Month: October 2011

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Week 4

honey badgerThough the Honey Badgers did walk away with another loss last night to the Terror Squad, there were definitely some highlights in last nights game. Many little plays just didn’t go our way at teams. If we can start to get those to go our way, we should be able to start winning some games.

By far the highlight of the night was Dustin single handedly taking out the Terror Squad in a systematic and almost cruel fashion. Never before have I seen a lone dodgeball player pick of 3 opponents with 3 consecutive throws in under 30 seconds. It was truly a beautiful thing to behold.

Our girls really played well overall too. The improvement that they’re showing week after week is great to see. Once we get a full healthy roster back, I do think our girls can and will beat the other teams girls. I’m really impressed by their teamwork.

I personally had a pretty poor night. Really hoping to get healthy soon so that I can get back to how I was playing a few weeks back. An opponent who should never be able to beat me running to the line was able to get the ball to begin way before I was. I really do have to go to the doctor and get my groin injury checked out.

Our guys played ok with some standout play at times, but we really ought to be able to handle their guys better. I really thought that we matched up well with their guys, but just didn’t execute or make the routine plays.

I thought that Geoff and Jared really showed some improvement tonight. I saw a lot more confidence in their throws and overall play. Just waiting for the entire team to click one week. We can play better and I really hope that we start to soon.

Categories
Video Games

Catrap

CatrapDownloaded a fine little old puzzle game a week or so ago on my shiny Nintendo 3DS that’s really impressed me. The game is Catrap, a puzzle game that was originally released for the Game Boy in 1990.

Despite the ancient black and white graphics and horrific sound, the idea is simple yet addictive. You have to clear a simple room with a cat person thing (still figuring that one out), that’s all. However the really cool thing is that you can rewind gameplay just by holding down a button. Mess up, make a bad decision, stuck in a corner now; just rewind and try again.

I do believe that this was the first game that featured the concept of rewind (think Prince of Persia Sands of Time). So in 1990 this must’ve really been an amazing idea.

Some of the levels can be very challenging (thought I was about to give up on I think level 29 or something around there). It’s the perfect brief puzzle for when I need just a few minutes away from what I’m doing.

At $2.99 I highly recommend it. I really want to consider developing a simple browser based version of this. I think that’d be a really cool project.

Categories
Books

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi Ascension

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi AscensionSince the copy of of Game of Thrones that I had loaned from the library became unreadable due to sever book damage (I really shouldn’t taken a photo to share, it was amazingly beat up), I figured I’d continue on my Fate of the Jedi series. The latest book out is Ascension, and thus far I think it was my favorite in the series.

Since this is the eight book in a nine book series, things are really beginning to come together. Lots of battles, a ton of Sith doing bad things, Abeloth doing all sorts of evil, political double crossing, all good stuff. The author does a great job of setting the stage for the final book which I will have to wait until April to read.

I really plowed through the very beginning and the last half of the book. There was just so much unfolding that if was hard to put down during those times. My favorite thus far in the series and am anxious for April now.

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Week 3

GhostbustersThe Ghostbusters were our week 3 opponenets. They are a very solid team and seem to get much more movement on the ball than any team we’ve played thus far.

With a gutsy opening game performance, our guys did mange to take the first match. It was great to not start ourselves in such a deep hole, as we’ve seemed to do thus far. I felt as though we played a lot more comfortably in week 3. I didn’t sense as much confusion as in previous weeks.

Our girls were down Caitlin who was unfortunately ill, and played 4 against 5 the entire night. Despite playing a girl down, they did pretty well. It was nice to see how much they had improved in catching the ball.

They all had some great catches and also showed excellent judgement in when to not catch and just get out of the way. Meghan seemed to be the last standing most of the games and almost single handedly won a few matches for us. If we can protect her and her sister, I think we can win a lot of matches.

I personally didn’t play very well overall. My throws just didn’t have any pop on them this week. I kinda realized this in warm-ups, but hopefully this was just a one night thing and not signs of a dead arm already.

The Ghostbusters was the game, but we did win 4 of the matches. With our guys winning 3 of them against their very good guys team. I really think we can build on this and continue to improve.

Afterwards I asked the Ghostbusters is they wanted to play a few more games just for fun. We agreed and decided to play everyone co-ed at once. It was pretty crazy having so many people on the court at once, but a lot of fun. I had no idea when throws were coming from and didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked, but it was fun just to see everyone else play. Ryan the referee hopped in there too on our team, which was nice to see.

Even though we lost, I thought we made some big strides overall as a team this week. I hope that we manage to peak right as playoffs begin (still a ways off).

Categories
Development

PayPal Buy Now add quantity with HTML

I was working on a project where PayPal Buy Now buttons were being generated by a widget and not allowing the quantity option to be used when a user was making a purchase. PayPal’s button generator does easily allow for quantities to be enabled with simple click, but this wasn’t an option for me in this case.

It was fairly difficult finding the tag to add to enable quantity on checkout, so I figured I’d share in case someone else ran into the same issue. Official documentation was eventually found.

It’s a very basic input that must be included with the form:

<input type="hidden" name="undefined_quantity" value="1">

<input type=”hidden” name=”undefined_quantity” value=”1″>

That’s all, just include that with the form and you’re all set.

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Week 2

Honey BadgerWeek 2 pitted the noble Honey Badgers against the all boy team of the Banzai Executioners. This week we were allowed to mix a co-ed team to play when their girls were supposed to be playing games. It did level things in terms of fairness, but I felt bad that it meant more sitting out for some of our girls.

We got ourselves into a pretty deep whole early, losing the first several matches. They had a couple of hard throwers on their team, with one guy really launching that ball with some serious heat.

Once we settled down we began to take several games, some in a dominant fashion. I saw us develop some teamwork; coordinating attacks, communicating better, shielding our throwers, etc. It was really great to see us play better as a team. I’m still pretty certain that if we can develop some further chemistry we’ll be able to take down any dodgeball squad.

I did catch a fastball from robo-dodgeball man. I thought this was important to try to do. I wanted everyone to know that he was human and we didn’t have to just duck whenever he unleashed a laser on our side. I was also glad to get a good amount of hits in tonight as well, it’s great feeling when you hear a teammate say, “nice throw”. The whole playing for your teammates is corny be also really gratifying as well.

Afterwards I stopped by Gregory’s with the lady Honey Badgers minus Lauren (apparently she really likes Dancing with the Stars). It was really great to get to know one another better. They all seem to be a really great bunch and I’ve very glad to be on the same team as them.

It was also nice to get carded as well as see jaws drop by my teammates when they learned my age. While I’m not exactly super old, it’s still nice to know that I also don’t look my age either. They were all very funny about it, I did get a little chuckle out of it.