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Bluespark Labs: Bluespark at MidCamp Chicago 2014
Bluespark is pleased to announce our participation at this year's Drupal MidCamp conference at the University Center in Chicago, IL on March 28-30, 2014. There's a lot to learn that weekend, so we're happy to keep everyone alert and focused and to show our support for the Drupal community by sponsoring coffee service for the event. So, make plans to attend now and while you're there grab a cup 'o joe (or several) on us and enjoy the sessions.
Speaking of sessions, the Bluespark team is giving two sessions this year. The first, on Saturday at 10:30 am in the Loop Room, is "CXual Healing, Content Creators are People Too!" given by Technical Director Adrian Rollett. In this session, he will show site builders and coders quick-win techniques that we have used to make our sites easier to use for an important, but often overlooked role: site content managers, creators, and curators. The next session, given later Saturday at 3:00 pm in the Arts Room, is "How Changing our Estimation Process Took our Project Endgame from WTF? to FTW!" presented by Project and Transition Manager Ashleigh Thevenet. Speaking to business people and project managers, Ashleigh will show you how we improve client expectation management through increased transparency via our estimation processes. Both sessions are going to be informative and instructive so be sure to add them to your schedule.
Looking forward to seeing you in Chicago!
Tags: AnnouncementsDrupalDrupal PlanetResources: Changing Estimation Process Presentation Slides
Mediacurrent: Techniques for Successfully Co-Theming with Others (Theme Team, Go!)
On larger projects it is likely that you be working with at least one other person on front-end tasks. This can be a great learning experience and be helpful to your developers too.
There are several aspects that can make a collaborative project a success. I have broken them down into development tools, techniques, and review processes.
Midwestern Mac, LLC: Announcing DrupalCamp STL.2014 - April 26 in St. Louis, MO
St. Louis is getting ready for its first-ever DrupalCamp! On April 26, 2014, DrupalCamp St. Louis will open up with a keynote by Brad Nowak, a Business Development Manager at Palantir. The Camp will have sessions covering a variety of topics, like Drupal 8 and how your business can benefit from Drupal's flexibility. It will be held at Washington University's West Campus in Clayton, MO, just a few blocks from a MetroLink station and only a few minutes away from Downtown St. Louis!
Online registration is open already, and for the next couple of weeks, earlybird registration is only $15! For that tiny fee you get:
InternetDevels: Git flow - repository operations model
This article deals with a model of work with Git branches called git-flow. It was introduced by Vincent Driessen in his article "A successful Git branching model" and is used in different variations. The general scheme of the model is as follows:
Read moreFlickr: Free Drupal 7 theme #drupal_10935
Free-Templates.lt posted a photo:
via Free-Templates.lt - Free Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla themes bit.ly/1fxAJGu FREE-TEMPLATES.LT
Four Kitchens: FastClick Drupal module removes 300ms tap delay
Howdy perfers! This week is just a quick note to let you know about a new release for the FastClick Drupal module which provides integration for the FastClick JS library by FTLabs. Drop it on your sites and feel the difference on touch phones!
300ms tap delay makes for slower browsingHave you ever noticed a delay between when you tap a link or other UI element and when it finally reacts? This is a solution to remove that delay! It is natively removed in newer versions of Chrome on Android, but for all browsers in iOS this library provides a very noticable improvement.
You can read about the history, watch a video that demonstrates the effect, and read the rationale for iOS's continued use of 300ms delay in this HTML5 Rocks article.
Drupal module provides integrationThe Drupal module is slim, but it makes for easy integration by downloading a copy of the library to sites/all/libraries/fastclick and adding the script into the footer area instead of up top in the <head>. The maintainer, Pere Orga, is very responsive to issues and open to discussion for improvements.
Code can be found at https://drupal.org/project/fastclick
Darren Mothersele: Dennis Dropin - BDD and Drupal
Last night I attended the Dennis Dropin event on Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and Drupal. This is a new event on the Drupal London scene hosted by Dennis Publishing.
I've been attending Drupal events in London since 2007, and there have been a wide variety of different types of events. There have been high points, such as Drupal Camp London 2013, and low points (we had quite a lot of Microsoft sponsored events, but one in particular springs to mind where every presentation was also either paid for by Microsoft or about Microsoft technology - I'm not complaining - I have no right to complain as I've eaten enough of their free pizza over the years!). From Drupal Camps, Drupalcon, code sprints, workshops, trainings, and just regular pub meetups, London has a really exciting and active Drupal-scene.
Do we need another event?
Well, if this first event in the series is anything to go by I'd say definitely, yes please! The event took place in the boardroom at Dennis Publishing, so it was limited in capacity, about 25 people in attendance and the room was nicely packed. Paul Lomax, the CTO, did say that they had plans for a bigger space so by July we could see this expand into a bigger event.
I can think of at least three reasons why this event was a success:
- It really felt like this was Dennis Publishing wanting to give something back to the Drupal community. The two presentations were perfectly matched. The first to motivate reasons for adopting BDD, and the second to give practical examples. There was enough technical detail to be useful, without being overwhelming.
- Dennis' approach to digital is exemplary, probably due to Paul's leadership. It comes across that the whole team have the right balance of formal process and pragmatism.
- It seemed like a lot of the Dennis team were in attendance and the experience level of attendees was high. This meant there were some interesting discussions around the presentations too.
The event had a natural split in two parts, which I'd never really considered before, but perhaps others planning events could take into account. Pairing a presentation of motivating business cases with a more technical presentation of practical examples and inner workings.
It was interesting to hear in the discussion alongside the presentations real world cases of how BDD had caught bugs that would have cost them ad revenue or resulted in financial losses if they had made it into production.
I asked about Continuous Deployment and if introducing testing and increased the frequency of deployment. Paul confirmed they had been able to do more regular deployments, but gave a good reason (one I hadn't thought of) for why Continuous Deployment is not viable in a Drupal environment. His argument was that when you do a deployment you have to do a cache clear, and when you do a cache clear you clear the form cache. This kicks out any content editors that might be working on the site so deployments have to be limited and controlled. This lead to some discussion of a growl-like notification system with Node.js to push notifications to content editors logged in to the site.
Another really interesting idea was the integration of visual diff into the Behat tests. This allows them to do a pixel-by-pixel comparison between the staging environment and production to flag up any major changes. A great extra precaution to pick up any bugs that may cause blocks to disappear or display incorrectly.
The next event in the series, Responsive Web design: How Dennis are skinning this cat is scheduled for April 16th. Already 17 people signed up to the Meetup group so I hope I get in!
Drupal core announcements: This Week-ish in Drupal Core: March 12, 2014
Two big news items this week for our intrepid testbots! First, RTBC core patches are now automatically retested every 24 hours to ensure they don't go stale and to avoid regressions and commit conflicts. Hooray!! Additionally, the 8.x testbots have been upgraded to PHP 5.4, which means Drupal 8 now officially requires PHP 5.4.2 or above to install. Woot! In addition to this allowing us to remove some legacy cruft regarding magic quotes and other things that are no longer relevant in PHP 5.4, there is also active discussion going on about how best to use 'traits', a new languge feature of PHP 5.4. Upgrade your dev environments accordingly!
Major headway was also made in removing the legacy router system, with the commit of Issue #2107533 by tim.plunkett, dawehner, pwolanin, Berdir: Remove {menu_router} -- a major milestone for the beta release, and anecdotally a big reduction in automated test times -- and Issue #2177041 by dawehner, Berdir, jibran: Remove all implementations of hook_menu. This thankfully resolves a rather confusing situation in alpha 9 where both hook_menu() and hook_menu_links_default() existed at the same time, duplicating each others' code.
Speaking of alphas, Drupal 8 alpha 10 is coming up on March 19! Here's the commit schedule around then: https://groups.drupal.org/node/412343
Drupal 8's migration path is making great headway in the sandbox, and with a two new maintainers and an initial patch to update the migrate API with the latest changes (note: this patch is both huge and needs reviews!) the hope is that the bulk of the Drupal 6 => Drupal 8 migration path will land soon!
And in BREAKING news, just as this was being posted, Issue #2148255 by jhodgdon: Make better D8 api.d.o landing page and put it in Core was committed, which now makes the Drupal 8 API landing page look like this:
Hot damn! Headings and stuff! Of course, now we need to actually write the docs behind those links. ;) If that sounds like a fun way to learn Drupal 8 to you, check out the child issues here: https://drupal.org/node/2148255
And finally, headed to DrupalCon Austin? Check out the Drupal 8 extended sprint schedule for DrupalCon Austin and book your travel plans accordingly!
Where's Drupal 8 at in terms of release?Overall, beta blockers continue on a downward trend, with a big dip over the past two weeks, although beta targets are increasing as various issues get de-scoped from holding up beta1. Missing change records remain relatively flat-lined. It'd be great to have those cleaned up once and for all so we can stop tracking them. :D
In terms of the overall Drupal 8 release, here's what our trajectory on all critical issues across the board looks like:
Last week, we fixed 4 critical issues and 12 major issues, and opened 6 criticals and 4 majors. That puts us overall at 120 release-blocking critical issues and 483 major issues.
2 beta-blocking issues were fixed last week. There are still 36 of 121 beta blockers that must be resolved and 13 change records that must be written before we can release a Drupal 8 beta.
Where can I help? Top criticals to hit this weekEach week, we check with core maintainers and contributors for the "extra critical" criticals that are blocking other work. These issues are often tough problems with a long history. If you're familiar with the problem space of one of these issues and have the time to dig in, help drive it forward by reviewing, improving, and testing its patch, and by making sure the issue's summary is up to date and any API changes are documented with a draft change record.
- [meta] CMI path to beta has several really thorny child issues that are the most likely to hold release of beta 1, so all hands are needed on deck to help move these issues forward. The most important issue at the moment is #2201437: [META] Config overrides and language. Help by reviewing the sub-issues and the overall proposed architecture.
The best of git log --since "2014-02-21" --pretty=oneline (197 commits in total):
In addition to the commits mentioned at the opening paragraphs, here are other big things folks have been working on:
- Issue #1996238 by sun, nod_, damiankloip, Wim Leers, longwave, alexpott, Xano, mdrummond, Mark Carver, Jeff Burnz, highrockmedia, joelpittet, et al: Replace hook_library_info() by *.libraries.yml file. — required reading if your module or theme uses any CSS or JS.
- Issue #1851234 by alexpott: Slow yaml parsing slows down tests which load/save many config files (e.g. views). resulted in some great upstream performance improvements for Symfony's YAML parser: https://github.com/symfony/symfony/pull/10312 and https://github.com/symfony/symfony/pull/10317
- Issue #2151459 by jessebeach, Wim Leers, plach, amateescu, Berdir: Enable node render caching. Also on the performance front, the entity render caching system that was introduced months back finally has been enabled on nodes by default. This caused a nice ~18% speed improvement on all content pages, though we still have some ways to go to get performance of Drupal 8 back to acceptable levels.
- Issue #2002134 by fago, yched, amateescu, effulgentsia: Move TypedData metadata introspection from data objects to definition objects. — an important DX fix for the Entity Field API.
- Issue #2114563 by joelpittet, martin107, Cottser: Remove TwigReference with the help of 'without' filter replacing 'show'/'hide' functions. — With an impressive diffstat, this important Twig patch removed a Drupalism and replaced with a Twigism, allowing future Twigisms to be used. ;)
- Lots of movement in general under the "@deprecated" tag, removing temporary backwards-compatibility cruft.
You can also always check the Change records for Drupal core for the full list of Drupal 8 API changes from Drupal 7.
Drupal 8 Around the InterwebsBlog posts about Drupal 8 and how much it's going to rock your face.
- Lee Rowlands and Kim Pepper from PreviousNext put up the slides and video to their Everything you wanted to know about Drupal 8 but were too afraid to ask talk from Drupal South. It gives a really great overview on some of the major API changes in Drupal 8 that will affect most module developers.
- Drupalize.me has put out a call to action to Start Contributing with (and to) the Drupal Ladder. Drupal Ladder is a set of lessons on how to contribute to Drupal, set in a logical sequence that each build off one another. If you want to contribute to Drupal 8, the Drupal Core Ladder is an easy place to start.
- Several Acquia developers wrote and recorded a video about their experience integrating CMI into their hosting platform, which resulted in releasing a number of helper modules to support various configuration management workflows.
- Interested in learning about Drupal 8's new APIs? Check out tutorials from InternetDevels on Field API custom formatters and widgets and Custom Process Plugins using the Migrate API, Code Drop on Image Effect Plugin for Image Styles, and Palantir's continued "D8FTW" series on Hacking Core without Killing Kittens, and Lullabot's REST in Drupal 8 podcast.
- Eric Duran's DrupalCores Drupal 8 contributor tracking site now has a new page listing the companies that contributors currently work for. While the data set is not without its problems, it will be useful to see if exposing a leaderboard like this will help encourage more companies to help make Drupal core development sustainable.
- March 24 - 30: Drupal Developer Days Szeged is coming up fast! In addition to many other sessions and sprints, you'll find Drupal 8 Module upgrade workshop as well as a sprint to get beta 1 out the door. Come join the festivities with some of the top Drupal 8 contributors!
- Mar. 28 - 30: If you'd like to collaborate with DevDays Szeged sprinters, but are looking for something in the western hemisphere, check out MidCamp. MidCamp is March 28-30, and there may also be a pre-sprint March 26-27. Contact ZenDoodles for more information.
- April 10 - 13: A bit further out, NYC Camp looks to also be a large Drupal event with a Drupal Core Summit and a variety of Drupal 8 sprints.
Do you follow Drupal Planet with devotion, or keep a close eye on the Drupal event calendar, or git pull origin 8.x every morning without fail before your coffee? We're looking for more contributors to help compile these posts. You could either take a few hours once every six weeks or so to put together a whole post, or help with one section more regularly. Contact xjm if you'd like to help communicate all the interesting happenings in Drupal 8!
AttachmentSize Screen Shot 2014-03-12 at 1.59.39 PM.png113.68 KB better_beta.png30.38 KB feb_outstanding.png25.21 KBgroups.drupal.org frontpage posts: It was fun GCI, Welcome back GSoC
Our awesome community recently became a bit more awesome. Drupal was accepted into Google's Summer of Code 2014! Student applications started March 10th and are open until March 21st. It's not too late to become a student, mentor, or submit a project idea. Not available to join the GSoC fun...maybe you can send an email to your alumni university mailing list?
Did you know Drupal recently participated in Google's Code-In contest for high school students aged 13-17 and they contributed over a hundred tasks? For example, did you see the Drupal 8 Theme Cheat Sheet @ https://drupal.org/node/2145023 (desktop background version @ http://goo.gl/zsQOf1) or the Drupal 8 Hello World module video @ http://youtu.be/N0IFTFQ9VTI ? Maybe you recently utilized DrupalLadder.org to find content updated for Drupal 8 by GCI students and watched the video on how to contribute back to the ladder @ http://drupalladder.org/content/get-involved ? Most importantly it is exciting to note that Drupal gained several Drupal 8 core contributors under the age of 18.
This is a special year as it is the 10th anniversary of Summer of Code and our community is excited to engage in the fun. In an initiative to spark participation, we contacted every single one of Drupal's alumni students along with the mentors of past GSoCs to contribute in the 2014 festivities. As a result Drupal organized almost fifty project ideas from mentors and companies around the world. We filtered the list into just under thirty compelling ideas and submitted a solid application. We're still welcoming project ideas, but we need dedicated mentors to help write applications with students and of course work with them all summer.
How to be a Drupal GSoC student in 10 Steps
- Register an account @ https://drupal.org
- Join Drupal's group for Summer of Code @ https://groups.drupal.org/google-summer-code
- Find a project on our ideas page @ https://groups.drupal.org/node/407793
- Add your name as an interested student to project idea
- Add your name as an interested student to project idea
- Contact mentors listed on project idea via drupal.org contact page
- If you don't hear back after 48 hours, try creating an issue in issue queue for project and contact org/mentor https://groups.drupal.org/node/411293
admins (Slurpee, Slashrsm, Varunity)
- Office hours are listed below if you still can't contact a mentor or admin
- If you don't hear back after 48 hours, try creating an issue in issue queue for project and contact org/mentor https://groups.drupal.org/node/411293
- Complete "Drupal Ladder for GSoC Students" @ http://drupalladder.org/ladders
- Completing additional ladders will help your application!
- Completing additional ladders will help your application!
- Utilize drupalmentoring.org to find issues to work on with mentors willing to help
- Test and reroll patches in issue queue
- Write a patch that is contributed into Drupal 8 (making you a "core contributor")
- Become a maintainer of the project you're planning to work on by contributing code/patches/tests/documentation
- Hangout in #drupal-google @Freenode helping other students
10 tips for writing student applications
- Treat this as a real job, would any software company actually pay you to work on this project all summer?
- Demonstrate your ability to contribute to Drupal and that you can immediately start producing code from day one of GSoC
- Create a complete project plan broken down by every week of GSoC
- Document and diagram the workflow of user experience
- Create wireframes/mockups of UI and UX (http://codecondo.com/free-wireframe-tools/)
- Research and contact initiatives looking to accomplish related tasks
- Plan out your "support contract", do you plan to stay in the Drupal community after GSoC (example, how long will you support/update your code for the community after GSoC?)
- Explain your workflow for project, time, and task management (a tool such a Basecamp or Trello?)
- Describe your methods, tools, and frequency of communication with mentor for collaboration in a virtual environment (g+ hangout twice per week?)
- Request mentors and helpers in #drupal-google to review application via Google Drive with comments enabled
10 tips for mentors to help students write applications
- List a project on our ideas page @ https://groups.drupal.org/node/407793
- Review the "Drupal Ladder for GSoC Students" to learn student prerequisites
- Update any of the Drupal Ladders to help students learn faster
- Respond to interested students that contact you via drupal.org contact page
- Please respond within 48 hours
- Please respond within 48 hours
- Test and review patches from students
- Facilitate contact with discussion between student and module maintainer of projects of interested student
- Create a project plan and timeline that student agrees on with specific deliverables, understanding you may need to fail student at midterm or final
- Review Google/Melange's guide on being a mentor (non-Drupal stuff) @ http://en.flossmanuals.net/gsocmentoring/
- Contact Drupal's org admins (Slurpee, Slashrsm, Varunity) if you have any questions
- Hangout in #drupal-google answering student questions
Drupal's GSoC Office Hours (help in real time!)
Mentors are available on IRC in #drupal-google @Freenode thrice each weekday for one hour from March 10th until March 21st. Join us in real time at scheduled times below to chat with mentors in real time to ask questions, request application reviews, or simply hangout.
- Asia/Australia 04:00 - 05:00 UTC (IST 09:30-10:30)
- Europe 13:00 - 14:00 UTC (CET 14:00-15:00)
- Americas 18:00 - 19:00 UTC (PDT 11:00-12:00)
Contributing to Drupal
Did you know many successful students started with zero Drupal experience prior to GSoC? If new to Drupal and willing to contribute, come to participate in core contribution mentoring. It helps anyone without any experience to get started with Drupal contribution development. Google wants to see students contributing to organizations prior to the starting of their GSoC project and this is a chance to demonstrate your skills. Office hours provide a chance for students that have problems with their patches or can't find issues to work on to seek guidance. Create an account at http://drupalmentoring.org before you participate in core mentoring. Drupal core contribution office hours are Tuesdays, 02:00 - 04:00 UTC AND Wednesdays, 16:00 - 18:00 UTC. If you need help outside of office hours, join #drupal-contribute to chat with the community members willing to assist 24/7.
Details about core mentoring office hours @
https://drupal.org/core-office-hours and http://drupalmentoring.org. More information about contributing to Drupal @ http://drupal.org/new-contributors and http://drupal.org/novice.
Final notes from Google to Students
We are pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications from students to participate in Google Summer of Code 2014. Please check out the FAQs [1], timeline [2], and student manual [3] if you are unfamiliar with the process. You can also read the Melange manual if you need help with Melange [4]. The deadline to apply is 21 March at 19:00 UTC [5]. Late proposals will not be accepted for any reason.
[1] - http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gso...
[2] - http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2014
[3] - http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCstudentguide/
[4] - http://en.flossmanuals.net/melange/students-students-application-phase/
[5] - http://goo.gl/1ZefN4
Drupal Association News: Guest Post: Why Olympus Gives Back to Drupal
Over the past few months, I've had conversations with Megan Sanicki and Joe Saylor at the Drupal Association. From them, I've learned that the Drupal Community is expansive, diverse, authentic, transparent, creative, ever-growing, and needs you.
Don't know who Megan and Joe are? Then keep reading, because this post is for you.
Appnovation Technologies: PACE Yourselves
Microserve: When to use $query->fetchAll() (hint: it's optional)
Something that has come up on one of our projects recently is when to use fetchAll() or equivalents like fetchAllAssoc().
When writing a db_query() or db_select() query, you don't always need to use $query->fetchAll() or $query->fetchAllAssoc() to retrieve the result set; it's optional.
Database queries in Drupal 7 are iterator objects, so you can treat them like an array and loop over the results with foreach(). If you're going to do any processing on the results, it'll be quicker and use much less memory this way.
So for example, this will still work, note the lack of fetchAll():
<?php// Build and run the query.
$results = db_select('node', 'n')
->fields('n', array('nid', 'title'))
->condition('status', 0, '!=')
$nodes = array()
// We can use a foreach loop on the $results object.
foreach ($results as $n) {
// Each $n is an object.
$nodes[$n->nid] = $n->title;
If you need the result as an array, you can use $results->fetchAssoc() to retrieve one item at a time:
<?php// Build and run the query.
$results = db_select('node', 'n')
->fields('n', array('nid', 'title'))
->condition('status', 0, '!=')
$nodes = array()
// We can use a foreach loop on the $results object.
while ($n = $results->fetchAssoc()) {
// Each $n is an object.
$nodes[$n['nid']] = $n['title'];
One common use-case for using fetchAll() is so you can use count($results) to find out how many items were returned by the query. To get around this, you can use a count query instead. So:
<?php// Create the query, but don't execute it yet.
$query = db_select('node', 'n')
->fields('n', array('nid', 'title'))
->condition('status', 0, '!=');
// This runs a COUNT(*) query to count the number of results.
$count = $query->countQuery()->execute()->fetchField();
// Now run the original query and return the result set.
$results = $query->execute();
More details can be found in the DatabaseStatementInterface API documentation, or in the PHP PDO manual.
Pronovix: My first iOS training at Drupalcamp London
I have been a developer at Pronovix for over 2 two years now. During this time I was either developing a .NET based web service or iOS applications, but what they all had in common was that they were communicating with a Drupal site. I was always on the dark side of Drupal until last week, when I attended my first international Drupal conference ever: Drupalcamp London…
Deeson Online: DrupalCamp London session: Concurrency in Drupal
On March 1, I attended DrupalCamp London as a speaker. It was my first time running a session, but my training topic, Concurrency in Drupal, turned out to be a popular choice!
What is Concurrency in Drupal?Concurrency in Drupal is the description and demonstration of making migrate faster. You can learn more about it in a previous blog of mine.
The sessionDuring my half-hour session, I covered the basics of:
- Why concurrency makes programs faster and;
- How to wrapper drush and migrate to make it execute in parallel.
The great thing about DrupalCamps are the discussions that take place - and there was an interesting debate after my session where the conference delegates described other approaches to solving the problem.
For example, a number of participants liked the 'brave' live demo which showed a migration first taking two minutes with one process, and dropping to around 20 seconds with eight processes.
Would I do it again?Actually, yes. I would.
All in all, it was a good first 'Drupal session' experience - so if you have discovered something of interest to share with the community, I'd recommend you give it a go!
Read moreDrupalCamp London session: Concurrency in DrupalBy John Ennew | 12th March 2014
Modules Unraveled: 099 The Core Mentoring Experience With Marc Drummond - Modules Unraveled Podcast
- For someone who's not familiar with it, what is it? Or how would you describe core mentoring?
- How long have you been taking part in core mentoring?
- Do you remember what your first experience was like? Was it scary?
- What are some of the way's you've helped in core mentoring?
- Cathy Theys
- After contributing once, what made him keep goin?
- Has he ever done something that didn't get feedback, reviews or moved forward in some way?
- How did he deal with that practically to get it moving, or mentally to not get him down.
- What would he say to people who were frustrated by trying to help?
- What are his goals?
- What improvements to d.o would make it easier for him in his daily (or weekly) contributing tasks?
- How much time per week does he estimate is on contributing?
- Is it interest driven, or a byproduct of projects at work or contracts?
- What ways does Marc contribute beyond writing patches?
- Is Marc happy with the amount of contributing he does? If not, what barriers does he face?
- Lots of people share that feeling: of wanting to do more, and see things fixed. Why? Is it that much fun? Addictive?
- Do you have anything you'd like to say to someone who's heard of core mentoring but not gotten involved?
Have you heard of/used NodeSquirrel?
Use "StartToGrow" it's a 12-month free upgrade from the Start plan to the Grow plan. So, using it means that the Grow plan will cost $5/month for the first year instead of $10. (10 GB storage on up to 5 sites)
Flickr: Free Drupal 7 theme #drupal_9225
Free-Templates.lt posted a photo:
via Free-Templates.lt - Free Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla themes bit.ly/1lU2xbw FREE-TEMPLATES.LT
Darren Mothersele: Death of the Drupal Themer
At Drupal Camp London 2013 James Panton presented a methodology for implementing designs in Drupal without resorting to custom theme development. At this years Drupal Camp I pulled together two BoF (Birds of a Feather) sessions to continue the conversation and discuss prototyping designs, atomic design, and challenges of incorporating design activities into development workflow.
In recent posts I've talked about prototyping and a bit about using Jekyll for prototyping. In many ways this discussion is a continuation of those ideas, but also much more general in it's scope, and more wide-reaching in it's potential.
Death of the Themer?I've become interested in this area after recently facing challenges bringing design activities into the development workflow of an agile project. But first, for some context, let me explain where this all began...
Last year, Jim presented a methodology for implementing designs in Drupal without having to do any custom theme development.
First, Drupal is stripped of all it's markup. Jim presented to a packed room at Drupal Camp London, and received a big whooping round of applause when he showed naked Drupal markup. Perhaps indicating the general level of frustration the developers/themers have from battling with Drupal markup. Also, there's a general preconception that Drupal suffers very badly from "Divitis", "Classitis" and "Span-mania". This demo showed that this need not be the case.
Next, markup is added back in bit by bit to match the markup in the flat HTML/CSS design. This means that the eventual markup produced by Drupal should exactly (or almost!) match what the designer originally intended. The rendered HTML is therefore cured of it's divitis (contains much less bloat), works with the CSS styles from the design with little or no tweaking, and can make use semantic HTML5 tags.
The tools used to reset Drupal default markup include: Semanic Views, Display Suite, Panels, and a fork of Semantic Panels that I can't seem to find a reference for. Fences can also be useful, although functionality to override field wrappers is also part of Display Suite.
One of the main benefits of this approach is that it allows designers and Front-end developers to work freely, using whatever tools they want, and without consideration for any of Drupal's (perceived) limitations. There have been lots of really cool developments in front-end, including CSS and HTML preprocessors, and the multitude of CSS and JS frameworks. This approach allows designers, front end developers, UXs, and IAs to take advantage of all of these tools when prototyping sites.
During the BoF sessions at this year's Drupal Camp London a few limitations and disadvantages were discussed. This methodology moves the implementation of design from development (writing code) to configuration. This can become quite repetitive as each individual bit of output has to be configured with appropriate resets and the correct wrappers to build up the markup.
Custom Plugins?In the BoF sessions I presented a methodology that I had been playing with, inspired by Death of a Themer, whereby designs are implemented in a similar way, without the need for a custom theme. Drupal markup is taken to a "full reset" state, and then just the required markup is introduced through various plugins.
This differs from the original methodology as it does not use configuration to add wrappers back in to fields, view modes, views, panels, etc. Instead, the markup is taken from the prototype (flat HTML and CSS) and copied into "plugins". Various plugins are used:
- Display Suite plugins to add markup to content/entities in various view modes.
- Views styles to output list markup
- Panel's style plugins to add "box" markup, and,
- Panel's layout plugins to add layout markup.
The result is the same markup as the flat prototype, and the same result as with the original Death of a Themer approach, but with much less configuration required.
The real big win for this approach, is that the components of the design are reusable across various content types and sections of the site without having to repeatedly configure each occurrence.
Building out these plugins for every bit of a design might seem like over-kill and more work than is really necessary, but it is a much more scalable way of theming as you end up with design components that can be reused across the site.
This version of "Death of a Themer" means the Themer is replaced with a developer, rather than a site-builder, as the emphasis moves away from configuration towards writing custom plugins in code. However, I think a lot of the grunt work can be automated, as I'll explain in a bit.
Atomic DesignI saw parallels between this approach (of reusable theme components) and the emerging trend of atomic design. In fact, I think atomic design is more than just a current trend but a real leap forward in design methodology.
We're not designing pages, we're designing systems of components.
-- Stephen Hay
While producing an atomic design the designer is effectively breaking down the design into components. This is exactly what a good themer does when they take a design and decide how to implement it as a Drupal theme.
From Design to ThemeWhen a designer hands over a design (let's assume static HTML and CSS) the developer (or themer, or site-builder) has to make several decisions about how this will be implemented.
- Assumptions are made and things get "lost in translation"
- Compromises are made due to limitations in implementation (i.e. limitations of the CMS, content model, etc)
- Markup is augmented to add in extra properties like RDFa, etc
There shouldn't really be a "handover" of design. The style guide / atomic design or static mockup that is the result of prototyping should evolve as the product evolves.
If something comes up that needs design we go back to the static HTML/CSS to implement it. If using atomic design, this means adding any required "atoms", "molecules", etc.
If changes have been made as a design is implemented these need to be flowed back upstream to the style guide so that further development of the design can happen, and then (some of) the conversion process is repeated to bring across new design elements into the theme/templates.
This process can be hard to manage and bring duplication of effort into the process.
If we can automate some of the steps involved in going from static HTML and CSS to Drupal theme then we can move towards a more agile, and robust design-dev workflow.
Proof of conceptAutomatically generating a Drupal theme from either a style guide, atomic design, pattern library, static mockup, prototype (or whatever you want to call it!) might sound like a crazy idea, but I've got a working proof of concept.
I decided to start from just pure HTML/CSS. After experimenting with static site generators (HTML preprocessors), and CSS preprocessors like SASS, I decided that it was best to take pure HTML/CSS as the starting point. This works because every design eventually ends up as HTML/CSS. It's the language of the web, so it's unavoidable. It means designers can use any combination of tools they like, as long as they produce HTML/CSS as the end result.
As an example, I'm using Jekyll to compile the static mockup, and Compass to compile the CSS, but this could be any combination of tools, or just hand-crafted HTML and CSS.
The next stage is to add annotations into the source of the HTML to identify and describe each of the design "components".
I don't have any terminology yet. Drupal has it's own jargon, as does SMACSS, Atomic Design, OOCSS, KSS, etc. I'm not sure what to call things. I'm tending towards a combination of Atomic Design and Drupal terminology, but this will change.
AnnotationsThere has been some discussion in the design community about Pattern Library Annotations documentation, etc.
I want to use annotations in designs so that they can be automatically parsed and converted.
In this proof of concept, annotations in the HTML source code map directly to the appropriate Drupal templates and plugins.
I'm using the x- prefix for my custom attributes. This mechanism is intended for use in vendor prefixing for vendor specific attributes. It distinguishes them nicely from data- custom attributes, results in valid HTML5, and therefore I think it's an acceptable abuse of the feature.
For example, annotate a certain part of the source code as being responsible for layout and it will be automatically compiled into a Panels Layout Plugin:
<div x-drupal-type="layout" x-drupal-name="front_page" x-drupal-label="Front page" x-drupal-no-wrap> <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <div class="span8" x-drupal-region x-drupal-name="content"> ... </div> <div class="span4" x-drupal-region x-drupal-name="sidebar"> ... </div> </div> </div> </div>Another example, this is content shown in a particular preview style called "Box". It maps to a Drupal view mode:
<div class="box" x-drupal-type="display" x-drupal-name="box_teaser" x-drupal-label="Box teaser"> <img src="" width="100" height="100" alt="" x-drupal-region x-drupal-name="image" x-drupal-no-wrap> <h6 x-drupal-region x-drupal-name="title">Easy to use</h6> <p x-drupal-region x-drupal-name="summary" x-drupal-no-wrap> To get started, you select the desired sample and base the entire website on it. It's that simple! </p> </div>Many other attributes are identified and the system currently supports panels layouts, panels styles, views styles, display suite (view mode templates), menus (kinda), and image styles.
During the compilation process the various components are identified and the appropriate plugins are created. Any required static files, such as CSS and JS are copied across. Any content in the various regions is removed from the markup, and the generated plugins therefore only contain the markup to wrap the various parts of Drupal output.
You can see the (very!) rough proof-of-concept here: https://github.com/darrenmothersele/hyde
You really shouldn't try using this yet, but if you insist, install the modules on a Drupal site with Display Suite, Panels, etc, then enable both modules, and configure to point at the folder with your HTML/CSS design. Then click the "Sync" button to parse your design files and create and register the appropriate plugins based on the design.
Warning: You are probably better off waiting for the next version or some actual documentation!
Rather see it in action?If you would rather see it in action, then come along to the next Drupal Show and Tell where I'll be demonstrating the early version of the theme generator and asking for feedback!
Drupal Association News: Drupal.org team week notes #22
As usual, a lot of big and small deployments happened on Drupal.org during the past 2 weeks. RTBC patches are now being automatically re-tested (thanks jthorson!). Module index page is back, as well as full pager on issue listings, except for text search pages (thanks drumm!).
There is a new block available in your Dashboard on Drupal.org - "Your security issues". The block will display the issues you have access to on security.drupal.org. Thanks mlhess and drumm!
Personal blog tags: week notesDrupal Association News: Addressing the Growing Demand for Drupal Talent
Recently, the number of Drupal websites on the web surpassed a million and that number will no doubt continue to grow. While there is plenty of interest from businesses, nonprofits, and government entities in implementing Drupal websites, a big challenge remains: the relative scarcity of talent.


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Know Your Lore: Wrathion's duty
Wrathion is one of those unique and entertaining characters who appeared out of nowhere and managed a staggering degree of complexity in just a few short years in game. Although he was not introduced by name until the tail end of Cataclysm, his origins began when the expansion revamped level 1-60 content and consequentially introduced a bizarre and touching origin story in the Badlands. It wasn't until the legendary quest chain for rogues that we got a real look at Wrathion, newly hatched and remarkably intelligent for his age.
Once his tasks for rogues were over at the end of the expansion, Wrathion departed -- and then promptly showed up again in Mists of Pandaria, in a far more extensive role that stretched the length of the expansion, and beyond. But one thing has always been incredibly unclear -- exactly what Wrathion is up to, and why he is doing what he's doing. He's given us a reasonable enough answer, but can we really trust the last remaining member of a dragonflight known for lies, deceit, and evil, even if he is supposedly uncorrupted?
Please note: The following column contains spoilers for War Crimes. If you're mid-book, or have yet to read it, you might want to come back when you're finished with it.
Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore, Warlords of Draenor

subset: commoncrawl


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Absolute Editions Archives - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources
'Absolute Batman Incorporated' to feature new Chris Burnham art
Chris Burnham confirms he has redrawn the fill-in pages from the end of his run on Batman Incorporated for DC Comics' upcoming Absolute edition of the Grant Morrison series.
"They're all done, too!" he emphasized this morning on Twitter. "So I'm not redrawing them, I have redrawn them!"
Batman fan site Gotham Spoilers, which posed the question to Burnham, notes the fill-in art was "unfortunate, because this was one of those stories, that you really just couldn't slap any artist on, as is the case with most Morrison penned stories."
Burnham mentioned the undertaking in July, following the conclusion of Batman Incorporated, telling Batman-News, "I'm gonna redraw all of the fill-in pages for the last five issues! You know how the little fill-in pages kinda snuck in? So I'm pretty sure I"m gonna redraw those pages for the big deluxe hardcover."
That deluxe hardcover, which clocks in at 608 pages, collects Batman Incorporated Vol. 1 #1-8, Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes, Batman Incorporated Vol. 2 #1-13 and Batman Incorporated Special #1. It arrives Dec. 2.
Frank Quitely covers Absolute All Star Superman: Let there be light
Via the Source, here's Frank Quitely's cover to the Absolute Edition of All Star Superman, which is due in October.


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33.3% of Users Would Recommend this Digital Camera
66.7% of Users Would Not Recommend this Digital Camera
PROS: It was ok to use, I liked the feature that you can take the movie aspect and make it into a still photo...
CONS: Owned one week, didn't take very good photos, most were blurry, couldn't get the camera battery to charge, despite the USB plug and separtely paid for outlet plug...Kodak needs me to send it back...Kind of bummed because my nice little Nikon bit the dust after less than 1 year of use...Owned Kodak before, but cost more to replace parts than it did to buy new...same with Nikon, luckily I bought the two year warranty for this camera even though, I have only owned this for about a week...
PROS: I shoot lots of very small bugs and insects. The image quality when cropped and zoomed is great! The high ISO pics at night are a little grainy but, that is not what I bought it for. Time from hitting the on button to snapping a pic is pretty darn fast also.
CONS: It is a little difficult to get a good clear shot when using digital zoom. Other than that it is a great P&S camera.
PROS: The lack of picture quality overshadows all of it's nice features.
CONS: The images are very grainy with lines appearing from left to right throughout, and especially more prominent when taken with less lighting situations.
Rate the Kodak EasyShare V1233
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text:
South Korea's beef protests: Lee's woes deepen
The cabinet offered to resign June 10 amid weeks of protest against a US beef trade deal.
Lee Jae-Won
Seoul, South Korea
The government of President Lee Myung Bak was plunged into crisis Tuesday, 3 1/2 months after he took office in a landslide win.
His entire cabinet offered to resign in the morning, and about 200,000 protesters staged a candlelight demonstration in the evening, holding banners, waving signs, and chanting slogans targeting the agreement his government reached in April to resume importing American beef.
Protesters accuse Mr. Lee of risking the health of Koreans in his eagerness to please the United States and push through a free trade agreement.
But the size and scope of the protest dramatizes problems that go far beyond that of simply beef.
The protests reflect discontent with "a lot of national issues," including high unemployment, education, and the economy, says Moon Kook Hyun, who campaigned for president on his own minority party and then was elected to the National Assembly. "The people are so disappointed. They have no other way to express themselves."
"Thousands of students are here to protest his educational policy," says a teacher, Kim Haeng Suu, accompanying other teachers and students from a nearby school. "The students say they have no voice in the system, and he only cares about education for the rich people."
South Korea excluded US beef five years ago after the discovery of mad cow disease in a single American cow, and US officials fervently deny any chance of the disease spreading to people. A Korean negotiating team has arrived in Washington, calling on the US to go along with a "voluntary" arrangement that will bar the export of US beef from cows more than 30 months old.
None of the protesters, however, appears willing to trust such a revision of the beef deal. Instead they castigate Lee and his ministers and advisers for the arrogance they perceive in his support of the chaebol, or conglomerates, which dominate the Korean economy and to appointments of rich and sell-connected favorites to high positions.


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Marcello Pelillo, Joachim M Buhmann, Tiberio Caetano, Bernhard Schölkopf, Larry Wasserman
Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia; ETH Zurich; NICTA Canberra; MPI Tübingen; CMU
Workshop: Philosophy and Machine Learning
7:30am – 8:00pm Saturday, December 17, 2011
Melia Sierra Nevada: Hotel Bar
The fields of machine learning and pattern recognition can arguably be considered as a modern-day incarnation of an endeavor which has challenged mankind since antiquity. In fact, fundamental questions pertaining to categorization, abstraction, generalization, induction, etc., have been on the agenda of mainstream philosophy, under different names and guises, since its inception. With the advent of modern digital computers and the availablity of enormous amount of raw data, these questions have now taken a computational flavor: instead of asking, say, "What is a dog?", we have started asking "How can one recognize a dog?" or, more technically, "What is an algorithm to recognize a dog?". Indeed, it has even been maintained that for a philosophical theory of knowledge to be respectable, it has to be described in computational terms (Thagard, 1988).
As it often happens with scientific research, in the early days of machine learning and pattern recognition there used to be a genuine interest around philosophical and conceptual issues (see, e.g., Minsky, 1961; Sutherland, 1968; Watanabe, 1969; Bongard, 1970; Nelson, 1976; Good, 1983), but over time the interest shifted almost entirely to technical and algorithmic aspects, and became driven mainly by practical applications. With this reality in mind, it is instructive to remark that although the dismissal of philosophical inquiry at times of intense incremental scientific progress is understandable to allow time for the immediate needs of problem-solving, it is also sometimes responsible for preventing or delaying the emergence of true scientific progress (Kuhn, 1962).
There are several points of contact between philosophy, machine learning, and pattern recognition worth exploiting. To begin, as pointed out by Duda, Hart, and Stork (2000), the very foundations of pattern recognition can be traced back to early Greek philosophers who distinguished between an "essential property" from an "accidental property" of an object, so that the whole field of pattern recognition can naturally be cast as the problem of finding such essential properties of a category. As a matter of fact, during the past centuries several varieties of "essentialism" have been put forward, and it is not clear which one, if any, is being used by present-day pattern recognition research (see Gelman, 2003, for a developmental psychology perspective). Interestingly, in modern times, the very essentialist assumption has been vigorously challenged (see, e.g., James, 1890/1983; Wittgenstein, 1953; Rorty, 1979), giving rise to a relativistic position which denies the existence of essences, thereby suggesting a relational view which is reminiscent of modern link-oriented approaches to social network analysis (Kleinberg, 1998; Easley and Kleinberg, 2010) as well to kernel- and purely similarity-based approaches to pattern analysis and recognition (see, e.g., Schölkopf and Smola, 2001; Shawe-Taylor and Cristianini, 2004; http://simbad-fp7.eu).
Besides the representation problem alluded to above, another all-important philosophical issue related to the machine learning endeavor concerns the very process of inference, and hence its connections to the philosophy of science. In fact, there are such striking analogies between the two disciplines that it has even been maintained that machine learning should be regarded as "experimental philosophy of science" (Korb, 2004). This is motivated by the observation that at the very heart of both fields there lies the notion of an inductive strategy (by way of algorithms or as they appear in scientific practice), and that the hypothesis choice in science is akin to model selection in machine learning (but see, Williamson, 2009, for a more elaborate position). The connecton with the philosophy of science touches upon such fundamental topics as the foundations of probability (Savage, 1972), Bayesianism and causality (Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines, 2001; Bovens and Hartmann, 2004; Pearl, 2009; Koller and Friedman, 2009), inductionism vs. falsificationism (Popper, 1959; Lakatos, 1970), etc., each of which is on the agenda of present-day machine learning research.
Other fundamental topics which lie at the intersection of philosophy, machine learning and pattern recognition (and cognitive science as well) include: the nature of similarity and categorization (e.g., Quine, 1969; Goodman, 1972; Tversky, 1977; Lakoff, 1987; Eco, 2000; Hahn and Ramscar, 2001), (causal) decision theory (Lewis, 1981; Skyrms, 1980; Joyce, 1999), game theory (Nozick, 1994; Fudenberg and Levine, 1998; Shafer and Vovk, 2001; Cesa-Bianchi and Lugosi, 2006; Shoham and Leyton-Brown, 2009; Skyrms, 2010), and the nature of information (Watanabe, 1969; Hintikka and Suppes, 1970; Adams, 2003; Skyrms, 2010; Floridi, 2011).
In recent years there has been an increasing interest around the foundational and/or philosophical problems of machine learning and pattern recognition, from both the computer scientist's and the philosopher's camps. We mention, for example, Bob Williamson's project of "reconceiving machine learning" (http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~williams/rml.html), the NIPS'09 workshop on "Clustering: Science or art?" (http://stanford.edu/~rezab/nips2009workshop/) and the associated manifesto (von Luxburg, Williamson, and Guyon, 2011), the recent MIT Press book by Gilbert Harman (a philosopher) and S. Kulkarni (an engineer) on reliable inductive reasoning (Harman and Kulkarni, 2007), the ECML'2001 workshop on "Machine learning as experimental philosophy of science" (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~korb/posml.html) with the associated special issue of Minds and Machines (vol. 14, no. 4, 2004), the work of P. Thagard on "computational philosophy of science" (Thagard, 1988, 1990), Corfield et al.'s study on the connection between the Popper and the VC-dimension (Corfield, Schölkopf, and Vapnik, 2009), von Luxburg and Schölkopf 's contribution in the Handbook of the History of Logic (von Luxburg and Schölkopf, 2011), Halpern and Pearl's philosophical study on "causes and explanations" (Halpern and Pearl, 2005), and O. Bousquet's blog on "machine learning thoughts" (http://ml.typepad.com/machine_learning_thoughts/), to name a few examples.
This suggests that the time is ripe to attempt establishing a long-term dialogue between the philosophy and the machine learning communities with a view to foster cross-fertilization of ideas. In particular, we do feel the present moment is appropriate for reflection, reassessment and eventually some synthesis, with the aim of providing the machine learning field a self-portrait of where it currently stands and where it is going as a whole, and hopefully suggesting new directions. The aim of this workshop is precisely to consolidate research efforts in this area, and to provide an informal discussion forum for researchers and practitioners interested in this important yet diverse subject.
Accordingly, topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
- connections to epistemology and philosophy of science (inductionism, falsificationism, etc)
- essentialism vs anti-essentialism (e.g., feature-based vs similarity/relational approaches)
- foundations of probability and causality (Bayesianism, etc.)
- abstraction and generalization
- connections to decision and game theory
- similarity and categorization
- the nature of information
Adams, F. (2003). The informational turn in philosophy. Minds and Machines 13(4):471–501.
Bongard, M. M. (1970). Pattern Recognition. Spartan Books, New York (original published in Russian in 1967).
Bovens, L., and Hartmann, S. (2004). Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Cesa-Bianchi, N., and Lugosi, G. (2006). Prediction, Learning, and Games. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Corfield, D., Schölkopf, B., and Vapnik, V. (2009). Falsificationism and statistical learning theory: Comparing the Popper and the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimensions. J. Gen. Phil. Sci. 40:51-58.
Duda, R. O., Hart, P. E., and Stork, D. G. (2000). Pattern Classification. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Easley, D., and Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Eco, U. (2000). Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition. Harvest Books.
Floridi, L. (2011). The Philosophy of Information. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Fudenberg, D., and Levine, D. K. (1998). The Theory of Learning in Games. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Gelman, S. A. (2003). The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought. Oxford University Press, New York.
Good, I. J. (1983). The philosophy of exploratory data analysis. Phil. Sci. 50(2):283-295.
Goodman, N. (1972). Seven strictures on similarity. In: N. Goodman (Ed.), Problems and Projects. Bobs-Merrill, Indianapolis.
Hahn, U., and Ramscar, M. (Eds.) (2001). Similarity and Categorization. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Halpern, J., and Pearl, J. (2005). Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach. British J. Phil. Sci. 56:843-911.
Harman, G., and Kulkarni, S. (2007). Reliable Reasoning: Induction and Statistical Learning Theory. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hintikka, J., and Suppes, P. (Eds.) (1970). Information and Inference. Springer, Berlin.
James, W. (1983). The Principles of Psychology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (Originally published in 1890).
Joyce, J. (1999). The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
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Schölkopf, B., and Smola, A. (2001). Learning with Kernels: Support Vector Machines, Regularization, Optimization, and Beyond. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
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Johnson just astonishing
PUBLISHED: 22 Feb 2014 05:06:49 | UPDATED: 22 Feb 2014 05:06:49PUBLISHED: 22 Feb 2014 PRINT EDITION: 22 Feb 2014Mitchell Johnson bowling during day four of the First Test against South Africa this month. Photo: Getty
Andrew Clark
Australian fast bowler Mitchell Johnson has turned cricket on its head. Johnson gave English cricket a collective nervous breakdown during the five test whitwewash in Australia over December and January. Then last week he blew away South Africa – rated the number one test team by the International Cricket Council (ICC) – in the first test of a three-test series at Centurion Park in South Africa.
He's now acknowledged as one of the all time greats by two past masters of the craft – Australia's Glenn McGrath and the West Indies' Michael Holding.
He is fast, venomous and menacing. He has a controlled run-up, his body well balanced as he accelerates, then takes the long stride approaching the pitch, arcs his shoulders and bends his back before unleashing 150km/h-plus bazookas. As a left-armer he can swing the ball away from, or into, the right hand batsman while bowling a sharp angle from over the wicket, or he can employ subtle, but deadly, variation when delivering from around the wicket.
Johnson's longer approach, the result of some intense one-on-one coaching from Australian fast bowling great Dennis Lillee, has made his delivery more fluent, accurate and deadly. It is partly the result of a more erect delivery stance, contrasting with his earlier, erratic, sling-shot style.
The results have been devastating. According to Kevin Pietersen, the now discarded South African-born batsman who was generally acknowledged to have the most talent in the English batting line-up, "there is a huge difference facing someone at 150km/h compared with 140km/h. When you are facing someone as quick as Mitchell your instinct occasionally makes you do things you shouldn't".
West Indies former express bowler Michael Holding, who terrorised batsmen in the 1970s, agrees: "That sort of pace is distracting. You can induce batsmen into playing strokes they won't normally play."
Panic in the England camp
Former English captain Alec Stewart says Johnson has been "sensational" and "has simply blown away England. The pace of Johnson created panic in the England camp". To generate this panic Johnson combines talent, practice, accuracy, delight in seeing off English critics and a remarkable fitness strategy that has added yoga to the usual weights-and-aerobics regime to give his body a core strength and fluency.
At various points the Johnson journey has been troubled. His renaissance late last year at the age of 32 – a time when many genuine quicks are losing their edge – is a metaphor for the astonishing recovery of Australian cricket. When the 17-year-old neophyte attended a cricket clinic in Brisbane in the late 1990s, Australian fast-bowling great Dennis Lillee called him a "once-in-nine-lives prospect". His recent record is testimony to Lillee's prescience.
Bowling against England he notched up a stunning 37 wickets over five tests at just under 14 runs a wicket. He followed this with a 12-wicket haul against South Africa in the first Test, and he now has 50 Test wickets for the season at an average of 13 runs a wicket.
These are the sorts of figures that raise Johnson into the hallowed company of speedsters like England's Harold Larwood and Frank Tyson, the West Indies' Michael Holding and Wes Hall, and Australia's Dennis Lillee, Keith Miller and the "demon", F R Spofforth, who terrorised English batsmen for a decade from 1879, and was the first fast bowler to take 50 Test wickets and secure a Test hat-trick.
But there've been times, in the 15 years between Lillee's prediction and the recent four months of bowling mayhem, that a Mitchell Johnson renaissance seemed as unlikely as the Barmy Army shedding its English bombast.
For years there were two Mitchell Johnsons. One was fast and menacing, the other was all over the place. He hit an all-time low in the 2009 Ashes series in the UK. His bowling was erratic, he lacked penetration and suffered a very public crisis of confidence.
Scenting blood, the Barmy Army skewered him with:
He bowls to the left, He bowls to the right,
That Mitchell Johnson,
His bowling is shite.
Just before the recent Ashes series, John Etheridge, cricket writer on Rupert Murdoch's UK tabloid, The Sun, opined, with a remarkable lack of foresight, that "there's no way the Aussies can turn it around". Australia's bowling attack was "vulnerable", and Mitchell Johnson needed a "sat-nav".
revenge best served on a cold plate
If revenge is best served on a cold plate, Johnson delivered it with white-hot, accurate, menace. BBC sports correspondent Tom Fordyce said the English team collapsed "like an over-extended beer snake" ending "a dizzy day in the gutter".
Johnson's success signalled a return to the authentic Australian cricket culture, albeit one honed by the gizmos of modern sport – specialist coaches, video reruns, and a brilliant fitness and recovery staff.
The national recovery roll-call is extensive. After the managerial-led fiasco of appointing a South African, Mickey Arthur, as coach, South Australian Darren Lehmann was appointed as his replacement.
Lehmann radiated a sunny confidence and preferred gut instinct over the cold logic of statistics. He gave purpose and ruthlessness back to his team. Along with Dennis Lillee, Lehmann helped sustain and nourish Johnson into the greatness that was, as Lillee knew, always within him.
There has been Michael Clarke's aggressive captaincy marked by flair – an approach encouraged by Shane Warne and based on the "answer back" tactics developed a generation ago by former Australian captain Ian Chappell – and also prominent in the honour roll has been wicket-keeper Brad Haddin's performance with the bat, Chris Rogers's turn as a late blooming opening batsman, and the wily skills of fellow bowlers Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle. But Johnson stands out. As Michael Holding has said, Mitchell has added a "new dimension" to the game.
The Australian Financial Review


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Task Force ODIN is an Army Aviation effort to observe, detect, identify and neutralize enemy forces, including those that may be placing improvised explosive devices. The task force formed during the Army's days in Iraq but has since been moved to Afghanistan.
"Today we carry on a 376-year-old tradition that began ages ago," said Brig. Gen. Paul G. Smith, Land Component Commander, Massachusetts National Guard, as he addressed the deploying Soldiers. "The mission you are about to embark on is one of critical importance to our forces. Your over-flight intelligence will undoubtedly save lives. Nothing could be noble in the call of duty than to save the lives of our colleagues and brothers in arms."
"The Soldiers of Det. 12 are ready for this mission," said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Joseph LeBlanc, commander, OSACOM Det. 12, as he addressed the well wishers, which included Smith, Brig. Gen. Gary W. Keefe, Air Component Command Commander, Massachusetts National Guard; and State Rep. Randy Hunt, Fifth Barnstable District of Massachusetts.
The deploying commander took time to address the families of the departing Soldiers and assure them that their Soldiers will be taken care of. "The hardest part of any deployment is not so much what we have to do, it's what our families have to deal with while we're away. We look forward to a successful completion of our mission and a safe return home to Massachusetts."
"Please understand that you are part of our Massachusetts National Guard family," Smith said as he addressed the families of the departing Soldiers. "We are here to support you."
"We're tremendously proud of you for carrying on a 376 year old Minuteman tradition," said Smith to the deploying aviators. "I wish you good luck, God speed, and we'll see you here again soon."


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Wednesday, January 26, 2011
New Releases Jan. 23-31 Part 2 (& Another Reader's Choice)
30 comments:
The Fallen Blade is a nice reading for those who likes Vampire and not afraid of blood/graphic ^^
Because I've read The Fallen Blade, I will pick Blessed. The cover is interesting.
I'm a GFC follower, I also follow you on twitter (@LynossaDBL) and I tweeted in here: http://twitter.com/#!/LynossaDBL/status/30295438347210753
Lynossa(at)yahoo(dot)comOkay, Dippy me didn't leave all the information for the giveaway. Actually, I didn't even realize there was a giveaway. :) I was so taken with the books.
+1 Blog Follow
+1 Follow on Twitter (@mellhay)
+1 I tweeted: http://twitter.com/MelLHay/status/30297803959832576
MyWorldinwordsandpages {at} gmail {dot} com
Now which book... Hard choice. The Fallen Blade or The Griffin's Flight. Although Griffin's Flight is the second book, it will force me to go get the first book. :) So Griffin's Flight sounds like the choice, I think. ;D
Thank you!What doesn't sound good! :-)I would have to say Archangel's Consort, The Fallen, The Sentinel Mage and Throat are all now on my wishlist.
1 comment
+1 follower
+1 follow on twitter @urbangirlreader
+1 tweeted - http://twitter.com/#!/urbangirlreader/status/30421857383485440
urbangirlreader(at)gmail(dot)comWow, thanks for the giveaway, again =) If I won, I would pick Archangel's Consort by Nalini Singh. I looked for the author's site and read the full review - I loved it =) So thanks again =)
+1 follow
+1 twitter follow: @mikkimano
+1 tweeted: http://twitter.com/#!/mikkimano/status/30671990213840896
email@example.com for another awesome giveaway! Some great books being released this week. I recently discovered Throat and am quite interested in reading it. Didn't realise it was coming out so soon though!
+1 Blog follower
+1 Twitter follower @peacelovebooksx
+1 Tweeted - http://twitter.com/#!/peacelovebooksx/status/31191635345809408


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Lofty North American ornamental and timber tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) of the magnolia family, not related to true poplars. It occurs in mixed hardwood stands in eastern North America. It is taller than all other eastern broad-leaved trees (up to 197 ft, or 60 m), and its trunk often has a diameter greater than 7 ft (2 m). Long-stemmed, bright-green leaves have two to four side lobes and blunted tips. Yellowish-green tuliplike flowers have six petals, orange at their bases, and three bright-green sepals. Other characteristics include conelike clusters of winged fruits; aromatic, purplish-brown twigs; stunning golden-yellow autumn leaves; winter buds resembling a duck's bill; and resistance to pests and diseases. The wood is used to manufacture furniture parts, plywood panels, paper, boxes, and crates.
Learn more about tulip tree with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Whitewood is located at (44.461314, -103.639136).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.6 square miles (1.7 km²), all of it land.
Whitewood has been assigned the ZIP code 57793 and the FIPS place code 71580.
There were 330 households out of which 35.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.9% were married couples living together, 10.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.1% were non-families. 26.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.52 and the average family size was 3.00.
In the city the population was spread out with 27.4% under the age of 18, 8.6% from 18 to 24, 29.7% from 25 to 44, 19.7% from 45 to 64, and 14.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females there were 101.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.8 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $29,297, and the median income for a family was $30,859. Males had a median income of $25,347 versus $16,597 for females. The per capita income for the city was $12,247. About 15.6% of families and 17.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.5% of those under age 18 and 7.2% of those age 65 or over.


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Icecream17 - I think that the Obama parodies are funny because the American people are so frustrated with Obama that the parody provides a bit of comic relief to a serious economic situation.
I think that the SNL crew is so talented. I also think that Rush Limbaugh does a brilliant job at demonstrating Obama parodies with some well known songs.
Some of the best were, "Obama Can Man" which was in response to Obama's attempt to indoctrinate public school children by having them create an essay on how to help him succeed.
Another classic parody was,"Party Like Its 1929" which is a direct response to how the government is recklessly spending our tax dollars.
I also like, "Every Cent You Make I'll Be Taxing You" in response to the higher taxes that we will all be paying.
Also, in response to the health care bill is, "Grandma Got Run Over by Obama" which involved the realities of the rationing aspect of this socialized health care bill. I love Rush. He has the funniest parody examples.


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quote:I think we will finally see a complete effort come Saturday.
quote:We've been hearing this since after the 2007 Virginia Tech game.
quote:What makes you believe this? Not trying to flame just curious about what you believe will cause this team to play with some fire.
quote:No way we win this
quote:Tigers will win ........
quote:But i want to hear the excuse for alabama, i thought saban always has his team ready to play and always plays their best week in and week out.
quote:Even Vegas has us as a 4 point favorite.


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Martel's Restaurant & Lounge
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Reduce, reuse, recycle - it's the mantra we've heard for decades, and it appears Americans are taking the message to heart and making efforts to go green in all aspects of their lives. Whether it's in their own home or at their place of work, being earth-friendly isn't just a trend; it's the new modern way of life. If you're looking to make your life a little greener - whether during the nine-to-five or the five-to-nine - consider a few simple ways you can save Mother Earth and feel pretty good about yourself too.
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I'm selling my Cawood early medieval sword. $200 shipped CONUS.
I'll do international/overseas shipping, but the price may change.
Kult of Athena has them for $260 (+probably $15 shipping). Grab yourself a deal!
The Seller:
I'm kind of new to this site, but I have 100% positive ebay feedback with over 100 transactions there (user "g2knee").
The Sword:
It's an awesome sword...the leather wrapped grip is nice and meaty. The sword has a decisive blade presence, but its fast and balanced well. You have to experience it to see what I mean.
It's in excellent condition. The edge is nice and sharp, but I'm sure a more experienced sword owner could make it sharper. No chips or dents on the edge. I've had it for a short time, but I've kept it oiled. The scabbard is in excellent condition as well, and it fits the sword snug. The pictures report well on the condition of the sword.
Below is a link to the Kult of Athena Cawood Sword description and links to the pics of the sword for sale.
Please post or message me any questions!
Kult of Athena "Cawood Sword":
http://www.kultofathena.com/product.asp ... wood+Sword
Sword pictures:
http://images.craigslist.org/3Kb3M23Ia5 ... 7e1b44.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/3L83F53N75 ... bc10d0.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/3Ea3J63N45 ... 361b84.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/3L73N23H55 ... 0d1075.jpg


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So today I learned a valuable lesson when bottling. Before filling a bottle shape you haven't previously used, make sure your capper fits it. I crushed an Anchor Steam neck and it shattered everywhere, full of my brew. Thankfully its just a 12oz loss and a big mess, but still. On a positive note, my first brew using a recipe I developed myself turned out pretty close to what I wanted! Next time I brew it, it should be on the money.
Are you using a butterfly capper? I did that with a bottle but I forget what one now I have a bench capper. Hell I even have a 29mm bell on the way so I can do champagne bottles.
Going through life is hard. Going through life stupid is harder.
I did the exact same thing, although I didn't crush it, kinda just circumcised the top of the bottle. I think I just pushed down too far with my capper. I do plan on trying again(with empty bottles so as not to waste precious homebrew), because I do love them bottles.
I heard similar stories before I ever tried it, so I'm always more careful with Anchor bottles, but I haven't broken one yet!
any other brands to avoid?
FWIW, I've bottled tons of Anchor Steam bottles no problem, with both a red wing capper and a Colona capper/corker.
On deck: Little Bo Pils, Bretta Off Dead (Brett pale) Secondary: Oude Bruin, Red Sky at Morning (Sour brown ale) On tap: Saison Duphunk (sour), Amarillo Slim (IPA), Earl White (ginger/bergamot wit) Bottled: Number 8 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale), Eternale (Barleywine), Ancho Villa (Ancho/pasilla/chocolate/cinnamon RIS), Oak smoked porter (1/2 maple bourbon oaked, 1/2 apple brandy oaked)
I used lots of those bottle with my bench capper and never had a problem.
Don't think you'll have to worry much anymore, pretty sure the new Anchor bottles are twist offs, at least the Foghorn ones are.


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Price: $0.99
Version: 1.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 3GS
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I first played Hypership Out of Control some time ago. Almost one year ago exactly, actually. This was back when it was an Xbox Live Indie Game. I was quite impressed with Fun Infused Games' retro-inspired not-quite shooter, but after spending some time with it on my phone it's become apparent that this game was meant for iOS.
Players assume control over an out-of-control spacecraft as it careens through all manner of obstacles with no space breaks. Unfortunately, the breaks are the only thing that's out. The accelerator is still perfectly functional and perhaps even a little over-zealous. The ship will build speed fairly quickly until it reaches its limit, however successfully navigating a section/wave will increase the speed cap so the longer players survive the tougher it gets. There are some power-ups available along the way to make things a little easier, such as a power shot that can destroy anything it hits (even the seemingly indestructible obstacles), a shield and even one that can significantly slow down the ship for a time.
Playing Hypership Out of Control with a touch screen just feels natural. It uses the same kind of scheme most shmups on the platform do: touch and drag on the screen to move the ship. It's infinitely more responsive and exact than using a joystick or console controller. In addition to just playing great, there are also lots of game modes to keep score-hungry players interested. These include the normal "survive as long as possible" mode, a mode with absolutely no speed cap and my personal favorite, one where the only way to survive is to constantly collect coins. On top of all that there's also an option to flip the levels, so once all the patterns are memorized (no easy task, believe me) it can all be done backwards.
This is normally where I talk about the various issues or problems I've had with the game, but I honestly can't think of any. The retro aesthetic is wonderful, the music is awesome, the controls are spot-on, the challenge is fine-tuned to perfection, there are a ton of variations to enjoy and plenty of achievements to acquire. I suppose I could complain about the various ships that are available to choose from not having any actual affect on the gameplay, save looking different and changing the color of the HUD, but that's all I've got.
In all seriousness, Hypership Out of Control is a gem of an iOS game. It's got all the pick-up-and-play trappings and super-addictiveness that a successful App Store release needs, wrapped in an incredibly tight package and sold for what I'd consider way too small a price. This is a must-own, people. Seriously.
Tagged with: $0.99, arcade shooter, endless runner, Fun Infused Games, Hypership out of Control, retro, shooter, space shooter, top-down shooter, vertical shooter


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Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies are planning a traffic enforcement effort Friday night.
The Central Iowa Traffic Safety Task Force and the Governor's Traffic Safety Bureau said the effort will focus on the northern part of Polk County.
Officers will be looking especially for impaired drivers and checking seat belt use.
Officials said that as with all CITSTF projects, officers will be enforcing all traffic laws in an attempt to reduce serious injury collisions.
The views expressed are not those of this site, this station or its affiliated companies. By posting your comments you agree to accept our terms of use.
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Mount Airy Bed and Breakfasts
Located 37 miles northwest of Winston-Salem, Mount Airy, NC is a growing city that offers normal family life from the city. Among the popular attractions in this area,... Read more
Located 37 miles northwest of Winston-Salem, Mount Airy, NC is a growing city that offers normal family life from the city. Among the popular attractions in this area, there is a large amount of B&B in the area. Mount Airy is home of many popular events including Mayberry Days and the Autumn Leaves Festivals which shows off some of the locals artists in the area. Not only is there a large amount of Mount Airy bed and breakfasts in this area there are plenty of Mount Airy Inns and restaurants in the area. One of the more popular restaurants includes Aunt Bea's Barbecue which offers great BBQ of the Carolinas. Less
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from $129
Pilot Knob Inn Bed & Breakfast
Pilot Mountain, North Carolina
Private cabins, honeymoon suites with hot tubs, whirlpools and jacuzzis for two, fireplac...Read more
from $120
Fiddler's Roost Bed & Breakfast Cabins
Galax, Virginia
Authentic Log Cabin Bed & Breakfast
Breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge Mountains
Loca...Read more
from $100
Willow Glen Farm
Cana, Virginia
Beautiful Farm on 50 acres of rolling hills, nestled in the foothills of southwest Virgin...Read more
from $60
Volunteer Gap Inn and Cabins
Fancy Gap, Virginia
Newly Constructed Inn at the crest of the Blue Ridge Parkway, just 7 miles north of Fancy...Read more
from $124
Glade Valley Bed and Breakfast
Glade Valley, North Carolina
Log home nestled on 29 acres within a short distance of the Blue Ridge Parkway and less t...Read more
from $100
Vintage Rose Wedding Estate
Pilot Mountain, North Carolina
A full service wedding venue and chapel in historical Pilot Mountain. ...Read more
from $115
A Mighty Oak B&B - Our Chosen Heritage Enterprises LLC
Pilot Mountain, North Carolina
Agritourism in Pilot Mountain. ...Read more
from $119
The Rockford Inn Bed and Breakfast
Dobson, North Carolina
This 1848 historic home in Village of Rockford is centered in the Yadkin Valley Wine Reg...Read more


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Corporate tie that binds America to a slow internet
PUBLISHED: 26 Feb 2013 00:32:11 | UPDATED: 26 Feb 2013 00:32:11PUBLISHED: 26 Feb 2013 PRINT EDITION: 26 Feb 2013If Dwight Eisenhower had General Motors and George W. Bush had Halliburton, Barack Obama arguably has Comcast. US presidents are often linked to one or two corporations that donate a lot of money to them and then benefit from their actions. Comcast, which is America's largest cable television and internet provider and is a near monopoly in most large cities, is no exception.
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Double-digit total revenue growth in the front end and the pharmacy drove a robust same-store sales gain at Walgreen Co. in January, with the monthly increase reaching a level that the drug store chain had not seen in over a year.
Retail News Breaks Archives
DEERFIELD, Ill. – Double-digit total revenue growth in the front end and the pharmacy drove a robust same-store sales gain at Walgreen Co. in January, with the monthly increase reaching a level that the drug store chain had not seen in over a year.
Walgreens said Thursday that comparable-store sales in January (excluding Duane Reade) climbed 6.1%, well above the 2.8% same-store uptick in December. The increase also continued an improving trend in same-store sales, which edged up 3.2% in November following a 1.3% decline in October and smaller gains of 0.4% in September and 2.1% in August.
The last time Walgreens had reported a 5% increase in same-store sales was in September 2009, when comp-store sales rose 5.3%.
January 2011 comp-store sales reflected a 0.7 percentage point positive impact from calendar day shifts, as well as same-store increases of 4.5% in the front end and 6.9% in the pharmacy, according to Walgreens. Customer traffic in comparable stores rose 2.4%, and basket size increased 2.1%.
In the pharmacy, same-store sales included a 1.1 percentage point positive impact from calendar day shifts and a 2.9 percentage point negative impact from generic drug introductions in the last 12 months, Walgreens reported.
Prescriptions filled at comparable stores increased 6.3% in January, reflecting positive impacts of 1.1 percentage points from calendar day shifts and 1.6 percentage points from a higher incidence of flu, the company said. Fewer flu shots negatively impacted prescriptions filled at comparable stores by 1.3 percentage points during the month. Flu shots administered season-to-date at Walgreens pharmacies and Take Care clinics totaled more than 6.3 million.
Overall in January, Walgreens turned in sales of $5.93 billion, up 11.3% from $5.33 billion a year earlier. Duane Reade stores contributed 2.8 percentage points to the total sales increase for the month, the retailer said. Front-end revenue rose 11.5% and pharmacy sales climbed 10.8% in January.
Walgreens said fiscal 2011 year-to-date sales for the first five months were $30.1 billion, up 7.3% from $28 billion in the prior-year period.
During January, Walgreens opened 13 drug stores, relocated two stores, acquired three stores and closed one store. As of Jan. 31, the company operated 7,670 drug stores, 506 more than a year ago, including 297 stores acquired over the last 12 months.


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Burma's military regime is distributing international aid today. But it is covering the boxes with the names of top generals in an effort to turn the relief effort for last week's devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.
Development agencies and United Nations officials are exasperated at the obstructiveness of the Burmese junta toward an international aid effort aimed at bringing desperately needed supplies to victims of the recent cyclone.
In the face of growing political instability and desperate food shortages in Zimbabwe, The Methodist Relief and Development Fund (MRDF) is supporting an appeal through ACT International (Action by Churches Together) that will distribute emergency food supplies to vulnerable households.
The Methodist Relief and Development Fund (MRDF) has held its first equipping conference for African partner organisations in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, from 22-26 November 2007. It was entitled 'Strength to Strength'.
Thousands of campaigners of all ages descended on central London on Saturday, 2 June, to send the UK Prime Minister a clear message: the world can't wait, make aid work!
As Tony Blair prepares to step down as British PM, the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD) offers an assessment and balance sheet of the impact of his policies on international development.
The world's richest nations have been accused of foot-dragging over aid pledges to Africa made during the Make Poverty History campaign.
Police from West Yorkshire have transformed thousands of pounds of local criminals' ill-gotten gains into humanitarian aid to help fight poverty in developing countries.
Church World Service highlights the message of International Women's Day 2007 by looking at their work around the world


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A small school of big dolphin followed him for a time. Sharks paid him visits, nibbling at the rudder. By sunset, after 29 hours of perpetual motion, he was having trouble on the compass dial. "Around two in the morning I started hallucinating," he remembers. "I saw beautiful patterns in the sky. Then I looked over to my right side and there was this huge wall coming out of the water. I wanted to tie up to it and sleep. I wanted it to be there so bad, but it wasn't."
Just before sunrise the speed indicator on his GPS nav unit told Hernandez he had finally escaped the Gulf Stream. He started scanning the horizon for the lighthouse on Cay Sal, an important Bahamas landmark for generations of yachtsmen, freighter captains, gunrunners, and coke smugglers. At 9:00 a.m. he saw a rock the size of a railroad boxcar protruding from the water. Just before noon, Hernandez tied up to it and went for a swim. His legs hurt. A lot. He ate two candy bars and drank a beer, part of his three six-pack ballast. After an uncomfortable snooze he moved camp seven miles west to a small scattering of islands, pitching his tent on a sandy beach. He speared a jumbo lobster and cooked it on a fire. "Then," he says, "I slept and I slept."
Back in Miami, a close circle of friends wondered if Hernandez was alive or dead. A VHF radio on the open sea transmits only five or six miles, so Hernandez had no way to contact them. Still, intimates of the high-mileage paddler were betting on his success.
"To kayak from Miami to Key West you have to be experienced and strong," says Dave Berman, owner of Mangrove Coast SeaKayaks in South Miami. "To cross the Gulf Stream, it's beyond that. You have to be willing to play with death. It's a world-class trip. Open-water kayaking is hard as it is, but this is open ocean that's moving. It goes. It's like driving against traffic on I-95. There have been many attempts by people from the Northwest and Northeast, cold-water kayakers who figure they can cross the Gulf Stream, no sweat. Every single one of them winds up getting picked up by the Coast Guard."
Berman sold Hernandez his first serious kayak three years ago, and the two have been fast friends and paddling partners ever since. He calls Hernandez fearless, gentle, tough, contemplative, a great and uncompromising cook, and an aficionado of the Spanish guitar. He often describes Hernandez as the missing link between man and fish. "I've seen him stay underwater so long it scared me, three to five minutes with no exaggeration," he says. "He'll go into a cave where there's a big shark and pull a lobster out. Say you're on a boat with him in a bad storm. Everyone's screaming and wondering if they're going to live or die. He'll turn on Celia Cruz and have a beer and say he can't believe how beautiful it all is.
"Miguel is unique," Berman adds. "It's hard to categorize him. Where the sea is concerned, he never forgets a detail A and it's the details that can get you killed. On land, in complete contrast, he's forgetful. He'll get out of his car and forget to turn off the engine. This is the guy you want to be with when the Titanic goes down, because he'll find something that floats. On the other hand, if you're moving your house, he may not be the one for the job. He might leave your couch somewhere."
Guillermo Lopez, a painting contractor, describes Hernandez as "probably the real-life Rambo. He has no fear about anything." Lopez met Hernandez 23 years ago at a Jehovah's Witness meeting. Both men eventually dropped out of evangelical Christianity but remained friends and spiritual seekers. Lopez helped Hernandez weather his divorce in the mid 1980s. He says his pal is a laid-back, fun-loving guy, but one who ultimately considers life a serious undertaking. "Everything he does is a path toward greater knowledge," Lopez notes.
Hernandez himself shrugs when pressed to describe why, exactly, he embarked on the trip. "Throughout my life in Miami, any excuse I've had to get out on the water, I took it," he contends. "Fishing or diving or just sitting in a sailboat looking up at the stars at night, that's the best. I thought I would get plenty of that on a six- or nine-month trip. It would also give me time to get a better feel for myself and my spirituality. It's hard to talk about a thing like that, or think about it in the first place. But since I was a boy, spiritual things have been important to me. I've gone through a few religions. I decided the best religion is no religion. You make up your own, then you keep it to yourself. I guess mine is about the ocean. So it made a lot of sense to me to take off in a kayak. I never read anything that made me think of doing it. It was just something inside me that made me think it was perfectly sensible."