Category: Sports

Andrew Wiggins Era Begins & NBA Season Bet

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I’m excited for the NBA season to start. On Monday night the Twolves had their first pre-season game and it looks like Andrew Wiggins could be the real deal.  A summary of his performance from the blog post: 

Andrew Wiggins. There is obviously a player here. He led the team in minutes (32) and points (18). He took some poor 20 footers and wound up shooting 4-11 overall, but got to the line 10 times and made both of his threes. He also blocked 3 shots and grabbed 3 offensive boards. There is obviously stuff to work on, including getting stronger around the rim and ball handling, but there was a lot to like.

There’s also a good YouTube video of his action here: 

As we do every year, we place a friendly bet in the office for the season.  This year it’s between Niraj and Ian.  Here is how our teams are projected to do: 

  • Timberwolves: Projected 26.5 games won
  • Nuggets: Projected 35.5 games won
  • Pistons: Projected 35.5 games won

The bet we’re making with each other is whichever teams performs the worst relative to their projected win count, the loser buys the winners a lunch of their choice at Rio Grande.   Now, let’s get it started!

 

My Minnesota Vikings vs. Lions Bet

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Niraj and I just made a bet.  The Lions are projected to win 9 games this season and the Vikings are projected to win 6.  We have a bet to see who wins more and he is spotting me 3 wins.  The loser buys the winner some football paraphernalia (max price $30)

Bring it on!

On a related note, I really want a website to exist that allows you to enter in a bet, a prize for the winner and a date for it to be resolved and then this app notifies you when that date comes.  I have so many little bets placed but I need something to keep track of them.  Somebody please build this.

Also related: the new Vikings stadium looks amazing.

2014 Sport Video Roundup

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The videos and advertisements for sports flowing through the internets these days have been great.  Wanted to capture and share a few for y’all: 

 

Recently, there was a great new ad lauding Derek Jeter in the final year of his career (although it should be noted that Joe Mauer has posted better stats at age 31 than Jeter did at at 31)

Related to that, there’s a send-up of the above ad by Funny Or Die, not lauding Alex Rodriguez:

For the Timberwolves, I’m all in favor of trading Kevin Love for Wiggins to the Cavaliers.  Speaking of the Cavs, there’s a great mock video of Lebron and his “Coming Home” campaign mashed up with Dumb and Dumber.

Finally, this is over a month old, but the Beats ad for the World Cup was definitely the best one of the summer.  It came out right before the Cup started and got me incredibly pumped for it.  A great ad.

(thanks to Kesner and Matt for sharing these first)

USA vs. Ghana

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What a great game yesterday.  After Jozy went down, the US was bad.  Really bad, but escaped with 3 points.  Without the 3 points, the tournament is basically over for them.  

John Brooks scored, soccer fans roared, and minutes later, US 2, Ghana 1 was in the books as a great win. I was sure that Brooks was going to be a disaster, but instead, Brooks, only 21, is a hero.  Nicely done.

Some interesting tidbits from the game:

  1. Here’s a video of a collection of videos from around the world of soccer fans celebrating the Brooks header off the foot of Graham Zusi. 
  2. A cool video fo the tweet volume before and after the goal
  3. John Brooks found his wikipedia entry edited last night right after the game.  Seems a big more accurate now: 
  4. Updated Soccer Power Index odds to advance: Germany 98%, 63% (33% pre-Ghana), Portugal 27%, Ghana 12%.
  5. Some notes i learned about Ghana during the game: 
    1. They were rationing electricity so that everyone in the country could watch the game vs. the US.  (link)
    2. Women in Ghana get 84 days of paid maternity leave (US get zero)
    3. The official language of Ghana is English although the country is divided into small groups that together speak more than 50 languages.
    4. Gold and cocoa are considered a mainstay of their economy

That’s it.  Really looking forward to Sunday’s match against Portugal. 

(thanks to Kesner for some interwebs stuff)

 

 

Why I’m Excited About the Super Bowl

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Here’s something I think is cool.

Broncos-Seahawks-Superbowl

The Denver Broncos shattered records this year as the most dominant offensive team in NFL history. They scored 38 points per game this year, an NFL record.  Their QB, Peyton Manning,  also set records for most passing yards and touchdowns by a QB in a season.  They play Seattle whose defense was the best in the league and is the fifth-best overall statistical performance of any team since 1989.

So, it will be an epic showdown of a historical great offense against a historically great defense.

If that hasn’t blown you mind enough, check this out…. the difference between the Broncos’ average-points-scored and the Seahawks average-points-allowed this season is the widest in the history of the Super Bown. It is what one website found to be “the greatest offense/defense showdown in Super Bowl history.”

So there’s that.  Let’s go Broncos!

 

 

New Vikings Stadium is Awesome

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The Vikings announced a while ago that they would build a new stadium, but just this week they revealed what it’d look like – and whoa is it beautiful.   The new stadium will be one of the advanced, state-of-the-art facilities in the world.  Some highlights: 

Clear is the new retractable: 
There is no retractable roof, but it will be made entirely of cutting edge materials and glass that will make the roof and the sides clear. There will also be five clear pivoting doors that will be the largest in the world of their kind:

 

Versatility
This will be the most versatile sports facility in the US, capable of hosting Final Fours, World Cup or MLS soccer, concerts, baseball, or Super Bowls. It will seat 65,000, expandable to 73,000 for the Super Bowl.

Total Baller
This is probably the coolest stadium I’ve ever seen. The innovation with the largest pivoting glass doors in the world, to the largest clear roof in the world and the first on a stadium in the nation, to the bowl that is level with the street as you walk in, to the modern lines and glass ceiling just combines well and works

 

Totally awesome.

Ponder is going to bring it home this weekend

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Christian Ponder was pretty awful for a two-month stretch this year, but with 4 games left, the Vikes had to run the table.  At that moment, a funny thing happened. While Adrian Peterson continued going absolutely nuts against opposing defenses and Minnesota’s defense continued to step up their game, Christian Ponder got better. How much better? ESPN.com blogger Kevin Seifert puts it into perspective.

But after a disastrous Week 13 performance against the Packers, Ponder quietly turned himself around and had the NFL’s second-best QBR (86.8) over the final four games of the season, trailing only Peyton Manning. Over the second half of the season, Ponder’s QBR on third down — measuring not only passes but also his scrambles — was the league’s second best.

Yep, second best QB after Peyton Manning. I’ll take that.

Capturing a Photo Every 30 Seconds

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I hang out with some pretty cool people at work.  And, i’ve got some great people to go home to too. I capture a lot of moments on Instagram (which i love) and have lately been trying out Snapjoy (Boulder company) and Picturelife as possible places to replace my Flickr as my online photo storage.

Recently though, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not enough. I want to capture more photos and more of my life. Lots of cool stuff is happening every day, both at work and at home that are just passing by.  I want to capture those too. So, you can imagine my happiness when i discovered a little gadget called Memoto.  What is it? It’s a little square that’ll snap a photo of wherever you are and whatever you’re doing every 30 seconds.  This is a 5 MP camera in a tiny little device.  That’s 4 GB of photos i’ll be capturing every day.  Now we’re talking.

Here’s a little video of the device:

I backed the project on Kickstarter so i don’t actually have the device yet.

One other things i’ve been using lately: Strava.  This used to be an app that tracks the crap out of your bike rides.  But, they’ve now added running tracking in there.  Before i stumbled upon Strava, I tested out RunKepper and MapMyRun and liked Runkeeper the best of those two, but after using Strava just a few times, i can tell that it’s better than both of them.

The REAL tech meetups in Boulder

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This morning I took a ride up Sunshine Canyon in Boulder.  We stopped half way up and we looked around and took a little poll about who was on the trip.  We had 4 Techstars companies represented (Orbotix, Kapost, Everlater, and PivotDesk), one VC (Hwy12), and one Techstars mentor (Jamie).  

While biking 6 miles straight up, and in between deep breaths, we talked about building product faster to meet demand (Dave from PivotDesk), growing revenue (Mark from Hwy12), and how to correctly build a financial model for a an early stage company (Nate and Natty from Everlater).  If you’re wondering how work in Boulder happens or how the tech community interacts, I’d say this was a pretty perfect example.  

Oh, and the views aren’t bad either….

You can see the damage from the fire from 2 years ago still: