in my screed on ipods and marathons, i hope i didn’t unintentionally leave anyone thinking i thought they thought i was dumb 🙂

“Beyond The Template Engine” is a nice little bit on templates that focuses mainly on smarty and contains the following bit of wisdom that most template zealots seem to forget:

“And remember: the point of template engines should be to separate your business logic from your presentation logic, not to separate your PHP code from your HTML code.”

[ via dangerousmeta ]

it’s hard to believe that five years ago kris and i were standing on a breezy lakeshore in wisconsin saying our wedding vows. even harder to imagine is the fact that you need to add roughly seven years on to the five to get the total number of years we’ve been in a relationship. how that time it does fly by. i’ve loved every minute of it.

amusingly, we bought a bottle of wine for our five year anniversary and a bottle for our ten and neither of us can remember which is which. we both suspect it might be the 1995 stags’ leap cabernet, but we’re not positive. hi. ho.

here’s to many, many more anniversaries.

well, that’s it. my
ipod

is

most definately dead

. and yes, i never did think that is was the greatest idea to

train for marathons with a device that had a hard drive

, but after a year of training – including running in the winter –
with no problems, i guess i decided to see just how much it could
take.

it’s a pretty amazing piece of hardware when you think about it. it
took a year-and-a-half of pounding, in temperature extremes from
sub-zero to over a hundred degrees fahrenheit , for runs as long as
18-20 miles; and to make the environment even more stressful, to
prevent skipping, i found i needed to tighly secure the ipod to my
upper arm with an

elastic bandage

. of course, this meant that the ipod was coated with a layers of
salty sweat after a long, hot run. obviously not the best idea for
things electronic that aren’t technically waterproof. so, yes, it
was “dumb” in a certain sense of the word, but it did make those
long winter runs a whole lot more enjoyable.

since it looks like post-warranty
ipod

work costs only slightly less than a new one, i’m
probably going to be forced to take it apart and see i bring it
back to life myself. there seem to be a few good resources on how
to disassemble the ipod, including

“complete ipod disassembly”

and the
“ipod
battery installation guide”

. it’s even relatively easy to

track down

the

toshiba 10 gig embedded hdd

that i’d need to replace. but after all that efficient gumshoe
work, i can’t seem to find a place to purchase the drive.
hmmmmmmmmm

having trouble coming up with a cohesive color strategy for your next Big Project? how about going natural with the prairie palette?

“From complex web applications to informative “brochure-ware” sites, naturally occurring color combinations have the potential to distinguish (by helping create a more memorable website), guide (by allowing users to focus on interactions), engage (by making page layouts comfortable and more inviting), and inspire (by offering new ideas for color selection).”

oh, the humanity. after surviving my
training for several marathons i think my ipod died today on a 20 miler. it just quit after 15 miles and now it won’t do anything. my ibook is not even recognizing it when i plut it into the firewire port so i can’t “restore” the software. it gets hot as if it’s charging when in plug it into the ac, but it doesn’t do anything if i try to “reset” it or put it into diagnostics mode. crap.

i’ll ignore it until tommorrow, but i don’t see things getting any better.

so let me get this straight. there’s a very
non-zero probability that

yellowstone could erupt

, obliterate everything within 650 miles and make things extremely
unsavory over the entire planet? nice.

“On August 10, the Denver Post reported that Liz
Morgan, a U.S. Geological Survey research geologist had discovered
a huge bulge underneath Yellowstone Lake that had risen 100 feet
from the lake floor. The bulge is two thousand feet long and has
the potential to explode at any time. Morgan was quoted as saying
that “The inflated plain is a potential and serious hazard and
possible precursor to a large hydrothermal explosion event.””

“”The impact of a Yellowstone eruption is terrifying to
comprehend.” says Professor McGuire. “Magma would be flung 50
kilometres into the atmosphere. Within a thousand kilometres
virtually all life would be killed by falling ash, lava flows and
the sheer explosive force of the eruption. One thousand cubic
kilometres of lava would pour out of the volcano, enough to coat
the whole of the USA with a layer 5 inches thick. The explosion
would be the loudest noise heard by man for 75,000
years.””

update: o.k. i’ll admit it. i didn’t really fully investigate the author of the article. via a metafilter thread i discover that the the author is a apocalyptic crack-pot. the usgs answers a few questions about what’s going on at yellowstone:

“Do any of the features beneath the lake relate to possible volcanic eruptions?

It is very unlikely. All active features are related to faults and hot water (hydrothermal) vents. Identified craters were formed by collapse or as a result of old hydrothermal explosions. Many of the rocks beneath the lake are lava flows more than 100,000 years old. ”