Bad Start in 2005
The Yankees suck. Nothing much more to say. After beating Boston twice, they quickly dissolved into crap, with the past two games getting worse. Don’t mind this negative, highly critical post – I don’t give anyone a chance.
Mariano is old and blew two saves in a row. The first time, he was lucky and the Yankees won – but he’s still an idiot because Pavano pitched a good game and deserved the win and didn’t get it. What the hell is wrong with him? Michael Kay is a commentator on YES and was shocked when Yankee fans booed him off the field after helping the Yankees win since the mid 90s. Yeah that’s true, but we’re taking about now, not the past. What about the World Series he blew? What about all the blown saves in last years’ ALCS? Steinbrenner better buy another closer. Ever since Rivera had that tragedy in his family, he hasn’t been the same.
Of course it’s not all Rivera’s fault. A-Rod is baseball’s richest player and we pay him to make fielding errors. If he turned a double play, the Yankees would have won. If he just got one out, the Yankees would have won because Rivera got the next batter out. A-rod has been good for shit since he became a Yankee. A-Rod will be a flop and will totally suck next year, mark my words. If you ever compared him to his Texas or Seattle days, he is an average player. And usually anyone who was good and came to the Yankees turned out to be a flop. Look at Giambi. He was excellent and came there and was crap last year. What the hell happened to Wright? Pitched like an asshole giving up way too many runs. Mr. Atlanta Ace.
Bernie Williams needs to retire. He is 0 for the season and can’t hit. The old bag has been here for 15 years and was very good, but when you start embarrassing yourself, just leave. Don’t get me wrong. I <3 Bernie - great player who did wonderful things over the years, but lately not so much. Same thing with Tino. He's OLD. Everyone makes this big stink about him coming back. The fans are cheering him for everything he has done in the 90s. Again, this is not the 90s. He's old and shot. Tony Clark was a better first baseman that filled in for Giambi. Who do we have now? Two fools: a ball-shrunken steroid addict who is too worn out to play 1B everyday, so they replace him with Tino, who is no good but is just there to make the fans happy. Making the fans happy does not win games. And Roger Clemens is an idiot. He pulled this "I'm retiring" crap prior to the start of last season and collects dirt from ballparks for his sons. Then he says "Oops. I lied! I'm gonna pitch another year with the Astros. So he comes back and is still there. Last year he had a great year and this year he's still pitching at 42 and just pitched a brilliant one hitter with 9 strikeouts. We needed him in pinstripes. Not these other pitching morons who don't know what they're doing. If he wanted to pitch for his hometown, fine. Why don't you say so. He wasn't in a contract anyway. But don't say you're retiring. By the way as sad as it is I still respect him because he's one of the few people who knows how to pitch well. And now for the positives: Matsui is decent and will probably have a good year. Possibly Sheffield and Randy Johnson. But despite their good seasons, we won't be seeing the Yankees in October. :mad:
Just A Test / Forum Update
I added the forum smileys to my database so that I can easily add them to my posts.
:banana: :worried: :tmi: 🙁 🙂 😛 😀 😡 🙄 ❓ ❗ :wacko: :toldya: :annoyed: 😥 😳 :woot: :doh: 😆 😯 😎 :confused: 😉
As for the forums: My host fixed the problem but my database is still messed up. I have a lot to do and I’ll get to them when I’m ready. 😛
April Fools
April Fools, you dunces! Of course the site isn’t banned at school. Why should it be? There’s nothing wrong with it. I faked the whole thing by banning the school’s IP and replacing the 403 error page with the default access is denied messange from school.
HAHAHA That was great. Sorry for the inconveniences I caused. For example, Dan wanted to use the uploader to send a file home and could not. Also Joey was pissed because now he wasn’t able to update his baseball team from school. HA. People were frantically using a certain site which bypasses the IP bans to get here. And remember to be skeptical about EVERYTHING on April Fool’s Day.
Ogg Vorbis Rocks
April 14, 2005
Computer/ Tech Related
5 Comments
Portfolioso
I downloaded a Winamp plugin that rips CDs into .ogg files. What is OGG? It’s an open source music file format, sort of like mp3, aac, m4a, etc. It is gaining popularity in many areas. For exmaple, Epic Games (the makers of Unreal Tournament have used ogg vorbis in their games ever since releasing Unreal Tournament 2003 to compress game music without having per-game mp3 license fees taken from every game sold.
So whats the big deal? I just realized how amazing ogg files are. For example, if you want a high quality sounding mp3, the minimum bitrate you can rip the song at is 128KBPS. Anything lower that 128kbps sounds flat and digital-like. So I took a cd and ripped an ogg at 48 KBPS. An mp3 at that bitrate would sound terrible, however, the ogg was crystal clear. I bet no one would be able to tell the difference (except Dannyrob, who thinks it sounds crappy. But maybe the fact that he does not hve a sound card doesn’t help). Decide for yourself with the examples in the table below. Ogg files can be played on Winamp. To rip CDs to ogg, download this Winamp plugin.
And now… Test it for yourself. I compiled a zip file with the same sound clip in the following formats: 128kbps MP3, 48kbps MP3, 44kbps OGG, 64kbps OGG and 112kbps OGG. Download it here (3MB). Also you need to do is download it, unzip it and read the readme (basically just click the playlist) and then listen in order. Use winamp to play the ogg files (by opening the playlist from winamp).
Finally, my conclusions. The 128kbps mp3 is excellent. The 48kbps mp3 is muffled and bad. I can’t tell the difference between the 48kbps ogg, 64kbpsogg and 112kbps ogg from the 128kbps mp3. Therefore, ogg sounds exactly the same as 128kbps mp3s at lower rates and smaller file sizes.
Cons of ogg vobis: 1) No mp3 players support it. 2) It’s not popular, so I can’t slap oggs on my site and expect everyone to know what to do with them. 3) It’s a pain to rip songs to ogg –> they must be from a CD: you can’t convert mp3s to ogg vorbis.