The channel that was previously known as Outdoor Life Network acquired rights to the NHL during the 2005 season. The station quickly rebranded themselves as Versus to better represent the content of their station. NBCSN’s OLN origins are still reflected by a variety of outdoor and hunting shows that still air regularly. On January 2nd, 2012, Versus was renamed to NBCSN following owner Comcast’s merger with NBCUniversal. January 6th marked the first NBCSN broadcast of College Hockey (several previous broadcasts on Versus notwithstanding). The January 6th tilt featured Dartmouth at none other than RPI, broadcast live from the Houston Field House. NBCSN originally featured a large variety of ECAC Hockey and Hockey East action, however the Eastern Conference broadcasts have been scaled back in favor of NCHC, B1G, and plenty of Notre Dame matches.
Note: This broadcast is from December 13th, 2013. The majority of this post was originally composed on January 4th, 2014, but went unpublished for who knows why reasons. Oh wait, I probably know why. I mean, I should know why. But I don’t. Here it is anyway.
The game we’re taking a look at tonight is a non-conference match featuring the Colorado College Tigers (NCHC) at the Wisconsin Badgers (B1G) from the Kohl Center in Madison, WI. Per usual, I took these screensots using the LG TV app on my phone. The app is quite easy to use, however it uses very lossy JPEG compression, so apologies for the intense artifacts!
I was unable to determine exactly which font NBC uses (it’s probably something custom). What The Font and Da Font forums had no clues, however Identifont singled out Frank as a candidate. Frank’s letters look about right, however the numbers are certainly not a match. Could be a strange hybrid, or bespoke/custom solution. Like CBSSN, lowercase letters are verboten (except the the short ordinals in the scoreboard — odd). NBC (regrettably) uses a couple wall-of-text graphics which are nearly impossible to read.
Thematically, NBC is gorgeous and consistent. Silver/chrome rectangular frames are adorned with circular mechanical looking elements, which aid in the forward rotation transitions of many of the graphics. Most graphics have a particle/snow effect emanating from the bottom corners. Multiple lens flares march across horizontal chrome elements. While the basic building block is rectangular, some larger titles project the rectangle on the inside of a cylinder to achieve depth. The base NBCSN color is a deep blue with a tinge of gray, however team/organization colors are used whenever relevant. School logos are tightly integrated in to the graphics. Pre-rendered title cards and transitions are consistent with this theme.
While these breakdowns primarily center around graphics, I’m going to touch on some production points of interest as well. With that, let’s get started with the complete titles and graphics breakdown after the jump!
The broadcast began with an external shot of the Kohl Center. It was not immediately identified with a graphic, however.
Fans trickling through turnstyles is a nice touch. It’s good to see that the metal detectors of professional sport have yet to make their way to the college level.
The opening graphic: note the geometric complexity. Faint CC and UW logos adorn the left and right edges. Only overall records are presented; conference records will be covered separately.
Curiously, Dave Strader is initially introduced without his broadcast partner. Snow effect and lens flares abound. No mention of whether Dave is PBP or Color (he’s PBP). Per the norm on this blog, Strader is mid-blink.
B1G standings are used to frame tonight’s contest: Wisconsin is a mediocre team. I love the little team logos in their school-color-background rectangles. There’s a lot of empty space in this graphic. Note the conference color and logo being used in the title bar. A dark-ish yellow is used throughout the broadcast to draw your attention to key data, in this case Wisconsin. Unfortunate that the B1G only contains 6 teams; there’s clearly a lot more room available on this graphic.
Things fill in a bit for the NCHC standings. Colorado College’s only wins are in conference play. Title bar takes on a slightly darker shade of blue for the NCHC.
Dave Strader’s other half is introduced. I don’t like how the graphic is off center, but still not centered under Anson. Fully commit to your lopsidedness!
Title card to a pre-baked storyline sequence highlighting a key player for the Badgers.
I’m glad NBC includes class years on their player lower 3rds. I’m not as glad that they relegate it to a tiny dangler in ALL CAPS. I don’t think NBC had a collection of player headshots; I didn’t see one the entire broadcast. The “This Season” ascender looks tacked on and inconsistent. Kerdiles’ point total is left as an exercise to the viewer, and both PIM and +/- are ignored compltetely.
Giant school logos are used in transitions.
No graphic, but I thought it was a bit weird that Strader and Carter were disappearing into a sea of black.
The Colorado College player introduction title uses a dark grey for Alexander’s number. I see what they were going for, but it doesn’t work, and you wouldn’t have noticed it unless I called it out.
Career stats are great. Double dangler + ascender. Side note — I should probably refer to objects below titles as “descenders” to be consistent, but “dangler” is a more fun word.
Mid-way through the “Friday Night Ice” transition.
And here’s your Friday Night Ice title card, shown at the end of their opening sequence / intro video.
On the other side of the intro video, we get a simple graphic reintroducing the game at hand. Teams, location, and branding are present. Apologies for the extreme MPEG-2 compression.
This is the preceding graphic vanishing in a flash of NBC light.
Not a great spot for an interview, but sometimes you have to make do. No other details are provided about Mike Eaves (until later in the broadcast).
Mike Eaves is eaten alive by a giant, glossy, semi-transparent NBC logo (this often serves as the replay transition and is accompanied by a corny glass-ish sound effect).
Mini-title card used when heading to commercial. Would be replace by a score lower third later in the broadcast as appropriate.
NBCSN column boxes SD commercials. NBCSN also sports a lot of cheap SD commercials.
Back from commercial, a beauty shot from ice level accompanied with the same info graphic from earlier.
Goaltender introduction time! Compare Thorimbert’s statscard to Rumpel’s (below), note how the name cell is larger. Clearly some dynamic resizing going on.
Rumpel’s graphic is narrower. Both goalie graphics include all the expected stats. Perhaps the only thing missing is shutouts.
An early stoppage provides for some further information about our coaches. Or, one of them, at least. Line breaks are a bit weird, and I hate the ALL CAPS. I like the addition of Owens’ record against Wisconsin.
Here’s a look at your score lower 3rd, and apparently a student who has shaved their chest hair to look like Bucky (?!?). Wisconsin’s national rank and Colorado College’s length cause an odd alignment and some auto font condensing, which doesn’t look great. Probably should have simply expanded out the graphic.
Coming back from commercial, this left-anchored graphic expands on the rivalry. Interesting use of a dangler-within-content (“185th Meeting”).
Finally we learn a bit more about Mike Eaves.
Simple graphic adoring a look at a previous matchup. I don’t understand why the edges of the frame are cut off of this and other similar graphics.
Some team info presented in front of Mike Eaves.
Another left-anchored graphic teasing the upcoming intermission show. A lot of crowd shots of the same small group of students were used throughout the broadcast. Presumably whatever was going on to the right of this camera operators wasn’t nearly as interesting.
This broadcast occurred during the midst of pre-Sochi hype. Note the varying color temperatures of the whites. On the whole, it’s a nice insert graphic.
Heading in to commercials following the first period, it’s a scoreless tie! It’s sort of weird that the score boxes are as wide as they are. They look like they could accommodate triple digit scores easily.
Here we are transitioning in to the intermission report segment. A reminder that indeed, you are wathing NBCSN.
Usually, the intermission report includes actual college hockey coverage. NBCSN generally does a good job presenting out-of-town scores and highlights.
Check out the beautiful NBCSN studio, complete with giant projection and/or green screen. I actually like the brick walls in the background; gives a nice aesthetic. Wish everything was a little less blue.
Some NHL highlights were shown, but we don’t care about the NHL on this blog (yet). This matchup caught my attention, however. What do you think the small text on this graphic says? I don’t know, my screen capture method renders these illegible.
This was apparently an outdoor AHL game in Rochester at Frontier Field (home of the AAA Rochester Red Wings — that’s baseball in case the AAA wasn’t giveaway enough). Love the throwback jerseys, but I’m alarmed that the score bug uses default colors for each team. Step it up, SportsTime Ohio! What’a LEM? What’s a ROCH? Why does LEM include the name of their mascot (Monsters) but ROCH does not (Amerks)?
The LEM logo is pretty awesome.
There’s definitely something on the field, but it doesn’t look like there’s any semblance of an ice rink yet!
Finally, some College Hockey highligts, as the segment promised! Love the AIC logo.
Maine has the prettiest uniform/color scheme in college hockey. Both their home and away unis are absolutely gorgeous.
AIC sucks. Also note the footer, RPI is/was ranked #18 (!). I do like that NBCSN routinely shows NCAAH (is that really what we call Div 1 Hockey?) in their crawl.
The NBCSN out-of-town scores graphic is absolutely gorgeous. Their theme perfectly leverages the colors of each team to use as the background of the bar, and I’m a huge sucker for the overly glossly/reflective look. Side note — Alabama Huntsville is one of two College teams I have seen play in person that I have not seen RPI play against (the other is Lake Superior State University State, both of which played two games each at the Field House as part of the RPI Holiday Tournament).
Heeeeeereeee’s tooooooo oooooold RPI! The score has suddenly grown to 1-1 since the score was shown in the crawl two screenshots ago.
NBCSN retracted the crawl, but neglected to extend the commercials back to full height. Weird.
I do enjoy these forced 3D perspective graphics. It appears there’s some faint text behind the title bar, “PERIOD 1” perhaps? The graphic itself relays all the typically important information other than penalties or PP stats. I always view the “Scoring Chances” “stat” with a lot of skepticism.
Column boxed AND letter boxed AND standard definition. Nice.
Have I mentioned that I dislike ALL CAPS? This is probably the least readable graphic I’ve ever reviewed. What a mess.
Interesting blurred backdrop. I like the use of the NHL logo.
Here’s the Colorado replay transition.
Finally, 6:18 into the 2nd, we get to know who is officiating the game. I do like the NCAA based blue background color.
Nice penalty box shot, and a quick look at NBCSN’s powerplay scorebug treatment. Announcing the penalty is always helpful to the viewer as well, but there’s a ton of negative space in this graphic. Why is there a video monitor in the penalty box?
This is a good looking PP/PK graphic. Note that it still fits within 4:3 title safe, which is a bit odd in this day-and-age. School colors are not overdone here — the black-red fade behind the Wisconsin “W” is very nice looking, as is the red highlight/lens flare.
Our first goal of the night goes to Joseph Labate!
Pre-baked transition/intro to a Wisconsin-centric segment.
NBCSN uses this weird rolodex-inspired transition to hype upcoming shows (and to remind the viewer that yes, you are still watching NBCSN).
It’s a Colorado College shortie! Cue the penalty box reaction shot! The guy on the right looks bored out of his mind. What is his role? The penalty box official is clearly on the left. This guy appears to have a press pass and a broadcast headset.
I’m torn on this graphic. I like the stat in-and-of-itself, but the dangler is a bit weird. It’s also impressive to me that this fact was readily available (pre-baked, even?)
Despite CoCo’s shortie, things were quickly back in Bucky’s favor. One Nic Kerdiles scored his 8th goal of the season at 19:58.9. Including the extra tenths-of-a-second would make this feat that much more impressive.
Heading in to the second, this was the graphic used to introduce the highlights from the 2nd period.
People cover/care about D1 soccer? Guess I shouldn’t really mention it, given the subject matter. WAIT. NO. The only reason this was shown is because Notre Dame is involved. Typical NBCSN…
There are a ton of graphical building blocks involved in this title. There’s a tabular structure, and a secondary logo (which looks really good).
Things seem to have gotten out-of-hand in the AIC Maine game. As I mentioned before, AIC is not the best.
Woohoo, even more UI elements! Lots of things in play here — the sub-title is presented as a dangler, a generic logo is used, and each team’s logo enjoys its own personal logo box. Not sure why NBCSN is bothering to show the Notre Dame / UAH game…
More stats! This time, we get power play stats instead of “Scoring Chances”, and the shots are highlighted. 45 shots through two sure seems like a lot… homer scorekeeper?
The Wisconsin / Colorado College rivalry has a rich history…
… a history long enough to involve two newspaper clippings.
Here’s another terrible ALL CAPS graphic. I do like that it is presented over a nice beauty shot. Not entirely sure why it is anchored to a huge left pillar, but it is.
Here’s a nice fun stat for CoCo! The coach is a bit underexposed, and why aren’t there fans seated behind the away bench?
Here’s another look at the Rolodex inspired flipboard, hyping next week’s matchup. GUESS WHO IS INVOLVED? You guessed Notre Dame, right? Of course you did. And of course they’re involved.
Uh, didn’t the start-of-the-second-period stats say Wisconsin led shots 45-27? Perhaps that shot was “pucks struck hard in the general direction of the goal” rather than the generally accepted hockey definition?
Nice dangler here, good job by the graphics op to have this stat handy.
With Wisconsin ahead by two goals, this graphic seemingly drives a nail in the coffin.
There are six ECAC teams in this top 20. Phenomenal. Hard to believe RPI was ever ranked last season (2013-14). RPI would finish the season below .500. Clarkson fell apart down the stretch as well. In the mean time, though, WOOHOO, #18! OOOOONE Minute, and Clarkson still sucks. Sweeeet Caroline, Union sucks, U suck, U suck, U suck!
Matching minors, leading to a gret two-up shot.
Now that’s a shirt.
Things seem to be getting out of hand.
Not entirely sure why we’re treated to a Wisconsin powerplay graphic given the 5-on-3 situation. Good stats, regardless.
Wisconsin still has quite a lot of 5-on-3 to kill, but the stats show they have a decent PK. Colorado, on the other hand…
This was one of the weirder things I’ve ever seen in a college hockey broadcast. Two facemasks became stuck together. Just a little bit awkward for the players.
The interlocking metal challenged the Wisconsin equipment manager, but eventually it was determined that the facemasks did in fact not actually fuse together. This could all have been avoided if everyone wore fishbowls!
Wisconsin did a mighty impressive job killing of the extended 5-on-3 opportunity. Great job, Rumpel!
Wisconsin tacked on an Empty Netter for good measure. The stick salute is one of my favorite college traditions.
Your victor, the Wisconsin Badgers.
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NBCSN has used the same graphical theme since their inception from the ashes of the Versus channel in January 2012. But that changed this past Friday, when something totally different was rolled out for what should have been a routine College Hockey broadcast!
What is this new devilry? The chrome, heavily gradiented graphics of old are gone, replaced with a more flat, light-colored theme. There’s definitely still some 3D depth — sort of a chiclet look. I was left wondering… why? The NBCSN College Hockey broadcast the next day (Saturday 12/6) was a revision to the norm (which I also grabbed a bunch of screenshots from, but if you know my blogging style at all, you know you’ll never see them). My leading thought right now is that this a trial of the look that NBC will debut at this year’s Super Bowl. Right now, the Big 3 (NBC, CBS, FOX) rotate through the Super Bowl. Last year’s Fox broadcast didn’t really debut anything new, but 2013’s CBS broadcast was the debut of the new look and feel that continues to all CBS and CBSSN broadcasts to date. Seems like a opportunity for NBC to change up their look too!
My other theory is that somehow the production truck was ill-equipped to use the normal NBCSN graphics for whatever reason, but seeing that there was another broadcast on Saturday presumably using the same truck (from Lowell, MA, a journey of all of 57 miles) seems to negate that possibility.
So, systems test will be the prevailing theory! So let’s take a look at NBCSN’s new look. As a reminder for those of you new to this series, these screenshots are taken directly off my TV using a bizarre LG app. The app unfortunately only takes screenshots at 960×540 with high levels of JPEG compression. It’s the best I can do until I finally call Comcast and ask for a cable card. Which I should do. But not today.
Click through the “More” link to see this graphics roundup in full.
Here we go! The UNH Wildcats play in the Whittemore Center in Durham, which a little Wikipediaing tells me seats 6,501 and features an Olympic sized 200×100 ice sheet–the widest in the Hockey East conference (though several others boast 95′ wide rinks).
This opening graphic offers all the important details–matchup, USCHO rank, branding (both logo and “Friday Night Ice”), and location. The way the sub-title slots in to the top of the graphic is nice. The shot is… well not the best exterior shot I’ve seen leading in to a broadcast–I can gather from this shot that Durham – UNH is the 5th-to-last (or 5th-to-first?) stop on some sort of transit line. The shot does little to establish the campus, rink, or city environment. Subsequent googling revealed that the Durham-UNH station is in fact the 4th northboard station of the Amtrak Downeaster.
During the pre-intro sequence, we see the typical locker-room scenes. This graphic is short on details, but that’s fine for a pre-intro montage. Note the logo, position, number, and name. The name is rendered in all caps, with the last name in bold. The graphic itself features UNH’s primary color (listed on Wikipedia as “UNH Blue”……) as the background, with white accents along the sides and bottom.
Thatcher Demko, BC’s star goaltender and one of three goalies on the 2014-15 USA U20 WJC roster, is pictured here juggling against a wall (?). His graphic reveals a couple more details about the graphics theme–the school’s secondary color is used on the bottom of each graphic. The sides of the graphic appear to use the school’s primary color and a gray/silver vertical piece.
Here, again, is the opening graphic. Once again, we get branding (Friday Night Ice), schools, location, etc.. The school’s colors are again apparent, although UNH’s secondary silver/white color blends in the graphic compared to BC’s gold. We also see a bit more of a curve in the bookends/sides, and this time the primary color is not apparent outside the bookends. We see a bit of NBC’s famous peacock logo adorning the background, as well as a somewhat strange upward diagonal accent line from the bottom of the B in BC to the top of the Wildcat’s nose. In terms of content, only overall records are displayed–it’s sometimes a bit more valuable to also show in-conference matchups. No clarificationover whether this is a Hockey Easy contest or not (it is). I like the use of (presumably) small caps in the 17 used to designate BC’s USCHO rank. All Caps are somewhat unfortunate, but seem to be a carry-over from the SD era. In my opinion, the clarity of HD screens now allows for mixed case title rendering, which is generally regarded as easier to read given sufficient clarity. Perhaps there’s an argument to be made when these TV broadcasts are streamed online, but I digress.
Also, what is this shot? Maybe there was a good reason they showed the train station earlier in the broadcast! Beats a solid black sky!
Welcome hosts DAN PARKHURST and KEN HODGE. All details of the NBCSN branding are apparent–logo, multiple peacocks, and colors. Light blue adorns the bottom edge, rather than the chrome seen on the sides. These lower thirds have a pleasant 3D depth owing to the bevel on the top and left/right edges.
Unfortunately, the graphics look is inconsistent. The pre-baked transition graphics are from the “old-style” glass look. I still love this style, but wish they had gone entirely in one direction or the other.
Here we get our first look at a player lower 3rd. The “Career” ascender seems a bit out-of-place, but otherwise this is a pretty solid graphic. Would like to see the inclusion of PIM and +/-. Framing on this shot is awful.
As we approach the end of the pre-game, pre-first-commercial-break segment, we’re treated to a hype graphic, as if we haven’t seen this information already. Nice shot, though.
Heading in to the break, we’re treated to the old/standard Friday Night Ice sequence. This graphic doesn’t match the old or new theme.
Returning from commercial, once again trains stations are the main thematic element. I have never been to Durham, but is there really no better establishing shot of campus/the city?!? This is a new graphic, though it looks similar to the sponsor billboard used in the current suite. The NBCSN logo was shortly replaced by sponsors (two, if I recall).
Many of my screenshots catch the subject with their eyes closed. I’m not sure why this is, but I can’t be bothered to retake this screenshots. The content of this graphic is rendered in mixed case, thank goodness.
This is the same graphic as the first one, but I enjoyed the lights these fans were sporting, so it gets included again. Good bump shot.
Alright! We’re now post-anthem, pre-puckdrop, so it’s time for the goalie stats! Here’s another look at Mr. Demko, who is no longer juggling tennis balls. All important goalie stats are covered.
Adam Clark’s shot is framed looser. This is also our first shot of the ice, which reveals a rather warm color temperature. Contrast the red of the ice with the white of the jersey. Now, ice white and jersey white will never match, but the ice looks particularly red/warm throughout NBC’s broadcast.
Here we go! After the puck drop, the score bug/bar appears, and wow! Tons of stuff to cover. First of all, it’s not centered. This is a trend that the various CSN-City stations have been using over the past couple seasons during their NHL broadcasts, but NBCSN never adopted for their national broadcasts. The team names are rendered in full, which I am a big fan of, but in all caps, which I am not-as-big-of-a-fan-of. Love the raised #17 for BC’s rank. The school names appear to be about the same compactness, maybe the BC text is condensed a bit. I wonder what this would look like with unequal length names. The score numbers are absolutely GIGANTIC. Period and Clcok are rendered in a similar font-size, but with a different weight and with no divider, which makes things feel a bit lopsided to me. The school’s secondary colors are not readily apparent; a darkened variant of their primary is used across the bottom. The chrome bookends are surrounded by a black outer edge.
Quickly after the game was underway, starters were shown via dangler. The dangler is full-width, and features the secondary color of the school as its bottom color. The bottom piece below the school name is removed for a seamless feel. Well executed and highly informative. The ice is further revealed to be quite red, though I’m not certain how my TV’s settings affect the color temperature of these screenshots. Ultimately, it’s too red/warm.
As is fairly typical, the first stoppage of play featured one of the coaches, in this case the honorable Jerry York. Very impressive career numbers. Look at how wide the numbers render. That’s also a lot of very big numbers. Why is the subtext in all caps? Perhaps its the thinner font. I love that the “highlight designator”–the little arrow designating the subtext–is one of the NBC peacock feathers.
Super strange as well is the first presence of the broadcast bug in the upper right. This screenshot is the first time in the broadcast that it appeared. Maybe someone forgot to bring it up? The NBCSN text is rendered on top of a semi-transparent black/grey gradient bar, while the LIVE text is above a translucent constant-black rounded rectangle.
Quick look at the UNH starters–note that the “FORWARDS” text is always rendered in yellow. It looked better on the BC starters graphic owing to BC’s gold secondary color.
Here’s the corresponding Dick Umile graphic. I’m sadded to learned that “Umile” is pronounced “you-MILL-ee” rather than rhyming with smile.
Nice little side-insert graphic. NCAA logo is present, and the bottom bar color reflects the NCAA’s light blue color (Pantone 300 U). Also some very impressive stats.
Heading in to our first commercial break at 12:59 (the window typically opens at 16:00, so we caught 3 minutes of uninterrupted play). Note the full-width ascender and chrome bookends/bottom.
We’re back from the break, and WHAT? WHY IS THE ASCENDER NOW SMALLER? Honestly, how does this happen? The peacock is bigger, the font is bigger, and the length is shorter. I don’t claim to know a lot about how these (presumably) Vizrt graphics work, but WHY WOULD YOU HAVE BOTH THESE GRAPHICS IN YOUR PLAYOUT? Spot any other differences? OF COURSE! BC gained its rank (#17), the school logos are smaller, the bottom bar is black instead of blue, and the period/time text is smaller. Seriously why has this happened, NBCSN?
Just over 7 minutes into the period, we’re treated to our first penalty. This lower third shrinks in width to accommodate the smaller content size. Everything is caps, of course. Time of the penalty is always handy. The shot is fun, taken from a reverse angle. The Whittemore Center is unusual in that the benches are not on the same side (like RPI’s Houston Field House). The visitor and penalty boxes are on the near side of the broadcast shots, while the home and scorers booth are on the far side.
Two things here–first, let’s look at the score bug/bar. The descender noting the Power Play is the width of the school’s area. The text is centered, and rendered in ALL CAPS. Again, the bottom color is the school’s secondary. Next, the lower third. Why on earth are the percentrages and ranks rendered IN HUGE BOLD TEXT? Disappointing, because I like the way the test of the graphic is rendered. The ascender is interesting as it is dual purpose with a large void in the middle–I’m wondering if it would have looked better with dual ascenders? The name of each school is not shown, only the colors/logos are used. The order is also a strange; home team is on the bottom, which arguably makes sense, but I’d rather see the team on the power play on the top. The content is great, but again, the rank and percent are WAY TOO BOLD.
UNH’s (terrible) 9.1% powerplay failed to click, and we went commercial break. Upon return, we saw a brief highlight for an upcoming feature on NBCSN. The flat, rectangular graphics fit with the rest of the broadcast, however this look is being used on all NBCSN broadcasts nowadays.
The same break also allowed for a look at UNH alumni. A good why-should-you-care for the casual viewer who might be tuning in without a lot of college hockey knowledge. I can’t remember exactly who is in this picture aside from both van Riemsdyks, who currently play for Toronto and Chicago.
Once play resumed, we were treated to the location of this game dangling from the score bug/bar.
Commentators too, for good measure. The yellow label text is now on the right, and an ampersand is used. Both weird.
Here’s a look at a non-stat player lower third. Appropriate use of bolding and all caps (if you have to use all caps, this is an okay way to do it).
BC unsurprisingly lit the lamp first. The entire score bug/bar lit up in celebration, and continued to pulse after reverting to normal form.
Your goal scorer, #24 Zach Sanford!
BC has only scored 6 times in the first period? Really? Regardless, a good look at a factoid dangler.
As the period ends, the clock area is set to “1st Int”. Woohoo for mixed case!
Our preview of the intermission report uses the older-style snow-effect-from-the-bottom. I really like the use of hockey boards as a backdrop.
The final score lower third reverts to full-width ascender. Something about the spacing/padding around the score numbers doesn’t work for me. There’s a lot of empty space on the bottom bar, too.
Here we go! The US Bank Sports Report! This graphic is clearly the result of a first year college student’s 3D graphics course homework. Ugh, terrible normals.
Once again, the caught-blinking-in-a-Reilly-screenshot strikes again. The whole intermission report should remind you what the normal NBCSN graphics look like. The bottom line / score crawl also makes an appearance, and I reflect on how wonderful it is that NBCSN chooses not to show a bottom bar during play (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ESPN).
Highlights from around the College Hockey scene. This clip from Miami (of Ohio) is presented in Glorious Standard Definition. Their scorebug admittedly doesn’t look terrible.
Next, a Fox Sports tilt. I’ve quite enjoyed the development of Fox Sports’ new graphics package, which debuted on MLB opening day 2014. Great use of the school’s colors in a compact scorebox.
Quick look at the graphic used when transitioning to a highlight package.
Ah, BTN’s graphics. Their hockey score bug has changed a bit from last season, perhaps I’ll highlight the changes in a later post. Heavily stylized with both a slant and a curve in opposite corners, it’s a good look.
Here’s a look at the out-of-town scores, where the LSSU Lakers are playing the North Dakota _______.
Where to begin. At least the header reflects that indeed, NCAA Men’s Hockey is being played. Every single team row here is wrong. And many in multiple ways. Starting from the top: BU has been given DU’s logo. DU is not one of the teams in this graphic. Colorado College is, however. Sure, both teams are located in Denver, but they’re over an hour apart. I also don’t like the abbreviation of UNIV, when it looks to me like UNIVERSITY should fit. Same goes for COLL/COLLEGE. Next line, it’s Merrimack. That logo isn’t a warrior, it’s a bulldog. The color is… probably Duluth’s color based on the way this graphic is messed up. A Duluth bulldog, to be exact. Colorado College’s line features… the Michigan M? The background color might be Merrimack’s blue, but it’s probably not. The last team row features the BU Terriers logo. Aside from the logo/team combos seemingly being swapped, there seems to have been two complete mis-identifications–Michigan instead of Merrimack, and DU instead of Colorado College. Further, the home/away teams aren’t right, even if it was a simple swap. I don’t even.
The intermission report also covered the NHL, but I don’t really care. Here’s an interesting caption.
Back to the Whittemore center for a brief stats rundown. Tons of stuff going on here. A white glow emanating from the logos. Some… rivet holes along the sides? Team names extending beyond the graphic with a cool ribbon effect. EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS. And the ever present NBC peacock in the background. The graphic is in front of a live shot from the “beauty” cam high in the near (I think?) right corner.
Coming back from the intermission, it’s the score lower third again, with non-full-width ascender. The color bars behind the team are also a bit lighter than the going-into-commercial-break variant. Once again, I don’t understand why this is happening.
Also not entirely sure what this a shot of. Presumably a holiday ribbon on… something… Is that what a Wildcat looks like?
Some nice graphics to intro the BC highlit reel from the 1st period.
And this was the transition used to bring us back to the action.
Before the puck dropped for the 2nd period, it was time for more stats! Demko is perfect through 20 minutes.
Basically, BC has a very good program. I like the use of the NHL logos here, but once again the ROUND and YEAR text is way too bold/big, and there’s a lot of negative space below the header and the names of the players. The chrome bookends on this graphic are not full-height, they reveal a bit of school primary color on the top and bottom. York’s assistant coach could easily be a 3rd of his age. Not sure the Dasani water behind them fulfills the term’s of the (presumed) Gatorade bench sponsorship.
Here’s a look at a stats dangler showing off the total shot count. School secondary colors adorn the left and right ends. I like how the graphic only extends across the width of the schools.
Sure, have some 2nd period shots too!
While we’re talking about shots, why not have them in lower 3rd format, too! The vertical alignment of the table rows here is awkward, New Hampshire is way too close to the bottom.
Here’s a player spotlight lower 3rd featuring Games, Goals, Assists, and +/-. The player’s total points are left as an exercise for the viewer. It’s strange that the format of this graphic differs from the player lower third featured earlier, which did include total points scored.
UNH scored a goal to tie the game at 1! The score bar looks better in UNH Blue than it does in BU Scarlet.
I don’t understand.
Not great composition on this penalty box shot. The eye between the door frame is a bit creepy looking. There appears to be some text on fire behind the player as well.
Powerplay stats presented via descender. These are full-width and rather informative. After the stats had time to sink-in, the graphic nicely transitioned back to just showing the powerplay time.
Apparently fish guy was cool enough that he got featured again in this to-commercial-break bump shot.
UNH’s 9.5% (coming into the night) power play has yet to produce a result, as this stat line reminds us. BC should be careful to avoid division-by-zero errors.
Oooh, some inter-team intrigue! Mike Ayers is apparently a UNH turncoat. Caught-while-blinking strikes again.
We already saw a similar screenshot on the first BC goal, but I like the mid-removing-helmet freezeframe. Lots of UNH players playing with a fishbowl style shield.
If you thought the ice during play wasn’t red enough, get a load of the goal overhead! The thing is bizarrely white balanced, and the camera is hung off-kilter. The PiP scoreboard is a nice touch.
There are a lot of officials wearing their headpieces in curious ways in this shot.
Here’s a correction to the earlier out of town scores panel. Can you spot all the differences?
Altitude Sports changed their score bug for the 2014-15 NHL season. I haven’t had a chance to see one of their broadcasts yet, but I hope to cover them at a future date.
I caught the 2nd period stats graphic mid-animation in this screenshot. Kind of weird to see what hasn’t appeared yet.
UNH fans used on the bump-shot back to the 3rd period after intermission. I love this stats graphic that breaks things down by period. Just have to fix the vertical alignment of the text in the bottom row…
Here we go, our first look at something Hockey East related! Not a great season for either of the participating teams. Strange circular/ellipsis things are extending out of the bookends. I like the strong edge/shadow used to separate the Hockey East logo from the content on the left. Highlighting of the teams involved is a good touch as well.
Pretty sure this shot is of Jerry York reacting to the graphics on the screen. A 2.5% power play isn’t very good. I assume most of the last 10 games have been in-conference too, which as we saw from the last graphic isn’t going great for BC. Guess they miss Johnny Gaudreau a bit.
TIME FOR AN IN-GAME WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR.
Speaking of Mr. Gaudreau, the SUBWAY ™ Fresh Take is apparently a still of shot of Johnny Football Hockey holding the Heisman Hobey Baker trophy.
Apparently there’s another Gaudreau playing for the Eagles! I did not realize there were two, and apparently Matthew is 15 months younger.
Some more stats via dangler, this time “Chances”.
And blocked shots (which is actually a real stat).
Coach split screen! This would have worked much better if the puck was being dropped on the other end of the ice…
Blocked Shots can be presented via lower third too.
Up close and personal with Adam Clark. Not entirely sure where this camera is; could be the near-high-right beauty shot?
Why is this a tracked stat? Regardless, nice graphic. Last year, BC failed to with the National Championship in an even numbered year for the first time since 2006.
I think this is the first time that the goal was announced via dangler? If NBC used this earlier I missed it. Per earlier graphics, the “Last Goal:” should probably be in yellow.
The scorebug dangler fulfills a lot of tasks, in this case hyping the fact that coming up next is USSA Birds of Prey! Now what, pray tell, is a USSA Birds of Prey? I racked my brain, trying to come up with a good answer. Birds of Prey… well I know that prior to being NBCSN, the channel was the Versus network, and that prior to that, it was OLN, the Outdoor Life Network, which feature a wide range of hunting/nature programs that still persist to this day on NBCSN. But do people really hunt birds of prey? Perhaps it’s a documentary. But what of the USSA? United States Shooting Association? What other “SA” organizations are there… what if we ditch the “Birds of Prey” aspect… United States Speed Skating Association?
To the delight of the viewer, this matchup is headed to overtime. “End Reg,” the score bug/bar announces. BONUS HOCKEY!
Here’s another derivation of the “X by Period” graphic. Similar to a baseball linescore. This camera guy seems pretty high up in the stands.
BONUS HOCKEY.
BONUS… TIMEOUT? Good to know that the scorebar can cover this circumstance.
Tomorrow features even more college hockey, Maine vs. UMass Lowell! I was out at a bar for this game with friends who were much more interested in watching college football. I announced my intention to ask the waitress to switch a TV over to College Hockey, and was rebuffed when I mentioned that this matchup featured #7 UMass Lowell. “What the hell is a UMass Lowell anyway?” The TV remained on the Buckeyes blowout.
Not really title related, but it’s interesting to me that “MCCOSHEN” is set in all caps, rather than using small caps for the “C” in “Mc”. Savage (on the right) is a great hockey name.
We end tied! Kiss your sister (or whatever).
Here’s your final score lower 3rd. Always good to see the coaches hugging/shaking hands.
But the broadcast isn’t over yet! Time to hype tomorrow’s events! It’s the aforementioned Maine Black Bears against the UMass Lowell Riverhawks Who-the-hell-cares, college football is on!
OOOH, OF COURSE! USSA Skiing!
Yes, naturally, the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships! Dream It, Live It, Share It! Wait, hold on, the countdown says 89 days? Then what are we watching?!?
Apparently this, sponsored by Audi.
Thanks for joining me on this roundup/breakdown of a weird new NBCSN graphics package. Stay tuned for next week, when I fail to fulfull my goal of releasing one of these breakdowns each week!
]]>One thing I disliked about the previous broadcast was the use of a Picture-in-Picture game clock in their score bar. Naturally, a PiP game clock is never desirable but it’s sometimes necessary due to technical limitations. Whatever technical limitations existed in Western Michigan’s Lawson Ice Arena two weeks ago did not exist in Minnesota Duluth’s Amsoil Arena last week, as that broadcast showcasing WMU at Duluth featured a proper game clock. It seemed to be actually synced with the arena clock, rather than manually operated, but I can’t be sure.
Here’s a quick look at the CBS score bar, with proper clock:
Looks much better. The whole look is more cohesive, the clock is much clearer and easier to read, and the dark blue background behind the clock is more consistent with the rest of the graphics. The blue bar below the scoreboard is the starting lineup “dangler” caught in mid transition.
Another change is an alternate background color for Western Michigan. As the away team, WMU is wearing black, and this is quickly and immediately discernible from the scoreboard graphic. I have mixed thoughts on this practice, however, which I’ll expand on in a future post.
A proper clock also significantly improves the score lower third, which looked nasty.
Something I forgot to mention last time was Typography. I’m not a “classically trained” graphic designer, or else I surely would have commented on it. Anyway, CBS Sports currently uses Klavika, following in the footsteps of ESPN. Like most broadcasters, CBS has elected to use an all caps (and in some places, small caps) for increased readability. Indeed, the graphics are extremely clear, even after the terrible JPG compression induced by my screen capture process. All caps are generally regarded as less readable as the amount of text increases, but CBS does a decent job of limiting the amount of text on most graphics (one exception is the “Coming Up” graphic).
While I originally only intended to grab a shot of the scoreboard with clock, while the broadcast was on I grabbed a couple more shots of titles that jumped out at me (after the jump!).
I liked this tidy little graphic used during the introduction to the broadcast. The composition of the shot is nice as well.
I’m not sure if I missed this one last week, or if they never showed it. This is a poor graphic, though. I feel that the names should be indented a bit, to break up the text, and perhaps the size differential between label and names could be altered. Tons of negative space on the right, there’s a weird darker horizontal bar, and the spacing between each line of text seems to arbitrarily differ.
What is this?!? This was used during some throws to commercial in place of the (much better looking) score lower third shown a couple images above. The style is completely different from anything else shown during the broadcast. No dark blue, no thick edges, no curves, and the right edge is angled considerably more than the left. It’s vaguely ESPN looking. I’m wondering if this is a vestige of last year’s graphics package, or maybe it’s coming from a different keyer/character generator as it’s accompanied by the CBSSN “ice cube” which was slowly growing in size. It is using Klavika, though, which is purportedly new to CBS for this year. That right edge! Why is it so slanted?! This needs to go.
The 1st intermission featured this two-box with commentator names. I don’t really like how the names aren’t centered under each commentator, but on the whole it’s a nice treatment.
CBS really likes to incorporate player headshots into their graphics. And boy, does it look good when they do. I’d like to steal this one for RPI TV.
We saw a similar graphic last time, but this one has four boxes and features RPI, so it gets included.
A couple notes on this one: There wasn’t a 4 on 4 scenario during the last roundup — I find it interesting that the dangler all the way left aligned rather than right aligned under the game clock. PIM/Game is a good stat as well. At the time of this broadcast, I believe RPI was ranked #1 or tied for #2.
My viewing experience was significantly improved by CBS EyeVision.
Most goals were announced via scoreboard dangler, but the first WMU goal apparently deserved this. Not sure why season goal/assist totals weren’t show in parenthesis next to each name…
…I guess because that information would be redundant! The graphic transitioned into this, again replicating a message that is usually conveyed via dangler. I did like the quick slide transition that was used.
?!?!?
Interesting variant on the player statscard. Also note the Timeout scoreboard dangler, which I don’t think has been chronicled thus far.
I’m a bit surprised by the number of “new” graphics in this broadcast. I wonder if CBS’ college hockey suite is under constant development, or if the storylines of this game simply resulted in different opportunities for graphics. What I’m quickly realizing is that I can’t count on one broadcast to give a complete picture, so expect to see more “update” posts.
As mentioned in the first paragraph, I should have an NBCSN post coming up in a couple days. I also discovered that I have access to BTN2Go through Comcast, which has archives of a number of local broadcasts, a couple of which have absolutely tragic graphics packages. WatchESPN also has an ESPNU game in its archive, so I should have an ESPN breakdown prior to the previously mentioned February date. I suppose at some point I should break down RPI TV and some of the other webstream only broadcasts.
Longer term, I hope to set up a graphics database/catalog (RAILS?!) with tagging, allowing for the ability to browse graphics by network, type, and sport. Before too long, I hope to branch out of College Hockey to NHL, then on to MLB probably, since MLB has the greatest variety of broadcasters and graphics packages, including some godawful ones (KCAL and MASN, I’m looking at you!).
]]>I went through their broadcast last night and took screenshots of each different state of the scoreboard and of each distinct graphic used during the broadcast.
The screenshots are of fairly poor quality (low res, high JPEG compression), as they were taken using the LG TV App on my phone (technology is amazing), and there doesn’t seem to be any quality setting. It’s very easy to take these screenshots, however. I will hopefully switch over to higher quality screenshots once I build my PVR (hopefully later this month).
So, let’s get started with the scoreboard after the jump!
The first thing worth noting is the Picture-In-Picture game clock. Is it really that hard to implement a proper clock? RPI TV has had clock sync working for YEARS! I am a fan of the big “full name” cells for each school. The addition of the team logo is nice, as well.
CBS offers a bunch of information as “danglers” from the scoreboard, including colors, commentators, officials, lines, goal scoring info, penalty info, stats, and random facts. Power Play time is presented as a dangler below the respective school, and past performances on the powerplay are sometimes briefly shown. Delayed Penalties and “Under Review” expand outward from the left from where the CBS Logo was located (I used the same crop box for each screenshot). The “goal” graphic expands to take up the entire scoreboard. For whatever reason, the CBS logo pulses during normal play.
All-in-all, CBS has a solid, comprehensive hockey scoreboard.
Let’s now turn to full screen graphics. Commentary after each image (where applicable), images should be in order of their appearance.
Exterior shots were accompanied by a small lower 3rd.
Starman and Holden, what a lineup! CBS logo separating the two commentators. Twitter handles included, I like it!
“Opening” graphic.
First of the “storyline” graphics.
Second storyline, the WMU goalie.
Title-card used to intro in a highlight reel of the WMU goalie.
Pre-rendered lower 3rds were used during highlight packages.
Title card for the NCHC broadcst, used throughout the broadcast, usually on the way to commercial.
Conclusion of the CBS/NCHC intro video (which was played after considerable commentary). Amusing similarities to RPI TV’s glass shattering title screen.
After the sports intro, back to the game, a bit of background info.
Starting lines for ND, coupled with coach shot. Would make sense to have an entry here for the coach.
Goalie lower 3rds. Note the ECAC Hockey scores in the crawl (woohoo!)
I believe these were used coming back from the 1st commercial break during the game. Slow 3d effect rotating from left to right. Borderline obnoxious.
Coach introduction, with record dangler.
Brief highlights of ND shots were accompanied by a 3D overlay in the bottom left.
Billboards were framed to be consistent with the rest of the broadcast.
Not a title, but a fun shot of the whiteboard in the locker room. Win Today, in case it wasn’t clear.
Sideline reporter hadn’t yet made an on-camera appearance, but she gets a lower 3rd (with headshot!) while speaking.
Score lower third used during the bump in to commercial.
Two visiting alumni get their own graphic. The columns on left/right are notable as well. Cano to the Mariners, woohoo!
More storylines, in-game! I really like this graphic.
Apparently at the professional level it’s okay to interview the head coach mid-period! This was around the 10:00 mark.
And the accompanying graphic for the coach.
The 1st ND powerplay provides an opportunity to take a look at special teams. Notable: no percentage sign and NCAA rank (steal this).
Sometimes the penalties were announced via scoreboard dangler (see way above), but more often they were introduced via lower 3rd. Fairly simple, no stats or info besides name and number.
More in-game storylines, believe this was used during a transition back from a break. Good narrative.
ND flavored version of the penalty lower 3rd. Looks like I caught the PP timer descending as well.
And the ND version of the special teams. Note that the teams didn’t flip-flop vertically, which I find a bit strange. Maintains home-team-on-the-bottom rather than PP team on top.
Preview of 1st intermission topics. I think this graphic is ugly.
1st period highlights, encased in ice for whatever reason, accompanied by a score lower 3rd.
Player interview with dubious framing and copious amounts of sweat. Very simple lower 3rd, note the lack of headshot and number.
Starman is apparently having a feature where he creates an all star team from each team’s past. Only five faces appear here, the sixth (Danny DeKeyser) was given his own highlight package preceding this graphic.
All three of the broadcasts got together during the 1st intermission. Curious positioning against the boards — I wonder if they really did PBP and commentary from this location? Hope not.
Apparently there was a poll to name the NCHC championship. “Frozen Faceoff” won (ugh).
Low-res video accompanied by a tiny lower 3rd to promote the frozen faceoff.
I don’t even.
Finally, we get a stats graphic. Notable: includes separated score and player notes.
Player highlight of a UND defector including some very old USHL stats.
This is a great graphic; it’s unfortunate that the three schools on the right all use red as their primary color.
I only watched the 2nd period on fast-forward, but didn’t really see anything else too interesting. Stats after 2.
I like this one; thinking about stealing it. I would include a “pace” column too, projecting tonight’s final totals based on the game clock.
The game was winding down at this point (around 5:00 left in the 3rd), so a brief recap was at hand.
This showed up a couple times earlier in the broadcast. Moderately strange that it doesn’t quite take up the full screen.
NCHC standings; shootouts are stupid and make the team records really ugly. W-L-T-SHL? I thought NCHC did a 3-2-1 point system, so don’t you need a SHW too? Mass confusion, no explanation.
Your final score lower 3rd.
There was a goal with under a second left, brief look at the PIP clock overlay.
ND’s New record vs. WMU
And here’s your credits to close it out!
I was left very impressed by the broadcast, notably the variety of on screen graphics used not only to cover the game, but to help to tell the storylines and to cover out-of-town games.
I have a couple other games on my DVR, including a BTN game and an NBCSN tilt. I hope to do breakdowns of those over the next week. ESPN is back in the hockey broadcasting biz, and while I don’t get ESPNU, I’ll analyze their coverage during their next game on ESPNEWS (Feb 1). I’m not sure if Fox Sports 1 has any games on their plate, but I’ll stay on the lookout. They have some regional games broadcasting on the FCS family, so I can take a look there. I don’t have a good way of getting my hands on NESN or Root broadcasts, but if I see one on some other channel I’ll grab it.
]]>Economic Left/Right: -3.62, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.87
That’s a contraction of +1.5 on the Left/Right scale, and +.67 on the Libertarian/Authoritarian scale from 1.5 years ago. Again, I attribute the Left/Right movement to continuing studies in the field of Economics. I have no explanation for the Libertarian/Authoritarian change.
]]>Newspapers:
TV Stations:
Other:
From the aggregate, one can get a pretty good idea what happened. There’s a TON of extra details that make the story more interesting, like how I saw their shadows on the wall of a building ahead of me as a car passed, and how I felt “safe” while their were cars passing, but as soon as the road was empty, they took the opportunity and shoved me from behind. It’s interesting that none of the articles got my direction of travel correct, which was to campus. My injuries were actually pretty decent — My left knee was scraped up pretty good and was bleeding, left hip was substantially scraped (it hurts the worst, currently), right palm was punctured and bleeding, left elbow was scraped, left shoulder scraped, left cheekbone scraped, and an area above the hairline above my temple was scraped and bleeding as well. The bleeding was nothing substantial, but you could smear blood from any of the indicated scrapes.
After the incident, and after four cars had passed, I ran across the street to Joe Perchiacca’s apartment, who was thankfully there. I’m extremely grateful towards Troy PD. Their quick response was more than I could have hoped for. At least six cars were involved, and they had apprehended multiple subjects within minutes. Based on what I’ve seen from the RPI Crime Notice fliers, it seems that arrests being made on Troy muggings are rare. I’m glad things worked out for the best.
]]>One of the main reasons I jumped ship from IX was the fact that I didn’t have fucking PHP5 support. It’s 2011. Who the hell doesn’t have PHP5 support in 2011? As it turns out, IXWebHosting doesn’t. Now, we’re running the newest and greatest WordPress 3.2.1 (at some point, PHP5 was required). I also went with Dreamhost as they claim to have some sort of Rails support. I haven’t poked around with it yet (I’m not convinced a shared host can actually do a decent job at providing Rails hosting), but eventually (within 3 months) this site will be either running Rails or extremely overhauled and reskinned. It’s about time for me to put together my Portfolio / Professional site. Of course, a redesign will be met with the same, normal, 3-5 day period of daily posts followed by a year-long abyss.
]]>Background: I’ve used Grooveshark for around a year now, and have been paying for VIP since September. I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with disappearing songs from my playlists and the unavailability of “key” songs like Rolling in the Deep. Grooveshark’s “host music until we receive a DMCA” model stops working when record companies start caring and start DMCAing.
I splurged last night on the Unlimited ($5) subscription and spent 4-5 hours setting up my entire “collection” on Spotify. It’s great. All the music is “legit”, ie actually licensed as opposed to Grooveshark’s mostly illegal model. A couple albums are missing here and there, namely all of Arcade Fire, and Daft Punk’s Discovery, but they had just abut everything else I wanted available, including many “rare” Muse B-sides, “indie” artists, and random dance remixes of stuff. It automatically scans your hard drive for music files and adds them to your library, which is AWESOME, and perfect for someone who doesn’t want to abandon their extensive catalog, or if you have super rare stuff that the Spotify catalog doesn’t have, or if you like The Beatles. Unfortunately it doesn’t like my WMA lossless files (probably not FLAC either), but I have most of them transcoded to v0 VBR on a separate hard drive which I’ll move around and import eventually.
Sound quality is 160 kbps Ogg Vorbis at the free and Unlimited level, 320kbps at Premium ($10 a month). It sounds fine (on RPI TV’s stereo monitors), much better than Grooveshark. Albums do NOT play back gaplessly. I do prefer Grooveshark’s “now playing” bar, but Spotify does allow you to queue things on-demand with a simple right-click -> Queue. It also shows the list of upcoming shuffled songs, which is a wonderful feature Grooveshark neglected. However, it doesn’t shuffle “queued” songs, only songs from whatever source you’re “playing from”. Additionally, you’re only able to reorder songs you’ve queued, so if you’re playing from a playlist you can’t reorder the songs in your “play queue”, like you can in Grooveshark. The workaround is to queue the whole playlist instead of playing from the playlist, but that’s slightly awkward and counter-intuitive, and then you can’t shuffle. So, some improvements to be made to the Now Playing interface.
Social networking integration, blah blah, I see Jeff in my right panel. It’s missing a “music discovery” tool like Grooveshark’s Radio, but I suppose there are enough other tools out there to help with that (Grooveshark mostly suggests garbage anyway).
I’m already considering upgrading to the $10 a month plan, namely for the mobile app. 320kbps and offline support would be nice too, but I’d be mostly paying for the mobile app.
]]>It was quite accurate with no false positives. I mean the following list describes me pretty much completely:
I’m curious why it singled out Porsche, and I’m not sure about the very first Concerts and Events category either, but still, great job stalking my internet habits, Google!
I believe the following link should bring you to the page, but I’m not sure as I stripped a ton of session variables from the URL.
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
I’m now going to take time to reflect upon my old, surprisingly unnamed laptop.
Here’s the earliest photograph I have of my old T61p, taken when it was only one day old…
It was involved in some early hijinks, here it’s joined by my T23 and my desktop in a rickrolling session:
In November of 2008, I chose to upgrade its motherboard to support four processors and dual graphics cards. The eBay listing for the motherboard provided by the Taiwanese vendor was a bit sketchy, but the product performed flawlessly. A++ would buy again.
The power unleashed by a Core 2 Duo, a Core 2 Extreme, a Core 2 Quad, AND an AMD Turion X2 coupled with both ATi and nVidia graphics was intense. Luckily, the motherboard vendor supplied an extremely efficient one-piece heatsink that cooled all six silicon dies to a reasonable operating temperature.
Massive power occasionally caused massive instability
Also sometimes Windows Vista was a bitch
Fuck you, Windows Vista, fuck you!
This is why I will use Thinkpad laptops for the rest of my life:
My first battery, posthumously named Ted Kennedy, was deemed inadequate for my needs in August 2009. Kennedy was succeeded by the exuberant Billy Mays
During winter break 2009/2010, my T61p underwent several critical changes. I once again overhauled the motherboard, dumping support for the factory Core 2 Duo in favor of a newer Xeon chip. My newly reinvigorated laptop is seen here with its new Xeon processor, providing titles for RPI TV’s hockey coverage:
Shortly after, I ditched my stock DVD/CD-RW drive in favor of new cheap technology from Asia. I absolutely love buying from sketchy Hong Kong vendors; I’m always amused by the strange stamps and customs stickers attached to the packaging. The product this time was a Hard Drive caddy. Coupled with a new hard drive, my Thinkpad’s storage capability increased by 412.5% from 160 GB to 660 GB. The blue hard-drive indicator light on the caddy confuses a lot of people. It also causes the thinkpad to not boot half the time when restarting. A complete shutdown / startup works fine, however.
I held off upgrading to Windows 7 until May 2010. I didn’t want the OS upgrade to wreak havoc with my RPI TV titling programs. I’m happy to say 7 has only bluescreened once.
During summer 2010, my Thinkpad had an unfortunate encounter with a feline. The family cat has always enjoyed keyboards; unfortunately she enjoyed my laptop’s keyboard while it was perched precariously near the edge of a table. The ensuing fall cracked the LCD bezel, broke the PCMCIA door, and took out part of the palmrest as well. I don’t have any pictures of the damage, so here’s a picture of the culprit:
I continued to overhaul the motherboard on two more occasions. I upgraded to 5 processors, adding an i7 chip in Spring 2010. Finally, just two days before its wet demise, I added a 6th, an AMD Phenom II X4.
The incident itself occurred early this afternoon. It was a blustery day, and my window blinds were making quite a racket banging against the window with each gust of air. I was in the kitchen, preparing a lunch of fake ham sandwich and strawberry waffles. I grew more and more agitated by the incessant banging of the blinds, so I dropped my lunch and headed to my room, intent on raising the blinds to the stowed position.
As I entered the room, I noticed that my laptop screen was blank. It was sitting emotionless on my bedside table, just under the windowsill. Perhaps it Windows Updated and shut off? I grabbed my phone from the palmrest and was alarmed by the puddle of water that was revealed by its ascent into my hand. Closer inspection revealed a soaked keyboard and soaked palmrest. Only the battery, plug, and bluetooth LEDs were lit. A now empty water bottle lay on the floor next to the table. I conjectured that the bottle, which was capless, had been blown and/or knocked off the windowsill by a gust of wind and/or the bottom of the blinds. The ensuing spill soaked my laptop and phone.
I rapidly retrieved four select-a-size paper towel segments and began drying off the keyboard and palmrest. I was a bit alarmed that the water had not drained through the keyboard drainage holes on the bottom of the laptop. Lifting the laptop revealed a massive puddle. Just how much water is in a 16.9oz water bottle? It was now clear that water had drained. I attempted to powercycle the laptop a couple times. The bluetooth status LED flicked on and off. This was bad. I removed the battery (whose contacts were quite damp). No change. I removed the hard drives and resigned myself that this was the end of my 6 processor, 20 core, dual GPU laptop.
I later traveled to the Rensselaer Computer Repair facility, and all I got was this lame loaner laptop.
Given the extent of the water damage, I don’t expect the laptop I get back will be spiritually my laptop. Since the palmrest was damaged in the Summer 2010 feline incident, I don’t expect to get my stickers back. I hope the Lenovo techs are taken aback by my awesome Taiwanese 6 socket motherboard.
May you rest in piece, my curiously unnamed T61p. I hope the 3rd world “computer recycling center” you end up in is pleasant, and I hope the toxic water runoff you cause doesn’t kill too many remote villagers.
]]>