Blogs are Offensive

Saw a link to an article off of Digg today about how studies have shown that "80 percent of blogs contain 'offensive' content". After reading it my first instinct was to come onto here and do my part by creating a post which featured an f-bomb after every other word (as in "#@$@ today my #$@@ing blog is #$@#ing 80% full of #@$ed-up offensive #$#$ing content"). Then I thought about who might potentially see my blog and decided not to. :)

Round 2 Predictions

Okay now it's time for the round 2 predictions for this years NHL playoffs. Without further ado:


Western Conference

Anaheim Ducks vs Vancouver Canucks
As I write this my boys from Vancouver just finished off the Dallas stars. So I'm still riding the high of winning game 7. Having said that, Anaheim looked like the best team in the west for most of the season, they're well-rested, and as great as Bobby Lou is, he's gotta be getting a bit tired with all the hockey he's played. I hate to pick against my team, but I don't think the 'Nucks will be able to get past the Ducks. Anaheim in 6. My wife's prediction: Vancouver in 7.

Detroit Red Wings vs San Jose Sharks
Well, I still like the Sharks in the west. They played well, and the time off I'm sure will help to heal some of those wounds incurred during the Nashville series. At times Detroit looked extremely impressive vs the Flames, but at other times seemed to struggle. Should be a very close series, but I think the Sharks have the grit to put them over the edge. Sharks in 7. My wife's prediction: Sharks in 6.

Eastern Conference

New Jersey Devils vs Ottawa Senators
This one should be interesting, the high flying Sens vs the defensive Devils. Certainly the edge in goaltending will go to New Jersey although Emery has proven to be a very capable goalie. I hate to admit it, but Daniel Alfredson was pretty impressive against the Pens and if he keeps it up Ottawa could go far. Tough one to call, but I'll go with the Canadian team: Ottawa in 7. My wife's prediction: Ottawa in 7.

Buffalo Sabres vs New York Rangers
Remember what I said in my round 1 predictions about the Atlanta/New York series? That it didn't matter who won, as they'd be out in the second round? Well, I'll stick with that. This one shouldn't even be close. Buffalo in 5. My wife's prediction: Buffalo in 5.

Round 1 - Comparison With TSN

Another thing I commonly do is compare my predictions with those of the "experts" at TSN. For those unfamiliar, they have a panel of hockey people who make predictions along with a monkey who spins a wheel to randomly pick a winner for a series. What's interesting is that oftentimes the monkey does better than the experts. :) I had originally put the results in a table in this blog, but unfortunately Blogger seems to choke on embedded HTML tables, so click here for the results. I did quite well, going 8 for 8 in my round 1 predictions. :)

Round 1 Results

Okay, round 1 is now over, time to summarize.

Also as well, I didn't mention this in the blog post relating to my initial predictions, but every year my wife and I compete to see who has the better predictions. To resolve this argument we needed some sort of quantifiable, mathematical evaluation scheme. How this works is we award 1 point for predicting the correct winner of a series, and another point for predicting the correct number of games. So each series is worth a maximum of 2 points. There has long been disputes between us (as is often the case in marriages....) as to this scoring, she thinks predicting the number of games should count for more points (of course because she lucks out on the number of games more than I do) whereas I think they should count for less (as it's basically a crapshoot predicting the correct number of games). Click here for a breakdown of the results, but to summarize, I got 12 of a possible 16 points, and my wife scored 11. So I'm off to a good start, leading the way by 1 point.

It's about that time of the year...

Well, it's about that time of the year, NHL playoffs are here. Traditionally every year I post my predictions on my homepage, but since I've now joined the world of blogging, I thought I'd post my (& my wife's) predictions on here. Here goes:

Western Conference:

Detroit vs Calgary - I'll go with the masses and agree that if there is going to be an "upset" then this will be the series. However, it's difficult to think of a team as strong as the Flames as an underdog (even if they limped into the playoffs). I think this one's actually very close, but I'm going to go with the Wings in 6. My wife's prediction: Calgary in 6.

Anaheim vs Minnesota - This is one of the series I'm really looking forward to. I really like the Ducks, and the Wild are a much more fun team to watch this season than seasons past. I really think Anaheim will be very tough to beat with the strong defence, goaltending, and tenacity the team has. Ducks in 5. My wife's prediction: Anaheim in 5.

Vancouver vs Dallas - Ahh, finally my homeboys get to return to the postseason. As much as I like the Nucks, this is going to be a tough series. Turco's got a lot to prove this year, and Dallas is a very strong team. I think this one will be the closest in the west, Vancouver in 7. My wife's prediction: Vancouver in 7.

Nashville vs San Jose - San Jose was my pick at the start of the year to win the Stanley Cup. Thornton is an awesome player, and (like Turco in Dallas) has a lot to prove in regards to playoff performances. The Sharks went far last year and I think they're on the verge of having a breakout year and winning it all. Still to early to crown them the champs, but I'm definitely picking them over the less experienced Preds. San Jose in 6. My wife's prediction: San Jose in 6.


Eastern Conference:

Buffalo vs New York Isles - Buffalo is the best team in the East. Nuff said. Buffalo in 4. My wife's prediction: Buffalo in 5.

New Jersey vs Tampa Bay - Brodeur is the best goalie in the game today (sorry Bobby Lou), and goaltending makes all the difference in the playoffs. Tampa's got a lot of scoring and experience, but goaltending is still a question mark for them. New Jersey in 6. My wife's prediction: New Jersey in 5.

Atlanta vs New York Rangers - This one's tough to call. Both are pretty evenly matched. Either way, I think whichever team wins this series will be knocked out in the 2nd round. I'll go with the Rangers, but you could flip a coin on this one. New York in 6. My wife's prediction: New York in 6.

Ottawa vs Pittsburgh - This should be the best series of the first round. Crosby vs Heatly. Malkin vs Spettza (sp?) Fleury vs Emery. What a series this should be. I'll go with Ottawa as they should be the hungrier team, but it really could go either way. Ottawa in 7. My wife's prediction: Ottawa in 7.

Recreational Computer Science Society Meeting Tonight

For those in the greater Victoria area, tonight is a meeting of the Recreational Computer Science Society, which is a bunch of geeks in Victoria who get together about once a month to talk about geeky computer stuff. At tonight's meeting I'm doing a very short talk about a ML-derivitive programming language named Alice, so if you're interested, feel free to come out (it's on UVic's campus in the Engineering/Computer Science or ECS building). There are other speakers as well, so get your geek on and come check us out. For more info check out:

http://groups.google.com/group/reccompsci/msg/1b4f49ba7947b616

100 Straight Days of Xbox Love

So as you might have noticed by the entries on the right-hand side, my Xbox 360 has it's own blog at 360voice.com For those unfamiliar with the site, what happens is the site uses the feeds from Microsoft which keep track of what games you play, which achievements you got, etc, and reports them in a blog-like format. In addition various "badges" and stats are reported. Yesterday was a big day for my Xbox, as it was the 100th consecutive day I played at least 1 game with it. In addition there were a few other highlights:

• 100 straight day of playing
• Passed the 17K gamerscore mark
• Another 1000+ gamerscore change day (I played through TMNT, as well as got a couple Gears achievments)
• Completed a retail game (TMNT), which should give me the 10 retail games completed badge for 360Voice
• New personal high for most achievements in a day (26)
  

My only beef about the entry was that achievement for Marvel wasn't actually earned yesterday, but on a day when there were no entries built (but I did play Marvel yesterday so it appears in the list).

Anyways, quick link to my 360's blog:

http://360voice.com/blog-view.asp?id=18240502

And for those of you with Xbox's, go sign up for a blog for your 360, it's a hoot to read!

NHL 2K7 Achievement Guide

Forgot to post this, I wrote it a couple of months ago. It's an achievement guide for NHL 2K7 for the Xbox 360, and outlines some easy ways to get most of the achievements. Click here for the guide...