Meandering through the doors of the grocery store last week, I brushed snow flakes off my jacket, sidestepped the display of chips in the entrance (sidenote: Chips? Why do stores not capitalize on snowy days and serve samples of soup?), and started trolling for inspiration on an unusually wintry day.

http://www.dclugi.tv. Go there.

The application I have been developing as a contractor since September had its deployment to a production environment this morning. Without going into detail, things didnt work out as they should and after getting up at 3:30, driving over the mountain, and getting in around 4:30 to be onsite in case of issues, we are just now getting things to a proper state. Some things were discovered that should have been discovered much earlier, but hindsight is 20-20 of course. The kicker is that we are trying again tomorrow morning. Same time, same bat channel. I am going to die. Nice knowing you.

This program we begin a special feature. For the next several podcasts, we'll be presenting music from the New York Latvian Concert Choir label. In my opinion, the NYLCC label is one of the most under appreciated that we carry. We're hoping our series will help change that. In addition to the first installment of the NYLCC series, we also present a selection from Troubadisc's latest offering --

So, the end of the first month of the year. It's been a busy one, and I'm sure February will be pretty ridiculous as well. It will be over before you know it, as we are all looking forward to March.

Of course, you would not know anything about my life by the contents of this blog, which I've posted to once or twice this past month, if that. I've not been able to finish the entries I've bothered to start.

For that matter, I'm not writing in my personal journal very much, either. I have exactly one entry in my 2007 folder, and it was written on New Year's Day when once again I told myself I'd keep some sort of a diary. 30 days later, I'm not really surprised. I've lost the interest and the energy to put words together. I think part of that is the creation of this blog.

I used to write. Really. I really did. I even used to keep an online journal called Codpiece, which was an anonymous mix of fiction, fact and fancy. I kept it from March of 1998 to February of 2000. It was a way for me to feel I was publishing something, making some mark on the world. It was on the old Geocities site, before Yahoo bought it for $3.57 billion dollars.

Haven't we been here before? At that time, Yahoo expected a ridiculous return on investment for a company that enabled community. I've just had to brush up on this history on Wikipedia to remember all of this stuff. So, working in my miserable office in Georgetown, I signed up for a spot in the Coffeehouse section of the Soho neighborhood. The idea was, you'd set up a space in a block of an imaginary city. I picked this spot because it advertised "art, poetry, prose, the bohemian spirit."

The great thing was, at that time, I got an audience. People came across the site. There was a mechanism for this to happen, because all of the other bored lonely people in the world were looking for other people with similar interests. There was traffic. I met people. I had interesting conversations with people. For a little while, I felt part of a community, but I won't now go into why that didn't really happen.

I guess part of the success of that time was my ability to write pretty much whatever I wanted. I was younger, of course, and more sure of myself than I am now. But, also, there was also no reason not to feel anonymous on the web.

Of course, during that time, I lived in a big city. Or, at least, two big cities. The population of each place was over a million, I guess. In neither place had I been featured in several media reports for my work on the web.

Now I live in a small place. My online self feels totally paralyzed, because things I say off the cuff here may be interpreted in a bad way in the real world. Being linked on cvilleblogs.com improves the chances of this happening. This blog exposes me far too much to people who are actually likely to know me. What's the good of the personal media revolution if you don't feel safe enough to actually be yourself?

So, this partially explains why I don't write much anymore. Writing online no longer produces the sense of exhilaration I used to feel when I'd post a piece to the podcast. For a while, I felt the same rush when posting a new podcast. But, frankly, no one is listening, and I fear that the same imaginary sense of community I built up as a lonely kid in Washington is simply repeating itself here.

Now, it could be that I just don't have enough time to write. But, that doesn't make much sense. I'm at a damned computer for far too many hours in the day. How weird is it, that I've been sitting at a keyboard for over twelve hours today! I did some other things, but for the most part, this screen has been my constant companion. What kind of a life is this?

Could my lack of posting it be a lack of interest in the world around me? I don't think so. There are certainly many things I want to write about. I've always felt it's important to keep a written record of what happened. And, I must admit, I've not been doing much of that at all lately.

I think the problem is, I work as a journalist in town. I'm news director at WNRN, an award-winning producer for WVTF, and the guy who runs the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. I'm putting together a plan for a new venture.

As such, I need to be neutral. I need to not offend. And these days, it's so easy to offend people with your opinion. And, as a person trying to start a news organization, it's incredibly important for me to be seen as having a vested interest in anything. I want to be trusted for being unbiased.

But, it's more than that. I'm incapable of holding the same opinion for more than a few minutes.

Is the answer simply to write more to myself, rather than to feel the need to post to an audience of strangers? This is difficult to comprehend for me because I did grow up in front of a computer screen. I spent my high school years meeting people online instead of meeting them in real life. The only time I ever went out was when I went to work at the Pizza Hut delivery store.

I think I need a serious change-up in my life. But, to be honest, I think I'll just start by closing this blog.

This year we've resolved to do even more with our podcasts in 2007. The subscriber base continues to grow, and we've noticed an increase in foreign listeners. Welcome! Our goal is to increase the production schedule for these podcasts, and we hope to begin enhanced podcast feeds this month as well. This first podcast of 2007 features organ recordings from various labels. Notably missing is the

Old article title: Katrina's Silver Lining: UVA Law Gains a Professor
New article title: Tulane's Collins Joins Virginia Law

I'd say it's a good thing they made the change before it got cached somewhere, but they can't change page 29 in my copy of the UVA Lawyer.

Are you confident that everyone in your organization knows and understands what it takes to build your brand?

Tomorrow at work, stop everyone you meet in your organization and ask them this one simple question: "What do you have to do to deliver on our brand promise?"

Ask the question and then remain silent and listen.

When you get back to your office, write down all the answers you hear.

You might just gain a better understand about your brand and how to better communicate it to the outside world. I'll also bet your next action plan will focus within your four walls before you worry about that big, nasty outside world of customers.

When I first moved here, the big joke in my family was every place was ten minutes away. My aunt and uncle really lived about 20 minutes outside of Cville, but my uncle would inevitably say the place we were going was 10 minutes away, and we believed him because where we had ventured from, it took about ten minutes to get everywhere. FYI- Crabtree Falls is not ten minutes away, nor is Blue Hole a ten minute walk (at least it didnt seem like it when I was 13).

Twenty years later, I find myself having the same problem as my uncle, places are "oh...two blocks" the courthouse, the fire department, First Settlement Title (that may be two blocks), the Post Office, even my uncle's house!

Everything is right around the corner in this City- that is what I mean- and usually traffic wont make you too late. So if I tell you two blocks, I may mean a ten minute walk.

It’s all about networking.

How many times have you heard that before? To find people you like to work with should be on your to-do list and I think it’s the most important move you can make. I’m assuming you have a goals, right? If you aren’t the lucky one with a “secure” job, aka a freelancer, you should try to network with friends and family. Grow your network and maybe someday, someone will get a job which his in a position to hire outsiders. Better to have them on your good side then on your bad side right? Now you probably understand why. Oh and well, also not being a jerk would help tremendously. On this note, I’ll be in New York for awhile working at Japan Society on a show called Big Dance Theater: The Other Here. Some of you might have guess it, it’s the work of choreographer Annie-B Parson and director Paul Lazar. If you see a follow spot acting weird, that might be me. Sorry in advance…

..Japan Society

A new design for the University of Virginia home page and top level pages was posted this afternoon by the Office of Web Communications, and you can learn all about the redesign project here. Once you’ve clicked through and checked everything out, please take some time to fill out the home page user survey (Feel free to comment here as well. Digg this story! — Ed.).

The new year is here and it finally got cold. It just seems more natural to have a cold winter, those 70 degree days in January are just a bit too freakish for me. And now our first early daffodils are blooming along with the snowdrops. I don’t know what happened to the winter aconite unless the many hungry squirrels found them before they could come up.

Kevin Murphy wrote up Fortify Software’s  Discover Hackistan campaign last night, in which a software company is “invaded” by Borat-looking hackers from a fictional country at the RSA Conference in San Francisco next week.  If you’re a journalist who hates covering RSA-related news or a PR person working with security, it’s good stuff.  Everyone else, move along - you’ll just read it and think, “Wow.  Dave’s a strange guy.”
read more | digg story

We have a situation on our hands of paramount importance. My brand new UVa Law hoodie, which was generously given to me by my loving wife for Christmas, has been viciously kidnapped and put up for ransom by freedom-hating terrorists. Judging by the culprit’s flagrant disrespect for the unalienable rights of private property, I have concluded that this crime must have been committed by radical, pinko-commie Canadians.

I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly decry this outrage and emphatically state the “We Will Not Negotiate With Terrorists!”

As long as mankind has nuclear weapons, one of them will be used in anger at some point in the future, and millions will die as a result. I am not a prophet, and therefore I do not know what circumstances will bring this terrible eventuality about. But I do know that many leaders are not wise; that war has always been part and parcel of the human experience; and that religion and passion have more often than not overrode reason in world history. And it also stands to reason that the more nations have nuclear weapons, the more likely one is to be used. And millions will die.

As Einstein pointed out, there is only one solution to avoid this cataclysmic fate: worldwide nuclear disarmament. Mikhail Gorbachev joined the chorus for this on today's Journal. The primary problem with this course of action is a collective action problem. Even if the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, and France give up their weapons, there will still be nukes in India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, and soon in Iran. If the U.S. lacks nuclear weapons, then it is far more likely that a nutty North Korean dictator will use them against Tokyo, Seoul, or Honolulu. Moreover, what happens if Pakistan falls to crazy Islamic extremists? Or when Iran develops nukes in 3-8 years? In addition, there is also a problem of enforcement. North Korea cheated on their 1994 Agreed Framework to stop their nuclear programs for ten years with abandon. What happens if every nation agrees to give up their nukes, but North Korea keeps 10 secretly. Next time there is a crisis, the world will be at North Korea's mercy.

We have a classic prisoner's dilemma here. Clearly the world is best off if nukes don't exist at all. But each individual nation is best off if they have nukes and everyone else doesn't, because this provides instant power/hegemony to do whatever they want. As a result of this cruel dilemma, it makes no sense for the U.S. to unilaterally disarm unless it can verifiably ensure that the rest of the world follows suit.

Unfortunately, the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty - the primary moral and legal instrument that we can use to ensure that these terrible weapons do not proliferate more widely - mandates that existing nuclear powers actively reduce their arsenals with a goal towards their eventual eradication. In my view, the U.S. can still meet this goal while maintaining a proper deterrence regime by bringing down the number of nuclear weapons from roughly 5700 to somewhere on the order of 600 or so. But we should rethink the purpose of these weapons to be more strategic and less Incredible Hulk type retribution. We should have weapons that we can actually credibly use, like bunker bust tactical nukes, as opposed to weapons whose sole purpose is to obliterate cities populated primarily by innocent civilians. And we need to elect presidents with the moral clarity, or at the very least the perceived moral clarity, that they would not hesitate to respond to any nuclear provocation in kind. It's tough to envision a John Edwards type has having the seriousness necessary to make these difficult choices.

One day, we must pray, the world's nations will have enlightened governments and leaders who can forever disavow these terrible weapons. It would be terribly unwise to prematurely bring about disarmament though, because it actually increases the chances of nuclear war if one perceives that the use of these weapons will not be responded to what assured destruction.

Lastly, there is the ongoing question of Iran. There are two terrible costs to Iran having the nuclear bomb. The first is that Iran will use it or distribute it to a terrorist affiliate; the second is that Iran will become the dominant hegemonic power in the world's most dangerous region. The first is an unlikely but possible scenario; the latter is a guarantee. Both in my mind are worth a war to prevent. Obviously this question is complicated by the internal dynamics of the Iranian regime and the possibility either of revolution or internal regime change.

What amazes me about the whole '08 presidential Iraq debate is basically that it is virtually irrelevant when compared with the terrible question of what to do about Iran. I've been very impressed with the moral seriousness displayed by Romney and Gingrich discussing this issue (and I have little doubt that this will be echoed by Rudy and McCain), but I haven't really heard anything from the Democratic field other than the notion that we have to get out of Iraq. Perhaps this isn't surprising. Hillary's speeches all seem to be politically calculated, while Obama hasn't really taken any serious political stands yet. But until I hear something from Democratic leaders, I can only conclude that the Republicans are the only serious party with a meaningful set of policy priorities.

Yesterday, I was reading an essay for one of my classes that was dealing with the issue of time in historical sociology. The author was addressing three uses of temporality in sociological explanation, one of which was teleological temporality whereby causes are explained in light of some end goal or overarching “system” etc. Kind of hard for me to articulate exactly the way teleology is used

Baha’i World News Service - Congo Republic issues stamp for World Religion Day

The Post & Telecom service in my old home, Congo-Brazzaville, site of my Peace Corps service, has issued a 120 F(CFA) stamp in honor of World Religion Day. This holiday was first celebrated in the United States in 1950 when it was established by the national governing body of the Baha’is of the United states to call attention to the essential oneness of the world’s religions. “God is the Source of All Religions,” says the stamp along the top edge. The rest of the stamp reads, “World Religion Day Observed the 3rd Sunday of January Republic of Congo.” The design shows symbols of 11 religions surrounding a globe with the words, “So powerful is the light of unity that it can illumine the whole Earth.”

I’m pretty tickled by this. At the moment, I’m wondering who I can get in touch with over there to get me one. I’m not sure I really have much hope of it. If I were to get one, I’d have to frame it since I don’t have any sort of stamp collection otherwise. It would be nice to have a reminder of Congo around.

In Charlottesville, Va
Jeff Lavezzo

Chysta (my wife) reports that Augusta repeatedly stated that "Daddy made me a bridge. I'm Special" when she was reading to her in bed Sunday night.

Today, made complete ass of myself with a school secretary. Mr. McP and I were waiting for his school bus. And waiting and waiting and waiting. And freezing. J had taken our only car to a meeting. I fumed and fretted and decided I couldn't wait for even one more second, and took Mr. McP back home and called the school.

All the city schools have similar phone numbers. They start with 245 and have 24 as the first two numbers in the second half: 245-2410, 245-2411, 245-2412, etc. Quickly dialing the number, and not even listening to what the secretary said when she answered, I launched into the sad tale of late bus, no car and Mr. McP will not be in this morning. The secretary kept asking who are you? Can you spell his last name? I blathered on about how Slate bus never showed up. I did think it was strange that she didn't know Mr. McP. Usually when I call his school they know exactly who he is. It was a different secretary. “It's not the nice secretary,” I told Mr. McP after getting off the phone. Then I saw the bus, rounding the corner. I shot out of the house like I'd been fired from a cannon, went sprinting up the hill and flagged it down. Oour bus driver, bless his heart, came to a grinding halt right at the end of our drive—we are supposed to wait further down the street. I ran back down, wrestled poor Mr. McP back into his coat and dragged him up to the street.

I thought I'd better call the school again, and—you can see where this is going—when I redialed the number, I realized I'd called the wrong school. No wonder she didn't know us. Considering that Slate bus doesn't even go to her school, she behaved with remarkable aplomb.

Slate bus. Here in Ch'ville, all the school buses are given color names to help the children remember which bus they ride. Apparently, last summer they gave the job of naming the buses to the gifted ed coordinator, or an interior decorator, because the buses have color names that are also things : Forest, Bubblegum, Mango, Peach, Rose, Slate, etc. For a day or so, the Slate bus was renamed the Silver bus, and then—get this—they changed it back to Slate. I'm not complaining, I'm just amazed that they gave the matter that much thought. The rest of America's kids ride the red bus or the green bus, but Charlottesville's children are driven in buses named like paint chips. Which is typical of Charlottesville, I must say.

The new Adobe icons have left a few people feeling a on the periodic table side of life, so one group has decided to run a contest to design a new set of icons for the Adobe Creative Suite.

Maybe one of us Director-centrists could create a new icon and we’ll just throw Director in the Creative Suite Bundle from now on.

this is rebecca, she lives next door to me. she is very nice, can't you tell. she was very hungry and not happy with me for wanting to take a photograph of her.

Reviews are pending. Here’s pictures and setlists. Be sure to check out my blog entry from earlier today. It should be right below this one.

The Rapture
w/ Under the Influence of Giants
January 30, 2007
Starr Hill
Charlottesville, VA

UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF GIANTS
(i fell in love with them tonight.)

Workin’
Got Nothin’
Ah-ha
Beautiful
Daysleeper
Mama’s Room
Heaven is full
Meaningless love
Faces
In The Clouds

(click on an image to see a larger view!)

THE RAPTURE

Down For So Long
Heaven
Get Myself Into It
Out Of The Races And On To The Tracks
Sister Saviour
The Devil
Pieces Of The People We Love
Killing
Whoo! Alright Yeah…Uh Huh
I Need Your Love
House Of Jealous Lovers
The Coming Of Spring
Echoes

The Sound
Don Gon Do It
OLIO

(click on an image to see a larger view!)

i don’t think that it is really any secret that i am a mac nerd. MWSF is my favorite day of the year, followed closely by WWDC, followed closely by any tuesday. and on today, a tuesday, i should be joyous, as there are more iPod things that i am going to lie awake at night and want to be purchasing with money that i don’t have. but no, tonight i am sad.

you see, i’ve been waiting for a while for a killer mac shareware app that would synchronize my iCal with my gCal. i don’t really use gCal, but there are times when i am away from my primary computer and i would love to be able to access all of my schedules. i am actually a pretty dedicated iCal user, since i rarely remember what i am supposed to be doing at any given moment. so there’s all of this hype for months about the program that will solve all of my problems, called Spanning Sync. it was in private beta for months, and i kept hearing more and more about it, and then today, on a TUESDAY, it goes public beta.

i normally enjoy free lunches. if something is free, i’ll at least try it. but this? spanning sync SUCKED. i don’t know, the interface was barely there, i didn’t feel like i could do anything, and i really didn’t understand what was going to happen to my separate calendars on my main mac and on the googleweb. so, i did something that i don’t do all that often. i deleted it within seconds.

it may be for some people, but spanning sync did not feel like what i normally expect mac software to feel like. it didn’t feel cohesive, or seemless, or awesome. yeah, it’s a beta, and yeah, it’s a great idea, so maybe i’ll give it another shot, later. but not now. sorry, spanning sync.

There are a patterns I've become aware of with me and blogging. Among them:

a) If I say I'm going to write something, I'm probably never going to.

b) Whenever I write something that might get peoples' attention, I get hung up in someway and can't really get back to blogging for a bit.

I'm making progress with the first one, but the second one seems to be going full force. I've been pretty sick for the last two days with a lot of pain on the left side of my face. Sinus infection? Impacked wisdom tooth? No, aparently just neck problems again. If I ever do become an English teacher, I swear I'll be a posture nazi in class. My bad habits really have cought up with me, and all the folks that nagged me over the years were right. Stupid counter culture tendencies! The trick is going to be getting the point across to that next generation without nagging, since the nagging seems to be what gets in the way of good sense.

Anyway, two cracks of the neck later and about 70 to 80 percent of my pain has gone away. Wish I'd gone that rout before the not so cheap antibiotics were bought, but lessons have been learned. As soon as I get my homework caught up with, I'll get back to comments and posting. Till then, take care folks. Try not to sit on your tail bones or lay on couches with your head at a right angle from your body.

I recently spoke via email with Darren, Category 4’s lead designer, about various template systems. I started the conversation with this question:

I was recently writing about PHP template systems on the weblog. What do you think of this style of template:

<? $this->RenderBegin(); ?>
Id: <? $this->txtId->Render(); ?>
Title: <? $this->txtTitle->Render(); ?>
Description: <? $this->txtTitle->Render(); ?>
<? $this->RenderEnd(); ?>

And what do you think of this style of template?

<form method=”post” action=”index.php”>
Id: <input type=”text” name=”id” value=”<?php currentValue(”id”); ?>” />
Title: <input type=”text” name=”title” value=”<?php currentValue(”title”); ?>” />
Description: <input type=”text” name=”description” value=”<?php currentValue(”description”); ?>” />
<input type=”submit” value=”Update this article?” />
</form>

Darren responded:

I think with that second style, it gives me total access to any markup I could want as a designer. I also like that each little grain of info can be moved around on my end (tag attributes, for example) rather than having multiple chunks of functional code bundled into one replace tag or php function. In the past, Cat4’s code would bundle an entire form tag and input fields into one PHP function. And to edit it, I’d have to wade into lots of code I didn’t understand (and wasn’t formatted like regular HTML) just to make elementary changes to one input field.

Importantly, the second method would prevent me from needing to ask a programmer to make changes at all. With the first, even if I made the changes myself, I’d still have to ask the programmer about directory structure so I’d know where to find the relevant script.

I followed up with this question:

On a recent Category 4 project, you had to redesign the look of an installation of vbulletin. What did you think of vbulletin’s template system? Am I right in saying they used variables in the template in a way that was difficult to follow?

Darren responded:

For one thing, I had to use their CMS. All that data was coming thru an XML file, so if I’d try to open files right on the server, they’d come out as gibberish. So I’d have to use their system to find what I was looking for which was a challenge. There were over 100 subtemplates and the naming convention was the only way to find what you were looking for. Even then, the chunks of code were displayed in a textfield only about 50 characters high, so you’d have to blindly scroll thru a bunch of nonsense before finding what you needed.

My next question:

Here is a block of code from Typo, from the file /app/views/articles/read.rhtml. Do you find this easy to read? Do you prefer to see conditional statements like this right in the template? Is this readable?

<% if @article.allow_comments? or @article.comments.size > 0 -%>
<a name=”comments”></a><h4 class=”blueblk”>Comments</h4>
<% unless @article.comments_closed? -%>
<p class=”postmetadata alt”>
<small><a xhref=”http://www.category4.com/blog/#respond” mce_href=”http://www.category4.com/blog/#respond” >Leave a response</a></small>
</p>
<% end -%>
<ol class=”comment-list” id=”commentList”>
<% if @article.comments.blank? %>
<li id=”dummy_comment” style=”display: none”></li>
<% else %>
<%= render(:partial => “comment”, :collection => @article.published_comments) %>
<% end %>
</ol>
<% end -%>

Darren responded:

I do find it readable, and yes, I prefer to see conditional statements in the template.

I asked:

Of the two styles below, which do you prefer? Assume that I, as the programmer, have created a new function called include_if_value_is_in_url(), which is like the PHP include() function, but it includes a file only if some word shows up in the URL.

<?php
if ($_GET[”neighborhood”]) {
include(”/neighborhood.php”);
}
?>

Is the above preferable, or this below:

<?php include_if_value_is_in_url(”/neighborhood.php”, “neighborhood”); ?>

Darren responded:

I think both styles are equally readable and usable.

I then asked:

Below is a sample from vbulletin, from calendar_monthly_day. I’m curious if you regard the use of conditionals a good thing or a bad thing.

<if condition=”$show[’highlighttoday’]”>
<td class=”alt2″ height=”50″ width=”$daywidth” style=”padding:0px; border:1px solid red; font-weight:bold” title=”$vbphrase[today]”>
<else />
<td class=”alt2″ height=”50″ width=”$daywidth” style=”padding:0px”>
</if>
<div class=”thead”>
<span style=”float:$stylevar[right]”>
<if condition=”$show[’daylink’]”>
<a xhref=”calendar.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getinfo&day=$year-$month-$day&c=$calendarid” mce_href=”calendar.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getinfo&day=$year-$month-$day&c=$calendarid” >$day</a>
<else />
$day
</if>
</span>
$dayname
</div>
<div style=”padding:$stylevar[cellpadding]px”>
<if condition=”$show[’birthdaylink’]”>
<div class=”smallfont” style=”margin-bottom:$stylevar[cellpadding]px; padding-bottom:2px; border-bottom:1px dotted”>
<!–<strong>»</strong>–> <em><a xhref=”calendar.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getinfo&day=$year-$month-$day&c=$calendarid” mce_href=”calendar.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getinfo&day=$year-$month-$day&c=$calendarid” title=”$birthdaydesc”><phrase 1=”$bdaycount”>$vbphrase[x_birthdays]</phrase></a></em>
</div>
<else />
$userbdays
</if>
<if condition=”$show[’eventlink’]”>
<div class=”smallfont” style=”margin-bottom:$stylevar[cellpadding]px; padding-bottom:2px; border-bottom:dotted 1px”>
<if condition=”$show[’subscribed’]”>
<img class=”inlineimg” xsrc=”$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/subscribed_event.gif” mce_src=”$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/subscribed_event.gif” alt=”$vbphrase[event_notification]” />
<else />
<!–<strong>»</strong>–>
</if>
<em><a xhref=”calendar.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getinfo&day=$year-$month-$day&c=$calendarid” mce_href=”calendar.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getinfo&day=$year-$month-$day&c=$calendarid” title=”$eventdesc”>$vbphrase[events]</a> ($eventtotal)</em>
</div>
<else />
$userevents
</if>
</div>
</td>

Darren responded:

I liked that vbulletin showed conditionals, but ultimately the sub-templates were ‘long-winded’. The output was table-based, the markup was sloppy, the content & presentation were not separated, and so on. It was a slog to find what you were looking for.

Typo is great because it’s built on the Rails framework, thus the directory structure was already familiar. The syntax and expressiveness of the conditionals written in Ruby were also clearer to my eye. Finding my way from the master template to the subtemplates didn’t require much work. Looking at the entire Typo package as a whole with all directories and files in exploded view, I felt for the first time I could ’see’ a glimpse of how the website would work in totality. Often in the eye of a designer, a programming framework can look like a confusing superhighway of intertwining and overlapping logic. Being able to glance at the architecture of something like Typo and ’see’ the site in an almost 3-Dimensional sense makes the design effort a lot more comfortable, and best of all you feel like you’re working With the programmer, not as a pesky subordinate.

One last thing about Cat4’s old products: something like ecomm4 (shopping cart) would actually require the skinning of 20 whole templates. Which means even if you changed one masthead for the store, you’d have to manually change it twenty times. Only with the recent programming we did and with Wordpress, Cubecart, et al, did I first get a glimpse of the concept of a ‘master template’ and subtemplates which consist of little chunks of functionality. This makes things much easier to read and much easier to skin. If all products opened up their presentation layer (like with the CMS we did) and offered a logical simple master/subtemplate system, I feel like a lot of the nagging bits of the buildout process would be eliminated.

Ken's post reminded me of another outstanding African-American actor, Mantan Moreland. Beginning in 1933, Moreland's career stretched over 100 films and several TV appearances before his death in 1973. Considered a major star –- or as much of one as an actor of color could be at the time –- his sophisticated, deceptively simple humor made him popular among both black and white audiences (although probably for different reasons). In the 1940's it was not unusual for him to receive top billing immediately beneath the white leads.

I’ve written before about what the uncurious miss –- and without the continual exposure to new things I receive from podcasts, I would have missed Mantan Moreland. One of the ClashTV.com’s podcast episodes was “King of the Zombies.” a 1941 “B” picture. It was competently filmed and acted and without Moreland would have been another pleasant but forgettable movie to watch.

Moreland’s running commentary on the action and witty asides made his performance practically leap off the screen -- raising the entire film several notches in my option. The highpoint of the picture were his scenes with Marguerite Whitten, an actress who also pushed the limits of what African-Americans were allowed to portray in film.

Click here for a sample of their by-play.

I’ll continue exploring Moreland’s work, now that I’m aware of him. Just another example of what’s out there -– if you’re curious.

- Ralph

The news that true red heads may become extinct by the end of this century is pretty old, but selective breeding may cure the problem. It's just a matter of compounding the recessives.

Being of mostly Celtic extraction, I've been highly amused at how popular bottle red has become in the past decade. It seems every woman I know under 40 has gone auburn, strawberry, or copper at some point. In my family, it's been a while since we produced a true carrot top, although most of us come by our highlights naturally, the stereotypical white skin prevails, and freckles can be found all over the family tree on both sides.

What I find most interesting about the phenomenon is how, well before science pinpointed and published the (lack-of) genetic trend, popular culture seemed to sense it--going red was (and still is) the haircolor version of getting couture swag. Much like bustles and corsets were popularized to make skinny girls look Mae West voluptuous around the turn of the last century, and the heroin-waif look is popular today precisely because we have, as a nation, finally grown into the Mae West figure. These trends in looks point up what is rare, instead of what is normal, as being more desirable. No wonder we're called a culture of death--we always idolize what few can reasonably achieve, whatever end of the pendulum it is.

It's simply too bad we can't harness all that obsession into idolizing a new model of society and community. It seems wasted on looks. Can you imagine the world if we truly valued rarity instead of imitating it? Here are some fashion-forward soundbytes I'd like to hear on the street:

"Buying clothes made from organically grown fibers is all the rage because, dang, are they expensive and hard to get!!"

"Scrap the Nikes--Eccos are sooo much hotter!"

"I'll be gingered, is that real flax?"

and my fave,

"Hemp--it's not just for smoking anymore."

I apologize for the late entry, but this race was particularly damaging to many parts of my ego, manhood, and life in general.
This past Saturday was the Hog Wild Five-Mile Run.
Having spent the last couple of months running 5K's and the occasional 4-mile race, I spent the week before this race running a few more miles than normal and doing a hill workout instead of a speed workout.
The race was in Dothan, Alabama about an hour and a half from Crestview, Florida (you know where I live and you never visit).
I showed up to the race confident that I would complete the race in 37 minutes or better. Before I left for Dothan, I went to the Dothan Runners website to get a description of the race. I remember it saying something like, "a challenging course with rolling hills" to which I responded, "Nonsense! I live on a hill - I'm a climber dammit!"
Well, while we were standing at the starting line (I was doing the leg kicking thing that all runners do for some purpose - I do it becuase I think it looks cool), this man approaches me and says, "Have you ever run this race before?" "No." I replied. "In fact, this is my first race here and my first five-mile race ever." "Congratulations," he replied. He then inquired about my 5k time to which I proudly replied, "I can do a low 22, high 21." "Hmm, you will do this in 39 minutes." "No way pops," I arrogantly retorted."I am covering this thing in 37 minutes or less." He then took the time to warn me that the first three miles were easy and that the course was really a bitch, but I continued to reassure him that a 37 minute five-mile time was in my near future. And then the race began.....
As we sprinted out of the parking lot, I realized that the pace was rather slow, so I took it upon myself to run with the leaders and, I got to tell you, it felt great. I felt so proud of myself. Running with the leaders, pushing the pace, and, unknowingly, making myself a huge target. In this race, they called out the splits at each mile. Ladies and gentleman, I am proud to say that my splits were 7, 7, 7, 10, 8. If you know anythng about road races then you understand the possibility of the 10-minute mile. If not then you will understand that the entire fourth mile was up hill! Completely and totally up hill! There were times in the fourth mile that I wanted to cry tears of what I hoped were saline, but knew would be blood. At the end of the race, I was in blinding pain, literal blinding pain - I could not see. In my entire running life, that has only happened once before at the East-West Championships my senior year in high school. My coach told me I had to place tenth or better or we would lose. I placed tenth and we still lost to Wilson (AKA the bastards), but I digress.
After the race ended, I wandered around for what felt like hours, but was probably hours. I looked at the race results and out of 250 participants, I placed 4th in my age group and 51th overall. Realizing that I was still alive and able to change out of my sweaty clothes, I looked at my free sweatshirt only to discover that this was the five-mile championship for the Southern Region of the Road Runners Club of America - I am almost positive, nope, actually positive that I did not qualify for the national championships. Next year, I run a 37 come hell, high water, or blindness (again).
As for the man who predicted my time at the start of the race - he was dead on - I finished the race in 39:46. I spent the next day sore, drunk and fantastically happy. Until the next race... some 5k, somewhere, sometime.