One Season Ends And Another begins

Today marked the end of my 2011 Spring Softball season.  I think I had a pretty good season.  I hit 2 out of the park homeruns, I had a base hit in almost every game, and I found a permanent position in the outfield.  On the flip-side, technically my team didn't win any games.  I say technically because we won one game by forefit, which I totally count as a win.  My confidence improved, my fielding improved, and I became a more vocal teammate.  Being more vocal on the team is probably what I see as my biggest victory this year.  I was always there to encourage my team each step of the way.

I've played on a lot of losing teams.  Losing isn't painful for me anymore.  So I began focusing on having fun and making progress each game.  Any time a ball was caught, a throw was made, contact between the ball and the bat, a ball was stopped on its way to the outfield, etc.  I was always there to encourage my team.  Each game we got better.  We made strides, we scored more runs, we allowed fewer runs to be scored.  We came closer and closer to winning.  We got to the point where it actually hurt to lose.  We were making such progress that we went ahead in a couple of games, and then we fell apart.  Those games hurt the most because we could almost see ourselves winning.  We could see we had a change to turn things around and then we'd get too confident, and start making mistakes.  No worries though, it showed we were making progress.  It showed we weren't the team we started the season as.  Progressing was most important.  Losing is never fun, but having a good time and making forward progress makes it interesting.

Now that softball season is over, I turn to soccer.  I've started practicing with my team before the season starts and our team looks promising.  I do have a lot of work to do before I'm ready.  I'm setting goals for myself this year, so I can monitor myself and make progress.  I want to truly improve.  I want to get better.  I always talk about being a good soccer player, but rarely do I do anything about it.  This year that changes.  I also want a new pair of boots, but that's another story.

My goals for my 2011 Soccer Season
 - Score 4 goals
 - Be able to play one game without being subbed out
 - Beat a defender with a step-over
 - Kick 4 corner kicks
 - Score a goal via header

I'm trying to be more of a playmaker, and move from playing on the outside to holding down the middle of the field.  I need to be able to run.  I like running, I also need to be able to control the ball.  This year I'm going to make strides towards doing just those things.

8Tracks.com

My friends and I like music.  We like to make mixes for different occasions.  My one friend has a good number of cd’s on the back of his car.  Each time we get together we discuss new music, they are always introducing me to new artists, mixtapes, and cd’s.  

We’ve always tried to discover new methods of discovering and sharing music between us.  Years ago we’d make playlists via imeem, and share them via Facebook and more recently twitter.  Sadly these days were limited and imeem was eventually bought by Myspace who killed it off.  Since then we’ve been searching for a new, easy, and legit way to share music online.  Today I may have found the solution to our problem.  It’s a little site called 8tracks.  

8tracks is a music discovery service that allows you to discover new music via playlists from other users.  The idea behind 8tracks is that people can come up with better music mixes than algorithms and computers.  8tracks reminds me of a Pandora, but with the songs chosen by the creator of the playlist.  It allows you to upload any track you own to the service to be shared.  

The site is awesome for anyone who is trying to share mixes.  You can create a “Monday Morning” mix of your favorite beginning of the week tracks, then add it to your blog or website, or share the link via twitter or facebook so that you friends can listen to it.  One feature I really like is the fact that you can see similarly tagged playlists and discover new music via other users.  

One minor thing I that discovered that may another some users is the fact that if you try to listen to the same list more than once in a row, it shuffles the song order.  This can ruin some playlists, but it also  could be nothing more than a minor inconvenience.  The site also doesn’t want you to add multiple songs from one artist on the same playlist.

8Tracks is a pretty cool site.  If you are getting bored of Pandora and want something similar with a different variety of music, check it out...

Palm Dev Day NYC - Day #2

Day 2 was awesome.  The day started off with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer talking about how far the web has come, and how HTML5 and mobile are changing things.  Followed by an Oprah moment, we all got Palm Pre 2s!  Phil McKinney spoke next giving HP's position on the mobile field and webOS.  He seemed really excited about the possibilities.  This only encouraged the crowd.  He gave a bunch of good ideas.  I really enjoyed his ideas about education and how we are currently raising test takers and not creative minds.  There are plenty of opportunities for apps out there.

Next i went to talks on the PDK and how I can leverage my C/C++ abilities within the webOS framework.  I also learned about the apps currently out there that utilize both JavaScript and the PDK.  The PDK presents a unique opportunity.  After that I attended Greg Simon's talk about optimizing performance of webOS.  He had a few tips on things not to do, but mostly he was talking about the webkit browser and JavaScript engine.

Lunch was after and it was awesome.  There were shrimp po boi sliders, jambalya rice, corn and bean salad, and cornbread with jalapenos.  They also served sweet tea of the mint, raspberry, and lemon varieties.  For desert there was ice cream and bourbon bread pudding.  Everything tasted so great.

Following lunch there were lightning talks.  In these talks webOS developers gave 5 minute presentations on how they overcame a problem they had with webOS.  It was a good lessons learned teaching experience.  There was a Cross-Platform Apps panel, developers of different frameworks talked about how they came about and how they are used to develop web apps across multiple platforms.  Really cool stuff, especially since you can develop a single app that works on webOS, IOS, Android, Symbian devices and more.  This gives developers a wider market to spread their app to.

The last couple talks I attended were about using HTML5 to spruce up your apps and the different JavaScript frameworks out there for us to take advantage of.  The last talk of the day, focused on the next generation webOS framework, Enyo.  Enyo take a lot from Ares to build a webapp.  They are trying to abstract some of the JavaScript setup work from building a webapp.  They are also working to make the process more stream lined and object oriented.  They demo'd an email app that was really slick.  It adjusted to different size windows very well, and looks promising.

Palm Dev Day NYC - PreConf Activities

I enjoyed the first day of the HP Palm WebOSDevDay.  It was enjoyable and a learning experience.  The food was good, the wifi not so much, but the people made the day awesome.  The facilities are nice too.

I spent time in talks about the webOS architecture, the PDK, webOS Internals, and managing Metrics for your application.   Since I do some C/C++ development already I'm looking forward to working with the PDK to see what I can leverage from it.  I started the day hoping to do some development, to work on an app or something of the like.  Sadly this was not the case.  This did not ruin the day at all though.

My favorite talk of the day was the webOS Internals talk by Rod Whitby.  I had heard of how  awesome the webOS community was, but today I learned to the extent.  I got to learn about how it came a long, how things were developed, and how Palm has embraced the community and its users instead of shutting them down like other companies would.  Since I use Preware, it was pretty kool to hear the history and meet Rob.

The best part of the day was the networking experience at the end.  Not only did I get to have free beer, in a mug I get to take home, but I got to meet a bunch of really cool people.  The webOS developers are all really cool and fun.  Everyone was nice, I got to spend time with the Precentral team as well as the infamous Geoff (@zhephree).  I was totally geeked out to be in the same building with them, let alone conversing with them.

The first day was great.  I look forward to tomorrow, as well as to meeting more developers and getting my first webOS app into the catalog.  I'm also hoping for a extra special treat tomorrow...

On my way to Palm Dev Day

I'm on my way to the Palm WebOS dev conference.  I'm a little excited and a little nervous.  I'm nervous because I've been reading about and playing with webOS since last spring, but I don't have anything to show for it.  I'm a C/C++ and Ruby developer by trade so I haven't fully grasped the framework and Javascript.  I know Javascript isn't a hard language to learn and work with, but it's different.  Event handling isn't something I'm used to working with.  My natural application space is not web apps, so this is all new to me.  It doesn't help also that I'm in grad school either.

I'm hoping going to this conference will help me put it all together so that I can get my mobile/web dev game going. It's something I've wanted to do for some time now,  My goals for the conference are to meet 10 people, and learn enough so that I can put something together in the following two weeks, so that I complete my goal of putting something our before the end of November.  I really enjoy webOS and I hope that I can help contribute to it's success and this conference is a good motivation point to start and grow from.

ESPN3 and my Xbox Experience

I tried.  For almost 2 months I had cable.  It wasn't worth it.  Verizon FIOS is pretty cool, but for someone like me who doesn't watch a lot of TV it wasn't the best deal.  I mainly wanted to watch the soccer channels (Goal TV and Fox Soccer Channel) which used to be part of the basic package.  Not any more.

Lucky for me the Monday after I canceled my cable, Xbox released their fall update.  This added ESPN3 to the Xbox Live experience.  This channel alone makes Xbox Live worth it.  ESPN3 just about satisfies my sports viewing wishes.  I don't get NFL football, but I can get it over the air.  I do get most college football, English Primer League, La Liga, and Serie A football matches which just gives me the warm fuzzies.  The viewing experience is awesome.   I really like it and I look forward to what will be coming with it in the future.

I'm sure one day most if not all of ESPN's programming will be available through ESPN3, right now I get more than enough.  Every day since the update, I've come home to watch something.  The MLS playoffs, the Manchester and Milan derbys, NBA basketball.  It's simply great.

When the Xbox 360 was first released, Microsoft had hopes for it to be the ultimate home media center.  For me with ESPN3 it's become just that.

My No Cable Experiement

When I got my own place, I vowed myself to never get cable.   I noticed I was much more productive without it.  I did a lot more reading and surfing the internet.  I was outside exercising more and discovering new things.  I spent way more time practicing my hobbies like photography and soccer.  I even did a very little bit of coding on the side.  Not having television forced me to spend my time more actively  I no longer had a reason to sit down and just veg out.  It also saved me some money. 


As I spent more time surfing the web, I discovered that I could watch most of my favorite television shows online.  Thanks to sites like Hulu, Youtube, CBS, and ABC I had access to my favorite shows.  Hulu, when it first came out, was the greatest thing since sliced bread to me. Not only could I watch my shows whenever I wanted to, with limited commercials, but I could go back and watch previous seasons.  More recently Hulu has begun to offer just about every show I watch plus some sports highlights.  It's great.

Once I discovered I could watch stuff online, I looked for ways to stream this to my television.  I purchased a Slingmedia SlingCatcher, and when I finally became available, 25mbps FIOS connection.  The SlingCatcher streams pretty much all flash based web video to your tv.  It works pretty well, I don't have too many complaints about it.  For my movie watching I use Orb to stream stuff to my Xbox360 and finally to my television. 


For sports I discovered Espn360.com, soon to be Espn3.com.  Espn360 gives you access to a lot of the sports Espn shows.  In addition to NBA, MLB, and a few college sports, Espn360 gives you access to European soccer leagues.  This was a big bonus to me, since if I had cable I would purchase the extra soccer channels.  Espn360 is the closest thing I found to being able to watch live sports on the internet for free. 

Here's the downer.  I think I watch more TV now than when I did have access to cable.  On Hulu alone I went from watching 3 Shows Regularly (House, 24, Grey's Anatomy) to watching 10 Shows.  With that said there are shows like Glee or Modern Family that weren't on when I first started using Hulu.  So now instead of browsing the television for interesting things to watch, I browse the internet and Hulu.  I watch old episodes and search for new things of random interest.  It feels different, but I'm doing the same thing as I was doing with cable.

In essence the internet only moved this problem to a new medium.  I am saving money by not having cable though, so that could be a plus.