I am currently away from my computer, and I have pretty crappy Internet access where I am. Unfortunately, that means that my NHL reports and schedule updates will likely be delayed, or not happen at all, for the next couple of weeks.
Category: Uncategorized
McDonald NHL Power Ratings – Playoff Report, July 1, 2021
Montreal came out strong in last night’s game, looking like a much better team than in Game 1, but still lost to Tampa Bay 3-1. Montreal outshot Tampa Bay 43-23, but haven’t been able to solve the puzzle of Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. The first period ended scoreless, and Tampa Bay opened the scoring 6 minutes into the second period. Montreal tied it up at the halfway mark of the period, but Tampa Bay again took the lead with 0.3 seconds left in the period! Tampa Bay scored an insurance goal after Montreal’s bad giveaway behind their own net with 4:18 left, and that was all the scoring. Tampa Bay now leads the series 2-0, with Montreal unable to score more than 1 goal in either game so far. With the win, we’re now giving Tampa Bay an 87.0% chance of winning the Stanley Cup.
The teams now head to Montreal for Game 3 on Friday.
Yesterday’s Game
Stanley Cup Final
Montreal 1 at Tampa Bay 3
- Tampa Bay leads series 2-0
- Tampa Bay now has an 87.0% chance of winning the Stanley Cup, up from 75.5%
Series schedule:
- Monday, June 28: Montreal 1 at Tampa Bay 5
- Wednesday, June 30: Montreal 1 at Tampa Bay 3
- Friday, July 2: Tampa Bay at Montreal
- Monday, July 5: Tampa Bay at Montreal
- Wednesday, July 7: Montreal at Tampa Bay (if necessary)
- Friday, July 9: Tampa Bay at Montreal (if necessary)
- Sunday, July 11: Montreal at Tampa Bay (if necessary)
New simulation results:
- Tampa Bay has a 87.0% chance of winning (▲11.5)
- In 4 games: 29.2% (▲10.9)
- In 5 games: 30.5% (▲5.2)
- In 6 games: 15.5% (▼1.3)
- In 7 games: 11.7% (▼3.4)
- Montreal has a 13.0% chance of winning (▼11.5)
- In 7 games: 8.1% (▼2.1)
- In 6 games: 5.0% (▼4.9)
- In 5 games: 0.0% (▼4.4)
- In 4 games: 0.0%
Friday’s Game
Stanley Cup Final
Tampa Bay at Montreal
- Tampa Bay leads series 2-0
- Tampa Bay has an 87.0% chance of winning the Stanley Cup
Playoff Matchup – Stanley Cup Finals
Tampa Bay (3rd in Central, 75 pts) vs. Montreal (4th in North, 59 pts)
Tampa Bay leads series 2-0
Chances of winning: Tampa Bay 87%, Montreal 13%
McDonald NHL Power Ratings:
- Tampa Bay: 1581
- Montreal: 1544
Playoffs so far:
- Tampa Bay:
- First round: Defeated Florida in 6 games
- Division final: Defeated Carolina in 5 games
- Semi-Final: Defeated New York Islanders in 7 games
- Montreal:
- First round: Defeated Toronto in 7 games
- Division final: Defeated Winnipeg in 4 games
- Semi-Final: Defeated Vegas in 6 games
Series schedule:
- Monday, June 28: Montreal 1 at Tampa Bay 5
- Wednesday, June 30: Montreal 1 at Tampa Bay 3
- Friday, July 2: Tampa Bay at Montreal
- Monday, July 5: Tampa Bay at Montreal
- Wednesday, July 7: Montreal at Tampa Bay (if necessary)
- Friday, July 9: Tampa Bay at Montreal (if necessary)
- Sunday, July 11: Montreal at Tampa Bay (if necessary)
Simulation results:
- Tampa Bay has a 87.0% chance of winning
- In 4 games: 29.2%
- In 5 games: 30.5%
- In 6 games: 15.5%
- In 7 games: 11.7%
- Montreal has a 13.0% chance of winning
- In 7 games: 8.1%
- In 6 games: 5.0%
- In 5 games: 0.0%
- In 4 games: 0.0%
Installing Google Fonts on Windows 10
A quick how-to guide on how to install Google Fonts into Windows 10.
Google Fonts is a collection of fonts intended for use on the Web. From the Google Fonts About page:
Google Fonts makes it quick and easy for everyone to use web fonts, including professional designers and developers. We believe that everyone should be able to bring quality typography to their web pages and applications.
Our goal is to create a directory of web fonts for the world to use. Our API service makes it easy to add Google Fonts to a website in seconds. The service runs on Google’s servers which are fast, reliable and tested. Google provides this service free of charge.
I was trying to make a graphic that used Ultra, one of the fonts, and I wanted to use Inkspace to make it. But, Google Fonts are web fonts, and I wanted to have Ultra as a font installed on my computer so I could use it. It turns out that it’s not that hard to do. I’ll show the steps for installing Open Sans.
First, go to the Google Fonts homepage. In the upper left corner is a search box:
Type in the name of the font you’re looking for, in this case, Open Sans. The Google Fonts website will filter down all of the fonts it knows about, and only show the ones matching what you’ve typed in. For me, it showed me two fonts: Open Sans and Open Sans condensed.
With each of the fonts displayed, there’s a blue “Add to Collection” button. Click that button, and that font will be added to a collection of fonts, displayed at the bottom of the page.
Next, we’re going to want to download a Zip file that contains a TTF file (short for True Type font, one of the types of fonts that Windows understands) of the font we’ve selected. If we add more than one font to our collection, all the fonts will be in the Zip file. Anyways, there’s a download button on the page, but it’s not real obvious. It’s in the upper right corner of the page, and looks like a down arrow:
Click that, and you’ll get a dialog box telling you that you don’t need to download the font. If you’re just using it for the web, that’s right, but we want to install the font into Windows 10.
We want to choose the first option, “Download the font families in your Collection as a .zip file”. Click on the .zip file link, and your browser will download a zip file to your computer — in my case, it was called Open_Sans.zip. Go to wherever that file was downloaded (likely your Downloads folder), right-click on the file, and select “Extract All…”. You’ll be asked where to extract the files to, and it will default to the current directory. Click the Extract button, and a new folder will be created containing a LICENSE.txt file and one or more TTF files.
The next thing to do is to install the TTF file (or files) into Windows 10. Open up the Control Panel (type Control Panel into the Windows search box if you’re not sure how to open it), and you’ll get this window:
Click on the Appearance and Personalization heading to get:
Under Fonts, click on “Preview, delete, or show and hide fonts”. You’ll be taken to a window showing all the fonts installed on your system:
Finally, from that folder of downloaded fonts, drag the fonts you want to install into this new window, and the fonts should now be installed!
What font is used for the 7 symbol on a slot machine?
Short answer: Clarendon Bold.
For fun, I’m writing a little slot machine game in Java. I wanted to create some symbols to go on the reels, and one of those symbols is the number 7. And, I wanted it to look like the fancy 7 you see on slot machines, like this:
So, after some googling around, I discovered that it uses the Clarendon Bold font. Here’s what the 7 looks like in Linotype’s Clarendon Std Bold:
This is a screenshot grabbed from the preview feature of fonts.com’s page for Clarendon Std Bold.
Unfortunately, I don’t have that font on my computer. After further googling, I discovered the Ultra font on Google Fonts. The Google Fonts page describes it as follows:
Ultra is an ultra bold slab typeface with nods to wood type styles like Clarendon and Egyptian. Strong and dramatic letterforms for titling, a serious, yet friendly, and easily legible typestyle. Perfect for power headlines and titling for impact.
Here’s what the 7 looks like in Ultra:
To make my slot machine 7, I installed Ultra on Windows, fired up Inkscape, added a Text object with the Ultra font at 72 points, set a fill colour of Red, added a black stroke 1 point thick, and here’s the final result:
I’m pleased with it!
Blogging 101: Who I Am and Why I’m Here
It’s been a long time since I’ve added anything to my blog — almost three years, now that I look back at my last post. I’ve been meaning to add more entries to my blog, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I think the main problem is because I really don’t know what the focus of my blog is, or what I want to blog about. So, to help me get over this hurdle, I decided to sign up for WordPress’ Blogging 101 course.
The first assignment in this course is to “Introduce Yourself to the World”. The intention is to blog about who we are and why we’re here. Maybe if I do this, it will help me to gain a little clarity on why I’m keeping a blog.
Well, here goes…
My name is Shane McDonald. I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I work as an instructor at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, in the Computer Systems Technology program. I mostly teach computer programming courses, with a smattering of Word / Excel / PowerPoint / etc. introductory classes thrown in the mix. Tomorrow is the first day of a new semester; I’ll be teaching a class in Java, and a class in C.
Why am I blogging? Well, thinking back to when I started this blog, I had a number of reasons:
- I wanted to get some experience with WordPress.
- I wanted to practice writing, in order to help to express my thoughts more clearly.
- I wanted a place to record solutions to computer problems that I’ve run across, and I thought other people might also run across. I know a quick Google search often helps me to find the solution to problems, but if nobody had bothered to record their solution, it wouldn’t help me out very much.
Thinking about it now, I think that third reason is probably the reason that seems most important to me. I know I get a good feeling when I see people accessing my posts, and I hope that others are able to solve the same problems I had, but without a lot of searching! My top post seems to be this one about how to use numbers in formulas in Microsoft Word mail merges; my least popular posts seem to be my series of tips on using the Vi text editor, which was an outgrowth of a set of tips that I had created on a corporate Wiki at a previous employer.
My problem seems to be that I either don’t run across too many problems (yeah, I wish), or that I don’t bother to take the time to record my solutions for posterity (more likely!).
Anyways, by taking this blogging course, I’m hoping to gain a little more focus on my blog, and to get some motivation to write posts. Who knows, I might even completely change the focus of my blog! If nothing else, at least I’ve created this one post, and people will see that I still exist! I’m excited to work through this course and see how things come along!!!