Revamped NFL Logos

I saw a site that redesigned NFL logos. And then I saw another one. And then some designers that did some for some teams. So I saved them and am here to go team-by-team, rank my favorites and give some commentary. I've listed my favorites at the top, per team.


New England Patriots

Not a strong start. Don't love any of these three. The second one is better designed, but just doesn't work for a football logo.

New York Jets

Now we're talking. This first one is snazzy. And then you see that it has a N Y in the logo. The second one is sharp, perhaps a little too futuristic.


Buffalo Bills

I feel like the retro look fits Buffalo. The second one is cartoony and the third one is a god-awful rendition of the shitty Sabres logo that everyone hated.


Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins was a popular choice. All of these are pretty good, but I like how the first one has a great looking dolphin and it works as a D in the script.

Pittsburgh Steelers

This is probably the best set of three in the post. It's hard to even pick a favorite.

Baltimore Ravens

The bottom one isn't bad, but the top one takes a cool element they already have and improves upon it. Not easy.

Cincinnati Bengals

These are both super shitty. But the bottom one isn't even a logo.

Cleveland Browns

I actually like all three logos for the Browns. My favorite would be to take the top logo and lose the words.

Indianapolis Colts

Again I would keep the horseshoe and lose the words.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Some teams are just hard to design I guess. I hate all of these. The last one is nothing. The second one looks like a snake. The top one wins by default.

Tennessee Titans

These are all sort of interesting and I want to like #2 with the face, but it's not quite right.

Houston Texans

All of these are okay, but the first one is boss.

Denver Broncos

Don't like either of these. I prefer the throwback D logo.

Oakland Raiders

The bottom one is a cartoon joke. The top one is badass.

San Diego Chargers

So I sort of like all three...except none of them are quite right. For San Diego, I like powder blue and lightning. No other team has lightning, so I think it's a mistake to lose that and insert a horse. The middle one has powder blue and lightning, but has a jumble of letters. And I like that the last one tried to use lightning and combine it with a Chargers' C...except that it looks like a 5 and there's no powder blue.


Kansas City Chiefs

None of these are very good, I might like the first one if the arrowhead pointed to the right.

Dallas Cowboys

Fucking terrible. They should have done what they did for the Bears and Saints below. When you have  a perfect, classic logo, all you can try to do is keep and add some flavor. Not ruin it with a bandito.

New York Giants

I'm a sucker for skylines. 

Washington 

This might be the biggest disparity. The top one is elegant. The bottom one is ghastly.

Philadelphia Eagles

Again, I think the retro look works. The bottom eagle is cheesy.

Chicago Bears

I'm impressed. The top one took a virtually perfect logo and gave it a nice revamp.


Green Bay Packers

Ugh. Fucking awful again. The bottom one might be the worst on this page.


Detroit Lions

So bad. Why are they doing this to me?

Minnesota Vikings

I like the top one. The bottom one isn't the worst.

Atlanta Falcons

These are both pretty bad.

New Orleans Saints

The bottom one is a joke, right? I could do with a little less grunge on the top one, but at least it retained the important parts.


Carolina Panthers

CP are not letters to build a logo around.

Tampa Bay Bucs

Three logos this time and I like them. Love how the sword is in the 2nd one, but the first one just has a nice feel.

St. Louis Rams

More shit. The second one isn't even a logo.

Seattle Seahawks

Credit for making the top one clearly a sea hawk.

Arizona Cardinals

The top one is pretty good. Combines a desert scape with the bird and the key letter. The bottom one is SHITE.


San Francisco 49ers

We finish strong with four choices. The top one is pretty killer. 

The Math of a Victory

Come Novmber 6th, Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama will need 270 electoral votes to become President.

The New York Times currently has the number of projected solid/leaning to Obama at 237.
Solid/leaning Romney is 206.

To double check how "solid" the leaning numbers are, here are the 5 leaning Obama states and their current chances of winning, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Maine 99%
New Mexico 97%
Minnesota 96%
Michigan 95%
Pennsylvania 92%

So there you go...those are the "leaning" states. So starting with numbers of 237 and 206 seems pretty safe.

Which means, these are the only states that matter for the 2012 election, listed with electoral votes:

Florida (29)
Ohio (18)
Virginia (13)
Wisconsin (10)
Colorado (9)
Iowa (6)
Nevada (6)
New Hampshire (4)

That's it. Eight states. 95 tossup electoral votes. And Romney needs 64.

In other words, he can only lose 31 of these votes.
So if he loses Florida, he needs to sweep the rest.
If he loses Ohio and Virginia, he can still win with the other 6.
If he gets the 4 biggest states that's enough.

So let's take a look at these 8 states right now.

Florida
Currently 538 has projected Obama has a 63% chance of winning Florida. But that's just 1.8 points of polling. So it's close. But I'm sure Romney wishes he was up 1.8 instead of down 1.8.

Ohio
Obama up 3.1 points for a 72% chance of winning.

Virginia
Obama up 3 points for a 73% chance of winning.

Wisconsin
Obama up 4.9, 81%.

Colorado
Obama up 3.4, 72%.

Iowa
Obama up 3.6, 72%.

Nevada
Obama up 5.2, 82%.

New Hampshire
Obama up 6.4, 83%.

To sum up: in the 8 battleground states, Obama is up (reasonably) comfortably in all of them.

Assumption #1: Romney will not be able to win all 7 states except for Florida, which means he needs to win Florida. So on election night, if a network calls Florida for Obama, the election is over.

Assumption #2: Wisconsin, Nevada and New Hampshire are large leads, and could almost be already in Obama's category. That puts Obama at 257, needing just one of Florida-Ohio-Virginia or the Colorado-Iowa combo.

Assumption #3: For Romney to flip about 5-6 points across all battleground states, he's going to need a semi-miracle. Either a trouncing in all the debates that exposes a severe Obama weakness or some sort of tragic economic news that shoots a hole in Obama's recovery rhetoric. Or just start handing out cash in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado. Cause Romney needs them all.

Ranking Levels from THPS 1 and 2

First a quick runthrough:

THPS1
Warehouse
School
Mall
Chicago (competition level)
Minneapolis
Phoenix
Portland (competition level)
San Francisco
Roswell (competition level)


THPS2
Hangar
School II
Marseille (competition level)
New York City
Venice Beach
Skatestreet (competition level)
Philly
Bullring (competition level)
Skate Heaven (bonus level)
Chopper Drop (bonus level)


19. Chopper Drop
Too small to really even be a level.

18. Skatestreet
The competition levels are boring. I like the wires and secret area, but still it's all plywood.

17. Portland
Another competition level. Not much to look at.


16. Marseille
See above. Just a bunch of bowls. Secret area helps.


15. School
Not a bad level, but School II hurts this ranking.

14. Roswell
Because it was the last level of the first game, I don't think I played it enough for it to really make it's mark on me.

13. Chicago
A competition level but I appreciated the railings in the ceiling as a way to continue a grab trick in the pre-manual era.

12. Minneapolis
Cool secret tape area.

11. Skate Heaven
A wacky level that was fun to play, but hard to take serious.

10. Phoenix
A really interesting level that adds great variety.

9. Philly
I like the city levels, but this one doesn't have a ton going for it.

8. Bullring
Cool concept, good pipes.

7. Warehouse
The first level ever. This is classic. Still a good place to hang out.

6. Hangar
Takes the warehouse to the next level with two secret areas and a helicopter that lifts off.

5. Mall
Even though I think the sandbox levels have more replayability, this one is undeniably fun.

4. New York City
My favorite spot in the entire game is a just jumping across a simple staircase on an angle in the back part of the city. The subway cars and taxis give this one a cool factor.

3. San Francisco

Super awesome secret tape area. Wide open city.

2. Venice Beach

A ton to like here. All the different ramps and gaps with plenty of areas to be street or vert and a cool secret tape off the roof.

1. School II
What do you want in a level? How about starting with a huge leap of faith, a ramp that leads to a high-wire, or a grind that takes you to a true secret area? Table to table transfers. Great lines. And a second secret area--a swimming pool.

Draft Results: Projections

There's no surefire way to grade a draft. But I felt good about mine and wanted to figure some way to measure up. I could wait until the week 1 projections, but those are dependent on matchups. So I took the yearly projections of just our starting lineups. This ignores bench depth and uses some questionable figures (An injured Ryan Mathews is at 218, 12 more than Jamaal Charles?) But it's a rough guide.

I wanted to do mine and Mark's obviously, then I wanted to see how Kirat's autodraft stacked up, and then I picked Stevo because he waited on QB until Romo in the 3rd round.

Dave
QB 420
RB/WR 819
TE 229.5
D/K 260
Total 1728.5

Mark

QB 434
RB/WR 900.5
TE 178.5
D/K 253
Total 1766


Kirat's Autodraft

QB 309
RB/WR 1004.5
TE 156
D/K 257
Total 1726.5


Stevo

QB 323
RB/WR 937.5
TE 127
D/K 300
Total 1687.5


Quick takeaway: bummer that my 5 rb/wr are valued significantly lower than kirat's autodraft. So I'm hoping that ESPN is too low on Antonio Brown, Julio Jones and Michael Turner.

relationship advice

Over the last couple months, I saw some good threads on reddit that opened my eyes to the way dating works. Of course, now I can't find them. But I wanted to write/expound upon them before I forgot them. Both for any future kids and just general knowledge.

1. Befriending vs Attracting

I'll start with what I think is a typical occurrence. A guy starts liking a girl. Probably because of looks first, but if there's more to it (they share a similar sense of humor, they're both easygoing, or share interests or whatever) then it develops into a crush. So now a guy has a crush on a girl. What does he do?

He's nice to her. He might give her a compliment, he might carry her books, he might make her food. In his head, he's hoping that she'll see how nice he is and want to date him. (And when that doesn't happen, he might complain that she likes bad boys or assholes. But more on that later.) But what is he really doing? He's befriending her. He's doing nice things that a friend would do.

And here's where some guys seem to complain that "she friendzoned me." That she thinks of me only as a friend, when I want to date her. Well as the saying goes "girls are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out." She didn't friend zone you. You became her friend. And you never gave her a reason to think of you as anything more than that.

In other words, you befriended her. But you never attracted her.

It seems sort of simple, but this was the revelation to me. It probably never occurred to me, because you never think of the girl as doing anything to "attract" you in the first place. But she did, even if was just being herself.

So what's the solution? I don't know that I have this part figured out. And I sincerely believe the advice isn't to be someone you're not. But it's not just be nice either.

I think it's probably starts with believing that you're worth being attracted to. That you can tell a funny story, be comfortable with who you are, and not worry about whether you're attracting her at all.

2. Girls Like Jerks

Here's another common story. "Nice guys finish last. I'm so nice to this girl. And she wants to date the guy that's mean to her. He rides a motorcycle and doesn't remember her birthday."

(You'll notice that these two points do overlap.) I fully believed this story for a long time. And just chalked it up to "girls like bad boys," as a sort of rebellion that I didn't understand. But here's what clicked for me recently on reddit.

a. Girls aren't attracted to bad boys. Girls are attracted to guys with confidence.
b. Nice guys often hear girls talking about the problems in a relationship, either while it's happening or after a break-up. Girls rarely gush to their guy friends about how great their boyfriend is. But they have no problem mentioning that their boyfriend was a jerk the other day. So nice guys perceive that girls are in relationships with jerks, but that's probably not the full story. I suppose that sort of covers point B.

Point A is something that I suppose nice guys have heard all their life and then shrug their shoulders and whine about how am I supposed to have confidence if every girl always shuts me down. Here's what I say to that: Fucking nut up. Fake it 'til you make it. Girls have not shut you down. You've shut yourself down. If you go up to a girl and really believe (like truly believe it) that you are worth talking to, you'll be fine. Or don't. Continue whining.

I don't know why this turned angry, but I read so many posts about friendzones and lack of confidence that it annoys me. No company wants to hire the applicant that doesn't believe he can do the job. And no girl wants to date a guy that doesn't believe in himself.

"this is special"