Mediocrity

One of the things that has always puzzled me is just how adverse a reaction you can get to anything average. You’d think that something average would be ok – I mean, how could it possibly be bad to be like everyone else?

Instead, in all languages I speak, there is a common thread: words that indicate averageness have negative connotations. Let’s see: mediocre (from Latin medius, middle); average; common; durchschnittlich (German for average). Even the very negative “mean” has a cognate that indicates averageness.

Review: Kirkwood

{moszoomimglink:Cornice}Of all the resorts in the Tahoe area, Kirkwood has been consistently cited by friends as the one with the best snow. It is indeed in an odd location, about 40 minutes South of South Lake Tahoe, all by itself. The slopes face the East, which means they are shielded from the fierce West winds that bring all the powder with the winter storms.

I had not gone in the four years I had been snowboarding: I had always relied on season passes, and it seemed foolish to pay extra tickets and then go to a place so far off. Indeed, those that love Kirkwood all say that it doesn’t have anything going on outside the slopes, unlike SLT, where you don’t get bored no matter what time of the year.

Back from Tahoe

{moszoomimglink:Advanced only in Squaw}Back from another snowboarding trip – this time to beautiful (though powderless) Lake Tahoe. It was the first time since I was a beginner that I went to Squaw Valley, and the first time ever in Kirkwood – and now I understand all the raving about the two resorts.

Progress on Component

Well, the feedback has abated quite a lot, but views and downloads of the component are still going strong. We are at 1,327 views and 150 downloads – so far, no new complaints, but no comments either.

What does an open source developer do to get more feedback? Well, maybe start by putting out some feedback of my own. Here are a few things I’d like to see in com_weight:

First Feedback on Released Component

We’ve had 963 views and 87 downloads of the component. So far, so good, considering it has been up for just a day. In addition, I received comments and feedback from two people: one that complained the frontend didn’t work (I am trying to resolve the issue), and one that wanted to extend the component to do more things than just track weight.

I sent the first one screenshots of the interface, the second one hints as to what needs to be done, and now I am thinking: gosh, shouldn’t I post those screenshots? Shouldn’t I add an FAQ or something?

12 Monkeys (1995)

After the disaster of {moscontentlink:The Running Man}, 12 Monkeys is a welcome contrast. Directed by Terry Gilliam, of Brazil fame, this movie explores the thin boundary between sanity and madness and applies it to one of the most confusing topics of science fiction: time travel.

James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a “divergent mind,” a criminal that gets a chance to save the world after a virus wiped out 90% of mankind. He is to go back to the year 1996, when the virus first spread, to collect samples of the unadulterated virus. He is to bring these samples back, so that scientists can create an antidote, cure, or the like.

The Satanic Verses (S. Rushdie) - Partial Final

Ok, I give up. After 40 years of slogging through any book I’ve had to endure – including War and Peace, the Bible, and various heavy-weight textbooks on theoretical physics, I finally found one that could outlast me. The Satanic Verses couldn’t hold my interest for more than 2 pages at a time, and the prospect of having to read all 561 pages of it was just way too much. At that rate, I would have read that book for more than three quarters of a year!

Registered Project and Released Feather

As of now, I did all the required work to register the project and release the first version on extensions.joomla.org. You should be able to download the file, com_weight.zip from there and install it on any current Joomla 1.0 instance.

A few words to go with the download:

1. This is an initial release. The component works just fine for me, and I have it running on gawd.at to track my weight – but I am extremely interested in feedback. Both improvements and bugs will be actively considered, so don’t be shy!
2. Plans for 1.5: now that the software is stable, I’ll start working on a 1.5 implementation. I’ve looked at the structure of 1.5, and it looks like it’s really 2.0 – a major rearchitecture of the underlying infrastructure. If the interfaces for components have stayed stable, though, there shouldn’t be too much work to do. Congrats, Joomla Core developers!
3. Who is this for? When I was a fitness trainer, I found that my clients had a hard time keeping their weight, losing it, or gaining it (whatever they fancied). One of the reasons was that they looked at their weight on any single day and made silly decisions based on that. If they lost a pound they’d start eating like crazy, if they gained one they’d starve until the end of the day, and then overate. Seeing the trend in the past few weeks helps a lot more.
4. Installing: in the Administrator, choose Installers → Components. There select the ZIP file and upload it. You should get something with lots of “success!!” on it. Then go to the menu manager, and add a Component menu item with the component “com_weight” in it. Place it in any menu, make sure it is published, and off you go!

The Running Man (1987)

This review is the result of a Netflix crime: I just started my subscription (why has the time to process just trebled?), and this was one of the movies they strongly suggested I watch. Not sure why, but here are my thoughts.

First: in hindsight, the 80es were just as creative as the 70es or 60es, only their innovation was mostly atrociously ugly. Watching The Running Man shouts instantly “1987” at you, what with the women’s dress and hairstyle, the cheesy music, the crapola choreography in the dance numbers.

Mika @ the Warfield - Followup on YouTube

Well, one of the things that was amusing at the Mika concert was the number of cameras pointing at the stage throughout the night. Indeed, sometimes the glow from the cameras was stronger than the light on the stage. I guess that’s what you get in the capital of geek!

I made the comment to my friend Julie that half the videos shot that night would be on YouTube by the end of the evening. Now, it wasn’t half, and it wasn’t until the day after, but there are indeed 6 videos that match the search “mika warfield” on YouTube.