Welcome to the NJDevils1087 User Page!
About Me
editMy name's Mike -- I'm a 21-year-old college student attenting the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, where I am a computer engineering major. I am a passionate sports fan, and follow basically everything there is to follow except for the NFL (which is increasingly becoming a joke) and the NBA. I especially love soccer, hockey, tennis, cycling, and curling. In addition to being an avid sportswatcher, I have a number of various web/computer endeavors. I run a personal blog as well as A Cynic's Paradise and Matchday Live! USA. Cynic's Paradise is my take on some products and services that I use in my daily life that are worthy of sharing with the blogosphere, as well as political and sports commentary. Matchday LIVE! focuses on the world of soccer and my long-standing goal of web audio broadcasts of matches for those who may not have access to streaming/TV views of select matches. Matchday saw a record 30,000 hits in 2 days for our coverage of the Eduardo da Silva injury and relevant video, which many had not seen due to a lack of during-match replays and the injury's graphic nature. It's been a long layoff towards working on Matchday for me with schoolwork coming as a top priority, but my goal is get it going again in 2009-2010.
Music
editI am also an avid music fan, enjoying tunes from many different genres. While my interests have always included (and in fact been rooted in) my love of the 80s and new wave, my tastes have become even more synth-heavy of late, as I have ventured into the world of dance/trance/house/electronica thanks to the discovery of Armin van Buuren's weekly A State of Trance radio show and the opening of Pacha in New York City. I also enjoy progressive rock such as Genesis/Yes and also more modern progressive, counting Frost* and Sylvan amongst my favorite bands. I have also this year begun dabbling in FL Studio, which I hope to learn more fully over the rest of the summer (here in 2009), in the hopes of producing some music of my own.
Work
editI work on campus for the athletic department here at Stevens. We broadcast all of our home varsity athletic events for a majority of our sports, and I am on the broadcast team. I have 2-3 years of experience on color commentary (with some play-by-play) for field hockey, soccer, and lacrosse; 1 season of play-by-play experience for baseball; and nearly 3 seasons of public address experience for basketball, including a guest appearance at the 2009 Horace Mann Buzzell Game in Bronx, NY.
Wikipedia Thoughts/Opinions
editOne of my biggest pet peeves about Wikipedia is the elitist nature of many editors I have come across. In particular, "notability rules" are, in my opinion, an insult to this grand project in the long run. Creating arbitrary cutoffs for what classifies as "important" is not in the spirit of such an endeavor. I am well aware that Wikipedia is non-profit and that servers have a finite cost, but I see no reason why in the future these limitations can not eased or eliminated for the preservation of larger quantities of data. We should endeavor to make Wikipedia the archive of all history, not just that which some editors feel fit to print. There's a reason this site was created, to expand upon the already elitist views of encyclopedia publishers. Let's not fall into the same trap in the infinite space of the web.
That about sums it up for me -- if you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them to my talk page!
Mike