Our Dearest Intern, Chris

Day 3, (or night 2)

"Look at the four dipping quadrants!"

Well, we're drawing to the end of another long day. Perhaps not as much to show for our efforts as the last two days, but we managed to stay much more on task than usual. For my part, I advanced leaps and bounds in my knowledge of ActionScript and XML. Andy worked programming miracles as usual and got some of the League play online.

Unfortunately, I'm going out of town and Andy is going into dental surgery, so we'll be off the grid for awhile.

Never fear, it's still Winter Break and we have a lot more work left in us before 2008 winds to a close.

Stay tuned.

Day 2

Big changes in the "office" today. I decided that our "workplace" needed some snacks, so I stopped at 7-Eleven before coming in to work. Needless to say, Joe was pretty excited.

In terms of progress, we made great strides today. Joe has been hard at work learning the intricacies of Actionscript, while I have been busy setting up league capabilities/features. We also spruced up the look of the sight with some nice changes to the CSS.

On a side note, people still seem to have some confusion about how this site will eventually work. The leagues will consist of two teams each, and both will be competing to be the most "manly." Players will receive (or lose) points for their actions in their everyday lives, and at the end of the season, the team with the most points wins.

Examples:

• Eating a steak: +3 points
• Eating a wrap: -2 points
• Watching Fight Club: +2 points
• Watching The Notebook: -4 points
• Watching The Notebook with a dime and then hitting: +5 points

Hope you all get the picture. We'll keep you all posted!

Day 1 (of the blog)

To begin, a brief background.

ManPointsLeague was conceived on an ordinary day by two extraordinary individuals. Andy Day and myself, Josef Sipkins, were just freshmen at Northwestern University when we decided that we were capable of much more than what our studies were offering at the time. We knew that combined, our engaged interest in design, programming, and entrepeneurship was a surefire recipe for success. Eventually, we knew, we could be bigger than Zuckerberg.

We just didn't know how we were going to get there.

The answer came not in the form of a brainstorming session, but rather the two of us taking a well-earned study break and playing some Smash Bros for the N64. After audibly recognizing our own skill levels, we started dreaming of an online Guitar Hero-esque leaderboard system that could track people's successes with old school video games. That idea soon dissipated when we realized how difficult it would be to verify winnings without an online connection or some other 3rd party source of judgment.

But it led to a bigger idea, and we like to think a better one.

Man Points League is a fantasy sport site more interactive than any other, because instead of just watching and drafting, YOU get to play. You and your friends start a team, add pictures, videos, and anecdotes relating how manly you are, and the anonymous online community decides just how much those exhibits are worth. You can also submit anti-man-ecdotes about players in your league who aren't on your team, and at the end of the day the manliest team stands alone.

The idea has since expanded and changed in a number of ways, and at this point we don't know exactly how it's all going to turn out. But we're getting closer every day, and we decided to create this blog to document the process.

We'll keep ya updated.

-The Men