I Don’t Care If Jason Collins Is Gay
A big story broke earlier this week when NBA player Jason Collins announced he is gay. Collins became the first active player in any of the four major sports in the United States (NBA basketball, MLB baseball, NFL football, NHL hockey) to come out. The story found it’s way into all media. Even a baseball podcast I listen too spent significant time discussing the issue.
I took a little heat from a friend of mine when, while discussing the story, I said “I don’t care if Jason Collins is gay”. My friend was adamant. “This is a big deal”, the friend said.
Let me explain. It took a lot of guts for Collins, whose professional world is extremely masculine and probably includes more than it’s fair share of homophobes, to publicly announce he’s gay. I have much respect for the courage it must have taken for him to do this knowing that there could be some consequences in the locker room.
But as a sports fan all I care about is the sport. When I’m watching a game or an interview with a player I don’t care (much) about the player as a person. I care about the player as an athlete. I don’t care if he (or she) is straight, gay, married, single, whatever. I don’t care about the house they live in or the car they drive. It’s all about the game.
We all have our own lifestyles. Some parts of our lifestyles we’ve chosen. Others are products of our environments. Still others have just evolved over time. We are all entitled to whatever our lifestyles are and don’t need approval from other people. I live my life in my way and you live your life in yours.
So why should I care if Collins is gay or not? He’s entitled to live his life his way.
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Pointing Abraham Williams’s PHP Library for Twitter OAuth to Twitter API 1.1
I’ve mentioned before how I’m using Abraham Williams’s PHP library for Twitter OAuth for various projects. With the impending decommissioning of version 1.0 of the Twitter API the question has come up as to how to edit this library so it uses version 1.1 of the Twitter API instead. It’s actually quite simple:
- Open twitteroauth.php.
- Go to line 21 where is says ‘public $host = “https://api.twitter.com/1/”;’
- Change this line to ‘public $host = “https://api.twitter.com/1.1/”;’
- Save the file.
That’s it! You’re now using Twitter API 1.1.
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Plugged In, Not Charging?
When I came into work this morning I noticed that the battery icon in the task tray of my windows 7 laptop said “63% available (plugged in, not charging)”. Naturally the “plugged in, not charging” part was a concern. After Googling for suggested fixes and trying a few different things I hit on a fix that worked for me. Here it is:
- Shutdown normally.
- Close lid when completely shut down.
- Remove AC adapter.
- Remove battery.
- Replace AC adapter.
- Open lid and turn on.
- After a full startup do a normal shutdown.
- Close lid when completely shut down.
- Remove AC adapter.
- Replace battery.
- Replace AC adapter.
- Open lid and start up normally.
As usual your mileage may vary. If you have this issue and find a different process that works for you please share it in the comments.
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Let’s Stop Using The Term Blogger
Upon perusing a couple of fan sites for a sports team this morning I began musing on how blogs have evolved over the years and how the term originally applied to the content management system has grown to cover several genres of writing.
As a fan of the New York Mets I was one of the first 12 bloggers to discuss the team nearly 10 years ago. Now there are so many blogs covering the team that I can’t even count them all. Some, like mine, are small places where people write about certain topics relating to the team when the mood strikes. Others are teams of writers assigned to certain aspects of the team, it’s organization and it’s functions. Still others are written by professional writers under the mastheads of nationally (and internationally) known publications.
It’s great how the technology has grown and packages like WordPress have made it easy to deploy the technology. But we can no longer use the term blogger like we did in the old days. These days a blogger can be:
- A writer for an internationally known organization like the New York Times (which has a large blogs section of their own).
- Professional writers who want to write independently. (Such as a reporter who wants to write something outside of the organization that employs them.)
- Teams of amateurs who share an interest.
- A single person who wants to write about something (anything).
There are other types of people who write on blogs as well but I think that covers the four basic types of blogs.
With so many different types of blogs how can we continue to use the term “blogger” universally?
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If Steve Jobs Were Alive He’d Want Us To Stop Saying “If Steve Jobs Were Alive”
This morning I read yet another piece about Apple that said “If Steve Jobs were alive…”. We’ve seen this time and again since Jobs died but even more now in the wake of the release of the latest iPhone. It seems like every time someone has a complaint or even a compliment about something Apple has done they invoke the name of Steve Jobs to support their position.
Here are some examples:
- Apple Maps would not have been released in it’s current state if Steve Jobs were alive.
- If Steve Jobs were alive he’d approve of the size and weight of the iPhone 5.
- If Steve Jobs were alive he’d fire Tim Cook.
- If Steve Jobs were alive today he’d never allow the iPad Mini to be produced.
The last example not withstanding (as of this writing we don’t yet know if the iPad Mini is fact or fiction) no one can say for sure what Steve Jobs would be up to if he were alive. What would he approve of? What would he disapprove of? What would he allow or not allow Apple to create? Produce? Sell? Who knows? Nobody.
So can we just stop saying this already?
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