It's Superbowl Time!

  Here it comes again, the biggest event of the year. So how about a glimpse of what's coming:


And if that's not enough:

Ed Sheeran The A Team

Performing his song

Something Special

Conan and Archer meet up for some unexpected hijinks. Enjoy:

Soon To Be Lost

   Nothing lasts forever. That is true of everything. And all across our country there are structures, such as the once great Pontiac Silverdome, that will soon fall to the ravages of time. 

  The Silverdome hosted the Detroit Lions until 2001 as well as several other sports teams and was the venue for such things as a mass for Pope John Paul II in 1987, and concerts for The Who and Led Zepplin. The dome was sold in 2009 for a reported $583,000.00, an amazing price considering it originally cost $55.7 million to build. Last year I think on May 19, 2014 an auction was held for the Silverdome assets such as seats I imagine to recoup some value out of the stadium before it is demolished. 

   In Birmingham, AL. there is a stadium called Legion Field built in 1927 which reminds me a good bit of the Silverdome. In its hay-day it saw the Iron Bowl games and a myriad of concerts (like the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd). Today Legion Field sees very little activity since the Iron Bowl has moved to alternating between UA and AU stadiums, the local UAB team has lost its football program, and the high schools no longer use it either. Of course concerts still show up there every so often & one bowl game I think is still played there each year (The Birmingham Bowl). But otherwise that's about it.     

    Yes our 'Old Grey Lady' is showing her age and may not have much longer to live. I suspect that if things stay the way they are her fate may go the way of the Silverdome. And we may have to put her to rest as well.

The HGTV Dream Home Contest

   If you'd like a million dollar home for free (or the closest thing to it since you would have to pay taxes on it) then I recommend entering this sweepstakes. There's only one winner I think but he/she wins either a fully furnished home in Martha's Vineyard + a GMC SUV (prize package worth over 2 million), or the cash option of about $1.7 million + the GMC vehicle (my preferred option considering I don't need such an expensive home).

You can enter twice a day starting here:
HGTV DREAM HOME

   I've entered these contests for several years. HGTV and it's related sites have all the best contests.

The Dream Home, Green Home, Blog Cabin, and Urban Oasis Contests are their best but just the tip of the iceberg cause they also have others too, so it's best to keep checking HGTV.com everyday for new contests.

Watch a 90 second video tour of this year's Dream Home:

Birdman Is A Must See

   I watched this film a couple days ago and have to say that it was one of the most entertaining and captivating films I've seen in a long time if not ever. There are a number of reasons why it impressed me more than the usual movies I see.

*** possible spoiler alerts below ***

1; The actors were very believable, esp. Michael Keaton, who should get an Oscar nod for his performance (in fact I'd be surprised if this film did  not get several Oscar nominations)

2; The way it was shot - it seems like it was done in one long take, though obviously it wasn't, but shooting it this way kept me riveted to the screen in a way that almost no other movie has recently if ever.

3; The subliminal & hinted at context as well as the more direct action going on left you wondering if what you were watching was really happening or just the hallucinations of Michael Keaton's character. Most of the time my guess is that he was imagining it all, but there are clues throughout the film that suggest he really was some sort of superhuman birdman.

   I don't write recommendations for many films, mainly because 99.9% of films aren't worth doing so, but I would recommend this one. It had everything you would want from a great movie. Action, comedy, romance, drama, suspension of disbelief, it even made me cry towards the end. See it!

Never Say Never

   If you seem to have bad luck at getting something to happen you shouldn't give up on trying to make it happen because there's a mathematical probability formula that is proven to be right that shows the more times you try to do something the greater chance you have of it happening.

  Let's say you want to flip a coin and have it land on heads. Each coin flip there's a 50% chance it will either land on heads or tails. That is true, but your chance to get heads increases over multiple attempts.

  Why you may ask? Well, I think you'll agree that if we were to flip the coin 100 times it is extremely likely that we'll get heads at least once, right? That is intuative. And it is true of anything you do, not just flipping coins. But why is this?

   Well, here is the formula to calculate it:

                1-((1-X)^Y)=Z

   X = the % chance for a given try (50% in the case of a coin flip)

   Y = the number of trys (ex: number of coin flips)

   Z = the % probability of it happening

    So, if you were to flip a coin 100 times trying to get heads you have:

                1-((1-50)^100) = 100%

    If you flipped the coin only say 15 times you'd get:

                1-((1-50)^15) = 99.99%

    So just flipping the coin 15 times gives you a darn good chance already. In fact not until you drop the number of flips below 7 does the % chance drop below 99%. Of course, that doesn't mean that if you flip a coin 7 times one will come up heads because there's still a 1% chance  that it won't. And in actuality, even with 100 flips there's still a really small chance that heads won't come up. This is due to rounding of the numbers when calculating the percentages. But this chance is infinitesimally small.

So small that it is extremely unlikely to occur. However, not impossible.

So, never say never.

   And for fun here is a probability calculator for you to use to see what chance you have of doing something of your own. Have Fun!
(thanks to Brian Wood and this site for this information and the following code)

Drop chance (enter 1% as 1); Number of runs;

A Most Spectacular Ringing In The New Year

  Londoners went all out in celebrating the start of 2015 with one of the best fireworks shows ever. Catch their superb spectacle in this video: