Website Woes And Whimsy

(04.26.05) Summer is almost upon us! About time too, I say. There's nothing quite like the feeling of straggling into the rink in shorts and flip flops, playing hockey in a rink some 20 degrees colder than the outside environ, then slipping into same shorts/flip flops and wander out into the still prevalent sun of a northern Alberta summer.

I also look forward to this time of year because it means that I take a nice break from this website, beesharps.com, that you all hopefully enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing the site and all that, but we all need a break from even our greatest passions, and the summer months is when I take my sabbatical from the grind of game summaries, statistical anomalies, and the assorted day-to-day tasks that it takes to maintain probably the most bombastic, over-the-top rec league website out there.

Part of the reason I take the summer season off (sorry, Yellow Jackets) is that the statistics kept up by the off-ice officials during the game are, well, a little lacking. I discovered this last season, as several of our games didn't list the roster on the gamesheets, and with half the players in summer league wearing beat up practice jerseys emblazoned with a hastily created #11 made out of discarded sock tape, I need all the help I can get. How else am I to fully represent the lineups of both teams, thus alerting each player as to the identity of the player from the opposing team that once said something bad about his mother?

Plus, it's nice to come home and relax after a game. In winter, it usually takes me two hours to update everything that needs updating after a Bee Sharps game. If you think two hours is long, you should have seen me at the beginning of this odyssey.

The Bee Sharps website started, inconspicuously, in October 2002. I honestly can't remember who suggested the idea to me, but it was a notion that was swimming around my head ever since I had wanted to make a website about my Playstation NHL '98 Team England squad. Wouldn't you want to follow the exploits of superstar English centre Nick Brain, or to see how many bad goals Angus Gray had let in against Kazakhstan?

Well, having run a website for my old band Flying Saucer Moonship (the last version of which can be found here, for those interested), I decided to have a crack at my first sports website. I begged, borrowed, and stole bits of code from all over the web (thanks to those anonymous sites who helped me out in the dark days) and set about creating the site. My main objective and guiding force in setting it all up was this : if I was a fan and the Bee Sharps were my favourite team, what would I want from their website? The answer : statistics, history, records, stories, and pictures.

Well, the pictures were the hard part, as we had no visual record of our games through the first one and three-quarter seasons of our existence. Team England to the rescue! I decided to create a Bee Sharps team in the PC version of NHL 2002, recreate certain plays from Bee Sharps games, and take screen captures of the results. Sometimes, I would enjoy playing the game so much that I forgot the pictures and led a computerized Bee Sharps onslaught against teams that we probably had just lost to in the "real world". We may have never beaten the Chain Gang on the ice, but, by gar, we got their number in robot land!

Thankfully, Landon Lewsaw obtained a digital camera from work in February 2004, and the site really approached legitimacy after that. Not that the digital camera was top notch. Landon received it for free from his place of work, and there's a reason that it was free. It is a huge machine; a true relic. It reminds me of the cameras on The Flintstones, both in its size and form, as well as in its function. In order to properly take a picture, one must press and hold the button for at least three seconds, allowing enough time for the small pterodactyl inside the camera to hurriedly chip away the image he sees onto a nice piece of granite. After taking a picture with this thing, hold up the camera to your ear, and you can hear the little dino-bird inside crack wise, with dented beak, "Meh, it's a living."

By the time the 2004-05 season started, the amount of information I wanted to put up on the site was stretching my work time to over three hours. Thankfully, a new version of Microsoft Office dropped into my lap, complete with a program called FrontPage. With this program, I no longer needed to tirelessly adjust ream upon ream of gobbledygook html code. I could now quickly, and easily, create and update pages in the blink of an eye like the rest of the free (and not so free) world has been doing since, oh, 1997.

My night of work begins with the typing up of the scoring summary, followed by the updating of the statistics and career statistics pages (all these are done with Microsoft Excel, for those who are inclined to know). I then upload the photos from the camera disk and create the photo page for the game. Next, I update the hockey cards, schedule page, and records page (if any records were broken that night). At this point, I update the front page, choosing a title picture and snappy headline. The last thing I do is the game write-up. I do this last as I use the summary and photos to jog my memory of the night's action. I will admit something here - I don't actually read my own write-ups. For shame! After almost two hours of working, I'm quite done for the night, as my bleary eyed expression would tell you. I then slump off off bed, and await the inevitable emails from James Seabrook, my unofficial proof reader, who points out all the broken and incorrect links that I happen to have missed from the night before.

So there you go. For those of you out there who think I don't have a life because of this site, I honestly do, but rarely have I closed a pub down with my fellow Sharps teammates after a game. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention all the help I get keeping this little time waster of a website afloat. The afore-mentioned pictures are most often taken by Brandi Charles (that's me girlfriend!), Jackie Lewsaw, Greg Anselmo, and Bess Sadler (if any other Bee Flats have taken pictures, please let me know!). Our plus/minus statistics are also tabulated by Bess and Brandine, although Jackie, Jannette Hurshowy, and Lisa Schulz have also helped along the way. Finally, the BeakBoard that we all enjoy venting vitriolic on about all things Sharps was created and maintained by Matt Stephens who, sadly, along with his wife Bess, will be defecting to the red state of Virginia soon, bent on bringing down the Republican machine from within. Fear not, though, as the Board, and this site, will continue to run until indifference renders it obsolete.

Thanks to all for reading.