Monthly Archives: April 2009

Apr 20 2009

links for 2009-04-19

Apr 19 2009

Statistics as Spoiler

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and so I was relaxing and kind of excited to see that the New York Yankees game against Cleveland would be televised yesterday.  So, I decided to check in and watch bits and pieces of it while doing other tasks.

Who would have predicted what happened?

The Cleveland Indians let loose in the second inning, scoring 14 runs en route to a 22-4 win.  Meanwhile, across town about 10 miles away, the New York Mets were winning their game against Milwaukee 1-0.  The commentators on the game were talking about the difference in hitting home runs between the two parks.  Yankee Stadium remains a batter’s dream while Citi Field is more pitcher friendly.

How could this be?

It’s a unique year in New York City.  They have two major league baseball teams which is exciting in itself.  However, both teams are breaking in new stadiums this year.  This is a rather unqiue time in history and I was curious to see the layouts of each.  After all, the old Yankee Stadium was such an odd shape as it was landlocked by city streets and Shea Stadium was round.  So, I fired up my favourite earth viewing utilities and zoomed in to New York City.  Baseball stadiums are unique in shape and so large that they’re easily identied from the air.  Shea Stadium, in particular, is very easy to find since it’s near LaGuardia Airport and Arthur Ashe Stadium which are unique in design by themselves.

I was disappointed to discover that all of my aerial viewing tools have not been updated with the newest images.  Instead of seeing the New Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, we’re still able to see the old Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium.

However, I was able to find images of the new Citi Field and Yankee Stadium at ballparks.com.


Citi Field from ballparks.com


Yankee Stadium from ballparks.com

In addition to these gorgeous images at ballparks.com, you’ll find all kinds of statistics about the design and opening of the parks.  If that’s not enough, turn to Wikipedia for specific details about Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.

Now, sporting events are an endless source for statistical data.  You can find statistics on just about anything.  But unlike hockey where the dimensions of arenas are standard, baseball is especially unique in that the dimensions differ from park to park.  Add to that, the fact that you’re outside with environmental effects and the statistics become that more intriguing.  So, while right field at Citi Field is 330 feet, it’s only 314 feet at Yankee Stadium.  Citi Field is near Flushing Bay and Yankee Stadium is inland in the Bronx.  How can they be truthfully compared?

Now, as a left handed batter, I’m not about to say that the difference would make a difference to me, but I think about a home run that would just clear the fence at Citi Field would be well into the stands at Yankee Stadium.

Is it fair then to compare the results from a 22-4 game with a 1-0 game, given this?  Baseball players have long expressed their desires to play for a certain team, not only for the money and benefits, but from the physical layout of the park.  That’s why rosters have so many players with left handed and right handed pitchers and batters.

As such, there really is no way to compare statistics from one ball park to another.  It also makes it difficult to get a frame of reference.  While I’ve seen baseball played at SkyDome, it certainly doesn’t compare to the experience of baseball at Comerica Park.  I would suggest, then, that baseball statistics comparing one ball park to another are next to useless or at best debated in a social setting where the winner buys the next round.

If we continue to put everything under the microscope, it needs to be done under similar circumstances.  Let’s stop trying to analyse dogs versus cats.  What’s important is the score at the end of nine innings and the ability to enjoy everything that happens after the first pitch is thrown.  We seem to want to quantify everything and turn everything into a statistic with the goal of deeper understanding.  Just because a calculator or computer can do it, doesn’t mean that it always should.  It can’t always be done and, when done improperly, just spoils everything.

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Apr 19 2009

links for 2009-04-18

Apr 18 2009

Wiki Changing Things

Yesterday, we hosted another Women in Technology session.  We’ve been doing this for six or seven years now, in partner with IBM Canada K-12 Education.  The session is half a day partnering Grade 7 and 8 girls with mentors who use technology as part of their daily routine.  The goal is to encourage girls as they enter their teenage years to not close doors on mathematics, science, and technology.

The girls are divided into small groups and work with their mentor on a project which they share with the group at the end of the session.  The project really isn’t the ultimate goal – the goal is to work and talk alongside a mentor about the project and technology and careers in general.

The original concept was inspired by the lack of numbers of women entering Computer Science courses at university.  The original project was also very Toronto-centric where you could assemble a group of women who work at IBM to come to the school.  In our location, that’s just not possible so we have modified things to include mentors from the local community.  It’s worked incredibly well for us and, while we have no delusions that we’re changing the entire world, the goal is to open minds to the possibilities.

To each session, each group of girls bring their educational learnings to the table.  In this particular group, there was something rather unique.  Throughout the year, this group of students (boys and girls) had developed a great deal of their course content on a class wiki.  As an observer, the mechanics of the session seemed considerably different.  The girls were easily able to decide on a project, work together for the entire morning, and there didn’t seem to be a visible single leader in any of the groups.

Instead, there was a greater sense of shared responsibility and more constructive conversation about the project.  I was really taken by how well teamwork was demonstrated on all fronts.  It has given me a great deal to think about – was it this particular group of girls or was it because they had developed a sense of working together throughout the year on their wiki projects?

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Apr 17 2009

links for 2009-04-17

Apr 17 2009

Infinite Photograph

This is just too cool not to share and is worthy of a blog post.  From National Geographic comes the “Infinite Photograph“.

Those of us who have enjoyed the National Geographic for years know them for their amazing high quality images.  With the Infinite Photograph, from user generated content, you’re presented with a delightful mosaic of images.  As you move your cursor over the image, you’ll notice an orange rectangle.  (What else?)  Click on the image to dig inside the mosiac.  You dig and dig and dig and soon you understand why it’s called the infinite photograph.

What an addictive concept.  I’ve been playing around with it for some time now and seeing just spectacular images.  Instead of single clicking on each, double click to get more information about the individual shot.  It’s guaranteed to keep you amused for a while.

Would you like to create your own Mosaic?

Head on over to the Image Mosaic Generator.

Here, you’re invited to upload your own image and the website creates its own mosaic of images for you from images uploaded to Flickr.  Again, another inviting and engaging thing to do with your images.

Here’s an image of Beauregard, the wonder Daschund.

beauregard

According to Cnet, this is part of National Geographic’s “My Shot” program.

If you or your students are digital photographers, all this is worth a followup.

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Apr 16 2009

links for 2009-04-16

Apr 16 2009

Thinking Desktop

After reading the article yesterday about one of the concepts behind the future of Firefox, I did a couple of things.

First, to experience what it looks and feels like, I installed the Tree Style Tab add-on into my Firefox browser.  In my entry from yesterday, I also made reference to the importance of having access to Twitter so did some arranging to make sure that my Seesmic Desktop was always going to be available.  My new desktop experience now looks like this.

I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of customisation that is available with this add-on.  I like the hierarchy layout that it provides as you go from one link in a page to another.  It delivers a nice record of how and where you got to a particular page.  My only concern, at this point, is the amount of dead space left over.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m in search of the perfect layout to have all of the information sources collected together into a single spot.  You’ll note that in the screen grab above, I’ve got a little room left over!  However, it didn’t take long to be able to adjust to having the tabs on the left instead of the right.  In long scrolling pages like my Delicious network above, the extra real estate in the browser window is nice to have.  There may indeed be something to this.

Now, for truth in browsing – I’m fortunate to be able to install this on a screen with wide dimensions.  The above illustration is from a Macintosh set at 1440×900.  The experience is a little less thrilling when set at a conservative 1024×768.  However, the add-on does have the ability to hide and reveal the tabs which is very helpful.

I also took a look around at family and some colleagues who happened to be on the internet.  The first observation was that my fixation on a single point of info isn’t shared by all.  Much of what I saw was just a browser open and a focus on the content of the webpage.  When other information was needed, it was a matter of going to a different web resource or to a different application starting with the process of shutting down the browser to do so.  What you don’t see in the image above is that I also have an email client, word processor, and iTunes open as well.  Daughter Bubby did have a couple of apps open as she’s doing homework, browsing, and clobbering me in Word Twist on Facebook.  She refuses to go full screen with any of her apps, instead preferring to have bits and pieces visible for switching from one to the other.

So, the experiment will continue.  It was a far easier transition that what I thought it was going to be.  Even if this turns out not to be the future for Firefox, I’m thinking that the add-on may remain.  It makes tabbed browsing even more intuitive for me.

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Apr 15 2009

Future of Browsing

It was with interest that I read this article this morning about the musings of the future of the Firefox browser.  Bottom line is that it shows a picture of the tabs on the left instead of across the top of the screen.


Image courtesy of:  http://www.azarask.in/blog/

It’s an interesting concept.  It looks a lot like the iTunes layout or the new Seesmic Destop.

I’m thinking of my computer habits and it makes a lot of sense.  Webpages tend to scroll up and down and so this would allow you to see more of the content on the screen at once.  By strategically placing the tabs, they can hide under other windows and only be visible when you bring the application forward.

I think that there’s more of a message than design as well.  With more and more applications moving to the web, we need to think of the browser more as a platform that integrates with whatever computer you happen to be using than as another application that needs to be run.

At that point, it becomes the great leveler.  Who cares if it’s Windows or Mac OS or Linux underneath.  You’re going to run your application in the browser.  Imaging Firefox as the platform and things like Seesmic Desktop or iTunes or whatever just snapping into the browser to be called upon as necessary.

It does give you pause to think about the value of standalone applications.  I’m also thinking of all those who haven’t embraced the Read/Write web in a significant way.  If this is the way of the future, those who are dragging their heels had better pick up the pace.

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Apr 15 2009

links for 2009-04-14