Wil Wheaton on Life Without DRM
Wil Weaton, known to some as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, has gained more publicity in the last decade as a writer giving voice to geek culture. His latest work is available as an audiobook available only directly from Wheaton’s website, not Amazon’s Audible service. Read Wheaton’s comments about Audible and DRM, [...]
Quarter Pole Math
When Marty’s arm popped, I suggested breaking the season down into 10-game slices, with the outside chance that Brodeur would re-appear for the final ten spot. The first micro-season saw the Devils go 6-2-2, the second set of 10 started off horribly – one win set up against five losses – but evened out with [...]
Tigers On Top?
I have this love-hate relationship with The Hockey News. At times their reporting seems to be a best of collection of beat writers and rehashed stories, and yet having all of the hockey beat writers appear in one regular publication isn’t a bad thing. Their coverage of college, major junior, women’s and international hockey is [...]
1980 Over My Shoulder
I’ve been looking for a bit of writing inspiration lately — blogging has been slow, I haven’t had the energy or creativity to devote to working on the hockey book, and work has been, well, more than a job. Perhaps it was the rainy day today, or perhaps it was the fact that I got [...]
Facebook and the Wrong Definition of Productivity
I’m convinced that “productivity” is a dumb word. It presumes some magic metric for how people create value in the workplace, and that metric is usually, inexorably tied to a clocking problem. Work faster, work harder, work more hours – and my favorite – waste fewer hours! I hear Tock’s admonishments ringing in the back [...]
Counting and Accountability
It’s another night of saying “no ken a horas” after watching a 5-0 Devils lead shrink to 5-3. As the Festrunk brothers would say, “I blame myself.” Had to tweet that Elias’ points streak is now five games with the assist on Zubrus’ second goal. An extended two on one that started with Elias falling [...]
Elias on Twitter
Patrik Elias has his own Twitter page. And it’s 80% him, a bit from his management team but for the most part it’s unedited Patty-streams. There are a whopping three people following him – c’mon, folks, when you get a glimpse into the daily grind of a professional athlete, it’s “Real Life” meets “Slap Shot” [...]
My Grandfather’s Tree Saw
Hanging in the garage of my parent’s house were two very large-toothed tree saws. Not your normal wood-cutting blades, measured in teeth per inch, as these monsters had inches per tooth, required at least two if not four hands to operate, and were intimidating to a 6th grader scraping by (no pun) in wood shop. [...]
Anti-Marketing Call From The Rock
When my kids were little and tele-marketing was all the dinner time rage, I used to put them on the phone with the hardiest of cold callers. I thought of it as fair play; they were interrupting my family team and my dinner for some unwanted spiel about credit cards, home loans, timeshares, or other [...]