I ran across this video tonight and had to share it. This is a speech from John Francis who walked the earth and didn’t speak for 17 years. It is his story, experiences and what what he learned over that 17 years. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/john_francis_walks_the_earth.html.
My quest to learn Ruby on Rails is still at full steam, when I am not swamped with work. Along with the numerous books, I have been going through an online Ruby on Rails training course at buildingwebapps.com.
I just created an account at JPG Magazine. Not only can you share your photos, you have a chance to be published in the magazine by entering theme contests. Wish me luck and vote for my photos.
The most recent theme contest I entered is “Shoot from the Hip”. I submitted a photo from a recent New Orleans trip. This photo was taken while walking through the French Quarter. The subject is a tap dancing street performer. Photo was adjusted using Lightroom 2. I developed it as black and white with a some vignetting to highlight the subject a little more.
Arizona Highways is having a photography contest for the first time since 1966. The deadline for entries is November 15, 2008. There are four categories in which to enter –Landscape, People/Culture, Wildlife and Macro/Close-Up. The grand prize is a trip on an Arizona Highways workshop.
Digital Photography Blogs has weekly photography contests with varying themes.
Digital Photography School has weekly assignments with different prizes each week.
Just launched this site yesterday for a client. The site was redesigned and a shopping cart was added. i used osCommerce for the shopping cart with a couple of contributions.
I was justed tweeted this by another cyclist on twitter. Lance Armstrong will be coming back to ride 5 races for Team Astana, including the Tour de France. Should be very interesting to see how good of shape he is in since retiring 3 years ago. He finished 2nd in the Leadville 100 last month. Here is a link to the full story. http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=3576014
I have been meaning to add recently completed projects to my site since last month. So here are a couple of custom WordPress websites I have recently completed for clients.
Cooner Wellness is local company that specializes in acupuncture. Specializing in acupuncture for infertility, he also treats pain, headaches, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, allergies, asthma, insomnia, stress, anxiety, depression, weight loss, PMS, infertility, acne, sinusitis, arthritis, irritable bowel and leaky gut syndrome, pre and post surgery preparation and recovery, and side effects of cancer treatments.
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The 2008 Tour de France is over. It has been over for a couple of days, but I haven’t had time to write about it. My prediction of Cadel Evans winning was wrong. He lead the race for awhile, but couldn’t hold onto the yellow jersey. He lost it to Frank Schleck of CSC, but he was not the final GC winner. The winner was Carlos Sastre of Team CSC. Photo by Graham Watson.
One of Cadel’s problems was that his team Silence-Lotto was too weak to help defend the jersey. Cadel was isolated from his team on every important mountain stage. Team CSC was way too strong! CSC had at least 3-4 guys together on every mountain stage. This included Frank Schleck, who held the yellow jersey for a few stages before his team mate Carlos Sastre won it from him on L’Alpe-d’Huez. What can you say about Jens Voight? The guy is amazing. Jens sets a tempo up the mountain that blows the peloton to pieces, sacrificing himself for his team leader. Team CSC’s relentless attacks up the mountains was too much for Cadel. He couldn’t follow every attack those guys threw at him. His final time deficit going into the final time trail was too much to overcome. I am happy to see Carlos Sastre win the Tour. He has always been a top contender.
Overall, the race was very exciting all the way to the end. The 7 different yellow jersey holders almost breaks a record in one of the closest tours in history. Hopefully, the race is as exciting next year, but with Cadel Evans winning.
It’s July and you know what that means. It is time for the Tour de France. The 95th edition has started. I have mixed feelings about this year’s tour. I always look forward to watching it, but I am disappointed that team Astana was not allowed to race in this year’s tour. Team Astana has Alberto Contador (last years winner) and Levi Leipheimer (3rd place last year). It sucks that they can’t come back and defend the yellow jersey.
I’m going to watch anyways, because it is the Tour de France and for the first time there are 2 American teams - Team Columbia (formerly High Road) and Team Garmin/Chipotle (formerly Slipstream/Chipotle). Above photo by Graham Watson.
A list of other American teams in the Tour de France throughout history:
My prediction: Cadel Evans will win the yellow jersey. I hope he does, because I have a picture with him from when I met him at the Sea Otter Classic. Back then he was a World Champion mountain biker.
My first attempt at learning Ruby on Rails has been thwarted by the latest release of Ruby on Rails v2.1. The book I was reading “Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications” published by Sitepoint was written very well but outdated. The version in the book is 1.2.3. I was excited about learning to create my own Digg site. I guess that is why Sitepoint was giving away free copies. I looked into purchasing the updated version called Simply Rails 2, but after looking through the forums, this edition had some problems too.
I found a much better book called “Agile Web Development with Rails” third edition. The first edition is among the best selling programming books in the world and won a Jolt award for best technical book. The print version doesn’t some out until October 2008, but you can download a .pdf version now. You will recieve updated .pdf versions as the book is revised. I hope this book turns out to be as good as the reviews.
Not only are they funny, but they actually teach you Photoshop techniques.
