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Archive for May, 2008

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Tribe-Yanks Wrap II: Lee to the Rescue, Again

Posted by Fred on May 9, 2008

With some late-inning heroics from David Dellucci and another stellar start from the resurgent Cliff Lee, the Tribe managed to take two of three in their last visit to the current Yankee Stadium, in the process securing a season series victory.  They were 4-3 against New York after going 0-6 in the regular season in 2007.  Eric Wedge attempted to wake up the club’s dormant bats - Ben Francisco got three starts in place of the designated-for-assignment Jason Michaels, while Victor Martinez sat out two games with a stiff neck. Ryan Garko, Asdrubal Cabrera and Travis Hafner each got some time on the bench, partly because they’re all mired in slumps and partly to allow Victor to DH in the one game he did play.  Unfortunately, the roster shakeup didn’t really wake up the bats (putting aside Dellucci’s three-run pinch hit HR off Joba Chamberlain on Tuesday night).  For the series, the Indians hit just .202, with almost as many strikeouts (18) as hits (19).

The Good

  1. Cliff Lee.  This is becoming a broken record, but Lee was fantastic again, as he out-pitched previously unbeated Chien-Ming Wang in picking up his sixth consecutive win to start the season.  He threw seven scoreless innings, allowing six hits while striking out 7 and walking none. 74% of his pitches were strikes, and 76% of his fastballs were strikes.  Lee hasn’t walked a batter since the second inning against Minnesota on April 18, a stretch of 101 batters faced without a walk.  His ERA stands at 0.81, and he has an absurd strikeout-to-walk ratio of 39-2.
  2. Ben Francisco and Casey Blake.  Hitting heroes were hard to come by in this series.  Dellucci has the big HR in the first game, but for the series, Blake and Francisco were the most consistent.  Francisco had 4 hits in 11 AB in his first consistent playing time in 2008.  Blake had 2 hits in 6 AB, and drove in three more runs.  Casey is hitting only .210, but his 22 RBI lead the team and 15 runs scored is third.

The Bad

  1. Paul Byrd. After a stretch of several pretty good starts, Byrd got hit pretty hard yesterday afternoon, giving up 5 runs in 6⅓ innings. That’s bad enough, but Byrd continues to have trouble keeping the ball in the park, giving up three more HR.  He’s now given up 10 home runs, far more than anyone else on the team (C.C. Sabathia is second in that dubious category with 6).
  2. The offense.  With a couple of notable exceptions, the lineup just couldn’t hit, continuing a trend started in the KC series.  Overall, the Indians managed just 19 hits in 94 AB.  Asdrubal Cabrera and Victor Martinez were hitless in their single appearances.  Jamey Carroll was 1-for 7, Kelly Shoppach 1-for-10 in relief of Martinez and Ryan Garko 1-for-8.

The Ugly

  1. Fausto Carmona.  Last year’s feel good story, 19-game winner Carmona, continues to be the antithesis of this year’s feel good story Lee.  Whereas Lee isn’t walking anybody, Carmona can’t find the plate, walking 5 more in 5 innings.  Carmona managed to get a no-decision thanks to pitching out of jams and Dellucci’s 8th inning HR.  In 7 starts, Carmona has walked 31 batters and struck out only 15.  Between them, Carmona and Sabathia have nearly half of the team’s 103 walks.

Putting Lee’s Fast Start In Context

Cliff Lee continues to amaze, and is far beyond the form that saw him win 18 games in 2005.  Consider these 5 pitchers and their statistics after 6 starts:

W L ERA BAA K/9 BB/9 K/BB
Player A 6 0 0.81 0.163 7.86 0.40 19.5
Player B 6 0 1.98 0.192 7.46 3.07 2.4
Player C 3 1 1.31 0.182 5.89 1.96 3.0
Player D 5 1 2.06 0.211 12.57 2.06 6.1
Player E 5 0 1.99 0.183 10.87 2.17 5.0

Player A is, needless to say, Cliff Lee.  Player B is Brandon Webb in his first six starts of 2008, generally considered the best pitcher in the NL.  Players C-E are, respectively, Bob Gibson in 1968, Pedro Martinez in 1999 and Roger Clemens in 1986.  All three won the Cy Young in those seasons, and Gibson and Clemens were the MVP (Martinez was 2nd in 1999 to Ivan Rodriguez).  Lee is, so far at least, having among the best starts ever.

To put it in more context, since 1956 there have been only 13 other pitchers to win at least their first six starts and post a sub-1.00 ERA during the streak, led by Juan Marichal, who won his first 10 starts in 1966 with a 0.79 ERA.  Of those 13, 4 won the Cy Young Award and 7 received votes for MVP.  Bob Turley started 7-0 with a 0.86 ERA in 1958, winning the Cy Young and coming in second in MVP voting to Boston’s Jackie Jensen, while Fernando Valenzuela posted a 9-0 record with a 0.50 ERA in 1981, winning the NL Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and placing 5th in MVP voting.

Lee is, therefore, in select company, and time will tell if he is more like Juan Marichal or Bill Krueger, who started 6-0 for the Twins in 1992 only to be traded to the Expos, where he pitched in 7 of his final 9 games from the bullpen, finishing 10-8 with a 4.53 ERA.

Next Up: four games at Progressive Field against the Blue Jays.  C.C. Sabathia (1-5, 7.51 ERA) takes the mound in the opener against Roy Halladay (3-4, 3.00).  Sabathia is coming off his fourth quality start in a row after a slow start in early April, although he was not as dominant in the loss to the Royals as in the previous three.  Saturday pits Aaron Laffey (0-2, 2.84) against Dustin McGowan (2-2, 2.95).  Laffey was good in his last start against the Royals, allowing no earned runs on four hits over seven innings, but McGowan has been even better, posting a 0.61 ERA over his last two starts (unfortunately for him, the Jays have scored only 16 runs in his 7 starts).  Sunday pits Fausto Carmona (3-1, 2.95) against A.J. Burnett (3-3, 5.19).  Carmona looks to find the strike zone, which has been elusive this year, while Burnett looks for success against a Cleveland team that has hit him hard (1-3, 8.46 ERA in four career starts).  Monday’s finale pits Cliff Lee (6-0, 0.81) against Shaun Marcum (4-2, 2.59).  The Tribe pitchers will have to be strong, as the Jays are second in the AL in team ERA and first in strikeouts.

Posted in Sports, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | No Comments »

Iron Man: What a Superhero Movie Should Be

Posted by Fred on May 7, 2008

I saw Iron Man over the weekend along with a lot of other people. This is not a really a review of the film - those are easy to come by, and have generally been positive, driving the initial weekend take above $100 million. It’s clear that Iron Man works; at a 94% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s by that criterion the best reviewed superhero movie of all time (unless you count The Incredibles, which I don’t). What’s more interesting to me is why it works. Why were Spiderman 2, X2, Batman Begins and Iron Man so good and the Fantastic Four movies, Daredevil/Elektra and the later Batman movies so bad? What will 2008’s Hulk film have to do to make it more like Jon Favreau’s Iron Man and less like Ang Lee’s Hulk?

It’s not just the character - Tony Stark is cool and all, but he’s not that cool. And it’s not just the casting - Robert Downey, Jr. was inspired casting for the lead role, but putting a good actor in spandex (or a gold alloy suit) is not enough, else val Kilmer’s Batman would have been a lot better. It seems to me that Iron Man establishes (or follows) a few rules that future movies in its franchise or other franchise-wanna bes should follow.

1. Embrace and Extend Genre, Don’t Transcend It

A few of the glowing reviews of Iron Man claim that it transcends the superhero genre. It doesn’t. Attempts to transcend the genre, to turn the spandex-clad superhero comic into High Art are doomed to failure. Ang Lee tried to do it with The Hulk and we got a jumbled mess of allegory and brooding antihero. Tim Burton sort of did it in 1989’s Batman, which was less a superhero movie by Tim Burton than a Tim Burton movie that happened to be about Batman, but his efforts doomed the rest of the franchise. The key to rising above the genre is to recognize what you can and cannot do. You can use genre conventions in the service of social commentary, such as in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Watchmen. You can re-imagine characters in different eras, such as in Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 or Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier, or my personal favorite, Brain Augustyn and Mike Mignola’s Gotham by Gaslight. These works don’t transcend the genre; they use it, they embrace and extend genre conventions.

That’s what Iron Man does. This isn’t high art, it’s a story about a brilliant weapons designer who creates a suit of impossibly strong but light armor powered by an impossibly small generator implanted in his chest. There are only a handful of types of superhero, each with its own genre conventions. Tony Stark is the Brilliant But Flawed Genius Driven By Tragedy, the superhero without superpowers (Iron Man, Batman). This genre has different conventions than the Alien From A Planet With Different Physics (Superman, J’onn J’onnz, Silver Age Hawkman), which is different than the Natural Mutants (X-Men), the Accidental Mutants (Flash, Spiderman), the Artificial but Intentional Mutants (Captain America), the Magical Device-Wielders (Captain Marvel, Green Lantern) or the Ancient Gods (Wonder Woman, Golden Age Hawkman, Thor). So Iron Man needed a flawed genius, an act of horror/tragedy and some toys.

Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark is certainly flawed - he’s a brilliant weapons designer who parties as hard as he works. He makes destructive missiles and gadgets but gives more thought to his one-night stands than the practical consequences of the military hardware he makes or the company he leads. The act of tragedy is updated from Vietnam to Afghanistan, and Stark’s fellow prisoner/savior Ho Yinsen changes from a Chinese physicist to a Muslim doctor (dropping the Ho). The toys remain largely the same as in Stan Lee’s original creation - Stark and Yinsen create crude armor so Stark can escape (and Yinsen can sacrifice himself to save him), Stark improves it a couple of times, and then fights bad guys. The back story is straight out of the comics, updated with modern villains – instead of Communists, you get Afghan warlords.

The supporting characters are straight out of the genre, too, from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts (the devoted assistant that we all know Stark should fall in love with but won’t) to Terrance Howard’s Jim Rhodes (the military liaison who intervenes on the hero’s behalf when the Air Force gets too uppity) to Clark Gregg’s S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (shadowy government agent who is suspicious of Our Hero but later proves of much use). All of these genre conventions are given a modern tweak, however. The government agent is a homeland security guy, and S.H.I.E.L.D., which was once the Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division, is now the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.

Jon Favreau and Mark Fergus don’t try to transcend the genre into high art, and they don’t just make a genre blockbuster that takes no risks (a la Tim Story’s Fantastic Four and its sequel). They use the conventions of the genre in the service of a fully fleshed-out character and a story full of universal themes of personal growth and change.

2. Fanboys Are Easy, So Don’t Try Too Hard

Producers of movies based on pop culture icons have to walk a fine line when it comes to the fan community. Alienate the fanbase with a load of dreck and your blockbuster is fairly well doomed.  Just ask George Lucas. The converse is equally risky, however.  Problems arise in one of two areas.  Some productions are excessively faithful to the source material, such as certain aspects of the Harry Potter film series, which has always worked best when talented directors apply their own vision to the story. Deviating from the source is not always harmful – while some Tolkien fanboys were offended by the liberties Peter Jackson took with the Lord of the Rings, in the end all was forgiven.

A second danger is excessive pandering to the fans, which generally comes out in oblique inside references that the general public doesn’t get, supporting characters who are never fully explained, or throwaway scenes designed entirely to induce nerdgasms among the audience. The Batman series suffered from this particular malaise.  There’s no better way to get the blogs fired up than with speculation about which villain would be introduced next, so each movie in the original sequence featured a new villain. That’s all well and good, but the average moviegoer with only general awareness of the comics would much rather see the Joker or the Penguin than Scarecrow or Poison Ivy.  There are only so many major villains in the pantheon, after all.

Iron Man walks this line particularly well. There are many little nuggets for the fanboys, of course. Stan Lee makes his obligatory cameo. The government agency is finally referred to as “S.H.I.E.L.D.” at the end of the movie. There’s a scene where Col. Rhodes looks longingly at the Mark II version of the Iron Man armor and says “next time, baby,” hinting at an appearance as War Machine in 2010’s sequel. Rhodes wears an MIT ring in the movie, implying that he and Stark were classmates (rather than meeting in the war zone, as in Stan Lee’s original story).  Favreau even worked the theme song from the Iron Man animated series into the movie. And then there’s the Ultimate fanboy scene, which rolls after the credits.

Lots of little nuggets for the fans, but Favreau stops short of making the movie appeal only to them.  The main villain, Obadiah Stane, is a well-known villain from the comics, but the movie never calls him Iron Monger (although Stane does refer to himself and Stark as iron mongers). He’s just a power-crazed lunatic who uses Stark’s original prototype to create a killing machine. The director is clearly reticent to introduce Stark’s nemesis, the Mandarin, created originally as a metaphor for Communism, but dropped clear hints (the Afghan baddies being referred to as the Ten Rings, for example, an obvious reference to the ten rings the Mandarin wears).  You don’ t need to know a thing about Tony Stark to enjoy the movie, but if you do, you’ll enjoy it more.

3. Make It Fun, But Keep It Human

In the end, a superhero movie is about flying around kicking the butt of bad guys. Iron Man has its share of barely-controlled chaos, as Stark zips around in his titanium and gold suit outrunning F-22s.  But the effects don’t overwhelm, as they did at times in Spiderman 3. Iron Man and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films actually have a lot in common – they’re both less about the cool things the heroes can do in their suits than they are about the human emotion, suffering, loss and ultimate redemption that got them in the costumes in the first place.  This summer’s Hulk faces a challenge, as it must simultaneously focus on the human side of Dr. Banner while not losing the fun of Hulk smashing stuff.

Favreau and his crew obviously did something right – the opening weekend was the second-biggest ever for a non-sequel (behind only Spiderman, which had the advantage of featuring a far more iconic character). I already know where I’ll be on 4/30/2010.

Posted in Movies | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

AFA: We hate gay people so much we won’t even use the word gay

Posted by Fred on May 7, 2008

It’s no secret that the Tupelo Troglodytes at the American “Family” Association hate homosexuals. They call for boycotts of any corporation that tries to sell things to gays and lesbians, or who acknowledge that homosexuality exists, or who fail to promote Christianity as the one true faith. But now, apparently, they have some sort of vendetta against vowels:

Following its support for the h-mos-xual agenda, Procter & Gamble established a toll-free number for people to register their opinions for or against P&G’s promotion of the g-y agenda, including open mouth kissing between g-ys. It gave a toll-free number which was heavily promoted on g-y Web sites for a week to give those favoring the promotion of h-mos-xuality an opportunity to call. Monday, after AFA had put out the word that P&G wanted to hear from AFA supporters, P&G abruptly ended it.

AFA is encouraging supporters to call P&G and ask the company why it is promoting the g-y lifestyle and why it quit using the toll-free number to receive opinions only after AFA notified AFA supporters about it. We urge you to spend a few cents to register your complaint with P&G. Here is P&G’s corporate number to call: 513-983-1100. (Please get others to call P&G at this number!)

P&G has added h-mos-xual lovers to its soap opera “As the World Turns.” The soap opera now includes scenes of h-mos-xuals with passionate open mouth kissing. The motive behind P&G’s push is to desensitize viewers, especially younger viewers, to the h-mos-xual lifestyle. The ultimate goal of h-mos-xual activists is h-mos-xual marriage.

That’s amazing - they’re so offended by homosexuality that they can’t even write the word.  For what it’s worth, that particular soap introduced the first gay character twenty years ago. They were the first daytime drama to include a homosexual kiss, and the P&G action the AFA is up in arms about resulted from a movement among fans to get the show to include more kissing from the two gay characters (the producers cut back on such scenes almost completely, in the hopes of appeasing people like the AFA, who almost certainly never watch the show). Because the AFA protests things that they don’t actually watch, they miss the sorts of content that could be legitimately troublesome:

Webber and Newcomb said they’ve been more bothered by other things they have seen on the soap, like when a 14-year-old boy shot a man who was attacking his mother. One character is so desperate for a baby that she slept with her ex-brother-in-law, and was nearly caught having sex in an elevator. Another woman led her children and ex-husband into believing she had a brain tumor, just to get him back.

Apparently that’s all OK; just don’t acknowledge that homosexuals exist.

Posted in Politics, TV | Tagged: , , , | No Comments »

Use Brother HL-4040CN Color Laser Printer in Ubuntu Hardy heron [HOWTO]

Posted by Fred on May 6, 2008

After managing to install Ubuntu 8.04 via Wubi and finagling the wireless into working with ndiswrapper, I decided to actually get some work done, and created some documents in OpenOffice. Time to print, so I tried the easy route first. System >> Administration >> Printing lets you add a printer, and Ubuntu dutifully located the Brother HL-4040CN at its network IP address. It looked for a printer driver, and suggested the driver for the Brother HL-4000. Same family, so it seemed like something worth trying. Bad idea, as it just spit out about 20 blank (but curled) pages.

Brother’s website has instructions for installing drivers in Linux, however. It’s basically a three-step process:

The drivers are *.deb files, which you can double-click in Nautilus or install via the terminal. Once you’ve installed the drivers, you can use the add printer dialog or follow Brother’s instructions. I tried Brother’s instructions, but they didn’t work, as they suggest using “lpd://xx.xx.xx.xx/binary_p1″ as the Device URI, where I actually needed to use socket://xx.xx.xx.xx, which is what the Ubuntu printer dialog suggested.

After clearing that hurdle, it was time for a test page, but it didn’t work. Instead I got this error message:

Unable to start filter “/usr/Brother/Printer/hl4040cn/cupswrapper/brlpdwrapper”

It was unclear why the system wasn’t letting me access the printer files. Trying to change the file permissions had no effect. Luckily a forum post had the answer. Go to a terminal and issue this command:

sudo aa-complain cupsd

The problem appears to be a conflict between the third-party printer driver and AppArmor, which controls application access to system files. Putting AppArmor into complain mode for CUPS means that it will write to a log file but not prevent file access. Printing works great now.

Posted in Linux, Technology | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Tribe-Royals Wrap II: Paging Jobu…

Posted by Fred on May 5, 2008

My favorite sequence in major League is this exchange between Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert), Eddie Harris (Chelcie Ross) and Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen):

Pedro Cerrano: Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.
Eddie Harris: You know you might think about taking Jesus Christ as your savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff.
Roger Dorn: Shit, Harris.
Pedro Cerrano: Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball.
Eddie Harris: You trying to say Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?

Not sure about Jesus, but the Tribe couldn’t hit much of anything against the Royals this weekend, managing a paltry .136 average and 2 runs over the two-game rain-shortened series. Clearly the team needs an offering to the gods, or hats for their bats. The series continued a recent trend of offensive ineptitude, and continued a pattern of turning inexperienced pitchers into Cy Young.  Over the past three seasons, the Indians have faced relatively new starters (defined as starters making 30 or fewer appearances) 88 times, with fair success at best:

Year W-L ERA BA OPS
2008 1-4 2.25 .170 .522
2007 20-21 4.66 .252 .745
2006 15-17 5.22 .263 .802
Total 36-42 4.70 .251 .754

In 2008, their only win came against Ian Kennedy, who hasn’t been able to beat anybody (and even then, the Indians managed only 3 runs off Kennedy in a 4-3 victory).  This weekend, it was Luke Hochevar, who held the Tribe to 2 runs on 3 hits over 6 innings.

The Good

  1. Aaron Laffey.  Laffey was one of the few bright spots in the entire series, as he surrendered only an unearned run on 4 hits over 7 innings.  He received no support from the offense, however, and was on the hook for the loss in the 2-0 Royals victory.
  2. C.C. Sabathia.  The good news is that C.C. didn’t give up 9 runs. The bad news is that he did give up 10 hits, leading to 4 Kansas City runs.  Nevertheless, he pitched into the 7th inning and gave the team a fighting chance, which they could not capitalize on against Hochevar.
  3. The bullpen.  With the exception yet again of Rafael Betancourt, the bullpen performed admirably.  Jensen Lewis, Rafael Perez and Masa Kobayashi combined to pitch 4⅓ innings of shutout relief, allowing only 2 hits and striking out 3.  Kobayashi has been pitching particularly well, and has now allowed only one earned run over his past 9 appearances, covering 10⅓ innings.
  4. Grady Sizemore and Ryan Garko.  There was little good on the offensive side of things this weekend.  One bright spot was Sizemore, who had 2 hits in 7 AB, including a solo homer that accounted for half the team’s run production for the series.  Garko had 2 hits and a walk in 6 AB. Since breaking an 0-for-21 slump, Garko has 4 hits in his last 10 AB.

The Bad

  1. The offense.  Even including Sizemore and Garko, the offense was anemic over these two games.  Asdrubal Cabrera, Casey Blake, Franklin Gutierrez, Jhonny Peralta and Travis Hafner combined for an 0-for-30 skunking, with 3 walks and 7 strikeouts.  Sizemore, Garko, David Dellucci and Victor Martinez each collected 2 hits, but even they had almost as many strikeouts (6) as hits (8).

The Ugly

  1. Rafael Betancourt.  The Tribe’s putative closer had another bad outing in a non-save situation. After Perez retired the first two Royals in the top of the ninth with KC clinging to a 1-0 lead, Betancourt surrendered a solo homer to Miguel Olivo before striking out John Buck. Over his last three appearances, Betancourt has an ERA of 27.00, giving up 5 ER on 6 hits over 1⅔ innings. That’s not a whole lot better than Joe Borowski, who had an ERA of 31.50 over 2 innings in his last 3 appearances before going on the DL.  Their lines are remarkably similar, as each had twice as many HR (2) as strikeouts (1).  Betancourt will turn things around, however, which is more than one could hope for with Borowski.

Next up: The Tribe had a chance to move into first in the AL Central this weekend, but now has dropped back to 4th, 2.5 games behind the division-leading Twins. The Indians now travel to the Bronx for three games against the Yankees beginning tomorrow night.  Fausto Carmona (3-1, 2.60 ERA) faces Andy Pettitte (3-3, 3.93) in the opener.  Pettitte’s had some success against Cleveland, but not at Yankee Stadium, where he is just 1-4 with a 5.48 ERA.  Wednesday features a pair of undefeated starters, with Cliff Lee (5-0, 0.96) matching up against Chien-Ming Wang (6-0, 3.00).  Wang outdueled Sabathia 1-0 in his last outing against Cleveland.  In Thursday’s finale, Paul Byrd (1-2, 3.74) hopes for some rare run support against Mike Mussina (4-3, 4.23).  Over his last 4 starts, Byrd has an ERA of 1.71, but is just 1-0 with 3 no decisions because his teammates scored only 4 runs during his time on the mound over those 3 starts.

Posted in Sports | Tagged: , | No Comments »

Tribe-Mariners Wrap: Closer wanted, apply within

Posted by Fred on May 2, 2008

The Tribe’s most recent series, which saw them take 2 of 3 from the Mariners was a complete reversal of the previous series, a four-game split with the Yankees.  Against the Bombers, the four starters were 1-2 with a 4.38 ERA (and it was only that low because C.C. Sabathia allowed only a single run in eight innings of work). The bullpen, on the other hand, allowed only a single run in 11⅓ innings, marred only by Jensen Lewis’ blown save (in a game the Indians won anyway on a Victor Martinez walk-off single).  In this series, the starters had a 1.77 ERA in 20⅓ innings, but only picked up one win, thanks to a bullpen that gave up 7 runs in 8⅔ innings (a 7.28 ERA). Some late-inning heroics last night salvaged the 2-1 series win, but a better performance by the pen would have rewarded Paul Byrd and Fausto Carmona with victories as well.

The title of this post is a bit harsh, as Rafael Betancourt has blown only one save in three chances since taking over for the injured and ineffective Joe Borowski. He entered Tuesday’s game in the ninth inning, however, and watched a 2-2 tie turn into a 7-2 debacle, giving up three runs and recording one out.  Betancourt’s numbers as the closer are not much different from his numbers as the primary set-up man for Borowski:

  IP ER ERA SO BB WHIP BAA
3/31 - 4/14 7 4 5.14 7 1 2.14 .367
4/17 - 5/1 5⅓ 4 6.75 5 1 1.31 .273

So what gives? He had a truly horrid performance on Wednesday night, putting a tie game out of reach.  Before that game, Betancourt had not pitched since April 25. Last year, Betancourt had a 1.33 ERA on less than three days’ rest, and a 1.93 ERA on three days’ rest or more. For his career, it’s 2.63 on short rest and 3.58 with more rest.  Given that, it is incumbent upon Wedge to get him work, even if it means occasionally closing with Kobayashi instead of Betancourt.

The blown save last night was only partially his fault. He allowed a single to Ichiro and threw a wild pitch to Raul Ibanez that allowed Suzuki to advance to second.  had Casey Blake not committed an error on a stolen base attempt, the outcome of the inning may have been different. Of course, had Betancourt not heaved a wild pitch, Ichiro would still have been at first, so it was a bungled inning all around.

The Good

  1. Grady Sizemore. After watching his consecutive games played streak end when he turned an ankle against the Yankees, Grady had a good series against the Mariners, collecting 4 hits and 4 walks in 15 plate appearances, for an on-base percentage of .533. Better yet, all four hits were for extra bases (3 doubles and a lead-off HR), so his OPS was a robust 1.442 for the series. Over his last 7 games, Sizemore is hitting .333 with a 1.138 OPS (3 doubles and 2 HR in 27 AB plus 7 walks). He also collected more walks than strikeouts, a nice change from his career ratio of 1.89 strikeouts for every walk.
  2. Franklin Gutierrez. The second-year outfielder is showing some signs of emerging from his slump, and got 6 hits in 13 AB against the Mariners. Over his first 11 games, Gutierrez hit only .158 with 12 strikeouts in 38 AB. Over the last 16, he’s hitting .352 with only 9 strikeouts in 54 AB, scoring 7 runs and driving in 8.
  3. Ryan Garko.  After watching his batting average free-fall 90 points in 7 games, Garko turned it around a little against Seattle, picking up 2 hits in 5 AB and reaching base 4 times in 8 plate appearances.
  4. Paul Byrd. After a rocky start, Byrd has now posted quality starts in three of his last four outings. Against the Mariners, he recorded two outs in the eighth inning, his longest start of the year. He allowed only four singles and a walk and was efficient in doing so, throwing 72% of his 87 pitches for strikes.
  5. Jensen Lewis, Jorge Julio, Masa Kobayashi and Rafael Perez. The news wasn’t all bad for the bullpen, as Perez, Lewis, Kobayashi and Julio allowed only one earned run in 7⅓ innings.

The Bad

  1. Asdrubal Cabrera. Although he redeemed himself somewhat by picking up the game-winning hit in the 11th inning last night, Cabrera was only 1-for-11 for the series.  For the year, Asdrubal is hitting only .202 and has seen an increasing number of his at-bats go to Jamey Carroll (whose own average has fallen to .216).
  2. Jhonny Peralta.  The Tribe shortstop was hitless against Seattle, and has managed only 2 singles in his last 18 at bats.
  3. Fausto Carmona. Although he put the team in a position to win on Tuesday night, allowing only 2 runs (1 earned) in 6⅔ innings, Carmona continues to allow too many baserunners. In 2007, he had a WHIP of 1.21; this year it’s 1.73. Against Seattle, he gave up 8 hits and 4 walks, and had multiple baserunners in 5 of his 7 innings.  Carmona induces enough ground balls to pitch out of trouble, but he’s walking a really thin line this year and consequently has pitched 7 innings only once this year, after doing so in 20 of his 32 starts last year.

The Ugly

  1. Rafael Betancourt. The Tribe’s new closer cost the team one game and nearly lost a second last night. In 1⅓ innings he allowed 4 runs on 5 hits, and had more difficulty finding the strike zone -  against the Yankees, 89% of his pitches were strikes; against Seattle, only 66% were.
  2. Casey Blake. In addition to nearly costing the team a win on his 9th inning error, Casey was 2-for-12 for the series, striking out 5 times. Over his past 7 games, Blake is hitting .125 with 11 strikeouts in 24 at bats.

Up Next: The Indians now sit in a second-place tie with the surging Tigers in the Central, 1½ games behind the White Sox.  The Tigers head to Toronto to face the last-place team in the AL East, while the Tribe hosts Kansas City, which has fallen from first to last in the AL Central.  C.C. Sabathia (1-4, 7.88 ERA) faces Luke Hochevar (1-1, 5.91) in the opener.  After a very rocky beginning, Sabathia has allowed only one run over 14 innings in his last 2 starts. On Saturday, Aaron Laffey (0-1, 6.35) gets his second start of the year against the Royals’ Gil Meche (1-4, 7.22).  Meche was rocked by the Tribe in his previous outing in Kansas City, giving up 8 runs in the 15-1 romp.  Sunday pits Fausto Carmona (3-1, 2.60) against Brett Tomko (1-3, 6.26), who made it into only the fourth inning in his last start against the Rangers.  Carmona wasn’t great in his start in Kansas City, however, giving up 4 runs on 9 hits in only 5 innings.

Posted in Sports | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Install Ubuntu 8.04 on Compaq Presario A900 laptop [HOWTO]

Posted by Fred on May 2, 2008

UbuntuLozengeStrapLogo compaq_qwubi_logo 

I have a Compaq Presario A900 notebook that I picked up cheap at Staples a while back.  It’s actually pretty decent, with a crisp 17″ screen and full desktop-style keyboard.  It came with Vista Home Premium and sufficient RAM to run it with Aero turned on.  With the recent release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04), I decided to see how hard it would be to install.  Ubuntu on a desktop is a piece of cake, but what about on a lower-end notebook?  It was pretty easy, with one sizable glitch.

The complicating factors here are (1) I have a CD burner but no blank media and (2) I have only a wireless Internet connection. So that means installing from CD won’t work and as it turned out I should have planned ahead for getting the WiFi working.  The first step is to grab some files.  I decided to install via Wubi, which installs Linux within a file in the Windows filesystem.  There are valid reasons not to do this and to install to a standard partition instead (which you can do without a CD via Netboot), but at this point it’s not clear how Ubuntu on this notebook is going to work out, and uninstalling Wubi is no different than any other Windows program.  Eventually, we’ll move the Wubi install to a dedicated partition if all goes well.  Here’s what you’ll need:

  • The Wubi installer for version 8.04
  • ISO for the Ubuntu 8.04 desktop CD.  This is not strictly necessary, as Wubi will download the files for you, but I found that grabbing the ISO directly was orders of magnitude faster.  This may change once the download servers cool down from the new release of 8.04.
  • The packages for ndiswrapper, which enables Linux to use Windows drivers for the Broadcom wireless chipset in this notebook. This is only necessary because I had no other way to get an Internet connection.  Some have reported better success installing from source, but the Ubuntu packages worked fine for me (which is good, because satisfying the dependencies manually would be a real hassle).  You’ll need both ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-utils-1.9.
  • Windows drivers for the Broadcom chipset. To make things easier later, I put the two *.deb files and the Broadcom package on a USB stick, but you will be able to access your Windows directories via Ubuntu if needed (look in the directories /host and /media).

wubi Step 1: Make sure the Wubi installer and the Ubuntu ISO are in the same directory and run Wubi.  All you need to do is tell the installer how much space to give Wubi (the minimum is 4 GB, but I gave it 15), which drive to install to and a username and password.  You can also pick a desktop environment - Ubuntu gives you Gnome, Kubuntu is KDE and Xubuntu is XFCE.  After that it’s fully automated - the Wubi website explains the process.  After two reboots (be sure to pay attention and pick Ubuntu from the boot menu, or you’ll end up in Vista and have to reboot), you’ll get the Ubuntu log-in screen.

Step 2: Log into Ubuntu using the username and password you picked earlier.  You’ll get the default Gnome desktop. You can do many things, but you’ll notice you have no wireless connection. Indeed, Ubuntu doesn’t even think there is a wireless card present, because we haven’t told it to use an appropriate driver.  This is where planning ahead comes into play - we need ndiswrapper, but we can’t use Synaptic without a network connection.

Step 3: Plug in your USB stick.  A Nautilus window will pop up, and you can drag drag the two *.deb files and the Broadcom file to your home directory. Again, not strictly necessary, but it will make things easier.  If you’re not using a USB stick, choose Places — Computer on the top panel.  Double-click on filesystem and then host and you’ll see your Windows files, where you’ll find the three files in question.

Step 4: It’s easiest to use the Terminal at this point, so choose Applications–Accessories–Terminal.  Issue the following command:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

You’ll be prompted for your password, and then the two ndiswrapper packages will be installed. To make ndiswrapper work, we’ll need to tell it what driver to use.  First uncompress the Broadcom file:

tar -xzvf WLANBroadcom.tar.gz

This will give you a directory full of driver files, of which we only really need two.

Step 5: Tell ndiswrapper what files to use by issuing the following commands in the terminal:

cd WLANBroadcom
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo ndiswrapper -m

Time to edit a configuration file to add ndiswrapper. Linux evangelists will tell you to use vim or emacs, depending on their particular denomination, but I’m lazy, so:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

At the end, add a new line that says “ndiswrapper” (without the quotes). Exit and save.

Step 6: Almost done, but Hardy Heron has a bug that causes a conflict between ndiswrapper and another package, meaning ndiswrapper still doesn’t work. We need to work around this bug.  Back in the terminal, run this command:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/wirelessfix.sh

In the gedit window, paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
modprobe -r b44
modprobe -r b43
modprobe -r b43legacy
modprobe -r ssb
modprobe -r ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper
modprobe b44

 

Exit and save.  back in the terminal, issue these commands:

cd /etc/init.d/ && sudo chmod 755 wirelessfix.sh
sudo update-rc.d wirelessfix.sh defaults

Step 7: Reboot, and voila! Wireless should be working.  I know this works on the Presario, but the same steps should work on any notebook with this Broadcom chipset, including several other HP/Compaq products and Dell notebooks with the 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI Card.

[resources used include Invaleed's howto for Ubuntu 7.10, and Ubuntu Forums howtos from HokeyFry and Mazza558]

Posted in Technology, Ubuntu | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Stargate Worlds accepting beta applicants

Posted by Fred on May 1, 2008

stargate_worlds

FireSky Entertainment, a subsidiary of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment that bills itself as a producer of SNAP games (Social Networks at Play), is now accepting applications for its closed beta of Stargate Worlds.  Stargate Worlds, scheduled to launch in Fall 2008, is a MMO online game set in the universe of sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.  The screenshots certainly look interesting, and I duly put my name in the hat even though I’ve never really gotten into the whole MMO scene.

SG-1 has never broken through to the mainstream the way the Trek series did or the way Battlestar Galactica has, but it’s been on the air since 1997, making it the longest-running US science fiction series (Doctor Who, which ran from 1963-1989 and again from 2005 to present, is the overall winner in that category by far). It’s also one of a handful of shows that were derived from movies but transcended their source material. Stargate, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and M*A*S*H are all better on the small screen than they were in long form (sorry Kurt Russell and Kristy Swanson, but Richard Dean Anderson and Sarah Michelle Gellar have you beat).  I love science fiction, but I just never got into Stargate in any of its various forms (SG-1, Atlantis, or the straight to video Ark of Truth and Continuum). The new Terminator series, Firefly, The 4400, BSG and the various Star Trek spinoffs (except for Enterprise, which sucked), yes.  Stargate? Not so much.  The game does look pretty cool, but I’d still prefer one set in the worlds of Admiral Adama or Mal Reynolds.

[via Game | Life]

Posted in Games, TV | Tagged: , , , | No Comments »

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