Write more Philip, use your words

As you probably notice, this blog appears abandoned. I’m not sure why because I do love writing, but maybe micro-blogging is to blame. Writing short snippets on facebook/twitter has taken over but I’m sure others have written about this so I’ll stop rambling. I do plan to write more and this entry serves as is a reminder for myself to make this happen.

Also, I recently lived on a farm for a few months and enjoyed the experience. I’m in great shape. Being active is good for the soul.

How to manage and play fantasy sports (football)

Over the last couple years I’ve introduced a few friends to fantasy football. And rather than teach them how to play, they were thrown into the fire and have typically burned. But, we’ve all been there. I remember in 2004 that we all drafted kickers in the middle rounds, and defenses, but over time we’ve learned.

Here are some tips to newcomers (newbies), and tips that are based on watching my friends progress.

Do not drop top draft picks early, even after poor performances

Last year a friend dropped his #1 pick Michael Turner after week #3. This caused a lot of discussion and poking fun but it’s understandable too. Nobody wants poor performers on their teams, but we all have our bad days/weeks. Players are drafted early for a reason, so store them on your bench instead of dropping. Give them time to find themselves.

This year a friend dropped his top three wide receivers, including Brandon Marshall and DeSean Jackson. They didn’t have stellar first weeks but as stated above, not everyone does. And this especially applies to wide receivers, who aren’t as consistent as running backs.

And there are several places that list who you should own, with one being the “Big Board” at Yahoo. It lists the top 100 players to own, so ideally the majority of your team is on this list. However, keep in mind that this is only one guys opinion.

Summary: Don’t panic.

If you’re unsure, use crowd wisdom to decide

Continue reading How to manage and play fantasy sports (football)

blog software update

I’m in the midst of moving blog software. Some things appear broken. I hope this problem does not continue. Haven’t yet touched the theme, I think the font is too small. My eyes hurt reading this blog.

PHP Planet Note: I see PHP Planet has added all of my PHP posts, yet the pubDate remains the same (old) so I’m unsure why it’s doing that. The URLs did change however. Investigating…. FAIL.

Update: Wrote the planet.

paul graham wrote an essay about stuff

Paul Graham has slowly become my hero. Or at least, I think he’s interesting and wise. The essay linked here is about stuff, and it touches on how the amount of stuff we [humans] collect has changed over time. It also talks about the value of stuff, and even eludes to the fact that stuff can own us. He explains it much better than I so have a read:

http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html

Warning: It contains a lot of words, and no pictures.

Setting one space tabs for textmate

Sometimes you might want to set the tab width to one space in textmate. For example, perhaps you’re working on the XML files that power the PHP manual (don’t complain, it’s been in the coding standard since the 90’s for well over six thousand files). Because the minimum tab width offered by the textmate GUI is 2 spaces, you may use the command-line like so:


defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakTextViewScopedTabSize -dict-add 'text.xml' '{ tabSize = 1; }'

There, tab size now defaults to one space for XML files.