Ok folks. Time to take off the bow and take this new bike for a ride. We're going to start out by building a video inventory right here on BSD. And you are going to do the work. Here is what you're going to do. (HT: Burnt Orange Nation )

1) Go here and stick the Fanshot button on your browser.

2) Go to YouTube and find a Penn State highlight you love.

3) Use your Fanshot widget to send it to BSD.

4) Make sure you tag the Fanshot with 'video' and 'psu highlights', along with other relevant descriptors.

And that's it. Instant vault of Penn State highlights, sortable by tag.

Hey Black Shoe Diaries,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Black Shoe Diaries from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Black Shoe Diaries and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Black Shoe Diaries now has all the basic information about the Penn St. Nittany Lions and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Penn St. Nittany Lions material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Ok, so this is embarrassing. Apparently when they sent me an email saying BSD HD was taking effect on Thursday they meant Thursday night. Which means we'll have to wait until Friday morning to play with the shiney bicycle. I regret the error. Please pick up a consolation pair of tube socks for your trouble on your way out.

Tonight there may be a short site outage for an hour or two while they upgrade to the BSD HD as we're calling it around here. Then tomorrow when you fire up your web browser there should be a nice shiney bicycle under the tree waiting for us all.

Have a good evening.

These "Things (Blank) and (Blank) People Like" have been circling around the internets the past few weeks, but I have yet to see anyone do one for Penn State. So I figured what the heck. Here are some things Blue and White people like.

Eat n Park

It's 2 AM on a Sunday. You're cruising down I-99 through Altoona on your way home to Johnstown after another Primetime Penn State game. In the past 24 hours you have consumed a case of IC Lite, half a fifth of Jack, and a margarita some cute girl gave you just to make you leave her tailgating area before you puked on her. Your face and the back of your neck sting from standing in the sun all day and you haven't had anything to eat in over ten hours since the shoe leather hot dog that sat on the grill way too long. Your buddies are passed out in the back seat and your eyes are getting heavy. Then you see it. Eat n Park is coming up at the next exit, and you're thinking nothing would hit the spot better than a Super Griddle Smile right about now. Screw your friends. You need to Eat n Park right friggin' now. Buy them a round of Smiley Cookies to smooth it over.

World Famous Grilled Stickies

You started out drinking Ice-T's at the Café 210 West. Then someone suggested you head down to the Saloon for a Monkey Boy pitcher. The bars are closing down and you and your buddies are getting hungry. You stumble down the block to McDonalds to find the line out the door. Screw that. If you can't get flesh, cheese and grease at 2 AM you'll go for the next best thing...fat and sugar. The trek up College Avenue in the bitter January wind is totally worth it for that delicious sticky bun dipped in butter and fried on the grill. Of course it wouldn't be a grilled sticky if you didn't go ala mode.

Fumble Drills

You play ring toss to pass the time? Please. Penn State fans prefer something a little more manly. Like decking yourself out in spandex and diving into piles of empty beer cans.

Beer

One thing all Nittany Lion fans agree on is their love for beer. The only question is are you a Yinzer or Youzer. If you're from western Pennsylvania yinz like to kick back with an Iron City. If you're from eastern Pennsylvania youz prefer the smooth taste of Yuengling Lager.

	Like the Pens and Flyers, the beer wars will never be settled.

Add your own things Blue and White people like in the comments.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Indeed, this Thursday morning Black Shoe Diaries as you know it will come to an end. But we're not closing up shop here at BSD. We're going to be upgrading to the new SBNation platform. Call it BSD 2.0 if you will.

What is not going to change

1. The BSD URL will still be www.blackshoediaries.com
2. BSD will still be a Penn State blog.
3. The logo and blog colors.
4. I'll still be here putting together these crappy posts, though my new network name will be BSD. Can you believe the user name "Mike" was already taken?
5. Like a moth to the flame you'll still come here to waste valuable minutes of your life to read said crappy posts.

What is going to change

Holy crap. Where to start?

1. Fanposts - The Diaries will now be called Fanposts. They're basically the same thing with a 1000% cooler name. Only now we give you tools to really express yourself. You can highlight text in bold or italic. You can strike through text or put a box around a quotation. You can create bullet points and lists. You can create links to interesting articles. And you can do it all without having to dig out your complicated html cheat sheet as BSD 2.0 will provide you with all of these features at the click of a button.
2. Fanshots - Want to share a funny picture or video you think other BSD readers would enjoy? Or maybe you just want to point out an article without having to give a 300 character essay on it. Learn to use the Fanshots. Fanshots are quick posts that just say "Hey, check this out" without having to write a book to do it or fill in 300 characters of garbage.
3. Network Wide Access - You can go visit other sports blogs from time to time. I swear I won't get too jealous. The beauty of SBN 2.0 is that now you can cruise among all the SBN blogs without having to remember 20 different user names and passwords. One user name and one password will give you access to all of the sites. All you have to do is click the "Join" button on a blog to instantly take part in the community discussion after you are logged into another site.
4. More Information - With the click of a button you will have access to stats, scores, rosters, and schedules for Nittany Lion football and mens basketball.
5. Auto-Refreshing Comments - The comments section will automatically refresh every few seconds almost giving a chat room feel to them. Game day threads as we know them will never be the same.
6. Power To The People - SBN 2.0 will give the blog reader unprecedented power to customize their settings and interact with the online community. You will have an SBN profile page where you can list the blogs you frequent, customize the look of the front page to your liking, and attach an avatar to all of your comments, Fanposts, and Fanshots. Reward readers that offer intelligent views by recommending their posts and comments to others while flagging spammers and inappropriate comments to draw the attention of the blog administrator.

What You Should Do

If you want to get a head start on the new platform you can visit any number of SBN blogs that have already made the transition and sign up for an account. Once you do that follow the directions to claim your old accounts on the SBNation blogs you visit. That way you will get credit for all of your old comments.

Then if you want to you can visit one of the migrated blogs (BON is a good one) and start familiarizing yourself with the different features. Or if you just want to wait it out until Thursday and learn it on the fly that's fine too.

I know this is a Penn State blog, but this series is going to be a lot of fun.

In case you're wondering which team I'll be pulling for, GO FLYERS!

Congratulations to the Penn State Nittany Lion Men's Volleyball team for beating Pepperdine 3-1 to capture the second national championship in school history. The win firmly cements Penn State as the collegiate volleyball capitol of the country as we currently host both the men's and women's trophies in State College.

Let me be the first to suggest we erect a sign on Route 322 as you come through the mountain pass that says "Welcome to Happy Volley - Home of the Nittany Lions. Beware of round objects traveling at high rates of speed. Attempt to block them at your own risk."

Interesting read in the Daily Collegian about a little known 75-hour rule all Penn State sports teams must abide by. The 75 hour rule states that no athletic team or student athlete can be absent from class for more than 75 hours per semester. From what I gather in the article, this is not an NCAA mandate, but rather a restriction Penn State places on itself. Many within the Penn State athletic department feel it puts our teams at an unfair disadvantage compared to other schools.

Now before anyone says this is why we're killing outselves in football, read the article and don't.

Bring On Coastal Carolina

There is No Name On My Jersey is already hitting the offseason wall as he has a preview of Coastal Carolina 120 days out from the contest. If you're dying for some real football analysis, go read it. In typical Homer-JB fashion he picks Penn State to win by 40 points. I think if Penn State fielded a team of 18 inch JoePa's he would still pick Penn State to win by three touchdowns. 18 inch Poz's would win by 100.

Pete Lisicky Scores!

David Jones confirms what most of us already knew. It's good to be Pete Lisicky.

And I thought playing basketball in Europe was a bad thing.

Dammit, Don't Call Me After 10

When Joe says don't call me after 10, he means in the morning. I was reading Sean Fitz's interview with Malcom Willis, the Maryland safety that committed to the Lions earlier this week, where Willis said he called Joe right after school to give him the good news. Here was Joe's response. (Note: Content from a premium article reproduced with consent from Blue-White Illustrated)

Make your own jokes.

Etcetera

Fox ranks the top 25 college football uniforms. Penn State comes in at #9.

Earlier this week there was optimism in the college football world as the BCS conference commissioners gathered together for their annual meeting. The centerpiece for discussion being the "Plus-One" format to push college football ever closer to a playoff system. But then it appeared to everyone that big bad Jim Delany wasn't going to let it happen.

Booo! Booo Jim Delany! Boo the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Rose Bowl Axis of Evil! Booo! Everyone on the planet can see the benefit of a college football playoff! Just ask the Big IX!

Huh. Well what does the Big East think?

Oh. Well surely the smaller conferences must be frustrated by this. The little guy is getting screwed here.

Hmmm. Ok. Well there's Notre Dame. They have God on their side. When the Irish speak, the college football world moves to their bidding, right?

Well how about that.

I'm not a big fan of Jim Delany's, but it's evident he's not the lone voice of obstruction against the college football playoff. There are too many people making too much money off of the BCS cash cow. And like Notre Dame AD Kevin White says, if it ain't broke they ain't going to fix it.