Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
For various reasons, my father is always on my mind in June.
Fathers Day is a big part of it, of course. But June is also my Dad's birthday month. When he died in the spring of 2004, he was just shy of his 80th birthday.
Also, the final round of the Stanley Cup playoffs take place in June these days. Hockey was my Dad's favourite sport. He always watched Hockey Night in Canada on TV every Saturday night, just as he had listened to it on radio ever since the Great Depression when he was a prairie farm boy. My father never played hockey (or any other sport for that matter), but he loved the game passionately.
My Dad taught me the rules of hockey and how to watch it. Apparently certain Americans find hockey hard to enjoy because it's difficult to see and follow that tiny, speeding puck on the TV screen. In the 1990s, FOX network even created a "glow puck" that generated a big on-screen blue/red streak (depending on the puck's speed) in an effort to make it easier for those viewers to follow. Canadians laughed that ridiculous puck right out of the NHL, eh?
So here's the simple but effective secret that every Canadian knows and that my Dad taught me -- don't even waste your time trying to watch the puck, just watch the players. You can tell where the puck is by where the players are headed or congregating, since they're chasing it. And if someone scores a goal, you'll know it by how they all celebrate. That's how you follow the game!
But I really shouldn't make fun of Americans because of the "glow puck." No, it's the Brits who truly suck at trying to figure out what's going on in hockey, as in this tongue-in-cheek clip!
