Archive for the 'sports' Category

U.S. Airways Jet Crashes Into Hudson River

US Airways Plane Crash & Rescue

My photo from the 21st floor of the New York Times Building, in midtown.

From City Room:

A USAir­ways plane that took off at 3:26 p.m. from La Guardia Air­port landed in the Hudson River five min­utes later, where it remains mostly sub­merged. Fer­ries and other boats con­verged to help with a rescue effort, as the plane drifted south. There was no imme­di­ate infor­ma­tion about the 151 people on board.

Accord­ing to Chan­nel 4 tele­vi­sion news, the plane, USAir­ways flight 1549, took off from LaGuardia Air­port at 3:26 p.m. was bound for Char­lotte, N.C. and had 146 pas­sen­gers and 5 crew mem­bers. The plane, accord­ing to the news report, may have hit a flock of birds. The pilot tried to return to the air­port when the plane fell into the Hudson.

US Airways Plane Crash & Rescue

Photo of the rescue, posted by Janis Krums on Twitter/Twitpic.

I watched from the 21st floor of the Times Build­ing, as the plan drifted south with the tide. I believe that the rescue oper­a­tion com­pleted before it came into view, and it has since drifted out of view.

The plane did not break up on impact; divers, com­muter fer­ries and a lot of emer­gency per­son­nel are assist­ing with rescue oper­a­tions. Every­one is reported to have sur­vived the crash and rescue, as of this moment, but there are injuries. CNN is cur­rently inter­view­ing pas­sen­gers, live on-​air.

UPDATE: I don’t know how the Graph­ics team put this together so quickly and so ele­gantly, but NYTimes.com has an inter­ac­tive piece today, that tracks the plane’s path.

Also, CNN has been run­ning a Google Earth ani­ma­tion of the flight, which is less pretty, but kind of cool.

January 15, 2009 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

A New Pair of Sox for the Red Sox

New Red Sox Identities

This design link is near and dear to my heart – The Boston Red Sox recently updated their team iden­tity and uni­forms. Over­all, I think it’s a pos­i­tive evo­lu­tion, though seems a bit nos­tol­gic. I love the gray pri­mary road jerseys.

Armin Vit mostly likes what he sees:

Replac­ing the old seal as the team’s offi­cial logo is the lone pair of red, hang­ing sox. Unless I’m wrong, there is no typog­ra­phy asso­ci­ated with it. None. No “Boston.” No “Red Sox.” If that’s the case, this is one of the best cases of visual iden­tity and brand equity becom­ing so strong the icon doesn’t need expla­na­tion. They are sox. They are red. They can not be any­thing other than the Boston Red Sox.

Illustration courtesy of Boston.com
December 19, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Carroll Will Never Be The Same

Carroll will never be the same

Barriers erected outside the Carroll Street MTA entrance at 2nd Place and Smith Street, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Looks like the 360 Smith luxury condo devel­op­ment is going to shut down my subway entrance, and severely mess up the nice plaza in front:

Because the safety of our cus­tomers is of utmost con­cern, this clo­sure will be in effect on a 24-hour, 7 days per week basis for 6-8 months (sub­ject to the progress of the con­struc­tion project)…

See outside.in for more his­tory of this con­tro­ver­sial development.

July 17, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 3 Comments

Bye Bye, Soupy

Sabres trade Brian Camp­bell to Sharks for right wing Steve Bernier

“Don’t boo me when I come back,” the defense­man said this after­noon shortly after being traded to the San Jose Sharks.

It’s tough being a small-​market sports fan, espe­cially when the sport in ques­tion is hockey. For all the talk of parity in the NHL, it’s clear that there are two classes of teams – those will­ing to spend money to acquire and retain top talent, and the Buf­falo Sabres.

The Sabres suf­fered losing their two top cen­ter­men to free agency last off-​season, after post­ing the best record in the NHL and their second East­ern Con­fer­ence Cham­pi­onship loss in a row. One can argue about front office mis­takes in not sign­ing Briere and Drury, but in the end, it was their turn to cash in on a big con­tract, and Buf­falo was unwill­ing or could not afford to pay. (Let us not forget also that the Sabres were up against the salary cap all of last season.)

bye bye, Soupy.And now we have a home-​grown NHL super­star in Brian Camp­bell – two-​time All Star, spin-o-rama skater, and open-​ice hitter of R.J. Umberger – now due his big pay day at the end of this season, as he becomes eli­gi­ble for free agency. What are the Sabres to do?

Well, the only move is to trade him. The Sabres could not risk losing him for noth­ing, and Camp­bell and his agent seemed luke warm about sign­ing some­thing before the trade dead­line. I cer­tainly can’t blame either party.

But, I can feel sad. Being a fan of a small-​market team is tough, and I’d be lying if I weren’t a little jeal­ous that the Rangers or Ducks can just go buy whomever they want every year. In Buf­falo, we have to make our own stars.

After the jump, some high­lights from Soupy’s career in Buf­falo, includ­ing some of his hilar­i­ously hor­ri­ble local tele­vi­sion commercials.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Bye Bye, Soupy’

February 26, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Lunch with The Destroyer

In the paper

This morn­ing, Lisa and I had lunch with her Grandma and Grandpa, who vis­it­ing this week­end from Buf­falo. Grandpa Dick is a retired pro­fes­sional wrestler, who used to be quite big in Japan. In addi­tion to win­ning numer­ous wrestling titles, the masked “Destroyer” was a star on the most watched comedy show in Japan’s tele­vi­sion his­tory, along with Wada Akiko. But he also was famous in the West – Debbie Harry of Blondie sported some camel-​toe in a t-shirt from Dick’s bad guy alter-​ego, Dr. X… Hott.

So, we ate a ton of Japan­ese food while Dick enter­tained the chefs and wait­staff with his antics and Japan­ese lin­guis­tic skills. The shot above is of a Japan­ese newspaper.

More photos, and a video of The Destroyer wrestling a bear, after the fold.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Lunch with The Destroyer’

January 27, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

The Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report was released today, con­firm­ing what every­body already knows – base­ball play­ers use per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs. It is inter­est­ing to note that while no promi­nent cur­rent Red Sox play­ers are listed, more than a dozen Yan­kees, past and present, were among the 80-plus play­ers identified.

Hmmm… (twoosh)

December 13, 2007 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

TiVo HD and Copy Protection

Why do I pay money for this?I am an avid hockey fan, since I was a kid grow­ing up in Buf­falo. I love watch­ing the game, and I espe­cially love watch­ing my home­town team, the Sabres. For the past 2 years, I’ve forked over $150 to sub­scribe to the NHL Center Ice cable pack­age, so that I can watch every game of the season. With our TiVo, I can record each game, and watch it when­ever I have time.

That is, I did, until this season started. We recently upgraded our TiVo unit from an old Direc­TiVo, to the new Series 3 TiVo HD, which appar­ently imple­ments unnat­u­rally strict copy pro­tec­tion on pre­mium con­tent. Because the new unit uti­lizes Cable­Cards, TiVo has dif­fer­ent rules for these TiVos as com­pared to Series 2 units, accord­ing to their sup­port page:

Since the Series3 and TiVo HD are DCR devices, in addi­tion to the Macro­vi­sion rules for analog con­tent, they must also comply with the con­tent pro­tec­tion poli­cies for Dig­i­tal Cable content.

What this means is that NHL Center Ice con­tent is copy pro­tected, and will be deleted within hours of the game’s com­ple­tion. Gone. Irretrievable.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘TiVo HD and Copy Protection’

October 25, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , . » 4 Comments

A New Nedward.org

Today, I’m launch­ing ver­sion 6 of nedward.org, a typo­graph­i­cal grid-​based layout, with heavy use of Hel­vetica Neue. This site has always used a sim­i­lar shade of green, so I wanted to main­tain that bit of con­sis­tency with the past, while intro­duc­ing some­thing very dif­fer­ent. I also wanted to bring together my con­tent from twit­ter, flickr, del.icio.us, and last.fm, while keep­ing it dis­tinct from the weblog con­tent – yea, I’ve gone back on my post is a post comments.

The last major revi­sion of this site was launched on May 1 2005, but even that was some­what of a realign­ment of the pre­vi­ous design, which dated back to 2001. I’m a big pro­po­nent of Cameron Moll’s realign not redesign rule – so I spent the past few years tin­ker­ing away, refin­ing the same basic layout.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘A New Nedward.org’

October 4, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 8 Comments

Blogging for 7 years?

I’m totally get­ting old! I just real­ized that I missed my “blogging” anniversary… On this past July 11, this site hit the 7 year mark.

wow.

FIrst Post? It was about that brick of a dig­i­tal camera (point-n-shoot) that I bought that summer.

My orig­i­nal weblog was on blog­ger, and then was migrated to a ned.suckahs.org, when we set up the suck­ahs domain in July 2001. (More on that here.) In Feb­ru­ary 2005, I decided to split it out into the domain I use today.

July 18, 2007 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Sabres as Oasis?

Chris DruryWe’re head­ing home to Buf­falo for the hol­i­day, (and my 10-year High School reunion), which reminds me of how well the Sabres are playing.

ESPN’s John Buc­ci­gross com­pares the Sabres to the brit­pop Oasis of all things:

At full strength, the Buf­falo Sabres are unequiv­o­cally the best team in the NHL. Not only do they have the full com­ple­ment of parts, but Buf­falo has that con­fi­dence that Oasis had when they went head-to-head with Blur back in 1995 in a Brit­pop mano a mano, or more accu­rately called boyo-a-boyo.

Noel Gal­lagher said he and Oasis’ soul was more pure than Blur’s because they grew up poor, with dirt under­neath their fin­ger­nails, while Blur was middle class. The con­cept is inter­est­ing, espe­cially when it is spoken with a rough Eng­lish accent while sit­ting in a gigan­tic and expen­sive chair.

But Chris Drury, who grew up in a middle-​class town in south­ern Con­necti­cut, makes $3.1 mil­lion this season and prob­a­bly will sign a five-​year, $22 mil­lion con­tract with some­one next summer. And yet, he plays every game like some­one kid­napped his entire family and the ransom is win­ning the face­off he is about to take. That’s the story, morn­ing glory.

I may not agree with John’s take on the 90s Brit­pop war, but it’s hard to argue with his thoughts on Drury.

November 21, 2006 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Game 7, Thursday

Danny Briere’s over­time goal sends series back to Carolina

Thank God.

May 30, 2006 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

Let’s Go Sabres

It’s play­off time for the NHL, (though you’d never know it here in Boston), and I am loving what I see in my Buf­falo Sabres. They’re up 2-0 in the best-of-seven series with the Flyers, after a bril­liant double-​overtime win Sat­ur­day, and an 8-2 rout last night.

Best moment thus far was Buffalo’s Brian Campbell’s clean hit of Philly’s RJ Umberger, in game 1:

I do feel bad for the guy, and I’m not cheer­ing for injury. But that is just great play­off hockey, and a big reason why Buf­falo is up 2 games to none. And, Philly seems to be coming unglued. One Buf­falo colum­nist com­pares Philly Coach Hitch­cock to Con­fed­er­ate Gen­eral Pickett:

You remem­ber Pick­ett? He was the gen­eral ordered to march his troops uphill through open fields on the final day of the Battle of Get­tys­burg. Union sol­diers, strung across Ceme­tery Ridge, picked them off in droves. The Con­fed­er­ates never had a chance.

The Flyers might as well come out for Game Three dressed in gray and whistlin’ Dixie. They’re no match for the team they are up against. Speed is the Sabres hill, their posi­tion of supe­ri­or­ity, and Philly lacks the artillery to mount a mean­ing­ful counter.

Let’s not get cocky now… TV cov­er­age is spotty, but you can check out Game 4 on April 28 @ 10:00pm ET, on OLN.

April 25, 2006 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

Hockey East Champs

Hockey East ChampsMy alma mater Boston Uni­ver­sity clinched the Hockey East Cham­pi­onship this past Sat­ur­day, win­ning in 2-1 OT against Boston Col­lege. Now, they’re off to the NCAA tour­na­ment, ranked #1 in the nation. They haven’t done that since 1997, when I was a sopho­more, and had noth­ing better to do on Friday nights than go watch the games.

And, if that wasn’t enough, a guy who played on that 1997 team, Chris Drury, is cap­tain­ing my home­town Buf­falo Sabres this season. They’re near the top of the con­fer­ence stand­ings, and one of the most excit­ing young teams to watch. We’ve got seats at the Garden for Sat­ur­day night’s matchup with the Bruins.

BC sucks!

March 20, 2006 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

New Feeds

Some new Atom & RSS feeds added today…

First up, by request, I’m offer­ing feeds of my weblog, with­out the Del.icio.us links… (some people really could care less about my bookmarks):

Also, I added feeds by Category… so, for instance, you could sub­scribe to just entries that I tag as Boston/Cambridge:

  • Syn­di­cate boston/cambridge: ATOM RSS
February 8, 2005 » Tags: , , . » Closed

12 Bars of Christmas Charity Pub Crawl

We par­tic­i­pated in the 12 Bars of Christ­mas Char­ity Pub Crawl in Boston last night, with dona­tions going to the New Eng­land Center for Chil­dren and the Boston Med­ical Chil­dren with AIDS Program.

Ned & Presley

I feel a bit guilty claim­ing this was for char­ity, since all we did was drink heav­ily, over and 8-hour day, in a pack of Santa-​hat wear­ing revelers… but, we did had a lot of fun with Jason, Kim, Casey, Jess, and the rest of the pack. Thanks to Autumn, for organizing.

December 5, 2004 » Tags: , , , , . » 3 Comments

End Game

Do you believe?

November 2, 2004 » Tags: , , , . » Closed

Schilling is Shilling for Bush?

It already seems like a dream — the Red Sox reversed the 86-year curse, by sweep­ing the World Series on Wednes­day night, and I haven’t posted yet. I gotta say, it’s been a great thing for this town, and for its decades of great teams that just couldn’t win it all.

Schilling, Pedro, DLowe, Ortiz, Manny, Foulke… all heroes. Can’t wait to great them at the parade tomorrow.

But what is up with Schilling, shilling for Bush ? Some­one needs to tell him that there are two Evil Empires — the Yan­kees, and the Bushies.

This is Kerry coun­try, Curt. We love the way you pitch, and we put up with all your “I love Jesus” talk, but nobody cares if you’re for low­er­ing your own taxes, and not every­body else’s. Keep that to yourself.

Appar­ently, his “doctors” instructed him to cancel the appear­ances with Bush in New Hamp­shire, today.

Wickid Smaaaht…

October 29, 2004 » Tags: , , , . » Closed

On to the World Series

I’m on a cloud right now… I never thought that I’d see this.

October 21, 2004 » Tags: . » Closed

On to Game Seven

I can’t believe how well Schilling pitched last night, with a bloody sock and all… I had my doubts, but from the first pitch, I knew he had good stuff.

That said, I don’t think the Yan­kees will choke tonight… we need only remem­ber Game 7 last year. But, I’d love to see A-Rod crying into Jeter’s arms more than anything…

D-Lowe is capa­ble of a good outing – let’s just hope he can keep his head clear, and get that sinker turn­ing over.

On to Game 7 – Keep the Faith!

October 20, 2004 » Tags: . » 1 Comment

On to Game Six

My heart felt as if it would explode tonight, as the Red Sox & Yan­kees again took it to extra innings, in Game 5.

David Ortiz came through huge (again) tonight for the Sox, and we’d prob­a­bly be talk­ing about an MVP award at this point, except for the fact that the Sox lost the first 3 games in the series.

But, we’re through to Game 6, and I’m encour­aged by the pitch­ing (start­ing and bullpen) in the past two games. The big ques­tion is, can Curt Schilling pitch well tomor­row, with the tendon injury and the high-​top cleat? I sure hope so.

October 18, 2004 » Tags: . » 1 Comment

X-mas in Buffalo

Ornament on the familial X-mas tree

Ornament on the familial X-mas tree

Macy and Jeremy at Spot Coffee, Elmwood Ave.

Macy and Jeremy at Spot Coffee, Elmwood Ave

Exhibit at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Exhibit at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Con­tinue read­ing ‘X-mas in Buffalo’

January 4, 2004 » Tags: , , , , , , , , , . » Closed

Rally Cap

I’ve been wear­ing my rally cap since the 5th inning.

Wow. Trot wins it in the 11th inning on a home run to the deep­est part of Fenway.

October 5, 2003 » Tags: , , , . » Closed

Almost Choke

My par­ents are in town vis­it­ing, and I thought it would be fun to go to a Red Sox game…

Never-​mind that it’s late-​august, during a pen­nant and wild-​card race, in the cra­zi­est base­ball city with the small­est sta­dium in mlb.

After trying in vain to find 4 tick­ets together for this week­end on craigslist, I ponied up and started call­ing bro­kers. These guys must make a killing – that’s all I’ll say.

We ended up 10 rows up from Pesky’s poll, way the hell out in right field. Still, the rain held after a vio­lent thun­der­storm, and we got to see a ter­rific game.

I love Byung-​Hyun Kim, but he simply has to stop with this chok­ing thing. A closer is a closer. Lights out.

Too bad I forgot the dig­i­tal camera…

August 23, 2003 » Tags: . » Closed

Mem Day Weekend

We’re off to Buf­falo for the long week­end, and I haven’t writ­ten in a while. The sox beat up on the yan­kees last night, and I hope they do it the rest of the week­end. Every­one in this town, (by that I mean the media), is talk­ing about how much Roger Clemens sucks, but he’s pitch­ing tonight. I wish I could watch the fans ride him… but alas, i’m off to the land of AAA-​ball.

666 vis­ited this week, and it was good fun. We even played tennis, and I’m absolutely con­vinced that she will become an up-and-coming star. No doubt about it.

May 24, 2002 » Tags: , . » Closed

Mapleleaf

Congrats to Canada, for their gold-​medal hockey wins (both men and women). It was so much fun to watch all of these teams play, espe­cially this year, when the sabres absolutely suck. I think the Belarus-​Sweden game was my favorite.

Anyhoo – it’s good for Canada to get a self-​esteem shot in the arm, because they’re good people.

February 24, 2002 » Tags: . » Closed