Author: Joe

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Season 3 – Week 8

The Honey Badgers concluded the regular season with a 3-6 regular season record. While we did narrowly lose last night’s game to Dodgeasserole 9-7, our guys did have one of our finer moments all season.

Without our best guy, John B. out due to flu like symptoms we knew we’d all have to step up our game. And I was really proud to say we all did pick up our game and play one of our best games all season, without our best player and playing a man down 4 to 5 all night long.

Dustin was great all game. You could see he was letting loose, putting a little bit more on each throw. Same could be said of Kevin as well, who as always finds new ways of staying alive.

Even Jared vowed to play harder that night, and backed up his predictions with some big catches and some throws with bad intent.

And I in my second game back from elbow surgery managed to contribute as well. I made a good amount of catches, and even finished off a game with a big catch. I gotta admit, it felt pretty great to get my teammates excited and be the recipient of high fives! While I’m still not back yet, I am beginning to adjust to the speed of things more each week.

Unfortunately our girls on this night really had a hard time getting a win. It was weird, they weren’t outclassed at all, but our opponent always seemed to find and way to pull out a win against us. They played well, it’s just wasn’t our night I suppose.

Next week is the playoffs, can’t wait!

Categories
Development

Drupal 7 Only Display 1 Image in Teaser

ok, I was working with a content type with an image field that could hold multiple images (0-4 say). Using the Teaser view mode it would display all the images that were associated with that node, which was really cool in the Default view mode, but not so much the Teaser view mode. I only want it to display 1 image there.

So of course, there’s multiple ways to do this, but I found this approach to be the best for me.

I decided to create and edit an template file in this case since there was enough overall customization going on with this node to warrant such changes. So I created a template file name node–myContentType.tpl.php  based on node.tpl.php and stored in in my theme templates directory.

Easy enough. I then threw in there some crazy text just to make sure I was working with the right template file.

Then I just made the following edits to node–myContentType.tpl.php

if ($view_mode == 'teaser') {
  print render($content['myDemoImage'][0]);
} else {
  print render($content['myDemoImage']);
}

The if statement checks what view mode you are in, if it’s teaser which is the one I want to only display 1 image in then it just renders the first photo in myDemoImage field, else display them all.

That’s it, not too bad. Another reason why I do enjoy working with Drupal.

Categories
Books

Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman

Churchill: The Prophetic StatesmanI suppose I’m a bigger fan of history than I realize. I easily read through Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman in two days.

First off, I’ve always been a pretty big fan of Churchill. Especially his numerous famed quotes over the years. He’s always been a very interesting personality to me.

While the title of the book sounds like they’re going to make Churchill out to be some mystical psychic, it really is about numerous examples of his study of history and it’s patterns allowed him to make some interesting predictions of how history would play out.

It was a really great read, I kept plowing through chapter after chapter. He lived through such an interesting time to me, with so much major change going on in the world during his lifetime.

Though his essay he wrote as school kid about London being attacked and he would be the one to lead it’s defense was a bit eerily prophetic.

I really enjoyed this one a lot.

Categories
Books

Fearless

FearlessSince I’d really been into the military, especially the special forces as a little kid I thought I’d read Fearless.

It always amazes me how close to reality playing with G.I Joe toys as a kid played out. As special forces became so important with the enemy often times being small terrorist groups. Hasbro must be psychics.

This was a pretty interesting and at times amazing story about the life of a pretty interesting guy. It was really interesting and inspiring to hear about the many highs and lows he encountered and his determination to get through those lows, never giving up.

Even though I’ve been going pretty hard with my post elbow surgery rehab before reading. After hearing how he overcame especially numerous injures, it did give me a bit more inspiration that I can get back to where I was before surgery and maybe even better.

A very good story.

Categories
Sports

Return to Dodgeball

After over four months of being shut down due to a pretty nasty elbow injury and surgery, I finally was able to play, albeit a bit sparingly. It was a pretty awesome night.

Since I was wearing shorts in the middle of November, as my teammates arrived they all seemed a bit excited as I figured out that I would be attempting to play in last night’s game. I’ve got some really amazing and supportive teammates, and it was really great to see how excited they were for me, it made my usually calm self a bit excited too.

While my right elbow is probably still two months away from throwing shape, I did commit to using my left during the game. In warm ups, I can actually get some ok velocity and accuracy with my left after several weeks of practice. In a game however, where everything is sped up and I can’t mentally go over each step it was a much different story.

Throwing with my left was a disaster. One of my throws came our so early that it literally hung up in the air for what seemed an eternity. In fact, I could hear teammates complain about it before it was caught it was in the air so long. So, at that point I realized that my contributions couldn’t come from throwing that night.

So, I figured I could still contribute by gathering ammunition and giving it to the closest available teammate. This approach did work and I felt was a benefit to the team.

Another technique that I attempted was to server as a block for my teammates, aka “Human Shield”. This surprisingly was very effective and I think bought some of my guys some extra time and allowed them to get closer to the line knowing that I would jump the angles in case of retribution throws as they backed away from their throws.

All in all it was a pretty awesome night, and I was very glad to be back.

The Honey Badgers would go on to win a very dramatic overtime victory! Our team really played hard last night, and we really did a great job of supporting one another. It was pretty great to watch.

Even thought I’m still very limited, it’s pretty amazing to be back and able to contribute to the team!

Categories
Video Games

Pokemon White Version 2

Pokemon White Version 2I’ve never played a Pokemon game, but was always wondering how they were since they’ve been around for quite some time. There’s no way kids would keep picking up installments of the franchise year after year if it wasn’t any good, right?

So I finally cracked and decided to pick up a copy of Pokemon White Version 2. When I bought it I did kinda act like I was buying it for someone other than myself, I was a bit nervous.

I fired up my trusty 3DS (it’s technically a DS game) and gave it a shot. I gotta admit, it’s quite the addictive game. I can see how kids get hooked. It has a simple story, with a ton of collecting and leveling up like a traditional RPG like the one’s I grew up playing.

I choose Oshawott as my starter Pokemon. I think she was a litter otter or something like that. While that alone is pretty awesome, she was holding a shell which sealed the deal for me. I accidentally named her Steven, not realizing the gender until later in the game, but I stuck with the name Steven as it would eventually grow on her.

I won’t get into just how many hours I wound up spending on this game, but I did eventually become the Pokemon Champion and crazily felt good when I did. That final battle was tough and took several tries.

What a great game, and I now understand why it’s been such an amazingly successful franchise for so long.