De la Hoya vs Mayweather – here we go
Oscar De la Hoya will be fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. for the 154 lbs title on May 5, 2007.
Undoubtedly this will be a major PPV event as De La Hoya is far and away the most popular boxer of the past 15 years and Floyd Mayweather appears to be the best pound-for-pound fighter of today. As a De La Hoya fan, I am excited and scared about this news. Excited because it promises to be a great fight; and Scared because I don’t think Oscar can win this one.
In his fights against the quicker Shane Mosley, Oscar was unable to dominate as he usually does – and at times was made to look slow. Mayweather is younger and faster than De La Hoya, and he is probably better than Mosley was, so the odds are definitely against Oscar on this one. If there is one advantage, it will be that Floyd is moving up in weight for this fight, so there may be a power advantage for Oscar.
Personally I think that Golden Boy Promotions would be better to get behind a Mosley-Mayweather match. This would match speed against speed as, right now, I think that Mosley has the best chance of beating Mayweather of any current fighters in the weight class. In the end, though, Oscar’s name carries much more hype and anticipation than Mosley’s so money must prevail.
Train hard for this one Oscar, I’d love to see you win this.
What I love about my fiancée
I have the world’s best fiancée. You may think that this statement is as pointless as “the world’s best coffee”, but in this case it is the literal truth.
What I love most about her is that she is true to herself, the world around her, and, of the utmost personal importance, to me. I have been quite difficult of late, being slow to accept certain life decisions and paths – and one might use a “wet towel” as a metaphor for my company. Despite this, however, she continues to be true and faithful to me by including me in her daily life – and not hiding those things for which I have demonstrated low aptitude for reacting well. I hope that, when faced with issues that are difficult for her, I can carry my self with the same level of openness and integrity.
I hereby make a pact with myself to wring out the dampness in my wet towel so that it can become a soft, warm blanket – as it is not fair to respond to her faithfulness with fear or her warmth with coldness or her openness with possessiveness – as I have never had reason to doubt our relationship and I cannot allow fear of the future to over-take what I know to be true today.
Let the fun continue…
Canadian Sketch Comedy
My friend Mike is part of a hilarious sketch comedy group called Classholes. This is a video of them doing some comedy at a competition in L.A. this past April.
Classholes Live in LA
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For more information about the Classholes, see their myspace page at http://myspace.com/classholes.
RSS Replacing Mailing Lists
I have recently discovered the joy of RSS subscriptions first hand. Before RSS, the only way to stay informed of the news and events that interested me was to subscribe to the appropriate mailing list. This resulted in a cluttered mail box. Last week I downloaded an RSS news reader for OS X called Vienna, and I started subscribing to the RSS feeds of the web sites and message forums that I enjoy. Wow, is this empowering. No longer do I have to spend an hour surfing the web to see if there is anything new on my favourite sites – or on the Dataface forum. Now I just have to check Vienna and see if there are any new posts.
DHTMLXGrid Part I
After much deliberation, I have decided to use dhtmlXGrid to develop a portal widget for Dataface. This will improve the usability of Dataface for complex data sources dramatically. Among other reasons, I have chosen dhtmlXGrid because:
<ol> <li>It is available under GPL.</li> <li>It seems really cool!! and polished.</li> </ol> <p>My initial observations are:</p> <ol> <li>Documentation and examples seem to be quite good and mature.</li> <li>There doesn't seem to be a forum or mailing list available.</li> <li>I am only using the Standard edition. The enterprise edition is not open source. </li> </ol> <p>One of the things that I like about this component is that you can load it with XML. This should make it relatively easy to define dataface actions that just output XML that is compatiblle with a the grid. I am stuck in a couple of spots, however.</p> <ol> <li>I can't see how to define como-boxes and select lists using XML. There are examples using javascript to programatically define them (which is okay), but I would rather do everything from XML.</li> <li>.. okay only one thing right now... </li> </ol> <p>I will scour the source code a little bit more and will probably end up emailing the company who makes it to ask about this one.. as it is pretty important.</p><p>The lack of a forum or community provisions seems a little limiting. I feel inclined to set up my own "fan" community site for this, if I begin using it a lot.</p><p> More on this later when I have some results.<br /></p>
Suing Spammers for Fraud
I have recently become more annoyed with spammers and their deceptive tactics. Especially since I have launched some web sites recently that leaves me open to receive more spam. I found this interesting article that goes over some of the developments with larger corporations like AOL and Microsoft engaging in court battles with spammers.
Web Lite Translate
My company, Web Lite Solutions, has launched a new web site translation service to translate data-driven websites into multiple languages.
The service uses Dataface as a foundation to convert existing PHP/MySQL web sites into multilingual sites without having to change the site’s structure very much. Theoretically any web site developed using PHP and MySQL could be converted with minimal changes. The technology is currently being used to convert Science.ca into French, and it is used to power the http://translate.weblite.ca site itself also.
In the case of Science.ca, attempts had been made to port the site into multilingual frameworks such as Plone or Typo-3 without success. The site had over 5 years of development invested in the current framework and changing frameworks would have been a lot of work ( = time and money).
Web Lite Translate, on the other hand, was able to cooperate with the existing architecture to seamlessly convert it into a multilingual site.
Check out Web Lite Translate at http://translate.weblite.ca .
Wikipedia to Aid in translations
We all know that Wikipedia is a great tool for learning more about various topics. I just discovered another great use for it: aiding in website translations.
My company, Web Lite Solutions, has hired someone to translate one of its web sites into Chinese. The question arose: "What is open-source, i.e. how should it be translated to Chinese?"
The term open-source, in the developer community, takes on a greater meaning than the sum of its parts. It is almost a brand name. Hence it is important to get the proper Chinese translation, and not just a translation that means, more-or-less, the same thing.
Wikipedia to the rescue!
I Went to the Open-source listing on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source). Then I looked on lower left column of the page where it lists the different translations for this entry, and clicked on the chinese link (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%80%E6%94%BE%E6%BA%90%E4%BB%A3%E7%A0%81). Presumably the title of this page should be the proper Chinese translation for "Open-source". In addition, my translator is able to learn a number of other related translations by simply reading the article.
Hallelujah
I just ran across a powerfully moving song recorded by Jeff Buckley in 1994. Apparently this song has been used in many movies, including Shrek and Lord of War. I don’t know how I managed to miss it before.
The song is called Hallelujah. It was written by Leonard Cohen in 1984 and has been covered by a number of artists in many different styles, but the version by Jeff Buckley is simply heart stopping. He performs it with a single electric guitar and his voice. It is becomes even more powerful when you listen to it in light of Buckley’s tragic life, and untimely death by drowning in 1997.
The song has a tragic, melancholy feel to it, and Buckley sounds as though his soul is crying out to God for hope while simultaneously lamenting the pain and tragedy of life.
I have read a number of interpretations of the lyrics on various web sites. Some say it is not religious at all, but is rather a song about the pain of love in general. This song spoke to me on a very spiritual level, however. It is about the fall of man on a very personal level – the fall that everyone experiences away from God. Some lament this fall (as Buckley does here), while others pay little attention to it, or find it irrelevant.
The opening verse includes imagery of David playing music to the lord and praising him. This describes a time in man’s life when he is walking with God, though amazed, and confused by eternity – but singing Hallelujah (Praise the Lord).
The second verse goes on to describe the fall. It again uses imagery of David with his seduction by sin (when he sees Bathsheba bathing in the moonlight. He succumbs to the beauty of sin, which proceeds to enslave him (ties him to her kitchen chair), and remove the love of god from his heart (from your lips she drew the hallelujah).
The third verse describes life after the fall. He knows this life all too well, as he lived it before he knew God. It is cold and lonely in this place, but he is helpless to return to God by this time. He sees evidence of God (the flag on the marble arch), but all he has left are cold and broken hallelujahs.
The fourth verse shifts gears a little bit, allowing God to share his thoughts on the matter. He is sad that the man no longer talks to him, and he reminisces of the time that he used to move in the man and when their every breath was hallelujah.
The fifth, and final verse, is ultimately sad, as, by this time, the man is completely disillusioned with God, love, and religion. He is no longer even sure if God exists, and he questions whether love even exists, as he has seen terrible pain spread under the guise of love.
Click here to see a video of Jeff Buckley performing Hallelujah live (from YouTube).