Chasing Joe Pa

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Steve

At Penn State, you’re required to take at least two courses in physical education. I believe it’s a requirement bourne out of the fact that nearly every coach and assistant is a faculty member who teaches class. I took a jogging class with a former basketball assistant, Mike Morse, who is a Penn State legend in his own right. Our final exam in that class would be the same as our first assignment. In fact, we repeated the same test several times in that semester.

Run to Joe Pa and back.

We didn’t run to the man himself, as running to the Lasch Building or McKee Street would have fallen short of our 3 mile route. We were running from Rec Hall, down Curtain Street, towards Beaver Stadium where Joe Paterno’s likeness is captured in bronze. I remember vividly running down that tree-lined road, cramping up between Shortlidge Rd and East Halls. Run, walk, run again, walk again, and hobbling towards the massive steel frame that is the football stadium. As you rounded the corner where students lined up for tickets, you couldn’t help pick up your pace. Running towards the statue, Joe Paterno’s arm stretched out to greet you. Somehow while catching my breath before resuming my run, I never caught sight of the quote inscribed behind the statue:

“They ask me what I’d like written about me when I’m gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.”

I think about that now and in many ways I feel like we were always chasing after a legend. Joe Paterno’s job title was merely “head football coach” but he aspired to do more than that in every aspect of his life. He could have gone elsewhere, he could have focused strictly on wins and losses, but he stayed and made every part of Penn State better. That ethic rubbed off on a lot of people. I think we all wanted to do better because he was always looking to do things better than everyone else.

When I try to defend Joe Paterno’s legacy to people outside of the Penn State family, they trivialize his accomplishments saying he’s “just a football coach”. He built a library, funded academic programs, and inspired many others to do the same. The Schreyer Honors College helped fund my tuition with a scholarship and enrich it with special classes and opportunities. Paterno’s close friend William Schreyer funded that scholarship and those programs. That is one of the many reasons I feel connected to Paterno. I imagine just about everyone at Penn State has those same types of stories about how he touched and improved their lives.

Ultimately it seems that at times Paterno the man fell short of the standard and symbol that his statue embodies. I think Paterno is honest and sincere when he says this Sandusky scandal is “one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.” It is fair to say that Paterno should have done more to help the victims, but it is also fair to say he is not solely responsible for their fate. I cannot sympathize with the idea that Paterno is a victim. People are fired every day for a lot less and this failing is far greater than a recruiting scandal or a losing season.The victims are the nameless children whose trust Sandusky broke and who innocence he allegedly stole.

For the last two months my anger has focused on the leaders at Penn State and the Second Mile who ignored this tragedy. My sadness focused on the idea that for these children Penn State is a place of horror and shame. Somewhere below that though is disappointment with the idea that there are no heroes any more. I cannot accept that we should not honor and celebrate Joe Paterno. As his family pointed out today, he has a “living legacy” that numbers in the thousands. Despite his failings in this matter, Paterno conducted his life in a way that makes him a worthy role model. The idea of “success with honor” continues to hold a place in the hearts of the Penn Staters who went on to become doctors, lawyers, educators, religious leaders, journalists, parents, and volunteers.

That semester I took 5 minutes off my time in that 3 mile loop, chasing Joe Pa. His life is an inspiration to everyone in the Penn State family who tries to conduct their life with his ambition, humility and grace.

My heart goes out to the Paterno family for their loss and I thank them for their continued commitment to my alma mater.

[Photo via drocpsu on Flickr]

Wolf Like Me Covers

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Steve

Happy Halloween, here’s a set of covers of Wolf Like Me.

The Dreamers

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Steve

First, I want to say I am hopeful that Steve Jobs’ health is not deteriorating and that he is just stepping aside because it’s not improving fast enough. I’m optimistic that he still has great things to give to the world and perhaps today’s change will allow him to do that.

That said, today is a career milestone and it seems worth reflecting on. Thinking about what he’s done up until this point, he has certainly earned his place among the “crazy ones” of the Think Different commercials. As a Walt Disney fan, its hard not to make comparisons between the two. Disney was an artist who expanded into technology and architecture with Disneyland. Jobs is a technologist who expanded into art (both with Pixar and Apple’s media software) and architecture (via the Apple Store and the upcoming “spaceship”). The common thread in both men though is looking at a problem, in any discipline, and simply refusing to leave it unsolved. I imagine Jobs would approve of Disney’s quote “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible”.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to Jobs came this week in a patent infringement case between Apple and Samsung. In trying to demonstrate prior art for touchscreen tablet computing, Samsung submitted clips from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. It seemed to confirm that Jobs and Apple build the stuff of fantasy. I believe Steve Jobs’ fingerprint will still be seen on Apple for the next decade, but will anyone be able to look at the world and reject the status quo the way Jobs has?

Phillies start the season off right

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Steve

I am not sure which is worse: a snowy Opening Day or an Opening Day without the Phillies playing. I guess things could have been worse, at least I am not a Brewers fan. Still the wintry mix we received in New England today dampened my start-of-baseball excitement. The thrill of the offseason also wore off and I worried this team would be overburdened with high expectations. Somehow I cannot shake the instinctive pessimism that used to be a trademark of Phillies fans.

So circumstances arose that prevented me from watching any of today’s opener and I can’t say I was disappointed. That is until I came back to my desk and everyone in the office started telling me about the dramatic finish. I decided to give Opening Day a do over. I tried to ignore the post game coverage while I finished my work day. Then I went home, bought a season pass to MLB.tv and watched the replay on my Roku.

It was a good night, must see TV. Halladay looked strong. The bullpen did not look as bad as described, things just got out of hand in the 7th. What made me happiest though was seeing Howard and Rollins contribute key hits in the 9th. Sure the offense as a whole was sluggish, but when these guys are hitting good things happen for the Phillies. Rollins could hardly contain himself from jumping out of the dugout every time someone made contact in the 9th. These guys still have high hopes and now I do too.

A Lesson in Poor Customer Service

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Steve

I love DVDs and Blu-rays, so I check the advertisements every week to see which movies are coming out. I look forward to seeing catalog titles released on Blu-ray for the first time, so it thrilled me to see that Best Buy would be exclusively releasing Almost Famous Blu-ray this week. I didn’t think having to buy the movie at Best Buy would be a problem, but it became a big hassle.

On Sunday I went to the West Hartford store and found two labels on the shelves for Almost Famous, but no Blu-rays. Someone put out the labels without every stocking the movie. I searched through the movie aisles for a while before a salesperson helped me. She confirmed in their system that they had copies in the store, then she wandered around the same aisles looking for it. In a store as big as Best Buy, it seems like their inventory system should know where in the store a copy is. After searching with a manager, the salesperson told me they could not find it. That disappointed me, but I told myself the shipment probably got delayed with the bad weather we had that weekend.

I returned to the store Friday night, figuring they should have located their copies by now. Their website and in-store kiosk both show there are still copies available in West Hartford. Yet once again there I could not find any copies. It seems like Best Buy trains employees to ask you if you need help only when you are not looking for anything, because no one stopped for me this time. After 15 minutes I was late for dinner, so I just gave up and left. My best guess is that there is a box of Almost Famous Blu-ray’s in their West Hartford warehouse, tucked somewhere between Rosebud and the Ark of the Covenant.

Today I ordered a copy online for pickup at their Newington store on BestBuy.com. Make them find the movie before I show up, I figured. When I walked in the store, I saw a display of Almost Famous Blu-rays immediately so I figured I was in luck. Unfortunately I needed to wait for the in-store pickup representative to finish a phone support call. Then his computer froze and he could not find my order. It took about 15 minutes and two customer support representatives to find my order in their system and find a physical copy of the movie. Finally the first representative returned with a copy. He printed out my receipt, laid it on top of my movie, and made an X next to the box where I needed to sign. I signed and left, relieved that I finally had a copy of the film. When I got home I discovered they left a nice little memento of my ordeal – the imprint of an X on the cardboard slipcover, right over Kate Hudson’s nose.

X marks the spot

I am writing this because I thought it was both a sad and amusing series of events. I do want to point out that all the Best Buy employees I met were friendly and well-intentioned. It seems like they focus on selling big-ticket items like TVs and computers and do not have the processes in place to make small purchases like this one simple and satisfactory experiences. Someday though their Blu-ray customer will need to buy a TV or computer though and they will probably end up going to Amazon.com.

2010 in Tweets

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Steve

Finding the right format for a year in review post is tough, so I decided to assemble my favorite tweets from 2010.

An Earthquake rocked Haiti:
just donated to http://foodforthepoor.org to help the people in haiti. if you have the means please support the charities working there #
Steve Jobs announced the iPad, which would translate into more work for me in 2010
it’s an ipad www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/m… #
I helped rip up a friend’s kitchen floor:
http://twitpic.com/11q9iu – playing this old house at pacinos new place #
After a month of preparing, I finally got an iPad to play with… I returned it a week later:
http://twitpic.com/1cwkdq – i swear i bought it for work! #
it’s official, espn.com is ready for ipad http://stevr.com/2c ! #
I got to spend some time in New York City:
the biggest thing i’ve learned from user testing this week is that new yorkers are impervious to traditional marketing. #
Roy Halladay Perfect Game!!! #
Helped dig up a friend’s backyard in preparation for a new patio:
helge’s future patio http://twitpic.com/1u9jak #
@_nuno we used the dingo a lot but we weren’t great at handling it http://twitpic.com/1uc58p #
survived jury duty, didn’t get picked for any trials. very tried despite doing nothing but sit in a room all day. #
Saw the movie of 2010:
get out of my way children, i’ve been waiting 15 years for toy story 3 #
Big sports day, the US gets a regulation time goal in World Cup:
walt disney pictures presents… miracle ii… coming to theaters july 2011 #
Then the longest Wimbledon tennis match:
oh god, looks like there is an infinite loop bug mahut-isner match. someone needs to restart the matrix #
Yes, I bought an iPhone and kept it:
scoped out the bristol at&t store, only 4 geeks in line at 1030pm. might swing by tomorrow morning #
like most days, today i had to deal with a lot of unexpected things work. this was one of them http://youtu.be/S0_qztvd35U #

This is what I got to watch during lunch http://twitpic.com/23kdjt #
We all waited for LeBron’s decision:
The Decision will end with LeBron learning we’re all dead but our time together on the island was very real and special #
I read a lot more this year, especially when I got my Kindle in December:
Nothing like the sense of accomplishment you get from finishing a book. I conquered The Adventures of Tom Sawyer today #
I took my brothers Brian and Mike to Walt Disney World:
Finishing up day 1 at Disney World and I’ve traveled by car, plane, boat, bus, and monorail. #
Sometimes the stress of building a large-scale web site gets to me:
today is one of those days i wish i worked for a site with only 100,000 pages that all used one page design #
Sometimes all that hard work pays off though too:
RT @sbosky I’m loving the new page design on ESPN.com. Much easier to navigate. #
I took a 3 city baseball road trip with my friends from work:
Camden yards row 3 http://twitpic.com/2glrs0 #
@khaughney yep. 9 guys, 3 games, 3 days, 1 RV. It has been an epic trip. #
The Daily Collegian said goodbye to a great news advisor:
John Harvey is one of the best teachers I encountered at Penn State collegian.psu.edu/archive/2010/0… via @dailycollegian@khaughney #
Roy Halladay opens the playoffs with a no-hitter:
so that’s one way to deal with all the expectations #halladay #highhopes #
Long story but basically my dad missed the first half of a football game, returned at half time and the team won the game in the 2nd half:
I just want to throw this out there that my dad is the f-ing man #
We met a lot of new people at the jQuery conference, including John Resig:
RT @scottconnor “Everyone wants to hang out with us. It’s the opposite of high school.” – @steveclancy #
I saw Amar’e Stoudemire walking in full uniform to a commercial shoot on my way out of work #
Joe Paterno got his 400th win the day Zenyatta got her first loss:
Joe Pa > 21 Zenyattas #joepa400 #
Got up early due to fall backward, so I went to the NYC Marathon:
using my extra hour to go see @mattrestivo and gang run in the nyc marathon #
I went to the Penn State-Indiana game in DC:
We Are taking over the Metro http://twitpic.com/38k1iv #
My brother Mike had an impressive Thanksgiving Day game:
at the half the haverford fords lead 20-0 over the upper darby royals. mike clancy has 2 TDs and an INT #
Philadelphia had a Merry Cliff-mas:
cliff lee returning to the phillies. this so beats the ghostbusters firehouse santa got me when i was 6, way to go big guy! #
Kitten’s First Christmas http://instagr.am/p/t-Qh/ #

Lost Finale Theories: Die Early and Often

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Steve

Spoiler Alert: If you have not seen the Lost finale and ever intend to, you probably don’t want to read this.

I was not sure how I felt about the Lost finale immediately after it aired. I was not sure how I felt about it this morning. Yet after hearing a lot of negative reaction and differing interpretations from friends and online theorists, I decided I like it a lot more now. At first I thought they gave us a simple answer to a complex question, but I now I think they gave us a complicated answer to a very simple statement: eventually everybody dies.

Let’s start with “eventually”. A lot of people now believe that the last scene confirms that the passengers of Oceanic 815 slammed into an island in the Pacific Ocean on September 22, 2004. That’s just not true though. Christian Shepherd tells Jack “your time on the was the most important time in your life.” While you could interpret the afterlife as part of Jack’s life (since Christian also points out that even after death they are very real), I don’t think that is what he meant. Jack Shepherd died in 2007 after restoring order to the island, collapsing in the bamboo he regained consciousness in 3 years earlier.

We’re left to believe that the “flash-sideways” world we’ve seen throughout season 6 is not part of the real world and instead part of the afterlife. Being the afterlife, its devoid of time or space so characters who live many years after Jack appear. In some ways it make sense – in the moments between life and death, the characters live out their deepest desires. Jack and Juliet become parents, Saiyd and Sawyer become heroes, and Locke and Ben get to know their fathers. In one sense they can’t move on because they need to realize these dreams and although they can’t move on because subconsciously they are searching for their friends on the island. Once they realized their friends are safe and among them again, their souls can move on together.

Something about this seems off to me. The fact that Christian Shepherd spelled it out so clearly, makes me suspicious. Nothing on Lost is ever clear, so why would this be any clearer? I can’t say for sure what the answer is though. I have a couple of thoughts. One thing that seems really interesting to me is that going from outside the church to inside the church, Kate is obviously dressed differently. In fact it seems like a number of them are dressed different. I guess once you realize you’re dead and in the afterlife, you can dress yourself however you want. It just seems like an odd detail to throw in there.

It got me thinking, what if it took Jack a long time to accept his death. Something about the last scenes gave me that idea, that they didn’t walk into a church and walk out dead. My thought is maybe reincarnation is a part of this story. Maybe the flash sideways was a life for these souls and only after they have reconnected have they achieved enough karma to move on and break the cycle of death and rebirth. As Jacob says, it only ends once and it seems in this life these souls have achieved enough grace to move into the next realm. So all these people did live together for a time in Los Angeles, became aware of their existence on the island, lived together for a while and finally reunite in death. In this scenario Jack doesn’t follow Kate into the church immediately, he might not accept death for many years later. It doesn’t change the final ending, but it does leave an opening for a lot more interpretation than half a season of life after death.

I think its great that everyone is interpreting things differently. My one friend is an atheist who thinks it was all a cheap plug for religion, where I have faith and think there’s more to the ending than they all go to Heaven. I think I want to go back and rewatch the series looking for clues about the show’s true ending. Someone posted this clip from an earlier season that just made my head spin. I guess I’m happy that I know that ultimately the characters I grew so fond of found peace in their life and death. Looking back it wouldn’t be Lost if it did not end with a few mysteries.

Kick-Ass

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Steve

No matter how jaded you are towards movie violence, I think you’ll be a little shocked to see 11-year-old Hit-Girl commit acts of cold-blooded murder throughout Kick-Ass. The general controversy around the movie that this violent child is a new low for films and potentially a danger for kids. Honestly, I think my biggest concern is for adults. Hit-Girl kills without mercy or remorse. She seems almost untouched by her militant upbringing. My concern is adults will view children differently, no longer believing that children are impressionable. At the end of the film a man chokes and throws Hit Girl across the room. The moment is horrifying, but given the context it plays like something out of WWE. Kick-Ass is a mediocre movie with some clever moments and I wouldn’t discourage someone from seeing it. However, I hope that cartoon-like child violence does not become a movie trend.

Movie Review: The Invention of Lying

Posted on April 10, 2010 by Steve

Voltaire said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” In Ricky Gervais‘ The Invention of Lying, Mark Bellison does that and more. In conceiving the world’s first “lie”, he opens the door to a world of imagination and emotion. The concept is clever and occasionally funny, but the execution feels a bit off.

In watching the movie, I kept thinking about it in comparison to Gervais’ television comedies The Office and Extras. Both are set in modern-day Britain, yet their characters also seem incapable of lying. David Brent shares the “good news” in The Office that the company is closing his branch and giving him a promotion.In Extras, guest-starting Kate Winslet explains she wanted to do a Holocaust movie to better her chance at winning an Oscar (in real life Winslet won last year as an ex-concentration camp guard in The Reader). The characters’ unusual honestly is what makes these shows funny, yet when it becomes normal in this movie it seems a bit off.

I suspect part of the problem is the A-list American stars struggled with the dry, British humor. Most of the cast seemed to misread deadpan for robotic cluelessness. The only actors who seem capable of telling the truth without a straight face in the film are Gervias and Arrested Develepment alums Jason Bateman and Jeffery Tambor.

The film seems to get lost in a Monty Python-esque turn when Bellison conceives the greatest “lie”, that of an omnipotent power and an afterlife. The film also treats fat losers as a race, which as a fatty I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. I enjoyed the premise of the film and some of its more inspired jokes, but ultimately I was left wishing for more.

News Reading and Focused Tasking on the iPad

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Steve

A series of events this weekend caused me to purchase an iPad on Saturday. I bought it mainly to test with in the short term and I’m still undecided about whether I want to keep it. It’s gorgeous, easy to use, and very well designed. It is also very expensive, fills limited “needs” and is inflexible. However two ideas stuck out very big in my mind from my first days of use that I wanted to share.

News Reading

The New York Times and USA Today applications are very impressive. In the past I’ve been pretty skeptical of “e-ink” newspaper applications. Hyperlinking and the interoperability make the Web superior to most news applications. The iPad applications, however, do a good job of recreating the experience of flipping through a newspaper skimming and reading stories as you go. Individual articles fill the screen, text wrapped in narrow columns which are easier on the eyes. On the USA Today app, you could literally “flip” through pages by dragging your finger horizontally. It was so simple and fun that I read through all 29 articles that were available on Monday morning. I haven’t read that much of a newspaper in years.

I still don’t think that applications are a good investment for most publishers, but I think there’s a lot Web publishers can learn from the design of these applications. Navigation was sparse. The focus was on content, not links. I spent little time on the apps’ front pages and a lot more time reading strories. Instead of marketing each story as a single product and trying to push other products on you (the Amazon.com model), the apps encourage you to play and consume more (the Netflix model?). Reading on these applications is more about the experience. Rather than overwhelming you with choices, they are offering a single cohesive product. These applications don’t have the burden of advertising and other marketing obligations that their Web counterparts have. I think some advertising could still be incorporated without destroying the experience (and in this environment, would be more valuable for advertisers). In the end I was frustrated that more news Web sites are not designed like this, since there is little in the apps that you couldn’t do in HTML.

The iPad will not save the print business model. For starters its too late. This device is not ubiquitous enough yet to make up for lost print revenue even if consumers would pay for subscriptions. Publishers have to recognize that they will never be able to recapture more than a fraction of their old subscription base online simply because they have too much competition.The publishers who do want to charge for content on an app should at least be smart enough to block access to non-subscribers on their main site. Otherwise they’re just selling bottled water. Under the right circumstances I could see myself paying for the right to read certain publications, but I don’t see myself as a typical consumer in that sense.

Focused Tasking

One of the biggest complaints from iPhone users is the lack of multi-tasking on the device. Playing on the iPad I’m starting to think the issue is exaggerated and that maybe this “limitation” is actually a feature. Forcing you to dedicate the whole screen to one view helps you focus on the task at hand, again by limiting choices. I believe this is part of the reason why I spent so much time reading the news apps on my iPad. It was more work to switch to Twitter or Gmail than it is on my browser. Whatever app I had open got my full attention. Compare that to my work computer which typically has half a dozen apps, more than a dozen windows and a bunch of tabs open at once constantly demanding my attention.

Even Safari on the iPad allows you to focus more on the task at hand. Tabs are banished to a background view so you aren’t constantly tempted. Double tapping on a text area zooms in on it, so the content you’re reading fills the screen. This is a feature is meant for making text more readable on mobile devices, but it also allows readers to block out distractions on the page. The HTML5 video experience also allows you to make any embedded video full screen, which looks great. You also have to consider that most iPad/iPhone users are a captive audience. They’re either traveling or too lazy to leave their living room, so they’re more patient and want to enjoy the content.

Yes there are some apps that need multitasking – I really can’t justify just sitting and looking at the NPR orPandora apps while I’m listening to them. Ithink I would suggest instead of caving on multitasking, Apple adds the ability to load widgets to your home screen that run in the background. That would allow me to keep track of live feeds like Twitter and Facebook while I’m idle (like last night when I was watching the NCAA Championship game with my iPad). It would also give radio apps a place to run in the background while you’re working. I imagine we may be hearing more about the future of multitasking in the iPhone later this week, but I for one hope they leave it largely unchanged.

* * *

So are some of my big observations from using the iPad, neither of which have gotten a lot of attention in the initial reviews. Even if you don’t need/want this device, there’s a lot you can gain from just looking at the design of the applications. It is worth spending a day or two playing with if you get the chance.

Steve Clancy

Web developer and sometimes blogger

Author Archives: Steve