This is something that always catches me.
If I’m talking about something in a post on whatever social network, I like to use “A.I.” with the proper periods within that abbreviation of “artificial intelligence”. It leaves you with little misunderstanding about what is meant by “A.I.”
But everything time I see “AI”, I just think you’re talking about “AL”.
I’m glad he sees it, too.
It actually is morning and much more sunlight in Iowa than there is an Vancouver right now. Funny how Reddit serves up sometimes.
Even my B.C. sister-in-law was impressed with the dawn and dusk skies of the Midwest. It’s a different beauty to appreciate.
This might be the only way we’re going to get through all of this.
This is pretty wicked. Found this via Robert Scoble who found it via Jakob Lodwick, and what we have here is an incredible video that was put together by Tom Guilmette who is not only an avid video enthusiast, but his day job is being a camera man in the outfield at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.
This short video is a small tour of the camera he uses to do his job, and the camera he used to make this video blog of sorts isn’t anything to sneeze at as well.
I would love to be able to do something like this with my day job, but in all honestly, radio is not as pretty and it sounds. No seriously, it sounds way better than what it technically takes to make radio happen.
Zanstorm posted about this on Waiting for Stanley some time back when he saw me in the background during the Nashville game, and he asked if I knew I was on TV. I honestly didn’t know if I made it on the TV, but it didn’t surprise me. We’re all down there doing our sports coverage thing.
It was when I got an email from faithful TCC listener GZ Expat that it was kind of fun to acknowledge that yes, that’s me in the background… the really short guy with Brad Isbister, #27. That guy is huge.
If you’re wondering why it’s been so long since I’ve posted, this is apart of that. It’s been quite the month with my day job. After Northern Voice, the pace has gone nonstop, even if we did make a weekend for ourselves on Salt Spring Island. The toughest part is coming home and wanting to do much of anything except relax.
I hope to do more soon, but the season isn’t over for the Canucks just yet (which could be an entire other post for another time). One more regular season game, then, I hope, things will slow down. Hope is the key word there.
The following video was somewhat surprising to find on YouTube, but it doesn’t do the legend of Roger Luttski justice. And thankfully, the person who posted it finally made it embeddable.
Colonial Lanes in Iowa City has made a series of commercials for their bowling ally that have been absolutely hilarious, all while keeping things on a low budget. More so, the creativity compared to production quality doesn’t even compare, but there is only so much you can expect from local commercials, no matter where you are in the world. This, on the other hand, has always been a campaign that is witty, if not completely hilarious.
The tag line of “oh yeah, bowling” is a play on all the things you can do at what is more than just a bowling ally. In fact, it’s something that I still throw out once and a while, but no one has a clue what I’m talking about. I’m not so sure that just this clip even begins to explain it, but it’s still pretty good. And the quality is far superior to the soft, grainy, yet comforting VHS look and sound of their old TV spots.
And who can forget the Tiger Woods spoof of, “I am Roger Luttski”? That one almost made me cry.
This is, or was, a long running theme in their commercials, and I hope it still is. Roger Luttski is a completely fictional character, but he has been portrayed as the same guy for a number of years now. I’m sure it’s not an easy job, but bowling for fun and then stumbling into the realm of a spokes person would be pretty cool.
While hanging out at Muffin’s house last Tuesday, I finally broke down and tried my hand at Guitar Hero[wiki]. Yes, it was the first edition of the game, but the bigger point is that I’ve tried my hand at this thing that has seemed to grip the gaming nation. I’ve been suckered into the Mario Kart[wiki] realms in the past and watched the disturbing rise of Dance Dance Revolution[wiki].
The Adam and Corinna are big GH fans, and I’ve never mustered up the extreme interest in picking up an axe and trying my hand at the game. The game looks and sounds like fun, but it never stuck me as something I really wanted to try. Stick me in front of a gaming console with a hockey game of some sort and you might have me asking for a try, even though I’ll have no clue how to play.
So, I’ve finally tried it. I had already thought that by knowing how to play bass and a little guitar would cause some conflict, and that was slightly the case. There is something to be said about having rhythm, and then it’s another story when you have to hit the right buttons when the game calls for it. To me, that’s more timing than the groove you kinda get when you are jamming on your guitar or bass. It kinda threw me at first, but I adjusted.
However, did you catch the recent episode of South Park about Guitar Hero? The part where they say something to the effect that it would be amazing what these kids could do if they spent all that time and energy learning how to actually play guitar versus playing a video game where they pretend. Made me laugh pretty hard.
And then Randy where he plays the game in his underwear. That was hilarious, but happened to me on the second time I tried my hand at the game, even on easy level. Of course, I wasn’t nearly naked when I did it, but maybe I should try that and see if I improve. Maybe it will make me man enough to tackle GH two or three now.
The beautiful thing about BitTorrent[wiki] is that it allows us to pretend that we have a DVR. Well, in Vancouver, they are known as PVR, but it’s that digital video box that is so much sweeter than what a VCR ever was or can be.
Anyhow, on one of the many sites that I watch for the latest torrents that I want to grab, something popped up that caught my eye. It said “Finland” and “hockey” somewhere in the title, and there was also a “vs” in it as well. I’ve heard a lot about the Swedish, Finnish, and Swiss leagues that NHL players jump ship to play in, so I thought I would download it to see what it was.
Sure enough, it was a Finnish league hockey game, and the broadcast was entirely in the native language. HD, widescreen format with sound that had some killer, stereo quality sound. Who ever did this rip, did it with passion, and the broadcast wasn’t half that bad either.
I didn’t get a chance to watch the whole game because I was going through the collection of stuff that has been accumulating for us to watch prior to recording the latest episode of The Crazy Canucks last night. I actually needed to help free up space on my hard drive, so I parsed through it rather quick. That’s not to say that I wasn’t able to make a few observations, if not get a feel for how the game went.
First and foremost, the amount of logos on the jerseys of the players should make any NHL fan rejoice that we don’t have to endure such blatant advertising. The arena wasn’t the biggest, but the home team made quite the noise when the home team scored. I think they were the ones in the blue and orange uniforms, but I don’t really know if they were SaiPa[wiki] or Tappara[wiki].
Checking into those Wikis, there are a couple of players on these respective teams from B.C. and Minnesota. Some good ol’ North American hockey kids, dontcha’ know, eh?
Both of these teams, finding this information out while writing this post, are in the SM-liiga[wiki] in Finland. Interestingly enough, this league is regarded in Europe the same way that the NHL is thought of in North America. Playing at this level is nothing to scoff at, and watching some of the action is evidence of that. International rules or not, these guys can play.
So Tappara won, and I think I’m pretty confident that they are the guys in those blue and orange uniforms, but now I’m second guessing myself and saying that the home rink was that of the guys in yellow and black. Or was it yellow and blue?
I don’t understand a lick of Finnish, so there is no way I can say for certain as to who was who, but 4-2 was the final score, Tappara was the winner. The guys in orange and blue. At least our numerics cross language boundaries.
Thank you, mysterious Finnish league hockey fan, for taking the time to put this out there for me to discover. Like I said, I’ve only heard about these leagues but never have had the chance to really get any exposure to it. On top of that, the announcers are fun to listen to, even if you can’t understand the language. Granted that it’s no Mexican league futbol match in terms of the quality and entertaining play-by-play, but these folks get just as excited.
I mentioned it in the recent episode of The Crazy Canucks, but the NHL should really do more with the technology of bittorrent. I’m not the first one to promote or come up with the idea, but it just might help grow exposure to the league if you make games available like this as soon as they are complete. Posting games to Google Video three days after they happen is… well… hmm, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, they’re easy to forget about.
Finland, you’ve got some good stuff over there. You make me want to come visit the home of Sami Salo[wiki] and stay for the hockey.
Just because I find these things so freaking interesting, I wanted to post this video. I’ve toured the studios in the CBC once with Tod Maffin, and he writes for Inside The CBC. Actually, Tod is basically the new media guru and ambassador for the CBC, at least here in Vancouver. I love that he uses the medium to share information about the substantial renovation that is occurring at their downtown location, and this video really helps to understand what’s going on and how it’s going to look when it’s all done.
Recently getting Montelban for my birthday from Adam and Corinna, I’ve been plotting my way to take more pictures like this. I’m still trying to figure out how, where, and when, but we’ll get there. Still, this picture sums up what some days on the job can be like. It’s not all that bad, but at the end of the day, it’s all about pushing buttons and knobs.
