The Vancouver Canucks are playing the Colorado Avalanche tonight, and as I was sitting at my computer, I was wondering … is there any live broadcast of the game online?
CKNW, the local radio station that usually broadcasts the Canucks’ games, doesn’t have streaming.
So I checked out NHL.com (irritatingly part of the MSN network) and was all excited about their Game Radio:
Listen to live broadcasts of NHL games on Windows Media Player! Links will not work until the broadcast is underway.
Unfortunately, all the games there are days old … the title is “Friday’s Games.” Not very live. And not what I’m looking for.
Ah well. At least they’re winning ….
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[ update ]
Aha … I found the live audio feed right on the Canucks.com home page. Errr … I guess that’s the most obvious spot.
Well, it did snow last night, as I thought it might. (Although, true to West coast form, most of it melted today.)
However, during the night, we were visited by the deer that we often see around our house – and they left tracks up our driveway:
I snapped this pic early in the morning, almost in the dark, just before clearing the driveway. And then when I came in the kids pointed out that the deer were right below our house, lying quietly under the cover of some of our backyard trees.
OK, occasionally I post the odd completely off-the-wall story on my blog. And this one fits the bill:
People’s bottoms are getting so big they no longer make a suitable target for injections, a study in Ireland has shown.
Many are now so obese that the needles customarily used simply are not long enough to penetrate the fat and reach the muscle, where they are aimed, Victoria Chan told the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of America in Chicago yesterday.
I hardly know what to say. However, if this is true of Ireland and the U.K., what is the story in the US? Or Canada for that matter? I doubt we’re healthier, overall.
Unbelievable.
Read more here.
Saw a cool bumper sticker at the rink Saturday night:
Support your local hospital. Play hockey.
I believe this is the one right here. Certainly rings a bell with me!
It is capital-C cold today. (At least for the West coast – I think it went below 0 Celsius today.)
It feels like snow, looks like snow, and it even smells like snow. And guess what’s in the forecast? Snow. (Of course, when all these conditions are met, and kids’ expectations are high, it would be very West Coast to get rain.)
I was talking to some people at church yesterday, and they were bemoaning the fact that it looks like we’re going to get some white stuff that is not on the mountains. Sorry, but when you start thinking that way, you’re getting old.
All kids (you too, when you were young) look forward with joy and glee at the prospect of snow. It’s wonderful, beautiful, marvelous stuff that transforms the world into a hushed, softened, magical place.
I say: let it snow!
(You can always work from home. That’s why they invented the internet.)
Teresa and I have been considering what to do with our home stereo for quite some time, and I’m thinking an iPod-based solution might be the answer.
Once I got my iPod, I immediately felt that my music library was freed – in retrospect CDs and jewel cases seem like little plastic coffins that concealed our songs.
Harmon Kardon’s iPod Docking Station seems like a good way to make that happen … put it together with the HK 3480 stereo receiver, and you’ve got a fairly decent home system.
Another benefit of putting these together (besides the relatively low cost) is that it’s a dedicated home stereo system. I’ve been looking for one for some time, and found it fairly annoying that everything auditory seems to have moved to home theatre systems. We don’t have our TV in the main living area, and see no need to integrate home theatre and home stereo.
Now the only question left … which speakers?
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(BTW, the cheapest reputable place I’ve found the HK 3480 is J & R.)
Remember the big ugly foot?
Well.
Apparently playing hockey on a badly bruised foot is not quite the thing to do. Unless you want it to get worse:
Ah well. It goes nicely with the bump just over my left eye that I acquired today from yet another stick in the face.
I can’t say I expected this … a new service from Google that connects advertisers and buyers via the phone.
We’re testing a new product that gives you a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on a Google search results page – over the phone.
Here’s how it works: When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click ‘Connect For Free,’ Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party. Then, chat away on our dime.
We won’t share your telephone number with anyone, including the advertiser. When you’re connected with the advertiser, your number is blocked so the advertiser can’t see it. In addition, we’ll delete the number from our servers after a short period of time.
Interesting!
[ update ]
I just threw this on my blog during a coffee break at work, but now that I’m back home, the thing that strikes me as really brilliant about Google click-to-call is that it provides a whole new way for the industry previously known as telemarketing to grow into something entirely different, new, and better.
Telemarketing will accomplish essentially the same purpose – sell stuff – but much more efficiently, because prospects will be pre-qualified. In fact, they’ll qualify themselves.
(OK, so that’s the rose-tinted glasses version. The reality will be somewhat less.)
However, there is no question in my mind that this is the future of telemarketing … just when that industry is entering it’s toughest days with the introduction of the national do-not-call registry in the US.
Saw it first here.
Ice hockey is for masochists, as I believe I’ve mentioned before.
In addition to the 4 stitches that were inserted to hold my lip together about 3 weeks ago, and the cantaloupe-sized bruise just above my right knee that I got as a souvenir for stopping a puck a week after that, I’ve got an entirely new happy memory to share with my grandchildren.
Last week I blocked a slapshot (entirely inadvertently, I must say) with my ankle. Ouch. Don’t try this at home, kids.
In addition to the puffiness, which you can’t really see, this is the result:
No my ankle is not usually that fat. Or black, blue, and yellow.
The most painful part, oddly, is above the actual ankle joint, which is not very black and blue. I was able to finish the game, but only because I never stopped to take off my skate. If you do that, forget trying to get it back on – your ankle will be too fat and too sore.
Hopefully it will feel OK for next game … tomorrow.
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The scar, by the way, is from a previous incident involving renovation, toilets, falling, and pain. Don’t go there.
Remember the “designed for Windows XP” urinal that I blogged a few days ago?
We had a good laugh in the office today when it suddenly broke down. Must have picked up a virus, or maybe there was a bug in the code. Apparently the software in urinals is very complex these days.
Hopefully someone has ordered a service pack. Dunno if it’s number 1 or number 2.
I thought I’d try out Google Analytics tonight, and went in to sign up, only to find this message:
Google Analytics has experienced extremely strong demand, and as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. In the meantime, please submit your name and email address and we will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new accounts. Thank you for your patience.
Not cool – but better, I suppose, than signing up and experiencing very poor service, or slow page loads, or other problems. Still, it’s surprising. This is Google – they’re not supposed to have capacity issues!
I have to say, I would hate to be a web stats software vendor right now. It’s very, very hard to compete with free.
I occasionally wander over to Technorati and weep at my woefully pitiful blog ranking: 103,499th.
Ouch.
But the other day, I had a slightly contrary thought. Sure, I’m part of the long tail of websites. Specifically, blogs.
But that long tail is really, really, really long. Incredibly long. In fact, mind-blowingly long. As Technorati now states, it is currently tracking 21.6 million blogs (as well as 1.7 billion links).
(BTW, since reducing the 22 million blogs by some considerably large fraction to take out the fake, auto-generated spam blogs would reduce the impact of my coming point, and since that would also adversely affect my ego, I’m going to ignore them.)
If I place slightly worse than 100,000th in a race, that sucks. However, if 22 million people are racing … maybe that’s not too bad after all.
In fact, with those numbers, sparkplug9.com is comfortably within the top 1% of all blogs. In fact, I’m in the top .5%.
Wow! Cool! Wooooooo! I came in 103,449th!
Can you believe some poor sucker is sitting at 103,450th right now? He (or she) must feel like a complete chump or something.
At least I’m not 103,451st. That would be a real embarrassment.
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By the way …
Here’s a really, really good Wired article on the long tail. In fact, it’s the article that started the long tail meme.
I took most of the day off last week Friday – Teresa and I took the kids to Mount Baker, just across the border in Washington.
There’s a great little tubing area that ends in a flat run over a little lake. The ice seemed to hold, but I could kick my way through it if I really tried, so we eventually moved to another area.
It was an incredibly warm day, at least in the sun: I didn’t need a jacket, and even took my shirt off for a few minutes here and there.
Here’s a family shot on self-timer … digital camera balanced precariously on the other tube:
Ethan decided he wanted to climb a steep slope just up from the lake – and he succeeded. I’m following him here in this picture, but I couldn’t get to the top via this route. I kept sinking in 5-6 feet of snow, but Ethan made it up. Way to go, Ethan!
Just across the from the lake there’s a little chalet that groups can rent. The proprietor allowed us to tube behind the chalet. Check out the doors at back: 4 at different levels … depending on how much snow will fall during the season:
On the way back down the mountain, we captured this shot of one of the peaks at Mount Baker. Note the snow pack just waiting to fall, about a third of the way down the mountain face.
All in all, a wonderful day.
Well, I hope you’ve got a great idea. ‘Cause unless you do, you’re sunk.
But if you do … it’s really cheap to start companies these days.
(That’s a link to a Paul Kedrosky presentation that I saw at a Vancouver Enterprise Forum session on Web 2.0.)
I finished reading Cavalcade, by Alison Sinclair this past week. Good book!
It’s science fiction – a novel take on first contact, which is hard to do, as it’s been done and done and done. But not quite to death, as this book proves.
As usual in the best of science fiction, the times and technologies are simply backdrops for experience and interaction. Two to three hundred thousand volunteers are taken into an immense egg-shaped ship, and only slowly do they come to realize that it is in fact, their ship, and they are, in fact, its new crew. That, and the conflict and cooperation they experience along the way, form the basis for the novel.
Well worth a read!
Note:
You can learn more about the book here. Ridiculously, it is out of print, so it’s going to be hard to find. Amazon has it, occasionally, in the shops that book merchants can set up with them.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
