Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.
New Jersey grows 2/3 of the world's eggplant
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Hurricane Wilma
As I sit on this turbulent plane flying back to Philadelphia, I can't help but to think how lucky I am to live in New Jersey (I know, that sounds funny.) But all kidding aside, the aftermath of hurricane Wilma is a lot worse than most people in the northeast imagine in their minds. The media's coverage of this hurricane doesn't come close to describing the destruction I've witnessed these past few days while driving from Ft. Lauderdale to Key West. Imagine throwing most of your belongings (including major appliances that were once a permanent fixture of your home,) out to the curb to be collected by some government agency.
I don't doubt that hurricane Rita was a bit more devastating than Wilma, but I find the lack of media attention to Wilma to be a bit startling. The media absolutely loves to go crazy over life-threatening events. Consider the New York subway scare that happened last month (Remember, someone was supposed to blow up the subway with a baby carriage.) I witnessed at least a half dozen news trucks parked out front of Penn Station for several days during the scare to do their news casts. They were just sitting there, almost waiting for fire and smoke to come pouring out of Madison Square Garden so they could get the best ratings on the 11 o'clock news. But unlike the subway scare, hurricane Wilma produced actual death and destruction. I don't get it.
I think the Ft. Lauderdale cab driver was quite articulate in his description of the hurricane: 'So much damage my friend, no more trees, no more coconuts'.
Saturday, November 12, 2005 09:12 AM EST0 Comments Filed in: Life -
Guster @ Nokia Theatre
Guster has got to be one of the most unique bands of our time. Sure, lots of people have never heard of them, but seriously, how often do you get to experience a band play with a drumstick-less percussionist? I've had the oppurtunity several times now, all of which were at a Guster concert.
The most recent of these experiences was this past Saturday night, when Guster played at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. Wow. What - A - Venue. This place was ridiculously fancy for a concert like this. When I think of Guster, I think of places like The Electric Factory and Irving Plaza, not some place with stained hard-wood flooring and chandeliers. More importantly, the acoustical properties of the stage were spectacular.
The show itself was great. More evidence of Guster's uniqueness was displayed as Chewbaka (from Star Wars,) was brought onto stage in between songs. This reminds me of a particular Guster show in Philly that happened to be right around the start of Hanukkah. A request was made to play the Dredyl Song, which the band granted, but with a Guster-esh twist. The Philadelphia Eagles mascot was brought onto the stage to light a giant menorah with a plunger. Never a dull moment.
The band treated us to a second encore, which consisted of a completely acoustic performace of Jesus on the Radio. Let me re-iterate here. A completely acoustic performance. In all the shows I've seen (lots) I've never experienced a band give an all-acoustic performance to a couple thousand people. When does Guster play again?
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 06:25 PM EST0 Comments Filed in: Music -
Ruby Suggestion
As I inch my way towards the Ruby conversion of this site, I can't help but to stop and think about how cool this stuff really is. If you are a web developer, I suggest you try the following:
- Buy a copy of Agile Web Development With Rails. (Don't walk, RUN.)
- Open the book to page 385 and read the chapter on Ajax support titled The Web, 2.0.
- If you are not completely blown away by what you are reading, then I have some doubts as so how much web development you've done in the past.
Let me say that I'm not a big fan of buzzwords. In fact, I loathe them. One of the biggest dangers to a company's software development is a bunch of middle-managers with their head's full of buzzwords ("We need to move all internal database access to a web service with SOAP built on top of SOA with a Portlet view ASAP!") However, after reading this chapter, I feel strongly that AJAX will help to lift the 'Web 2.0' buzzword to industry-altering status.
"I remember the days when a web form needed to be submitted to an actual web server to be processed. Your typing wasn't even spell-checked for you!"
Friday, November 25, 2005 12:40 AM EST0 Comments Filed in: Software