Million dollar Nielsen bust

BuzzerBlog posted some local market ratings for the October 23 premiere of Million Dollar Mind Game. Nobody should have expected anything except near-invisible numbers, and that's exactly what happened.

My own review was tepid at best and brutal at worst. ABC knew what they were doing when they burned the show off in a throwaway Sunday afternoon slot. Still, I'll admit to a sneaking wish that a few more people would give the show a chance.

I'm not just pleading for game shows in general, though there's a little of that involved. Million Dollar Mind Game is a truly offbeat departure from the usual run of American game shows. Frankly, some of the departures, like the excruciating difficulty of the questions and the lollygagging pace, strike me as anything but favorable.

But it would still be nice to see such a quirky show somehow find a few viewers, at least the famous "cult following." I'm afraid even that may be too much to ask for the import from Russia without love (by Nielsen).

It's Not That Hard: GTOG Realigns the NHL

By Finesse

The fallout from the NHL's proposed realignment is very noisy.  Reactions are all over the map.  Here is the proposal, via Puck Daddy.

According to Elliotte Friedman of CBC Sports, each team will play every team outside the division twice (once home, once away).  If the Pens are in a 7-team division, that means 46 out of division games, and 36 in division games (so the Pens would play each team in the division 6 times -- the same as now).  There would be a return to divisional playoffs, where 4 teams from each division would play each other for the right to play the conference's other division winner in the conference finals.  Think Patrick Division.  Pensblog did an excellent analysis of this yesterday, but today, we've got a different plan.

Find out GTOG's proposal after the jump...


There are some assumptions that are accepted as underlying truths, we think, for no apparent reason.

First, Detroit seems to be the most eager to get out of the Western Conference.  There were even reports that Bettman promised he'd move Detroit east once the Atlanta-Winnipeg move was finalized.  We understand Detroit's frustrations with playing in the Western Conference -- if we had to watch, let alone play, thirty 10pm games every year, we'd be pissed too.  But if Detroit wants to move East, then we say goodbye to Wings-Hawks, Wings-Blues, and Wings-Avs rivalries.  Can't have it both ways.  Accordingly, we are not concerned about Detroit's rivalries, and apparently Mike Ilitch isn't that concerned either.

Second, there is no law of nature that says Philadelphia has to be geographically grouped with the New York City metropolitan area.  We understand that Philly is 90 miles from New York.  But it's also about a 34 minute flight from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.  In the age of chartered jets, it's an enormous reach to say that travel between Pittsburgh and Philly is any more taxing than travel from Philly to New York.  Based on nothing but our own experiences, we'd even bet that flying from Philly to New York takes longer given the crowded skies and airports in New York.

The same goes for Washington.  You literally don't even have time to turn on your iPhone on a flight from Pittsburgh to Washington before they tell you to turn off all electronics.  When traveling by air, there is essentially zero difference in the distances between Washington-NY and Pittsburgh-NY.


Ovechkin: Will wear same outfit either way

So once you dispense with the I-95 Fallacy -- that Washington, Philly, and the three teams from New York must be together -- this is actually pretty easy to figure out.
Here's our proposal for the East, using Bettman's proposed realignment as a template.

Division I
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
Washington
Detroit
Carolina
Florida
Tampa Bay


Division II
New York Rangers
New York Islanders
New Jersey
Boston
Montreal
Ottawa
Toronto
Buffalo

Our rationale:

Geographically, it makes total sense.  If you took out a map and drew circles around the cities in each division, there would be no overlap.

Rivalry-wise, it preserves almost everything, and in fact may improve the situation. Pittsburgh keeps Philly in the division, and adds two more games per year against the Caps (plus much greater chances of meeting in the playoffs). Detroit also comes into the mix, and if you don't think that the Wings would instantly be as detestable as the Caps and/or Flyers, then you haven't been paying attention.  Sure, Carolina, Florida and Tampa aren't that exciting, but we're about getting wins, not about having brawls at Nassau Coliseum.  And ask the Pens players whether they'd rather spend a January road trip in Florida or in Ottawa-Toronto-Montreal.

Taking Talents to South Beach

The addition of the Caps and Wings to the division more than offsets the loss of the NY-area teams.  The Rangers are a nice rival, but neither team considers the other team to be that important.  The Devils and Islanders are boring.  This proposal also keeps the Boston-Toronto-Montreal rivalry, and adds the media-favorite Boston-NY rivalry.   If the NHL wants to get crazy and make the Eastern Conference with two 8-team divisions instead, then we would be more than happy to welcome Columbus to the mix.

There is no perfect solution. But under the GTOG plan, think of how many Ottawa-New York Islander games you have to look forward to.

Gladiator: Champion of the arena "Pallas"

Painted up my converted giant Gladiator, pretty pleased with how he turned out. I will have a lot of regular gladiators and a couple of named "Champions of the arena" - this will be one of them. Named him "Pallas" as it refers to a greek mythoogy titan (Pallas was perhaps the Titan-god of warcraft. His name was thought to derive from the word pallô, meaning "to wield or brandish a spear.").

The conversion is based upon this model "Necropolis Ghast" , the spear is made out of a thin metal rod and plastic arrow head for a tip. Shield is from Warlord Games plastic romans and chainmail sleeve is made out of greenstuff. I will post a custom profile that will go along with the WH:H Gladiator rules soon.

GTOG Raw Emotion Podcast: Steelers Beat Patriots 25-17

After a long-overdue and emotional win over the Patriots, we reflect. But we're not raising any banners.

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"I wonder if they are finally starting to realize that I may have lost my fastball..."

Sunday Video: Charlie Brown: Blockhead's Revenge

A Funny or Die video intrroduced by John Carpenter warning the world of a potential new spree killer in the making.

Featuring Rachel Bloom and her horror movie calibre scream.

It also sort of goes with PG Porn's A Very Peanus Christmas.

Nor'Easters versus Northwest Windstorms

During the last day, a strong Nor'easter (also called Northeasters by some) struck the northeast U.S. with strong winds, rain in the coastal areas, and snow inland.

What made this storm so remarkable was the snow.   Rarely do such storms bring this much snow so early.  Usually the first snow of the season hits the coastal northeast U.S. in mid-December.  From this events, some locations are breaking long term records--such as the earliest 1-inch snow for over a century at New York City.  This storm is NOT a record for earliest snow over the region---historically, most northeast snow have had some snow as early as mid-October. Snow on trees that are still leafed is a major issue, resulting in lots of downed trees and power outages.

 The weekend event is an example of a a Nor'easter--a strong, midlatitude cyclone (low pressure center) that moves up the east coast from the southwest to the northeast over the nearshore waters, roughly paralleling the coast. The winds move around such lows in a counterclockwise way, with the strongest winds generally from northeast over the north and western quadrants of the storm.  Here is a National Weather Service surface chart at 10 PM PST on Saturday night as an example (solid lines are isobars--lines of constant pressure....the closer together they are, the generally the stronger the winds).  Winds are shown by wind pennants at various stations.

Nor'easters are cousins to the big northwest windstorms (e.g., the Inauguration Day Windstorm, Chanukah Eve Windstorm, Columbus Day Storm).    Both get most of their energy from horizontal variations in temperature--thus they are midlatitude cyclones.  This is very different from tropical cyclones, such as hurricanes and typhoons, that derive their power from the warm temperatures and moisture of tropical oceans.

Both Northwest major cyclones and Nor'Easters have impressive satellite signatures, with characteristic cloud swirls and frontal cloud bands.   Want to see?  Here is an enhanced infrared image of the December 12, 1995 storm that hit us hard

and here is the latest east coast storm in the visible:

Large, impressive systems. For the Nor'eastern event...do you see that lines of clouds extending NW to SE from the coast---that is caused by cold air going over warm water.   In general, the very strongest Northwest cyclones are stronger than the top Nor'easters, with our 1962 Columbus Day storm probably being the most powerful non-tropical coastal storm to hit the U.S. in a century. (Beware--those wily east coasters like to call their storms "Perfect" or "Storm of the Century" and get books and movies made about them.  Don't believe their propaganda--ours are bigger and more powerful).

Before roughly 1990, few of these big storms--on either coast--were well forecast by our numerical models.  The 1962 Columbus Day storm came as a big surprise, and the President's Day Snowstorm of 1979 brought unforecast snow to D.C.  (very bad place for forecast failures!).   But by the early 1990s something had changed.  Our models now had sufficient resolution and physics, and satellite information was improving our description of the atmosphere to a point that we began to get these storms right.   For example, both the West Coast Inauguration Day Storm (January 1993) and the East Coast "Storm of the Century" (March 1993--I hate that name), were correctly predicted days before.  And we have only gotten better in time.

Lets see how we did for the current storm.   Here is the model analysis at 5 PM on Saturday.

Nice low off the coast, large coast pressure variations.  The dashed lines indicate lower atmosphere temperature, with the first blue one indication conditions cold enough for snow.  The forecast by the National Weather Service GFS model initialized 36 hr before is shown below...as well as the precipitation forecast (light blue is the heaviest).  Not bad!

Or how about 60hr before? Still quite good, but displaced a big too far offshore.

Keep in mind that some of these strong midlatitude cyclone can have hurricane force winds over water and are the equivalent of category 1-2 hurricanes.  And  midlatitude cyclones are much larger than tropical systems and do not weaken as quickly when they pass over land.

If a big midlatitude cyclone hits the Northwest this year we will have a magnificent view of the details using the new coastal radar.  And if our models are wrong about intensity or position, the new radar will enable us to get out timely warnings in time to save property and lives.  We have finally caught up to the east coast, where they have had radars looking offshore for decades.

Announcement:  The Puget Sound Chapter of the American Meteorological Society will be meeting on Wednesday, November 2 at the Northeast Branch of the Seattle Public Library at 6:30 PM.   UW Graduate Student Luke Madaus will describe the new dual-polarization products available from the newly upgraded National Weather Service radars.  All welcome.   Location: 6801 35th Ave. N.E.  More directions at: http://www.spl.org/locations/northeast-branch/net-getting-to-the-branch

Speed improvement on the blog?

Let me know if you think the blog loads faster. Got an email from a reader, Scott S. who provided me with a jpeg version of my background picture. Can't believe I had run with the png 4mb version for over a year without thinking about it (though I do have a fast broadband connection).

Anyway, the new picture is but a fraction of the original size so the page should load faster. If so let me know. I'm also looking into how to stretch the background to make it a single picture instead of a "tiled format" and make it scroll along with the page as  the current look has been bugging me a lot. But I'm a complete CSS noob which makes finding the parameters and apply the tweaks so that it will work for all browsers hard for me.

Anyways, thanks for the smaller sized version of my background Scott :-)

If you can't beat Toronto, you might as well throw a sick Halloween party

By Finesse

When the Pens play on HNIC against Toronto, it's usually one extreme or the other -- think the Valentine's Day massacre or some game where Sid and Geno probably each had hat tricks (not looking it up, but just assuming that it's happened in Toronto).  Last night, as the game crawled by on mute in the background of a big time Halloween party, it was clear that this game wouldn't hit either of the extremes, unless you count Malkin trying to set the record for most penalties taken but least amount of time actually spent in the box.

The definition of something you hope to never see.

Bottom line: nothing to dwell on here.  Pens are going to lose some games.  Hands is going to continue mopping up in front.  Pens PK will miss Michalek.

We look forward, not backwards.

Pictures and report from SydCon 2011

This year’s SydCon was a mixed bag, even though I was only there during one of the days. The locale was imo better than last year - but I can't shake the feeling that everything not directly involved in the tournaments always seem to be covered in "depression".

I won't blame the convention guys as they are a nice friendly bunch who wants to make these events happen and make people happy. I've been to SydCon 4 times, taking part in a WHFB tournament once and the remaining times I've helped out to demo some games.

The first two years where it was still being held in Lund it did seem to draw a lot more people and attention. Last two years seem to have been troublesome and the convention is imo on a evident decline.

I think two things might have saved this year’s convention, the amazingly huge "Magic" tournament. I would dare to say that half of everyone in the locale was playing magic. The other was the Flames of War tournament and events. It was evident that Flames of War , though still small compared to GW games here in Sweden is on the rise. And it was such a contrast in dedication when it came to terrain and painting of miniatures between the 40k tournament and the FoW tournament crowd.

You can call Flames of War and their players a lot of things, but they sure as hell try to make their games look as good as possible. There is a screaming lack of imagination among the 40k crowd when it comes to tables and terrain. Mind you that most of the 40k stuff was supplied by local game clubs while a lot of the FoW stuff was supplied by private gamers - including my FoW buddy Thomas who loaned a lot of his terrain for the convention.

But apart from these competitive tournaments there is very little attraction to this event. It's not like small "indie" games are lining up to let people try out new stuff. There were 3 demo stations if you like to call them that. Strange Aeons, Incursion and a very nice Flames of War duo of tables, one holding a newbie demo, the other was running a reenactment of the Band of Brothers episode where the 101st are storming the artillery trenches in Normandy.

But not only was there a lack of alternative games and reasons to wander about and "look around", very few people showed any interest at all. There were a few people checking out the Strange Aeons terrain and miniatures but in actual demo games I only ran but 2. I usually get a feeling of which way the wind blows within an hour so I wasn't really shocked or pissed off at this. The guys trying out the game were nice, seemed to like the game and I explained stuff beyond the demo scenario. Of course I would have liked to make my stay more worthwhile, it was a lot of work to haul all that stuff down to Malmö for just 2 demos.

Which brings me to the conclusion that next year I will most likely not attend SydCon but try to take part in either GothCon or "Gubbspel Galore" up in Gothenburg. There seem to be more focus on diorama games and playing demo's up there which would make the long trip worth it.

The good things about SydCon were purely social, got to meet my buddies Calle and Thomas, got to meet Thomas buddy Patrik again who I think ran the FoW tournament and is just one big beacon of enthusiasm. Me and Calle upheld the tradition of going out to town to get something to eat only to get a probable food poisoning light. Wtf is wrong with Malmö when it comes to food!? We even ate at different food courts over at the train station.

I also met Peter who donated the train tracks for my Polish armored train and met a couple of fans of my blog (sorry guys for not asking your names but at that point I was feeling wasted by the food I had eaten)I did not buy anything except for 1 blister of Flames of War "single horse limber" for my Polish 37mm AT gun platoon. The surprising thing was that the pack includes 3 limbers, I always thought it was a single limber in the pack. Internet stores should provide better information about box/blister contents....


As for my final thoughts about SydCon, it is hard to tell how it can be improved, I do think they should focus a lot more on all kinds of tournaments since that seem to be the main attraction judging by the amount of Magic players in particular. I honestly don't think one demo game more or less will make any impact on the visitor or participant number. The visitors might also have been turned off by the very steep entry fee enforced in the early afternoon. Though I don't know the economical situation of the convention to make a fair judgement of that.

Secret garden of delights

Richard Carson is a game show fan after my own heart. His I've Got a Secret episode guide is an invaluable source for my favorite black-and-white game show ever.

The guide provides detailed production and content information for hundreds of IGAS episodes throughout the show's 1952-67 run. Even more handy are the links to dozens of clips from the show on YouTube, many of them uploaded by Richard himself. I spent hours yesterday watching some of the very best clips from one of the funniest shows ever to grace American TV.

One of the most hilarious bits came from the November 12, 1958 episode. With the panel not in on the secret, host Garry Moore and guest Peter Lind Hayes read incredibly bad jokes that had been written years before by...none other than panelist Bill Cullen.

At first befuddled by what was going on, the panel soon started ripping the jokes as downright awful (which they were). This naturally led to gales of laughter from the audience. Bill Cullen in particular dumped on the jokes as material he wouldn't be caught dead using. Bill said the jokes must have been stolen from jokebooks authored by men long since dead.

By now the audience was helpless with laughter. Bill suddenly realized that they were laughing at him, and that he must have written the horrible jokes himself. As always, the self-deprecating Cullen then joined in the hilarity. To give Bill some respect, Garry and Peter finished the bit by reading a pretty funny routine that Bill had also written years before.

It's times like these that I really, really wish GSN would bring back the black-and-white IGAS. Maybe we'll get some episodes around Christmas, as the network has done in recent years.

Its A Meme, A Protest...

...and a television reference.

Writer's Dice Update #2

As of Saturday night, we have 833 dice pre-ordered and we still have a week left in the campaign. Incredible. I just posted this little video above to show how the dice roll. Nothing fancy, just a product demo. :)

More inside stuff

Following up my post on super-sekret inside info...

Just to show you the kind of things that land in my inbox, I've posted a birthday photo of Pat Sajak. The folks at Wheel of Fortune sent me the happy picture to celebrate Pat's 65th on October 26.

Wikipedia tells me that Sajak took over the big zillion-colored wheel in 1981, when he was 35. That means the show has been part of his life for nearly half his life. By now Wheel of Fortune must seem like his left leg, something you'd have to amputate to get rid of.

Not that I want to call the doctor. Pat has been perfect for the show, with a low-key but quirky personality that has worn very well through however many thousand episodes he's hosted. A flashier and more intrusive host (not to mention any names, Richard Dawson) would have long since grown unbearable.

All GSN all the time

You're probably wondering when I'll get tired of posting about GSN. Well, it hasn't happened yet. Some more of my deep thoughts from the GSN Internet boards about new programming exec Amy Davis and the new prime time schedule...

Other poster, who claims inside information on Amy Davis' plans for GSN: Billy and I thought we both were receiving factual information and until we both see it, [emphasis mine] I'm going to believe what I heard and I'm sure Billy will be saying the same thing.

Until you both see what?

Another poster: So, I do think there will be some viewers who tune in on Friday nights [for the oldies block] that don't normally watch during the day/late night and therefore these episodes won't be worn out to those folks. Just my thoughts.

Sure, that's why GSN can get away with rerun abuse. Even an extremely short-run show like Million Dollar Password has managed to get decent ratings after a lot of rerun cycles. MDP's latest published number on October 15 was 330K viewers, just fine by GSN standards. Most viewers don't watch every episode of any GSN show religiously. There are always some eps that are new (or at least haven't been seen for a while) for some viewers.

When you start talking about a 400-episode order like GSN currently has for Match Game, a bunch of the eps will be new (or long forgotten) for many if not most GSN viewers.

Yet another poster: But your thoughts basically are to say "to hell with the diehards who do watch these shows." Who cares about the rerun abuse? They do.

Diehards like you describe are heavily over-represented on these boards (and Internet game show boards in general) compared to GSN's actual audience. Most GSN viewers do not watch every single ep of Match Game or any show every single day. The audience you talk about is a shifting group of people who occasionally tune in.

So when you have a huge - and it is huge by usual TV standards - number of episodes of Match Game, as GSN does, most of the network's audience will find plenty of new (or forgotten) eps to watch. It's really the secret of GSN's success over the years. A lot of game shows have a lot of episodes, so GSN can get away with grinding them through a lot of rerun cycles.

I don't know how GSN's oldies block on Friday will perform in the ratings. But rerun abuse really won't be a factor, though I'm sure classics fans will blame it if the shows don't get numbers.