Nathan's Personal Blog

Preamble Alright, before we dive into the rankings, I want to get a couple of things out of the way. There are far more jerseys this year that I just simply do not like. I think this is a product of Nike forcing this program on the NBA teams and making them come up with new designs every year for six years now. There's only so much some teams can do, and in some cases, they did their best work already and are now being forced to turn in bad products. Second, I think it is absolutely pathetic how many teams relied on a phrase located near the waist of the jersey in order to claim some sort of tie-in to their city. THAT PART IS TUCKED IN DURING GAMES! Nobody is going to see those phrases, so if that's your only thread of hope, it's probably not a good one. These jerseys will be ranked based on two factors: 1. How nice does the jersey look? 2. How well did the jersey capture the city or something about the city? Lastly, these are just my rankings. If you love a jersey I hated,...

This mix has a lot of promise. The mini stack I had today wasn't the best I've ever had, but I think there was definitely some user error involved. It's a lot thicker than the usual batter I make, so I'll need to either pour a different amount or thin it out with some water or milk.  The taste of the pancakes is great. They taste a lot like homemade pancakes and cooked really nicely. They were a little bit too dense for my taste preferences, but certainly not uneatable by any means. I will definitely be making these again and hopefully they'll be even better next time. For now I think I'll give them a 7.1 out of 10. 

Today is the day! The NHL has released all 32 Reverse Retro 2.0 uniforms for the 2022/23 season. The Reverse Retro program was a fantastic promotion when it was first introduced in 2021. I've been so excited for these to release, and some of the leaks have gotten me even more excited. There looks like there will be some awesome jerseys this season, so let's get into my rankings! Instead of ranking them 32 to 1, I'm going to sort them into tiers and explain each one. I'll still try to rank them within each tier, but this should make the article more readable.  Okay, the jerseys have been released now, and I am thrilled! There are so many great jerseys! Let's rank them! Lottery Pick These are the jerseys that either missed the assignment altogether or just look bad. In this section we have Nashville, Ottawa, Minnesota, Winnipeg, and Tampa Bay. The Predators, Senators, and Wild all look decent. They aren't terrible jerseys, but I just think they should have tried h...

Yesterday I was scrolling through the old Instagram feed when a strange post from UberFacts came across my screen. UberFacts is a great account on Instagram that does exactly what the name would suggest: they post facts. Sometimes they post facts that are quirky or fun, and sometimes they just post facts that are relevant to the times. The post that caught my attention was this one:  So, naturally my first thought was, "how on Earth do they know this? No one has been there, and they certainly haven't taken their helmets off to smell and taste whatever is there." Well, apparently this is a bit of an exaggerated fact. This is all based on the presence of something called ethyl formate . This compound is what gives raspberries their flavor and apparently it also smells like rum. Don't get too excited though. Here's why it's exaggerated. They found a bunch of other compounds and molecules in this sample of electromagnetic radiation, so it's not like there are ...

The UEFA Champions League (UCL) starts today! Somehow it sneaks up on me every year, but it's here and it is glorious as always. The best thing about the Champions League is that during the group stage, there is almost always a good game on because there's so many happening and then in the knockout rounds, only the good teams have qualified, so all the games are usually pretty good. Here are the games I'm most excited for today. 3:00pm ET - Juventus @ PSG Two teams who have recently dominated their domestic league but failed to achieve European success. This should be a really competitive game as both teams have some absolutely world class players. PSG of course has Neymar, Messi, and Mbappe, but they also have serial winner Sergio Ramos and one of the best young prospects at any position in the world in Gianluigi Donnarumma at goalkeeper.  Juventus has been struggling in the last couple of years but still possess young stars Federico Chiesa, Manuel Locatelli, and Dušan Vla...

It's 11:07pm. I'm sitting on the couch in the house I grew up in watching two women I haven't heard of until this week play each other in a tight U.S. Open match. I woke up at 6:30am today, took maybe a 15 minute nap around 9:30am, and had a relatively good Saturday in my opinion. I  really should be ready to head upstairs, get a good night's sleep and enjoy not having to work in two days because of the long weekend. But I can't. Why can't I? Because I'm in a thought spiral (thank you John Green for naming that concept) regarding athletics.  I played competitive sports from the time I was about 9 years old. For a while, I played baseball, hockey, and soccer until I decided that I needed to pick two of those sports to focus on and I was worst at soccer out of the three. I had varying levels of success in both baseball and hockey over the years. Nothing more than a district championship though for my town (baseball when I was 9, and hockey as a sophomore in hi...

Welcome back to "Intrusive Thoughts" the series where I just pour my intrusive thoughts onto a blog in an attempt to get them out of my own head. Today I will be discussing briefly why I think high school actually prepares people BETTER than college does for the real world. I really only have one main point here, so this won't be a very long blog, but here we go.  I know that technically the actual classes that we take in college are supposed to prepare us to work in whatever industry our major aligns with. In that sense, yes, college gives us more information to help with living in the real world than high school does. However, once we get out of college, most of us are going to be bound to eight-hour work days with about two weeks (at least to start) of vacation per year. In college, we're taking maybe three or four classes per day, and they last maybe an hour and a half typically? There is SO much more free time in college than in the real world. We can watch movie...

This is a very niche thing to blog about, since international baseball is not very popular and has struggled to gain any kind of momentum for some reason, or a number of reasons to be more accurate. I'm not here to talk about that though, I'm here to ask what the heck is going on with the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC)?  The WBC is sort of baseball's attempt at a World Cup-type tournament, except it has not been as successful and it is not as historic. The first one was in 2006, and in four tournaments, Japan has won two with the Dominican Republic and the United States each winning one. There was supposed to be a tournament in 2021, but COVID hit, so now it is in 2023. As such, lots of news about who will play and who the coaches will be is coming out now.  The players aren't anything that shocking, Mike Trout is in for the U.S., Trevor Story is in, and I'm sure other stars will likely declare their interest soon. What I'm curious about is why on Earth so ma...

Ummm...apparently the Little League World Series (LLWS) has restructured the way their bracket will be set up this summer and I sort of hate it, so let's discuss. First of all, this is being written from the perspective of someone who grew up idolizing the teams in the late-2000s LLWS and dreaming about hitting a walk-off homerun like the kid for Warner Robbins in 2007. To me, the New England region will always be maroon, black, and white, the West will always be UCLA-blue and gold, and the Southeast will always be gold and red.  I know that was not always the case, and I know it is not the case right now. In fact, one of my most vivid memories of the LLWS was Nick Pratto hitting a walk-off single for the yellow and green West region to win the world championship in 2011. I also know that there was a time (until 2001 to be precise) that there were only four regions per bracket rather than eight U.S. and eight international teams. For reference, the regions I am used to are: U.S. Ne...

Okay we have some baseball uniform news!  The MLB has just announced the uniforms that will be worn in the 2022 Field of Dreams game on Thursday between the Red and the Cubs and there is a lot to break down! This is the MLB's version of the NHL's Winter Classic in a way. The uniforms are throwbacks and the concept behind the game is to bring it back to a simpler time before guys were turning down $400 million contracts and throwing 95+ miles-per-hour. As always, huge shoutout to the guys at sportslogos.net (especially Chris Creamer) for the news and graphics.  The first thing that really jumps out to me is that both of these jerseys are white! Okay, well technically, the Cubs' jersey is cream, or ivory, or off-white (depending what you want to call it). Both jerseys are basically white though, which is probably the first time in a while that this will happen. I do not quite get why  this is the case, as other-colored jerseys have existed for a while, even if that other c...

 This is a new series of articles I will be writing called "Intrusive Thoughts". The concept is simple. As someone who struggles with intrusive thoughts, I will just be writing blogs about the intrusive thoughts I have to hopefully get them somewhat out of my head. I am not an expert on any of these topics, so do not take my thoughts too seriously or personally, as they are often driven my emotion and not logic if they are being included in this series. The first article is this one, and it is about the American school system, a common grievance of mine.  I have a number of issues with the American school system, but my main grievance right now is how the school system combines with social media and "fame" or success right now. Fame brings financial success, those two things go together. While money is not equal to happiness by any means, and at times can even deter it, some amount of money is needed in this world and this society to survive and then, thrive. We als...

 Alright, I should have written and posted this blog days ago, but I didn't and now I am. I totally forgot that the NHL was doing another Reverse Retro series this season. Recently, a leak has come out showing what the Canucks jersey is going to look like, and it seems to be pretty legit, although not entirely confirmed just yet. Here's a look at the jersey if you haven't seen it already.  I've seen people giving pretty mixed reactions to the jersey so far. I really like it. I think it is relatively simple and nice looking, but it also captures the spirit of the project. The whole point of the Reverse Retro series is to take an old jersey and recreate it with today's colors, or flip the colors on the original uniform if the team still uses the same colors. Here is a look at the 1962 Canucks, which is what this jersey is based on:  As shown in the picture, it is likely that there will be a number on the upper left chest, although I think it would be more beneficial t...

 OKAY!!! WE HAVE BIG UNIFORM NEWS!! Greg Wyshynski of ESPN has reported that after the 2023/2024 season, Adidas will no longer be the manufacturer and designer of NHL uniforms. Right now I think most people are expecting Nike to take over when that change happens, and if you have read any of my recent MLB blogs, you already know how I feel about that. For now though, I want to think about what that might mean for the identities and designs we might see.  BREAKING NEWS: @adidas will not return as the NHL’s official supplier of uniforms and apparel when their contract expires after the 2023-24 season, multiple sources confirmed to ESPN. My exclusive story: https://t.co/Im0EYbyPz6 — Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) July 28, 2022  For some teams, like the Red Wings, Rangers, and Canadiens, this will probably do absolutely nothing. Those teams have so much history and have had their jerseys the same way for so long that I doubt whoever takes over will change much. Teams like the B...