Shakespeare Made Easy
I find Shakespeare so hard to read, and yet I find his writing so eloquent, beautiful, and well crafted. What am I to do?
Buy some Shakespeare Made Easy books, that’s what!
Shakespeare Made Easy is a series of “translations” of Shakespeare into modern English. That alone isn’t what I’m looking for–I want to enjoy Shakespeare, not pass a class. What makes these books good, is that the translation is side-by-side with the original English. Which means you can appreciate the craftsmanship of Shakespeare’s words while simulataeously understanding what the heck he is saying. Genius!
Here’s an example:
Speedlinking, June 22nd, 2008
Speedlinking is yet another tool of the lazy blogger. Basically I smash together a bunch of interesting links that I collect every so often, and write a sentence or two about them.
This week’s Speedlinking is being brought to you courtesy of the useful Instapaper website, which I’ve been using to temporarily bookmark the below links.
- TV and movie bloopers compilations.
- Do you use a data dictionary in your database? No, I don’t mean information_schema.
- How bin Laden got away – not a politicized story, but a day-by-day account of what happened.
- An animated comparision of various sorting algorithms on four different types of data sets. Fun!
- I’ve heard that conservatives come from whiny, insecure kids, and that republicans are happier than democrats. We also know the difference between consevatives and liberals when it comes to entertainment. And now I see that conservatives are more honest than liberals, at least that’s what the writer of the longest book title ever says.
Join-Fu
Jay Pipes was kind enough to post his slides for a presentation he is giving on SQL later today in Cincinnati (I wish I could attend).
According to Jay, “many of the techniques are not specific to MySQL and can be applied to most DBs.” So, no matter if you use MySQL, MSSQL, or both (or neither), go check it out!
Model-View-Controller
I recently did some research and gave a presentation on the not-quite-released-yet ASP.NET MVC architecture.
That presentation is available for download.
While the presentation is geared towards the particular shop I work at (Student Life IT), I think it might be generally useful for someone who programs in ASP.NET but isn’t familiar with MVC.
It certainly is nothing but a very brief introduction to MVC and some of the newer .NET 3.5 components that are very complimentary to MVC. For more information (both breadth and depth), I implore you to visit the following sites:
- ScottGu (Scott Guthrie)
- You’ve been Haacked (Phil Haack)
- WekeRoad (Rob Conery)
- Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC site
Weekend update: June 13 – 15
This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of June 13th – June 15th.
Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.
It’s been a celebratory weekend. Saturday was mine and Ali’s 5th wedding anniversary. Ali’s mom came over to watch Matthew so that Ali & I could gallivant around the city.
One of the things we did on Saturday was to visit a movie theater for the first time in over 2 years. I really wanted to see Indiana Jones, but we ended up seeing The Happening. It was a Saturday matinee show, during summer, downtown: there were only about 8 other people there and none of them made a peep. It’s a shame the lengths that we had to go through to enjoy a film.
I use the word “enjoy” loosely, because the acting in The Happening was uncomfortably bad (with the notable exception of John Leguizamo, who would have been much better in the lead role). I have to say that, unfortunately, this movie is probably M. Night’s worst effort–beating out Lady in the Water. Maybe I have to be some sort of “green” hippy to “get” it, but the antagonist in the movie (plants? the CIA? God?) was really, really poorly defined, vague, and approaching The Day After Tomorrow levels of ridiculousness. There were several characters and sequences in the movie that didn’t make any sense in a larger context. This movie could realistically be made into a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode, and probably feature better acting in that channel.
The scenes of mass suicide were gruesome, chilling, and very, very effective. However, there wasn’t much else to enjoy. I don’t think it deserves the dreadful reviews it’s getting, but that’s what happens when you kill a film critic in your movie.
Er, so, I didn’t mean this update to be a movie review.
Sunday was Father’s Day. My first as a father. Ali cooked up a really, really nice meal with slow-cooked brisket, red potatoes, honeyed butter rolls, and creme brulee. I keep telling her than I’m not her father, but her feast did not relent. My son Matthew, on the other hand, didn’t do anything or give me any presents for father’s day. So much for gratitude!
I picked up Orange Box this weekend in anticipation of some Team Fortress 2 action, as well as to finally own the 2007 game of the year: Portal. If you haven’t played it yet, go get it! Now!
I start my last quarter of school tomorrow.
That is all.
Bon Voyage, Luke
My colleague of over 4 years, Luke, also known as Sithlet here at mgroves.com, has finally moved on to greener pastures, taking a job in Colorado.
It’s bittersweet when thinking about all the things we’ve done over the years, all the projects we’ve worked on, all the crazy lunches and bizarre conversations. It seemed like Luke and I were always on the same page; I will definitely miss him.
Enjoy Colorado, Luke & Liz, and good luck with your career and the rest of your lives. Don’t stop believin’.
See you on Xbox Live.
Street view maps of Columbus
The Google truck came rolling through Columbus, and as a result, Columbus now has Street View maps!
For some reason, the Google truck was afraid to enter my neighborhood, so I can’t see my house! However, here are some other interesting landmarks in Columbus…
The corn statue fields of Dublin.
Skyline Chili!
Ohio Stadium
My office building
The Lane Ave. bridge.
White Castle headquarters.
Schmidt’s Sausage Haus
Free markets versus regulation
This is just a quickie.
I though Kling made a good point in one of his posts today.
High gas prices have had the following effects via the market:
- End of free pizza delivery in many places
- Drop in SUV sales
- Drop in price of houses that are far from jobs or mass transit
Meanwhile, during 2004 when regulators first started worrying about subprime mortgages, HUD stuck with their policy allowing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to dish out ARM loans to low income and minority families as a being “good for the community”.
I think this is a good demonstration of how markets generally function well and how government usually just exacerbates problems. No the market isn’t perfect, but government intervention rarely helps.
Laws of Marketing 5: Focus
I’ve picked up a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout, and I’m blogging a summary of each chapter.
Chapter 4. The Law of Focus
The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.
“Owning” a word like Xerox owns “copy”, Kleenex owns “tissue”, and Volvo owns “safety”, is the most powerful concept in marketing. Just recently I linked to a site called Brand Tags (see also the Volvo and Xerox links) which might be a useful sort of word association tool to see if a brand has achieved the focus they are going for.
It should be a simple word, with a narrow focus. The word should also be benefit oriented.
Achieving this isn’t simply a matter of advertising. If a firm want to obtain this kind of obiquity, it should reduce the scope of its offering(s) to narrow their focus instead of chasing after everything.
Also, it helps if the word is an “opposing” word. It’s not a good idea to go after a word like “honesty” because no one is going after after “dishonesty”. Words like “honesty” and “quality” are merely table stakes.
Now that I’m at #5, what do you think about this book? Should I continue summarizing the remaining 17 chapters?
Wednesday Tube: Monkeys
Missed the last Tuesday Tube? Head over to the tag search for ‘tuesday tube’ and browse through the archives.
Welcome to the increasingly misnamed Tuesday Tube. So, monkeys, anyone?
Monkey fight!
Monkey situps!
Mean-spirited monkeys!
Monkey cowboy!
Monkey versus robot!
Baboon testosterone!