Manitoba Links Weekly: Portage and Main, Public Sphere Craft Show, and Police Service Dog TIKA (ManLinkWeek 33)

ManLinkWeek ahoy! Later than intended, yes, but t'is the season; this is the brief but significant period of time when good weather and playoff hockey intersect, and when they do, hey, something's gotta give. I am finishing this post off during Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals, with the window wide open, trying with various levels of success to enjoy everything at once.

A housekeeping note, before I begin: the presentation notes from the Manitoba Libraries Conference, mentioned last week, are now online. So if you're interested in a bit of independent study on adult literacy, or data ownership in the Web 2.0 world, collection and classification decisions at the Canadian Human Rights Museum, or the public and academic libraries of Northern Manitoba, you'll find no better place to start than there.

As for this week -- one sure sign of the approaching summer, in Manitoba, is that locations outside Winnipeg start seeming a lot better and Winnipeg starts seeming a lot worse. So there's something of a conceptual split this week between the Winnipeg content and the Manitoba content, and I think you're going to be able to tell quite handily which side I'm more taken with this week.

But enough talk! Have at you, ManLinkWeek:

The 2012 Stanley Cup Finals Begin Tonight

ManLinkWeek will be along shortly, delayed already as it is, but first things first -- I just got home, and Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals starts in maybe fifteen minutes. And, since I got none of my series predictions right last round (well, 'neither', really, since there were only the two series), the best I can aim for on the year is one under .500 -- so, hey, at that point, what's the harm in zipping through it?

LET'S DO THIS

Stanley Cup Finals

(6) New Jersey Devils vs. (8) Los Angeles Kings

sixth seed home ice advantage, how did this even

I am begrudgingly obligated to admit that I do, after the last round, rescind my previous round's assessment and recognize the New Jersey Devils as legitimate; a large part of that is how Martin Brodeur is on a spaghetti-western old-man-with-one-last-task-in-life tear right now, playing well enough to outduel a world-elite league-MVP-candidate goaltender and look every bit as solid as his ridiculous lifetime statistics would suggest. The forward depth of the Devils outperformed the Rangers' lines admirably -- although, to look at the Rangers' playoff stats afterwards, that may not have been as impressive as it sounds -- and the defence, while not really a force defensively in the traditional sense, turned out to be pretty valuable offensive threats. (So it probably helps that, with Brodeur back there, they never actually have to go back and play the puck.) And I have a longstanding soft spot for Adam Henrique, for some reason; I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect the EASHL modes in NHL '11 and '12 have something to do with it. Yes, that's right; I'm that guy.

But! But. If the Kings don't look like a capital-T, capital-D Team of Destiny to you right now, I don't know what team could. The Kings' forwards are gigantic, at precisely the time of year when height and weight are most considered assets, and at precisely the time of year when the opposing defenders are going to be the most tired. (New Jersey actually seems like kind of a tiny team by comparison, but they are very fast; unfortunately for them, that's more of a help earlier in the year when referees are still calling plenty of penalties.) The defence is, for what people would have expected of them earlier in the year, overperforming, and... there's probably a more clever way of stating that Jonathan Quick is playing really well, but holy crap Jonathan Quick. He just shows up, waves his hand a few dozen times, and theoretically much better teams end up dumping their franchise goaltenders or losing hundreds of millions of dollars for the infinitieth straight year.

Given the evidence, given the comparative levels of rest and how both teams have played in the rounds previous, I would predict that the Los Angeles Kings would win with what seems like reasonable ease. However, if there is one thing I have learned from years and years of watching the Stanley Cup Finals, it is that their end results more often than not underwhelm and vaguely disappoint me.

SO

What I'd Want: Los Angeles in five.
What I'll Guess: New Jersey in six, including at least one shutout.

Hockey, everybody! ManLinkWeek will be along shortly, don't worry.

Manitoba Links Weekly: OMC and Oleson, Parks and Parcels, Libraries and Liquor (ManLinkWeek 32)

Welcome back, long-weekenders! To indulge my well-established enthusiasm for format fiddling, this week's ManLinkWeek will operate a little differently than most of the other installments. Last week's post took longer to write than I'd anticipated partially because -- and this will happen, sometimes -- I'd left an extra link on the list for consideration and then forgot to drop one when I wrote the post proper. (Man, I knew I was forgetting to... well, to forget something.) So this week I'm saying "the heck with it" -- paraphrased -- and cutting the weeding step entirely, instead grouping related links by subject where appropriate.

With all that established, let's open with local blogosphere developments:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Can We Build It? No, We Canalta (ManLinkWeek 31)

yeah I'm stealing my own jokes, what up

Hello and welcome to ManLinkWeek for the week of Tuesday, May 15th! I've put this segment off until the day after, as I sometimes tend to do lately, but who could blame me? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and poorly-handled civic files are dying sudden miserable deaths.

The 2012 Stanley Cup Conference Finals Begin Tonight

I literally only just now got home from hand-building my grandmother a brand new roof for her cottage. Happy Mother's Day, everybody!

So obviously, in the meantime, the third round of the playoffs has already started and I'm completely behind on this post. Rrrgh -- man, whatever, let's go, let's get this going:

Manitoba Links Weekly: a city where these is everything like any other Canadian City -- but beware ! (ManLinkWeek 30)

It's that time again! Your favourite Tuesday feature that occasionally gets pushed back to Wednesday afternoon for reasons not compelling enough to dwell on -- it's ManLinkWeek! So let's open up the... bag? The vault. The vault-bag! The ManLinkWeek vault-bag.

Yeah, okay, the branding needs a bit of work still. You get the idea, though! And first up:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Best in the World, Kony on Clearance, and Here Be Murrays (ManLinkWeek 29)

My apologies for the delay on this post; the internet at my house (and possibly on my whole block, although the way I'd normally find that out is through the internet) mysteriously conked out yesterday evening, which makes researching and writing a post about internet links a tad difficult. So if this post doesn't appear until the middle of Wednesday, and it seems a bit discombobulated, it's because I had to write it overnight from vague memory of the subject matter and then post it on my lunch break at work.

So, uh, hey! ManLinkWeek!

You all like good news, right? Let's open with the good news: