Futurelawyer

"People Will Come, Ray". Why We Love Baseball.

I get a lot of resistance from friends who can't understand why I attend baseball games. How can you sit for hours watching grass grow, they say. Too little action, they say. Football and hockey are more exciting, they say. The world has passed the game by, they say. Baseball executives hear it too. They have instituted pitch count timers, and cut back on novel player placement, and other things to speed up the games. But, at its core, the magic of baseball is its continuity. It is the magic of remembering our youth. It is the magic I feel when I remember the time I threw a player out at home plate from right field. Or, the time I had an unassisted double play at first base when I made an impossible catch of a line drive. Or, the time I walked 8 batters in a row in an All Star game. Every time I sit in the stands, and score a game on the computer, I remember hot summer evenings as the official scorekeeper for the municipal baseball league. But, Terence Mann, the fictional sportswriter in Field of Dreams, said it best. 

First Home Baseball Weekend - You Score All The Games Also, Don't You?

IScoreSports My first summer job in the Sixties, was as an official scorer for Jacksonville area baseball. My stepdad, who was a very good professional ballplayer in his youth (career cut short by an injury), taught be the game, and he became a well regarded umpire. Through his connections, I got scoring jobs, and I learned the game by scoring on paper in big notebooks. Other than playing, the best way to learn baseball is to score it. I got into the habit of scoring when I went to AAA games in Jax, and later, I revisited it when the Rays came to town in 1998. Naturally, the FutureLawyer was interested when scoring came to computers, and I started using IScore years ago. The software is ridiculously inexpensive, and you can get up to the minute rosters for all of Major League Baseball for $19.99 a year. I have never figured out how to add it to more than one device, though, so I usually spend the $20 on more than one device. The company kindly attempted to refund the extra purchases; but, I stopped them after one. This software is worth a lot more than twenty bucks a year. With the press of a button, the lineup cards are brought in at gametime, and current stats are available for every player at all times. The software can be used for any other league or game as well, so, if you have kids in little league, or follow other games, you can use it to create stat sheets and score cards for all of them. Yesterday's blowout win over Detroit produced the attached scorecard for the Rays. Don't you love those 12 little blue squares, each of which represents a run driven in? I am using my old Samsung Tablet, the S5e, which is very thin and light, and not a problem to hold for the whole game. Thanks, iScore. Thanks, God, for another season watching baseball, and joined by my beautiful, loving wife, Diane. I can't wait until this afternoon's game, when I get to do it all over again. Play ball.

 

Saturday Fun - Attach A Gaming Controller To Your Spare SmartPhone.

Razer Kishi Android Gaming Controller. Ok, this is officially the most fun you can have for $43. I love Razer keyboards and mice. While designed for gamers, they are great for touch typists like the FutureLawyer. I can speed along at the speed of my thought processes. But, when I saw this little expandable controller that connects to a Smartphone, I decided to try it. I am not a gamer; but, I enjoyed the early versions of Doom, a first person shooter in which you get to run around a dark tunneled underground and zap monsters, and I enjoy the great graphics of modern car racing games. So, I bought it, and I now have a dedicated portable system, using my backup Samsung Galaxy 10+ phone. Also, with XBox Ultimate, I can play any XBox game in the cloud on my Android phone. I may become a gamer after all. Life is short. Play games.

Square Off Kingdom Chess - Still Wonderful

I have set up my Kingdom Chess Set in the Waiting Room at the office, and I still get a charge out of sitting down and playing a ghost that can move real physical chess pieces, and is a stronger player than I will ever be. Now, a lighter, more capable, self playing board, the Neo, is coming out of KickStarter. Square Off is getting some complaints; but, the Pandemic, and the supply chain problem, are responsible for the delivery delays. Given Square Off's solid history, and my personal experience with the Kingdom set, I am sure the new sets will be available soon. They are half the price of the Kingdom set, at $229, and you know that I will be adding one to my collection of sets. Chess, anyone?

 

Chess Club - The Game Of Kings In Virtual Space.

Chess For Oculus Quest 2. The very first video game I ever purchased, and for which I drove 50 miles to a store in Tampa, was an early Chess game cassette for the Atari 2600 game machine in the Eighties. I have played Chess all of my life, an addiction begun by my grandfather, and was really interested in how a computer game would allow me to play an imaginary person. I was influenced early on by the Chess playing automatons in literature, and Paul Morphy in particular. My addiction has come full circle now, with the introduction of Chess Club for the Oculus Quest 2, a $15 virtual reality simulation, in which you can reach out and grab the pieces and place them on the board, against a computer opponent, with your choice of classical music in the background. I don't have the time to use my VR glasses a lot; but, I suspect that Chess Club will become one of my favorite pastimes. It is easy to get lost in a game of chess, and the immersive nature of VR will enhance the experience. If you are a chess fanatic, this one game is worth spending $400 on a Quest 2. Movies on a big screen are another. Reality takes a back seat when you put this marvelous technology on your head.

FutureLawyer Acquires A New Chess Opponent.

Marcus Junius died in 256 A.D., in a Persian gas attack, and he has graciously consented to act as my sacrificial opponent. I can kill him, since he is already dead. Keep your King safe, and your Queen out of harms way.

You Are The Last Man On Earth - What Do You Do?

Why, play chess with a bust of Julius Caesar, of course.

 

Playing Chess Against A Computer Is More Interesting With Real Pieces.

I don't spend enough time with my Square Off chess set. It is pretty amazing to watch the classic Staunton wood, weighted pieces appear to move by themselves. The board itself is a beautiful Rosewood construction. I have always wanted a self moving chess set, ever since the iconic scene in which Charlton Heston plays by himself as the last man on earth. This video is interesting, and now all I need is time and solitude. 

Buccaneers Coming Home To Tampa For SuperBowl.

Not thinking about law or tech today. I have been a season ticket holder for the Tampa Bay Bucs (formerly known as the Tampa Bay Yucks) since 1976, and have attended most of those home games. I can't claim that I stayed past half time for many of them, and I only really enjoyed one season throughout, in 2002, when they won the Super Bowl for the first and only time. But, in a year when a Pandemic has been the big news, and when political protest has been a part of the game, and too much money has been thrown at too many young people unprepared to manage it, I am still moved by this year and this team. My 1976 Bucco Bruce jacket will be coming out of the closet, even though I can't afford to go to the game. I will watch on TV, with millions of others, not to support the players, good or bad. I will watch because we all are living the same life or death struggle that sport imitates. We win or we lose. Our teams win or we lose. We live or we die. Ultimately, all of us wants to experience joy. When I was growing up, I watched, in 1961, on a small black and white TV, when Jim Nance uttered a famous line: "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition... This is "ABC's Wide World of Sports!" So, whether Tampa Bay experiences thrill or agony in two weeks, we will watch. We will be human.

Superman Has Nothing On Alexa - Alexa Super Mode

Unlock Alexa Super Mode With Cheat Code. Mondays are always a challenge. So, I try to ease into them with something fun. We are all getting used to saying: "Alexa" or "Echo" and having our devices tell us the news or weather or hundreds of other useful bits of information. But, did you know that by saying a magical potion of words you could bring Alexa into Super Mode? I won't tell you what Alexa does. You have to find out for yourself. I will only say that it is totally useless, but entertaining. If you had an early Nintendo, and spent a lot of time learning cheat codes, you will understand.