14.1 on the clock. The Magic take a timeout before they inbound the ball. The entire arena, 20,000 people are on their feet cheering for both the Magic and the Celtics, the game is tied 93 each. The Celtics are the best team in the league, with only seven losses so far this season. The Magic and Celtics have both won on their home turf this season putting their record at 1-1.

Hedo inbounds to Arroyo, Arroyo holds the ball the passes it back to Hedo. Hedo is our go to clutch shooter, he is one of our top players and we try to get the ball in his hands in the final seconds as he has a definite ability to sink them when it counts.

So I watch as he holds the ball and holds the ball, obviously making sure the Celtics won’t have a shot if he misses, taking us to overtime. 3 seconds on the clock he moves left, 2 seconds he slips right, 1 second left with a defender in his face he jumps up and takes a three point shot from beyond the arc.

The alarm blows and the backboard goes red as the clock expires, lighting the ball as it falls through the basket and net. The arena explodes, we’re all jumping around and high fiving. Magic win 96-93! It was one of those magical moments, the world falls away and there is only adrenaline

The NBA, where awesome happens.

I have to watch Sports Center tomorrow morning.

K and I are media junkies, no denying it, she loves the *ahem* crappy reality television like Rock of Love 2, and such. However we both love the shows which make fun of media, like The Soup and VH1’s Best Week Ever.

This week though, I feel the need to salute The Soup, which ended their show with a mention about Heath Ledger:

“And one last thing. Heath ledger passed away this week. And in all the years we’ve been doing this show, we’ve never had cause to mention him. So stop digging through the dirt, weasels. A talented, decent guy is gone and our thoughts go to him who knew him.”

Joel McHale, and writers of The Soup, I salute you and thank you for having decency even as you make Britney Spears jokes and dress Joel up as Rainbow Brite.

Update: I’ve discovered that while what I did worked, it also cut out the stats somewhere along the line, so I’ve rolled back to my previous settings and I’ll explore it more this week.

Podpress is far from perfect, but it’s closer than many other podcasting systems out there. The developers have put a LOT of work into it, so much so I half expect them to begin spinning off their own blogging app. The fundamentals are all there, they just need to build their own system for handling posts and such. Not that I am recommending they do so, Wordpress is great, there is just so much code in this plugin that it is halfway there already.

For ManaNation though, I’ve been quietly hacking myself some custom features or abilities. Since ads are going to be a major revenue source, I wanted to open that door on their popup video player, I got some help on their forums and found the javascript which launched the popup player, then I modified it to show my logo and some ads.

That was all well and good until something better, and cooler, and ultimately more awesome, came along. Shadowbox.

I link-logged it yesterday during work and then last night I sat down and figured how to hack it into the system.

First, I installed and tested Shadowbox on the Wordpress installation. I chose to use the Yahoo YUI framework, uploaded the necessary javascript and css files, and linked them in the theme header. I tested a few links with the ‘rel=”shadowbox”‘ and sure enough it worked like a charm.

Next, I ditched Podpress’ whole javascript popup launch, instead I created a php page which I called ‘popupvideo.php’ and had it create the same page I was generating through javascript, it also accepted a php variable (videolink) which it used in the wmv player to load the video for activex or the embedded player.

Third, I modified the code which generated the popup link (in podpress-theme.php) to instead create a shadowboxed link to the popupvideo.php file. This took some trial and error as I had to find the proper variable for the code “$val['URI']” which is the link to the media file.

Fourth, I fiddled with my page’s design some. I’m still not totally happy with it, but I like it better. This way I don’t lose visitors to new links, I can pop them up in site. Sure, some might find it annoying, but for my podcast audience I don’t think many of them will be unhappy with the change.

The older I get the more I realize that the secret to being a success is really who you know. Politicians are an example of this, it’s what some might call a “Good Ole’ Boys network” where everyone has reached this tier and if you’re on the in, it’s much easier to remain there. Oh sure, people can succeed and thrive by pure awesome or skill or innovation, but there are easier ways.

To visualize, consider life’s achievements as a mountain with tiers or levels, involving lots of climbing and sure you could hoist your petard up there with enough umph, or you could look for someone standing on the ledge who is willing to reach down and pull you up. You might have to make promises, cut deals, or smile real pretty - but that is worth the saved effort.

This is what brought the topic to mind:

Word came about a possible partner for the podcast and so I’ve been trying to get the guy on the phone for over two weeks, and he has just been elusive. I’ve kept missing him at the office and he hasn’t returned any calls. So when I mention this to my cohost, Lee, he pulls out his phone and calls the guy’s store, talks with the store manager who calls the owner on his cell and gets permission to give us his cell phone number. All in all, less than five minutes.

Now it’s still up to me to get him on the cell phone, a call I’ll place later today, but I’m this much closer to closing a deal.

When Lee got off the phone and got us the number, I just shook my head at how easy he did it. Here I am busy battering down a well guarded front door when Lee decides to get directions to the back door.