What I Learned from Drunken Master
1) Breaking norms is rewarding. The main character disrespects his masters, flirts and gropes his niece (so no one gets grossed out), gets his ass kicked in by his aunt, cripples some dude at the market, refuses to pay for his dinner, and in the end earns the respect of all. A hero for the ages.
2) The more you act like a goofball, the more you succeed. Jackie Chan has proven that not taking yourself seriously will earn you MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. In other words,
a) Look like a buffoon. This can apply to all walks of life. Chicks dig the comedian.
b) PROFIT!
3) What the hell’s in the water in China (other than copious amounts of lead)? How do these thousand year old Chinese men go flying around kicking ass ? Is it tai chi? Buddhism? All the senior citizens I know in America just want to buy cheap prescription drugs and sleep at 4 pm.
THIS MOVIE GIVES FALSE HOPE THAT BEING OLD IS AWESOME.
Buy on Amazon, or rent the movie on Netflix.
Stuff I’ve Been Writing About Cal Sports
People who thought I was done writing about Cal football/hoops are mistaken; I might be done writing for Bears Necessity, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not writing about the Golden Bears elsewhere.
For those who don’t know, I’ve been writing a lot for the California Golden Blogs (a Cal sports community that’s part of SBNation, a grassroots sports network of team/sports blogs), which is probably why you haven’t heard or seen much of me lately. Stupid I know, but I generally work at my best when unencumbered by social or physical burden. I haven’t been this productive in years, and it’s definitely allowed me to reassess the way I approach writing.
For those who care about this stuff, the best way is to follow me at SBNation by clicking on the here (or on the SBNation link on the sidebar) and subscribing to the feed.
Anyway, these are just samples of the best work:
Should the Pac-10 eliminate round-robin scheduling?
“The BCS, for better or for worse, is here to stay for most of the next decade. We don’t really have much of a say in it, so we have to deal with the system as is. So we have to figure out what situations would benefit the Bears assuming USC maintains its conference dominance. One thing to look at it is the vaunted Pac-10 round robin. I got thinking about this after reading a quote from Wizard of Odds:
Wouldn’t it be nice if BCS teams took off the skirt and started playing BCS teams in nonconference? Wouldn’t it be nice if you, the fan, actually got value for all that money you pump toward a university just to get a decent seat? Wouldn’t it be nice if the spirit of competition returned to college football?
This is a nice viewpoint, but it’s a little naive. The Pac-10 already does this, playing the extra game, having every other team in the conference play each other once. How much respect do they get for this system? (Hint: it’s equal to the number of BCS at-large bids they’ve been rewarded with the past six seasons.)
Other stuff, if you want to take a look at it.
Here’s the dirty secret: This extra conference game drives up the probability of an extra loss. And you could argue has crippled BCS dreams several times for our conference’s best.”
This post was pretty crazy. 484 comments, with pretty good discussion arguing for and against. Can’t say it didn’t get a little bit heated, but it was all in good fun! We even started a discussion about Scorsese movies on the side.
Here are some of my other favorite posts.
What Concerns You About Cal Football (2009 ed): ”Concern. That’s the state of mind a Cal football fan can find his or herself in during the interminable offseason…However, while those positive thoughts run through our minds from time to time, worry and apprehension can supplant them fairly easily. As in, “how will the Bears break our hearts this time…There are several troublespots going into next season, and I’m sure we can identify others if we try hard enough. Behold the power of pessimism!”
Introducing +/- to Cal Hoops (still a work in progress!): You probably know how the plus/minus has become a huge staple of NBA stats (you’ll see it on NBA box score sheets); I tried applying them to Cal Hoops. Still a work in progress.
Should the Pac-10 Get Better Television Deals?: Anyone who’s followed or tried to follow the Pac-10 football circuit outside the West Coast has pretty much found themselves in dire straits…
Finally, I started a Hall of Fame for this Cal community site to reward the greatest Cal athletes for their efforts as Golden Bears and as pros. It’s a March Madness style tournament where . You can see what the full bracket looks like here, and track what’s going on by following the Hall of Fame section.
It’s really cool stuff; Cal sports fans should check it out if you guys have some time, some really quality stuff has come out of this.
Was Operation Barbarossa A Smart Move by the Nazis?
Tens of thousands of Soviet Unions at Birkenau. Nearly six million Soviet soldiers would be captured during the Second World War. Only about four of every nine would return to Russia.
Operation Barbarossa are two words that emnate pure terror to any European. It would start a war between Germans and Russians that would end with tens of millions dead (either on the battlefield, massacre or as POWs). On the 68th anniversary of this battle I figured I’d talk a little bit about it. This particular post and map focuses on the military aspects of the campaign (in the future I’ll talk about the horrifying aspect of Barbarossa involving the Nazi death squads).
After Hitler could not subjugate Britain by either air supremacy or coastal invasion (Operation Sea Lion was postponed, and eventually cancelled), he turned his sights eastward toward Russia.
Strategic breakdown
There were definitely huge advantages for Germany if they did win. The Soviet Union had the largest army and air force in Europe, some of the richest territory in terms of resources, and the last great meance to Nazi dominance of the continent. If Germany were to crush the Russians in combat, they could be overlords of the European mainland for years to come.
They also believed they would have the superior tacticians on the field, thanks largely in part due to Stalin’s Great Purge. The embarrassing performance by the Soviet Union against Finland in 1939 reinforced that notion. It would bear out during the early months of Barbarossa, when Soviet commanders, afraid of the NKVD squads if they gave ‘retreat’ orders, would rather they and their soldiers face encirclement and imprisonment from the German Panzers.
However war against Russia needed to be won swiftly. The German economy was not in the shape to fight a long, protracted war, which was certainly what Barbarossa would entail. A decisive military victory would have to come in the first year or two of the invasion if Germany was going to have any chance to win in the Eastern Front.
Moreover, while he respected the British as a people and longed for a coalition of both the empires, Hitler expressed malice for the Russians almost as tantamount as his hatred for the Jews. Indeed, the main reasons for the invasion were probably ideological, which overruled strategic orthdoxy from the outset. Hitler outlined his stark and frightening thoughts on Russia early on in his famous testament, Mein Kampf:
Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing P ussia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race.
…
For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian I empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish theory.
Indeed, the campaign would be full of such barbaric overtones, and would eventually rob the Germans of the strategic advantages they had enjoyed in their biggest battles in Europe (we can talk about that later).
As for the Soviets, they were in good shape to anticipate the attack; they received NUMEROUS intelligence reports that indicated, even a report that indicating an attack for June 22. However, Stalin refused to believe any of this; whether he had wholly deluded himself to believe this or simply shrank from the moment can be debated for ages.
Battle Plans
As you can see from the map above, the plan was for the Germans to center their attacks on Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, with one army group in charge of each case. The northern most group (Army Group North) would advance through the Baltic states with minimal help from the Finns looking to recapture lost territory from the Winter War. The southern most group (Army Group South) attacking the Ukraine would advance with the help of Rumanian and Hungarian satellite troops. The middle group, Army Group Centre, would be assigned the most tanks (two of the four Panzer groups), charged with encircling the bulk of the Soviet troops and opening the road to Moscow. Eventually they would try to take the territory between the Russian cities of Astrakahan in the Caucasus, which would occupy practically all of European Russia.
The Germans would engage nearly four million soldiers to the initial attack with 3600 tanks and 4400 aircraft; although they’d be outnumbered 4 to 1 in tanks and 3 to 1 in aircraft, those numbers would mean less compared to the inability for the Red Army troops to manuever, the fear of Stalin by Red Army commanders, and the inferiority of the equipment to defend with (the Soviets would not start producing T-34s en masse until very late in 1941, and Soviet aircraft was of barely average quality throughout the Second World War and was generally outclassed by the Luftwaffe until late in the European campaign).
Ultimately, each side (one fueled with ideological motivations, the other wandering with willful ignorance of the situation about to unfold) would collide into circumstances that would ensure the maximum number of casualties. It would leave a generation of men from Europe’s largest countries ravaged. To think it could all have been avoided.
Conclusions
1. Germany should not have prosecuted the war in Russia until they had finished off Britain. Had Hitler finished off the British by either overwhelming the Royal Air Force or achieving total economic blockade with the U-Boat campaign, the worry of persisting in a two-front War would have dissipated. Unfortunately, Hitler remained deluded that the British would welcome a partnership with Germany to help govern the world. This viewpoint seemingly made even less sense considering their leader Winston Churchill was one of the most vehmently anti-Nazi leaders BEFORE the war even begun.
2. Hitler’s paranoia about Jews and Bolsheviks ultimately led to his undoing. Hitler’s inability to reconcile his perceptions of the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ would force him to conduct the war with Russia from ideological rather than pragmatic purposes (although he did turn the war into an economic one). It would end tragically for the Jews in Eastern Europe, especially in the Ukraine and Belarus, but it would also ultimately lead to the destruction of their Gideon.
The ideology against Slavs would alienate and antagonize many Baltics, Ukranians and White Russians. These peoples were no friends of Stalin and Communism; they weren’t even very friendly to the Jews. However, instead of collaborating, recruiting local troops from these territories, and setting the resources of these occupied territories to the Third Reich, the Nazis would treat those occupied as inferior peoples not worthy of anything but slave labor or extermination. Thus a potential pool of soldiers and resources was severly drained and those who survived were lost to the partisan movement or the prisoner camps of the East.
3. Stalin’s stubbornness to reconcile himself with reality would end up costing Russia millions of its finest soldiers. The Red Army would only mobilize in the hours before the invasion when it was far too late to face the attack head-on. Interestingly, while Hitler’s personal feelings about Russia would color the portrait of the war that was about to unfold, without Stalin’s co-operation (by his ignoring all warnings of war coming to the Motherland) the Red Army would never have been brought as close as it was to near breaking point.
4. Germany would have to win quick. Letting the war drag on would ultimately lead to a war of attrition, one the Soviet Union was bound to win. The Germans would have to rely more than ever on their Panzers to outmanuever and envelop the slower, plodding Russian armies.
5. Germany still had a decent shot to destroy Russia. I’ll talk about this later on.
In the next few posts I’ll get into the nitty gritty of Operation Barbarossa, and then in a post after that I’ll talk more about the darker side of the battle.
Source: John Keegan, The Second World War (The best one volume novel on World War II around. I’m sure there are better books out there, but this books does a great job of breaking down the big picture, of how these stories fit into broader history and gets us deep into the mindsets of the people prosecuting the war. There are probably fine books breaking down the intricacies of warfare, but if you want the best book to learn about the overaching nature of World War II, Keegan is for you. Keep in mind he does not like Clausewitz.)
The Zen Master’s 12 Strategies
Phil Jackson is about to win his tenth NBA title, probably tonight or Tuesday. It can be debated whether Phil is the greatest coach of all-time, but there’s no doubt that he’s done what he needed to get the Bulls and the Lakers to the top of the mountain.
As usual, back to Robert Greene and The 33 Strategies of War, which I learn something new from everytime I pick it up. Kind of like watching Zen Master Coach, and how he applies some of these strategies to his coaching.
Declare War On Your Enemies: In most sports, this usually refers to the other opponents, but in basketball, the war is from within. Phil knew the biggest enemies to the Lakers’s progress would be their mindset, roughed up after getting wiped out in last year’s Finals. Were they tough enough? Could they handle the spotlight? Could they fight the concept they were soft?
Phil Jackson is pushing Pau Gasol. Has been pushing him. Since the beginning of training camp. Since the last seconds ticked off the clock in the Lakers’ ugly loss to Boston in Game 6 of the Finals last June.
“He’s yelled at Pau more this season than at anyone I can remember in a long time,” Lakers assistant coach Kurt Rambis says. “He’s been working him, needling him, constantly challenging him to be better than he was then, to be a tougher rebounder, a tougher defender.”
Playing with greater resolve — absorbing blows more carelessly and lowering a shoulder more forcefully — isn’t a switch you throw, it’s an attitude you arrive at, a process you survive.
Many of us remember the famous anecdote from the 1991 NBA Finals, when Jordan was looking for his shot in traffic instead of passing out to the open John Paxson, and in a timeout Phil asked MJ who was open. After asking him several times, Michael finally said, “Pax.” Phil replied, “Then get him the fucking ball.” From that point on in Game 5, MJ drew the double team, found Paxson, who nailed five jumpers in the final four minutes to give the Bulls their first title. Jackson picks his spots, finds the weak points in his team’s psyche (Michael’s and Kobe’s willingness to take over the game, Shaq’s passive-aggressive behavior, Scottie’s whining, Gasol’s lack of toughness), and challenge it when the team needs it. In terms of managing the emotions of his stars, no one has done it better as a coach than Phil.
The Ten Thousand
For those wanting a visual depiction of the Xenophon story, click on the picture of the map to go to the actual Google Map.
~The blue markers represent where the mercenaries originated from.
~~Example: “4000 hoplites under Xenias the Arcadian“ would be marked by a marker on the province of Arcadia, Greece, etc.
~The red territory marks the extent of the Persian Empire during the time of the march; the Greeks would have to make it to the Black Sea to sail their way to Greece.
~The blue line….is well…yeah, the line they marched on.
~The fire represents where the battle of Cunaxa took place and all that jazz. There aren’t many details outside of the book of Anabasis; click on the link to check it out via Project Gutenburg!
Xenophon and The Big Aristotle
For those not familiar with the story, Xenophon was a Greek philosopher/adventurer back in those ancient times. He accompanied Greek mercenaries under Cyrus into the heart of the Persian empire to march on Babylon to overthrow Cyrus’s brother, the Persian king Ataxerxes. The attack failed, Cyrus was killed, and the Greek commander was ambushed and beheaded by Persian soldiers on the trek back to Greek territory. As the Greek soldiers began to fall into despair, Xenophon began to cast himself into the spotlight.
“That night Xenophon, who had stayed mostly on the sidelines during the expedition, had ad ream: a lightning bolt from Zeus set fire to his father’s house. He woke up in a sweat. It suddenly struck him: death was staring the Greeks in the face, yet they lay around moaning, despairing, arguing. The problem was in their heads. Fightin for money rather than for a purpose or a cause, unable to distinguish between friend and foe, they had gotten lost. The barriers between them ”
Eventually Xenophon would help inspire the Greeks to forget about these internal battles and turn their fight outward onto the Persians. He told them to focus on one goal: Getting home to Greece. Inspired by this call to arms, the Greeks managed to elude the Persian army and get back to Greece in reduced, but still healthy numbers.
Now, what does that have to do with the Big Cactus? Let’s take a little look at his personal taste in movies:
“Remember, Shaq’s favorite movie is “The Warriors,” the ’70’s classic where the top gang leader in New York City (Cyrus) holds a gang summit and tries to organize the first-ever gang revolution. As Cyrus points out, the total number of gang members doubles the number of police officers in the city, which logically means that they can overpower them and take over everything. Apparently, he didn’t know about the National Guard, the FBI, the Army and the Marines. Anyway, Cyrus gets assassinated at the gang summit — one of the most devastating screen deaths ever, right up there with Sonny Corleone and Hooch — and everyone incorrectly blames the Warriors, an unassuming gang from Coney Island.”
Sound familiar? The Warriors is actually based off of Xenophon’s Anabasis. The struggle, the despair, the leader stepping up (Swan taking the place of Xenophon).
What is striking is that despite this being Shaq’s favorite movie, he doesn’t seem to have learned the deeper meaning behind the message of the film. If he did, he might very well be most dominant center ever. Simmons wrote a fascinating paragraph about Shaq’s reaction in the 2006 NBA Finals, that even with Shaq playing the Robin role he still couldn’t cede the spotlight. The victory had to be about him, in some form or the other.
Shaq has struggled with internal drama his entire career, to the detriment of his team and perhaps his legacy. That he could never show up and lead his team to big victories (and it’s still debatable whether he’s ever shown up). That the NBA had to change the rules so teams could defend him. That he never put in the work to make his damned free throws. That everyone was out to get him. That his coaches were never good enough or masters of panic. That his teammates didn’t get him the ball enough. That his centers That his sidekicks (Penny, Kobe, Wade) were selfish and immature.
Perhaps there’s some truth to that. Shaq is candid like that. But what does it tell us about Shaq that he says such things? Is he just trying to make excuses for his narcissism and self-indulgence? He could’ve had at least seven to eight dominant seasons rather than three (imagine that 2000 season replicated six to seven times over), like Bill Russell and Kareem, and left the game as undoubtedly one of the greatest to ever play the game. Right now he’s sitting somewhere in the top 20, with two of his sidekicks (Kobe and Wade) on their way to surpassing him.
Shaq could’ve overcome all of this if he had the foresight of Xenophon or the will of Swan. Instead of being ruthless and destroying his opponents on the court after winning his first title, he retreated and did just enough to squeak his way to titles. If he had battled his inner insecurities and turned the inner drama into an external battle he waged to get to the top.
But he could never truly crush his insecurities. His career won’t be a disappointment, but it’ll be diminished from what it could’ve been. Shaq can say he’s the greatest center ever all he wants. We all know the truth. He didn’t do quite enough to get out of Persia.
Brief Thoughts From Game 1, 2009 NBA Finals
Orlando could not hit anything tonight, jumpers, 3 pointers, layups, nothing. The Lakers didn’t straight up double team Dwight, but they congested the lane and collapsed on him when it was clear no one else on Orlando could hit the net.
I’m going to take the glass half-full approach for the Magic. First of all, the Lakers get complacent. They are so talented, so efficient, so destructive on offense when they’re running their sets that they look totally unstoppable; when Bryant and Odom on their game, doubly so. And sometimes they sort of ride that train and lose their edge that it takes the other team beating them to get it back. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Orlando storm back to take Game 2, and certainly if the three ball gets stroking it frees up Howard to wreck more inside (Bynum, Pau and Odom flirted with foul trouble, didn’t really matter though).
Kobe was not padding his stats. He was running the offense, driving to the hoop, breaking down Orlando’s D (Howard was a step slow all night, compounding the Magic’s issues), producing open jumpers for open teammates and pretty good looks for him. He wasn’t pulling up for 3 balls or badly contested jumpers; those are good shots for Bryant. It was a great performance and it should be taken as such.
If Gasol isn’t playing well in the low block, Howard can come over and bother Bryant on his drives, something Lebron couldn’t do with Big Z (and only minimally so with Varejao), who is not a good post player. Take a look at how much trouble the Rockets gave LA when Chuck Hayes banged with Pau, or how close Denver played them when Bryant and Fisher were hoisting up jumpers and Pau saw the ball too few times.
Kobe can get his, but when the offense runs through or with Gasol, it takes their team to another level on the offensive end.
I really don’t know how I feel about Black Mamba’s performance (otherworldly as usual). Maybe it’s that awful Laker crowd he plays in front of. Anyone get the sense you were watching a grand Shakespeare play, except it was being performed at your local VFW? Those guys get excited about NOTHING. Nevertheless, art is art.
Let’s keep in mind he can play that great because Gasol is down low and Howard can’t play off the pick and roll as much as he’d like. One of the big problems LeBron had was that there was no one he could go to inside.
However, UNLIKE Chosen One, Kobe didn’t hesitate. No dribbles, just drive, drive, drive. In previous series it looked like he held back a lot more because he wanted to make sure he had something for the end. And it just angers me more why Coach Brown didn’t unleash Lebron on a fast break once in that series. I hate NBA coaches.
Let me give credit to the Laker D, which was much better than Cleveland’s D in adjusting to Howard and forcing the Magic into rushed passes into 3s in uncomfortable spots. Orlando did miss a lot of open shots, but LA did have something to do with the blowout.
2009 NBA Finals Breakdown
Orlando: I was living in Orlando back in 1995 when the Magic last made it back to the Finals, led by an explosive center and a bunch of swing men who could shoot triples. They were raw, but they lacked poise, and it eventually did them in. Ultimately, they ran into a team with championship pedigree and a more polished center, and they were dispensed of in painful fashion.
Flash-forward 14 years and they face a similar situation. But not quite. Howard might not be quite as polished on the offensive end as Shaq was, but his defensive game is certainly up to par, he kept LeBron James out of the paint for most of the series and forced him to take tough jumpers, and in Game 6 he wrecked his way to the Finals (40 points, 14 rebounds, a performance that will go unheralded unless Orlando wins it all). He probably won’t have his way with Gasol (who battled him to a standstill in the Olympic play) or Bynum (much more athletic on the block, although absent-minded defensively), but he still should be the better center.
For those who haven’t watched the Magic this season, their offense is predicated on more than just 3s. It’s ball movement, penetration, kick, rotate it to the open man. It’s disturbingly Spurs like in its efficiency, although unlike Duncan, Howard isn’t always the focus of the Magic offense; their forwards, Lewis & Turkogulu have their own offensive talents (Hedo, their SF, often has as many assists as the Magic’s point guards; Rashard can post up and shoot 3s). Add in former Warrior swingman Mickael Pietrus, rookie Courtney Lee, Skip To My Lou Rafer Alston, the recently reactivated Jameer Nelson (who killed LA in the regular season), and you have a very scary offensive team if the 3 ball gets going. Every one of Orlando’s guards/forwards can slash, drive and kick. They’re a surprisingly efficient team, quite different from the ‘95 Magic too (that was a team purely built on youthful exuberance).
LA Lakers: This is arguably Kobe Bryant’s last chance to win a title as The Man. He’s wrapping up his thirteenth season in the league. He’s played over 1120 games in the league, more than MJ during his entire career as a Bull. The slippage starts now, and soon the team totally belongs to Gasol or Bynum (this is a big if, the likelier bet is Gasol) the way it belonged to Shaq. Bryant would again become the second option, and he would be doomed to deal with the fact (even if he won more rings) that he could never win a title as
The key to this series is how quickly the Lakers get into their offensive sets and establish themselves with Gasol getting that ball on the block in the Triangle offense, how much Kobe can play off of it, how well Odom and Ariza can finish, and how Fisher, Farmar, Vujacic and Brown can nail down open jumpers. The offense has to run through Pau; if he sees that ball late in the shot clock, if the ball stays hung out on the perimeter, than the Lakers can expect to get torpedoed. Lee & Pietrus are not even close to being Battier and Artest, but they can keep Kobe in front of him and force him to take jumpers (as can Howard if Kobe drives). However, if Pau has it, things become much easier offensively.
Now, if Lamar Odom plays like Odom at his best for four games, the Lakers are getting their rings. But none of us are expecting that–LA should be happy if they get two and hope Kobe and Pau can win them two more. The Lakers do have the size to compete with the Magic’s forwards in Ariza and Odom, but they also can fall asleep on closing out at the three point line (their two losses to the Rockets post-Yao a good example).
If I had to pick, it’s probably the Lakers, because Orlando, despite their monumental success, would not have gotten here if KG got injured. They got here a year early and they might play like it; the urgency isn’t quite there like it is for Los Angeles and Bryant. Dwight Howard is 23 and will be back. Who knows how many more times we’ll be able to say that about Kobe.
Additional notes:
Phil never double teams. He threw Rodman on Shaq, O’Neal got his 40, but the Bulls swept the Magic. He put Horry on C-Webb, who struggled to finish games and the Lakers eeked out the Kings. I expect we’ll see Bynum, then Pau, then (maybe) some Mbenga, but it’s up to those two to stop the onslaught of Howard inside.
Now, Jameer’s return makes the Magic very interesting. He might not play well early on, but if he can slash and drive on Brown and Farmar he will make LA’s lives very miserable, because they will always be reacting to what Orlando is trying to do on offense.
Keep in mind that the Magic love to screen and roll…and Phil Jackson-coached teams always struggle with screen and roll (this one especially because of how much they like to overhelp).
Let me guys know if there’s anything I’ve missed.
Other places to check out: Forum Blue & Gold and Silver Screen and Roll for Lakers fans, Third Quarter Collapse for Magic fans.
Introducing the Fark Map
The Fark Map is a map full of all the recent news stories detailed up on Fark
Click here or on the image of the map for the full-screen map.
This is only the first prototype of a series of maps I’m trying to make utilizing stories from the Fark main page. What I’m trying to do is utilize Google Maps to help catalog current Fark events. For now the process is manual, since I’m trying to be as precise as possible. We’ll have to see what happens when it gets larger.
Hopefully this’ll make it easier for fans of Fark and those looking for the funniest news of the day more easily. Here’s the description of how the categories are bunched up:
Stories Key
Dumbass: Blue Marker
FAIL: Blue Marker w/o dot
Stupid: Blue Pin
Cool: Sky Blue Marker
Caption: Sky Blue Marker w/o dot
Spiffy: Sky Blue Pin
Scary: Purple Marker
Strange: Purple Pin
Weird: Green Marker
Followup: Green Marker w/o dot
Sappy: Green Pin
Interesting: Red Marker
Unlikely: Red Marker w/o dot
Asinine: Red Pin
Amusing: Light Red Marker
Ironic: Light Red Marker w/o dot
Sad: Light Red Pin
Hero: Flag Marker
Florida: Sunshine Marker
Obvious: Yellow Marker
Silly: Yellow Marker w/o dot
Sick: Yellow Pin
PSA: Information button
Photoshop/Caption: Camera
News: Television
The next step will probably be to separate the maps into categories so people can find events based on the event they’re looking for. This is far from a perfect project but I think it’s a pretty good start.
Two main ideas I have right now:
- Separating the maps by day, finding a way to combine them into one.
- Separating the maps by category, allowing the users to filter the events they want to see.
If you guys have any ideas how I can improve this, just comment away or shoot me an email: ramanujanredux at gmail dot com.
Battle of Cannae
I originally created a map of the events of the Battle of Cannae on Concharto, then modified it for Google Maps. For some reason it’s not appearing quite right on initial load up. If you just click on any of the events on the right though, the map should appear and you can adjust it as you need to.
For a full-screen map, click here.