I have friends who refer to soccer (football for the rest of the world) as "the beautiful game". This phrase is credited to the soccer-great Pele.

I am not a true soccer fan I guess - I only watch the World Cup. But I have seen bits of every game in the 2006 World Cup. For instance, the goal Maxi Rodriguez of Argentina scored against Mexico. That was a beautiful goal. Off the chest, and onto the left foot and in the net in one smooth motion. Worth replaying again and again.

But more often than not, soccer is not beautiful. It is ugly. It seems to be full of cheaters, and rules that are meant to be bent. It is often a totally unsatisfying game to watch. Disgusting at times.

For instance, yesterday's France-Spain game is a good example. The winning goal was stolen. The French player Henry ran into a Spanish player, and then fell to the ground holding his face although the replay clearly shows his face was never touched.

Of course, the ref gives the Spanish player a yellow card and France has a free kick just meters from the goal. Some lucky bounces of the ball, and it's in the net. With less than 10 minutes to go, the game was virtually over. Spain was robbed.

Now, occassionally people ask "Why doesn't soccer 'take off' in North America the way it has in the rest of the world?". This is why. A game, in the North American point of view, is defined by a very precise set of rules. We employ every reliable means available to ensure the rules are followed.

American Football is known as "a game of inches". The referees employ camera replays from multiple angles to determine if the ball travelled one inch or two. Chains are available on both sides of the field to ensure an exact placement of the ball on each down. Each coach has the ability to "challenge" one or two calls during the game. And the ref can, on his own, go to the instant replay to double-check a call. A single toe touching the sideline can bring a touchdown all the way back up the field for 4th down.

Hockey also uses the instant replay. Did the puck cross the line? The instant replay judge can even call down to the on-ice referee during the next break in play and tell him of something he saw on the tape that the referee might have missed. Hockey players are tough - two players can have a big collision mid-ice, and both get up and keep playing. No diving, no fake injuries, and very little whining to the referee.

Basketball has shot clocks, lines, buzzers, 3-point lines. It's a very precise game as well. Since basketball is a small court, players are in contact much more often and the occasional foul call is made. But basketball is not broken nor corrupted.

Why not soccer? The biggest problem with soccer, as I see it, is the diving. It's a weird thing to watch. How did grown men get so fragile? These men are athletes! Yet, one little tug of a shirt is enough to cause a 200-pound man to fall to the ground clutching his elbow like it had fallen off. Oh the pain! Oh the agony! It gets to the point where the best soccer players are actors, and not goal scorers. They might as well hire Patrick Stewart to run around and pretend to be near death as the pinky finger of an opposing player came within half-an-inch of his forehead.

And the whole concept of "timing". Does the game last 90 minutes or not? With extra time added to both the first half and the second, the game often lasts 100 minutes. But some games don't. In this World Cup, I've seen a goal "called back" by a ref because time was up just seconds before the goal. This not knowing precisely how many minutes or seconds remain is ridiculous.

They need to fix this game. It is seriously broken.

When I speculated earlier this week that the Larry Ellison would never be so generous as Gates and Buffett, I had no idea that he would provide proof of that so soon:

Larry Ellison Renegs on Pledge of $100 Million to Harvard

The funny thing is, he pledged the money about a year ago. And last week Harvard was complaining that they still haven't seen the money, and that Ellison stopped returning their calls.

So now Oracle officially confirms that Ellison is renegging. What a snake. Has there ever been anyone LESS deserving that has been so wealthy? (Some of the sleezy-industrialists of the 19th century come to mind, but that was a long ago era.)

People have been saying for years that Ellison has been jealous of Gates. But now that Ellison is falling on the Forbes richest list year after year (at one point, he was #2 I think, now down to at least #9), perhaps Ellison has given up trying to catch him.

 

By the way, look at the following numbers:

* Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG) currently worth: $25 Billion
* Bill Gates currently worth: $50 Billion
* Warren Buffett currently worth: $44 Billion

Once Buffett has given 85% of his fortune to BMG, and assuming Gates himself will do the same, the foundation will have a worth of...

$104.4 Billion

Which is a staggering sum for a charity to have. Why, invested in a stock that returns a measly 8% a year, the charity gains $8.4 Billion in capital gains per year.

BMG currently gives away money at around $1 Billion per year, so the fund will earn 8 times that in just capital gains! It will soon have to increase spending to an incredible level!

Given the recent announcement that Warren Buffett plans to give away 85% of his $44 billion fortune, I have to admit to being a little bit jealous.

First, bravo to both Buffett and Gates for their generosity. The number 1 and 2 richest people in the world plan to give away most of their money. That's just amazing. Truly amazing.

The jealousy comes from not being able to do the same myself. I wish I could someday be in a position to make an enormous difference to the world. The Gates Foundation is not only the largest charity in the world, but also is apparently making an enormous difference in the causes it supports. And, after reading Buffett's letters (to the Gates Foundation and his kids' foundations), it's apparent that Buffett wants his money to do the most good it can too.

Honestly, the saddest thing about Gates and Buffett giving away their money is that the people who follow them on the list are not likely to do the same. Can you imagine the self-absorbed Larry Ellison doing the same?

Even Paul Allen, Gates former business partner, seems to be more absorbed with sports teams, yachts, and venture capital investing than charity.

So I kind of wish that their charitable donations didn't count against their net worth, so that two deserving men still sat at the top of the list for many more years to come.

 

I have had the idea for a “web 2.0” application for some time, and playing with Ruby on Rails has spurred me to try a pre-alpha development of it. Make it pre-pre-alpha.

So, first step - a basic database diagram. I decided to use SQL Server 2000 as my database (not MySQL which is traditional in the open source world) because that is what I am used to. I like Enterprise manager, and I work quickly inside it. I found playing with MySQL from the command line too limiting.

I have created 4 tables to start:

First you have categories. Categories contain a number of goals. Goals contain a number of paths. And paths contain a number of steps. This is by no means complete or final, but it's a start.

Now, lets see if I can get a series of web pages set up to manage these four tables and their nested relationships.

By the way, there is a pretty good rails tutorial at O'Reilly OnLamp.

Once I have the database created, and have configured Rails to use SQL Server, I then use ruby to generate the model and component objects for these classes.

What is a model? A model is a data-tier object that represents a database table - it is a class. It provides the basic data-related create, delete, update, and find functionality.

What is a controller? A controller is an application-tier object that publishes a number of predefined (inherited) and custom methods and properties. It is also a class, but it is one level of abstraction above the database object.

Now I can generate the models and controllers separately. You can see what that looks like here and here. But I want Ruby to go that extra step further and generate all the starting code I need for my web app. You'll see what I mean in a second.

You know the old saying, “it's easier to edit than to create“, so I am going let Ruby create the basic HTML and classes needed for my application, and I will simply edit the pages according to the look and feel I want for the site. This pregenerated code is called “scaffolds”, and they are pretty cool. This will generate the models and controllers at the same time.

I will do this for all four of my database tables.

Finally, when I start the ruby web server (“ruby script/server”) and point my web browser to http://127.0.0.1:3000/categories I get:

Which is ugly as sin, but at least it's something to start editing. When I add a few sample categories it gets a bit better:

This is fun. Ruby on Rails is fun.

 

So I finally gave in to the hype and downloaded the new Web 2.0 programming language, Ruby on Rails.

Ruby is a relatively new (1998, I believe) programming language that aims right for “developer productivity”. Someone sat down, I suppose, and combined all the easy-to-use-but-powerful parts of Smalltalk, Python and Perl. Does the world NEED a new programming language? Well, usually the answer is no but Ruby is starting to gain some traction as a powerful tool. People are starting to port Ruby to .NET even.

Rails is a web application framework developed by the folks at 37 Signals for Ruby. 37 Signals is famous for their easy to use web applications such as Basecamp, Backpack and Ta Da List.

The claim made by Ruby on Rails is that you could get a new web application up and running in minutes, where it would take days using another language such as ASP.NET. Now when hearing someone claim a web site could be up and running in “minutes”, I instinctively roll my eyes and think, “Yeah, right.”

Last night I ran through the ONLamp Ruby on Rails tutorial, and I must admit to being impressed.

Perhaps the revolutionary feature is this thing called “scaffolds”. Rails will actually provide a default set of CRUD (create, read, update, delete) pages for any database table. So if you have a database table of employees, you simply run a couple of command line programs, and Rails will create a bunch of web pages to let to manage those tables through the browser. It's amazing. Maybe you have to see it in action to be blown away.

I'm still getting into it. I'll spend more time with it tonight. But I have just begun customizing those pages, and working with multiple tables.

I will update this blog later with more on my experience with Ruby. Maybe I'll even have a web application to share with the world, in 15 minutes development time!

 

Two years ago I searched through my “Living the Geek Life” referral logs and found some interesting search terms. It's time to update the list, using a small VB program I developed at the time and is still available for free download here.

So without further ado, Google has actually sent people here using the following search terms:

“Easy Gymnastic Moves”

I'm #9 on Google for this phrase.

Wow. The olympics aren't on, and people are still searching for gymnastic moves. And Google is STILL sending those people to my web site. The best I can offer is this web site and this one.

“Writing to a 5 year old”

I am #2 on Google for this phrase.

My page got into Google because I was talking about by World Vision sponsored child, who I correspond with. Writing to her is difficult, and doubly so because of the “lost in translation“ effect. Basically, you have to keep the words small, talk about things she might be interested in, etc. Imagine what you would say if she was sitting in front of you... “Did you have fun today? What did you do? Do you want a cookie?“ That kind of stuff. Of course, in a letter, those questions are totally irrelevant so don't listen to me at all.

check my numbers lotto 54321 ie.

I am #1 on Google for these terms. I have no freaking IDEA why.

Honestly, if you are searching Google using that meaningless group of words and numbers, I am not surprised you are brought to an irrelevant site such as this. You've given Google nothing to work with. But welcome anyways, and I hope you enjoy it here. I am sure you won lotto. 54321 comes up all the time!

Movie countdown timer 10...9

I am #3 on Google for these terms.

Ha ha. Searching for a term like that in Google is like searching using the punchline of a joke. Yes, the “countdown timer“ is one of the stupidest ways Hollywood movies use computers. Click that link to see some other good ones. 

Sophie Neveau employer

I am #3 on Google for these terms. Probably because her name is misspelled.

In the book The DaVinci Code, Sophie Neveu was employed as a cryptologist with the French police. In the movie version, she didn't do much but look good. And ask Tom Hanks... “Tom, what does this mean? Tom! Tom! I'm a cryptologist and you're not, but what does it MEAN?“

unemployed can i afford to retire

There is only one difference between unemployment and retirement. Retirement is voluntary. I would have to say that if you are currently unemployed, you probably cannot afford to retire. People who can afford to retire generally call their periods of unemployment “sabbaticals” or “vacations”.

 

Minor spoilers ahead.

Sandra Bullock and Keanu “Whoa!” Reeves are reunited in this romantic tale about:

OK, there are these two people, and they fall in love. But they can't be together - there's an impossible and almost insurmountable barrier between them. All through the movie, one person is trying to get them back together but circumstances and bad timing keep them apart. At some point during the movie, one of them loses hope but the other doesn't. And then at the very end of the movie, they end up together. The End.

Wait, am I now quoting myself? Am I quoting myself on something I said 10 minutes ago? As Keanu would say, “Whoa!”

Basically, I'll start off by saying this is not my type of movie normally. I went because my wife is a Sandra Bullock fan. And Sandra and Keanu together? Well, let's just say I had two choices: see the movie tonight, or patiently wait in the parking lot of the movie theater for 100 minutes. I decided to watch. And I was pleasantly surprised.

The movie is well done overall. The writing is excellent. Since Keanu and Sandra are basically the only two characters in the movie (other characters probably had less than a week of shooting), the writing must be good to carry the story.

The movie had excellent direction and cinematography too. It wasn't just slapped together, there is a good feel to the movie. The timing is good, it doesn't drag. There are no real “loose ends” hanging in mid-air at the end of the film. From almost the opening scene, to the last scene, the story weaves together well.

Now this movie is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Clearly, at opening weekend a majority of critics didn't like the movie. But I went in expecting a slow-moving romantic drama. I wasn't expecting “Speed” or “Fast and the Furious”. So I got what I expected.

There were a couple of points in the movie I found touching. There is a point where Sandra's character is heart-broken - and it was a touching scene. Likewise Keanu also had a chance to cry, and those are the moments over which the characters bond.

So I liked the movie. There's some interesting summer blockbuster's coming, so don't worry. The sappy romance stuff is out of the way for the next little while.