Bad week for the Red Sox. Playoff hopes gets slimmer by day, by loss.
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Twitter update this week was mostly about Red Sox, but there was a Gyroball talk, which is awesome. I also went to Public Media Camp Boston this week, and was very interesting and inspiring.
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I was a computer game geek in Japan when I was growing up (why isn’t that a surprise?). I played lots of Nintendo – was so called Family Computer, or FamiCon to be short – and also played games on PC-88 at my friend’s house. I didn’t own a PC, but I sure spend a lot of time at this friends house. I can not remember exactly how old I was, but I must have been around 12, 13, 14 years old? around 5-7 grade, I would imagine. That would make it around 1986-88 or so. Spec from 1987, PC-8801 FA (I’m just randomly picking one, I have no idea what model my friend had) was 8MHz CPU speed with 64KB RAM. I remember the games had like 6 floppy discs and you had to load them all before you can start the game. Remember sitting around and inserting the floppies in the right order, one by one…
ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS TOUCH
Speaking of iPhone games from the past, I have to admit that I’ve already bought Final Fantasy for iPhone, which, to be honest, I didn’t play that much when I was young. I played a lot more of Dragon Quests – or DoraKue for short, or it was sold as Dragon Warriors in U.S.- than the FFs. Dragon Quest was first released in May 27, 1986 – I was 12 years old. Super Mario Brothers, which I also obsessed over as a kid, was released in September 13, 1985, I was 11. The Wikipedia link before also says that the Sangokushi game was released in 1985. I wonder (read: fear) what kind of games my son will be into when he is 12…
A couple of friends have been raving to me about Google Chrome. Being a big fan of FireFox (see my name in their ad! – misspelled but twice!) I was reluctant, but I finally started using it at home (can’t at work since we are still OS X 10.4.11. I know…) It already has firebug, web developer and delicious plug-ins, which I am using daily on firefox…
But then I noticed some of the web sites look kind of different. I was missing out on some of new CSS3 effects (very subtle) and man, I felt old, behind the curve, whatever. Not that I need to be cutting edge (which I am certainly not) but this is fun stuff, I should be in on this.
So, I made a slight change to this very blog and couple of other sites that I maintain. Just using text-shadow property. Like following:
text-shadow: 1px 2px 0px #ddd;
Following sites were helpful resources (As you’ll notice those are links from couple of years ago… better late than never, I’d say):
I sure tweet a lot about baseball. I’m so glad you have a one-track mind like me. That is a line from Hey Soul Sister by Train. I heard that song on the radio a few times and liked it, but I had no idea who it was or what the song is called. I only knew as “Hey, he-e-e-ey.” Which of course produced no hits on google search. Last time I heard it at a bar (Parish Cafe in Boston, where I am no longer the mayer in foursquare. Booo.), I used Shazam to recognize/find out the song, then subsequently purchased via iTunes at $1.29. Crazy that you can get buzzed and guy a song on your phone… Ukulele chords are here at Uke Hunt. I don’t know why I am way off the track here, but anyway, here are the list of my tweets this week (below). All about Red Sox.
Couple more of other things that I have found this week that I didn’t tweet, but I’d like to keep somewhere, were:
I am sure there are better ways, but this is one way I found works, and thought I’d take a note myself. This blog post titled “Reading XML with jQuery” from think2loud.com tutorial with downloadable source code was super helpful. In fact now that I look at it, I am basically suing his work. Another tutorial that I found helpful is this one: Tutorial: From PHP to XML to jQuery and Ajax. Anyway, I thought I would pass along, and keep it here for when I need it again…
Say you have xml file like this one, which can easily be created by Creativyst CSV to XML Converter (one of my absolutely favorite web tools of all-time)
<document>
<row>
<Col0>1</Col0 >
<Col1>2</Col1 >
<Col2>3</Col2 >
</row>
<row>
<Col0>2</Col0 >
<Col1>4</Col1 >
<Col2>5</Col2 >
</row>
</document>
Use this JavaScript:
$(document).ready(function(){
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "example.xml",
dataType: "xml",
success: function(xml) {
$(xml).find('Row').each(function(){
var Col0 = $(this).find('Col0').text();
var Col1 = $(this).find('Col1').text();
var Col2 = $(this).find('Col2').text();
$('<tr></tr>').html('<th>'+Col0+'</th><td>$'+Col1+'</td><td>$'+Col2+'</td>').appendTo('#chart');
});
}
});
});
And have this html:
<table id="chart">
<tr><td></td><th>Data header 1</th><th>Data header 2</th></tr>
</table>
Is this an awesome infographic or what? Copied from NYTimes website
In the process of updating my daily “Itadakimasu” blog, I was looking up correct spelling of Banh Mi (I always think that “h” is before “n,” like “John,” but obviously, I am always wrong) and came across this NYTimes piece “Building on Layers of Tradition “. I came across the graphic above, it was so good, I had to copy it here so I can find it again. Awesome.
Ooohhh, and more awesomeness, check this blog called gastronomy, links out for lots of banh mi photos. Yum.
BTW, I am the defending mayor of Banh Mi Ba Le in Dorchester, and they are awesome.
This week’s tweets included me finally figuring out what the guy in the stand selling was saying on TV during the Red Sox games (“Hey, get a cold bud light!”) at Fenway, and quote from Roberto Clemente, which I saw on the signature of a person from SABR mailing list (I think). Clemente, a rightfielder for Pittsburgh Pirates with 3000 hits in MLB, died when the plane he was riding crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico, en route to deliver relief supplies to victims of the earthquake in Nicaragua. (December 31, 1972)
"If you have an opportunity to make things better, and you don't, you are wasting your time on this earth" – Roberto Clemente
Oh, and watch this catch by Masato Akamatsu of Hiroshima Carp
EMBED-Spiderman Style Baseball Catch – Watch more free videos
Boy, those West-coast late night games are tough. Especially the Red Sox are notorious for long games (as Bill Simmons of ESPN points out, in first 101 games of 2010 Red Sox had only one game that took less than 2 hours and 30 min., 41 games between 2:31-3:00, and rest of 59 games took longer than 3 hours. 6 of those were longer than 4 hours (4 extra). So the games started at 10:10 PM EST in California/Seattle didn’t end till after 1 AM…
One of more interesting story that I read this week is that Daisuke Matsuzaka is throwing "one-seam" fastball this year. I have never heard of one-seam. This according to Japanese article by SportsNavi's Carlos Yamazaki. Yamazaki actually reside in Boston and I know him personally, and he says (in the article) Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz all throw "One-Seam." Beckett is quoted in saying “Our team have a lot of guys who throw one-seam. Including Lester, Buccholz, and Daisuke. (Note: this is his Japanese translation translated back to English so it is not the exact quote)” He says Tim Hudson is the most known successful pitcher that throw that pitch, and has talked to him about it. Hudson learned it from his teammate Omar Olivares in 2001 (on my tweet, I said “Oliver Perez”, but apparently, it was either my mistake or SportsNavi edited after my tweet… I believe it was latter, but none the less.)
Darvish Yu showing his one-seam fastball grip via Nikkan Sports
I guess TV Asahi ran a spot right before the Opening Day about it (Houdou Station 2010/03/19), interviewing Darvish. It looks like YouTube had a link but has been removed. (Try this:
tudou.com/programs/view/6NuQ0PKEPgY/ )
Here is Yu Darvish striking out 10 in the 2007 Japan Series against Chunichi Dragons, my hometown team.
A bilingual websites dedicated to bring you the information on Major League Baseball players from Japan.
Japanese language blog about Boston Red Sox.
My work as graphic designer/web designer.
Personal blog that I've been keeping since 2002.
I like to eat. And taking photo of it.
MLB going YouTube in Japan?
Apparently in Japan, you can watch highlights of MLB baseball games on YouTube. The URL for MLB.jp channel is youtube.com/mlbglobal, but when accessed from US, you get “This channel is not available in your country.”
Bummer. Of course, there are ways, but you didn’t hear that from me. ;)
Speaking of YouTube and Japanese baseball, there was an another “spiderman” catch in Hiroshima’s new stadium. This time, an out fielder is standing on top of the outfield fence to catch a home run ball. It is a great catch, but shouldn’t the fence be configured to not able to stand right on top of it? Not to take anything away from the catch, it is a great catch… and the ball park looks really cool; with a name like, Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima, how can you go wrong?