In case you read the previous post about baseball scorecards and were eagerly awaiting the Mark 3, I am pleased to announce that it is ready to begin trials. In addition to recreating the basic form from the Mark 1 and Mark 2 in a more open file format, SVG, I have made several other changes, predicated on two ideas: implementing Tufte, and changing from traditional to modern measurement statistics:

• Eliminated some wasted space from the header
• moved the summary block down
• Changed the pitch count grid from an inning by inning count and total per pitcher to a grid. This is an experiment, and it's probably easier to print the scorecard, go to a game, fill it out, scan it, and upload it than to explain how it should work. The idea is that 1) the marks are the data; 2) it's easier to do totals inning to inning; 3) you can see at a glance how many pitches a pitcher is throwing per inning relative to a complete-game rate (12/inning).
• Changed some of the stats from traditional (At bats, hits, runs, strikeouts) to modern (On-base percentage, slugging, and what I think are the necessary raw ingredients - plate appearances, outs, and total bases). So when Jeff Kent (I still can't believe he's a Dodger. Or that he's hitting so well at 37.) draws three walks and makes two outs, his line OBP/SLG is .600/.000, which is more useful than his batting average, which would be 0-2 or .000. When J.D. Drew hits two singles, a double, and a homer, and grounds out to first, his line is .800/1.600, instead of just .800.
• Dropped the convention of recording RBIs, though this change is not visible on the blank scorecard
• Cosmetic changes to the at-bat box; removed the pitch count circle.
• Followed Tufte's ideas and made most of the lines gray, instead of black, so that data, which is recorded in pencil anyway, is more visible than the grid lines.

300dpi PNG, ready for printing: Mk3 Scorecard Front, Back.

Get the SVG source files.

The strategy of the Chinese government is to change the subject.
When complaints are lodged about the imprisoning of dissidents, the Chinese do not forthrightly proclaim “Indeed, we do put them in prison. We are justified in doing so. They are a threat to our security.” Instead they change the subject to “No country should interfere in the internal affairs of another country.” When America attacks China’s human rights record, the Chinese do not say “You are mistaken about our human rights problem, and here’s why.” Rather, they change the subject: “What about your human rights problem?”

All governments—all human beings—are guilty of this move, which in American parlance is called “spin”. But in China the technique has been reflexively applied for so long, it is now simply the default official approach to any awkward information whatsoever.—Ann Condi

How much longer until this is the norm in the United States? Or have we already passed that threshold? How do we measure? I think that even though the Administration is either there or headed there, that's not a direct comparison. I believe the change the subject syndrome applies to all levels and branches of the Chinese government, whereas I would still expect to get straightforward (or at least not deliberately misleading or obfuscating) answers from, say local governments or branches of federal agencies or judges or a district attorney. Not from politicians, but from bureaucrats. If this changes in the US, will "terrorism" be the excuse?

I've made several custom baseball scorecards, since the ones that come in programs are quite inadequate. Unfortunately, I made them in Coreldraw and Visio, so I couldn't use them on my linux computer even if I hadn't misplaced the original files. I decided to use SVG (Scalable vector Graphics) to create version 3. This is a standard XML file format which allows you to "draw" shapes by describing them in text. Instead of using the mouse to lay out shapes, I can just type in the dimensions I want. It looks like this:

<rect x=".16" y=".16"
        width="0.18" height="0.18"
        transform="rotate(45 .25 .25)"
        fill="white"
        stroke="#cccccc"
        stroke-width="0.01"
        stroke-dasharray="0.02,0.02"/>

That code creates a diamond bordered with a gray dashed line.

I have run into two main problems with this project. The first is that the SVG specs on relative and absolute coordinates for reused components are clear as mud and devoid of helpful examples. This means in effect that I'm doing a lot of stuff the Wrong Way, using offsets and other tricks which just make it harder to move stuff around and correct mistakes. I got to a certain point where I probably should have backed up, created a simple trial document, and mastered viewport coordinate system, effect of the viewBox attribute on sibling attributes, Nested transformations, and the tangled relationship between patternUnits = "userSpaceOnUse | objectBoundingBox", patternContentUnits = "userSpaceOnUse | objectBoundingBox", and viewBox. Instead, I just bulled on ahead to finish the darn thing.

The second problem is that, although SVG has been around for a few years, support for it is mixed. I tried four different programs and got four different outputs, wrong on four different ways. GIMP's SVG module botches the text utterly, putting it in the wrong place and orders of magnitude too big. GIMP also gets most of the lines wrong, though that may only be an artifact of going to a print-ready resolution and then shrinking back down for display. KSVG in Konqueror looks much better, but the text is still destroyed: it seems to round all text block locations to the nearest inch or so, so that the headings for innings 1 and 2 are superposed, as are 3-4, etc. Sodipodi does the text fine and the lines look good, but the diamonds which are the most crucial element of the whole thing are not rotated. Finally, squiggle, a java program which is part of Batik, whatever that is, seems to get everything right except that the text seems to alternate being a pixel too high and a pixel too low. Still, if I can cajole print-quality raster files from squiggle, that will probably be the solution. But a one-afternoon project is now, stretching out into its fourth session of work. Bah.

As a result, I had to use fresh xeroxes of my old scorecard for the Dodgers-Padres game last week. The Padres' stadium, (commercial naming sponsor) Park, is reasonably nice. If you come on the trolley, you have to walk around most of the back side, which looks like a blank mall exterior, to get to a gate, but once inside it's pretty. The commercial signage is a notch past excessive, but at least the players don't wear any advertising (aside from little logos that are practically invisible). The game happened to fall on Military night, and the Padres were wearing camouflage jerseys—grounds for protest if ever there were any. Aside from lots of froo-frah before the game, there was a very very cool parachuting demonstration, with an eight-man Navy parachuting team jumping into the stadium. The first one put his foot down directly on the target in the outfield. Others did tricks with smoke, joined up in pairs, and/or did this thing where they plummet towards the ground at 60 mph until well below the tops of the nosebleed seats before pulling up and abruptly not dying. Useful when being shot at, no doubt, but I'd hate to practice that much. Most importantly, the Dodgers won, although it was the last victory of an improbable 8-game winning streak.