President Obama Throws a Super Bowl Party

January 30, 2009 By Aaron 1 Comment

With the Super Bowl a few days away, I have yet to figure out where I’m watching it. However, President Obama knows where he’s watching it. He is throwing a party at the White House for a handful of elected officials.

  • Senator Bob Casey (D-PA)
  • Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)
  • Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
  • Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA)
  • Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
  • Congressman Artur Davis (D-AL)
  • Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
  • Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA)
  • Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA)
  • Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ)
  • Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
  • Congressman Paul Hodes (D-NH)
  • Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC)
  • Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA)
  • Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI)

I presume Sen. Specter, Sen. Casey, Rep. Dent, Rep Doyle, and Rep. Murphy will be rooting for the Steelers. Likewise, Rep. Franks and Rep. Grijalva will be rooting for the Cardinals. I presume Rep. Cummings, my Congressman, will be a Cardinals fan on Sunday too, considering his district is in the Baltimore area. And, of course, our President has defied logic, as a man from an NFC town who now lives in an NFC town, by declaring his support for Pittsburgh.

For my part, I’m loving me some Red and White.

Filed Under: Sports, politics Tagged With: arizona cardinals, football, pittsburgh steelers, politics, super bowl

Exporting Textile2 Content with WordPress

November 17, 2008 By Aaron Leave a Comment

A friend of mine approached me recently to help him out. He had tons of archives in his WordPress blog that had been created using the Textile2 plugin. Textile is a form of markup that is wiki-like. In other words, it’s not straight HTML. The Textile2 plugin interprets the markup and renders HTML that browsers can understand when the post is actually called.

I created a small plugin for him that, on WordPress export, translates Textiled content into standard HTML format. It depends on the Textile2 plugin, so if you are going to use this, make sure you have that.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Textile Friendly Export
Version: 1.0
Plugin URI: http://technosailor.com
Description: Translates Textile 2 Content to HTML on WXR Export
Author: Aaron Brazell
Author URI: http://technosailor.com
Disclaimer: This Plugin comes with no warranty, expressed or implied
*/

function textile2_export( $content )
{
	global $myTextile2;

	if( !class_exists('Textile2_New') )
		return $content;

	return $myTextile2->do_textile( $content );
}
add_filter( 'the_excerpt_export', 'textile2_export' );
add_filter( 'the_content_export', 'textile2_export' );
?>
Filed Under: Code, Movie Reviews, Sports Tagged With: textile, WordPress, wordpress plugin

NFL FAIL (Or, how Hurricane Ike Helped Good Men Forget How to Do Business)

September 13, 2008 By Aaron 2 Comments

As a Baltimore Ravens fan, I’m pretty pissed off at the moment. The reason is very simple. Due to the NFLs incompetence and lack of planning, the team with the fourth most difficult schedule before the season began is stuck with a Week 2 BYE.

The scenario was clear on Monday. A massive hurricane was bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico and showed no sign in wavering off course. It was headed straight for the Texas gulf coast. A handful of teams play in proximity to the gulf coast, all of who might have been affected at that time. New Orleans was scheduled to be in Washington, so no concerns were merited there. Tampa Bay was at home against Atlanta, but there was no expected threat to western Florida. Dallas was playing host to the Philadelphia Eagles way inland. And of course, the Ravens were traveling to Houston for a week 2 showdown at Reliant Stadium.

As we know now, only one game was directly affected by Hurricane Ike making landfall around Galveston, TX early Saturday morning. By all accounts, Reliant Stadium may not be able to be played in until the second half of the season. Chunks of the roof have been torn off and excessive water damage, according to officials, is at ground level.

Surprised as they were, the NFL has juggled the schedule to allow the game to be played during Week 10, bumping the scheduled Bengals-Texans game to Week 8 when those teams had scheduled BYEs and leaving the Ravens and the Texans with a Week 2 BYE.

That’s right, a week 2 BYE. For the team with the fourth most difficult schedule. The original Week 10 BYE was scheduled after a long run where the Ravens would face all division rivals once, including the hated Steelers, plus matchups against Indianapolis and Tennessee. Now, with the exception of the week 1 win against the Bengals, all of those games will fall after the one and only break the team gets all year. There is no “recharge for the second half”.

Let me be clear, disasters happen and what has happened in Texas along the Gulf Coast is, indeed, tragic. However, with the Saints in Washington, this game could have been scheduled for the Superdome and still have drawn a home crowd. LSU has a night game tonight, but in a pinch, an NFL game could have been played on Monday or Tuesday. The Alamodome in San Antonio is two hundred miles inland, and was largely unaffected by Ike. It seats 65,000 people.

Or, hey, at least have a Plan B. Maybe actually get your inspections in so that the Astrodome could have been utilized in case of damage to Reliant Stadium.

Or maybe the Baltimore Ravens themselves could have opened up their home of M&T Bank Stadium to play as “the visiting team” and allow Texans fans right of first ticket, honoring the tickets already purchased for the game in Houston.

Any number of things could have been done to avoid the doomsday scenario that is happening right now. But the NFL did not plan and did not look ahead. They waited to make a game-time decision, pardon the pun, affected teams practicing and mental preparation and quite possibly have caused serious injuries that might not have come later in the season if players had an adequate opportunity for a rest and healing cycle which was the impetus for the BYE week in the first place.

Shame on the NFL. If you have fantasy teams, makes sure you peek at your rosters this week and are not starting Ravens or Texans in week 2 and that you have enough time, if the waiver period has not already passed, to complement your roster if necessary.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: baltimore ravens, houston texans, hurricane, ike, nfl, Sports

4th and 11 and Going for It

February 4, 2008 By Aaron Leave a Comment

Congratulations to the New York Giants for their Victory in Super Bowl XLII. It was a classic. It was much closer than anyone expected.
The thing that sticks out at me as the epitome of the 2007 New England Patriots is the arrogance. With a 7-3 lead in the third quarter and faced with a 4th and 13 at the NYG 31 yard line, you’d expect the Pats to kick the 48 yard field goal. There was no pressing reason to do any differently. If the range was in question, it would not be unheard of to call for a short punt that would pin the Giants inside their 10 yard line.
Yeah, no.
Instead, the Patriots decided a pass play was in order and, quite naturally, the play failed to deliver the first down. This odd choice was fairly typical through the Patriots 2007 season where they were often accused of running up the score on opponents. Worse, the Patriots turned the ball over having not added 3 points to their total.
The final score had a spread of 3 points. Ironic, isn’t it?

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: new england patriots, new york giants, nfl, Sports, super bowl, superbowl