I made a new header today. Say good bye to the old header and in with the new one!

Some photos again did not make the cut but that’s okay. Enjoy the new header!

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the comments section because all it appears to do is spam me. I’ll have to figure out a way to just put “tweet me” but I’m sure twitter could be spammed eventually. (Am I wrong on this one)

Meanwhile I’m working on a book list for the future and I have these titles on there.

• With wings like eagles : a history of the Battle of Britain  by Michael Korda
• Satchel : the life and times of an American legend by Larry Tye
• This republic of suffering : death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
• True compass : a memoir by (the late) Edward M. Kennedy
• How to value players for rotisserie baseball by Art McGee
• THE BIG SHORT : INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE by Michael Lewis
• The Eastern stars : how baseball changed the Dominican town of San Pedro de Macorís by Mark Kurlansky
• Outside the limelight : basketball in the Ivy League by Kathy Orton

Any recommendations? Let me know via twitter @ryanarestivo

Another look at Google Analytics to see how the site has done.

The top states? New York, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Massachusets, Virginia.
Top Browsers? Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome.

46% are direct hits to here, 19% comes from Facebook and about 15% from Google. Just under 10% from Twitter though. Follow me on twitter @ryanarestivo!

This might be part one of a million but I love this new Google Analytics!

I’ve hooked it up to this site and now I get to see where the traffic to the site is driven!

As of 12/23/09, here’s the map!

The top three states are? New York, Connecticut and California.

Top cities? Commack, New York City, West Hartford, Poughkeepsie. See a theme here?

Other states the site is doing well in? New Jersey and Massachusetts. Even with that, getting hits from Bismarck, North Dakota; Marion, Illinois and Lonexa, Kansas are cool too. Now, please hit my site from other places to fill the states!

Since then the list has expanded to even more regions! I’ll have to show them another time.

One of my friend’s favorite videos. Have a great Christmas Eve and Christmas! I will have posts, mostly with videos, for the next 3 days. After which I will review 2009 and get ready for the new year!

I’m reading my own writing. I did an interview with Steve Amedio of Keepin’ Track of the MAAC and it’s really good stuff. My brother Matt has put forth a great long term plan for SienaSaintsBlog.com and we hope you check out everything we have to offer for the rest of the basketball season!

I also wrote an Expensive in 2010 column on Brian Fuentes for RotoSavants:

Fuentes led the league with 48 saves last year, but that is more a factor of the LA Angels of Anaheim getting into save situations. Fuentes pitched less than an inning in 9 of his 48 saves.

I’m trying out the new Google Chrome now. My brother Matt says he loves it and I am starting to like it too. I have used 4 browsers in the past: Mozilla’s Firefox, Camino and Apple’s Safari other than Google Chrome. I’m finding Chrome to be a very good experience and performing really well so far. It is still a Beta for Macs though but it has done everything I’ve asked of it so far in a few days.

I’m working on the draft kit project as well, mostly updating all the player movement that happened at those Winter Meetings in Indianapolis. A lot of players moved which makes for some fun time in Excel.

This one site is probably getting more than it asked for by writing that Baseball Prospectus Jumps The Shark. He brings up an interesting argument which made me think of a comparison. He must think that it is like Saturday Night Live in the old days, which had so much more talent, and move today where it pretty much is unwatchable.

In my continued experimentation with HTML, WordPress and the like. I try to conquer a contact form!

I’ve created a contact form with help of a plugin for WordPress! Check out the contact page! I have also brought back most of the features I had at the old site, with the Twitter and Category sidebars.

And don’t worry I already tested it with an e-mail from, me!

_________________________________

from Testy The Tester <an e-mail address I own> to <my own e-mail!!> date Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 3:54 PM subject Message via RyanRestivo.com

hide details 3:54 PM (8 minutes ago)

Message body:
This is a test message. Test messages rule!

–
This mail is sent via contact form on Ryan Restivo http://ryanrestivo.com

Here are some of the photos I thought about putting in the header but did not make the cut other than the

Everyone will like the caption of this photo, the time my hair fell off.

Okay so, I promise I will take off the Opponents shirt/hat when I leave the stadium(s) in 2010.

This one’s cool. First ball of 2009. I caught it and then after I thought a good goal for 2009 would be to get to 10 baseballs. I eventually did get there thanks to a great September!

Ah, college.

In my continual work as I try to tweak, tweak and tweak with WordPress… I’ve found a new format that I like better.

Here are a few reasons why.

• Pages like “About Me” and “Resume” are situated above the posts instead of to the side.
• A customizable header that I created with photos that I found of me and people. I like it, plus it helped me use Photoshop a lot more!
• The text on the site is larger so I can see it better, a major key for me.

So now that I have been told that it looks like I am engaging in a special relationship with a rock in a certain picture, see bottom right.

I created the photo as a 770 by 220 jpeg but when I inserted it, WordPress told me to crop it. So I did and my me and rock picture at a museum looks a little, different. So I am attempting to change that now!

Here is that picture by the way. Jenna and I visited the American Museum of Natural History in September and I am “attempting to lift up a rock.”

I failed. Though we got to see their Planetarium show, which is what we really went there for. It was a good time.

Then we went to the Shake Shack on the Upper West Side. This is where we found out that the Strawberry shake is really good and the Chocolate shake is really chocolate-y which made me say, “no wonder they serve the Black & White shake at Citi Field.”

Oops. Well I planned this site in the long long ago. So I just realized my about me page is not very well, um, updated . So I just updated that so check it out!

I also now have a resume page which has examples below of things I have worked on. Fun stuff.

Now if I can only build a contact me page…