http://thepensblog.com/pensblog-news/jobber-posts/our-five-favorite-scenes-from-247.html
Bourne Blog: Decoding the Penguins, Capitals whiteboards on HBO<http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Bourne-Blog-Decoding-the-Penguins-Capitals-whi?urn=nhl-296937>
By Justin Bourne<http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy?author=Justin+Bourne>
One of the reasons coaches don't want cameras in their dressing room is because they have sensitive information written on their whiteboards, and they don't want other teams seeing their game plan. Also, I presume they don't want people knowing that they sometimes coach with a hand down their pants, as was Bruce Boudreau's preference.
Well, thanks to HBO's first hockey episode of "24/7" -- every time I type that, angels sing -- we caught a glimpse into how Pittsburgh and Washington -- and Dan Bylsma and Bruce Boudreau, their respective coaches -- prepare for opponents.
Bylsma appeared to be more technical with his preparation (as well as a wise manipulator of his players). He came off as a coach with a nice balance of hockey charisma and seriousness, a fine line that good coaches walk behind closed doors, something 24/7 allows us to see.
Boudreau, on the other hand, came off a touch less cerebral -- an understandable impression, given the team's current struggles (as HBO wisely pointed out, a team is never as good as it seems when they're at their highest peak, never as bad as they seem in their lowest valley).
Still, his whiteboards seemed old school. There were plenty of full sentences written, specifically the "Keys to Victory" board, which included messages like the one before the Caps game in Madison Square Garden that read "1st period success we always have to come from behind in this building play with a lead meet their play!"
Hmm ... kay. So, try hard, then?
Coach Bylsma's whiteboard was set up in a fairly standard, if more thorough, fashion. I managed to get a solid "pause" when we saw it, so here's an explanation of how Pittsburgh's coach technically prepares his team for a game:
On the far left, Bylsma has two whiteboards that he's combined to use as one, with the headline "Toronto's Tendencies" (oddly, it doesn't appear to say "sucking" anywhere). It lists what their scouting report tells them of their opponents OZFC (offensive zone forecheck), NZFC (neutral zone forecheck), breakout preferences, and other things to note - if they were to play Tampa Bay, the phrase APPARENTLY STAMKOS TAKES THE OCCASIONAL ONE-TIMER FROM THE LEFT SIDE might appear.
Toronto's roster is apparently not written in any particular order, since Keith Aulie<http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/4598/>(notes)<http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/4598/news> is listed as the first defenseman.
Down the middle you have the most important information, the X's and O's. For this game (and probably most), Byslma has diagrammed their opponent's most commonly used powerplay breakout and then their in-zone rotation.
Toronto's "set breakout" is in focus beneath that -- that's the one a team will use when a defenseman has time to stop behind the net and set up. He has that written in blue, while Pittsburgh's plan to defend it is in red.
Since that was the clearest for us to see, I'll break down how he has that coverage drawn up:
To go along with the first forward in front of the net (who is to pressure the d-man to bring the puck out on his backhand side), he has one of his forwards come down low on the second d-man who is without the puck and in the corner, so he can provide immediate pressure on a quick pass. "F3" has a read to make, depending on which of the two low forwards the defender moves the puck to -- he'll either swoop into the middle or hold his ice and provide pressure. Bylsma then has his first D-man on Toronto's forward that swings across the blueline, and as he puts it, the other D-man plays "centerfield." If well executed, that's a tough system to crack.
To the right of that board, he has his "Keys vs. Toronto" -- a compilation of shorthand notes that provide more tactical advice, which again, differs from Boudreau's more longhand, motivational Keys to Victory.
Finally, to the right of that information, he has the basics - a permanent team board where "The Code" is displayed (team motivation), and even farther right of that, there's a board simply titled "Systems," presumably where a reminder of the basics for their own team goes.
Unfortunately, we didn't get nearly as good of a look at Boudreau's full whiteboard set-up, although there's one concerning shot in their home rink during the eff-bomb speech where there's literally nothing but those "Keys to Victory" in the middle of two near-blank boards). But you know that somewhere, he's written out similar information for his players.
Still, I always preferred to have it laid out and left in front of me for the entirety of the game.
The whiteboards will be filled before you come to the rink - it's one of the first things you do when you walk-in -- change, grab a coffee, saunter over and give it a quick read.
There are two full-team meetings before a game -- the quick one we saw from both coaches mere moments before hitting the ice, and one that takes place around 5:30, where coach goes over what he's written in detail.
Hopefully sometime next week we'll get to really pick Boudreau's board apart too. I'm sure he's got his own effective methods, and I think we'll glimpse those before the series is over.
I left the show thinking both teams reflected their coaches styles, to a certain extent - one is tactical, the other more free-wheeling.
The only thing I didn't see that I was looking for was: Where's the spot where a team is apparently supposed to write about Pronger's sexual orientation<http://mobilwi.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a6dde087970b0133f0cb0dbf970b-500wi>?
Maybe the Blackhawks still have some whiteboard from a previous era?
Robert Redford: What I've Learned
The 74-year-old actor and director on his brush with a too-close fan, his sophisticated friendship with Paul Newman, and the perfect margarita
By Matthew Belloni
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[robert redford]
Jay Thompson/Globe Photos
The movie star, circa 1965. His eighth film as director, The Conspirator, will be released in April.
Published in the January 2011 "Meaning of Life" issue, on sale now
When I was a kid, nobody told me I was good-looking. I wish they had. I would've had a better time.
You'd have to be inhuman not to be flattered. But it was so obsessive so quick that some part of me didn't trust it.
The way you really find out about the performer's seriousness about the cause is how long they stay with it when the spotlight gets turned off. You see a lot of celebrities switch gears. They go from the environment to animal rights to obesity or whatever. That I don't have a lot of respect for.
There were some hairy moments. Some strange dark character was sending me gifts. They kept coming and coming... . The guy was obsessed with me and Joan Baez. They had a SWAT team and infrared binoculars, and they threw us out of the house. They caught the guy, and he was insane. They put him away and he died in prison.
I have a lot of land. I bought it because I had a very strong feeling. I was in my early twenties, and I had grown up in Los Angeles and had seen that city slide off into the sea from the city I knew as a little kid. It lost its identity — suddenly there was cement everywhere and the green was gone and the air was bad — and I wanted out. I went to Utah because I didn't know anybody there.
Speed. I've always liked speed. I own a car that I shouldn't be talking about because I'm an environmentalist, but the 1955 Porsche Spyder 550 RS is the finest sports car ever made.
Man, it's a lot tougher. To really be out in nature in a pure way, without being directed, without being there as a result of some marketing plan, just to find yourself pure in nature — I made a film about this, Jeremiah Johnson — it is not easy.
Sometimes your gut doesn't work.
There was a woman who was obsessed in the sixties. She'd stalk me and stalk me. Finally they found a gun in her purse and arrested her. She was a dope addict.
I was in a small charter plane flying from Santa Fe to Santa Rosa, and the engines went out for nine minutes. You go through that checklist. Then you get down to what it's gonna feel like. What's it gonna feel like? I still wonder.
I grew up in a pretty cynical environment. All my friends gave each other a horribly bad time. We'd destroy each other with criticisms, but for me it was a sign of friendship. If someone gave me a hard time, I'd say, "Well, I guess he's my friend." I think Paul and I had that relationship.
It did come out of the films, and it did come out of the characters we played in the films. The characters — you knew they were friends because they gave each other such a hard time. We'd play tricks on each other. The more sophisticated the joke, the better. And of course, no one would ever acknowledge the joke. If I'd play a joke on Paul, I'd never hear about it.
I'll never forget meeting a kid I really liked in grammar school and going to his house to go swimming. I just couldn't conceive of a house with a swimming pool in the backyard. Did I stay his friend because of the pool or because I really liked him? I don't know.
Growing up, I was heavily into sports, and you're given these slogans: "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." I realized that was a lie. You could be the worst-behaving character in the world. If you won, it didn't matter.
Scots ethic: Don't forgive easily. And I think that's a negative. Ordinary People was about that. Scots are pretty tough folks. They come from a tough land and they've got tough minds.
Life is essentially sad. Happiness is sporadic. It comes in moments and that's it. Extract the blood from every moment.
Nothing beats a margarita. It comes close in L. A., but you've got to go to New Mexico or Arizona for the right agave plant.
Speak out for what you believe and what you feel. Or don't. You have to live with yourself.
Humor. Skill. Wit. Sex appeal. That order.
Sometimes I'll look at the women on magazines in the market: They all look alike! New this, new that, top this — forget it.
The one that came the closest happened at the festival, late eighties or 1990. I was coming into the Egyptian Theatre for opening night. A guy from Tennessee had driven up with the sole intention of killing me. They found the guy next to the box office and he had a gun. He admitted it. He said, "I'm glad you got me. I was gonna kill him."
Whatever designs nature, whatever makes it work when you observe it closely, that's good enough for me.
Things don't work as well anymore. You get angry. I'm pretty blessed to be able to do a lot of things still. But there's an inevitability here.
People don't remember who the critics were.
GOOD RIDDANCE
The long-overdue movement to abandon Caps Lock.
By Christopher BeamPosted Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010, at 1:39 PM ET
THE END IS NIGH. That's the message Google sent last week when it unveiled its new laptop, the Google Cr-48 notebook<http://www.slate.com/id/2278058/>. The computer has all kinds of new features<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374223,00.asp>—Chrome OS, a simplified design, and free broadband. But perhaps the boldest change is Google's decision to ditch the Caps Lock key. In its place is a Search button, denoted with the image of a magnifying glass. Users can still designate the search key as the Caps Lock—they just have to take the time to change a few settings. But the default is that if you want capital letters, you have to hold down Shift.
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[Google's new search key. Click image to expand.]<http://www.slate.com/id/2278252/>Google's new search keyWhat's most shocking about Google's announcement isn't that it's scrapping Caps Lock—it's that the button has lasted this long. Caps Lock originated with typewriters. The first typewriter to include both upper- and lowercase letters was the Remington No. 2, introduced in 1878. (Before that, typewriters printed only in uppercase. Stop shouting at me, writers of the 19th century!) Uppercase letters were typed by holding down a "shift" key that would literally shift the carriage so that a different part of the type bar—the part on which a reverse uppercase letter was printed—would hit the ribbon. The problem was, it was hard to hold down the shift key for more than a few letters. So typewriter manufacturers added a "Shift Lock" button that would keep the carriage elevated until the button was released. It was a useful innovation: Typewriters didn't have options for italics or bold or underlining, so capitalization was the only way to emphasize words.
The first computers didn't have "Shift" keys at all since all text was uppercase anyway. But when mass-market personal computers like the Commodore 64<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64> and the Atari 800<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family> were introduced in the late 1970s and early '80s, manufacturers tried to make them as similar to typewriters as possible. Consumers were wary of the new machines, so familiarity was important. That meant including a "Shift Lock" or a "Caps Lock" for old time's sake. (There is a difference: Shift Lock prints the secondary symbols on all keys, like the % and # signs, whereas Caps Lock only capitalizes letters.)
In those early years, the Caps Lock key had no fixed position. Some manufacturers put it on the right<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/OSI_Challenger_4P.jpg> side<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atari-600xl.png> of the keyboard<http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm/fa/items.main/parentcat/11066/subcatid/0/id/171727>. Others put it in the lower left<http://homepage1.nifty.com/y-osumi/parts/keyboard/sun/sun_type5c.jpg>, below the Shift key. It wasn't until IBM adopted the 101/102-key Model M keyboard<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard> in 1984 that Caps Lock became semi-permanently ensconced in its current location above the left Shift key. (The International Standards Organization certified<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_9995> that keyboard design in 1994.) Early Caps Lock keys also stayed down when you pushed them down; push them again, and they'd pop back up. To cut costs, companies switched to regular spring buttons with an LED that lit up<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/ModelM.jpg> when Caps Lock was engaged.
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Caps Lock had its uses back in the olden days. Some of the earliest computers were business machines, used to input product keys and other strings of letters and numbers that often included all caps. Some of the first programming languages, like FORTRAN and Basic, were composed entirely in caps. (They didn't always require Caps Lock, mind you—a lowercase a would often automatically show up as A.)
[Ye olde caps lock key.]Ye olde caps lock keyBy the 21st century, Caps Lock had become an outdated scourge. Modern-day personal computing—surfing the Web, writing school papers, chatting online—doesn't require nearly as much capitalization. As of 2010, the most-common Caps Lock users are enraged Internet commenters and the computer-illiterate elderly. The key's location makes it a frequent target for an aCCIDENTAL STRIKE when your pinky reaches for the "a." Worst of all, Caps Lock occupies prime real estate that could be deeded to a more useful key, like Control or even a second Enter button. In 2006, Belgian computer programmer Pieter Hintjen launched<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71606> the "Caps Off" campaign to persuade hardware manufacturers to abandon the key. Their slogan: "STOP SHOUTING!" Many online publications ban<http://www.wctrib.com/event/obituary/id/75843/> comments<http://www.ft.com/servicestools/help/comments-policy> that are typed in all caps. Some people pry the offending key right off<http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web03/2010/5/15/13/caps-lock-control-32258-1273943674-103.jpg> their keyboards in protest.
So why has Caps Lock stuck around so long? The simplest explanation is technological inertia. Computer companies have long been obsessed with reverse compatibility, or the ability of any new product to support old software. People are more likely to buy a new computer, the thinking goes, if they can still access their old files and don't have to change their habits. As a result, computers have almost always been additive: more keys, more programs, more functions. That was the logic behind carrying over the Caps Lock key from typewriters to personal computers, and every new keyboard designer has probably thought the same thing: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
And, yes, Caps Lock does have its merits. There's no question that capital letters do a better job EMPHASIZING WORDS than bold or italics. (See what I mean?) It's also useful for HTML<http://www.web-audio-maker.com/images/getstarted/html_code.gif> and legal documents<http://www.eff.org/files/subpoena.pdf> and people who can't see very well. The gaming world offers another niche use: If the Shift button makes your character run, you can sometimes use Caps Lock to make him run forever. And without Caps Lock, how could Kanye West fully express himself? (Sample tweet<http://twitter.com/#!/kanyewest/status/28442395619>: "JUST GOT TO LONDON!!! YOU KNOW I HAD TO PUT MY CAPS LOCK ON! I DON'T TYPE IN CAPS CAUSE I'M MAD I TYPE IN CAPS CAUSE I'M LAZY!!!")
Nor is Caps Lock the only key deserving of criticism. The function keys (F1 to F12) are useless to the average user. Scroll Lock dates back to DOS<http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2125/whats-the-scroll-lock-key-on-my-computer-for>, when you needed to use the arrow keys to scroll up and down a screen. The Pause and Break<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_key> keys, vestiges of the days of teletype, are used almost exclusively by programmers. Even Google's new Search button could get annoying. At least when you accidentally hit Caps Lock, it merely changes the text. If you hit Search by mistake, it opens a whole new browser tab.
Will scrapping Caps Lock really increase civility on the Web, as one Google employee told<http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/1209/Caps-lock-key-An-endangered-species> Business Insider? Doubtful. If someone wants to blast out their reaction to a YouTube video in all caps, they still can. (The easiest way is to highlight any normal text and hit Shift-F3. So, I guess those function keys aren't entirely useless.) Plus, you can also say nasty things in lowercase.
More likely, Google's decision to ditch the pesky key is one more step in the decline of casing itself. As e-mail and texting have become primary forms of communication, expectations of proper spelling and grammar have diminished. Capital letters aren't necessary to get your point across—why bother with Shift, let alone Caps Lock?
"perhaps the day will come when caps will be out of favor and will be mere embellishments," writes former George Mason University technology professor Virginia Montecino in a caps-less e-mail. "i see an overall simplification of text, in a world in which more people communicate in a written form than any previous generation, crossing boundaries of age, gender, nationality, geographic borders, ideologies."
Google eliminated Caps Lock in order to simplify the keyboard. They may be simplifying the language, too. Does Google intend to overhaul English itself? The keyboard on the new Cr-48 notebook offers a hint: The letters are all in lowercase.
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