HexagonalBlog

Let's see if I can start a trend

I'm not going to be able to make a conventional live blog Saturday's WC matches for obvious reasons, but I intend to post updates on Twitter.  I was thinking of using a hashtag to identify Hexagonal-related updates (#hexagonal09).  That way, you can do a search on that tag and get all updates related to the World Cup qualifiers.

It would be great to get tweets from people at the stadiums with their impressions of the games that they're watching.  It would also be interesting to find out if I'm important enough to start trends on Twitter -- probably not, but let's find out.

Come on in, the water's warm

Actually, this guy's been in the pool for a while, but news travels slowly to me.  James Lagrange has a blog on CONCACAF soccer, and he's published a preview of the upcoming Gold Cup, surveyed the fan culture in CONCACAF, and ponders what a 16-team Gold Cup might look like. Check it out.

HexagonalBlog talks geek

My growing interest in applied math/stats problems for soccer has outgrown this blog, so I decided to start a new one devoted to that subject area.  It will be more technical in content, but I still want it to be accessible to a general (or at least curious) audience.  I reproduced my Moneyball post on that site, and there should be some more original content within the next week or so.

You can find the site here:

hhamilton.typepad.com/soccermetrics/

but there will be a new domain that should be operational by the end of this weekend NOW:

www.soccermetricsblog.com

HexagonalBlog goes bilingual, take two

I decided to give the Spanish-language version of HexagonalBlog another shot.  I greatly underestimated how much work would be required to make that kind of effort successful, and translating my own posts required a lot more effort.  There will be some overlap between this site and that one when it comes to posting results and tables, but there will be some posts on that site that you won't see here, and vice-versa.  Anyway, the site has its own domain now:

www.hexagonalblog-espanol.com

There are some additional changes coming, such as design and layout, as well as another blog where my geek interests and soccer intersect.  I'm kind of building my own mini-empire! 

HexagonalBlog now on Twitter

This could be the start of something. 

I just set up a Twitter account for HexagonalBlog, and I'd like to use it to send and receive rapid responses during World Cup qualifying matchdays, Champions League matches, or other events.  If you have a Twitter account, you can follow me at hexablog, and you can send me replies to messages using the '@' command (ex. @hexablog).  I may place some comments on there from time to time, but I'll ramp up my presence there next month.

I'll place a Twitter widget on the blog so you can follow along.  In general, I'm somewhat reluctant to use the social networking sites, but perhaps Twitter will be useful.  At any rate, I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Updates to the blogroll

I haven't updated the blogroll in a long time, which is bad because a number of sites link here and I haven't linked back.  I know they probably think I've been blowing them off, but it wasn't my intent.  Other links have gone dormant, and there are some sites that piqued my interest but was too lazy to add.  Bad, bad, bad.

Well, I'm going to add a few right now and add some more in the coming days.  So welcome, MLS Debris, Soccer Source, and CONCACAF Club Rankings.

And I want to add Axel Torres' site.  Axel is an analyst at Radio MARCA in Spain and he is far and away the best football analyst on that radio station, especially on international football. 

More sites to be added in the coming days, or weeks.

Anyone seen my post?

Last Friday I wrote a post titled "The post-qualifier roundup" that was a media roundup of the first-round qualifier matches -- twice in fact, because there was a server error that caused me to lose the contents of the first version.  TypePad told me that the post had been saved, but now it is no longer among the list of posts.  Did anyone see my post?  Needless to say, I'm very irritated with TypePad right now.

Changes to the blogroll

As you can tell, I made some changes to the blogroll last night.  When I started HexagonalBlog I had links related to the countries in the final round of World Cup qualifying.  As the scope of this blog expanded to include CONCACAF events outside of the World Cup, I felt that it was time to include more links from the other member countries.  On the left hand side you can links to those national associations that have official websites (there are still seven that do not).  There are some other links that I'll include in the "Other Blogs" list in the coming days.

From time to time I get requests to add links to this site.  I usually don't add links on request, and I certainly don't if it doesn't have anything to do with (a) soccer, (b) CONCACAF, or (c) MLS/US soccer.

MORE:  Ok, that last sentence didn't come across well...I have added links in the past from people who have asked to be added to one of my blogrolls.  I wrote what I did in response to requests I often get to add links that aren't soccer related, or aren't related to soccer in this region.  So there you go.

Another weblog addition

I decided to update my blogroll with Roberto Gotta's vecchio23 blog.  Roberto Gotta is an Italian journalist who is a columnist on Italian soccer on the ESPN Soccernet website.  He's that rare foreign journalist who is really knowledgeable about American sport and covers it in a serious and non-sneering way.  (To be fair, even fewer American sportswriters are knowledgeable about foreign sport with the probable exceptions of tennis and golf.)

Anyway, it looks like a content-rich blog, and it gives me some motivation to learn Italian again.

Some blogs on the U20 World Cup

There are a few blogs out there devoted to the U20 World Cup, such as Bobby McMahon's blog at FOX Sports and the Off the Post blog at Toronto's National Post.   I'm sure there are more, and if you want to suggest others, you may do so in the comments.