This is roughly as difficult as keeping our own lives in proper balance

In plainer terms, I could be guilty of stating a self-evident truth—we act the way we do because the mind behaves the way it does. Yet I believe this simple insight helps explain several facets of human behavior, and indeed highlights the difficulty of adhering to one set of principles at all times. The very concept of “balance” that I hold so dear necessarily depends on the consideration of opposing viewpoints. I am quite aware, in fact, that the other two principles I mentioned, empathy and loyalty, are themselves two sides of the same coin.

The human mind has been aptly compared to a computer, and the similarities occasionally run deeper than many realize. Computers have had the ability to multitask for many years now, yet upon closer inspection one notes that the central processor merely devotes a number of “clock cycles” per second to each of its tasks consecutively, granting the illusion of handling several things at once. In the days before it possessed multiple processors working in tandem, a computer’s “brain” had to be nimble enough to switch tasks quickly and effectively. Such is the case for a person’s mind, and barring the potentially grotesque emergence of multiple brains of our own, this nimble handling of our collected information is the challenge we perpetually face.

Since even our best attempts at multitasking are illusory and we are thus bound to varying intervals of single-tasking, one can begin to explain an array of naturally occurring human behaviors: mood swings, the power of persuasion, becoming distracted, practice makes perfect. The mere fact that one line of thinking can overwhelm and eventually dominate someone’s mind not only describes the experience of addiction, it also gives rise to the tendencies that manifest as homicide or even genocide. Such domination of a single idea or fixed set of ideas could also describe religious zealotry and its frequent nemesis, obsession with pop culture.

With this essay, I feel that I am arriving at a synthesis of my previous philosophical musings, a unified concept of the human experience that is admittedly basic—perhaps a result of my own predilection towards pragmatism and common sense. The implications of these thoughts are that the cynic and the optimist are both right. While I am forced to concede that tragedy in all its forms may always be part of the plight of mankind, I also know with utter certainty that through the convergence of our individual efforts and serendipitous timing, we the people can continually inspire others, and ourselves, to greatness.

I hope to say more of the principles of empathy, balance, and loyalty, in due time. But perhaps it is best that we simply consider the words themselves and what they mean to us. Our single-tasking minds would surely do well to recall them often.

A one-for-all, all-for-one solution to website content management is the holy grail of my profession. For my web development work for clients, I find that several of them have a lot of specific features they want in their content management system (CMS). But soon enough I’m walking the tight rope between simplicity and flexibility.

Selecting a tool to build such a website or application is a matter of audience. The first audience, software developers, need either a lot of freedom or a lot of options. In practical terms, for my PHP development, this is a choice between CakePHP and Drupal. Working with both of these equally has been eye-opening, because without fail there are many features that are much faster to implement in one or the other—it truly ends up about 50/50. Want to display a custom calculation in a specific place on the site? With CakePHP it’s simple. Want a paged image gallery with Lightbox functionality? Drupal can get you there much more quickly.

For both these platforms, the other audience comes into play as well, namely the client. Obviously the client needs to have their available options presented as concisely as possible—they don’t need (or want) a huge amount of freedom or options. So the creation of such a simple interface falls to the developer. The trick is knowing which stuff to allow them to change and which stuff to hard-code. In both cases, priority #1 is defining these as variables (or object properties) as soon as possible in the code, so we can switch back and forth if need be. Yet clients will always possess an uncanny knack for requesting the tweaks that are most troublesome to implement. Granular permissions, anyone?

Creating robust software that is still easy to use is the challenge facing any software developer. Apple has rightly gained a reputation for striking this balance with substantial success, yet they are certainly not above reproach. In the web industry, the balance of power is more volatile, as anyone with a great idea can launch a web application with little to no concern for infrastructure—innovations from Google, Rackspace, Amazon, and the like are taking care of those issues. And while there are a wealth of options in the realm of content management, several of them quite good, I believe this abundance indicates the ongoing problem of balancing features with simplicity in these applications. After a myriad attempts, the world still awaits a truly excellent CMS.

NOTE: Parts of this post were originally a comment at Gadgetopia.

Rock Band Numero Uno

I gave myself a few ground rules as the exercise commenced. The finished collection had to fit on two CD’s, and no artist or album could be represented more than once. Thematically, I decided not to include some genres for the sake of coherence, as the bulk of my favorites are concentrated in the categories of rock, alternative, and electronic music from the last twenty years. My apologies to Marty Robbins, Busta Rhymes, and Beethoven, but it was for the best. Another difficult choice I made was to limit my selections to those produced during the last two decades. As much as I love Floyd and Zeppelin, I feel a deeper connection with the music made during my lifetime, and I dare say most of us tend to feel the same.

Beyond that, I simply chose the songs that have resonated most powerfully with me over the years, and I worked diligently to order them very specifically. Music speaks to the full range of human experience, and I sought to capture its true voice. Each artist on my list is beloved to me, but I am compelled to mention six in particular who are foremost in my mind.

1. Plaid — Simply put, Plaid is my number one group and have put out some of the most beautiful electronic albums of all time, with Rest Proof Clockwork ranking as my favorite in the genre. But not far behind are Double Figure and Parts in the Post. Plaid manage to convey an astounding depth of emotion balanced with an inherent optimism and a teaspoon of humor. They seem remarkably in tune with this crazy adventure we call life.
2. Alice In Chains — The Layne Staley era was the best thing ever to happen to rock music, in my opinion. This band had it all: heartfelt lyrics, amazing technical skill, and unbridled originality. Their harmonizing in particular is spine-tingling, and they managed to spread their talent fairly evenly over their discography. I am hard pressed indeed to pick a favorite from Jar of Flies, Dirt, and Tripod.
3. Soundgarden — The first time I heard Down on the Upside, I’m pretty sure my life changed forever. I still consider it the best rock album in history, and for that alone this band deserves special mention. Their level of technical skill is off the charts—not much more needs to be said. Just listen and savor.
4. Orbital — The Hartnoll brothers are responsible for my realization many years ago that electronic music is not only legitimate but transcendent. Upon hearing The Brown Album in its entirety, my musical tastes were rebooted. For a long time, Orbital was my favorite artist, and even now are second only to Plaid in their genre. Other standout works from them include Snivilisation and In Sides.
5. Battles — I lovingly refer to Battles as “the ones who saved music.” Either music had lost its power to thrill, or I was just becoming too jaded to appreciate it in recent years. So it seemed until Battles came along and rocked not only my world, but my face, with their now legendary album Mirrored. Fortunately I have been able to experience the power and fury of Battles in person as well. May they continue to lead the way.
6. Guitar Vader — In an alternate universe where things make sense, Miki and Ujuan would be more famous than anyone or anything else from Japan, Pokemon included. With an astonishing stylistic range, Guitar Vader have produced a handful of albums that are quirky, fun-loving, and always enjoyable. Perhaps it’s heresy to compare anyone to the Beatles, but this group seems to be their worthy spiritual successor to the East.

So there you have it. I’ve said my piece, and all that remains is the listening. I sincerely hope you enjoy.

Brademixx Disc 1

1. “Novacane” — Beck — Odelay
2. “Sweet” — 311 — 311
3. “Forever” — Orbital — Snivilisation
4. “Get Born Again” — Alice In Chains — Music Bank
5. “Get Your Snack On” — Amon Tobin — Supermodified
6. “Captain Bligh” — Filter — Title of Record
7. “Crystalline Green” — Goldfrapp — Black Cherry
8. “The Distance” — Cake — Fashion Nugget
9. “Race: In” — Battles — Mirrored
10. “Let My Fish Loose” — Aphex Twin — 26 Mixes for Cash
11. “Glass of Water” — Bunky — Born to Be a Motorcycle
12. “1969″ — Boards of Canada — Geogaddi
13. “Leave Me Alone” — Guitar Vader — Dawn
14. “We Have Explosive” — The Future Sound of London — Dead Cities
15. “People of the Sun” — Rage Against the Machine — Evil Empire
16. “21st Century Poem” — Leftfield — Leftism
17. “Home” — Smashing Pumpkins — Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music

Brademixx Disc 2

1. “The Cerobi Steppe” — Hitoshi Sakimoto — Final Fantasy XII: Original Soundtrack
2. “Gel Lab” — Plaid — Rest Proof Clockwork
3. “Maquiladora” — Radiohead — Lost Treasures 1993-1997
4. “Can’t Cry These Tears” — Garbage — Beautiful Garbage
5. “Eutow” — Autechre — Tri Repetae ++
6. “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” — U2 — Batman Forever: Music from the Motion Picture
7. “Humming the Bassline” — Hideki Naganuma — Jet Set Radio: Original Soundtrack
8. “I Feel Cream” — Peaches — I Feel Cream
9. “Operatique” — CoLD SToRAGE — Wipeout
10. “Broadcast Emotion” — Helmet — Aftertaste
11. “C Note” — Photek — Wipeout Pure: The Official Soundtrack
12. “Who’ll Be the Next in Line” — Queens of the Stone Age — Stone Age Complication
13. “For Love” — Lush — Spooky
14. “Away” — Toadies — Rubberneck
15. “4 Dead Monks (Original Demo)” — Red Snapper — We Are Reasonable People
16. “Xpander (Edit)” — Sasha — Wipeout 3
17. “Never the Machine Forever” — Soundgarden — Down on the Upside
18. “4:14″ — Global Communication — 76:14
19. “We’re In This Together” — Nine Inch Nails — The Fragile

I live in the south, and I think hockey is the most exciting sport you can watch. I heavily promoted the Olympic USA/Canada matches to all my friends, and gladly the games did not disappoint. However, I think there are a few obvious reasons why people normally don’t give hockey a fair chance.

1. They’ve never played it. Many people follow sports they play or have played before, even if only recreationally.
2. The scores are low. At least the NHL no longer allows ties. I celebrated the day they instituted a shoot-out. And offense is a bigger factor now than in the 90′s. Maybe if hockey used the artificial method of football and awarded 6 points per goal, people wouldn’t notice?
3. They can’t relate as much to the players. Since most players are from other countries, a sense of connection is missing for some fans when they watch the game.

For myself, I can say that none of these three things matter. What got me into the game was NHL 94 for the Sega. I enjoyed playing that game so much, I had to find out more about the real thing. The scores might not have been 12-2 like I was used to, but I still loved certain things about the game. Here are a few reasons why hockey could catch on if promoted properly:

1. ONE timeout per team, per game. This is a massive advantage for hockey over basketball and football. How many times have those sports slowed to a crawl simply because teams are allowed to say “Hold up!” whenever they want?
2. It combines a bunch of things people already like: slapping a small item with a stick (baseball, golf), fighting and hitting (UFC, football), 5 on 5 goal-oriented setup with slick passing (basketball). Plus it adds the wacky element of doing it all on skates.
3. I am firmly convinced that the NHL has the best announcers of any sport, by far. Doc Emrick and Jim Hughson are masters of their craft, and most of the teams’ local guys are fantastic as well (as I have found from subscribing to NHL Center Ice). There seems to be more passion and less detachment from all these guys compared to other sports. It’s like we’re all in on a great secret, and can’t get enough of this great sport. Here are just a few favorites.

NOTE: This post initially appeared in slightly modified form as a comment on an ESPN article by John Buccigross.

Greetings to all,

Do you remember the joy of a puffy pan pizza as your ultimate reward for a personal dedication to reading? Then you remember Book It! The edible bonus was of course secondary to the personal enrichment you must have felt after blazing through such classics as “Superfudge” and “Five Children and It.”

Recently it has become apparent to me that we would do well to recapture the spirit of this bygone era by establishing such a stimulating reading programme for the upcoming year. I have run this idea by a few of you already, and I’d be honored for as many people as possible to take part. Essentially I would like to establish an agenda of reading 12 books over a 12 month period, and holding a meeting each month for discussion and general merriment—so yeah, a Book Club. At the end of the 12 months, we could then decide if we want to “renew the contract.”

…

But the big thing is keeping it informal. These are just ideas, and mostly I want it to be dang fun. And I want it to be low-pressure. Don’t feel the need to read every page of every book if you don’t want. Pick out the parts that seem intriguing and be on your way. I want this to be something we will be quite glad we did when we look back on it.

Drawing obvious inspiration from The Inklings of Oxford, the goal for our group was similarly informal and straightforward. And thanks to the recommendations I received from the others, we began with arguably the best possible selection by reading Chesterton’s famous work, which was even regarded by C. S. Lewis as a chief inspiration for his own thoughts on Christianity and history.

Chesterton is the sort of witty and enthusiastic writer that anyone would do well to emulate, even if you don’t agree with his philosophy. For my own part, I can’t say that it was so persuasive that it changed my mind forever about any one thing, but I must agree that its stated mission was accomplished. Written in response to H. G. Wells’ The Outline of History, the book aimed mainly to demonstrate just how unique is this religion called Christianity—how it cannot be subject to simple studies in comparative religion because of the special claims it makes, and how Christ himself must not be merely admired as a capable moral teacher when he balanced those teachings with specific proclamations about his deity and his life’s purpose for all of humanity. It is a convincing case, and the author chooses to make his point by framing man’s entire history around those outrageous events in the Roman Empire two millennia ago, when mythology and philosophy were finally joined, and the course of history truly changed drastically. Jesus spoke aptly indeed when he said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

It is not my place to convince anyone reading a summary blog post of anything contained in the book, so I would merely encourage each individual to read it for yourself, as you are at least guaranteed to be entertained by such a sweeping look at the world’s past. And from so grand a starting point as this tome, any reader could then springboard to any number of subjects. For The Applebiters, we’ve got our big sticks ready for this month’s entry, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

Watch Conan’s farewell speech here.

Thanks for doing what you do, Conesy. Karma will always be on your side!

Whose life wouldn't change at such a sight?

The plans began innocently enough, as they always do. The four of us would enjoy a week-long vacation in glorious California, backpacking fifty miles in one of nature’s treasures, Kings Canyon National Park. We would behold the grandeur of the High Sierras, relax among vast and tranquil lakes, and encounter a delightful array of woodland creatures. With nothing but our packs and our inalienable right to liberty, we were about to pursue more happiness than you can shake a trekking pole at.

Or maybe I’d end up praying for the sweet release of death.

What? How could such an experience be anything less than invigorating, enlightening, and thrilling to my very soul? The answer, my friends, came only too swiftly and vividly in the days that followed our arrival. Here now, after two months of gradual mental and physical recovery, I am ready to recount this dark episode of my life and its lone valuable gift: a clearly defined limit of bodily stress to which I am quite sure I will never again submit voluntarily.

This is not a gift I accept lightly. Indeed it has opened my eyes to a new way of living. No longer will I feel the anxiety of “missing out” on some sort of personal enrichment when some zany scheme is suggested as a preferable alternative to maxin’ and relaxin’. For now I know better. Now I know my limits. Now I know myself.

I shall recount the five-day affair by providing a brief description of each day’s activities followed by the type of breakdown I suffered somewhere along the way. Together these breakdowns combined to tear asunder the illusory ideal that such an excursion is somehow to be appreciated and treasured for its own sake. No, such a trek instead provides a harsh reminder from nature that frail man is but a fool.

Day One

It didn’t take long for me to realize I had made a mistake. Sure, everyone always says day one is the worst, but that is when one’s mind is still sharpest. Were we to heed its advice, we might spare ourselves future agony. Within the first mile we were hiking upwards at a severe grade and with maximum weight on our backs. I was quickly losing steam. Not only the obvious physical steam, but my mental motivation was nowhere to be found. I have a terrible lifelong habit of constantly asking, “Why?” and tragically no answer was forthcoming on this day. Any sense of adventure and anticipation was swiftly replaced with dread within the opening stages of our jaunt. I found that walking in quick bursts and stopping for frequent rests of less than a minute was my best course of action, but before I resigned myself to that fate, I suffered my first breakdown.

Breakdown Type: Threatening to Turn Back Immediately

The other three gents were eager beavers, ready to put aside their discomfort and forge ahead. This was the spirit of adventure! Who could know what astounding sights were just around the bend? These lads weren’t the least bit concerned with such trifling questions as “Why are we doing this?” They were doing this because this is what needed to be done! At some point they crested a hill, then I didn’t see them for a long while. My mind had already resolved to walk right back down that hill and drive to the nearest hotel while the rest of them played out their fruitless fantasies. At last I caught a faint glimpse of our fearless leader hurrying back along the trail towards me. When he finally arrived, the words were simple and pointed: “This isn’t going to work.” In my mind I concurred. The only way this was “going to work” was for me to exit stage left. When we met up with the others I announced my grandiose plans to leave and wished them all the best. Then something happened. Rational thought gave way to whimsical ideas of “trying harder” and “pressing on.” I had been on hiking trips before—even one that lasted just as many days—so I foolishly convinced myself that I could establish a more reasonable pace. I assured them that I would not fall behind like this again. And perhaps in this I succeeded. But when we arrived at our first campsite, the concept of success could not have been further from anyone’s mind.

Day Two

Oh, did I leave you hanging? Then allow me to explain the scenario when we arose at dawn. Only two of us had brought tents, and for the rest of my life I will thank God that I brought mine. The morning greeted us with its sky blurred by a vast swarm of mosquitoes. The very same hell-spawn had driven us to our premature slumber the night before, after a truly miserable dining experience. And now they threatened to keep us holed up forever on this freshly rain-soaked hill out in the middle of nowhere. My fellow travelers were beginning to see what truth this portended: this hike was destined to break us, one by one. We needed to dispatch any romantic notions of strolling comfortably over snow-capped peaks while friendly marmots chirped happy songs in unison. This “vacation” was to be our ultimate trial. When we finally emerged from Mosquito Valley, we merely found ourselves marching under sweltering heat and fording absurd streams that could not possibly be part of a trail intended for recreation. Right? Day two’s frustrations boiled over into a momentous outburst.

Breakdown Type: Yelling and Cursing at the Top of My Lungs

The itinerary called for one last extreme elevation gain before setting up camp. But it would not come to pass. Driven to the brink of insanity, I pressed onward towards the others with the assistance of a series of adrenaline boosts wrought by extreme anger. When at long last I happened upon their crude forms, I aimed my head low and prepared to unleash my fury. There they sat as I slowly removed my giant backpack and threw it to the ground. What happened next would help define the terms of our subsequent agenda with startling clarity. I clinched my fists, opened wide my maw, gazed toward the heavens, and roared with a great and primal force. Sustaining an incredible volume I bellowed my displeasure at the false gods whose will it was to see me sacrificed on this mountain. Your unholy plans be damned! Curse all of it! And curse those who led me astray! My body shaking, my mind reeling, I brooded for the remainder of the evening. Not only was my mental state in utter disarray, I felt as if my kidneys were caught in a vice. For some reason, I could barely breathe. Slumber took hold of me, and I wished in vain that the struggle would soon end.

Day Three

The slight adjustment to our schedule meant that the aforementioned dramatic ascent was our first challenge of the morning. My mind was in a markedly improved condition, so I decided to get a head start on the others and plow ahead while motivation could still be summoned. My pace was steady and deliberate, dotted with short rests. I was able to progress several miles before we all met up for a lunch break. As the day wore on, however, my resolve devolved into an incessant recitation of that foreboding question, “Why?” Today’s campsite destination was Evolution Lake, and as the hours rolled past, I imagined myself plunging into its watery grasp, having resigned all hope. My last few miles consisted of prolonged periods of rest as I ruminated at length about the life I left behind.

Breakdown Type: Utter Despondency

Dusk had nearly arrived by the time I shuffled into camp. I gently removed my bag and sat down on it, placing my head into my hands. This lake was no respite. This sunset no reward. None of this mattered. Why was I here? I thought back to all those moments of uncertainty prior to getting on that plane and flying myself into this chaos. They were perfectly legitimate doubts! My hesitance was not baseless! The previous two years I had been part of groups that flew out west for voyages that involved hiking. But hiking had never been the sole purpose of our endeavors. Time was set aside for casual pursuits as well: restaurants, museums, landmarks, big cities. As my memory alighted on each treasured experience, I knew that I had committed a gross error by agreeing to a trip wholly devoted to rigorous labor and without a hint of precious leisure.

Day Four

Believe me, I tried to spin the present situation in any way that could uplift my beleaguered spirit. The majority of this forsaken trail is done! Our packs are a little lighter! Our legs a bit stronger! But as day four unfolded and we traipsed across craggy terrain, I suddenly found myself consumed with sorrow. As I repeated the same questions to myself—questions that could not be sufficiently answered—all traces of willpower vanished, and under the unrelenting fire of the sun, my feet barely moved. My eyes firmly affixed to the ground before me, I removed my pack almost unknowingly and sat gingerly upon a large rock. This could not continue. This will not continue. I leaned back slowly and tilted my head towards the sky, my eyes overwhelmed with the brightness of the sun’s rays. Was this the end?

Breakdown Type: Blubbering Like a Baby

The tears came quickly and boldly. My spirit had been broken. What more did you want from me, Earth? I readily admit defeat. I freely defer to your awesome majesty. I am not your equal, nor even close. You are the breaker of bones. You shatter the souls of the prideful. What right have I to tread your mighty shoulders? Look upon my bitter weeping with pity. Release me from this bondage. Suffer no further affliction upon my weakened husk! Alas, so did my cries echo across this vast canyon. And this Earth did hear my entreaty and did placate this lost man. I wiped the tears from my face, arose from my seat, and walked not ten paces before I saw it—a roof at first, and then a quaint stone hut, there waiting to take in the sick and the weary to give them rest. Upon entering I noticed my companions had already partaken of its salvation. After about an hour of napping, eating, and self-examination, I was sufficiently recuperated. With a new energy I proceeded with haste along the remainder of the day’s trail until we finally arrived at our communal campsite. We exchanged stories of glee and woe with our fellow adventurers. Then we slept.

Day Five

This was it. The last full day of the hike. It would cover more miles than any day heretofore, but once we reached camp, it would only be another four or five miles the next morning to reach our long-awaited destination. But something happened on the way to this goal, and it happened early on. A foul temptress would beset me with promises of instant relief and unvarnished joy. Freedom, she vowed, was only a mile or two down the trail. This black-hearted witch took the form of that most sacred of shrines: the ranger station. If only I could make it there, she would deliver me from this debilitating charade! Her chosen sentry, the ranger, would escort me from the premises with due haste, and I would finally taste again the freedom of a life worth living. Oh, I could hear her calling me closer. I am almost there, my sweet…

Breakdown Type: Intending to Leave the Trail Ahead of Schedule

Sure, we were close to 80% done with our trek. All it would take is a modicum of focus to see me through to the end. Why allow myself to be enticed by thoughts of a swift and preemptive exit? Ah, but the reasons are only too easy to recount! We had encountered an unrelenting barrage of mosquitoes throughout the week. We had sizzled in the harsh summer heat. We had been rained upon during the night. We had grown sick of crumbled granola and melted Snickers. And we were mystified by countless creeks that could only be crossed with perfect precision. In short, we were fed up. Or perhaps more critically, I was fed up. Any sense of accomplishment had long since been abandoned. Only a fool would undertake a quest like this, I thought, and only a fool would feel any sense of achievement in its completion. This was brutal torture that had to be stopped, and the earlier the better. When I saw the ranger station, I glided towards it on clouds of hope. A veritable Mecca, it seemed. Freedom regained at last… One problem though. No one was at home. And who knew when anyone ever would be? I stewed there for several minutes, appraising the environment: a wheelbarrow leaning against a tree, a clothes line with undergarments on display, a sign that warned against stealing any of the trinkets on the lot. Soon enough it became clear that this place was not to be my final rest. Dejectedly I set out for the last leg of our journey, looking back frequently on that sturdy log shanty, wishing beyond reason that I would spy her tenant returning so I could dash down the mountainside and into the welcome release she had promised me that morning.

The End

Were you a dream? A test?

The climb immediately following the ranger station was mean. Further and further, higher and higher we marched. But eventually, it leveled off into a quiet wooded area that was all too dreamlike. Along the way, I met people of all ages and all walks of life who were each drawn here for one purpose or another. There were couples on missions to conquer trails together, college students who were convinced that the sensation of pain was nothing more than a mental illusion, and a few old timers who had been here many times before and continued to challenge themselves anew. Everyone seemed at peace here and quite comfortable with their decision to be here. I knew I was not like them, but I surely admired them. These monstrous pillars that touch the sky are not where they discovered their limits as I had discovered mine. No, these were their solace. Their limits were likely of an entirely different stripe than my own—perhaps academic, perhaps social, perhaps financial. As for me, I was heartened by the realization that I had discovered my limits here among these peaks. It seemed to me the sort of profound epiphany one hopes to experience in such a place, even if the revelation is a bit paradoxical. “I am not meant to be here.” It was a liberating truth.

The rest of the journey was not so bad. Soon I was walking alongside mammoth lakes, their waters undisturbed but for an occasional fish leaping near the surface. The light shone brilliantly off the ripples and against the mountainside. Earlier our group had met up and decided to finish this unforgiving trail on this very day, forsaking our prior plan to camp one more night. We were all ready to be done with the whole affair. The last couple of miles seemed especially long, but the promise of finality bore us along. Once I climbed that last flight of stairs, I found myself in one of nature’s most wondrous gifts from man: a paved parking lot. My cohorts and I boarded a red Dodge Charger, and before long the four of us ended up at a place that felt a lot like heaven. The folks out west just call it The Pizza Factory.

The other imminent launch is that of AirTran Flight 121, departing from Atlanta and arriving in Los Angeles tomorrow. On board will be a group on a mission—a mission to conquer the “Classic Sierra Hike” at Kings Canyon. Yours truly will be joined by three others on this week-long trek, and much like the two prior editions of the Chuck Norris Memorial Hike, this one promises its share of bizarre photos and ridiculous anecdotes. You have been warned.

This new “activation model” is patently insane and just made my life 100 times more difficult. If someone were to create a fork of Firebug 1.3 that preserved domain whitelisting/blacklisting, I would pay $50 for it easily. johnjbarton [the resident firebug developer], since you seem oblivious to how the new version is problematic, let me spell out some common scenarios I have tried:

Previously I enabled firebug for localhost, since that’s where I do most of my testing and developing. Then I would browse from page to page (without the panel open) until the “script error” message came up on the status bar. Then I’d open the firebug panel and troubleshoot. I’d fix it then perhaps browse around a few more pages, with the panel still open. When I was happy I’d solved the problem, I minimized firebug (back in those halcyon days, I could click the “x” button or the little firebug icon to remove the panel—it didn’t matter). But firebug stayed active, so I would be alerted to script errors if they happened.

Fast forward to today. Seems firebug now remembers panel position PER PAGE, which is ludicrously stupid. So as I browse from one page to the next, the panel is randomly disappearing and reappearing. And of course I can no longer simply tell firebug to be active only for localhost. WOW, WHAT SOME GREAT NEW FEATURES, GUYS!

The new system is completely absurd, and I hope now you can begin to see why. When a tool as ubiquitous as firebug gets changed so drastically, the question is WHY? We all loved it before, so please stop butchering it. And again, I put out the call to some developer out there who would want to continue the awesomeness of firebug 1.3 and perhaps rename it. That person would be regarded as a hero at this point…

I received an immediate response that at least acknowledged the legitimacy of my point of view:

Work on Firebug 1.4 is complete. Your scenario description is a good one, I wish we had it back when we were working on this feature. I’d love for Firebug to be perfect for everyone, but in every change there will be some winners and losers I guess.

The activation model in 1.4 was designed to allow extensions to provide special activation solutions.  If anyone wants to create one for this use case we’d be happy to give advice. (Just to set expectations, I have no plans to do any more work on activation myself).

As you can see, it seems this train is already moving at full speed, and those of us who loved the way Firebug formerly behaved will unfortunately have to endure (for the time being) the headache it has become. We can only hope a proper “extension” is released that brings back the wholly intuitive domain-based activation scheme that worked perfectly before. Until then, a single tear shall roll perpetually down my cheek.

So close, yet so tragically far away

I recently endured one of the most cathartic, heart-wrenching, emotionally taxing experiences in my entire life. I am of course referring to the 1999 World Series, wherein my beloved Atlanta Braves delivered one of the great pathetic performances in sports history. Why do I allow them to tear at my very soul with their clumsy and uninspired playing style during their most critical match-up of the year? The answer, my vassals, requires a stroll down memory lane.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. More specifically, it was 1987. I had just survived a three-year vacation in Germany. I say “survived” because I somehow lived through a variety of life-threatening injuries, such as completing a 360-degree back flip off a playground swing and slicing my lip open on the concrete below. I also endured a series of high-speed bicycle wrecks, which involved my attempts at advanced trickery on my “freestyle” machine of greatness. I would love to speak more of my vaunted Huffy, but this story is about the Braves, so stop interrupting me!

Anyway, in 1987 my family settled in the culturally intriguing state of Louisiana and made a key purchase once we moved into our new home: Cable TV. This was quite a change from the channel selection overseas, which included a grand total of one channel—the Armed Forces Network, which I recall showed plenty of WKRP in Cincinnati reruns in addition to the Mutual of Omaha nature show. So as you can tell, I was more than elated with our all-new cable system. Among the many stations available was WTBS, which televised the professional baseball matches of the Atlanta Braves. At this time, I became absorbed in the various aspects of baseball culture: I played little league, I collected cards, I impersonated star players during heated wiffle-ball competition between my next-door neighbor and myself. Also, I purchased a jock strap. I say all of that to say this: I loved the Braves, specifically their power-hitting right fielder, Dale Murphy. I had my team, I had my hero. I was set. Except for the fact that the Braves were a horrendous team during the late 80′s. Yes, I was scoffed at by my peers, who were fiercely loyal to their respective teams, namely whatever team was in first place that year. I know you are shocked to find out that most people change their favorite team from year to year, but it’s true. So I was basically the lone Braves fan outside of Georgia until 1991, when they miraculously finished first and began an unprecedented streak of success lasting the entire decade.

I should mention that the Braves traded my hero, The Murph, to the Phillies the year before their run to the World Series. Thus I harbored some significant feelings of resentment that season, even though I was beyond gleeful when the Braves accomplished the impossible—they were in the World Series! It was with much anxiety and trepidation (Can someone tell me what that means?) that I intently watched each chapter of this riveting saga, and it would all come down to Game 7. Without drudging up any long-buried and painful memories, suffice it to say that the Minnesota Twinkies prevailed via a valiant and courageous effort that involved high levels of cheating. I was deflated, muttering under my breath, “If they hadn’t traded Murph…”

Throughout the decade the Braves continued to win abundantly, but when they reached the playoffs, the thing was a crapshoot. Their lone championship came in 1995, otherwise known as the greatest year in world history. Well, maybe not, but how glorious it was! My team, the team that used to be Dale Murphy and a bunch of would-be plumbers, the Braves had finally won it all. John Smoltz and Tom Glavine were my link back to the old days, but the rest of the players were all-new and all-talented. Guys like Dave Justice, Marquis Grissom, Greg Maddux, and Chipper Jones constituted the new-look Braves, and suddenly everyone was on the bandwagon. Like any other gracious and welcoming life-long fan, I wanted to bop each new fan on the head with my aluminum Easton and tell them to get away from my team. But I learned to put up with this type of mindless, leech-like fandom.

I would later learn to cherish this World Series victory all the more, because the remainder of the decade was filled with heart-breaking collapses during the most important games. The 1996 Series is still such an aberration that I now consider my memory of it to be a side effect of my wisdom tooth removal surgery.

The Braves were not even featured in the next two World Series. 1997, as we all know, was the year of The World Series That Absolutely No One Cared About Or Acknowledged. I believe NBC promoted it this way, which explains why it was the lowest rated championship since that obscure contest in 1616 between the Jamestowne Scurvy Survivors and the Atlantis Fame, thusly named because of their well-known city slogan, “Fame—we’re gonna live forever!” The victors in both the 1616 and 1997 World Series have long since been forgotten. Curiously enough, if you add together the individual numbers in these years, you get 40, which is also the name of a popular style of alcoholic beverage. Coincidence? You wish.

At any rate, the 1998 Series was equally pointless, featuring a match-up akin to a game of chess between the IBM Deep Blue and Bubbles the Chimp. I believe the New York Spankies may have been the first team to win a World Series game via the Mercy Rule.

The stage was set in 1999, then, for a titanic clash between Atlanta and New York which would decide the Team of the Decade. At least that is what Sportscenter told me, so I was geared up for the games. Well, consider my transmission officially stripped. The Atlanta Braves displayed all the talent of a box of toothpicks in this World Series. In fact, I am calling for a government probe into the possibility that the Spankies may have swapped the Braves’ bats with these toothpicks. Basically my team could not hit a ball, field a ball, or run the bases with anything resembling skill. The pitching was spectacularly mediocre, and the entire squad seemed as if they were stricken with Fred McGriff Syndrome. This is the syndrome whereby a player will put forth the absolute minimal level of effort towards playing baseball. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of McGriff, but generally speaking, any given team can only afford to have one such lackadaisical player on the roster at a time. Therefore the 1999 Braves doomed themselves from the start, while New York did everything right. They achieved key strikeouts, key home runs, key base running, key defensive plays, and the keys to the Atlanta clubhouse, allowing them to purloin key statistical data that we were hoping to exploit against them.

Being the gracious and sportsmanlike baseball fan that I am, I will admit that the Spankies swept my Braves in the World Series only because we were without three of our best players, namely Andres Gallarraga, Javy Lopez, and Kerry Lightenberg. So don’t think for one minute, New York, that you actually accomplished anything special. Let’s see how well your team plays without Rivera, Martinez, and Leyritz, you noony-heads.

Whew. Anyway, my opinion is that we could have avoided a lot of post-season disappointment by hiring Dale Murphy as the hitting coach immediately after his playing career ended. Have you ever heard of the Curse of the Bambino? Well, I’ll have you know that the Babe and the Murph both wore number 3 on their jerseys. That sounds pretty peculiar to me. Let’s not take after the Red Sox. Let’s nip this problem in the bud.

I also want to remind the Braves franchise that my wiffle-ball skills are second to none.

An application I’m developing at work runs critical code in beforeFilter() that checks if a user is logged in and uses the results to set the website title and which links appear in the main menu. So you could say that’s fairly important. But on my error pages, Cake would conveniently display no title or main menu whatsoever. Because no debugging messages were displayed, I thought the issue might have been a minor case of a different layout file being used for error pages. But after a thorough combing of Cake’s library code, I discovered the ugly truth within the cake/libs/error.php file: the CakeErrorController class, which is used by the accompanying ErrorHandler class, never calls the beforeFilter() function. This contrasts with the Dispatcher class in cake/dispatcher.php that is responsible for most normal pages—this code eventually runs beforeFilter() within the controller’s _invoke() function, but before that it also calls the controller’s constructClasses() function, which turned out to be a critical part of my solution to this now unwieldy problem.

After attempting several ways of making the error pages run my beforeFilter() code, I found that simply adding $this->beforeFilter(); as the last line of the CakeErrorController constructor seemed to work. The problem with doing this, however, is that I had to change a core file within Cake. As my fellow developers know, this is not an option, so I had to make it work from within my own code. But luckily I was on the right track: the constructor inherits from the AppController constructor, which I was free to modify. So within my application’s app_controller.php file, I added a constructor and copied the code from CakeErrorController, making sure to add my call to beforeFilter() at the end. Amazingly it seemed to work, so I then proceeded to see which lines I could safely comment out, until I was left with just a few lines of code. The constructClasses() function in particular seems to be Cake’s succinct way of loading the components used by the application. After testing several normal pages and error pages alike, I feel fairly confident that I have solved my initial problem. Here’s the code I added to app_controller.php:

function __construct() {
    parent::__construct();
    if ($this->name == 'CakeError') {
        $this->constructClasses();
        $this->beforeFilter();
    }
}

Since I was forced to put the code in the main AppController class, some side effects may exist: beforeFilter() is potentially called twice on standard pages and perhaps earlier than normal. From what I can tell, this doesn’t affect the application’s performance or behavior. So hopefully this solution will help other CakePHP developers who want their error pages to behave as expected. But surely I am not alone in hoping that future versions of CakePHP will make this workaround unnecessary.

UPDATE: I tweaked the code to include an explicit check for CakeErrorController before running the extra lines of code in the constructor. I found a fail case that had to do with adding new users via the Auth component—new passwords were being hashed twice. So this new snippet should successfully eliminate the possibility of code running twice needlessly.