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WWE's Top Tweets, Instagram Photos and Viral Videos for Week of Aug. 4

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WWE's Top Tweets, Instagram Photos and Viral Videos for Week of Aug. 4
Ben Margot/Associated Press

After a week bogged down by talks of budget cuts and Alberto Del Rio's release, fans needed a pick-me-up and that came in the form of amusing WWE-related social media.

Stinging slaps and tables refusing to break highlighted some of the best tweets, Instagram photos and viral videos of the WWE world in the early part of August. Conan O'Brien poking fun at fictional failed wrestlers and Steve Austin saluting a longtime WWE employee made the list as well.

We begin there, the Texas Rattlesnake tipping his hat in a way only he can after WWE let timekeeper Mark Yeaton go. PWInsider's Mike Johnson reported the unexpected move, writing, "Yeaton had been with the company for decades and his departure was described to me as a sign that 'no one was safe' from the company cutbacks."

One of Yeaton's duties during his tenure was apparently to toss Austin beers during his trademark celebrations, as Austin noted on Twitter:

Yeaton's exit reinforces how unstable employment within WWE is right now. All this recent budget trimming reminds one of an unfortunate reality of the business, that the machine rolls on with or without you.

Having to get staples in one's head has been another unfortunate WWE reality as of late.

That was true for Roman Reigns after his Last Man Standing match with Kane. The ring steps cut open the top of his head. He shared an image of his freshly stapled dome via Twitter:

It's definitely intriguing to get a backstage peek like that, but it's also unsettling. Scripted or not, pro wrestling is a gnarly business at times.

Luke Harper wasn't going to let Reigns be the only one to disturb fans through social media. He posed for a shot on WWE's Instagram that captured his creepiness quite well:

He doesn't need staples to make one's stomach squirm, just an ominous glare peeking out from the shadows.

Should one need a visual palate-cleanser after looking at those two photos, The Bella Twins have you covered. The view of Brie and Nikki Bella walking backstage before Stephanie McMahon and Brie's contract signing on Monday's Raw was more enjoyable than many of the matches on that show.

The pic had more likes and comments than anything on the company's Instagram account for the week.

This is the kind of thing WWE keeps the Bella Twins around for despite their less-than-stellar ring skills. Pretty girls equal clicks.

O'Brien's take on WWE's recent slew of releases sought viewership through hilarity rather than sex appeal. On his talk show, he trotted out a number of fake failed wrestlers from the Puerto Rican Vegan to Lazy Boy Reese:

Fans of WWE during the early '90s will notice that Donnie Duct Tape looks a lot like Bastion Booger.

WWE produced two amusing videos of its own this week, the first of which centered around moments in which the announce table refused to give in to the wrestlers' demands.

The compilation features Devon Dudley, Kurt Angle and Rob Van Dam all creating a thud as they collide with an unforgiving piece of furniture:

A collection of slaps was equally entertaining. WWE's latest top-10 video traced the history of wrestlers and non-wrestlers alike smacking each other in the face.

That includes Ted DiBiase and AJ Lee swinging away. But as the video shows, Stephanie McMahon is WWE's queen of slaps:

The order is certainly debatable, but it's a fun watch regardless. The end of Monday's Raw delivered the most fun moment of the week, though.

Heath Slater defeating Seth Rollins was a welcome surprise, an upset that gave a perennial loser the unfamiliar sensation of attaining momentum. Wrestling Memes went heavy on the caps in their response to the victory:

Dolph Ziggler, who knows exactly what it's like to suffer loss after loss, added his thoughts. His tweet on Slater was heartfelt and right on:

Being a WWE Superstar at the bottom of the pile is a tough endeavor. One attempts to get noticed, to grab hold of the audience with just minimal opportunities to work with.

Slater got a major one Monday. For his next big win, though, Yeaton won't be around to ring the bell afterward.

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Are Chelsea on the Verge of Emulating Manchester United's Class of '92?

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Are Chelsea on the Verge of Emulating Manchester United's Class of '92?
Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

Things are changing at Chelsea.

The club's transfer dealings this summer have shown the determination at Stamford Bridge for Chelsea to dominate English football once again.

The additions of Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Filipe Luis have made Chelsea more than Premier League title contenders—they've made them favourites.

Under the guidance of Jose Mourinho, a new dawn is breaking.

Not content with just splashing the cash on big-name stars, there is equally a determination to create them in west London these days.

Clive Rose/Getty Images

From bringing through just one first-team player in the past decade or more in John Terry, Chelsea suddenly have an army of youngsters on the brink of making it into Mourinho's long-term plans.

The line-ups the Chelsea boss picked early in pre-season would have been a proud moment for the club's academy coaches as Chelsea fielded teams made up mostly of players from their youth setup.

Indeed, the Blues' first outing against Wycombe Wanderers featured eight academy players in the first half, with a further six coming off the bench at the interval.

Chelsea won 5-0, three of their goals coming from youngsters—Patrick Bamford scored the opener, while Izzy Brown bagged an impressive brace.

Ben Hoskins/Getty Images

With the deep pockets of Roman Abramovich meaning Chelsea can invest in ready-made stars from across the globe, it was refreshing.

There was an element of Mourinho having little choice in fielding so many young players given the World Cup had decimated his squad, yet the performance told the true story.

Chelsea don't just have numbers in the academy anymore, they have talented players who are going to enjoy successful careers in the game.

Winning the FA Youth Cup in three of the last five seasons has also hinted at that.

The big challenge now is whether they can be integrated into Mourinho's team effectively enough to ensure their careers scale the heights of players they will be replacing—the likes of Terry, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard.

Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images

Mourinho is one who seems to think they will.

"If, in a few years, [Lewis] Baker, [Izzy] Brown and [Dominic] Solanke are not national team players, I should blame myself," he recently declared, per the Mirror.

Focusing on just three of the players who have impressed this summer, they were encouraging words from Mourinho.

Not since Manchester United's famous Class of '92 have we seen an English club blood a team of youngsters that has gone on to deliver success at the highest level.

United fans and neutrals—begrudgingly or not—often eulogise over the impact of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers, Gary and Phillip, for a reason.

Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Their emergence as a group was unique and it's going to take something special to emulate them.

Chelsea themselves have a team of youth graduates equally lauded in west London: Docherty's Diamonds.

When Tommy Docherty was appointed Chelsea manager in 1961, he bravely ditched his team of experienced names in favour of his youngsters who had recently enjoyed back-to-back victories in the FA Youth Cup in 1960 and 1961, not to mention finishing runners-up in 1958.

"I’m a great believer that if you’re good enough, you’re old enough," Docherty explains to Bleacher Report.

Getty Images/Getty Images
Tommy Docherty in his days as Chelsea manager

"They’d just won the FA Youth Cup for the second time, so I threw them in because they were good enough.

"It was all down to Dickie Foss, the youth coach at Chelsea back then. He was responsible for all these young players coming to the club. It wasn’t about a culture or anything like that. He was the man making it happen for Chelsea.

"He brought them through and I gave them the chance to prove they were good enough. They never disappointed me."

The players in question were Ron "Chopper" Harris, Ken Shellito, Bobby Tambling, Peter Bonetti, Terry Venables, Peter Houseman, John Hollins and Peter Osgood.

Peter Kemp/Associated Press
Peter Osgood

From youngsters, inexperienced and untested in professional football, they all became legends along the King's Road. With the exception of Venables and Shellito, they all hung around long enough to inspire Chelsea to their first-ever victory in the FA Cup in 1970, too, adding the European Cup Winners' Cup a year later.

"You’ve got to back your judgement as a manager," Docherty continues. "Every young player is going to have bad games and make mistakes, but you need to trust your judgement that he is good enough.

"I dropped Barry Bridges—an England international—for Peter Osgood, who was just 17. I said to Ossie that he had 10 games to prove himself and he went out and did it.

Getty Images/Getty Images

"In a way, that shows my inexperience as a manager at the time, yet in terms of ability, Ossie was a far better player than Barry Bridges."

Chelsea were producing talented players at such a rate, they had not long sold Jimmy Greaves to AC Milan when Docherty was appointed boss.

Greaves was a star, one of the finest strikers English football has produced. In 169 games for the club, he scored 132 goals, including four in his final appearance in a Chelsea shirt.

"Had the chairman not sold Jimmy, we would have won the championship four or five times with that team," Docherty laments.

Associated Press
Jimmy Greaves

That era of players still wrote its name into the history books, though, with Ron Harris leading the way as captain.

"Tommy used to shout from the dug out: 'Come on my Diamonds!'," Chopper remembers.

"He was a manager who gave youngsters a chance. His philosophy was that youngsters never cheat, that they'll work hard all day to prove themselves.

"When I made my debut at 17, I thought Tom was the bee's knees. I would have run through a brick wall for him. Now, you think of the young lads Jose has, if he starts playing them, they’ll be running up the Fulham Road telling everyone they’re playing for Chelsea's first team and they’ll love him for it."

Paul Gilham/Getty Images
Ron Harris

And that's the key to it all—Mourinho needs to play his youngsters the way Docherty did if they're to achieve their potential.

In these days of short managerial stints, when it's difficult enough to build a team around experienced names let alone youngsters, is that approach even possible?

"Let’s be honest, look at some of the sides now and they’re dominated by foreign players," Harris continues. "There’s not many homegrown players. Manchester City, Spurs, Arsenal, Manchester United—they’re all paying big money for overseas players.

"Chelsea are spending money themselves, but they're also trying to get younger players into the squad, which is a positive thing to see. The problem at the moment is you get more opportunities lower down to play regular football, so a lot of them are sent out on loan."

Journalist Clive Batty is a man who knows the Docherty's Diamonds era well, writing the acclaimed book Kings of the King's Road that documented their rise.

Unlike the 1960s, though, Batty sees the pressures and culture of modern football playing a significant role in the development of players now.

"It's hard for any club in the modern era as the pressure to succeed is so intense," he explains. "If the players are going to develop, they need to go on loan as it's more beneficial than reserve-team football.

"It's about finding the right club, though, as lower down there can be a tendency for kick-and-rush tactics.

"What I'd like to see at Chelsea is for Mourinho to play these young players in the League Cup. Outside of that, it's difficult to see how you can give a youngster a chance over players who play for Brazil, Spain and other countries.

Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images

"Logically, you can see it's not going to happen."

Chelsea supporter David Johnstone is in agreement.

"If Dominic Solanke and Patrick Bamford are going to make it, Diego Costa needs to be the last big signing up front," he says.

Docherty: "Look at Fernando Torres. He was a great player at Atletico Madrid and Liverpool, but it hasn’t quite happened for him at Chelsea.

"It’s judgment time for him for now. He hasn’t delivered and the club should get him on his bike, give a young striker the chance to do what Torres hasn’t—score goals.

"Chelsea shouldn’t have a £50 million striker as their third choice. For that type of money, he should be playing every week. When you pay that type of money, you’re buying the finished article.

"The third-choice position should be given to a youngster looking to make his mark."

Where to draw the line, though.

Mourinho's conundrum is such: He has a duty to deliver success at Stamford Bridge and in an era where Chelsea's rivals at home and abroad continue to spend huge sums on international stars, he needs some of his own to keep up.

Those very players who are delivering success are blocking the route to the first team for those in the academy, however.

Joseph Heller calls it Catch-22.

"You've only got to look at Manchester United," Docherty concludes. "Since the Class of '92, they haven't had another generation like it. And when things went wrong last year, all we hear now is about spending sprees and the big names the club is targeting.

"How can young players flourish in that environment?"

Chelsea's Rising Young Talent
Player Position
Lewis Baker Midfielder
Patrick Bamford Striker
Izzy Brown Midfielder
Jeremie Boga Midfielder
Charly Musonda Midfielder
Charlie Colkett Midfielder
Ruben Loftus-Cheek Midfielder
Jordan Houghton Midfielder
Nathaniel Chalobah Midfielder/Defender
Todd Kane Defender
Dominic Solanke Striker
Jay Dasilva Midfielder/Defender
Andreas Christensen Defender

Johnstone is a well-respected figure among Chelsea fans, producing the CFC UK fanzine. He believes a team of homegrown talent would be supported from the Stamford Bridge terraces regardless of success.

"If Mourinho was to field a team of youngsters from the academy, any real Chelsea fan would be behind them and supporting them every week. Whether he would be given the time is another thing, but I also think Roman Abramovich wants to see it.

"As fans, we would love to see a team of homegrown players and I really hope this current crop of players can go on to emulate what we've seen in the past.

Can Chelsea's current generation of youngsters emulate the club's previous success?

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"It's going to be very difficult, though."

Batty: "Football has changed now. Docherty's young team was relegated in his first season, but they soon bounced back the following year.

"They were allowed to fail before they succeeded. That wouldn't happen now."

The odds may be stacked against Chelsea emulating the success of Docherty's Diamonds, let alone United's Class of '92, although Harris is keen to stress one point:

"You can see a little bit of that Docherty’s Diamonds era at Chelsea now with the likes of Frank Lampard leaving and more younger players on the brink. If that continues, who knows what can happen?"

*Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.

Garry Hayes is Bleacher Report's lead Chelsea correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @garryhayes

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The Red Bull Air Race: Electric Englishman Paul Bonhomme Makes It 2 of 2

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The Red Bull Air Race: Electric Englishman Paul Bonhomme Makes It 2 of 2

The Red Bull Air Race, for the second year in a row, went to San Diego. And for the second race in a row, Paul Bonhomme took a win.

However, the only difference to this race was that instead of Hannes Arch competing for the win against Bonhomme, it was defending champion Mike Mangold, but he still wasn't enough to stop the Electric Englishman.

Bonhomme beat Mangold by a full 2 seconds or so while the third place run was won by Kirby Chambliss against Hannes Arch.

Bonhomme was ecstatic. "I'm very pleased to take the win" said Bonhomme about his run, "you have to be consistent in every session all the time" he added later.

Further down the field, Nigel Lamb with his new set of wings, pulled off a disappointing sixth place on a bad setup while Peter Besenyei touched a gate and took only two points. Glen Dell rounded out the pilots by coming in last.

The Californian crowd got to see some high flying and were rewarded with two American pilots on the podium.

Next up on the calendar, in over three weeks time is Detroit. For the first time, the motor city will make way for airplanes. This will also be the first time that the Red Bull Air Race will be hosted in two countries simultaneously, as Detroit is bordering the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario.

See you in Detroit!

Photography Credit: Daniel Grund, 2008

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Will the Philadelphia Eagles Capitalize On Its QB Riches?

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Will the Philadelphia Eagles Capitalize On Its QB Riches?
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Now that the Saints have partied on Bourbon Street and paraded through New Orleans to celebrate Sunday's Super Bowl triumph, media and fan attention quickly turns to key offseason issues throughout the rest of the country. One of the biggest story lines in the NFL, which has been brewing over the past month, involves the Philadelphia Eagles three headed quarterback quandary.

The airwaves and Internet are filled with opinions and speculation about the possibilities and ultimately what the Eagles should do with their three starting-caliber quarterbacks. With so many teams in desperate need of a face lift at this  most critical and impactful position, several of them should be looking for the Eagles to share the wealth.

Philadelphia clearly seems to be in a very enviable position, and if handled correctly, it could help propel them towards that ever elusive Super Bowl championship. But, the key question now is whether Andy Reid and company will do just that, or will they bungle a golden opportunity?

I staked my opinion a couple weeks ago in a post ("The Philadelphia Eagles: Seven Semi-Controversial Steps to a Super Bowl Title ") regarding Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick. With the situation continuing to evolve, it now appears the Eagles best course of action might be to wrap their arms around one of their QB's and aid their efforts to fortify their team by trading the other two.

Initial trade rumors primarily revolved around McNabb and Vick, but now speculation has also turned towards Kevin Kolb. Perhaps this is because teams contacting the Eagles are getting a message that Donovan is not going anywhere?

Or, maybe it is a matter of teams setting their sights on a player that best fits their particular scenario. Not ready for prime time clubs could be looking to rebuild around a young quarterback such as Kolb. Conversely, teams such as the Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers or possibly the Minnesota Vikings feel they have all the pieces to go with an established veteran such as McNabb or Vick.

Although going young would likely be their first choice, rebuilding organizations like the Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, St. Louis Rams, Oakland Raiders, and Washington Redskins might be willing to take a shot with any of the three players due to their dire need for a quality signal caller to propel them in the right direction.

In terms of economic theory, the Eagles are clearly in a great position due to overall demand outstripping supply throughout the league. In fact, they might hold the only attractive excess supply of projected starting quarterbacks currently in the NFL.

Of course, in a free market system, capitalizing on the excess inventory comes down to the decisions, actions, and tactics deployed by the supplier. How the Eagles brass play their cards has the potential to make a huge difference in the team's near-term and future success.

And, its not just who they decide to keep, move or let walk—it is going to be all about the art of the negotiation and the deal.

The most pressing situation involves Vick as the clock continues to tick towards Philadelphia's early March option expiration date. Because they would be obligated to pay Vick $5.25 million for his services if they exercise that option, many believe they have a short window to trade him and otherwise will have to let him walk.

My perspective is substantially different. By now it is clear that teams around the league are interested, so the Eagles should not be bound by this trigger date. If they can work out a deal of commensurate value prior to then, fine. If not, they need to pony up and keep him—for the time being.

General Managers around the NFL are not inquiring about Vick to make him a back-up. Clearly the whole Wildcat thing was a bust. They would want Vick as a starter—and wouldn't shy away from those financial terms, particularly since both sides would be willing to renegotiate a longer deal.

The Eagles need to lock him up (pun intended) if need be, and use the abundance of potential suitors to extract a second or third round pick. Anything less than that will signal a serious organizational weakness in negotiating skill. And, surely, they can't let him walk for nothing.

Its no secret, the most controversial and critical aspect comes down to the whole McNabb versus Kolb debate. Who will Reid clutch in a bear hug and who will he tender a parting handshake?

Since the post playoff meltdown press conference in Dallas, the signals have been noticeably mixed. The weak organizational vote of confidence for McNabb has been conspicuous. While McNabb has clearly stated his desire to finish his career in midnight green, black, and silver—the team has played things straight down the middle.

Perhaps this is to avoid tipping their hand and maximize negotiating strength? Or, perhaps Reid and the team had not reached a conclusion or are ambivalent until they assess market value of each player?

Retaining both McNabb and Kolb is certainly a viable option—as long as the plan is to have the latter carrying the clipboard. A training camp competition is a bad idea on several fronts, but if Reid were inclined that way, he should just go ahead and trade McNabb for a high draft pick.

The conditions seem to be right, though, to trade Kolb now and invest the spoils in shoring up the current team weaknesses. Would swapping Kolb to the Rams and former Eagles coach Steve Spagnuolo for free safety O.J. Atogwe be a possibility?

In the absence of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the door is open to creative deals. For the other teams in the hunt for a new quarterback, it would certainly seem that each would possess a safety, linebacker, offensive lineman, or defensive end that would fancy the Eagles' interest.

My point of view has been abundantly clear that the best choice to lead the Eagles is McNabb, but how the Eagles brass capitalizes on their current embarrassment of riches at this valued position can have profound impact on the team's prospects over the next three years.

Shrewd decision making and handling right now could re-position the Eagles as a true Super Bowl contender—starting this coming season. Certainly, a good portion of it will be about the "who" and the "what", but the "how" will be critically important, too.

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NBA Rumors: Toronto Raptors

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NBA Rumors: Toronto Raptors
Jamie Squire/Getty Images

 In my previous article "Rebuild Stage", I talked about all the things the Raptors are working on, and who they are trading and who they might end up trading. Well now, the stage has begun.

This team has definitly been through some struggles, as they seem far from success, although to get there you have to start somewhere right? Well let me take you through the latest of the rumours and draft speculations out there.

Hedo Turkoglu

The latest news from Hedo stage that Bryan Collangelo has already worked together a trade with an unnamed team to trade Turkoglu on Draft day. This could help the raptors aquire 2 new pieces for their new franchise, and get rid of one of their biggest contracts weighing down the team.

Jose Calderon

Now Jose has been in many trade discussions, but that has not changed yet. It seems the Raptors still have Jose on the table up for trades, but in return they arn't looking for another point guard. So scratch that Moe Williams rumour for the 2010-2011 list. From the most recent news for Jose, it is said that if Bosh decides to leave Toronto in a sign and trade deal, Jose will be included to whichever team is aquiring Bosh.

June 24th

This day is one of the biggest days in Toronto's offseason. Draft Night. The Raptors already have a 13th pick in their hands, and they are not looking to move it up or down, instead are looking for another pick. As above, Turkoglu could be a part of helping the Raptors recieve a new draft pick. The Most likely pick right now going for 13th is going to be Avery Bradley. There are other possibilites as well, but lets look through the players of interest.

Now lets be fair, the 13th pick isn't the greatest pick out there, but its a start. It may not give us a superstar, but it could give us an allstar, or a very good role player. Lets start the name of prospects with the one everyone has heard of most.

Avery Bradley

Everyone heard of John Wall by now right? Well did you know Avery Bradley was the name along with John Wall for best player coming out of highschool? This guy is alot like John Wall, but just doesn't have that pointguard vision like John. Avery Bradley is one of the best guards coming into the NBA in this draft class. He has a solid mid range, and is known for his great perimeter defence, which is something the raptors desperatly need. This kid is also extremely athletic, and if raptors draft him they will see the most athletic back court of Toronto, best since Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady. Avery Bradley won the McDonald's Dunk Contest back in 2008, and the Resume for this guy just keeps going. If the Raptors draft him, they will lack a pure PG, such as Calderon, but they will certainly fill that defence hole, and be one of the more exciting teams. If you have anything bad to say about this guy, then go ahead. I'm actually looking forward to seeing him play in a Raptors jersey.

Hassan Whiteside

Hassan Whiteside is one of the best blockers coming into the league, as he averaged 5.4 BPG in his Freshman year in the NCAA, although he lacks the offensive ability. This guy could make a great fit for the raptors, mainly because picking him puts Bargnani in his original spot, the 4. With Bargnani playing the 4, he is able to play much easier, and won't have as much pressure on the defensive end. Rumours are Raptors are going to pick Avery Bradley, and try to pick this guy up with a Trade deal.

The Draft

Those two guys are the biggest names in the Raptors draft rumour. Anyone else would be a bust for all of the Raptors fans. These two are the most exciting and best players available at our 13th pick, seemingly everyone better then them will be picked. If any of the Top 10 projected prospects slip to their pick, we will most likely chose that player.

What to expect?

The Raptors are found to be the team making the most calls and making the most deals right now. Bryant Collangelo is working extremely hard to try to get this franchise back together, whether its with or with out Bosh. By the way, don't keep your hopes up for him returning. The Raptors are one of the teams expected to make the most changes to their lineup, expect to see them without atleast 3 of their starting 5 gone for next season. I say this team will either make the playoffs next year, or win less than 40 games next season. Lets hope for the best!

Any Fake Rumours?

The biggest fake rumour about this team out there right now is Jarrett Jack. Many rumours are out there saying JJ will follow Chris Bosh if he leaves, or that he's in the trade market for the Raptors. Jack found out about what the media was saying, and cleared it with Bryan Collangelo that he doesn't have any plans to leave.

Another news, from my last article I spoke of Micheal Beasley coming to the Raptors with a sign and trade deal for Bosh, if Bosh wants to leave. This trade is currently on hold and will only happen if CB decides he wants to be Wade's new Robin.

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LeBron James: He Never Wanted To Be Great

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LeBron James: He  Never Wanted To Be Great
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To start off i first want to say I in no way shape or form hate Lebron for leaving. Now the way he went about it is a different story for a different time.

The evidence of him not wanting to be Great was there all along. Not to diminish his talent he is one of the most talented to players ever.

He himself never stated he wanted to go down as the greatest ever. The media and fans just automatically were under the perception he wanted to be the greatest.

All along he stated all he wanted to do was win. He never wanted the pressure of taking the last shot for his team the burden was placed upon him and he accepted it unwillingly.

He deferred to his teammates on several occasion's early on his career for game winning shots we should have known then. Now that is what a team player would do but a leader would take the shot. He never desired to be the Cav's savior.

He was born into it. It was a lot of pressure to try to bring a title to Cleveland and he just could not do it for whatever reason.

In many ways all the blame for not winning a title is not his fault. Other roster moves that should not have been made were made and thats the gamble you take.

I held out hope he would deliver a title to Cleveland but unfortunately it became evident in the Boston series.

Granted he had a strained elbow but you just could not see the desire to win in his eyes. He had several lackluster performances against Boston. Ultimately the Cavs were defeated by Boston and that is when it became clear to me his career in Cleveland was over. Lebron ripping off his jersey going into the tunnel will be forever etched into my mind.

Lebron's family structure as a child growing up has a profound effect on his ideals today. As we all know he didnt have a father growing up and he and his mother moved around a lot. As a child Lebron did not have a lot of family around and he just wanted to be apart of something.

When he finally got in high school he developed a relationship with four guys on his basketball team. They won titles together and they became his family. That is why today many of his friends are around and he considers them family.

That is why when Lebron announced on his one hour show "The Decision" he would be taking his talents to Miami it did not surprise me.

There is a direct correlation between him deciding to go to Miami and his days as a high school kid winning titles with his buddies.

It all began in Beijing in "08" he developed a serious bond with three guys in particular. Dwyane Wade,Chris Paul, and Chris Bosh. It is no coincidence that two of those guys are on Miami's team.

Over in Beijing Wade,Paul, and Bosh became more then teammates to Lebron they became family.

In a sense Lebron is trying to recreate what he had in high school. He wants to win titles with his friends and capture fame for it.

In his press conference with Wade and Bosh and the rest of the Heat organization he preached "Family"

Lebron said Pat Riley preached how everything in Miami is done as a family. Lebron loved that because deep down inside he is still that little kid in Akron Ohio who just wants to be apart of something.

So Lebron ultimately made his decision and sacrificed his chance of going down as the greatest player ever for a chance at winning titles with his buddies something he said he could not pass up.

Lebron just showed us who he truly is and now we can see.

"He never wanted to be great he wanted to be apart of something Great"

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Kenyon Martin Could Be Included In Melo Deal!

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Kenyon Martin Could Be Included In Melo Deal!
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 The Nets may get back former Net K-Mart in a trade for Carmelo Anthony. Martin will make about $16 million this season, his last season under contract for Denver, and that money has, arguably, kept Denver from making more roster moves this summer. If the the Nets take Martin with Melo the trade could get done. A package that Devin Harris, or Troy Murphy and Terrence Williams and draft picks makes a lot of sense for the Nuggets. K-Mart would replace Troy Murphy at the power forward position. But a source said Martin will miss "significant time" this season: K-Mart is working diligently on strengthening his knees this summer. In the playoffs last season, Nuggets power forward Kenyon Martin valiantly came back from injury to his left Knee, but he said those efforts may keep him out for some time this season. Martin had underwent left knee surgery this summer. K-Mart was a big time player when he play for the Nets. The Nets miss that when management let him get away. To get Melo on the team, bringing back Martin is a no brainer. The New Nets would bring back that swagger that was missing for years.

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Is Brandon Lloyd the Best Receiver in the NFL?

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Is Brandon Lloyd the Best Receiver in the NFL?
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One of Brandon Lloyd's jaw-dropping plays.

Brandon Lloyd was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the fourth round of the 2003 draft with the 124th pick. At the denouement of Lloyd’s collegiate career, he established himself as one of the most prolific receivers in the history of the University of Illinois’ football program.

At the dawn of his NFL career, Lloyd was always considered to be a very talented receiver who could never liberate the full potential of that incredible talent. He often came to meetings late and never really applied himself to his profession.

During his tenure as a San Francisco 49er, Lloyd’s production was nothing but average. He never once produced a 1,000-yard season and never surpassed 50 catches in a season. In his sophomore and junior seasons, Lloyd did however display an adequate ability to get to the end zone: He produced 11 total touchdowns during that time period.

The 49ers were tired of waiting for him to develop and unleash his potential. Thus resulting in them trading him to the Washington Redskins in the 2006 offseason for two subsequent draft picks in the 2006 and 2007 NFL drafts.

In Washington, Lloyd’s luck didn’t improve; in fact, it worsened. Lloyd’s production was absolutely abysmal. In his first year with the Redskins, Lloyd averaged 1.5 receptions and 24.3 yards per game in 15 games; mind you that Lloyd was a starter as evident by his 12 starts that season. Consequently, Lloyd lacked much participation in the Redskins' offense in the 2007 season. He was subsequently released by the Redskins after the 2007 season.

Thence, Lloyd was signed by the Chicago Bears, where he yet again didn’t show much improvement.

After his short stint with the Bears, Lloyd signed with the Broncos, where he was reunited with Kyle Orton, the same QB he played with in Chicago.

With the bevy of talented receivers on the 2009 Broncos roster, Lloyd only played in two games. Thenceforth, in peculiar and befuddling fashion, Lloyd would establish himself as the best wide receiver in the NFL (in my opinion of course).

Now… I say in “my opinion” because labels such as “best” and “greatest” are often very subjective, contextual and most importantly in and of themselves, very loaded terms.

In the 2010 season, Lloyd’s production exploded exponentially. He led the entire league with 1,448 yards receiving. His 11 touchdowns were tied for fourth best in the entire league.

His most remarkable statistic however, is maintaining 18.8 yards per reception while being among the most targeted receivers in the entire NFL (153 passes were thrown his way). While his 50 percent catch rate is certainly unremarkable, the caveat of having the third highest deep percentage (44.4 percent) among receivers in the league certainly reduces the stench of his catch rate.

In the Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replace (DYAR) rankings, Lloyd finished second only to Mike Wallace for the 2010 season. In the efficiency apparatus of Defense-adjusted Yards Over Average (DVOA) Lloyd finished seventh in the league.

It’s relevant to point out that all the receivers rated ahead of Lloyd in DVOA were targeted extremely less than Lloyd. The only receiver that was rated ahead of Lloyd in DVOA and targeted more the 100 times is Greg Jennings. Even so, Lloyd was still targeted 28 more times than Jennings.

The conclusion of my thesis will not be of arbitrary statistics, nonsensical awards or some ridiculous team/game he was selected to play. While all those have value in some way, in terms evaluation of a players true talent they rarely give a clear and precise picture.

Watching games on television, or reviewing “tape,” and even watching highlights tend to provide the fanatic with a more succinct idea of players production and/or talent.

With that said, I provide you with this video to judge for yourself.

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Tommy Tuberville's Future: Betting Game for a Betting Man?

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Tommy Tuberville's Future: Betting Game for a Betting Man?

Tony Franklin is O-U-T of Auburn—this just a day after head coach Tommy Tuberville adamantly defended Franklin in his routine, early week press conference.

With a dismal offensive start to a season that was supposed to be supercharged by Franklin’s first year at the OC helm with his custom spread offense, Auburn currently finds itself 2-2 in the SEC, 4-2 overall with no sign of improvement in the offensive game.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise.  After all, what better a point in the season to conduct a major overhaul of a hot rod that hasn’t been so hot?  The upcoming Arkansas game at home should give Tuberville somewhat of a break to get a win, regroup and execute the next step of his plan (assuming there is one...we will).

The Tigers' schedule gets progressively tougher after this weekend with road tests at West Virginia and Ole Miss, followed by Georgia at home and then you-know-who at the end of the season in Tuscaloosa.

Now, go with me for a moment on a speculative journey, a mental trip consisting of unverified, potentially inaccurate ideas regarding this recent development on The Plains...if for no other reason than it’s too intriguing not to.

The end of the 2007 season was a crossroads for Tommy Tuberville and the Auburn Tigers.  Tuberville’s contract was up for renewal.  Tuberville delayed signing the contract for reportedly wanting the university to remove the “buyout” clause from the agreement.  The university refused to do so and wouldn’t budge on this significant stipulation.

After the standoff, Tuberville relented and signed with the existing agreement intact, “buyout” clause and all.

Now, why would a head coach be so insistent on having a “buyout” clause removed from his agreement in Tuberville's situation?  Hmmm.

You and I will never hear what’s discussed behind the many closed doors of college football human resource management, but it’s safe to assume there are many, many discussions between university kings and warlords that serve as catalysts for many of the ground-shaking events we see, such as personnel changes.

Back to our magic speculation bus: It’s common knowledge that Phillip Fulmer is on the ropes at Tennessee this season, and as usual there are other programs with midterm grades that put their head coaches in jeopardy.  Could there be a different shade of orange in Tuberville's future?

Perhaps the wheels started turning for Tuberville after the Vandy loss.  Maybe they were already in motion when the season began.  In either case, I speculate we will see some very interesting changes to the coaching landscape in the SEC by the end of the 2008 season—and I think Coach Tuberville will add yet another twist to an already interesting story.

Talk about parity in college football—how about parity in college football coaching jobs?

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Listen to free music played by iPengin

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iPengin "...I thought we had something special, we had something good..." ♥
iPengin "...I still need you, I still care about you, though everything been said and done, I still feel you, like I'm right beside you..." ♥

I Still---Backstreet Boys **Lyrics**

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iPengin "...but baby I can't help it, you keep me drowning in your ♥..." -faints-

Drowning Backstreet Boys Lyrics

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iPengin "...but I will ♥ you more than, I won't say the words and take them back..."

More Than That w/ Lyrics

| play
iPengin "...baby, please try to forgive, stay here don't put out the glow..." ♥ -starts to melt-
iPengin -telephone rings- "...one of her friends found out that she wasn't my only one..." That's right. We see you's.
iPengin -bops head- Wheee..!! "...and that makes you larger than life..." -high kick- XD
iPengin -starts break dancing- "...backstreet's back, alright..." ♥ -dropkicks someone- XD
iPengin Woohoo! "...believe when I say, 'I want it that way'..." ♥ Even if I lose followers for it, you know that you want it that way. XD
iPengin "...as long as you ♥ me, baby..." -wink wink- dedicate to @Luquester who is loving the song right now.
iPengin "...I don't want to wait, for us to be over, I want to know right now..." ♥

Paula Cole- I Don't Want To Wait

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iPengin "...thank God, I found you..." ♥ -giggles- (>^.^<)

Thank God I Found You [Lyrics]

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iPengin "...I ♥ you, goodbye..."
iPengin "...fifteen..." Good song. For those of you who just started freshman year. :)

FifteenTaylor Swift

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iPengin "...you're too late to come around on your white horse..." -sigh-
iPengin "...I ♥ you...goodbye..." -sigh-
iPengin Just dance, that's pretty good. I ♥ it!!!
iPengin "...cherry cherry boom boom..." ♥ "...eh, eh, nothing else I can say..."
iPengin "...I am, I'm too fabulous..." ♥ "...Merde, I love them Jimmy Choo..."
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Listen to free music by Avril Lavigne Tribute

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SocialGreg Life's like this...that's the way it is...
Rue_d_Albert Morning! (in my case Afternoon ;-)) @ellendiane: "good morn!@Rue_d_Albert: "@ellengalvao"Avril Lavigne- tribute- Complicated" (reblip)

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Listen to free music by Makai

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Friday, September 29, 2006

The only man to ever enter parliament with honourable intentions.

We watched V for Vendetta the other night and I though I ought to blog about November 5th when the date comes round. Only, I will hopefully be editing the final pages of my book come that time. So rather like posting about Easter in February, I’m going to post about Bonfire Night today. Long and factually-dubious history, I’m afraid, but really important history. I told you I was getting stuff out of my system.

The first thing to say about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot is that Fawkes was a scapegoat. Robert Catesby was the charismatic mastermind and perhaps a far more interesting character, but he got himself shot before the authorities could touch him. They needed to vilify a living person; someone to be subjected to a very public execution. And Guy Fawkes was the chap who had been caught red-handed in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, surrounded by barrels of gunpowder. His face fitted.

Fortunately, about to be hung, drawn and quartered, Guy leapt off the scaffold and broke his neck, resulting in a gratefully instant death. Phew! His surviving accomplices were not so lucky.

Now, this is a four hundred-year-old failed terrorist plot. Is it relevant to anything today? Well there are two answers to this. The first is that very few revellers attending bonfire parties will be considering what a “joyful day of deliverance” it was when King James escaped assassination – nor are they likely to be burning effigies of the Pope as they did in the early celebrations. But the annual moral panic about the dangers of fireworks has become a tradition in this country; it’s part of what makes us British.

The second answer concerns the usefulness of history. And yes, I think this is a very important period in history which has resonance in our times.

Everything changed on 5/11. Even America changed.

With hindsight, the division of the Christian Church would seem inevitable. Non-conformist ideas were almost bound to spring up here and there. But perhaps more to the point, the Roman Catholic Church was so huge with so much power that sooner or later some monarch or other was going to resent that power and break away.

However, the Tudors really didn’t do the English people any favours. First of all there’s Henry VIII, who might have been a good Catholic had he been able to keep his hose up. But he couldn’t, and we broke away from Rome. Then under his son Edward VI things get a bit more radical. Then of course Mary comes along and starts using Protestants as kindling.

Elizabeth I is the other way inclined and being Queen for forty-five years, at least offered something like stability. Unfortunately, by this time you have very serious sectarian divisions. People on all sides have seen persecution for believing what they believe. Some Protestants are edging towards Puritanism, believing that Elizabeth’s reforms haven’t gone far enough. Many Protestants regard Catholics as traitors. After all, we are spending a fair amount of time at war with Catholic Spain and Ireland, and when Elizabeth was excommunicated, the Pope stated that any Catholic who took her out was absolved from the sin of murder.

Elizabeth dies without any children or surviving siblings in 1603. And the strongest (if not the most logical) candidate for the throne is her cousin three times removed, James VI of Scotland. He is the son of Mary Queen of Scots; the Catholic Queen who attempted to depose Elizabeth as the Queen of England – a threat that Elizabeth had responded to by chopping her head off.

So it’s 1605 and we have James I of England, VI of Scotland on the throne. Shakespeare’s latest is showing at the Globe, Francis Bacon has just published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning and The King James Bible was in the pipeline.

Now James I and VI was famously described as "the wisest fool in Christendom". He stuttered, swore a lot and was open about having male lovers. Generally folks who met or heard him speak thought he was a bit thick. However, he was actually quite bright; may well have been one of the more intelligent and well-educated monarchs we’ve ever had. And I think he may well have had a genuine desire to see peace between the Catholics and Protestants, only to be let down by the people around him.

After all, there was no legal way of practising the Catholic faith in England at that time. A person would be fined for failing to attend the Church of England services and to attend or organise a Catholic Mass could result in imprisonment. All Catholic clergy had been ordered out of England in 1604. Plus you have all the side-effects of being treated as disloyal to your country on account of your religion; Catholics were more like to be stopped and searched, subject to raids on their homes, detained without trial and so on.

But the Gunpowder Plot wasn’t simply a response to persecution. Some Catholics believed that this Protestant malarkey was total heresy and England should be restored to a Catholic country as soon as possible..

So it was that James I was going round in a special padded doublet to protect him from assassin’s knives and there were various plots to force change before Robert Catesby got his band of friends together and planted thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, ready for the King's arrival. And although the gunpower was successfully defused, this was the metaphorical spark that lit a metaphorical fuse which would lead to the world being turned on its head. Metaphorically.

It can’t really be said that the administration exploited the failed terrorist attack for all that it was worth; many Catholics were horrified at what had been planned and James himself conceded that it was the work of an extremist minority. However, life was undoubtedly made more difficult.

The bit most relevant to American readers is that all religious separatists were targeted in the crackdown that followed. Thus it was in the direct aftermath of the Gunpowder plot that a group who later became known as the Pilgrim Fathers decided to clear off out of England. So if it wasn’t for Robert Catesby and the Gunpowder Plot, North America might look very different indeed.

Back in England, within a generation, civil war erupts. Civil war with all its associated horrors; neighbours and family members turned against one another, no household in the country remaining unaffected. Regicide is committed, only by Puritans who accuse James' son, King Charles I, of being a Papist Sympathiser (among other things). Not that the English Civil War was purely about religion by any means, but it was certainly a big part of it.

We get a Republic under Oliver Cromwell who cancels Christmas in 1647, bans dancing, swearing, any form of gambling and take a very dim view of non-religious art and music. But it was not long before the man literally bores himself to death (malarial fever, my arse) and we soon restore the monarchy*.

But we did learn our lesson. For one thing, we put in place what was probably the closest thing to a democratic system of government that existed anywhere else in the world – not recognisable as democracy today, but it was a significant step towards it. And whilst religious Catholics and other non-conformists did not get an easy time from there on in (the last person to be imprisoned for Atheism was convicted as late as 1842), we necessarily developed something like religious pluralism.

After all, the Civil War which everyone had fought believing God to be on their side was rather inconclusive. All these little religious groups sprung up, folks deciding that an entirely different course of action was necessary; thus folks like the Quakers and Methodists and many lesser known, long since declined denominations. And we all lived happily ever after. More or less.

Neither Guy Fawkes nor Robert Catesby or any of the others can be considered heroic, even if folks still joke about wishing to blow up Parliament today. Had they suceeded, it seems unlikely that they could have restored Catholicism in England or gained equal freedoms to worship; more likely the Catholic minority would have been all but wiped out in retaliation.

However, I do think there are important lessons here about religious toleration and the way that we respond to terrorist threats.

* Oliver Cromwell was in fact one of the most interesting people in British history, but he was still a bloody killjoy.

Adrian said...

Having a bad day?

The first Tudor monarch was Henry VII, yes, but he wasn't the one who split with Rome, that was Henry VIII - I'm sure this was just a typo...

Henry VIII's son was not Edward VII. Edward VII died in 1910.

Edward VI was Henry's son.

The Goldfish said...

Typos, typos, typos. I shall correct them and then we can pretend that you were just seeing things. ;-)

I did at least managed to correct James I of England, V of Scotland to James I of England, VI of Scotland.

This is why we should have been a republic all along.


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Friday, June 22, 2012

Care and Teamwork: A Ramble

The one massive practical advantage of Stephen's and my relationship is that we are able to do many things for each other that someone else would have to do for each of us otherwise. We share tasks and, working at a gentle pace that others would consider deathly slow, we achieve things together which we wouldn't have a hope of managing by ourselves. We are effectively one another's carers, without ever thinking about it that way, except just now when I said it.

There are all kinds of unique and personal things about our relationship that makes this work. We both understand pain and fatigue and share a great deal of knowledge about pacing, resting properly, easing painful parts, keeping warm (but not too warm), hydrated and fed with the minimum of effort. We love food and take pleasure in preparing things the other person will enjoy; some of our sandwiches are works of art. We are very physically affectionate and helping one another wash, dress or undress merges with the fondling and stroking that happens anyway.

And if that sentence made your stomach turn slightly, it illustrates a very important point. But a point I will get back to after I've talked about Stephen's parents.

For the last twenty years, Stephen's Mum has been severely disabled and is rarely able to leave the house. Stephen's Dad is her carer, and is relied upon to do any shopping that can't be done on-line, to run errands as well as to do lots of lifting, carrying and other tasks around the house. But honestly? This is a very egalitarian marriage. There are all kinds of things that Stephen's Mum does, especially when it comes to technical things or organisation, which Stephen's Dad would struggle with. Each relies on the other and each enables the other to have a good quality of life.

Outsiders sometimes express sympathy for Stephen's Dad, for the burden of care he must carry. But if something happened to one or other of them, whoever was left would need outside help in order to cope and carry on. What makes Stephen's Dad a carer and Stephen's Mum merely a wife is the difference between the nature of the help they each need.

So care is often part of the teamwork that happens between couples, friends and in families. I've written before about the dangers of defining it as something you deserve a medal or financial reward for. That stuff bleeds into and swells the idea that disabled people are burdensome - that a disabled friend who can't physically drive is magically more trouble to give a lift to than another friend who never passed their test.

But not all human relationships are the same. My parents have been very happy together for almost forty years (despite what they claim), but I wouldn't fancy their chances if one needed intimate care from the other. It's not a matter of either being too independent or impatient, it's a very complex thing that would make that situation extraordinarily difficult. I have received intimate care from both my parents and I'm not sure I could survive if that was the situation long term. I think it is a very common experience for parents of disabled adults to tend towards reverting back to being parents of small children if they need help with basic things. And that's presuming they're the kind of parents who noticed you grew up in the first place. All kinds of entirely tolerable factors in the relationships you have with your parents can become raging nightmares when you need them to help wash your hair.

So not every disabled person who lives with someone else, even presuming that they are loving and not in the least bit inclined towards abuse (given that half of all disabled women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime), can hope to receive care from that person. Some people who are good compassionate people make terrible carers, in the same way some decent people happen to be terrible partners or parents (well, not terrible terrible, but incompetent, unreliable or distant).

Meanwhile, not every disabled person can cope with receiving care - especially intimate care - from friends or members of their family. For some it's absolutely impractical, unless someone volunteers to become their shadow and that's not necessarily healthy. But for others it is simply inappropriate. For example, almost everyone has some boundaries around touch and nudity and it's often easier to cope with that stuff around people you don't know very well.

And of course, some people live alone. Some people like very much to live alone. Others don't have a choice.

I have provided care that felt more like work in the past, in a few very different circumstances. It felt like work because either
  • The care interfered with my ability to eat, sleep or rest when I needed to or
  • The care was more than I could manage without significant physical suffering or
  • My efforts were entirely unappreciated (ranging from no word of thanks to verbal abuse) or
  • All of the above.
And frankly, nobody should have to do that kind of thing without pay or a lot of help and respite. Someone who does that without pay or help is not a hero, but a victim. Not a victim of their loved-one's illness or the burdensome disabled person (though as my experience suggests, some of us suck) but of a society which isn't fulfilling one of the chief functions that society's are supposed to do: sharing the load when someone is in trouble. And while Samantha's tragic story is from the America of yesteryear, partners, family members and still sometimes children continue to be asked for much more than they can give in the UK today.

And there is no conveniently crisp line between work people do for pay and things people do out of love, kindness or social obligation. There never has been. You can pay someone to perform pretty much any act that most of us prefer to do for only ourselves and the people we love; people have been employed to cook, clean, have sex, provide massage, breast-feed, even be friends with someone (have you checked out those people? Brrrr.) Meanwhile, people volunteer to do paperwork, people phone-lines, build houses, pretty much any task which one would usually associate with paid work. The help disabled people need may be essential for life or a basic quality of life, but those tasks have no particular status.

This is, as the title warned, a ramble. I don't have any dynamic answers about how we might sort out even first principles when it comes to reforming how care is provided (or most often not provided) in our country. But I think the nuances are vitally important. It's the nuances that create the problem - the over-reliance on family or community to provide care, because families and communities are very good at providing lots of kinds of help and support for free. But the nuances are real, and to ignore them is to  reduce disabled people to units of consumption.

While I'm here and on this subject, I really love the look of CURA. It's kind of like a social networking solution to organising the little tasks which friends, neighbours and family can do to keep a person going, and save time and energy for primary carers.

Gary Miller said...

True to form, you have tackled a very sensitive subject with your usual directness and wonderful eye for detail.

Not a great piece of vocabulary from me I know. But, you know what I mean.

Please, please keep on doing what you do so admirably. Tackling such subjects in a way that others can understand and relate to.

GirlWithTheCane said...

There's a lot here that I hadn't thought about - particularly the bit about how sometimes carers talk or are referred to, that feeds into the perception that people with disabilities are a burden. I think we're hearing a lot of that where I am right now because there's very little gov't money/programs for respite for carers, and the little that there is for carers for people with intellectual disabilities just gets clawed back further and further.

It's very frustrating.

Great piece. Very thought-provoking.

The Goldfish said...

Thank you both. :-)

Never That Easy said...

Excellent, as always: so many valid points and sensitvely addressed.

As my situation is evolving here (as the secondary caregiver for my grandmother, who is quite ill), I find that I'm crossing all sorts of boundaries for myself (as to my own health) that I would never require or allow in someone who was caring for me. (Going without sleep or food, not being able to take meds that help with my pain because they are too sedating and she might need help, etc)
It's one of those things that I haven't figured out how to balance yet (this is a relatively new situation for all of us, and the duration of it is... questionable).

So I was glad to see you talking about it, as I try to puzzle it out for myself.


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Christmas mood

Wednesday, 30 November 2011 by Irene Hoofs

Ready for Christmas?  Perhaps making this Wreath will get you in the mood...

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Tiny Modern Dreams: Leaf House

Architecture & Interiors

Does anyone else ever fantasize about running away to some remote yet gorgeous landscape with a teeny tiny modern home, small enough to pull with a truck? We can’t be the only one, which is why we occasionally drool over the website, Tiny House Listings. One day. In the mean time we can’t help but find inspiration in one tiny modern home posted yesterday called the Leaf House based out of Canada.

“Leaf House is inspired by the philosophy of the owner-built home, and a creative approach towards designing and building. They feature full amenities and they are insulated for severe winter climates. Leaf House uses Forest Stewardship Certified (FSC) lumber, reclaimed materials, natural finishes, and ecologically friendly building products. Leaf House can also build carriage homes and fixed tiny houses, with a particular emphasis on natural building methods such as straw-clay, straw-bale, and timber-framing.” Oh yes, these are for SALE. More.

Could you live in something this tiny?! We’re curious.

Images: Lair Herbert
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  1. kat bell

    Apr 19, 2013 at 10:05 am

    i need more information im starting construction of my very own, and i am in need of building plans and and how tos and other ideas… your hacked supposedly your (more) button is broken.

    • Promila Shastri

      Apr 19, 2013 at 11:44 am

      Hi Kathryn. It appears the link is no longer valid; sorry, but we don’t possess the instructions–as you can see, the post linked to the site where the original information existed. Good luck!

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It’s The New Year, How About A New Samsung TV?

If you are in the market for a new flat-panel TV, Samsung has incredible savings with some new bundle deals.  When you purchase a select Samsung TV, you will receive additional items, such as two pairs of 3D glasses and a 3D Blu-ray player, for FREE!  Start shopping for the home theater experience of your dreams.

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Updating Gold’s Structure and Key Inflection Level

Jan 29, 2013: 11:27 AM CST

We’re watching a key inflection level in Gold and I wanted to update the current chart landscape to show these levels along with the developing short-term structure.

Let’s start with the Daily Chart and highlight the easy-reference levels:

In simplest terms, the upside resistance barrier exists from $1,680 to $1,700 while the downside support level trades from $1,630 to $1,640.

Starting with the upside chart-based resistance, we note the falling 50d EMA at $1,685 and the upper Daily Bollinger Band at $1,697.

Beyond that, we can easily see a price-based resistance high (the most recent swing high) at the $1,700 “Round Number” level.

You can also visualize a falling longer-term trendline starting at the October 2012 high which ends at the present $1,700 level.

From the downside support perspective, we see a longer rising trendline into the $1,660 region which is just above the most recent “spike” reversal lows off the key $1,635 level.  The lower Daily Bollinger Band is $1,645.

In other words, the short-term bounce-around boundaries rest from $1,630 to $1,700 and that’s where price has been trading recently.

Let’s look at the intraday perspective on both the 30-min and 15-min charts for more details:

Gold (Continuous Futures @GC) 15-min (finer detail):

On the 30-min chart, we see the operating short-term Fibonacci Retracement levels, the most important of which are $1,666 (current short-term high) and $1,658 (short-term low).

As price interacts with these levels, we note the short-term positive momentum divergence into the key $1,650 support line which suggests a possible bullish or upside resolution toward $1,675.

That short-term bullish expectation would trigger on a breakthrough above $the recent high into $1,667.

Continuing the logic, a breakthrough above $1,675 (the short-term target) would suggest that gold could travel higher toward the $1,700 daily chart confluence.

When planning trades, we have to be prepared for both outcomes (a breakout or a breakdown) and thus bearish trades would trigger under the recent support lows into $1,655.

A clean breakdown under $1,655 could target the prior swing low and support cluster near $1,635.

Even if you don’t trade gold, you can use the same type of logic (starting with the higher timeframe and creating a game-plan from the details of the lower frame) on the stocks and markets you trade.

This type of “Game-Planning” logic is what I’ll be describing in Thursday January 31’st educational webinar (intraday planning and day structure).

Corey Rosenbloom, CMT
Afraid to Trade.com

Follow Corey on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/afraidtotrade

Corey’s new book The Complete Trading Course (Wiley Finance) is now available!

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  • A nascent investment demand for gold has commenced, as is seen in the chart of the gold based ETFs, UGL, and DGP, trading higher, as Gold, GLD, has been trading higher since January 1, 2013; it’s chart shows that it stands at the apex of a consolidation triangle at 161.50, with support at 160. Spot Gold, $GOLD, is trading at is 200 Day Moving Average at $1,660

    Perhaps one might enjoy my Friday February 8, 20133 chart article Stocks Trade Lower On Fears Of Eurozone Financial And Political Instability

  • TheLazy Trader

    Great article....suffice to say, trade what you see not what you think!

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text:
Kyle Busch takes Nationwide championship with a win at Homestead

Doug Demmons - The Birmingham News By Doug Demmons - The Birmingham News The Birmingham News
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on November 21, 2009 at 6:52 PM, updated November 21, 2009 at 8:48 PM
2009 Homestead Nov NNS checkered flag Kyle Busch wins.jpgKyle Busch wins the Nationwide race and the series title at Homestead. (NASCAR / Getty Images)
Kyle Busch had just enough at the end of Saturday night's Nationwide Series season-ending Ford 300 to hold off Carl Edwards and take the victory.

The win gave Busch his first-ever NASCAR championship.

Edwards had come in on a final caution and gotten fresh tires. He was charging back to the front with a handful of laps to go but couldn't quite make it to Busch.

Jeff Burton
finished third, followed by Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin.

Early in the race Hamlin was blackflagged and penalized a lap by NASCAR after he deliberately spun out Brad Keselowski -- payback for earlier incidents between the two drivers. NASCAR warned both drivers after the incident.

Hamlin said after the race the penalty was worth it and that he had never seen so much cheering from the crews of other teams who were glad that he tagged Keselowski.

Keselowski said he laughed and thought Hamlin's payback attempt was "funny." But he also was ready to move on.


text:
Tuscaloosa dance competition at UA open to community

Chris Pow By Chris Pow
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on November 15, 2011 at 11:38 AM
riptide.jpgCan you dance better than the UA RipTide dancers? (
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- Do you and your friends think you have what it takes to be the best dancers in Tuscaloosa?

Groups from the community are invited to compete at T-Town's Best Dance Crew, an event presented by the University of Alabama, Stillman College and Shelton State Community College, on Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Ferguson Center ballroom.

The competition, inspired by Randy Jackson's "America's Best Dance Crew" television show, is open to college students, faculty and staff and the Tuscaloosa community.

"We hope by opening this event to surrounding colleges, high schools and community members that it will bring the Tuscaloosa community closer together," Eliza Adams, a Ferguson Center volunteer coordinator, said.

Each group must have no more than five members and must bring their own music for a five-minute performance. All types of dance styles are welcome.


text:
harold hongju koh: "why diversity matters to me"

Last week, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the State Department held a program entitled, "Why Diversity Matters to Me." Several Department principals spoke and shared about diversity, including Legal Advisor Harold Hongju Koh. Here's the full text from his inspiring remarks reflecting on Dr. King's legacy:
Why Diversity Matters to Me
Harold Hongju Koh

I am Harold Koh; I am the Legal Adviser.

Why does diversity matter to me? Because although my face is yellow, I am a child of Brown, Brown vs. the Board of Education. I first began to understood why diversity mattered by feeling its absence. When I was five, my family moved to Takoma Park. My brother came home from school to tell us that his third grade class was half white and half black. When recess was called, the black kids and the white kids silently divided into different baseball teams and started playing separately. As an Asian, my brother literally did not know what team he was on. So he sat alone for all of recess, isolated by segregation.

During my sixth-grade year, students from an inner city school were bused to our classroom. A short, wiry African-American boy named Richard was seated next to me. For two days, we sat inches apart, eying one another. On the third day, he leaned over and said, "Man, this classroom is much nicer than the one we were in." For the first time, I understood how unequal separate but equal facilities can be, and by the end of the year, we were friends.

One day, Richard asked me who was the greatest baseball player of all time. I told him, "Babe Ruth." He said, "Man, you're wrong!" (For some reason, he always called me "Man," even though I was only 10 years old!). I asked him, "So who do you think is the greatest baseball player of all time?" He answered, "Why, Number 42. Jackie Robinson!" When I asked why, he answered, "Because Jackie did everything the Babe did, but at a time when everyone wanted him to fail." I had never looked at it that way before. Richard's different perspective changed my mind. And ever since, whenever someone asks me who was the greatest, I say "Number 42. Jackie Robinson."

I remembered that story in law school, when I read a book by Richard Kluger called Simple Justice. I read about the stirring partnership between African-American lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and Spotswood Robinson and white attorneys like Jack Greenberg and Charles Black. I read about how the lawyers in Brown argued cases in towns where they could not eat at the local restaurants, where they could not sleep at the local hotels, how they typed briefs in the back of their cars, cited cases from memory because they could not use the libraries, but still won case after case, culminating in the unanimous victory in Brown. I decided that like Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall must have been the greatest lawyer of all time, because he did everything Daniel Webster did -- and won equality for millions -- at a time when so many wanted him to fail.

As a law clerk, I was thrilled to actually meet Justice Marshall and Judge Spotswood Robinson, and to hear them tell stories of their days litigating Brown. As I traveled the world as Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, I learned that Brown is viewed globally as America's finest hour. And as a lawyer and law professor, I came to see Brown as a model of how lawyers committed to human rights can do simple justice by pressing for change we can believe in. I learned about the nearly invisible struggle of the Asian American community for equality: the battle by Chinese and Japanese immigrants for basic legal protections, equal treatment, and the right to become naturalized citizens; the tragedy of Korematsu, where thousands of loyal Americans were interned during wartime simply because of their race. Many of our core constitutional protections for foreign nationals resulted from civil rights struggles that arose out of discrimination against Asians in America: a struggle like that experienced by so many other groups, which reminds us -- as Dr. King said -- that though we may have come in different boats, we're all in the same boat now.

Now that I am Legal Adviser, my job is to ensure, as a matter of law, that diversity is respected, as what our Supreme Court has called a "compelling governmental interest." As the Department's lawyer, my job is not simply conducting business as usual, but pressing for even more progress and inclusion.

Is progress really possible? When I was a student, my school had only a handful of Asians, African-Americans, Latinos, and no openly gay and lesbian students. But as a law teacher and dean, I have seen the law school classes of today become strikingly more diverse. So too is today's State Department, which is so much more diverse a place than it was even ten years ago. Because we represent every race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation, we as a department are so much better able to understand and communicate with the diverse world in which we live. Fittingly, it was Jackie Robinson who put it best, when he said, "Baseball became a much, much better game, when everyone could play."

Let me close with this story. A few years ago, my mother met a man named Don James. After talking, they realized that they had both graduated from Boston University in 1955. When they looked together at their yearbook, they realized that the man who had marched between them at graduation -- between James and Koh -- was none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate today.

Picture that day more than fifty years ago, a Korean immigrant woman, an African-American man, and a Scandinavian man, all marching onto an American stage to get their degrees. Dr. King and my mom were both 26. Thirteen years later, he was dead. But in between, he had changed the world. But my mom lived on.

Then flash forward to today. Consider that the son of that woman, an Asian-American lawyer, is now Legal Adviser to a woman Secretary of State who serves in the cabinet of a president who is the first African-American since Dr. King to win the Nobel Prize. And all three of these people hold their jobs in a country where not so long ago, none of them would have had the right to vote.

So progress may not come quickly, but as Dr. King said, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome some day. But for that to happen, we must believe -- we must insist -- that diversity matters. And we cannot rest until the dream of diversity, and the aspirations of so many who fought for it, have been fully realized.
Indeed, we're all in the same boat now. (Thanks, Patty.)

angry archive


text:
News Apps Blog

Matters of interest, from the newsroom developers across Tribune Publishing

Archive for the ‘PHP’ Category

We’re hiring: WordPress, HTML5 developer extraordinaire

with one comment

We are looking for an experienced web developer who can help us build sites for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Tribune Media Group. Somebody who has a passion for code and getting things done. Somebody who likes having a problem to solve.

On the News Apps team, you will help us research, design, and build online news products. You will be a generalist: sometimes interviewing or helping users, sometimes writing HTML and CSS, sometimes coding in Python, PHP or Javascript, and sometimes working on servers.

You will work with a group of talented, passionate folks who enjoy making websites and software. We have short deadlines so we work iteratively and try to work closely with our users and stakeholders. It can be stressful at times, but it’s worth it. We build good stuff fast and you will become a better programmer. You will always be refining your tools and trying out bleeding edge web technologies. You will make things you will be proud to show mom.

Acronyms and buzzwords:

These are the tools we use. Apply if you can rock them.

  • WordPress & PHP development
  • Git
  • HTML5, CSS3, SASS and Responsive Design
  • Javascript & Coffeescript: Backbone.js, Underscore.js, jQuery
  • Python and Django
  • Amazon Web Services: EC2, S3, RDS
  • Linux/Ubuntu server administration: Apache, Nginx, Varnish

P.S. You don’t have to know them all to apply.

Stuff we’ve done:

You will be working on these sites, and new ones like them.

And you’ll be contributing to our blog and our github.

Gear you’ll get:

  • One shiny, new MacBook Pro (or an iMac, if you’d prefer)
  • One CDM (Cheap Dell Monitor)
  • One comfy Aeron chair
  • …all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.
Interested? Send a cover letter and resume to newsapps at

Written by Ryan Mark

January 12, 2012 at 10:12 am

Posted in Jobs, PHP, Python

Turning WordPress into a framework with MTV

with 30 comments

A couple of months ago, Ryan Nagle described how he and Ryan Mark had unravelled WordPress and reknit it into something prettier for ChicagoNow. Since we finally got around to releasing the code, we thought it might be helpful to share a few thoughts on getting started with the MTV setup.

The beauty is that with MTV, WordPress now works just like any modern web framework. Once you get over the initial weirdness of working with WordPress in this sort of environment, writing themes gets a whole lot more pleasant than it used to be.

Why on Earth is this necessary, you ask? Ryan Mark answers that question in our GitHub docs:

We love WordPress, but we need it to be more serviceable. We need to be able to look under the hood and figure things out quickly. We need a code base that is simple, explicit, legible and self-documenting. That’s what we’re trying to do with MTV.

Development in WordPress becomes a mess very easily. It’s difficult to look at a new theme and figure what’s going on where, because it’s common practice to have a lot of PHP in your HTML and vice versa. Additionally, WordPress packs so much into some functions that sometimes it’s difficult to determine which one you want to track down and modify. If you’re doing heavy customization, you’d better be prepared to spend a good chunk of time playing code detective.

So WordPress functions tend to be extremely implicit. Essentially, MTV creates a more organized, explicit layer on top of WordPress’ native functionality.

Making WordPress behave like a framework removes a lot of hassle by separating markup, request handling, and data manipulation from the site’s core functionality. It’s a little like the way stylesheets separate markup from layout and design.

To make this work, the MTV plugin breaks The Loop and WordPress’ template processing. Fair warning: this means that some of the functions that rely on WordPress “magic” aren’t going to work. If you’re used to writing WordPress themes, this brave new world is going to take a little getting used to. But like the Guide says, “Don’t Panic.”

Let’s walk through how to get MTV up and running. Then we’ll look at how it works by setting up a simple theme.

Before you begin
Check to make sure your host is running PHP 5.3. Because MTV relies on namespaces, a feature introduced in 5.3, earlier versions of PHP won’t suffice.

1. Install WordPress on your local machine (more about that here, though in the latest versions of WordPress, you shouldn’t need to edit the wp-config file manually).

2. Clone MTV from our GitHub account. Drag the “mtv” folder into your wp-content/plugins folder .

3. Install Twig, either manually or with Pear, PHP’s package manager.
With Pear:

sudo pear channel-discover
sudo pear install twig/Twig-1.0.0

Manual install:
Grab the tarball and put the extracted Twig folder in the MTV plugin.

4. Go activate the plugin!

Roll your own theme

A lot has changed since our initial blog post on this subject. This section provides some bare-bones sample code to get you started and referenced the original post where appropriate.

WordPress only requires inclusion of two theme files: style.css and index.php. We won’t be messing with the CSS here, so just make sure you’ve got WordPress’ required comment header in your otherwise-empty stylesheet.  As for index.php:

// Your princess is in another castle.

That’s it. Since WordPress expects this file to exist, we have to have a placeholder file. But we’ll create a template for the index page elsewhere.

Next, we need to register the theme as an app, similar to installing an app in Django. We do this by creating a functions.php:

// Configure MTV
if ( function_exists('mtv\register_app') )
    mtv\register_app('mtv_theme', __DIR__);

// Setup enabled apps
global $apps;
$apps = array('mtv_theme', 'wp');

We’re doing two things here. First, we register the app. This works similarly to registering a function, custom taxonomy or custom post type in WordPress. All we need to provide is the theme’s name and the path it’s on. Since our functions.php is in the same directory as the rest of our theme files, we can just use __DIR__.

Second, we declare a global variable that contains an array of all our installed apps. You can register as many apps as you like. Keep in mind that the order of items in the $apps array matters. When rendering a template, Twig uses this order to look for templates that match. In this case, Tiwg will look in the theme first and then the wp app.

What’s that “wp” app, you ask? That’s part of the MTV plugin. Inside, we register a bunch of WordPress functions we want to use.

Frameworkin’ it

From here, we get into more familiar territory for those of you who have dealt with web frameworks. (If you don’t have framework experience, don’t worry; we’ll explain as we go.) We’ll write some URL regex patterns in urls.php:

 $url_patterns = array(
     '/^$/' =>
    '/(?:[0-9]{4}\/)(?:[0-9]{2}\/){1}(?P[^\/]+)\/?$/' => # year/month/slug
    '/(?P[^\/]+)\/?$/' =>

**Important: Your WordPress permalinks must be enabled in the admin, and they must match the regex for your URLs. We’re using month and name permalinks in this tutorial.

These patterns basically say, “When the URI matches this regex, call this function in views.php.” The patterns are only concerned with what comes after the domain. So in the first object, we’re calling the “home” function when the URI ends after the domain (and possibly a trailing slash). More info on URL patterns is available on our GitHub wiki.

Introducing views

“View” is a bit of a confusing name. It sounds like it should be a page template, but those are, well, templates. (We’ll get to those in a bit.) Views contain the logic that specifies what data is available to your templates. This is where this whole crazy mess comes together. Instead of putting code in our templates, we’ve isolated it in our views.

An example: We said that in our first URL pattern above, whenever a URL ends after the domain, urls.php calls the “home” function in views.php. The home function then does the heavy lifting of assembling the info to serve to the assigned template.

Here’s what a complete view looks like:

namespace mtv_theme_example\views;
use mtv\wp\models\PostCollection,
function home( $request ) {
 	 $args = array('post_type' = 'post',
                  'posts_per_page' => 10,
                  'order' => 'DESC');
     $posts = PostCollection::filter($args);
 	 $template_array = array(
        'posts' => $posts->models

    shortcuts\display_template('index.html', $template_array);

The paths to the functions served in urls.php are based on the namespace we mentioned earlier. The namespace gets declared at the top of views.php:

namespace mtv_theme_example\views;

Let’s step through writing a view for our index page:

 function home( $request ) {

When we defined our URL patterns, we set up some groupings to capture data. $request passes the data we captured to our function. The first thing we do is set query flags (also known as conditional tags). WordPress sets these by default, but we reset them in MTV when we break The Loop. So when urls.php calls a view, we reset the query flag in the function. Resetting them makes it possible to use familiar conditionals like is_home, is_page and is_single (including with body_class).

     $args = array('post_type' => 'post',
                  'posts_per_page' => 10,
                  'order' => 'DESC');
    $posts = PostCollection::filter($args);

The heart of this view function is the PostCollection model. Models, very simply, are blueprints of your data. Their contents usually correspond to fields in your database and describe the data’s attributes. The PostCollection model is what grabs the data from The Loop and makes it available for MTV.

Ryan explained PostCollection in his introductory post:

Note that the $args array passed to PostCollection::filter() is exactly the same array you would pass to WP_Query() to get recent posts. The difference is that returned objects are more robust (for example, all post meta/custom fields are included as attributes of returned posts) and have methods consistent with those found in Backbone.js models (for example, get(), fetch(), set(), save()). Also note that these Backbone-like methods do exactly what you think they do. You don’t have to remember the 101 different WordPress functions related to post objects and the variety of possible return values.

MTV’s models are defined in mtv/models.php and mtv/wp/models.php. In views.php, the PostCollection model is included at the top of the file, directly after the namespace declaration:

 namespace mtv_theme_example\views;
 use mtv\wp\models\PostCollection,

Our template loader function is in “shortcuts.” But back to our index view, where we’ll create an array of the data we’re interested in exposing in the template:

    $template_array = array(
         'posts' => $posts->models

    shortcuts\display_template('index.html', $template_array);

That last line loads a template file and passes data to it. Templates only have access to variables that you provide in $template_array. If we ever decide to change our index page, we can just swap out the template reference here and point it somewhere new.

Now that we’ve got a view, we need a template to go with it. We can write clean, readable, easily modified templates using Twig’s syntax. This should be pretty intuitive if you’ve used Django, and Twig has some good documentation if you need to brush up.

Make a templates folder within your theme. Here, we’ve thrown all of our common template code, like doctype, stylesheets, headers and footers, into a base.html template and then extended it to create a lovely index page (or at least a non-blank index page):

{% extends 'base.html' %}

{% block content %}

{# if we've got posts, show 'em. #}
      {% if posts %}
        {% for post in posts %}
        {# show headlines of recent posts #}

{{ post.post_title }}

       {% endfor %}

      {# if we have no posts, show an "oops, sorry" page. #}
      {% else %}

Nothing Found

'Apologies, but no results were found for the requested archive.

     {% endif %}

{% endblock %}

As expected, we can use dot notation to access any of the attributes in objects passed to the template via the view.

**Important: You can only use WordPress functions in templates if you’ve made them accessible to Twig. MTV comes with a pared-down list of functions we find the most useful. Ryan’s initial post goes over how this works.

You can’t use WordPress’ functions in Twig templates out of the box.

Thankfully, the overhead of making functions accessible in Twig templates is negligible. This means, however, we were forced to consider what functions we would allow in our templates.

Here’s how to make a WordPress function accessible in Twig templates, using home_url() as an example:

    global $twig;
    $twig->addFunction('home_url', new \Twig_Function_Function('home_url'));

Over time, we compiled a list of all the WordPress functions we needed to get things done. Nothing more, nothing less.

That list of available functions can be found on MTV’s wiki. You can also find an extended version of these sample theme files here.

We hope this will prove a useful way to write clean, easily maintained WordPress themes. Have ideas and want to lend a hand? Find us on GitHub here.

Written by Heather Billings

October 19, 2011 at 8:48 am

Posted in Open Source, PHP

WordPress network auto-deployment

with 5 comments

Going from Django development to WordPress development is rough, not only because I generally dislike PHP (the flashbacks), but mainly because tools that we’ve come to rely on in Python simply don’t exist for WordPress.

Repeatable automated deployment

Our Django apps are deployable with the push of a button and each of us have identical code and data for testing. We found nothing like this for php or WordPress, and we really looked, honest.

Much of a WordPress blog’s configuration is stored in a table in the database. In a WordPress network, each blog has it’s own configuration table. For TribLocal, we needed to create and manage almost 90 network blogs. Each is practically identical but still needed to be customizable. There was no way we would configure each blog by hand.

So with the power of fabric, and a pile of php scripts reverse-engineered from the WordPress code, we built a rig to bootstrap WordPress — from the vanilla download to a customized, functional blog with a single command. Kudos to our contractors, Human Made, who helped quite a bit to make this all work.

Hello Network!

This tutorial is written for folks on Mac OS X. Much of the instructions will work on any UNIX variant. If you’re on Windows, I’d love to hear how you got this to work.

You’ll need to have fabric installed.

sudo easy_install fabric

Let’s grab the scripts for this tutorial. You can clone them from github here. Next you need to grab the latest WordPress. Download and unzip the WordPress archive. You want to take all the files from the wordpress folder created by the archive and move them to the folder you just cloned from github with all your fancy new scripts.

git clone wp-deploy
cd wp-deploy
curl -O
tar -zxf latest.tar.gz
mv wordpress/* .
rmdir wordpress

To get this new mess of code to do anything interesting, you will need an Apache, PHP and MySQL stack on your machine. We do all WordPress development locally and deploy stuff to a server when we want to test or show off our work. Since we all work on Mac OS X, we decided to use MAMP for development. We chose MAMP because it’s a tight package that made it trivial for everyone to get running quickly. Feel free to setup your stack however you like, but this tutorial assumes you’re using MAMP.

Out of the box, MAMP needs a few tweaks before it will serve our project. Download the latest version, install it to your Applications folder and run the MAMP application. MAMP will immediately start Apache and MySQL and open its web control panel in your browser.

Find MAMP on your dock and click it to bring up the status window. Click “Preferences…”. Under the “Ports” tab, set the Apache port to 80. WordPress gets cranky if you try to run it on a port other than port 80. Under the “Apache” tab, change the “Document Root” to the project folder with your new scripts and wordpress code.

If you’ve ever turned on web sharing, turn it off now. If you already have MySQL installed on your machine, you’ll probably run into trouble.

You need to add MAMP’s MySQL binaries to your path, so you can use mysql from the command line.

export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin

Add this command to the end of your ~/.bash_profile so you can always access the MySQL commands.

echo "export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin" >> ~/.bash_profile

Add the demo WordPress domain name to your hosts file.

sudo bash -c 'echo "" >> /etc/hosts'

(If you’re on Leopard or earlier, your hosts file is /private/etc/hosts)

At this point you should be able to fire up a WordPress site with the demo settings. Just run the bootstrap fabric command.

fab bootstrap

You should have wordpress running now. Visit You also should have network blogs running at and

Configuration juiciness

These scripts are just a starting point. The ones we use for TribLocal are heavily customized. Dig through them and tweak to your hearts content. We’ve annotated them a bunch, but ask us more questions if you find something that isn’t clear.

The scripts:

    Where all the deployment settings are put. Use this to setup your production or staging server or to change settings for local development.
  • scripts/na-options.php
    Most important file. Holds all the config information for the WordPress side of the automatic setup.
  • scripts/na-install.php
    First script that runs. Installs the WordPress database, root blog and network.
  • scripts/na-postinstall.php
    Second script that runs. Configures the root blog and network with settings from the na-options.php.
  • scripts/na-createblog.php
    Script that creates a network blog. Pass it an index, uses that index to fetch data about the blog it should create from the $sites array in na-options.php.
  • scripts/na-setup-plugins.php
    Enables plugins.

One more thing

Something that always bothered me about WordPress is the way the domain name is stored in the database. You can’t just dump and load the database in a new location without also moving the domain name. We want it to be push-button to deploy an identical copy of the site in multiple places.

So I wrote a few fabric commands to shuttle a WordPress database across servers and domain names.

fab dump_db
fab load_db
fab reload_db

These commands will create or load data/dump.sql.bz2. They’ll correct the domain name in the WordPress database to whatever you have defined in your fabfile. It just pipes the database content through sed to replace the domain names. Super useful, eh?

UPDATED: Fixed the git clone URL.

Written by Ryan Mark

October 5, 2010 at 3:11 pm

Posted in PHP, Recipes

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