So the IIHF World Championships of Hockey are on for the next two weeks. Having been going through hockey withdrawal lately, I was excited at the prospect of seeing some good hockey on TV. I checked around, and heard that Hammerheads and Coconut Joe's and some other bar had gone in together and 'sponsored' the tournament, so that CITN, the local channel, would broadcast the games on Channel 27 (or channel 11 if you don't have cable)

The only problem is that due to existing committments, the only time they could show the Canada Latvia game was Saturday night at 2am. Uhh, the bars (who paid for them to broadcast it) arent open them, dumbasses. On top of that, they werent showing any of the games live, and something else happened last night so that they werent going to show the US-Slovenia game, either.

In a panic, Wammer from Hammerheads called up Little Bucket and said “This is bad. We need to get these games on the screens down here. Do you know anyone who can help out?” Guess who she called...

Since cable and satelite were out, we were left with trying to come up with more creative ways to get the games on. I stumbled across Mediazone who offered an all-access pass to all the games, streamed live or time-shifted over the internet. Johnny Rotten and I went to Hammerheads yesterday after brunch to talk to Wammer about it and saw that we had all the neccesary requirements to pull it off (John did a lot of wiring and stuff for them, so he already knew their A/V system.

We returned at 6:30 and proceeded to set up the stream from their Wireless Access Point in the office to a laptop out at the bar. We used the S-Video output on the laptop to output the video to a DVD recorder, and from the DVD recorder to an RF Modulator. From the RF Modulator, we split the outut and sent one signal to their DLP Projector for the 20' screen and also into their coaxial A/V system and “broadcast” the game to EVERY TV in the joint, on channel 4.

We got everything set up and working at 7:27pm. Three minutes from the time Wammer put on the handbills & notices he had printed up to let everyone know that they would have the game on.

7:30pm: GAME ON.

Now Hammerheads has the upper hand on the other bars on the island, where they aren't tied to CITN's schedule of the games. If they want to show a game early (like for instance next Sunday when it “airs” at 10:30pm and means that they have to close before the game is over) then they can.

If you're lookin for the hockey games on Cayman, Hammerheads is THE PLACE TO BE. w00t!