01.19.08
Posted in sports, tennis at 3:22 pm by danvk
Because of the 15 hour time difference, most Americans don’t get particularly excited about the Australian Open. It’s our loss. The first major of the year always manages to produce some interesting stories, and this year is no exception. Good thing there’s danvk.org to help you catch up!
Yesterday alone saw:
I managed to catch the last set of the Federer match, and it was fantastic. Both players played well. Federer had less trouble on his serve in the final set (he set a career high for aces in a match), but with each passing game it seemed like the chances of some random twist turning the match the other way increased. After all, the last time Roger lost here was in 2005, when Marat Safin knocked him out in a five-setter that ended well after midnight.
It’ll be fun to see if Tipsarevic continues to play this well. He seems like an interesting guy. He’s the only tennis player I know of who wears goggles on court, and he has a Dostoyevsky quote tattooed on him (”Beauty will save the world” from The Idiot). Frankly, I’m surprised that more young players don’t throw the kitchen sink at Fed like Janko did. It’s a great way to make a name for yourself. After all, people first started noticing Federer when he knocked off Pete Sampras at the 2001 Wimbledon Championships.
The announcers on ESPN pointed out an interesting fact about this tournament. It’s the first time in many years that a single tournament can decide who will be #1. Here’s how it works:
- Rankings in tennis are based on your performance in events over the last 52 weeks.
- Rafael Nadal has 5780 points
- Roger Federer has 7180 points
- At a Grand Slam you get 1000 points for winning, 700 for runner-up, 450 for semis, 250 for quarters, 150 for round of 16, 75 for round of 32, etc.
- Roger got 1000 points last year — if he’d lost yesterday, he would have dropped to 6225 points
- Nadal got 250 points last year — if he wins this year, he’ll have 6530 points
If Roger makes it to the semis, or Rafa doesn’t win the title, then Federer will remain number one. You can argue about the merits of the tennis ranking system, but it’s certainly predictable!
One final twist: if Rafa doesn’t pass Roger at this tournament, it will be impossible for him to do so for several more months. That’s because Rafa cleaned up during this time last year, while Federer kept losing to this guy. Rafa has points to defend, while Federer does not. You can see the full points breakdown on the ATP profiles for Federer and Nadal.
Permalink
12.11.07
Posted in astronomy, news, sports at 11:01 pm by danvk
There have been two space-related stories of note in the news recently.
The first was that the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis was delayed until January. The space shuttle has been NASA’s greatest boondoggle in history: its $145 billion cost to date has passed the Apollo program’s inflation-adjusted $135 billion. The worth of the Apollo program is an issue for another time, but at least it had a clear goal which it accomplished. The Space Shuttle has languished into old age. Seriously, does anyone realize how old this program is? Here’s a video from the launch of the first space shuttle, in 1981:
For some context, the commander of this mission was John Young. John Young walked on the moon… on his fourth space flight! Here’s a plot of space shuttle launches over time:
NASA was accelerating launches through the start of 1986, when Challenger was destroyed. The first period represents the hopes and dreams of the shuttle program. Before Challenger, it really might have made space travel routine. The middle segment, from Challenger to Columbia, is the long working life of the shuttle. Expectations were capped, and so were results. The shuttle program should have ended after Columbia. But instead, it gets a third period to die of old age.
Shuttle missions these days primarily service the International Space Station, which exists primarily to give the Space Shuttle somewhere to go. Seriously, try reading the wiki article about the Columbus module being installed on the next shuttle mission and tell me what exactly it does. Hubble Space Telescope maintenance is often pointed to as something worthwhile that the Shuttle does. Fair enough. But how many Hubble’s could we have had for $145 billion?
The second story is genuinely exciting. It comes from the European Space Agency’s CoRoT mission. At $50 million, it’s a featherweight space mission. This telescope was launched last December and has been observing stars for the past year, looking for transits. This week, they reported that “CoRoT is discovering exo-planets at a rate only set by the available resources to follow up the detections”.
This is completely nuts! There are currently 268 known exoplanets. It’s possible that this number will double in the next month as the CoRoT group begins publishing their findings on December 20. Personally, I’d consider that a more significant achievement than anything the Space Shuttle has done in the last 25 years with its $145 billion.
Permalink
09.06.07
Posted in news, sports, tennis at 11:49 am by danvk
It’s time once again for a token Grand Slam post. The 2007 US Open is winding its way to the final weekend. There have been some surprises, like defending champ Maria Sharapova’s early exit, and some fun matches, like James Blake’s loss to Tommy Haas in a fifth-set tiebreak.
Last night’s match between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer was the most hyped of the tournament. The result was no surprise. Federer won in straights. The messaging on this match has been spectacularly consistent: Roddick played brilliantly, but there’s no shame in losing to the greatest player of all time. I think this is crap. People need to stop going so easy on Roddick. He’s 1-14 against Roger all-time and 0-9 since 2004. He hasn’t taken a set off the guy this year. Maybe if people stopped patting him on the back after every loss and telling him how close he came, then he’d be forced to regroup and find a way to deliver.
One highlight of the match was Andre Agassi’s debut as an announcer. Great players often make great announcers, and John McEnroe is the best in the business. Andre didn’t pipe up too frequently, but everything he said was interesting. Here’s one exchange:
When Roddick stared down Federer and bellowed after a 138 mph ace to get to 4-4 in the first set, Agassi said: “There’s a fine line between getting pumped up and waking a sleeping giant, I assure you.”
Another great moment came when Andre revealed how he used to deal with Boris Becker’s. He picked up on a tell — whenever Boris stuck his tongue out before a serve, he was sure to go down the middle. What an edge that would give you! I wonder if Roger’s picked up on anything like that. Andy’s serve just doesn’t seem to phase him.
My picks — Justine Henin beats Svetlana Kuznetsova in the Women’s final Saturday. On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic beats David Ferrer in the semis before losing a close final to the man himself, Roger Federer.
Permalink
09.05.07
Posted in personal, reviews, sports at 10:43 pm by danvk
I took a walk around the San Jose State University campus yesterday, and stumbled upon this statue:
It’s based on the famous photograph of the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics:
Although less controversial now than it was at the time, I was still surprised to see this moment memorialized as a statue. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.21.07
Posted in news, sports, tv at 8:35 pm by danvk
I don’t get the wave of excitement about David Beckham coming to America to join the L.A. Galaxy and play in the MLS soccer league. ESPN was advertising this like mad. His wife, a former spice girl, is even getting her own reality show.
First thing I don’t get: How does an MLS team have $250 million to pay this guy? Does the entire league bring in that much money?
Second thing I don’t get: Why does anyone expect this to get American’s excited about soccer? Getting the World Cup in 1996 couldn’t do it, so how could one man? But there’s no arguing with the true believers.
The whole hysteria has made me very cynical today. If you want to get people excited about something, you don’t tell them how great it is or try to explain why they should be excited. No, you just act as though the rest of the country already is excited. I’ve often wondered if ESPN could pull this off with a lesser-known sport like disc golf. If they covered professional disc golf events on SportsCenter and brought in some talking heads for a “Disc Golf Tonight” show to analyze the week’s events, people would start to care about it.
Permalink
07.07.07
Posted in sports, tennis at 12:46 am by danvk
I took some grief for writing too much about the French Open, so I’ve avoided saying anything about the last two weeks at Wimbledon. I get one post though, right?
The main story has been rain. It’s been so wet that Nadal wound up needing five days to finish his third-round match against Robin Soderling. The tournament got way behind schedule, so many players have been playing on back to back to back days. Men’s quarters were today, men’s semis are tomorrow, and the finals are the next day.
That makes for some really tired players, so we’ve been getting a few surprise results. A lot of matches have been one-sided at the beginning, then a player gets tired or hurt, and the match suddenly reverses. That’s what happened to Andy Roddick today. He was up two sets and a break on Richard Gasquet, but wound up losing a 6-4, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6, 8-6 marathon. NBC must be all kinds of pissed. Instead of getting a marquee matchup with an American, Andy Roddick vs. Roger Federer, they get a lopsided matchup with a player nobody’s heard of. Remember the tight schedules? After playing a four hour slugfest than finished after 8 PM, Gasquet has to wake up tomorrow morning and play Roger Federer at noon. It’s going to be a blowout.
The women’s final is also going to be a blowout. Venus Williams has been playing out of her mind, and Marion Bartoli (who upset Justine Henin today) has never played in a Grand Slam final before. There’s a fine tradition of choking in your Grand Slam final debut on the women’s tour. See Anna Ivanovic and Justine herself for reference. Expect more of that tomorrow.
The one interesting match is the Nadal vs. Djokovic semi. These guys will both be exhausted. They’ve both played several days in a row and had a few five-setters. I’m picking Nadal in five, but I’ll be rooting for Djokovic.
Another random note: Bud Collins, the veteran NBC tennis commentator, is retiring. Good riddance. This guy is like the Dick Vitale of tennis. Nobody likes him. His role now is mostly to do cringe-inducing post-match interviews with the champions. A sampler: Bud: “On clay, Rafa is el Rey!” Nadal: “hehehe, ahhmm” (awkwardly looks for anyone else to talk to). Way to go, Bud.
Update: An update doesn’t break my one-post limit, does it? I called all three matches correctly. Venus and Fed rolled, and Nadal won. I called five sets, but it only went three. Djokovic hurt his foot and had to retire in the third set, tied at one set apiece, presumably on its way to a thrilling fifth. =) I’m picking Fed in four tomorrow. The final is on NBC at 9 AM EST/6 AM PST.
Permalink
06.10.07
Posted in sports, tennis at 9:53 am by danvk
Nadal played well in the French Open final, but Roger mostly beat himself. The key statistic: Federer won on only one out of 16 break point chances. Ten of those were in the first set, which he really should have won. Roger must be all kinds of pissed. He refused post-match interviews.
With three convincing losses to Rafa in the last three French Opens, you’ve got to wonder whether Roger can ever pull it off.
In other, unrelated sports news, congrats to the Rice Owls on making the College World Series again. I regret not going to Omaha to cheer them a year ago. Hopefully they can do it this time!
Permalink
06.03.07
Posted in sports, tennis at 3:50 pm by danvk
How did I not know this? Joakim Noah, from Florida’s back-to-back championship basketball teams, is the son of Yannick Noah, the winner of the 1983 French Open. Crazy. (from this article)
Permalink
05.01.07
Posted in personal, sports at 9:44 pm by danvk
The final score of my win in the Supreme Court Low-C’s racquetball championship. I even get a trophy! Next up: high C’s.
You can always tell how good a racquetball player is by how they respond to “what level are you?” If they say “medium” or “intermediate” or “pretty good”, it means they’re not that great. Good players will answer with A, B, C or D, with A being the best. Tennis has
Permalink
04.03.07
Posted in sports, web, wikipedia at 9:04 pm by danvk
A few weeks ago, I looked at the Wikipedia edits to the 2006 NCAA Tournament article. Here’s the edits chart for this year’s tourney, as promised.
For comparison, here’s the chart for last year:
The overall features are quite similar: the important dates stand out clearly in each chart. The total edit volume in 2007 is about double what it was in 2006, which is consistent with Wikipedia’s rapid growth. The edits were more front-loaded in 2007. Selection Sunday was far and away the busiest day, and the edits decreased steadily into the later rounds. This may indicate that fans contributed content relating to their favorite teams, and then stopped once that team was eliminated.
Shortly before last year’s tournament, I wrote a program to create a basic article for every NCAA tournament, from 1939-2005. The articles had a list of teams, locations, and a bracket. The idea was that, once the tournament got underway, other contributors would spruce the articles up a bit with some individualized content. Here’s a plot of the cumulative edits to the 1939-2005 tourney articles.
There are clear spikes during March Madness each season. Cumulative, there have been 1,493 edits to these articles by users other than myself, an average of 22/article. This is a bit skewed by the more recent tourneys, though. The median number of non-Dan edits is 10/article, which still isn’t bad. Wikipedia has its own flavor of the “release early and often” mantra from open source software. It’s not important that the article be perfect the first time around. It’s more important to just put something out there so that others can improve upon it.
Permalink
« Previous entries