Mouse Art

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This shows my mouse tracking at work...it sure gets a workout! For the program go here.

Haiku Wednesday

Mardi Gras

Tired New Orleans?

Super Saint celebration

Nah, born to party

Neil Gaiman - American Gods

This is the second time I have read this book. A rare event since there are so many great books...who has the time to go back? Well this book left a mark when I went through it the first time. It was my first go with Gaiman and I read it each night while riding the bus home from work. So 6 - 7 years later, after reading more Gaiman, I decided to give the book another shot to see if it held up over time.

This is part of an ongoing attempt to determine a Top 10 book list so I wanted to reread some choice titles to ensure they still meant something (see my post on an old Heinlein's book...). Boy reading a book a second time, paying a little closer attention to it all, made the book a whole lot more enjoyable. I think the first time reading a book with a lot of levels can be a bit overwhelming. Just trying to get a feel of the characters and plot. Kind of like following directions for the first time...really difficult looking for street names and addresses but then that second time is so much easier because you have a general feel. By the way is it weird that I am listening to Amanda Palmer while writing this?

The book follows the hero, Shadow, as he journeys through the Midwest with his boss, Mr Wednesday, who is the God, Odin! Along the way Shadow runs into Gods. This is the fascinating part of the book. Since America is such a melting pot of cultures, each culture brought with it their Gods and as long as that culture still existed these Gods exist in human form. Problem is that modern day Gods like the Internet, are causing the old gods to disappear. So a big storm is brewing. Little things like the Egyptian gods being undertakers and owning a Funeral Home, sacred places like Rock City, and names the Gods adopt. These details make the book so much more. This website lists every god that makes an appearance and also has a map! This book is a definite Top 10!

Rox Talk

Few years back I was wondering with all of these new stats whether one, specifically On Base Percentage, was worthy of runs score. I mean baseball is about scoring runs. If a master stat doesn't relate to runs score what does it really mean? So I started easily and plotted our Rox runs scored versus batting average, on base percentage (OBP), and on base plus slugging (OPS).

Guess you'd figure that on base plus slugging would correlate the best but OBP works pretty good too. Since OPS seemed to correlate the best with scoring runs, what about the rest of the league (see below)? Well there you have it...on the league level it seems that OPS is the big winner. Funny thing to me is the data below it makes the OBP seems a whole lot more correlated than OPS...hmmmm the miracles of excel!

OK so OPS correlates to runs scored. Well another thing that makes me wonder. Runs scored versus runs allowed...which one matters more? I have always been fascinated by the simple concept behind the Pythagorean run theory (read about it here). Thus if you plot runs scored divided by runs allow against wins you get the graph below.

The graph shows data from 2000 - 2009 seasons. Again this is probably an obvious point but when you score more runs than your opponent you tend to win more games ;-). OK so back to my second thought, is there any way to determine which is more important; a runs scored or a run prevented? Think about it...if a team wins 1 - 0 what is more important the one run scored or the nine innings of preventing a run? I have no idea just something to ponder but I went ahead and tried in my own way to see what plotting the data might suggest. Based on ten years of data the average runs scored was 771 runs. I then removed this number of runs from every team's total and then plotted this against number of wins. I also did this for runs allowed. The two graphs produced looked like this:

Pretty much two scatter shotgun pattern of data points. Both suggest a week correlation (0 being no correlation and 1 showing a correlation). The runs scored had a 0.35 and the runs against 0.45. On this basis could you suggest that the higher correlation in runs against might suggest wins are more depended on allowing your opponent less runs? I am not a stat guy, don't pretend to be, and probably the power of excel makes real stat guys cringe when people like me play with numbers looking for patterns that truly don't exist but either way to me it is fun...

Ghost Writers?

The Sunday NY Times Magazine had an article about James Patterson and his book publishing empire. One thing in the article struck me as kind of odd and I quote, "This is partly because Patterson is so prolific: with the help of his stable of co-authors, he published nine original hardcover books in 2009 and will publish at least nine more in 2010." Anything sound weird in that sentence? Last time I checked his book's titles were simply James Patterson, not James Patterson and X. I mean if you push out 9 novels in a year I don't think you are fooling anyone to suggest that you yourself didn't write it all but to suggest that your favorite book might not even be 90% his written word just his plot and characters...well to me this is sacrilegious. When I find an artist and strike up a relationship I have an understanding that it is 100% the authors words and ideas and that he sat down over whatever time period and wrote, typed, dictated, or whatever the story that I am about to invest my time in. To me it is an intimate relationship but to then discover that most of it was written by some "ghost" writer who was working on a plot outline developed by the author seems to be very disingenuous...a lie, the wool being pulled over my eyes, a slight of hand, or whatever you might suggest. It saddens me a little to think that an author has become like a corporation just banging out books. Now not to make Patterson seem like a bad guy as the article would suggest that this is Patterson's doing, that he is pushing the publisher to publish 9 titles a year (or more if possible). Does it cheapen a book if you know it's not written by the author?

Comic Splat (5)

Siege #2 of 4 - I can't believe he tore up Ares...WOW...don't see that everyday in comic books...love the ending as Capt's Shield reflection in Iron Patriot's helmet gets closer...BOOYAH

Iron Man #23 - Stark is such a lady's man...filler issue, move on bring the Iron Man back!

Cinderella #4 - Interesting concept kind of a ho hum ending, problem is when I read this I think Buffy!

Buffy #32 - Well I keep trying to give this up but the last issues of the season were too good to pass up...one word...Twilight?

Wonder Woman Blackest Night #3 -Female artist still draws huge breasted comic heroes!

Haiku Wednesday

Hearts

Sweet, candy sayings
They're mini love messages
Love handle makers

Connie Willis in Person

Went to Mrs Willis' book signing event tonight and boy what a fantastic talk. It has been a while since I went to an author's reading and actually came away with something. Connie was just so refreshing. Really honest and not afraid to express opinions. On tour for her new book, Black Out, which took 8 years to write and developed into two books it certainly sounds like a great read. I have only read one of her books (review here) and I generally liked it. As I stated back then I thought of her not as much as true sci-fi writer. Still think this but that is okay because she must cringe when she goes to sci-fi conventions because her personality is so outstanding. I couldn't imagine her having a conversation with Neal Stephenson or William Gibson although I see her and Neil Gaiman having a good go of it!

Any how loved her talk about Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, and Who Killed Rodger Ackroyd. She made some interesting points on how Christie wrote and how she used reader's built in bias' to write her stories. Might have to dig out some old Poirot books and reread them as an adult as I read most of them back when I was a teenager. What bias did I have then?

Finally it was interesting to note how she hates to write (a little sarcasm...I think). She was very thankful after 8 years the book was finally finished. She provided an interesting background on how she writes especially her outlining. Also she says that every plot was either developed by Shakespeare or Dickens and that all modern writing just rewrites one of these plot but using a different view point. Rambling outlines and trying to find different viewpoints seems to be a good way to start although I think every writer finds their own methods...

Rox Talk

Odds and ends...

Prediction time...what are the early thoughts? This one says 86 wins finishing behind the Dodgers and one game behind the Braves for the Wild Card. And this one gives us 86 again but finishing behind the Diamondbacks and winning the Wild Card (funny thing about this one was that when I viewed it a week ago the Rox were at 80 wins(?)...does Mora mean that much?). With PECOTA they are projecting 768 runs scored and 717 runs against. The previous projects 831 and 785. This one seems a bit more realistic.

So what was the last decade like for the Rox? Neil Paine published this post on baseball-reference. Using a statistical method called maximum likelihood estimation he created team rankings according to records and strength of schedule. Of the 30 teams the Rox placed 22nd. They had some pretty lean years earlier in the decade...

Ever bet on baseball? I did once on a whim years ago. I took the Rox over the Giants in San Francisco...I won

Rob Neyer jokingly refers to his Royals as returning to national prominence due to them getting a date ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball next year. The bigger question to me is when was the last time the Rox were the Sunday Night game of the week? I have no idea? You would have thought that with them going to the World Series in 2007 they would have gotten a nod in 2008 but I don't think so....

Research suggests that baseball is just luck...

Baseball in Portland?

Comic Splat (6)

Detective Comics #861 - A dueling issue featuring Batman and Batgirl! Of course the Batman is a story taken from the past but why do you have to bring him into the fold at all? Let go of the Bat!

Captain America Reborn 6 of 6 - Kind of a let down to be honest. No twist, no nothing, and an extra issue for that? Disappointing and why wasn't this in the Captain America continuum?

Marvelous Land of Oz 3 of 8 - Great art

New Avengers #61 - Thank god this is going away in a couple of months. 61 issues and really nothing exciting has happened it has simply served as filler between the big Marvel events. Can the Hood go away and can we get some universe spanning kick ass story lines? Please!

X-Force #23 - Necrosha bore...ughhh why do these books exist...they are awful!

X-men Legacy #232 - Wake me up when the X-world makes me care again...