David’s 2013 Freshman Lacrosse Highlights

I created a highlight video with cool music of David’s freshman lacrosse season.
Google stripped out half the music, left half, and posted ads for the music they left!
So I decided to post the video myself with all music intact.
The video plays back in the default video player of your browser.
Depending on what you are running it may or may not play well.

Here are two links you can try in your browser:

#1 Uses Default Browser

#2 Uses FlowPlayer

2012 LTYA 12u All-Stars

LTCavs 12u All-star team from Alan Kleymeyer on Vimeo.

Which iPad is better? iPad 2 or the New iPad?

The iPad 2 may be a better choice than the new iPad according to Dave Winer

Hippopotami are dangerous

In your face Cassidy and David.  I told you that my answer of “Hippotamus” was right for the Scategories category “Things you are afraid of”.

From The Straight Dope:

“The hippo, found today throughout sub-Saharan Africa, is considered by many experts, explorers and Africans to be the most dangerous animal in Africa (not counting the mosquito).  They’ve all killed way more people than Africa’s lions have. (A few rogue tigers have killed a lot of people too, but they live in India, not Africa.) The hippo is extremely aggressive, unpredictable and unafraid of humans, upsetting boats sometimes without provocation and chomping the occupants with its huge canine teeth and sharp incisors. Most human deaths occur when the victim gets between the hippo and deep water or between a mother and her calf.”

WordPress plugins

I love WordPress.  I use it for all my web sites.  Most hosting services offer it for free.  I manage three  primary Wordpress sites.  My own blog, laketravislacrosse, and laketravisparents.

Below are plugins I recommend for WordPress

Members highly recommended for collaboration.
NextGen Gallary for simple photo management.  Can be used to rotate through images.  I use it to highlight VIP sponsors.
iFrame. Wordpress doesn’t allow iFrames for security reasons.  This plugin supports iFrames which are necessary for embedding things such as a Google Form or PayPal buttons.
AWPCP for Classified Ads
Exclude Pages From Navigation.  I found this plugin searching how to remove pages that showed up in the Classifieds Menu created by the AWPCP plugin.   Previously, I had made pages private to keep them from showing up in the menu which is related to the theme I am using.  Now with this plugin I have better control of whether a page should be on a menu or not.

Prefer Interfaces over Base Classes

Why Java Extends is evil

Let it crash programming

I’m not sure I’m sold on the notion of “Let it crash programming”.   Here are some posts on the subject.

1 2 3 4

USTA 4.5 2011

I had a great season of USTA 4.5 tennis this year.  Counting the three matches I played this weekend in Houston (Little State) I went 10-1 !  Not bad for the last year as a junior.  Next year I qualify for senior leagues!

Thanks to my tennis partners: Clay Johnson, Steve Gilmer (we went 3-0 in Little State), Russ Needler and James Bronson.

And thanks to Gentry Sparling for captaining our team and to Darrell Breeden for all his help this season and for scheduling most of my practice matches.

Confluence for collaboration

My company is standardizing on Atlassian products such as Jira (for issue tracking), and Confluence for Wikis and collaboration.   I have yet to use a system that works better than a simple blog with categories, pages and RSS feeds.  I mean what is better than subscribing to a Page, Category (or tag) and contributing to the comment thread of a post you are interested in.

So far, I’m finding Confluence’s support for blogs leaving much to be desired.  Starting with the fact you can’t subscribe to feeds with many readers since they require authentication and many (such as Google Reader) don’t support authenticated feeds.

Here is one option that uses a proxy

I tend to agree with Scott that a wiki without RSS feeds is a non starter.  Email notifications?  I find it funny that Confluence promotes itself as a solution for email chaos but then offer it as the primary mechanism for notifications.

You should completely drain your battery once a month

“For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

“Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

Of course, many iPhone users find that it’s easy to completely run the battery down…