Many of you know that Brooklynne and I enjoy taking pictures, and this spring I exhibited a few pieces at Broad Street Cafe here in Durham. The exhibit was semi-successful, and it has made me want to send more time and energy to the art. Alot of times I take pictures of things I think would make interesting paintings, but as busy as I've been since beginning school again, I haven't had time to work on much. Still the backlog of planned paintings has led to a growing body of photos that represent some of the beautiful places we've been and the interesting things we've seen. Here is a gallery of some of my favorite scenery-type photos that Brooklynne and I have taken over the past four years or so.

College football season begins again for the Tar Heels this Saturday versus James Madison. Last fall, I swore off watching UNC football until they earned a quality win. Later I defined "quality win" as a win against an opponent from a major conference who has a reasonable expectation of making a bowl game this year. Therefore I will not watch a UNC game until the S. Florida game at the earliest (but only if we beat UVA and the wahoos look like a bowl-capable team).

I will make a prediction, though, based on the outcome of the JMU game....

• If we lose to JMU, we will not win a game this season.
• If we beat JMU by 14 or less, we will not win more than 2 more games this season.
• If we beat JMU by 15-21 and JMU scores 10 or more, we will win 3 games this season.
• If we beat JMU by 15-21 and JMU scores less than 10, we will win 4 games this season.
• If we beat JMU by 21 and JMU scores less than 7, we will win 5 games this season.
• If we beat JMU by 22-28 and JMU scores less than 7, we will have a winning season.
• If we beat JMU by 28+ and JMU scores 3 or less, we will play in January.

• Back up one bullet point for every two fumbles or interceptions we have.

If you are reading this, please post a comment, so I can see how this new installation handles comments. If you were a trusted commenter on the old TWJ, you may have to be trusted again... or maybe not. We will have to see.

NEVER MIND!!!! I didn't notice that you have to login to comment. I'll fix that. 

If you are reading this blog, you either stumbled on this site randomly, or you noticed that I have finally moved my site off the ipowerweb servers that were giving me so much grief. Well, I hope I didn't lose a bunch of readers by switching, but I think the move will mean the end of all the commenting errors everyone was getting and fewer hours on the phone with powerless tech support trainees that drew the shortest straw and had to man the call center lines at my old hosting service. I used to be excited that they were in Arizona instead of India, but after a few exchanges, I was begging to be connected with Mumbai.

Anyway, since I was switching servers anyway, I went ahead and installed MovbleType 4.0, the latest website management platform released by the folks at Six Apart. Here are my thoughts:

1. Much better posting interface (although it looks suspiciously similar to WordPress, which I would be either upset or flattered about if my name was Matt).
2. Much more complicated template structure (again, very similar to WordPress, but harder to figure out)
3. A very buggy template editing tool.
4. More built-in limits on the personal (free) license version.
5. As of yet, very poor documentation/knowledge base online.

I need to keep upto date on the new version of MT for the sake of my fledgling development business, otherwise I think I would quit using MT. Just not enough that you can do with it that you can't do better or easier with other platforms such as WordPress or Drupal.

Today I've been intrigued by the controversy surrounding the soon-to-air CBS show, Kid Nation. I vaguely remember hearing something about this a while ago, but I didn't really pay attention until I heard this story on NPR. There's a better story with more details from the CBS point of view at the LA Times.

My first thought was "who in h--- would let their child do somehting like this?" Brooklynne made a good point that it's probably desperate parents dreaming a windfall, which is another topic for discussion in itself.

But as a think about it, I'm not sure what it is, but there's something else a little off here. After reading more stories, I'm ready to admit that CBS (and the parents) is not as crazy as I first thought. But even if they are justified, they should have bent over backwards to comply with any possible law that could be applied here. Those labor and wellfare laws are in place to protect kids, and even if CBS was totally upright in their supervision, their lack of transparency signals a poor respect for the spirit of the law.

I don't think I'm upset to the point of not watching, but I am pulling for the state to hammer CBS and put them in their place.

By the way, here's a link to the show's website.

As promoised, here are some pictures from our trip out to Bear Lake for the 20th anniversary of the Olds family cabin. Click here to view the pictures in a new gallery widget I'm trying out.

I had the oxygen flow sensor replaced in Brooklynne's CRV this morning. It only took a couple hours leading me to wonder if I should have explored doing it myself.

Here's the rest of my car care list:

Get a new battery.

Fix broken undercarriage guard.

Fix short in the airbag system.

Fix short in the DC outlet.

Get new tires.

Take CRV to the carwash.

In other news, Brooklynne and I will be in Bear Lake, Utah this weekend for the 20th birthday of the cabin her dad's family built when she was small. Milkshake at LeBeau's here I come!

Lately, and for good reason, the blgo has been dominated by Anna Efird, but I'm going to be a good dad and post some Halleigh at Bear Lake pictures soon. (But don't worry--Anna will continue to be a prominent feature on the site too, but if I post all their pictures, the Efirds will never give in and get a blog of their own!).

For anyone who did not know, Caleb Andrew Bennett was born on Tuesday, Aug. 7, at 4:13 p.m. He was 8 lbs 10 oz. and 20.5 inches long.

However, this summer's award goes to Alana Andrews who gave birth to Griffin Clayton Andrews on August 13, at 10:43pm. He was a whopping 9lbs, 4 oz and 22 inches long.

And once again I have new pictures of Anna Efird. Click "continue reading" for a couple more.

Today I will sum up how I would calculate the offensive value of a player according to widely available stats and without regard to league and era differences (remember that these differences will be accounted for in a later part of my formula).

Take a deep breath... and here we go.

Thinking about Bonds's place in history got me to thinKing about nerdy baseball statistics stuff. Baseball buffs seem to continually search for one ultimate stat that would describe a player's value and allow us to definitively say who's the best of all time. Well I'm coming up with a formula for such a stat in three parts, and over the next few days, I'm going to explore each of these components. Of Course, a stat like this would have to include so many factors that it would be very difficult to compile, so if there are any sabermetrics people out there who would care to calculate these stats for a few famous players, I would love to see your results. Until then we will just debate what goes into a formula for greatness.

So without further ado, here's my meta-formula to determine a player's greatness:

(A - B) x C = greatness

where:

A = offensive value measured in "adjusted forced runs,"

B = defensive liability measured in "equivalent unforced runs allowed,"

C = "adjusted run value" based on league and era.

In the next few days I will outline how I would calculate A, B, and C. Stay tuned....

Meanwhile, two caveats:

1. No stat can account for the smallest things a player can do to help his team, like swinging through a pitch to allow a teammate to steal, backing up another outfielder, or being a good lookerroom presence. These qualities are either too immeasurable (lockerroom effect), or have such a small or rare impact within the enormous quantity of stats (backing up), that I have ruled them negiligible in this discussion/formulation.

2. I plan to attempt to weight the offensive and defensive components of the formula so that an average pitcher's defensive stats, for example, are balanced with an average position player's offensive stats. Thus, all players can be equally compared in this computation. American League pitchers are automatically assigned an "A" value of 0, so players like Roger Clemens are automatically handicapped by the designated hitter rule. If you're upset about this, go complain to your league for having a stupid unnecessary rule.

I can't not comment on Barry Bonds today. The question is: "is Barry Bonds the greatest baseball player ever?" HR king, 7 MVPs (? next best 3, I think?), member of the 40/40 club (stolen bases/homers in a season), soon to have 3,000 hits and 2,000 RBIs, and a .298 career batting average.

Even if we accept that Bonds took steroids, a strong case could be made that he's still the best offensive player ever (no offense to Ricky Henderson).

But could he do this?

I'm not convinced that Bonds is the best player ever. Any comments?

Anna Efird was born 7 lbs., 5 oz. and 21 inches long. Elizabeth is doing well besides not sleeping all night. I took this picture without a flash so I would not disturb her, but I'll get some more pictures up when all of the Efirds are rested up.

David and Elizabeth just gave birth to their daughter who is rumored to be named Anna. Elizabeth is feeding the baby and enjoying her little girl so I don't have all the details yet, but I'll post a full report once Elizabeth is ready to have visitors in the room.

As many of you know, David and Elizabeth (Miles' sister) are expecting their first child, a girl, to be born literally any day... Elizabeth was due on the 29th of July.
I wanted to coordinate the meals being brought to them after they get home. Miles had the wonderful idea to make a sign-up website. So...