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The PWHL is a Historic Moment for Women’s Hockey and Women’s Sports In General, and it’s been a long time coming

On New Year’s Day, 2024, in the historic Maple Leaf Gardens in downtown Toronto, the puck dropped to start a landmark game between teams from Toronto and New York City. After decades of instability and years of infighting, womens’ professional ice hockey had achieved a new milestone: one league to unite them, one league to rule them all. The puck drop marked the official on-ice start of the brand-new Professional Women’s Hockey League, a league in which all of the top women’s players from the USA and Canada could finally, at long last, have the competition they’ve always deserved.

Let’s talk about how we got here.

Women have played ice hockey as long as there’s been ice hockey to play. Dating back to the late 1880s, the women in the family of Lord Stanley (the Stanley Cup Stanley) were known to be avid hockey players, right along with the men. Most famously, Lord Stanley’s daughter Isobel Stanley took to the game fondly and served as both an early promotor and ambassador of the sport, as well as one of – if not the first – organizers of women’s hockey games in Canada. [1]

Hockey back then, for both men and women, was primarily if not exclusively an amateur pursuit, in line with much of the world of competitive sports at the time. Hockey turned professional comparatively early for most sports, in 1904 with the consolidation of several amateur teams into the International Hockey League in Michigan’s upper peninsula. [2] While that league itself didn’t last long, the puck was in motion for professional hockey – at least for men – and eventually saw the emergence and formation of the NHL in 1917.

For women, though, professionalism wasn’t just out of the cards, it was nowhere near the horizon, as those early, semi-organized and regional tournaments of the era of Isobel Stanley were essentially the limit of women’s hockey for decades. Local and regional associations held tournaments for amateur women’s teams, but these proved frequently unstable with teams and associations perpetually coming and going on both sides of the border. Canada found more stability and longevity in general, due to the massive popularity ice hockey found there, with two organizations in particular carrying the torch for women’s hockey in between world wars. The Ladies Ontario Hockey Association, formed in 1922, made for the most formalized women’s hockey body to date, and rare for the time, saw players from a working class background take charge. This group made an unsuccessful push for official recognition for women’s hockey players from the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in 1923. That recognition which ultimately wouldn’t happen until 1982. As Canada entered the 1930s, it began to feel the effects of the Great Depression and gradually over the decade, the LOHA slowly fizzled out. [3]

Parallel to the LOHA, the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association was formed in 1933 with the goal of forming a national organization for women’s hockey. Their lofty ambitions included a national championship tournament, all-star tours of Europe, and a bid to make women’s ice hockey a demonstration sport at the 1940 Winter Olympics planned to be held in Sapporo, Japan. Unfortunately, the DWAHA failed to achieve their goals before the Great Depression and outbreak of World War 2 interrupted their plans and led to their dissolution around 1940. [3]

From then onward, little succeeded to push for national, organized hockey for women in the USA or Canada, and the massive baby-boom-era sexist pushback against women saw more than just hockey players discriminated against. That is, until the 1970s.

The civil rights movement in the continent giving rise to second wave feminism brought with it a renewed vigor for women’s equality in athletics. Canada saw the rise of the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association in 1975, while in the States, the Ivy League’s university athletic programs added women’s ice hockey teams, bringing women’s hockey to heights it hadn’t seen since the 1930s. The next major turning point was just around the corner with the creation of the Abby Hoffman Cup in 1982, the first truly national championship for women’s hockey on either side of the border. [4] With Leeman Taylor in charge of the OWHA as their first salaried employee, the tournament gained corporate sponsorship and women got official recognition at the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.

South of the border, the college game kept growing under the banner of the Eastern Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. From its creation in the mid 1970s and thanks in no small part to the push to coeducationally integrate in then Ivy League, the EAIAW grew to feature 9 collegiate teams by 1978, and in 1984, the previously men’s-only ECAC Hockey integrated by absorbing the EAIAW and became the first collegiate conference to host a full women’s hockey tournament. [5]

With both nations reaching new heights in the mid-80s, talks began to take things international, and create a world championship for women in ice hockey. The international sanctioning body for ice hockey, the IIHF, at the time did not sanction any women’s events at any level, and despite the major push from the OWHA, weren’t willing to roll the dice. Instead, the OWHA led by director Fran Rider pushed to hold it themselves. On April 21, 1987, the Canadian Women’s National Team made their debut against Switzerland to begin the World Women’s Hockey Tournament. [6] Over the next 5 days, the aforementioned teams joined by those from the United States, Netherlands, Japan, and Sweden, along with an all-Ontario selection, competed in a 21-game round robin tournament to seed a 4-team playoff bracket. Canada and the United States topped the table, followed by Ontario and Sweden. In the knockout rounds, Canada won 8-2 over Sweden and Ontario shocked the United States 5-4 to qualify for the finals. The USA would blank Sweden 5-0 in the bronze-medal game, and the Canadian national side would defeat their compatriots 4-0 to win the gold. [7]

Despite shaky moments, the last-minute withdrawal of a West Germany side over disagreements regarding body checking (which was banned in Canada for women), and a paltry budget, the tournament succeeded, and put women’s hockey on the international stage. The IIHF took notice, and began planning for an official IIHF Women’s World Championship, to be held in 1990. [6]

Fast forward to March of 1990. Fran Rider once again stepped up to organize the tournament (despite the withdrawal of the CAHA), and eight national sides made their pilgrimage to the Ottawa Civic Centre. Canada and the United States were once again joined by Japan, Sweden and Switzerland, and found new foes in sides from Finland, Norway, and West Germany (back as the IIHF agreed to allow body checking). [8] Divided into two groups of four teams, Canada and Sweden topped Group A while the United States and Finland led Group B. Canada and the USA both won their semifinals to make the gold medal game, where Canada prevailed 5-2 to repeat as champions and win the first official gold medal. [9]

The success of this further pushed the envelope for women in hockey, and caught the eye of the International Olympics Committee. The IOC, seeing the rising tide and support for women on the ice, added women’s hockey to the in-planning 1998 Winter Olympics, to be held in Nagano. [10]

Outside of the international arena, women’s hockey continued to grow, boosted by the attention drawn by the major events. College hockey added more teams and another conference in Hockey East, and women gained a league of their own in 1992 in Canada with the Central Ontario Women’s Hockey League. Despite still remaining firmly amateur, the level of organization and play alike kept pushing higher and higher. Still, though, outside of the Abby Hoffman Cup, there were no national leagues in either country. But they didn’t need to wait long; another new zenith of attention in the Winter Olympics would change everything.

February of 1998 saw the first Olympic recognition for women in ice hockey, with 6 competing teams in Nagano: Canada, the United States, Finland, Sweden, Japan, and China. As had been the case in the 1992, 1994, and 1997 IIHF championships, Canada and the USA dominated, making the gold medal game. In front of a crowd of 8,626, the USA stunned the 5-time champions to win the first Olympic gold medal, bringing even more attention to the women’s game in the United States, and motivating Canada to take an unheard-of step: launching a professional league. [11]

Canada had in the COWHL a decently strong, decently run league. But it was fully amateur, it struggled to retain teams, and held a rather narrow footprint in Central Ontario. The COWHL had contracted to just 3 teams by the 1997-1998 season. The league then regrouped, brought in new investors, and rebranded as the National Women’s Hockey League. [12]

The newly-reinvigorated NWHL would feature eight teams across Ontario and Quebec, giving women the chance to make (some) money playing hockey in Canada for the very first time. The dream had finally been realized. The league continued to grow and expand westward, incorporating Alberta and British Columbia over the following seasons, before the cost issues of supporting the national footprint led the league to split into the NWHL and new Western Women’s Hockey League. [13] The WWHL would then itself continue to expand its reach, including Saskatchewan and the first professional American team, the Minnesota Whitecaps. The two leagues co-existed and co-operated well enough despite the perpetual tensions that exist in any sports leagues at this level, with one unlikely event bringing them closer together and closer to hockey fans across the continent.

Ask any hockey fan who won the 2005 Stanley Cup and they’ll give you a very unusual look. The NHL, having struggled with collective bargaining negotiations between its players and owners since the early 1990s, saw the collective bargaining agreement negotiated between players and teams in 1995 expire on September 15, 2004. What then followed was one of the most monumental events in the history of the sport. Owners and players found themselves at an impasse with the owners unwilling to negotiate with the requests of the players, causing the lockout to continue well through the end of 2004 and into 2005. On February 16, 2005, five months into the lockout, the NHL canceled what would have remained of its season. [14]

While the NHL was locked out, Canada’s women’s leagues found themselves as the highest level of hockey being played in many of their home cities, leading to a lawsuit fighting to award the Stanley Cup not to the NHL champion, but to the champion of the women’s interleague series. While the lawsuit ultimately failed, it did lead to the creation of another championship trophy named after a governor-general of Canada, the Clarkson Cup. Issues between the leagues, and between the designers of the physical trophy and Hockey Canada (a renamed CAHA), saw the cup ultimately not awarded, but the precedent for a major women’s championship trophy, akin to the Stanley Cup, was set. [15] The increased attention also highlighted issues the players, teams, and owners had with the state of women’s professional hockey in Canada, leading to the collapse of the NWHL after the 2006-2007 season after multiple failed attempts to merge the two leagues in Canada. [16]

For the 2007-2008 season, the NWHL would be reorganized as the fully-amateur Canadian Women’s Hockey League, featuring the same Ontario/Quebec footprint as a counterpart to the WWHL across Alberta, BC, and Minnesota. [16] The idea of a championship trophy awarded to the interleague champion persisted, using the Abby Hoffman Cup, until the issues surrounding the Clarkson Cup were resolved in 2009. The unstable stasis between the CWHL and WWHL continued through the 2011 Clarkson Cup, after which the WWHL merged with the CWHL, once again uniting professional hockey under a single banner. [17]

With all of this happening (mostly) in Canada, opportunities for American players were limited. They could either try and play in Canada, or… well, find some local amateur team to play for. And even for those playing in Canada, the money wasn’t much. There were bonuses and incentives, expenses covered, sponsorship deals, yes, but none of the salaries one would expect as a professional athlete. That would soon change.

A former player for Northwestern University, Dani Rylan, found a way to change things. After meeting with players and investors, Rylan launched the National Women’s Hockey League (yes, same name as the other one) in March of 2015 with a budget estimated at $2.5 million, higher than any league that had yet taken the ice. This professional American league would initially feature four teams in hockey hotbeds in the northeast: the Boston Pride, Buffalo Beauts, Connecticut Whale, and New York Riveters. While the salary cap was a modest $270 thousand, the $10 thousand minimum per-player was at that point the highest guaranteed minimum salary women had ever seen in ice hockey. [18]

The league saw some initial highs with sponsorship deals with Dunkin’ Donuts, a successful outdoor game between Buffalo and the CWHL’s Montreal Canadiennes, and the awarding of the first Isobel Cup to the Boston Pride in March, but ended up burning through money, which would unfortunately become a recurring trend. Ahead of the second season, the NWHL announced they were cutting minimum salaries in half, cutting the above-minimum salaries by similar amounts, and switching to a ticket-based revenue split to compensate. Despite gaining partnerships with NHL teams and arenas, the league struggled to address questions over their finances and investors. [19] This, too, would prove to be a recurring theme.

While the NWHL was celebrating the end of its 4th season, up in Canada, the CWHL was in trouble. Only, nobody outside of the league office knew it.

Following the merger between the CWHL and WWHL, Canadian pro women’s hockey found a period of relative stability. The CWHL added teams in Boston, continued to grow across Canada, and even added two teams based out of China as part of China’s own push to grow hockey domestically. They also added dedicated player salaries, following the NWHL, and began discussing the possibility of a cross-border merger, rallying behind the #OneLeague movement. [20] The 2019 Clarkson Cup finals came and went, successfully, with Calgary taking the honors, but only days later, the league suddenly announced they were shutting down immediately. Whether the blame lie with investors, a failed restructuring, dilution of the talent pool across the border, competition between leagues, ultimately, it didn’t matter. The CW[7] https://www.iihf.com/en/news/18481/ww-30-story-12HL tried to follow the NWHL’s lead, and paid the ultimate price. [21]

In the aftermath, the NWHL announced plans to add two new teams in Toronto and Montreal over the coming seasons, but neither would be ready for the upcoming 2019-20 campaign. They also announced that their partnerships with two NHL teams, the Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils, had ended as well. This led to another painful revelation: the league could not afford to pay the full-time salaries the players had requested, nor offer any benefits on top of their contracts, like medical insurance. To say this disappointed the players is an understatement. During all of this, they formed a union, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, to advocate collectively for living wages, training programs, and essential benefits, which they hoped could be served in a single, united, American and Canadian league. [22] With the NWHL unable to meet their demands, the members of the PWHPA withdrew from the league and formed their own independent competition directly controlled by the union.

September of 2019 saw the PWHPA launch their Dream Gap Tour, a traveling series comprising rotating teams named after designated captains rather than franchises or cities. The series would hold 4 to 6 games in a given city across two days, treating each event as a mini-tournament showcase than a traditional league structure. [23] While the schedule was ultimately cut back due to the state of the world in March 2020, the series managed to hold 6 showcases and sent a selection to the 2020 NHL All-Star Game, including a women’s 3-on-3 game for the first time. [24] To put a cap on their high profile series, 4 PWHPA players were also invited to the double-A men’s ECHL’s all-star tournament, taking the ice alongside their male counterparts with one woman on each of the 4 men’s teams. Two women, Kali Flanagan and Annie Pankowski, scored goals in the tournament, whole Gigi Marvin registered an assist. [25]

During the height of the pandemic, the NWHL offered their first major response to the PWHPA, by beginning their Canadian expansion. On April 22, the NWHL announced that they were expanding to Toronto for the upcoming season, while still looking for owners for 4 of the 5 existing teams. The season was initially planned to be a 20-game slate for all 6 participating teams, but very quickly, once again due to 2020, the league had to push back the start of the season, and ultimately settled for a shortened bubble campaign to be held in Lake Placid, NY. [26] The players who hadn’t defected to the PWHPA’s Dream Gap Tour raised concerns about their salaries being affected by truncating the season, leading the NWHL to guarantee full-season salaries for however much of the season would be played, and even guaranteed salaries for players who opted out of play. [27] Despite their best efforts and precautions, the NWHL’s COVID bubble season was interrupted in its first week, with the withdrawal of the Metropolitan Riveters due to an outbreak among their ranks. The schedule was adjusted, but that lasted only days as the Connecticut Whale also had to withdraw on February 1. Two days later, the NWHL suspended the season. [28]

The pandemic also interrupted the parallel PWHPA Dream Gap Tour, which had pivoted from the captain-based teams to 5 hub-based, sponsor-named teams representing Calgary, Minnesota, Montreal, New Hampshire, and Toronto. The tour also planned to track standings and award a championship trophy, the Secret Cup (sponsored by Secret deoderant), but that too got set to one side after the whole world’s front fell off. [29]

Following both sides’ 2021 campaigns, the NWHL had some big news. The league found new owners for all of the league-owned teams, brought in new investors, and announced a doubling in the salary cap to $300 thousand per team. Along with this, the league rebranded as the Premier Hockey Federation, a fresh name for a fresh start. [30] This reinvigorated league managed to start pulling players from the PWHPA, who were unfortunately struggling to promote their Dream Gap Tour. The PHF also launched another new team in Montreal, and ahead of the 2022-2023 season, announced another major monetary milestone. For the upcoming season, the salary cap would increase again, to $750 thousand, and players would have full health insurance coverage. Along with these major wins, players would gain a 10% equity ownership of their teams, a targeted move aimed directly at the PWHPA. [31]

The moves worked. The PWHPA took notice of where the PHF was heading, reorganized as a formal union, and came back to the negotiating table following their respective 2022-2023 seasons. During the discussions, the PHF announced that the entire league had been bought out in anticipation of creating a new league in conjunction with the PWHPA. While the players union celebrated their massive victory, the players signed with the PHF but unaffiliated with the union were left in the cold, as they would not be included in negotiations. That said, the PWHPA did look out for their fellow players, and negotiated a payout of either 1/2 of the agreed 2023-24 salaries, or $5 thousand, whichever was more, for all of the former PHF players. Those players would also receive the payout from their 10% equity, and if they were unable to sign with a team for the 2023-24 season, they would receive another $10 thousand compensation payment. [32] From the negotiations and the ashes of the PHF, a new league would emerge, at last. Welcome to the Women’s Professional Hockey League.

The WPHL immediately worked to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors. Before teams were announced, the league had a collective bargaining agreement signed with the renamed PWHLPA, now officially representing all players in the nascent league. And while the initial salary cap was believed to be only $1.265 million, down from the $1.5 million the PHF had offered for 2023-24, the CBA included an annual 3% raise for 8 years, meaning they would reach that $1.5 million mark by 2029, and more importantly, had it guaranteed in writing in contract, a first for professional women’s hockey. [33] While at the high end, some star players would be taking a substantial pay cut, the average salary of $55 thousand and minimum of $35 thousand marked new high water levels for compensation for women in hockey, without factoring in the annual growth. The agreement also included benefits, not just health care, but for housing, traveling, relocation, transportation, and more, all long-desired standard issue benefits for professional athletes that had, till then, only been on offer for men in ice hockey. [34] And even more important than the contracts or salaries, the league would be the one, singular, united league for women in North America, bringing the warring leagues period of the past decades to an end, at long last.

Following a successful signing period and draft, the league announced their own original six. Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa would host teams in Canada, while Boston, New York, and Minnesota would in the United States. [35] After a very poorly received announcement for team names (which included, among others, the Boston Wicked and Ottawa Alert), the league announced that they would debut with purely geographic names, with each team being referred to as PWHL followed by their location (e.g. PWHL Toronto, PWHL Minnesota). [36] The players would let their hockey speak for themselves.

Anticipation for the league grew. The PWHL signed deals with Canada’s three largest sports broadcasters in TSN/RDS, CBC, and Sportsnet, announced a free-for-all YouTube option for the rest of the world, and signed partnerships with Air Canada and Canadian Tire. Games began selling out weeks before the season even began across all 6 markets, with multiple games outselling the previous North American record crowds for professional women’s hockey by more than double. [35] Everyone was ready for the puck to drop, to finally officially unify women’s hockey as a major professional sport.

Toronto hosted New York at the Maple Leaf Gardens on New Years Day, and when the puck hit the ice, the PWHL had arrived. 10 minuts, 43 seconds into the first period, New York broke through with Ella Shelton scoring, fittingly, with an assist from the second NWHL’s first ever first overall pick, Alex Carpenter. Carpenter would add a goal of her own in the 3rd, followed by two more form Jill Saulnier and Kayla Vespa as New York blanked Toronto 4-0. The full-capacity crowd of 2,537, despite watching their home team lose, was electric, celebrating the success of their local legends playing for the opponents.

The following day in Ottawa at the TD Gardens, Montreal prevailed 3-2 in overtime in front of a world record breaking crowd of 8,318. That record only lasted four days, as Minnesota’s first game at the Xcel Energy Center against Montreal drew 13,316 fans through the gates. Through the first five games, three were listed as sellout crowds, and Toronto has already sold out their entire home season. The PWHL has found a recipe for local engagement that their predecessors could only dream of.

It’s always impossible to predict how well a sports league will continue to succeed, but all of the right pieces are here for the PWHL, and with it, women’s professional hockey has found an unprecedented level of strength to start this new adventure. Even if things ultimately end up changing in the coming years, New Years Day of 2024 will go down as a major milestone.

Sources

New year, new project: ThinkPad T530

I’ve always been a fan of ThinkPads, dating back to growing up and seeing some of the late-90s/early-00s models around my Dad’s IT colleagues. They’re utilitarian in a way that reminds me of 1980s consumer electronics, like hi-fi components, and I’ve always been nostalgic for that Sony/Kenwood sort of look.

I’ve actually ‘owned’ two previous old ThinkPads, actually: an extraordinarily thick, circa-1997 380D with an original generation Pentium CPU, and a relatively-modern-ish T500, both pulled out of the e-waste garbage at work. Given that neither will really run a modern OS all that happily (and one doesn’t support Windows versions after like, Windows 98SE), they’re fun novelties but not really practical to use regularly.

ThinkPad 380D. Somehow heavier than it looks.

So instead, after getting more sold on ThinkPads and the tinkering possibilities by my girlfriend, I went on eBay and found a T530. It was in solid physical shape, firmly middle-of-the-range for what Lenovo offered, and at a decent price. I threw out a bid, and ended up winning it for $127.50 of my hard-earned dollars, with an additional $28.80 for package and posting from Pennsylvania and $12.50 for the alphabet.

It arrived an understandable amount of time later, as listed, and I was very pleased. Spec-wise, out of the box, it was equipped with the following:

  • CPU: i7-3320M (dual core Ivy Bridge)
  • RAM: 4GB DDR3L-1600 (OEM)
  • SSD: 120GB SATA ADATA SU800
  • 1600×900 15.6″ LCD
  • Wifi: Anatel 1×1 B/G/N Wireless (OEM)
  • ODD: CD/DVD Burner
  • Original (dead) battery
Pre-tinkering, from the original eBay listing. (biggitybiggims on eBay)

To be honest, I bought it mostly for the chassis and motherboard since those are the hardest/most annoying to source and swap. Getting the 1600×900 screen instead of the (substantially worse) 1366×768 panel was also nice. But pretty much everything else was getting pulled before long.

So, after unpacking and firing it up for the first time, I ran a few tests to make sure everything was working as expected, and then was hand-held through how a tool called 1vyra1n works. It’s basically a BIOS ‘jailbreak’ that grants access to every possible feature available, not just the ones Lenovo wants end users to have. Neat!

Then it was time for upgrades.

First came a SSD swap, pulling out the SATA drive and sticking a 256GB Samsung PM871 mSATA drive in one of the open mini PCIe slot. Out came the basic OEM ram, and in went a 2x8GB kit of properly nice Crucial Ballistix Sport memory. Not just 4x the capacity, but running at a higher clock speed with lower latency. Nice.

Next came a proper OS. This is a Lenovo ThinkPad, and while it was shipped with Windows, had a Windows sticker on the bottom, and has the Windows logo on the keyboard, you don’t run Windows on a ThinkPad. That’s not what they’re for, and if I wanted to run Windows on a laptop, I already have a Surface Pro with Windows 10.

No, this thing got Linux, and in my specific case, it got KDE Neon. It’s basically Ubuntu with the latest and greatest KDE desktop environment and programs. I’ve been a KDE fan forever, and I like getting the shiny new KDE features, so rock on. And since it’s built off Ubuntu (which is already built off of Debian), it’ll run damn near anything that’s been ported to Linux. It also lets me get all fun with the theming and customizations, which of course I did immediately.

Happiness is a customized KDE desktop.

But all of those are still fairly basic, routine upgrades. Those aren’t weird.

The real fun began with the CPU upgrade. Now, one could just go look at the CPUs the laptop shipped with, find the top-tier chip, and buy it off eBay. One could do that and have a very normal, reliable, consistent experience. But that’s extremely boring. Instead, I went on AliExpress and ordered an Intel engineering sample of the i7-3720QM. The finished, actually-released-by-Intel 3720QM is at least twice the power of the original chip, mainly due to the fact that it has four cores, not two. But the one I have is technically Intel’s confidential property from when the 3720QM was still in development. I don’t think they particularly mind that I have it now, given that the final product was publicly released 9 years ago and has long since been discontinued, but it might technically have been stolen property-adjacent. Also it’s not fully guaranteed to work the same as the final product given that it’s a testing sample made while the CPU was in development. But really, that’s a far better story and far more fun.

CPU arrived one standard AliExpress wait later, and it worked exactly as advertised by the vendor in China. Neat!

Next came a few touch-ups to deal with a few of the issues any second-plus-hand laptop would have. The battery was the original battery it came with, and was in bad shape as any 9-year-old laptop battery likely is. Amazon to the rescue with a reasonably-priced equivalent. The laptop was also missing two of its rubber feet and the trackpad sticker was worn out, which again were easily handled thanks to Mr. Bezos’ Rube Goldberg Machine of Suffering.

Next to go was the wifi card, which was fine but basic, the lowest-tier OEM part Lenovo ever used. Instead, I went for an Atheros AR5B22 card. It’s the same spec of B/G/N wifi, but uses fully FOSS firmware (meaning no need for proprietary blobs to work in Linux) and runs a good 5-10% faster than the original card. For $10 or less, it’s totally worth it.

The most recent major component that needed replacing was the keyboard. The one it shipped with was in rough shape. It was bent, the bezel was falling off, and the keys had their coating almost completely gone, making them feel slimy and unpleasant. Any random 30-series ThinkPad keyboard is compatible, and getting a high-grade USA layout keyboard from eBay is quick, easy, and cheap, but again, that’s boring.

No, it’s far more fun to import a backlit dual English/Korean keyboard from AliExpress. Which, of course, I did.

One more standard AliExpress wait later, and the Meme ThinkPad is nearing completion.

There are a few things left I’d like to work on. I have a random 500GB 7200rpm hard drive in here for additional storage which I’d really like to replace with something faster (either hybrid SSHD or SSD) and bigger (1-3TB would be nice), but the storage market is fucked because of Chia Coin mining. So that’s on hold until the dumber side of stupid crypto hype dies down. Instead, I’m going for a screen upgrade. For about $100, I can upgrade to a full 1080p panel with better dynamic range and marginally newer and nicer technology. Since $100 doesn’t go anywhere nearly as far as it should in the storage market at present, that’s a much better quality of life upgrade for the money. Plus, KDE supports proper fractional scaling so I can dick with those settings and upscale a bit. Perfect!

In the end, I’ve ended up with a $150 laptop with about $250 worth of parts in it that performs about as well, CPU-wise, as my current personal Surface Pro 6. Yes, I could have probably just bought a faster laptop for the money, but again, that’s boring and pedestrian and not fun. It’s far more fun to have a project computer that can get upgraded piece by piece into something nicer than it was when it was new, and having that in a laptop is actually practical.

So instead of having regrets, I have the opposite: a literally brand new ThinkPad X230. It’s the T530’s little brother, cramming much of the same features (sans optical drive) into a tiny little laptop. It’s delightful, and the ThinkPad nerds at large have already modded it to hell and back. I can put in ridiculously high-end screens and reworked motherboards and make it almost as fast as its full size sibling. But those parts are more expensive and trickier to get ordered, and they require far more work to install. So for now, I’m cutting my teeth with this one.

Don’t talk to me or my son ever again.

This thing has actually been in use more often than my Surface since I got it, and I love using it. I have my graphic design tools installed, I have Bitwig for working with audio and music projects, and OBS for some video capture. It’s not quite powerful enough to handle editing, but I have both a Surface Pro and a proper desktop that can handle that easily. 90% of what I want to do on a computer can be done happily on here, and it’s just more fun to be running a modded Linux laptop than something stock.

On Linux: Giving Zorin OS a go

Hello website!

I’m gonna ramble a bit about Linux today. For years, like, since high school, I’ve sworn by Linux Mint as my go-to, first-choice, no-brainer Linux distro of choice. But maybe that’s gonna change?

See, yesterday, I assisted a friend in dual-booting his laptop, and found that Zorin OS had a much better out of the box experience than Mint typically does. I’m no stranger to a bit of configuration and troubleshooting in the wild world of Linux, and I was shocked at how little needed to be done. Even high-DPI scaling, something Linux is notoriously not great at, worked flawlessly.

So, I’m gonna give Zorin a go on my primary Linux laptop, a Dell Latitude E5450. This is the first time I’ve switched my primary Linux device’s distro since my initial switch from some flavor of Ubuntu to Linux Mint circa 2009.

In fact, for quite a few years in high school, I was Linux-exclusive. My only main computer, a Toshiba Satellite laptop, was running Linux as its only OS, and everything I did was done on that laptop. That’s when I got heavily interested specifically in Mint.

But now, maybe it’s time for a change. I’m installing Zorin today, and I’ll be using this laptop for much of my lighter work stuff for a few weeks.

Rant: IndyCar’s 600km Race in Texas is NOT 600km.

Every June, the IndyCar series pays a visit to Texas Motor Speedway. It’s been an annual event dating back to the track’s opening in 1997. From 2007 through 2010, and then 2012 and 2013, the race was advertised with the number “550” as the distance. 550 kilometers. For 2014, it was extended another 50 kilometers, to round out at a nice, even 600.

Except those numbers are completely meaningless. Here’s why.

Texas Motor Speedway is not 1.5 miles long. All of those numbers are based on that assumption, which IndyCar internally refutes. All of their timing and scoring is based on a measured distance of 1.44 miles. That works out to 2.317 kilometers. Time for a bit of light math.

The race, during the “550km” era, ran for 228 laps. 228 laps times 2.317 kilometers equals… 528.276km. That’s not even close to 550. To get close, we need another nine laps, leaving us at 549.129km in total, and 237 total laps.

But wait, the discrepancy actually gets worse. The difference between the old race distance and what was advertised was 21.724km. Now that the race is 248 laps long, it’s a total distance of 574.616km. That’s more than 25 kilometers shy of what’s advertised, a whopping 11 laps.

If the race were 259 laps, that would reach 600.103km of race distance, and that’s goddamn close to exactly what’s painted in massive numerals along the front stretch. But it’s not, it’s 11 laps off.

If one were to be sufficiently annoyed, and go back through every single race that IndyCar has run in Texas, adding up the total distance run versus the listed distance, they’d find some very irritating numbers.

At least, that’s what I did, and that’s definitely what I found.

Even excluding the shortened fall race in 2003, wherein Kenny Bräck had his accident, we find that 14,115.16km of racing has been run by IndyCar at Texas Motor Speedway, but they’ve advertised it as 14,695.23km. That’s 580 missing kilometers, for a total of 250 race laps not run.

Yes, this is just a ranty missive about something mostly inconsequential, but I want my extra laps, please.

Or at the very least, adjust the race distance to match what’s advertised.

 

 

Things I’m Adding Here Soon(ish)

So, I’ve been making plans to use this space for more than just mirroring what I do elsewhere, and here’s the short summary of what I have planned for my website in the nearish future.

First up, I plan to post at least one unique thing here per week of some sort. I want to keep writing, and to write a wider variety of content, and this lets me share things and get feedback publicly while still having full control over everything. I have some things on PC gaming that I’d like to do, as well as writing about writing stuff, and some non-soccer related musings on sports. All of that will end up on here.

Secondly, I’m working on getting all of my graphics projects on here. This includes all the soccer flags, radial brackets, and more. I want to make it nice and easy to share not just what I’ve made, but also the thought process of why I did what I did. This isn’t quite as simple as I’d ideally like it to be, but it’s coming.

Third, I’m adding a few pages of “recommended” stuff. These range from the software programs that I use to get work done, the books and movies that have influenced the most, links to websites I use for research, and that sort of thing. Basically, if it contributes to my work in any meaningful way, it’ll end up in a tab. Thinking about calling this section “Essentials” because I’m a pretentious hipster.

Fourth, I’m adding a contact/submission/commission thing for people who want flags made for something. I want to make more flags for a wider variety of things, and this should hopefully give me ideas I never previously considered.

Fifth, and finally, I’m working on a “Public Gratitude” page, wherein I list all the people I want to personally thank for helping me get to where I am. Some of these people are authors or writers that influenced me, others are the individuals who offered me the chance to work on something new. I personally find it important to let people know when they’ve done or made something that has personally either affected me or inspired me, and I want to keep all of this in a nice central place. It’ll be interesting to see all the names written out in one place.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m not counting this as my weekly post, even though i have every right to, because I’m (of course) setting arbitrary rules for myself once again.

 

 

Purely Speculation: A Non-Existent League

It’s become a recurring joke, bordering on meme territory, that the weird world of American soccer relies heavily on rumor, anonymous sources, and outright speculation. So much is said, maybe not publicly, but far more than is actually done. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s in line with routine punditry found among any sport. However, the jokes of “60-90 days” or “sources say” or “announcement for an announcement” have increasingly permeated soccer culture.

Maybe that’s why Asbury Park FC is a thing. If you’re unfamiliar, Asbury Park FC is a fake team, an anti-team, a parody of modern soccer and modern professional sports. There’s a website where jerseys and scarves are sold, and occasional news updates of fake player transfers. But there’s a heavy joke-y nature to the whole thing. It’s very punk rock satire.

This has me thinking about rumor and speculation and the disconnect from reality. Asbury Park FC isn’t a thing, but it’s definitely a thing. And there are dozens of teams around the country that were announced, named, and never signed a player. What if that were the entire game? What if the entire point of a league was to not actually exist? No players are signed, no tickets are sold, no balls are kicked, but that doesn’t prevent the existence of statistics tracking goals scored, game day attendance, and team standings.

This is something of a thought experiment, and I’ve yet to fully convince myself that this idea isn’t completely stupid. It’s at least somewhat amusing to me, and gives me complete creative freedom, but at the same time, it’s inherently pointless.

And maybe that’s the point.

So. What the hell, let’s see where this train of thought goes.

For this, I feel the need to establish some sort of basic rules for myself to remain consistent for whatever this ends up being. The league needs to have a name and branding, for certain. There needs to be a process for team announcements. Everything is going to be as real as a fake endeavor can possibly be. Even if it’s parody, or fan fiction, or the logical extension of “Whose Line?” scoring, it’s not anarchy. And where would American soccer be without the existence of and reliance on arbitrary regulations?

First up: the name. Hypothetical Soccer League, known as the H-League for short. This is as straightforward as something this arbitrary can be. The logo is a combination of a question mark, a lightbulb, and a key hole. As per industry standard, all of these elements represent some flavor of obligatory nonsense. The question mark represents the speculation and quasi-rhetorical questions found everywhere in soccer media, the lightbulb represents the idea of creating a new league or team, and the key hole represents the secrecy and anonymity maintained by the media. The “H” in the center is indicative of a dead filament, representing failed plans, and it also stands for “Hypothetical”. Poetry.

.League Wide.png

 

Of course, there will be teams, and those are sure to be announced in the coming days/weeks/months, and I’ll let you know when those announcements are coming, but for now, this is all.

The YouTube Experiment

I’m starting a YouTube channel. It’s going to bear the same branding as this website, intended as the video catch-all equivalent for me for the foreseeable future.

I’ve uploaded maybe a half dozen videos to YouTube in the past, but never with the intention of any sort of regularity. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, it’s that I really have no idea what I’m doing with regards to video. I’ve done some incredibly rudimentary video editing, and I worked on a video project back in high school, but stuff like what I typically see on YouTube is a complete blank spot for me.

In the past, when writing was still a blank spot for me, I started this WordPress site, wrote more, shared my posts around the internet, and eventually became what I would consider to be a good writer. With graphic design, I dove headlong into InkScape, started working on little projects, and have moved up to my sports flags, logo work, and all sorts of interesting projects.

With video, I feel the best way to figure it out is to start a YouTube channel and learn by doing once again. So, I’ll be posting those videos to this site, and several written articles will be made into videos. I also have a few ideas about the tools I use for the work I do as part of a larger “What exactly is it you do?” series.

My initial video projects will be made using OBS, a tool that I’m gaining familiarity with, and edited at first with OpenShot. There may be better free options out there, but this one looked decent enough for now.

So yeah, consider this the official announcement. Here is a link to the channel if you’re interested in subscribing. And click here for the video equivalent of this announcement.

Growing Pains, or the story of today’s build.

Today, I built my dad a brand new desktop pc, his first new desktop since the summer of 2008.

He wanted to go pre-built, but I told him he’d get a lot more PC for his cash if I did the assembly and picked the parts.

So, after weeks of research and build checking, I went to Micro Center earlier today on a mission. I already had priced everything out and the tech I’ve been working with helped get everything together. Shopping went shockingly smoothly, and that tech/salesdude very much so earned his commission.

Assembly, hardware wise, went smoothly as well. Motherboard was easy to install, CPU went in smoothly, fan and heatsink installation took only a few minutes, and all the wiring was clearly marked and labeled. So far, so good.

Once everything was bolted and screwed and wired into place, it was time to fire the beast up, just for confirmation.

Post and BIOS, first try, no issues, everything working. Never happened before, but I’m not complaining (at least about this).

The drama begins when we get to the software. Back in 2009 or so, my dad bought a 3 pack Windows 7 upgrade license for Home Premium. He’s never built a machine from scratch, always going OEM, so you may notice, we’ve not bought a pure install (non-upgrade) license of Windows since 98SE. Nearly TWENTY years ago.

And, of course, the upgrade disc didn’t work correctly, because I didn’t have anything installed on this machine. Fantastic. I don’t have any other working clean install discs lying around, so in order to set up this new machine, I had to go pirate a Windows Vista install disc, install Vista, and THEN install a clean Windows 7. This took about three hours longer than I have patience for, and when everything booted, I was eager to get this fucker finished.

But wait! Why should things go smoothly? Drivers install as expected, but even when connected to wifi and running normally, Windows Update refuses to do a goddamn single iota of a thing. Installing SP1, hoping it fixes the issue.

Shit, Microsoft, get it together.

My Workflow, or why shopping for technology is pissing me off.

Right now, I’m using a two year-old phone, a seven year-old e-reader, and a desktop that’s almost to the decade point. It came with Windows Vista, when that was new. And my tablet, that’s been retired due to a broken micro USB port. It’s also three years old, and

Obviously, this is unacceptable, and I realize this, and I’m trying to find suitable replacements.

The desktop computer part, that’s easy. Plenty of configuration sites and then amazon or newegg and I’m set. An afternoon with lego’s autistic cousin and I’ll have something perfect.

But everything else, that’s where I’m getting pissed off. And it’s all the portable stuff, too.

I went through this not quite a year ago with music, when it became glaringly obvious that smartphones are pretty much useless at high end audio, due to restricted storage space and shitty audio processing hardware. After briefly using a Sansa Clip, the glorious, amazing, wonderous, superlative Fiio X1 came out. I’ll be reviewing that in the context of how I run my music collection at some point, but needless to say, music audio is firmly covered, and that task is irrelevant to my decision making process from here on out.

Rather than looking at what device is getting replaced, I’m more concerned with how I can best accomplish a set of tasks. I’m less tied to a specific device than I am the workflow I use as a whole.

For me, most of my working time is spent using Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress, because that’s what it means to be in web content. Like this, right now, what I’m doing, is not all that different than what I did at work and was actually assigned in a recent class. I actually don’t use the stock Facebook app, or any Facebook app, because every single one of them is unusable, especially the “official” one. For that, I need a web browser. A good one.

Reddit, on Android, is easy. Reddit News Relay for Reddit is simply the best one out there. Reddit Now is a close second for when Relay isn’t working (like on my phone, for fucks sake), but they’re both great and do what they need to do easily. Same with Twitter, plenty of great options.

I actually don’t use wordpress much on portable stuff except my laptop, and again, just needs a web browser (and a non-shitty keyboard).

But herein lies the dilemma:

The things I do on my tablet, laptop, and phone have a LOT of overlap. The only exclusives are Waze on the phone, ebooks (sometimes) on the tablet, and Netflix on the laptop. So now, I’m wondering if one of these three devices gets booted off the island.

This is accomplished by taking the tablet functions and splitting them across laptop and phone. This also means I’m looking for a touchscreen-enabled laptop-slash-Surface-device and getting a massive brick of a bitch of a phone.

I like small smartphones. It’s easier to use, typically more power-efficient (since screens are a massive battery suck), and comfortable in the hand.

Yet, the phone I’m considering to solve this problem is the Droid Turbo. That bastard is a whopping 41% bigger than my current phone. And it’s going to complicate the pocket situation. Normally, I carry my phone, a pen, a notebook, and my wallet. This thing is going to crowd out all non-phone objects to one pocket, which is annoying, but potentially manageable.

I want to test it out, and see if I hate it as much as I expect I might, but I only get 14 days thanks to the draconian policies of cell phone carriers.

Oh, and I know I’m sticking with Android. I’ve tried an iPhone, and it’s good at being a podcast player in the car and nothing else. And Windows Phone, yeah nope. The only parts of the software I’m at all familiar with are elements I disable and replace on my desktop. Android is literally the only rational choice for me.

So, say I get the big phone. I’m probably sacrificing the tablet’s ebook-reading abilities, cause reading on a phone, no matter the size, is awful, plain and simple. That means I’m looking at ereaders, too (we’ll get to that).

Phone potentially solved. Onto the laptop situation.

My laptop is my portable workbench. I write, research, take notes, and even record podcast audio on there. This is also the device most likely to find itself near my bed for whatever internet-based content I’m applying to my retinas. I’ve seen the Surface Pro’s latest whatever they’re calling it, and I gotta say, I’m pretty convinced. I like that I can still have the touchscreen tablet feel for browsing the internet, while also having a not-crippled-incapable-of-productive-work device. The keyboard case looks nice, but it’s actually awful for typing, but again, most laptops especially suck at that. I might be able to manage with it, since the new revision is backlit and better engineered. And touchscreens are SO MUCH INFINITELY BETTER than track pads ever could hope to be. Key example of this: the MacBook line. Annoying keyboard, annoying massive trackpad.

ANYWAY.

This is the alternative to my normal practice of just buying the most discounted new Toshiba Satellite model I can find. And I’ve seen what Toshiba is offering, and I’m not super impressed. Not a good year for laptops, in my opinion, but whatever. I’m stubbornly brand  loyal, but mainly due to my experience with ripping the things apart to repair the inevitable issues. The devil you know, etc.

So, at this point, my arsenal looks like this:

  • Droid Turbo
  • New desktop
  • Surface Pro 3

Now onto the thing pissing me off the most. Ebooks.

I like to read. I take my nook all over. It’s lovely. The interface is very simple, loads quickly, decent battery life (while new, mine isn’t), and most importantly, a physical button one presses to turn a page.

This may sound simple, and that’s because it really is. It’s the most important action while reading, the page turn, so it should obviously be the most logical, convenient process.

Instead, on all the current Nooks, Kobos, Kindles, everything, you have a fucking touchscreen. WHY.

Touchscreens are nice, and when they’re good they’re excellent. But everything does not need one! Hell, that’s half the reason I bought the Fiio is because it had mechanical buttons.

I want just a few things from an ereader: E-ink screen, good format support, a microUSB port for sync and charging, a light of some sort, and a button to turn the fucking page.

Instead, they all decide, weeeeeeeeell, we’ll just get rid of the nice control system and oh yeah, fuck the expandable memory, and we don’t really like all those formats, so they’re out too. What you’re left with is something incredibly frustrating and clumsy. And so many people around the tech world agree. This was not a change made in ANYONE’s best interest. And before you defend the companies saying maybe they’ll save money or some shit, the hatred of the new devices will cause more damage to their bottom line than a couple of fucking tact switches.

And it’s not like this hypothetical device exists somewhere at some ludicrous price point. It simply no longer exists. No one makes such a thing.

Goddamn.