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I don't have a link, but I was interested to read in the paper that baseball statistics (sabrematrician) guru Bill James has been hired by the Boston Red Sox. Among other duties he will consult on all trades.

I started buying Bill James' yearly Baseball Abstract when I was a kid growing up in Massachusetts. What little mathematical facility I have is due in large part to my fascination with his elaborate and rather arcane formula for quantitizing player performance. Great great stuff. And the idea that he will be helping the utterly hapless BoSox is icing on the cake. I'd like to see it work, but I'm not sure even Bill the great can turn baseball in that town around.
- jim 12-03-2002 9:08 pm [link] [1 comment]

Austria 2002. What a short decadent trip it's been.
- jim 12-03-2002 8:20 pm [link] [3 comments]

I have the new upload scripts working. And I've uploaded all my Austria pictures. It works pretty well. I'm about half way through writing the small amount of textual explanation I want to include. Doing so has made me realize how much my writing style has degenerated. This is thanks to blogging, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.

I could write better. But then I wouldn't write very much. Everything you see on this page is straight off the top of my head. It's unusual that I even proof read one time. Obviously this leads to lots of sloppy writing. It's probably embarassing even, but I don't notice. I'd rather write more, poorly, then not as much. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Still, I used to be able to write better. Which is to say, I used to go over my words many times. Reread and rewrite and rethink. That's fun, for sure, but I don't have time for it. Blogging takes up so much time already. If I made myself proof read, or even think twice about what I was saying, then I wouldn't have any time for it at all.

I guess that's why some people don't understand what I'm doing. I can see that it could seem low quality. It's just that it's not the quality that I'm after. It's the constantness. Is that even a word? See, I don't care. You know what I mean.

Or do you? I think it will become more clear as things turn more multi media. Bandwidth is still a bit constrained for pictures, and certainly for video. So text is where it's at right now. But it's all about the immediacy. Rewriting is something else. I hope I haven't lost the ability to do it, but I seldom run across the instance where I want to give it any practice.

In any case, I should have the pictures all done by tomorrow. Not that it's so interesting. It's almost like it's too late now. That's what I mean by immediacy. If I could have been broadcasting live it would be more interesting. Like you could have come along on my vacation with me. Now that it's after the fact it's more like I'm boring you with lame vacation pictures. But I'll put them up anyway.

I guess the other side of the coin is that they might be interesting to me many years from now. Probably at that point I will wish I would have proof read more. Or maybe I'll just be happy that I kept a record at all. I wonder...

- jim 12-03-2002 5:52 am [link] [9 comments]

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