Category Archives: Uncategorized

Charm City – 3

Of course, the real reason I went to Baltimore was to take in a few baseball games. I deliberately picked a week where the Orioles would be in town, and bought tickets to two games – conveniently with different visiting teams.

Now I have to admit that Oriole Park at Camden Yards (to use the full, official name) is a lovely place to watch a ball game. Clean sight lines, a nice backdrop, and easy to get to. Worth noting is that it doesn’t have any deliberate quirks that one finds in many of the newer stadia. No giant wall with a home run train on it, no corner of a building serving as a foul pole, no weird walls or angles “just because”…. OK, the left field wall drops back really quickly from 333 feet at the pole to 371 feet, and there is that building behind Eutaw Street in right field. But those things aren’t forced; they feel perfectly natural.

But there is one thing that really irks me; and it’s an absence rather than a presence.

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Charm City – 2

I couldn’t really not go to the Walters Museum of Art; it’s Baltimore’s premiere art museum. Not as big as the ones in Chicago or New York City (duh), but it’s got a fine collection of art and artifacts, and their curators know what they are doing.

It also has free admission…..

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Charm City – 1

Time for another “Spring Break”! Have to use up those vacation days…..

I didn’t feel like traveling a great distance (air travel doesn’t seem particularly safe or reliable these days) – where could I easily drive in one day, and with a baseball team that’s at home so I could take in a few games?

Baltimore fit the bill. Even though I’ve been there already – but it’s been about a decade since my last (and only other) trip there. Time to make plans!

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What to Drink While Playing Diplomacy

Back in my college days, when I had joined the campus gaming club, I came to love the game Diplomacy. The chief problem with setting up a session was that you need at least five players (seven is normal, but there are rule variants that allow for less). And getting that many people together at once for what could take a full day of gaming…..

During the COVID shutdown, I found to my delight that there are a couple of websites where you can play the game online. Diplomacy seems perfect for it – time periods where the players discuss alliances and plan moves over a simple chat app, then once all moves have been submitted, a fairly simple program calculates and delivers the results. I signed up on one, and have always had a couple of games active.

To cut a long digression short, I began to wonder what beverages (alcoholic if possible) would it be appropriate to sip while representing each nation in Diplomacy…

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Pond in a Jar – 9 1/2

Finally got around to taking a photo (as promised in the last update, which is why this isn’t getting a whole number). It’s at the original size, by the way – no resizing, trimming, or color adjustments.

You can see the worm thing just above the shadow of the cable on the lower left. And the brownish spot a little left of center is one of the teeny snails. There’s new(ish) growth on the right, and plenty more at the top (most of which is just out of the image). You can also see a lot of leaves and stems turning brown and decaying, returning nutrients back to the muck.

One thing about the worm – I swear it pops up in slightly different places every now and then. I’d try and track it if I cared enough. By the way, I’ve had no luck identifying it. The only search results I get for “freshwater worms” (or similar terms) are parasites for fish – with more than enough icky photos…. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, let me know….

Photo after the jump:

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A “Town Ball” All Star Game – 3

And here’s where it all went kablooey.

I ran through the simulation, and things were going nicely. However, I completely forgot that if the home team is still leading after the visitors have had their six innings, there’s no reason at all to play the bottom of the inning (other than satisfying the gamblers), and so you won’t get to see some of the All Stars take their chances against the other league’s best pitcher.

I suppose that one could play the bottom half of the inning anyway, and then give the visitors one last crack at it. Send the home team’s best closer out to the mound, and then the visitors can send up whoever they want, in whatever order they want, to score as many runs as they can given the standard three outs. Should they actually take the lead, then the home team gets to do the same thing in the bottom of the “extra inning”. Continue as needed.

Or perhaps the format could be that the Visitors bat until they score a run (with commercial breaks and pitching changes after every five batters), then the Home Team comes to bat and hits until they take the lead (same thing about breaks every five batters), then the Visitors get to bat, etc. – but that sounds too much like a weekend softball league game.

At this point, I’ve put WAY more effort into the thing than was called for. If you want to play with the idea and run some simulated games, go right ahead.

And if you really want me to post the record of the game, just ask….

A “Town Ball” All Star Game – 2

Yeah, yeah, I get it – you want more than seven or eight All Star pitchers. But let’s be honest – most pitchers are just average, and no one (other than their specific fans or stat nerds) really wants to see a “set up man” in an All Star Game. I’d wager most casual fans can’t even name one. So the pitchers will be the top five or six starters, with a couple of closers of note.

As far as the players that will actually be out there on defense, we’ll leave that to fan voting. We’ll keep the rule that each team must have at least one representative. Maybe we’ll leave that up to the actual players on the team, or some sort of local poll. Or just the player with the highest WAR; it’s no big deal. The rest of the batting side of the roster can be filled out by the team’s manager, choosing from runners-up in the fan voting – with a decided bias to the big name stars. At least we won’t have to worry about having too many players at the same position – the starters voted in by the fans will be expected to be out there for all six innings.

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A “Town Ball” All Star Game – 1

This past summer I was among those musing about alternative formats to the standard All Star Game in Major League Baseball. Noting that the superstar players always tend to be taken out after an inning or three – which meant that when the game was on the line in the later innings, you had second or even third tier players coming up in the most dramatic moments. I posited a sort of “town ball” format to be used in the later innings. This would give an incentive to keeping players in longer, if you actually wanted to win the game.

Thinking on it some more, I wondered what it might be like if you just went with the town ball format for the entire game.

There would be some major changes to the format…..

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Pond in a Jar – 9

I have to admit it’s really ugly, and I want to dump it and start anew. I even have a jar / bottle being prepared as a replacement. That little plant that sprouted back in the fall of 2023 is pretty much out of control – it’s grown up and out above the water surface. There are stems and dangling rootlets all over the place, Unfortunately, quite a few leaves are turning brown. Yuck. At least most of the green fuzzy stuff is gone.

It’s not something you really want on your desk or windowsill.

But then the light hits it just right, and you see that the darned thing still has plenty of life in it.

There are dozens of teeny swimming things. The big snail seems to have gotten bigger, and there are even a few tiny snails creeping around. And most interestingly, there’s a tiny worm in the muck at the bottom. About a half inch long and a pale green in color, it is most definitely a worm. It waves back and forth independently of any movement of the Jar, and can hide back in the muck when I tap the glass. I’d never have noticed it if it wasn’t right next to the side.

Looks like I’ve got a nice little ecosystem going in there. Hopefully it will look better in the spring.

No photos this time; my phone’s camera isn’t good enough to take decent close ups of the interesting stuff. Maybe in the next update.

Welcome to 2025

In the past, I’ve used the first post of the year to go over the stats from the previous year. But after eleven full years of doing this, things haven’t really changed. I post about the same number of essays, get no significant increase in the number of visits or views, and the same old posts top the “Most Visited” list. And I always make a comment that I’m surprised that I’ve been able to post fairly regularly, and that I’m still going with this thing.

This year, I feel like doing something a bit different.

In the next few months, expect to see a usual post on the Baseball Hall of Fame results, and another “fantasy” game where I play with the Deadball rules. I’ve got five book and one movie reviews lined up, and I’ll probably do another post or two on my Pond in a Jar.

With luck, that will carry me through to the point where I can blather on about a vacation.

But – I’m also starting to feel that this is more of a chore than anything. Look, eleven years and well over 500 posts is a pretty good run for a silly little personal blog that I do for free. Maybe if it brought in some money I’d be more “inspired” to keep it going. If I do decide to pack it in, I will let you know. And I’ll keep the site up for another year at least – those 80 book reviews and 70 movie reviews are still good, right?

By the way, if you care, 2024 saw 57 posts, over 4000 visitors, and over 5000 page views….