Author: Joe

Categories
Books

A Game of Thrones

A Game of ThronesI actually began reading A Game of Thrones at the end of last summer after watching the great show on HBO. However I never did get around to finishing it up as the book I loaned from the library was in incredibly bad shape. I regret not taking a photo of it, it appeared as though it spent some time submerged and literally fell to pieces as I attempted to read it.

I did notice a shiny new hard cover edition of it on my last visit to the library and thought I should finish it up (it’s not good to not finish things). So I checked it out and was very pleased to read it through.

Having watched all the episodes on TV it really helped me to identify a bit better with the characters as well as get a better understanding of them than could be portrayed on the show. There were many moments where actions made a lot more sense when read than if you were to just watch the series.

it was a little slow moving for me at times in the beginning, but halfway though really picks up and can be hard to put down at times. No character is safe in this, and just when you grow accustomed to a character it seems that they meet an untimely demise. Very good, and I expect to continue reading more of the series.

Categories
Movies

The Avengers

As a lifelong comic book nerd I have been looking forward to the release of The Avengers for quite some time. Add in the fact that the last Marvel backed films (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, etc.) have all been great too, I really wanted to see all these great characters in one big film.

While not that big of a moviegoer, I was determined to see this on it’s opening night. Joining me on this would be the Shepherd and Dustin. We had to wait for the Shepherd to get off of work before we could go. He was expecting to work till 7 pm, maybe 8 at the latest.

Several phone calls later, the Shepherd would wind up getting off work around 10 pm. So that meant there was only 1 showing left in the area that we would still be able to attend. The 11 one in 3-D. None of us really like 3-D that much, but since it was our last option we didn’t have much of a choice.

The theatre wasn’t packed, but there was a good amount of people there for being so late. I thought the movie was excellent. There didn’t seem to be a wasted moment, or too much character explanation (I do get tired of always seeing the origin stories).

While a movie can never be exactly like the comics, it did a great job of appealing both to the comic fan and a casual viewer as well. There were also some genuinely funny moments in there as well. Very well done.

My favorite moment of the night was afterwards during the credits. Many movie goers had begun to leave as the credits began to roll. Any decent Marvel fan knows that spoilers are to follow after the main credits.

Well this one girl really seemed to take it upon herself to make sure that everyone in the theater was aware of upcoming spoilers. She continually shouted “Don’t leave, there’s more”, etc. Finally she stood up and motioned with her hands while shouting too. It was pretty amazing. You’d of thought she was trying to save their lives.

A guy dressed as Captain America was seated next to her, so I guess that kinda explains her behavior a bit better now that I look back.

All in all a very great comic book film and hope that they can keep up this great streak of solid comic adaptations.

Categories
Sports

Kickball Season 2 Week 4

Coming off a pretty tough loss last week, the Honey Badgers we’re really hoping to get back on the winning track. Luckily this week’s opponent was the winless Gung Ho Executioners.

While the Gung Ho gang did put together several scoring rallies, we were able to kick pretty well as a team against their fielding. Are four girls playing that night; Lauren, Irena, Caitlin and Megan all had breakout performances. They were great for us and really made a big difference in the outcome of the game.

Unfortunately the most memorable moment of the night came late in the game with one of the Executioner’s girls running to first. Sean attempted to tag the bag before, but at the last second attempted to peg her to get her out as he was just a few feet too short to arrive at the bag before her.

It was a very heads up play on his part, however his throw sailed a little to high and struck her right smack on the side of her face. It was a pretty substantial strike and play had to be halted for a short time in order for her to recover. It was clearly an accident on his part with no malice and she was able to continue playing (you’re safe it struck above the shoulders).

The entire team did a great job of keeping the ball low and advancing runners all game. This really worked well for us and is a strategy that we will have to employ moving forward.

My one blunder of the game was not getting my foot on first base while making my catch. I kinda thought that I had touched it in time, but it was very close and the ref did not see me touch it. I wasn’t sure where the runner was exactly and really didn’t want to possibly collide with her and cause any injury.

All in all a very good game for the Honey Badgers. New faces making contributions and our veterans were able to try some new stuff out since we got out to an early lead.

Categories
Books

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsFinishing up the last book in the Harry Potter series was quite the bitter sweet moment. While the conclusion of the numerous pages I’ve read was great, I was also bummed that there’s no more to be read. Kinda got a little attached to some of those characters.

The Deathly Hallows was great, and probably my new favorite book. I found myself reading through many long stretches at a time, falling into the unproductive trap of just one more chapteritis (think I just made that word up).

Wasn’t expecting so much loss along the way however. I was really genuinely bummed to hear of the unfortunate fate of so many characters that I had gotten to know so well through previous reading. While it was a real shame for such loss, it really did add to the weight of just how much was at stake.

All the twists and turns towards the end were very well written. With the majority of them catching me off guard at times. The battle for Hogwarts was great and probably my favorite moment.

Great stuff, worthy of all the hype.

Categories
Development

visitavalonnj.com

visitavalonnj.comFinished up one of the cooler projects I’ve had the pleasure to work on a few weeks ago. The site is www.visitavalonnj.com.

I’ve worked with the client in the past and they were looking for a new site to help with the tourism of Avalon, NJ (a very nice place). Working with them is excellent and probably the best overall client relationship I’ve had to date. They know what that want, and present a professional design/concept and I build them a web solution to meet their needs.

In this case they really wanted a site that would be easy for them to maintain and add and edit content on a regular basis. Oh yeah, and they also needed it done before the start of their tourism season (middle of March ideally).

With only a few seconds into the conversation I knew that Drupal would be the perfect match for their needs.

Some modules featured in the creation of this project were:

  • Views – while I use it in every Drupal site I’ve ever worked on, it was heavily used in this project and really helped cut down on development time.
  • Calendar and Date – they needed an events calendar and the Calendar module was great to build upon. They also used dates with other content types and the Date module was a real life saver in these cases too.
  • Media – the client wanted the ability to add images inline view a wysiwyg editor. While still not a perfect solution, the Media module did help us give the client such a ability.
  • Facebook OAuth – they wanted users to have the option to login with their Facebook account instead of having to create a separate account for their site. This module was simple to set up and got the job done.
  • Google weather – this allowed us to easily bring in and display the latest weather in Avalon without too much hassle. Just some minor CSS tweaking was involved to get it done.
  • Social media – a very new module and it’s release was most timely. An excellent way to bring the now common social media button onto a website.
  • Webform – again a well known staple that just gets the job done.
  • Omega Theme – a real lifesaver for building a responsive web design. I highly recommend it as a starter theme for any new site.

The whole building block structure of Drupal really allowed us to deliver some cutting edge features without having to start from scratch. This really saved us a great deal in time and costs ($$$) and allowed me to concentrate more of the really unique aspects of the site.

Most impressive was how well the client has been able to use Drupal to manage the site. Our training simply consisted of a few minutes on a phone call. The admin interface was very intuitive to them and I did make sure to label all content types and fields so that each part was clear to them when it came time for them to manage the site.

Again, this was a pretty impressive project and and absolute treat to work with them again! I’m very impressed with it’s outcome and am very excited to check back with it’s performance in a few months.

Lots of fun.

Categories
Sports

Kickball Season 2 Week 3

This was our first and hopefully only bad game of the season. Though we played an overall clean game in the field, our opponent Kick Tease was just too much for us to handle on this night. They had several players who could kick the ball a great deal further than any of our previous opponents had yet in this season.

The deep kicks gave us the most trouble. There were a number of homeruns and if not for one guy tripping up on the bases rounding first, another certain homerun would have been had at all. Not only were they kicking deep, but they were also mixing up their kicks making it a challenge to adjust our defense to them at time.

Our kicking on the other hand was pretty much off as a team. While we did get a few good at bats, we just weren’t able to string any of them together to knock in more than one run. The injuries to two of our better kickers was evident, but they were troopers and did their best to play.

Despite the beating, we did have some excellent plays in the field. John K.’s throw across the diamond to John B. at first was amazing. It’s hard to make that throw and get a runner out, but he made it look almost routine. Lauren nearly turned a double play herself, and Meghan and Irena made some great catches as well around second base.

Continuing his excellent play, Kevin made some fine catches in center too. Whether we had Megan or Steph at third they both did an excellent job of not letting any kicks get by them and holding runners to no more than a single.

While this was our first tough loss, I do think that it won’t be too much of a setback. We do play solid defense and know each other very well, which will keep us in and win many games as the season goes on. We just need to get a little more consistant with out kicking and I’ve got to tweak the lineup a bit further until we find a combination that works best for us.