Author: Joe

Categories
Books

The Big Over Easy

The Big Over EasyMy latest read was a NGM suggestion. He told me that it was pretty funny and a creative take on nursery rhymes. So I gave it a shot.

A mystery featuring Jack Spratt and numerous other well known nursery rhyme characters. jack must solve the mystery of the murder of Humpty Dumpty.It’s funny to read about these characters outside of their normal stories and interacting with one another.

The author does a great job of poking in subtle jokes, that almost slip by at times. While I’m not one to chuckle out loud, there were some pretty funny moments in the story.

The old man who calls everyone either Ronald or Nancy and how Jack interacts with him was great. Also, when Mary Mary tells Jack at the end that he’s now on a first name basis and he responds with Mary is great as well. Funny and well done stuff.

NGM tells me that there’s more in this series, so perhaps I might give them a shot down the road too.

Categories
Sports

Kickball: Week 5

SpongeBob SquarepantsLast night’s game was just what we needed after last week’s tough loss. Not only because we were on the winning end, but Jake’s Water Ice is just a really fun team to play. We all seem to enjoy joking with them and it’s just really fun.

Our fielding was pretty solid overall (I did drop more than I should’ve), and very few if any forced errors occurred. Smart, heads-up play prevailed.

Kicking wise we did great. As a team we really had some intelligent kicking, aiming for our spots and in many cases hitting them. There were a lot of hits between us all, and Lauren had a career day. 5 for 5 with 4 runs kicked in and 4 runs scored. It really didn’t dawn upon me just how impressive those stats were for one game until I looked over them today.

It was great to have some new heroes last night as well as continued solid play by the usuals too.

Afterwards we walked over to Jake’s Water Ice to celebrate our fine victory. It’s a great little place to go after a game. Geoff got to see the amazing bubbles come from the pirate SpongeBob (or SpongeRob as we speculated).

All in all a great team, and look forward to a couple more weeks.

Categories
Books

Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children

Game OverSince I was obsessed with Nintendo growing up, I had to read Game Over. The book details the early years of Nintendo (starting way back around 1890) as well as the growth of the video game industry overall. Growing up I just played Mario and Zelda, but reading about all the crazy industry stuff that went on behind the scenes was pretty entertaining.

From the early start when Nintendo brought the NES (known as Famicom in Japan) to the US after the early 80’s video game crash, it was all very interesting to learn about. Also the explanation of Atari and how the industry crashed in the US was great too.

Since the book was written in 1993 it’s really interesting to see just how much the industry has continued to change since then. While Nintendo is still a major player at this time, this is all before the Sony Playstation and XBox came on the scene. Also, it’s interesting to yet again find out just how rapidly the Interent burst on the scene and changed our daily life. Not once in this book was it even mentioned.

Even though it’s a bit dated, all the info leading up to 1993 was amazing to learn more about. I had no idea just how much battling went into getting Tetris out of the Soviet Union and on my Gameboy. Very good stuff.

Categories
Sports

Kickball: Week 4

This week we were scheduled to play Jakes, but due to a last minute schedule switch by the other 2 teams in the league, it turned out our opponent for the night would be 24/7 Bait & Tackle. It sounds stupid, but I really think that this switch really through off the team a bit.

There was also dog poop on the field. But heroic Katie scooped it up with a bag and we could play this game without the fear of stepping in dog poop.

This was our first bad game. A different red ball was used this game, and it traveled far, very far. Playing right field very deep by the old ball standards, a kick travelled well beyond me. As a team we all quickly adjusted to this difference after watching me chase after a ball in what was previously unplayed territory.

They scored many runs, and in bunches. While we didn’t really commit more fielding errors than usual, the errors just happened to be when Bait & Tackle was in scoring opportunities.

Offensively we really didn’t do that bad as a team. The majority of us had multiple hits, we just weren’t able to knock enough of our runners home.

Most of us went to Jake’s Water Ice after the game. It was very cool there, and was nice to chat with the team afterwards. We’ve got a really good bunch.

Categories
Books

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi Allies

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi AlliesFinished up the 5th book in the Fate of the Jedi series. It was pretty solid stuff. I really enjoyed the beginning and the ending, but the middle was a little less enjoyable for me.

Luke forming and alliance to work with the Sith to fight a common foe was very cool. But then they didn’t really touch much on it, until the end of the book. In the meantime some new story lines were introduced, such as the reporter and slavery issues.

I’m sure that they will lead up to some bigger stories in the later books, but I guess I just wanted some more action taking place. I’m glad that the hutts did get a brief role, Jabba was always a favorite growing up.

I wasn’t expecting the jedi madness to be cured in this book, so that was a surprise. But then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not really cured just yet, but I guess I’ll eventually find out.

The Sith do make for some interesting characters, so I hope there’s still a big focus on them in the remaining books.

Categories
Development

Drupaldelphia 2011

DrupaldelphiaAttended Drupaldelphia at Alter Hall at Temple University today. I took the journey to Philly with Mark, he drove since he knows Philadelphia much better than I. He actually knew many facts about various buildings and areas.

The facilities at Temple were very impressive. Great sized lecture rooms, with 2 large screens and electrical outlets everywhere for everyone’s laptops. The wifi was also great too, didn’t have a single issue once I logged in.

All the sessions I attended were pretty solid too.

  • Open Academy: A higher education Drupal product for departmental websites
  • Keynote
  • Building a backend content administrators will love
  • Making Site Mobile Friendly
  • Ten Steps to Becoming a Panels Pro

Some very good and insightful stuff. Picked up some new tricks and gained confidence in some cases, knowing that what I had been doing in some cases is what was suggested as best practice too.

The mobile and content administration stuff were very relevant to some current projects I’m working on. So the timing couldn’t of been better.

Lunch was pretty amazing too. I wasn’t expecting much of anything, but it was really good. Just the right amount of food too. They also gave out free t-shirts too. So now I have another Drupal shirt.

All in all an extemely very well done event. Drupal continues to be an amazing platform. I’m so glad that I attended and definitely am looking forward to another one next year.