I finally got the new design up. Whew!

I was getting pretty sick of the old look. This blog has been up for a year now, so it’s time for a change. And the nominees are:

• New color scheme.
  I don’t know why I had red on the old one. It’s my least favorite color. I wanted something more clearly associated with baseball. So I picked a color scheme to have an old-time scoreboardy feel to it. Or should I say, a scorebardy feel?
   
• New logo.
  It’s kind of a baseball field sliced in half, or something.
   
• Tabbed navigation.
  I read somewhere that this is a good thing for usability. I hope so.
   
• Related info area.
  One problem I’ve had is that if you put hyperlinks inside a poem, it distracts from the poem. Your eye goes right to the link. So I needed somewhere less distracting to put links. Off to the side of the page they go! Now all I have to do is go back through my archives and add those links everywhere.
   
• New About section.
  Now in non-fiction flavors! Learn almost everything about me. Or not.
   
• Updated Periodic Table.
  Any site I didn’t visit regularly was replaced. Also, a mini-sized version on the home page.
   
• They said ‘Humbug’.
  The word ‘humbug’ has been replaced by ‘B.S.” in America. That in itself is humbug. I want to bring the word back. So to encourage its revival, I’ll highlight any media use of the term on left side of the home page. (“Bah, humbug” doesn’t count.)
   
• Humbug Soup.
  A little anagram game. If people like it, I’ll make more.
   
• Mock Swedish Translator.
  In case you need it.
   
• Updated Diamond Notes.
  A few more random sentences with the new look.
   

Some things I haven’t gotten around to. These are the next things on my priority list:

1. Fix any bugs on the site that I find.
    
2. Draft Simulator ’04. I hope to have it by the end of next week or so.
    
3. Linkify archives.
    
4. Present essays on aesthetics. I’ve got some ideas about how art works that I want to share, as soon as I get those other things done first. 

Please let me know if you see any problems with this site. I haven’t tested this on Macs/Safari or Opera, so I’m particularly interested to hear if the site looks OK on those browsers. If the site is too slow to load, let me know that, too. Thanks!

A best weblog nomination?
I think it’s just an aberration.
When compared to Diamond Mind,
My work is surely less refined.
For business you can turn to Pappas
He’s the best one to recap us.
When you need a baseball muse
With David Pinto you can’t lose.
And those guys up in Seattle
Can give anyone a battle.
Although I’m certain I’m the rhymiest,
I doubt my humbug is the Primiest.
I think my chances are remote,
But still, I wouldn’t mind your vote.

The Red Sox are bringing back Ellis:
“We’re hoping that he can propellis
Into winning a ring
With his masterful swing
And make all those Yankee fans jellis.”

The covetous Yankee community
Drools at their new opportunity
For their gluttonous Boss
To grab Chavez or Glaus
And fill up their unAaron-Boonity.

When first we saw Jesse Orosco
Brezhnev was ruling in Mosco.
We had no CDs
VCRs or PCs,
And no one bought bulk yet at Costco.

When age strikes our current young stars
Maybe we’ll drive flying cars.
We’ll all watch TV
In HD3D
As the Expos play home games on Mars.

To say where the future will go
Is hard, but there’s one thing I know:
There will still be a need
To genetically breed
Orosco-like lefties who throw.

There is a movement afoot in Darwin, Australia to make humbug illegal:

“Humbug is, I suppose, being a public nuisance, being a nuisance to the community, going out of your way to give people a hard time, people that you don’t even know,” NT Minister Assisting on Indigenous Affairs Jack Ah Kit said.

I’m sorry; I never realized.

Monday is Martin Luther King Day. King had a dream which inspired millions. My dreams, on the other hand, make no sense at all. Can anyone make sense out of this one I had last night?

I was on a train headed due east out of Berlin. I expect the trip to be long and boring, but occasionally, in the mountainous regions, the track twists and turns and even goes upside-down like a roller-coaster. I marvel at the quality of German engineering.

The land turns flat again, and to avoid boredom, I turn on a TV. They’re showing the final meeting of the 2004 season between the Giants and Padres, in San Diego. John Madden is doing the color, and Steve Young, wearing his full 49er uniform (shoulder pads and all), is a guest commentator.

The Giants are leading in the bottom of the ninth, but the Padres have loaded the bases. With two outs, Matt Williams, somehow unretired, is sent in to pinch hit. He hits low line drive to the opposite field, barely fair over the low right field fence. Grand slam! The Padres win! The Padres clinch the NL West! The Giants, dejected, are left only with the slim hope that they can pass the Cubs for the wild card spot.

I look out over the German landscape rushing past the window of my seat on the train. I wonder if I can see any fireworks from the celebrations in San Diego. Instead, something begins to emerge from the clouds like ghostly angels: the giant floating heads of Julie Andrews, Florence Henderson, and Angela Lansbury, singing songs of glorious celebration. God, it occurs to me, must be a Padres fan.

Now, I ask you: what the heck can this dream mean?

New England confronts Indiana.
McNabb tries to be Joe Montana.
But what I never know
From this NFL show
Is how it affects Frank Tanana.

I just discovered an HTML typo in my photo essay that left many of you unable to view it. Please try again, and accept my apologies.

Most poetry bores me. A poem about the poet’s lover or parents: I can’t even read more than a line or two. If it’s about nature: rocks, trees, rain, snow–I reach for my mental remote control. Not interested.

But poems about iPods and DSL connections? Now we’re talking!

Mike Snider is bravely attempting to write a sonnet a day. The results are admirably good. A daily sonnet can’t be much more than a rough draft, yet Snider makes them sound as easy and natural as a guy telling you a story over the watercooler. That’s not easy to do.

So even if you don’t usually like poetry, I suggest you give these ones a try.

Satellite cable TV
Government banned this CD
Eliminate debts
Casinos take bets

donnelly escobar percival anderson alvarez patterson betemit hannaman varitek youkilis remlinger hollandsworth smitherman valentine valentin betancourt kennedy sullivan holliday halladay ligtenberg hatteberg hermanson bonderman robertson higginson hendrickson flannery flaherty williams relaford restovich richardson robinson carpenter lieberthal bergeron spiezio olerud overbay vogelsong wilkerson wigginton calloway carlos lee

This winter the Angels are fiscally
Investing their income quite riskily.
Seventy mil
Is a bargain until
Guerrero behaves bulging-discally.

TwinsFanDan thinks the IPod deal between Apple and Hewlett-Packard is a work of genius.

Once, when I was a card-carrying member of the Church of Steve Jobs, I would have agreed with him. Good design above all else!

Not anymore. I have worked for companies that worshipped at the altar of Good Design, and we were handed our heads by Microsoft and Oracle. I have come to realize that my faith in Good Design deities like Steve Jobs was not unlike believing in the baseball philosophies of Joe Morgan:

Bunt! Steal! Hit sac flies! And design software with maximum elegance!

Statistics have shown that bunting and stealing are not good predictors of success in baseball. Similarly, if you sit down and look at the facts, you’ll see that aesthetic quality is not a very good predictor of success in high-tech. You may think you’re playing “the beautiful game”, but you’re actually using a losing strategy.

Why? I think it’s because the only people who really understand high-tech products are the people who make them. The buyers are not usually engineers; they just want to use the product. So how do they decide which products to buy?

Insurance. What buyers are really paying for is insurance. This is particularly true inside corporations, where the big bucks are. Buyers want insurance that this product they don’t really understand will work. Insurance that they will be able to get help if it doesn’t. Insurance that their competition won’t have better technology than they do. Insurance that they won’t get fired or lose that promotion because they made the wrong choice.

If you look at high-tech not as a technology industry, but as a technology insurance industry, the whole thing makes a lot more sense. The winners, the losers, and the behavior of both.

At no point in their histories have the core products of either Microsoft or Oracle been the best on the market. Microsoft has never had the best operating system. Oracle has never had the best relational database. But they both understand that making the best product is not the game. The game is insurance. And both of them have been WAY better than their competitors at providing it. Bill Gates and Larry Ellison had Billy Beane beat by twenty years.

So I’m much more skeptical about Apple these days than I used to be. I think their best chance to succeed is to move as much as possible into the entertainment industry. There, as at Pixar, Jobs’ talent for creating products with high aesthetic quality can be more relevant to the economic success of the company. Perhaps this HP deal moves them a step in that direction. Or perhaps, it’s like this quote about the recent Carlos Guillen trade from Seattle to Detroit: “a basically meaningless trade between directionless franchises that won’t have any real impact on the future of either.”

It’s not easy for me to say all this. I love Apple’s products. And I’ve always hated both Microsoft and Oracle, partly because I competed against them, but mostly for the sheer inelegance of their products. It’s sad to go through your career like I did, thinking you’re doing great work, and wake up one day realizing it was all humbug, and you’re nothing but another Alex Sanchez, running around stealing bases to little effect.

Come to think of it, that’s probably why I’m still unemployed. How do you get motivated to work when you suddenly realize the one thing you’re really good at, the one thing you really care about, is not really contributing to the success of your organization?

But I see now the errors of my ways! I understand the follies of my faith! I have forsaken my false gods, and cast out the demons that haunted me! I am a new man! Hire me! I repent! I repent!

Update: TwinsFanDan responds.

When Molitor got in a groove,
He was quietly able to prove
An impossible thing:
That a player can swing
Without even seeming to move.

Though Rose is confessing he bet,
He seems to be lacking regret.
I think he’s cajoling us,
Ray Fosse-bowling us–
Forgive him? I’d rather forget.

A toast to our health and good cheer!
Forget every heartache and tear!
Here’s hoping our pain
Will not be in vain:
That finally, this is our year!

I wish that some day I could boast
Among writers, I’d written the most.
But my thoughts only rhyme
Five lines at a time,
Well short of a Gleeman-length post.

Here’s a photo essay, written in Flash.

The title needs work: Score Bard’s Top 10 Baseball Player Names and European Vacation Photos.

Bonus points for anyone who recognizes the location of any of the pictures.

You’ll need Flash 6.0 or greater to view it. I’m new to Flash programming, so please let me know if you have any trouble viewing it.

A little verse to honor Baseball Primer on its 10,000th Clutch Hit thread:

TangoTiger, Voros, DIPS,
Aaron Gleeman, Forman, ZiPS,
Shredder, Treder, Davis, Werr,
To their wisdom I defer.

Giambi-Mabry, Petco thread,
RossCW getting fed,
Neyer, Beeah Guy, guys who lurk,
TOLAXOR, Ring Dings, **** don’t work.

Mr. Selig wants a cap;
Mike Piazza; It’s a trap!
If all those things are what’s in store,
I hope I read 10,000 more!

And Mike Crudale.

Oh, Score Bard, that last blog entry was pure humbug. If you want to use imagery to “open the mind to the flow of meaning“, write a poem.

Now get back to work.