Kalamazoo Wings: Colonial Cup Champions!

That has a nice ring to it! On Saturday night, the K-Wings won their third straight game in Danbury, CT, to bring home the Colonial Cup. They did it by winning 12 of 13 playoff games (the first 9 in a row). The "community party" is Saturday night and we're hoping to make it.

Congratulations to the Wings and to the owners, the Parfets, who have kept pro hockey alive in Kalamazoo.

SnTT: Taking Notes Podcast

I posted this suggestion on the Taking Notes Podcast blog but didn't get any feedback on it yet, so I'm going to try a bit of an experiment. The experiment is to see how far this blog reaches (not very far, I suspect).

At any rate, I find the Taking Notes podcast to be a good source of information - and it's entertaining a lot of the time too. If you haven't checked it out, do so, either from the blog site or through iTunes. Bruce posted today about some of the guests they have lined up for future episodes and they look good.

Now for the experiment: Bruce said in comments on the most recent podcast that they have about 1,000 listeners, which he thinks is pretty good. But I think there are a lot more people out there who could benefit from the podcast so let's spread the word. So, if you read this, are a Notes/Domino developer or admin (or are otherwise interested in Notes/Domino), listen to the podcast and have your own blog, publicize the podcast on your blog. And leave me a comment that you did (please!).

And keep up the good work, Bruce and Julian!

Technorati: Show-n-Tell Thursday
Categories: Show-n-Tell Thursday_

Destination: Colonial Cup

Our local minor league (UHL) hockey team, the Kalamazoo Wings, are in the Colonial Cup Finals. Game 1 is Friday night and we're going! This is their first trip to the finals in the UHL and the first time in any finals since 1981. They won the IHL championship in 1979 and 1980 so there is a lot of excitement around town.

They won the Tarry Cup this year for the best record in the league. At least they've live up to expectations so far - unlike my Red Wings!

GO WINGS!

SnTT: Sub-Categories in Views

Kind of by accident a while back, I discovered how to add a second level of categorization in a view without adding a second categorized column. You *can* add a second column, but that will cause a second category to appear under all top-levels; I only wanted sub-categories under one of my top-level categories.

Here is a picture of what I wanted:


I only wanted additional categories under the 4. Fieldwork category. How do you do it? Add a backslash (\) and your second category to the end of your formula in the categorized column:


Note that you have to "escape" the backslash by entering it in the formula twice. I stumbled on this by seeing the behavior in a view that was categorized by a file path field (eg. Data\PlayDbs\Developer1\MyBlog.nsf). Now you have sub-categories just where you want them with no effect on categories that don't need them.

Technorati: Show-n-Tell Thursday

Categories: Show-n-Tell Thursday_

Podcasts? RSS?

As a person in the technology field, it amazes me how many techies don't know about some of the latest tools available to them. Take Bruce's RSS presentation for example; how many of you use RSS feeds to keep up on news and/or blogs? If you do, how many fellow techies do you find that you have to educate about RSS?

Another thing is podcasts. Of course, you listen to more than music on your iPod/portable music device -- don't you? Beyond Taking Notes, there are lots of others on tech to help you keep up on the news or learn new things. For now I have settled on two: Gillmor Gang which, if you can get beyond Steve G's occasional "Notes is Dead" (set him straight, Ed!) screeds, has a lot of good thinking on tech trends and directions; and Mobility Today, which talks a lot about portable technology (phones, PDAs, small form-factor computing) - just watch out for the periodic and inconsistent rants.

Find some fun ones too - but not too many or you'll never have time to listen to music again!

Why Didn't I Think of This?

Sometimes I feel like I don't have anything to say; other times I feel I *have* something to say but am not sure I want to put it out here for everyone to say. So I was reading another blog tonight and saw a post about a "proud parent moment" and it made me think "I've had one too!".

I'm helping to coach our son's Little League (minor boys) team this year. Last Saturday, our son spent the third inning in left center field. Out of the 10 batters from the other team, I swear 5 of them hit a ball to left center. And he stopped all of them!

I find myself amazed at how much his skills have improved over the last year. He'll probably never go to the majors (if he even wanted to), but he is doing well and having fun. And we're proud of how he's doing and that he wants to practice and get better. Just wait until the golf lessons in June!

SnTT: Computed Outline Entries

I did this a while ago but ran across it again and thought I'd share it. I'm not sure in which release this first appeared (somewhere in 6.x), but you can set an outline entry to compute the database from which to read a design item. You may already know that you can choose a Named Item for the outline entry to display and to choose that item either from the current database or from another database. We wanted to read an item from another database but to have the database change each year without changing the outline entry. That was not possible in R5 but is now.

To do this, set your Content Type to Named Item and then click the @ (Formula) button next to the Value field. Here is a screen shot of the resulting dialog:


In the Formula for Database block, notice that the path to the database includes variables. This one points to a database in a folder for the current year; we have an entry like this plus one for the prior year in one of our outlines. We used to have to modify the outline each year to update these two entries but now we don't have to!

Technorati: Show-n-Tell Thursday
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Teen Depression

Life has gotten in the way of blogging lately. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

Last week, we had a presentation for our youth group and parents on depression in teens. It was done by a teen who was diagnosed in the last few months with depression and included a short film he made about his feelings; the film has since won a number of film festival awards. You can read his story here. The word about this teen and his film is spreading (see this and this) and he is happy to send copies of the film and a presentation he did at his high school for your own use. If you request a copy, consider making a donation to your local mental health or suicide prevention program to support your local teens.

Over the last few months, I have developed a better understanding of this issue. Sure, there are kids who might use the idea of depression for manipulative purposes but I find myself thinking twice before I write off some of the behavior I see as manipulation. Plus, as a parent, it is helpful to know as much as I can about this and things like bullying as I watch my own kids grow up.

Categories: Youth Ministry_