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September 2008 Blog Posts
Deep Thoughts by John Madden, from Sunday Night Football

On cheese: “The first guy who ever made cheese, how did he know he was done?  You have your curds, and you have your whey, at what point did that guy say, ‘That’s it fellas, let’s eat’?”

posted @ Sunday, September 21, 2008 9:37 PM | Feedback (0)
The State of College Football Broadcasting

Is poor.  Very, very poor.

Maybe I’m just paying more attention this year than in recent years, but the inability of announcers to follow what is happening on the field, to consistently get calls incorrect (including whether someone gains a first down or not), and to botch instant replay predictions is amazing.  They still get stuck trying to fit games into their pre-conceived, pre-game analysis, not matter what happens in the actual game, but they’ve been doing that for forever.

Even though it has been more than a week, take a good example from the Rutgers-North Carolina game a few Thursdays ago.  North Carolina put a beatdown on Rutgers, beating them in every aspect of the game.  There were a couple of lucky bounces that went NC’s way, and a couple of unlucky bounces that went against Rutgers.  The announcers (Tirico’s team) decided to ‘analyze’ the bounces ad nauseum and that’s fine.  But then, there was a punt, and NC appeared to down it on the 6 inch line.  The announcers go nuts and go on and on and on, with multiple replays, analyzing footwork at the goal line, blah blah, ‘isn’t it amazing how every bounce is going there way’, etc. etc. etc.  Except in every replay, the referee was clearly signalling a touchback.  60 seconds later, play resumes.  At the 20.  Because it was a touchback.  NONE of the announcers point this out, even though they just rambled for 90 seconds about how NC downed it inside the one.

One thing that is pretty obvious at this point is that they don’t have a screen that shows the electronic first-down line, because they seem to be way too inaccurate in figuring out whether a play gained a first down or not.  “And he makes that extra move to gain a first down.”  Uh, no, he’s a yard and a half short.

And one other thing.  Pay attention to the officiating crew.  When the officials are all in a huddle, that’s usually a sign there was a penalty, you might want to bring it up and stop showing multiple replays of a play that’s coming back.  If they signal incomplete, that means the receiver didn’t catch the ball.  If they signal a catch, it isn’t incomplete.

And so on.

posted @ Saturday, September 20, 2008 9:03 PM | Feedback (0)
Marillion releases 'Happiness is the Road' for free

Sort of.  Kind of.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7606029.stm

I was one of those who pre-ordered the release, and though I wasn't really aware of it at the time, the 'extra' money charged helped the group to pre-pay for all of the studio time, etc. to record the music without worries.  At least that's what I gather from the info in the link and through various emails from the band.

Anyway, looks like they want to 'flood' all of the file-sharing sites with versions of the music that somehow let the band 'market' various purchasing opportunities to people who download those versions.  Since I didn't have any intention of uploading the music, I had the option (which I took) of downloading the release in 'not quite CD quality' format (with a video message from the band saying it was okay to download each song).  To be honest, the quality of the music files seems good to me.

Now that it is in the open, I take this to mean that it is kosher to post a review of the new release.  I may do so in detail at some point soon, but here's the mini-review:

For me, the Hogarth version of Marillion has always been hit and miss.  I think Brave was really good, and I think Marbles was excellent, but most everything else has been spotty.  Their previous release, Somewhere Else, was a perfect example.  I think the title song is brilliant, but outside of one or two other cuts, I thought it was mediocre at best, disappointingly boring at worst.  Having listened to it a few times, my initial reaction is that Happiness is the Road approaches Brave in quality, but probably doesn't hit the brilliance of Marbles.  'Side one' (the first 10 songs) works really well, while maybe a few of the songs on 'Side two' (the second set of 10) aren't quite as good.  Steve Rothery never really cuts loose, in my mind, on any particular track, but the melodies and lyrics (that I can tell...need the forthcoming full lyric sheet to know for sure) are solid throughout most of the effort.  It certainly isn't disappointing in the way Somewhere Else was to me.

But, that's a first reaction.

posted @ Friday, September 12, 2008 11:29 PM | Feedback (0)
Follow-up to Chicago Alt.NET September 2008 Meeting

Below is from Sergio.  Thanks to everyone who attended.

 

**********************************************************************************************

 

I'd like to thank all that came to our meeting on Wednesday. A few people emailed me asking the name or site of some things mentioned both in the talk and in the discussion portions. I thought I'd send a list of things that were mentioned. This type of thing would belong in our site, which isn't ready yet, but sit tight, it's coming.

Structure Map
http://structuremap.sourceforge.net/

Code Better blogs
http://codebetter.com/

Jeremy D Miller's blog
http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller/default.aspx

Rob Conery's MVC Storefront Videos
http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/

Los Techies blogs
http://www.lostechies.com/

Chad Myers' blog
http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/chad_myers/default.aspx

Robert C Martin SOLID Principles
http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod

Other IoC Containers

Windsor

Ninject
http://ninject.org/

Spring.NET
http://www.springframework.net/

Unity
http://www.codeplex.com/unity

ORM discussion

NHibernate
http://www.hibernate.org/343.html

SubSonic
http://subsonicproject.com/

posted @ Friday, September 12, 2008 8:33 AM | Feedback (1)
PostSharp 1.0 RTM

They've finally announced it.

I've been wanting to try out AOP, and now I have no "it's not RTM yet" excuse.

posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 9:42 PM | Feedback (4)
Persistence Ignorance (POCO) Adapter for Entity Framework

I've only just read through the blog post describing it, so I can't say that I've used it, but it is of some interest, as it is designed to provide:

- Change tracking (snapshot-based and proxy-based when possible)
- Transparent lazy loading
- Immutable Value Objects
- Queries (LINQ and Entity SQL)
- Shadow state (maintaining certain persistence-related fields outside of entity class)

I don't think in the long run it will be satisfactory enough by itself to make people switch from NHibernate (in a way, it's implementing a mapping on top of the already over-abundant mappings required in EF), BUT if it is used/eventually becomes how EF implements native POCO support in v2 (its described as a vehicle for providing feedback), then MAYBE it becomes a bridge to use in the interim (did I hedge that enough?).

posted @ Tuesday, September 09, 2008 3:50 PM | Feedback (0)
And I thought the Penguins' defense needed help

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3577150

I'm not sure what's more amazing.  The 82-0 score, or the 139-0 shot differential.  Couldn't they have shot it at the goal from center ice or something?

posted @ Tuesday, September 09, 2008 8:39 AM | Feedback (1)