cygweb

Rush's first album came out in 1974. Even though they're still together and producing new music, they've technically been eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 1999. Despite their success and the fact that this season the RRHOF Museum has a Rush exhibit, they've once again been denied induction into the Hall of Fame. I like The Police a lot and I'm glad they're getting some recognition this year (perhaps they'll get together in NYC for the induction concert). But Rush has had such a great career and impact on rock music that it's hard to understand why they've been ignored so far by the Hall.

How six weeks can change things!

Finally, all the teams have sat out their bye week and there are 16 games per week for the rest of the season. This is much better than the last few years, where, with 31 teams, there was a bye for at least one team per week for the entire season.

My fantasy team, the PA Thunderbolts, are 7-3 and we have four weeks to go until playoffs in my league. I've had quite a few shuffles in the QB and kicker positions, but my original RB, WR, and TE picks have turned out pretty well. My team defenses are middle-of-the-road. I don't know that I'll do too much tinkering over the next few weeks. I got burned by Kurt Warner's early inconsistency and injury, then Jamie Martin's injury. Kordell Stewart (my backup QB) had lost his starting job by the time I had decided to dump the St. Louis QBs (after Martin was injired going into Week 6 and I didn't know), and I had picked up Jim Miller, but since he was probable for Week 7, I picked up Drew Brees and started him. When Drew had a bye in Week 8, I grabbed Tommy Maddox and started him. He's been even better in the last two weeks and has remained my starter. The top four teams in my league play in two weeks of playoffs, so I hope to be playing for the championship!

I've enjoyed watching the Ravens, Eagles, and Steelers this season, and I even got to see the Bills play the Broncos one week. I think I'll probably try to tune into a Bills game radio stream in the next Sunday or two. I haven't heard Van Miller in a while!

I'll share my current playoff predictions soon!

The Internet Radio bug has bitten me again! Over the last year I've played with Nullsoft's Shoutcast to stream out my own mix of music. I've even written Python code that takes a list of MP3s and OGGs and based on my own rotation decisions (such as which artists get heavy rotation) will create a playlist with station ID's inserted at certain intervals. It made for a lot of fun, but since Shoutcast only supports MP3 streams, it was hard to pump out a low-bandwidth stream that sounded decent.
I just started looking into Vorbis streaming solutions the last two weeks, and things are starting to mature quite well. Oddsock maintains Oddcast, a Winamp plugin that creates MP3 and Ogg Vorbis streams, and Win32 builds of Icecast2 a Vorbis-compatible streaming server. After I get my basement computer configs stabilized for the winter (it can get cold down in the polar region), I'll probably get a private stream or two going. I estimate I'll probably have something going within the next two weeks.

If you want connection details, post here or email me! My mix usually contains heavy amounts of Rush, King's X, Dream Theater, The Tea Party, Extreme/Nuno, and Yes. I also like to put a good amount of other progressive rockers in there, like ELP and Genesis, and I'll probably be adding Porcupine Tree as well, thanks to Don!