Upgrades
I’m upgrading the blogs here to a more modern Typo, so the style has reverted back to the default and some things may be broken for a day or two.
I Got Game
The folks over at Only A Game out of NPR station WBUR in Boston have posted their show that features a report on Hurricanes U.
You can listen to the show – the Hurricanes U part comes about 6:30 into the show. I’m in there three times: I ask the question about players getting stitched up to Pete Friesen, you hear my name mentioned over the PA during the graduation, and I have a short blurb about the benefits of the program.
RealPlayer only (boo), but give it a listen!
Second Season
The NHL playoff matchups are set. The Hurricanes ended up with the #2 seed in the East, one point behind Ottawa.
The good? The Canes had an incredible season, shattering all records as far as regular season success. They were in contention for the President’s Trophy most of the year, and tied for the third-best record in the entire NHL (Detroit – 124, Ottawa – 113, Carolina/Dallas – 112). Several players are having career years. Rod Brind’Amour is amazing. Drawing #2 matches us up with #7 Montreal, who we owned during the regular season, vs. #8 Tampa Bay, who was much tougher.
The troubling? We’ve skidded into the end of the season, and were unable to get that critical win to secure #1 in the East. Erik Cole is still out, with an outside chance of getting back in the Conference Finals, should we make it that far. Martin Gerber, who had a stellar year, has looked awful over the last couple of weeks, letting in far too many soft goals. Our offensive touch is faltering a little bit. Several players are missing time with nagging injuries. Canadiens goalie Cristobal Huet is red-hot since taking over.
The lame? There’s only one playoff series out of the 8 in the first round scheduled to get zero national TV appearances in the US. One guess as to which one it is. No respect, I say. None. On the plus side, that means we get to hear John & Tripp call the games, instead of national announcers making Mayberry jokes.
I’ve got three tickets to Saturday night’s Game #1, so the whole family will be going. We’ll watch the rest of the games on TV.
As far as the first round, here’s how I see it going.
East
#1 Ottawa vs. #8 Tampa Bay: Tampa’s had a subpar, inconsistent season, but they’re the defending champs, and that’s tough. Ottawa, though, is too offensively gifted to get stopped this early. Prediction: Ottawa in 5.
#2 Carolina vs. #7 Montreal: Carolina owned the season series 4-0, but that was before Huet came into the picture. Carolina’s still got the psychological edge from 01-02 and the “Miracle In Molson”. The Canes should get it together and find their offense. Prediction: Carolina in 6.
#3 New Jersey vs. #6 New York Rangers: New Jersey may be the most dangerous team in the playoffs right now. 11-game winning streak, Amazing. The Rangers have had a stellar season with their high-priced players actually producing like high-priced players. If the refs call the games like they should, NY’s speed should prevail. Prediction: Rangers in 7.
#4 Buffalo vs. #5 Philadelphia: Buffalo, much like Carolina, has used the new rules to their advantage. They’re fast and on a hot streak. Philly’s suffering from some missing parts. Prediction: Buffalo in 6.
West
(I don’t really follow the west, so take this with a grain of salt).
#1 Detroit vs. #8 Edmonton: Detroit’s the best team in the NHL over the regular season. As much as Mike Patterson and I would like to see it, I think they easily handle an undistinguised Oilers team. Prediction: Wings in 5.
#2 Dallas vs. #7 Colorado: Colorado hasn’t done a whole lot, Dallas is solid. Shouldn’t be too tough. Prediction: Dallas in 5.
#3 Calgary vs. #6 Anaheim: Anaheim is getting hotter at the right time, and both teams finished the season with 6 wins in the last 10. Should be close. Prediction: Anaheim in 7.
#4 Nashville vs. #5 San Jose: Nashville was, like Carolina, a post-lockout surprise with their strong season. But I don’t think there’s a more dangerous team in the NHL than San Jose, with Thornton and Cheechoo. Look out for them. Prediction: Sharks in 6.
Mr. Voice On Rails
After saying for about a year I was going to do it, I’ve finally revamped the Mr. Voice website. It’s gone from a mostly-broken PHP system to a pretty fun Ruby on Rails-based application. While I’m sure there’s more that I can do with the site, it’s meeting or exceeding the capabilities of the old site, so I flipped the switch this afternoon.
A big win, at least from a mental standpoint, was redoing the database structure to match what Rails expects and, as a side effect, getting a database that was more logically named and laid out than the old one.
One fun thing was reimplementing the XML-RPC API for the client application in Rails. The Mr. Voice software can talk via XML-RPC to the website, so that people can query and share sound clips with other Mr. Voice users. The client software is in Perl, and the previous incarnation of the API was also in Perl, which was pretty forgiving. Moving that over to Rails’ ActionWebService format wasn’t too hard, but there were some small data format issues that I had to work around. Since all of the clients out in the world are still using the old API, though, I rewrote the Perl version to talk to the new database.
I split the information about the Troupes using Mr. Voice into its own table (vs. an XML file in the old system) and added latitude and longitude information. Thus, I was able to use the Cartographer plugin to generate the Users map on the fly from that data. Pretty slick.
Because Rails makes AJAX so easy, I was able to add a few AJAX calls to dynamically render parts of the page, such as the login box, song info box, and shopping cart stuff. I was also able to use RJS templates, so that when you add an item to the cart, a series of effects happen to let you know what’s going on. I also found out that you can drive yourself crazy if you set a global Content-Type header of “text/html”, and then try to figure out why your RJS templates are broken (hint: RJS reponses need to be sent as “text/javascript”).
I was even able to use ActionMailer to implement a “lost key” emailing system and new key request form. Also in the email front, I installed the exception_notification plugin to send me email when something in the app breaks (so I got a few emails when people hit it and tripped over some bugs I hadn’t caught).
So I’m pleased with it. Head on over and check it out!
The Cause That Refreshes
If you’re looking for a good cause as a recipient of your time and money, I’ve got two that are guaranteed to help build karma and assist worthy groups.
The first is Kelly Turner and her participation in the March of Dimes WalkAmerica event. The event raises money to improve baby health – things like preventing birth defects, premature birth, and the like. Mark and Kelly’s oldest, Hallie, was born nearly three months early. She was tiny. But thanks to advances helped in part by groups like the March of Dimes, you’d never know she was ever at any sort of risk. And that’s the great thing. Donate here.
The second is the amazing Julie Murphy Wells, lead singer of the band Eddie From Ohio, participating in the Susan J. Komen Race for the Cure. Julie was diagnosed with cancer in September 2005, but has been fighting through it with chemo and the support of her family and fans. It’s thanks to progress in cancer research that the world hasn’t lost this incredibly talented artist. Donate here.
I’ve donated to both causes.
You should too. Every little bit helps.
Babies Having Babies
Your scary news headline of the day, courtesy of WRAL:
Elementary School Has 18 Pregnancies In School Year
(Thankfully, when you read the article, it’s not the kids)
RIP
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