Why you should care about the 2008-2009 hockey season

10 Reasons to Care About the NHL This Season - Maxim
The 2008-2009 NHL season is just around the corner, and Maxim (yuck) has a guide to why you should care about the new year of hockey. They should have replaced "New Third Jerseys" with "New Chance to Win your Fantasy Hockey League."

Behind the acronyms of the Financial Meltdown

The Fuel That Fed The Subprime Meltdown

The current financial crises are huge in scope and have many layers of complexity.  This article from Forbes Magazine’s Investopedia breaks down some of the alphabet soup, and explains ABS, CDOs, RMBS, ARMs and where they fit in with current crises.

 

Hockey Pool Guide stats

Fantasy Hockey Pool Stats .ca

2008-2009 Hockey Pool Tool Kit: Excel Stats, Projections & Picks, at the best price

My hockey pool stats website has been updated for the 2008-2009 NHL season.  It's my second year selling the best fantasy hockey guide as an Excel spreadsheet for $5.95.

The idea came about 3 years ago when I was preparing for a hockey pool, and was frustrated by the static, outdated statistics and predictions in the fantasy guide magazines.  That year, I put together a fantasy hockey spreadsheet for myself, and I won my hockey pool.  The next year, I figured that if the sortable hockey statistics were so useful for me, that they would be really helpful for others as well in preparing for their fantasy hockey leagues.  I spent a lot of time organizing hockey stats, and figuring out a way to make predictions for everyone in the NHL, and this year, I've improved it even more.

Can you tell I'm excited about hockey season?

Nine Inch Nails video technologo

NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens - wired.com

I had the chance to see Nine Inch Nails perform at the Pemberton Festival, and was blown away by their amazing video technology. If you have a chance to see them in concert, I recommend it. Otherwise check out the wired.com story about the technology behind their live visuals.

The Real WWF

Reinventing a Sports Magazine

Reinventing sports on the Web – Salon.com

Salon’s King Kaufman discusses how a floundering The Sporting News magazine is experimenting with the radical concept of bringing magazine design, production values and content to the web with Sporting News Today.  Have a look at the revolutionary design, and maybe stay for the detailed daily sports coverage.   In today’s issue, there’s lots of baseball, football and Olympic coverage, but what I want to know is, how much NHL Hockey are they going to cover?

 

 

 

Weird Olympics photos

Weird Olympic Photos - Guardian UK

Keeping with the recent Olympic theme, the Guardian has 29 weird and unusual photos of the Olympics with some amusing captions.

Beat Usain Bolt

You vs Bolt – Puma running

In honour of Usain Bolt’s second Olympic gold medal in today’s 200m sprint, Puma Running has a button-mashing Flash game where your fingers can run in a race against the Olympic Champion and world record holder of the men’s 100m dash.

Thanks to kottke.

Michael Phelps' closest race

Phelps - Cavic photo finish - kottke.org

Today American Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.  Phelps' seventh race was the 100 m Butterfly race, and it was his closest race and the only one where he "only" set an Olympic Record (instead of the World Record).  

Kottke is on point (as usual) with a breakdown of the race and participants (including Silver Medalist, Milorad Cavic representing Serbia) that is worthy of Metafilter.

The highlights are the underwater photos of the finish, Cavic's blog entry, and Omega's explanation that their timing system is more accurate that the length of the swimming lanes.  Also the NYT article and profile of Mike Cavic.

15 Cool Things to Do with Excel

Because today is the Friday of a long-weekend (BC Day here in Vancouver), here are 15 Fun Things to Do with Microsoft Excel