It’s way too late to back out now. I’ve already sent the first fundraising email (some of you may have received it, and some may even have already donated – thanks!) and I’m fully committed. Committed to what? To running my first half-marathon – the Avenue of the Giants on May 6 – as part [...]

It’s way too late to back out now. I’ve already sent the first fundraising email (some of you may have received it, and some may even have already donated – thanks!) and I’m fully committed.

Committed to what? To running my first half-marathon – the Avenue of the Giants on May 6 – as part of Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. Team in Training helps me train for my race and in return I am fundraising for LLS.

I hope to have as many of you as possible virtually cheering me on, and I’m asking you to help by making a donation to my fundraising campaign.

Please visit my Team in Training page to donate online quickly and securely plus learn more about my progress. You will receive a confirmation of your donation by email and I will be notified as soon as you make your donation. You can also see my progress in the handy widget on the right side of this page.

Each donation helps accelerate finding a cure for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Nearly 958,000 Americans are battling these blood cancers. I am hoping that my participation in Team In Training will help bring them hope and support.

On behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, thank you very much for your support. I greatly appreciate your generosity.

I’ll post updates here as my training and fundraising progress and as I get closer to the actual race. And of course, I’ll post race-day photos.

Thanks again.

For today’s Giants-Phillies NLCS game 6, I’m using the same setup as described in my earlier post. It’s working moderately well and is of course miles better than the torture that is listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. The strangest thing is how the delay between GameDay audio and DirecTV seems to vary minute [...]

For today’s Giants-Phillies NLCS game 6, I’m using the same setup as described in my earlier post. It’s working moderately well and is of course miles better than the torture that is listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

The strangest thing is how the delay between GameDay audio and DirecTV seems to vary minute by minute. It’ll be steady at around nine seconds, then drop to seven and go up to twelve, all without any pauses in the audio stream. This means I have to keep my VNC window (all the audio processing software is on my old Dell Windows laptop) open and adjust the buffer in Radio Delay every so often. I can see several reasons for the delay between radio and TV and therefore between radio or GameDay and DirecTV, but I can’t quite grasp how the delay can vary in realtime without the stream dropping or pausing.

It seems to me that the overall delay is the result of the differing paths the audio and video take to reach me. If I was listening to KNBR on a standard AM radio, I’d be hearing the play-by-play in near-realtime; the signal goes from the ballpark, through KNBR’s onsite processing/uplink, to KNBR’s studio, to Sutro Tower and then to my radio. Most of that happens via broadcast, i.e. speed-of-light, and is point-to-point with no satellite bounce. Add another couple of steps for retransmission to MLB’s studio so it can go out over GameDay audio, and of course the streaming audio is affected by Internet speeds.

The video path is very different and a lot longer. It goes from the ballpark, through Fox Sports’ onsite processing/uplink (“the truck”) to Fox Sports’ central studio or processing center–I don’t know where that is, or if they use KTVU’s facilities–to KTVU’s studio in Oakland, to DirecTV’s facility in Denver and then via direct-broadcast satellite to me. There are at least two satellite round-trips there, possibly three depending on how the signal is sent from the Fox Sports truck to their central facility. The signal is encoded, decoded and re-encoded an unknown number of times during the whole process, and that takes time as well.

Most of the above is speculation based on some knowledge of how these things tend to work and a bit of research. I’d love to know any better and/or corrected details.

Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA! We are going to see the San Francisco Giants play (and hopefully beat) the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, August 11, 2009. I expect we'll have a great time, whether or not San Francisco wins–though of course a win would make it all the better.

Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!

We are going to see the San Francisco Giants play (and hopefully beat) the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, August 11, 2009. I expect we'll have a great time, whether or not San Francisco wins–though of course a win would make it all the better.

Tonight as I watched the Giants play the Pirates, I did pushups for strikeouts (by Giants pitchers) and base hits (by Giants batters). Strikeout: 10Single: 10Double: 20Triple: 30Home Run: 40 Totals by the end of the 6th inning: Strikeouts: 7 x 10 = 70Singles: 4 x 10 = 40Doubles: 1 x 20 = 20Triples:Home Runs: [...]

Tonight as I watched the Giants play the Pirates, I did pushups for
strikeouts (by Giants pitchers) and base hits (by Giants batters).

Strikeout: 10
Single: 10
Double: 20
Triple: 30
Home Run: 40

Totals by the end of the 6th inning:

Strikeouts: 7 x 10 = 70
Singles: 4 x 10 = 40
Doubles: 1 x 20 = 20
Triples:
Home Runs: 1 x 40 = 40

170 pushups, and my wrists are in serious pain so I'm done.

15:57 Giants beat Dodgers in game 162. Cy Young for Lincecum! # Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

15:57 Giants beat Dodgers in game 162. Cy Young for Lincecum! #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter