Ramapithicines cross 600pts while passing Wolves

The big event of last night was the entry of yet another club, the Ramapithicines, to the 600pt club. They joined the club in spectacular fashion posting a 20pt night and racing past the Wolves, whom they are also playing in the Challenge Cup this week, to move into 6th place.

Further down the table, the Edge continue to have a solid week in their efforts to stay ahead of the last-placed Scourge. The race to avoid the Herbivore looks to be as closely fought as the race to win the Predator Cup. Speaking of which, the Bladerunners had a good night last evening but it might have been better had the latest installment of Brian's +/- experiment not fizzled on him. D.Markov got two points last night, on the power play, but went -1 for the night. Certainly not devestating but enough to temper what could have been an even better evening for the Bladerunners.

In the Challenge Cup, the game of the week is the tilt between the Bladerunners and the Severed Heads. The Heads are currently leading by a narrow margin but should that lead hold, the Severed Heads could move into first place. I say "could" because while the Heads hold the tie-breaker against the Bladerunners, the Shadowmen are also leading in their game and should the three teams be tied atop the Challenge Cup standings the situation gets much more complicated: Bladeruners are 2-0 vs the Shadowmen while the Shadowmen are 1-0 vs the Severed Heads with their final match in week 20. If all three teams have 2-2 records at the end of the season against the others you next go to pts scored in those games. Ironically, pts scored by the Severed Heads against the Bladerunners may help them win a tie-breaker against the Shadowmen.

There is also a spirited battle for the final playoff spot. The Knights Templar are doing their part in leading the current 4th placed team, the Highlanders. Beneath them, however, are 6 teams that still have a mathematical chance of making the post-season. Contenders and pretenders may become clearer after this week as all 6 are playing each other including the Great Whites and Lost Boys who are less than a point apart in their match. Should be fun to sort out.

Here are the stats as of last night's action:

Amid Cries of Protest, Stats Return to FunHL Blog!!

Ok, ok. I get it. You do love me...or at least you are as addicted to your daily stats "hit" as I am and can't be bothered to add another favourite to your lists. I won't take it personally that you didn't want to visit my site and just assume that you would rather we all do this together, like a dysfunctional family. I'm cool with that.



Seriously, I'm thrilled that so many of you have been asking for the stats to return here and now that Cam has converted to the Google-ized version of Blogger - I can post them myself again, so here we go.



Week 18 starts with only two games on the schedule and there is not much change in the numbers from the end of Week 17, with the exception of the race to avoid the Herbivore. The Edge, who had been slipping further and further back in recent weeks get Week 18 off with a bang - a 9pt night fueled by a +3 performance by M.Malik (6pts) and another 2pt night from B.Shanahan. Coupled with the Scourge's T.Priessing going -1, the Edge have doubled their lead on the Scourge from 10pts to over 20 in one night.



The rest of the Predator Cup standings, early Challenge Cup action (remember only four regular season games left, including this week) and the most recent Omnivore standings are as follows:

Stats going into WD2

For those who still look here for stats!

Admin status granted to Highlanders and Red 5

California Criminal Code 187

The Numbers 187 have turned up besides the team names highlander, bladerunners and great whites with xs' through their names.

An x through the shadowmen and severed heads with 187 - completed has also been seen...

Be Wary.

Invitations to FUNHL

You should all have recieved an invitation to join the FUNHL blog again.

My apologies for the difficulties this is putting us through.

Blogging the FUNHL

Hey everyone,

Because of the technological gap that was forming between Blogger and the version of the software I have been using, I have recently moved my blogs (including theFUNHL) to the new Google version of Blogger.

I suspect all that is necessary is for each of you to get your own G-mail account through Google, in order to be restored as permissable members to the FUNHL, but as yet I am not sure this is the case.

Please take a moment to survey the situation so I can assess what issues may exist.

Thanks,
Cameron

Highlanders' Blog Is Up

For some reason I am now able to post again. Good.

That said, I was only able to do it on my own blog as recently as yesterday so I've resurected it and would invite you to come check out the stats there.

Cam/Dan, any chance the Highlanders site could be added to the Blog list?

http://funhl-highlanders.blogspot.com/

FuNHL All Star Rosters

Here are the All-Star Line-up I have. The Shadowmen have now traded all
of their original nominees, twice. :-)

With the recent Lost Boys/Great Whites trade, I have the Lost Boys
sending Visnovsky on defense as opposed to Boucher.

Thanks for participating everyone. Enjoy the skills tonight, the NHL's
All-Star Warm-up Tomorrow and the FunHL All-Star game starting on
Friday.

FUNHL Blog etiquette

Just so we can keep the FUNHL blog somewhat focussed on its purpose for existing, not to mention readable, I'd like to reccomend the following;

- Please keep posts relevant to hockey, hockey pool, or poolie issues. (i.e. if Yzerman dies, if Yzerman comes out of retirement, if Yzerman is porking your atheist girlfriend, or even if you just want to post naked pictures of your girlfriend, that's all ok.

- If you wish to post Pizza menus, movie reviews, etc. let me know and I'll help you set up your own blog. Failing that, if what you have to say is actually interesting, send me an e-mail and I might just post it on my own blog (antiphonrising@blogspot.com).

- No embedded video on the FUNHL site until Rob gets Cable - which apparently will be in 2010. Video should be YouTube, and a simple link will be fine.

- Picture are ok

- Try to keep posts to less than a couple of pages of text. More than that and you bore me.

- Excessive foul language, porn, etc. will be deleted. My mom reads this blog.

- Keep it fun!

Line up clarification

I've already submitted a line up for this week. In fact, I submitted it before the extension through to Friday happened. I am disinclined to submit another line-up.

If I now make trades, what does my line up for Friday have to be based on? What my roster was Sunday night, or what my roster will be Thursday night? What about everyone who has not yet submitted a roster?

Uh, I'll talk in more detail with the GMs whose trades I am pursuing, but it occurs to me that timing might matter to me.

Richard.

My girlfriend is cool!

Well... if Brian gets to post regarding Pizza I get to talk about the coolest woman in Toronto.

Anyone who's done their reading of the loony blogosphere is well aware of the conspiracy by atheists and sexual deviants to corrupt the school system, overthrow good old-fashioned moral values and generally ruin the Christian US of A.

Until now I had thought this was worth a good laugh. My experience with atheists is they are prone to arguing, and not exactly "cohesive." I had always figured organized religion was a much greater threat to social stability because it was, you know, organized.

Well, then I met Jennie and her social group, and have been proven entirely wrong. The atheists are organized, and they are out to upset stable conservative society. They've had the prayer taken out of graduation at U of T. (Apparently we don't owe obtaining our degree to the grace of God anymore.) They write letters to the editor, crash "multi-faith" gatherings, and have decided that publicly funded Catholic education in Ontario is going down... constitutional guarantee nothing.

Read all about it... and donate! (Apparently their magazine is going national, so you could even write.)

But yes, it turns out I was mistaken: the atheists are organized.

http://secularfreethought.ca/

Final Stats Week 16

At the All Star Break:

Great Saturdays for a lot of teams resulting in some movement in the standings. The Bladerunners have the best week, the Edge the worst. The Highlanders hold on to their lead in the Predator Cup but the Bladerunners have halved the gap. The Severed Heads retake 5th spot. The Shadowmen join the 600pt club.

In the Challenge Cup, the Bladerunners' win over the Wolves clinches them a spot in the post-season while the Severed Heads and Shadowmen swap spots, and home-ice advantage, again.

In the Omnivore, the Severed Heads have a great night while the Highlanders falter and that moves the Severed Heads into 3rd but both teams remain in the "black".

Stats Through Friday Night

Quiet night in the NHL and even quieter night pool-wise. Several very close Challenge Cup games, including two within a point, going into the last night of the week. On the Omnivore side, the Severed Heads have, again, inched back over to the good side.

Lots of games tonight, as usual Saturday night will tell the tale for the week.

Stats Through Thursday Night

Nice night for the Great Whites, thank you Mr. Marleau – again with the 3 point night. The Personal Vendetta’s fall appears to have ended as they pull themselves out of 11th and ahead of the Edge. The Scourge are still making ground on both!



The game with the most potential standings implications is the Wolves-Bladerunners game, which the Bladerunners are currently leading. If the score holds up (and the Great Whites and Lost Boys continue to hold their leads in their games (against the Personal Vendetta and Severed Heads, respectively) then there will be a three-way tie for fifth place and a real race for the playoffs following the All-Star game.



The Bladerunners, having a very solid week, have consolidated their lead atop the Omnivore standings. Note that half the league is now either positive or better than -10pts. If the trend continues more than half the league could be positive by season’s end.

Ok... how about some non-hockey blogs?

Theory of relativity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Two-dimensional analogy of space-time distortion described in General Relativity.
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, refers specifically to two theories: Albert Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.
The term "relativity" was coined by Max Planck in 1908 to emphasize how special relativity (and later, general relativity) uses the principle of relativity.
Contents[hide]
1 Special relativity
2 General relativity
3 References and links
4 External links
//

[edit] Special relativity
Main article: Special relativity
Albert Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" introduced the special theory of relativity. Special relativity considers that observers in inertial reference frames, which are in uniform motion relative to one another, cannot perform any experiment to determine which one of them is "stationary". This is actually Galileo's principle of relativity; Einstein's contribution was to explicitly include electromagnetism within this principle, which required that the Galilean transformations be replaced by the Lorentz transformations. The resultant theory has many surprising consequences. In particular, it requires that the speed of light in a vacuum be the same for all these observers, regardless of their motion, or the motion of the source of the light, since the invariance of the speed of light is a consequence of Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

[edit] General relativity
Main article: General relativity
General relativity was developed by Einstein in the years 1907 - 1915. General relativity replaces the global Lorentz symmetry of special relativity with a local Lorentz symmetry in the presence of matter. The presence of matter "curves" spacetime, and this curvature affects the path of free particles (and even the path of light). General relativity uses the mathematics of differential geometry and tensors in order to describe gravitation as an effect of the geometry of spacetime. This theory is based on the general principle of relativity, which requires all observers to experience the same laws of physics, not just those moving with uniform speed, hence its name.

[edit] References and links
See the special relativity references and the general relativity references. For information on the silent film produced on this subject, see The Einstein Theory of Relativity.

Hockey Fights

I was watching some great NHL fight videos on You Tube and came across this video - ugly, just ugly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z8l9d2ogqc&mode=related&search=

Future player?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoedHDZER7k

All Star Lineups Thus Far

The week thus far...

Not much change following a quiet night other than the Wolves have passed the Severed Heads to move into 5th place. The Personal Vendetta, having a strong week, become the 11th team to join the 500pt club.

Trade: Kost Boys - Shadowmen

Bob asked me to post this here, because I'm not going to have e-mail access until tomorrow, or possibly Friday. (This whole 'girlfriend' thing: rocks.)

Um, it does seem a bit unfair that Bob can get me at work and the rest of you don't know how, so I'll e-mail out my work number with my line-up for next week. But I'm not gonna deal with hockey e-mails here.

Anyway, I clearly win this one, since I get the league's fifth best centre, and Bob gets the 6th best... except of course he'll no longer have his omnivore being eaten alive from the Bottom.

Speaking of Omnivore... can anyone explain why my score has suddenly gotten so much better? Did Koivu become a Buddhist? Did the plague wipe out the Ds? Seriously, how'd I get "-10" when, like 4 weeks ago, I was "-45?"

Oh yeah, the Trade:

To the Lost Boys: Nylander NYR C
To the Shadowmen: Brind'Amour CAR C

Um, no injuries at this time. No ability to reference RFA Status, but I think they're both normal drafts. (But Bob, if I am trading you an RFA for a non-RFA, I'll need to reconsider. As will you in the opposite case I would think)

Okay, there we go.

Richard.
GM of the Lost Boys.

Stats Through Tuesday Night - Week 16

Thus far:

The Edge joined the 500 club with the Personal Vendetta looking to do the same tonight. The Shadowmen have hit on some hard times the last few days and are now 60pts out of first. Indeed the groupings seem to all be spreading out a little bit – Doug's not buying it however, by Saturday everything will likely be back in flux.



In the Challenge Cup standings, Doug misread the previous Severed Head-Shadowmen result, Bob actually won, and so the Shadowmen are currently holding the tie-breaker and thus should be in 2nd as opposed to the Heads. That has been corrected here.

FunHL All-Star Game uses Reg Season Pts for Week 17, NOT those from the NHL All-Star Game

Hi guys,

For some f#*Ked up reason I can post a new topic (sans photos) but am unable to add comments to existing topics - or even new topics which I started. Google, why did you mess with my Blogger?

The NHL shuts down from Sunday the 21st to Thursday the 25th for their All-Star break but there are still 3 nights of games (rather full slates too) Friday the 26th thru Sunday the 28th. Points will still be collected for the Predator Cup race on those three days but a three-day week seemed a tad too short, IMHO, to base a Challenge Cup game (particularly late in the season with tie-breakers on the line) so I came up with the All-Star Game idea. Points gathered in those three days will be used to calculate the points for the All-Star teams which means that everyone should be able to nominate two forwards and one defenseman (except Dan, who doesn not have a single healthy d-man :-). Hasek, if his totals are higher than Kipper's by the end of the week, with the the OCC's starting goalie. Brodeur looks certain to start for the Calgary Conference.

Hope that clears everything up. Sorry I couldn't correct this sooner but...well I just hate what they have done to my Blogger status.

Peace,

Doug

The Fitzpatrick Affair

Something seems afoot - check out some of the commentary:

Mcerlain Off Wing



Mutcrutch




Mirtle



Perhaps there is more to this than a sentimental/humorous/mocking venture that fell slightly short?

Calgary Conference vs Out of Town Conference

Every GM needs to submit 2 fwds and 1 def as per Doug's instructions at start of the year. Otherwise Doug will pick highest scoring players from your team at those positions.

Let's add our players to the commentary on this blog, to keep all in the same place.

Great Whites Join 600 Club

Early days into week 16, and the Highlanders continue to lead not only the Predator Cup race, but the weekly totals as well. The Great Whites can take some solace in the fact that their depleted Defence core hasn't stopped them from cracking the 600 mark. The Scourge continue their strong weeks with a good start, while the Severed Heads inch towards joining respectability in the Omnivore with a near positive total.

Contribution to All-Star Team

Um, submitted for editorial comment for my fellow OCC GMs. (And to generate a more permanent record)

Lost Boys on the All-Star team:

Kovalchuk LW ATL
Brindamour C CAR
Boucher D TEX

Yes... all our nominable players come from the Confederate States... which, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with Hockey today.

Stats Through Week 15

On behalf of Doug - Let's hope I have more luck!

test

Omnivore Disruption from one game?

Hi guys,

No, the Omnivore was not drastically affected by the one game last night but I did have a chance to go through everyone's team and perfect their baselines - usually finding unexpected TGs who ought to have been played but never have been (Zhitnik, Ohlund, Koivu, etc). As a result, there has been some changes in the standings but rest assured, we would have discovered these ideal baseline line-ups at the end of the season anyway (and by then your ideal baseline will have changed itself a half-dozen more times). Still, this is as accurate as I can be, as of last night. :-)

As for the Predator Cup race, the Highlanders have an 11pt lead (which could evaporate by tomorrow). 9 teams have over 500pts, with the Edge looking to join the others in the next day or so. 5th through 7th are separated by less than 3pts and even the Scourge gained ground on 10 of 11 teams this week.

In the Challenge Cup, the Bladerunners lose but still lead with the Severed Heads and Shadowmen exchanging positions (on the basis of the tie-breaker). The Highlanders hold down the final playoff spot. The Wolves are one win (actually two with the tie-break) back and then there are a trio of teams one further game back. With only 5 games left, things are heating up. Remember, next week the Challenge Cup season takes a break with the first ever FunHL All-Star Game. Please remember to submit your team's representatives otherwise you will have to endure my selecting them for you. Two forwards and one defenseman from your current squad. The Calgary Conference (Great Whites, Bladerunners, Personal Vendetta, Ramapithicines, Knights Templar and Edge) includes the only 3-peat teams in the FunHL (the Great Whites who have won the Predator Cup 3 times and the Personal Vendetta who have won the Challenge Cup 3 times). By contrast the Out of Calgarly Conference (Severed Heads, Shadowmen, Highlanders, Wolves, Lost Boys and Scourge) have the two rookie GMs. Remember that the Scourge used to be the Okatoks Dogs, hence their placement in the OCC. Starting goaltenders, barring injuries or trades to the other conference this week, look to be M.Brodeur GW for the Calgary Conference and either M.Kiprusoff SH or D.Hasek LB for the OCC.

I would like to be able to attach the stats at this point but the "new" blogger apparently won't let me. Don't know why.

Highlanders, Bladerunners hit 600+pts, Severed Heads jump to 5th

The Highlanders, with a league-leading 51pt week, join the Bladerunners as the first two teams to hit 600pts. In doing so, the Highlanders extend their lead atop the Predator Cup standings and appear poised to pull out a close-fought victory in their Challenge Cup match with the Scourge, who had the league's second highest total for the week. Further down the table, the Knights Templar cross the 500pt level and are on the verge of winning thier game with the Great Whites.

While all week the Wolves and Ramapithicines had been exchanging positions, it was a strong Saturday night that helped the Severed Heads pass both and take posession of 5th spot in the Predator Cup race.

With only a Wild-Blackhawks tilt this evening, these standings should remain fairly stable now but who knows how much more damage the Havlat led Severed Heads can exact. Until then, these are the unofficial stats:

Coach "Trotz" found Dead in Mexico

It was only a matter of time...An ice-pick was found plunged into the back of the skull of former bench boss Trotzky in Mexico. A note to the Shadowmen with a SwissBank Account and the words :A pleasure doing business were found by the body. The Bounty has been paid and the Shadow had Trotzky decapitated in Temple of Shadows. His severed head has been sent to Cameron of the Severed Heads...

The team can hopefully now move on from this bloody business to a more successful 2nd half.

Quiet Friday Night Sets Up Big Saturday

It really was a very quiet night last night in the NHL and FunHL. The only change in the standings was that the Ramapithicines and Wolves exchanged positions for the 5th time this week. Suffice it to say that the two teams are close. Saturday's huge line-up should create some separation between the teams in the 4 Challenge Cup games currently separated by 5pts. The closest of those games has the Knights Templar holding a 0.66pt lead over the Great Whites. By contrast, the Edge have almost a 2pt lead over the Severed Heads following Friday's games.

See you tomorrow...

Here are your, unofficial, stats:







Since so little happened last night, here is a summary of past award winners in the FunHL.

Highlanders, Shadowmen displace Bladerunners

While much of the responsibility lies with Bladerunner d-man Brian Campbell and his -3 performance last night, the beneficiaries of the Bladerunners' misfortune was the Highlanders, who regained top spot in the Predator Cup race, and the Shadowmen, who reclaimed the lead in the Omnivore standings.

The story of the week, however, probably belongs to the two league rookies as both the Scourge and Lost Boys are currently having the two best totals this week.

Notables: The Lost Boys join the 500pt club following last night's play. The Wolves leapfrog the Ramapithicines into 5th place in the Predator Cup.

Challenge Cup games of the week: The Severed Heads hold a fractional point lead on the Edge while the Great Whites are in tough against the Knights Templar.

Here are the unofficial stats, if you have any questions about line-ups and points don't hesitate to ask:

Ramapithicines Jump Up The Standings

Hi everyone,

With Darrell releasing the official Week 14 stats, there is one major change to the Challenge Cup standings. The Highlanders ended up winning their tight match with the Lost Boys and, as a result, are now in the playoffs while the Wolves drop out.

The Ramapithicines have made the most, relative, noise so far this week jumping up into 5th place in the Predator Cup standings. The Bladerunners continue to hold a slight lead over the Highlanders. While the Highlanders are having the second best week so far, they are losing in their head to head match with the team having the best week thus far - the Scourge.

After Wednesday night's games the unofficial standings are as follows (corrected twice today, once from Brian checking his stats and again thanks to Bob noting his numbers were off - thanks to both of you for checking):

Proposed Change to Omnivore Reporting

Proposal:

Make the Omnivore easier to read, and less depressing for the vast majority of teams, change the way it is reported so all numbers are positive.


Currently:

The Omnivore is calculated by subtracting a "baseline" from your teams current score. The baseline is the total points you have from all the players, including prospects, you collected in the draft. If you do not trade (or--with more snark--if you do not trade like the house is burning down) you cannot realistically get a positive omnivore score.

Why not? Because the baseline is calculated off all your players, including those who you bench, those whose penalty minutes come in freakish unpredictable clusters, and the prospects you chose not to promote. There is simply a margin of error you will continue to hit. Not even the waiver drafts can make up for it significantly, because you're only dropping around a quarter of your players at the waiver draft. Well it could, but, You'd have to draft the equivalent of Philly and then WD the Sharks for that to work; and count on everyone else having made the exact same mistake, but then WDing Philly.


So, with the exception of "can't trade enough" GMs, the rest of us are tugging margin of error FUNHL scores that seem to be about 8% of baseline. With a stat based on two variables, generating teams in the positive and negative range, you have to engage in weird multiplication to figure out how far behind the lead you are. It encourages relegation of the omnivore to "who really cares anyway" status, because there doesn't seem to be much a GM can do about it, and it's depressing to score a "-24.59." (This is not just sour grapes by the way, I'm practically quoting Brian, and he's winning.


How to fix it: Don't change the method, change the reporting.

Add the absolute value of the lowest team in the omnivore race to all scores. Lowest score becomes a 0, every other score increases proportionately. The distance between teams remains the same, but now it all looks much more positive; really the stat itself hasn't changed.

We actually do the same thing at the moment with the Challenge Cup; each teams "score" is wins times 2. There's no particular reason to do this, because every week results in a win or a loss, but the value of wins are increased, just to look better. Real value doesn't change.

So, what does it look like? Here are the scores Doug just reported, compared to my "new" reporting method:

Team / Current Score / Proposed Score
Bladerunners / 26.95 / 68.22
Shadowmen / 25.81 / 67.08
Highlanders / 0.17 /41.44
Severed Heads / -4.40 / 36.87
Ramapithicenes / -15.27 / 26.00
Scourge / -18.54 / 22.73
Great Whites / -21.67 / 19.60
Lost Boys / -24.59 / 16.68
Edge / -36.25 / 5.02
Knights Templar / -36.58 / 4.69
Wolves / -39.88 / 1.39
Personal Vendetta / -41.27 / 0.00

Assuming excel is used to calculate stats as it is the cell formula for the proposed change is "=K23+ABS(MIN(K16:K27))" . K23 is the team in question, and K16:K27 is the range of cells holding the omnivore score as currently calculated.

So, that's my proposal. Since the stats posted here are unofficial anyway, I submit we try out my system for a little while, and see if it takes.

I do raise the ominous spectre of what if one year we all field worse teams than we draft? Do we really want someone winning the omnivore with a score of "-6.82"?

Richard.

Bladerunners overtake Shadowmen in Omnivore!!

Any other day the headline would be about the great early week the Scourge are having, why not - they are playing the Highlanders. Still, the story of the Omnivore all year has been how dominant the Shadowmen have been. They are still doing well but they have recently been joined by the Bladerunners and now Brian's team has managed to pull ahead.

I would be remiss if I didn't note that the Severed Heads, in a reversal of recent weeks, have pulled ahead of the Ramapithicines in the Predator Cup race if only by a hair.

Here are the standings after the first, real, night of action this week:

Bladerunners retain top spot.

Not much time to chat today. The Bladerunners, after a minor week 13 hic-up, are back atop the Predator Cup standings and hold on to top spot in the Omnivore. They also join the Shadowmen in the +20 Club in the Omniore.

The Severed Heads join the 500pt club and manage to eke out a win against the Ramapithicines. Other winners were the Bladerunners, Shadowmen, Edge, Lost Boys and Knights Templar.

Here are the Stats heading into Week 15: