On the one hand, Cincinnatians had great cause for celebration Sunday. After thirteen years of disappointment, the Cincinnati Bengals maintained their lead in the AFC North with a gutsy, last-minute win against long-time rivals, the Steelers. Not only does this win move them closer to their first winning season in 13 years, it puts their destiny in thier own hands. When they win next week in Baltimore; the Bengals will be sole division leaders. Then, the playoffs would be just around the corner.

Only fans of the Chicago Cubs or Columbia University might understand how sweet it is to hear/read NFL pundits sing the praises of Coach Marvin Lewis and the Cincinnati Bengals. Now living in Las Vegas, it was great to see the Bengals as the featured sports lead-in on the Sunday night news here in Vegas.

Truly sweet.

On the other hand, the same newscast featured graphic video taken from a camera in Cincinnati police cruiser. Once again, my hometown makes national news for allegations of police brutality. For more details, read the quote below and follow the link.

A 41-year-old man died after a violent struggle Sunday morning with Cincinnati police officers outside a North Avondale fast-food restaurant.

The fight, which included the nearly 400-pound man hitting officers and police repeatedly striking him with nightsticks, was caught on tape from a camera in an officer’s patrol car.

Within minutes of the struggle ending, Nathaniel Jones was dead.

Man dies after brawl with city police officers
By Brenna Kelly

We will have to wait for the full results of the investigation for a real sense of what happened and if police response was inappropriate. Given the events of the last few years, I suspect there will be another round of protests and perhaps riots, no matter what the findings. And there is the crux of the problem.

I know folks in both the police and black communities in Cincinnati. This problem does not exists solely in either community. Distrust exists on both sides of the fence. Whether or not the distrust is justified, it needs to be overcome. Else, our hometown team may gain national respect, but our hometown will not.

Truly bitter.

Movie-going is a bit of a holiday tradition in my family. This Thanksgiving was no exception. Here are my thoughts on the three major releases I’ve seen so far.

The Missing :: This movie was excellent. Tommy Lee Jones delivers a strong, nuanced performance. As ever, Cate Blanchett is excellent. She and Gwyneth Paltrow are in a dead heat for the finest female actors of my generation. Val Kilmer also appears in what amounts to a cameo. Ron Howard pulls together another strong film. Check it out.

Gothika :: Halle Berry can act. She gets a lot of grief for being just a pretty face. Monster’s Ball showed she can act; this film extends that legacy. Don’t get me wrong, this is no great cinematic feat. It is a supernatural pot-boiler and, in truth, is rather formulaic. That said, strong performances by Berry and Penelope Cruz make this film worth your time and theater dollar.

Cat in The Hat (CitH) :: Don’t bother. Most of the funny stuff can be found in the trailer. This movie is easily my biggest movie-going disappointment since the over-glossy, inappropriately homo-erotic piece of tripe that was Batman and Robin. I curse the day Joel Schumacher became involved with the Batman franchise. But, I digress.

I am a huge Mike Meyers fan. That said, CitH was weak and derivative. Jim Carrey managed to get lost (in a good way) behind the green fur of The Grinch. Regrettably, CitH plays like a sanitized, dumbed-down SNL skit with Meyers in a furry suit. Sad really.

Moblog Tools of offerers such as text America.com, 20six.de, Twoday.net or Swiss start ups the Kaywa permit it to place pictures and summaries via MMS or GPRS Mail directly from the Handy in the InterNet. During conventional Weblogs meanwhile however from the simple diary to a representation format which can be taken seriously also for respectable contents to have been gemausert and in the meantime also of politicians, star and journalist be used, begins itself the Moblogger again on field one.

Publish in real time :: Camera mobile telephones as new tools
NZZ Online Translated by Google

Kaywa, Gregor’s moblog venture, made the papers. Congrats to the G-Man.

(CNN) — From a remote region in the heart of Africa to a genetics lab at the Omaha Zoo, scientists are trying to find out if they have a new big ape on their hands.

“It doesn’t look much like a gorilla, it doesn’t look like a chimpanzee,” said primatologist Shelly Williams, who captured a bit of video of the female mystery ape with a baby.

Pictures of the rare ape are scarce. Wildlife photographer Karl Amman, who was first to spot the mysterious mammals a few years ago, said the animal has feet that are about two inches bigger than the average gorilla and is more flat-faced than other apes. Its behavior also sets it apart from other apes, researchers say.

Seeking answers to big ‘mystery ape’
CNN.com - Aug. 9, 2003

Thanks to freshyill for the heads up on this story. Like freshyill, I tend to think an undiscovered North American Great Ape, more commonly known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch, is likely to exist. Not a believer? Think science knows everything about the world? Google coelacanth. Science thought this fish extinct millions of years ago. Also, consider this recent find.

Comment Spam
Bastards got me again. The irony is they chose to spam my rant about comment spamming. This is annoying, to some extent more so than email spam, as it could potentially show up on my website.

The Next Great Comic Book Movie?
Thanks to Jerry Smith for giving me the heads up on the new trailer for Hellboy. While I’ve never read the book, I may have to if the movie is as good as it looks in the trailer. This film is directed by Guillermo del Toro, the same evil genius that brought us Blade II and Mimic (the orginal film). I know where I will be April 4, 2004.

Feed Your Head
I just finished re-reading The Keep by F. Paul Wilson. I’d forgottten what an interesting and compelling author Wilson is. Wilson has extended this initial book into a well-received series. So, I reread this book to get to know central characters again. For any fan of vampire novels, this is a must read.

Now, I am reading The White Plague by Frank Herbert best known for the ground-breaking Dune series. A big fan of Dune, I’ve read some other non-Dune work by Herbert (Hellstrom’s Hive and Eye). So far, The White Plague is excellent. First published in 1982, this book is eerily prescient in these days of widespread bio-terrorism threats.

I was very glad to hear Gregor read and loved Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders. It is easily the best business/self-help book I have ever read.

Site Redesign
One thing was made painfully obvious while blogging about ApacheCon, My site needs a lighter, less graphic-heavy skin. So, I have a new project.

Creating Dynamic PDFs using PHP by John Coggeshall
We use PDFs pretty extensively at work. Again, this is something that mostly sits in the guts of our application core. I’ve not yet been called on to fiddle with this stuff, but certainly feel better prepared prepared to do so after this session. The only potential problem is that much of the solutions were based on a commercial library. I’ll have to see if we already have it. If not, the knowledge will still apply, but perhaps not as readily.

Do you PHP? by Rasmus Lerdorf
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that one of the things I like most about OSS is the relative transprency between developers of technology and their audiences. Here, I had an opportunity to hear the creator/founder of PHP speak. Lerdorf offered a great deal of useful advice for tuning and securing PHP apps. All of which should prove immediately useful in my daily work. Great session!

Apache and Do-It-Yourself IT (DIY-IT) by Doc Searls
I am going to let Searls’ talk sink in a few days and provide a well-considered response. At the moment, I’ll simply say Searls posed a lot of really interesting theories and questions about the nature of communications and journalism as they relate to the Open Source Community. A great keynote to say the least.

PHP Attacks and Defense by Chris Shiflett
Security is the real bugaboo of PHP, at least the perceived bugaboo. Shiflett caught the ball Lerdorf threw in the earlier session and ran with it quite effectively. The central message to take away from both sessions was that PHP is not an inherently insecure language. Most of the discussion of PHP’s alleged insecurity has to do with applications which where not neccesarily built for security and therefore make themselves vulnerable; namely the “Nukes” (PHPNuke and Postnuke).

Such apps cause undue concern about inherent PHP security. Any language can be insecure, if coders do not take the appropriate measures to secure their apps. As a former Postnuke dev, I took notice. I know Xaraya aims to end this legacy. See the Slides >>

RSS Elements and Versions by Chris Pirillo
Ok. I detect a pattern here. As with his keynote, Pirillo took a long time to get to the meat of his presentation; which was essentially an extension of his keynote. This is not to say that he did not offer value, but the first 30 minutes covered ground that Mark Pilgrim covered more clearly and concisely on when introducing the Atom API on Monday.

As with his keynote, once Pirillo was on message he was fine. He again took up the content syndication banner and waved it high in the air. Again, I applaud his willingness to be in the frontlines. That said, if he does not tighten up his presentation when speaking to technically proficient audiences, he is going to start losing them.

So everyone knows, I am not hatin’ on Pirillo. I have a plan to make RSS work for me, so I want him to succeed and build awareness. Simply put, I was at the low end of the code-fu bell curve at ApacheCon. So if I was saying “C’mon, get to something I don’t know”, I am fairly certain most others were as well.

So Chris, just know the ApacheCon audience is not the same audience as Call for Help and tailor your presentations accordingly. All will then be well. On a more up note, I am glad you found your soulmate. Those are rare in this world. Congrats!

Subversion: Version Control Rethought by Greg Stein
So, what flavor was that WebDAV kool-aid? I’ve heard lots of good things about Subversion (SVN) as well. Turns out, it is built on top of WebDAV (or at least with it). I know Xaraya considered SVN before we went with BitKeeper for source control. SVN offers a lot of interesting features and definitely appears to be a considerable improvement of CVS. Whether or not the case is compelling enough to move us off of BK remains to be seen. Marcel, I’ll expect to be shot on sight for even opening thar can of worms. That said, I think it could be present an interesting solution at work, where we currently use CVS and bump in to some its vagaries on a semi-regular basis.

Wrapping up and heading out
The Closing Plenary was filled with well-wishing and door-prizes. Nothing earth-shattering unless you’ve been holding your breath for Geronimo. The project team demo-ed it running Sun’s pet store. Congrats guys.

After the plenary, Gregor, Michael and I took a crew to AJ’s Steakhouse at the Hard Rock Hotel. We all treated ourselves to an excellent meal and then retired to the hotel for beers, Cuba Libre and Sambuca by the pool. I learned a little German and enjoyed the company. Then, I gathered up a slightly buzzed Gregor and got him to the airport. He and Michael have a meeting in the morning in NYC. Here is hoping all goes well.

All in all, ApacheCon was a great experience. I feel as if my knowedge of both the technology and culture that surrounds Open Source development has grown immensely. I am richer for the experience; both personally and professionally. My head is now swimming with ideas for both work and Xaraya. Now, to let it all sink in, start downloading packages and then start playing.