It’s less then a half hour before the NBA Draft is about to start. I’ve made my way to the living room with my laptop to watch Sportscenter, and I am chatting online with my friend Angie online.

Angie: So I didn’t know you were that excited about the NBA draft

Me: Oh yea! It’s the last time I get to see my favorite college players before they fizzle off into the obscurity that is the NBA.

Angie: So it’s more like a funeral; or a ‘celebration of life?’

Me: Remembering the good times we had…

In my mind, the NBA is second tier basketball. There are 80+ games in the regular season that decide which 14 teams out of 30 will not make the playoffs. Once a majority of the teams in the league make the playoffs, they face immediate elimination after losing four games in a series. A player can “take a night off” and not have to worry much about the consequences.

Give me a one-and-out playoff, at least in the early rounds and I might be interested.

That being said, I am a college hoops fanatic and love determining what teams need. It has been nice to see most of the players that are being talked about in the draft play in college thanks to the new rules.
Read more…

A recent study by Harris Interactive states that a typical mid-sized business that leaves its computers on overnight wastes more then $165,000 per year in electric costs; more then $1.72 billion wasted in the US alone. The article continues:

Simply by turning off machines during night hours, the report says, the average business could also eliminate 1,381 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, which translates to nearly 15 million tons nationwide.

I recently started shutting my home computer down at night after a friend told me how much he saved on electricity by shutting his down. Unless you are downloading something completely legal, what’s the point of keeping your PC running at night – unless like me you use it as a heater in the cold months.

Read the Register’s article. 

The iPhone, the latest uber-hyped creation by Apple comes out this Friday, but the frenzy over this cell phone started when it was announced in early January. Within the last week the hype has exploded, as this miracle of technology is released Friday. People in NYC and San Francisco are already standing in line, over 100 hours before the phone goes on sale. If you are too important or impatient to stand in line yourself, you can always hire iWait to do it for you.

While the iPhone is defiantly a cool gadget, there is one huge problem and reason people initially should avoid it.

Read more…

Mark Cuban has a great article discussing the future of music on his blog. In it, Cuban discusses making music available everywhere. This is a much better plan then the RIAA’s current “sue-your-customers” theory.

I would find a manufacturer of cash machines, the ones you see in every bar, restaurant, mini-mart and retail outlet and work with them to reconfigure the machines so that they can hold a hard drive that can be updated with new songs via wired or wireless internet access and whose screen can offer a simple interface for people to select music. The consumer plugs in their SD card from their phone, or plugs the USB cable attached to the machine into their IPod or similar device and the music selected, downloaded and debited to the customers credit or debit card. Pay the machine host a commission, or a per transaction and everyone goes home happy.

Read the article here

It’s been a little over a week since Apple released its Safari web browser for Windows. Apple is currently banking its reputation will inspire users to download their browser over the open-source alternative Firefox.

For most people, the addition of another web browser on the market means very little. For geeks like me, it means a third web browser to play with (along with Firefox and Opera). However for small businesses that do design work, the addition of Safari for Windows may equate to a significant cost savings.

Read more…

I really liked how this turned out, so it gets posted here as well…

What happens when you combine Madison’s favorite local baseball team with one of the greatest television shows of all time?

If you said the UW Badgers performing a musical about the off-camera antics of the cast from Diff’rent Strokes, sit down.

But, if you said The Madison Mallards Simpson’s Night, featuring the Mallards in Springfield Isotopes jerseys, you are one of life’s winners.

Read more…

It’s been a while since a pitching debut for the Brewers has generated excitement among the faithful. Usually excitement about a pitcher revolves around them being drafted by the Brewers, and after that they are never heard from again. I will digress from my frustration with the brewers and their usual inability to draft pitching.

Enter Yovani Gallardo.

Gallardo has dominated this year in the minors. He is 8-3, with a 2.48 era, 110 strikeouts and only 28 walked batters. Gallardo is only 21 years old, and was selected by the Brewers in the second round of the 2004 draft. He has a great fastball, curveball, and changeup, and great command on all his pitches. No pitcher has generated as much excitement in the Brewers organization since Ben Sheets made the jump to the majors.

Not only is it Gallardo’s major league debut, but the Brewers are also facing the San Francisco Giants. The swirl of attention surrounding Barry Bonds and his pursuit of the homerun record held by former Brewer Hank Aaron is a big story in Milwaukee. FSN is planning to do a couple of stories on Aaron during this series.

It looks like it is time to Play Ball!

Read more…

PC Pitstop has a great video comparing how much “bloatware” come installed on different brands of PC’s. Sony is the king, followed by HP and Dell. All the more reason to do a clean install of Windows after purchasing your new PC.

Watch the video below.

Made the pilgrimage to the theater to check out Fantastic Four earlier today with a friend. The movie itself was not that good. One of the main reasons we wanted to see it was the Silver Surfer, one of the greatest comic book characters of all times. I was disappointed that 90% of the coolest moments involving my favorite character I saw in the first trailer.

What added salt to the wound for me; a poor college student with little extra money to spare seeing a flick in the theater opening day, was the advertising. I don’t mind when Hollywood finds creative ways to plug sponsors in their movie – see Wayne’s World. I also can tolerate product placement, like the Dos Equis beers the characters were drinking. What I can’t stand is when a movie basically becomes a commercial for no apparent reason. Anyone that has seen I Robot knows what I’m talking about, as the first ten minutes of the film are various commercials. Enter the Fantastico-Dodge-Mobile.

In short, don’t waste your money on this film – rent it or illegally download it if you are so inclined. Dodge has already paid for most of it anyway.

Also – is it just me or does  this thing look like a Nintendo 64 console?

Apple’s World wide Developers Conference keynote address came and went a couple days ago, with little new to show. Notorious for dropping big announcements at the event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs mostly discussed the new Leopard operating system for Macs before informing the world that Safari Web browser would be available for Windows. I believe it is only a matter of time before Apple starts forcing Windows users to download their browser (which pales in comparison to Firefox) when they update their iTunes/Quicktime.

However, the biggest announcement for fanboys didn’t receive much coverage. However, it could be the catalyst that sways more users to make the switch to Apple.
Read more…

Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and co-editor of the website Boing Boing has a great article about urban surveillance. He discusses how cities have incorporated cameras on every street corner, to the point where a resident of London is photographed over 300 times a day. The problem is cameras report what has happened; rather then stop it from happening like a police officer would. A friend of mine who recently returned from London discussed how she was “gently mugged” while in the heart of the city. Cameras create a surveillance state where everyone is viewed as a possible perpetrator of a crime and recorded accordingly. Doctorow states:

The city of the future is shaping up to be a neighborly Panopticon, leeched of the cosmopolitan ability to see, and not be seen, where every nose pick is noted and logged and uploaded to the Internet. You don’t have anything to hide, sure, but there’s a reason we close the door to the bathroom before we drop our drawers. Everyone poops, but it takes a special kind of person to want to do it in public.

The trick now is to contain the creeping cameras of the law. When the city surveils its citizens, it legitimizes our mutual surveillance–what’s the difference between the cops watching your every move, or the mall owners watching you, or you doing it to the guy next door?

Read the entire article.

It has only taken six years, but a politician has finally figured it out.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, unlike his Republican colleague President Bush refuses to let the terrorists win. Bloomberg was asked Monday about the possibility of terrorists at JFK airport in New York. Bloomberg responded,

There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life.

Bush and a handful of Republicans have used the threat of terrorists to change national laws and limit individual rights since the attacks of 9/11. By doing so, the terrorists have been winning by shaping the agenda of our country. It’s about time a major politician steps up against and really fights terrorism.

This was originally written for Dane101.com.

The sun and clouds vied for position over the parking lot at Warner Park.  The occasional break from the intense rays of the sun provided momentary relief to the group that spent the afternoon tailgating.

The group started small; two people started the celebration around 1:30 p.m.  By 2 p.m. the group had doubled in size, and continued to grow.  Shortly after three, the smell of burgers and bratwursts poured from their gill.  At its apex there were over a dozen baseball fans, most clad in Mallards colors or apparel.

Read more…