Tong Family Blog: Arrgghh. Ensim to Cpanel – rich recommends crimsoneditor for remote ftp file editting. Looks worth a try…

OK is it too early to start talking about BCS Rankings? Considering they don’t come out until October 20th? Nah, never too early.

I did a quick and dirty analysis tonight. ESPN has a page that describes the basic calculations from last year, I started from this formula, I haven’t heard of changes to the formula this year. The College Football Resource Center and the Massey Ratings sites have a lot of the raw computer ranking data. The Wolfe poll will not be available until 10-20; I was not able to find the NY Times computer poll today on the net yet; and the Massey BCS variant seems to be behind a subscription wall so I used the published non-BCS Massey rating (which includes margin of victory, which is not permitted in BCS polls). Also on the Sagarin site, you need to be careful and get the BCS variant, not the standard Sagarin rating.

Also I didn’t go thru all the strength of schedule calculations as this requires building a little db of every Div1 team’s opponents and results, a little beyond my Excel hacking tonight. The lack of this doesn’t really sway the results as it is likely only going to add a further point of difference to the scores.

OK so today, Oklahoma (3 points) and Miami (3.67 points) would play in New Orleans. OSU (7 points) and USC (7.33) would be on the outside looking in, in a very nice Rose Bowl match I assume (tho maybe the Orange would get to poach one of these teams? Sad if so). FSU is the next closest unbeaten at 9.67 points, with the rest of the unbeatens at 12 points or more.

This will all scramble a lot but fun to start projecting.

Skinning & Theming: Why Is It So Underestimated? - OSNews.com – it is never good to underestimate people’s desire for personalization.

Philip Greenspun’s Weblog: – wow, how did Java get driven into the ditch so fast? It does seem to be the tool with the highest learning curve these days.

HP DVD Movie Writer dc3000 review by PC Magazine – I’ve mentioned this product before and now there is a first review. This seems like a great potential product – getting the PC out of the middle of the process will simplify the operation substantially.

Jon Udell and Greg Reinacker have intriguing articles.

My comments at Big 10 College Football - Fanblogs.com: OSU 24, BGSU 17

ComputerZen.com – Thank you Scott!!!!

DNS Lookup and other handy tools on a web page and Router Logging Tools – thanks rich!

ComputerZen.com

Mirra Personal Server Debuts – I love the product concept, a box that handles all my home or small business storage issues. It will live and die based on the quality of the software – if accessing the files is funky, or if the backup is errorprone, or if it causes my file access to slow way down, then it will fail.

Engstrom plants Wildseed to change lives - 2003-09-15 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)

Pants auction stresses Tressel – hey these pants are a big deal. My dad still wears his from his days playing under Woody in the 50s. (If any of you have ever wondered where my obsession with OSU football comes from, it runs deep in the family).

Gary Burd: NATs and Internet telephony – Gary points out that some VOIP developers are struggling with the implications of NATs. Like Jeremy, I just had a good experience with VOIP – I was a little surprised when I tried out my Vonage service last night for the first time, and the Cisco VOIP Modem automagically found its way thru the NAT/Firewall with no problems. It was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I have learned to avoid the PC as an end device like the plague for VOIP calling because I’ve never found PC mics and sound systems to be that great for phone calls, but maybe that situation has improved since last I tried. But using regular phone handsets with the Cisco modem supplied by Vonage was painless.

Falcons Enter Saturday’s Game Fearless – BGSU has the top-rated offense in the company, they have already beat Purdue at West Lafayette, and perhaps the biggest motivator – many of the players at BGSU were probably spurned by OSU and would love to take OSU down a notch. These intra-state games have been tough for OSU every year, this one will be no different.