Two weeks ago, doing some TV channel surfing with Betabug, we put a channel that was broadcasting some videos about the 2008 Paralympic Games. We were a bit shocked when we saw some guys riding MadMax style wheelchairs and kicking each other out of the playing area. They were playing Wheelchair Rugby (known also as Murderball).
Some days later, Betabug found a movie about this sport. Is the movie I’d like to recommend you: Murderball. This documentary focus the story on the U.S.A. team and their members, also talking a bit about their lives in a wheelchair.
It starts talking a bit about the sport and the U.S.A. team, but after some minutes you’ll get inside the life of the players: their feelings about the game, and also about their daily lives and problems. It also shows the confrontation with the Canada team and how competitive people can be (It doesn’t matter if you have legs or not).
In the end I got the feeling that all our problems are nothing compared with what these people have to stand everyday and how they’re able to accomplish their lifes. They do things that we can say “It’s impossible”, and you can see in their eyes that “they’re alive”.
My personal mark: 8,5 (a must see).
About Paralympics
We usually focus all our media and attention in these guys that excel in the sport they like. But some times we forgot other sports for people who live in a different way, for example in a wheelchair. This got my attention now, perhaps because I got so bored of the typical sports in the olympic games that when I saw people giving their best but in something totally different… I just liked it.
Google just joined the Browsers War with it’s own weapon: Google chrome. But, of course, they added the google spicy touch. It’s not fair to leave my last post about browsers without Google chrome’s benchmark.
So here is the summary again:
Google Chrome 0.2.147.27 (Webkit 525.13): results (4.15x faster than IE8)
IE8 Beta 2 (8.0.6001.18241) results (1x Base speed used for comparisons)
So now it’s time to wait for you (reader using Internet Explorer) and the rest of IE users to realize that Internet Explorer for the web is just like using wordpad for professional text editing (you can troll comment for this ).
September the 16th, 2008. One would think that in 2008, in the city centre of a big urban area, you won’t be attacked by men handling tables and chairs and covered with motorbike helmets. But add in a mix Athens, Greece, University and Brainless people and everything is possible (with the consent of people, police and government).
Let’s go to the juicy story. 16/09/2008 around 7 o’clock in the afternoon, I witnessed a brutal attack with chairs and tables against a car with diplomatic plate parked in Stournari St. (in front of Papasotiriou bookshop). There was at least a woman inside shouting loudly and asking for help while the assailants were attacking her car. But a second one (her daughter) appeared seconds after. I don’t know if she was inside or she just arrived.
After the aggression the attackers hid inside the university because Greek laws don’t allow police to get inside the university and it doesn’t matter what you do: you’re safe there. I did not try to stop the attack (sorry 4 vs 1 ), I only checked that the woman wasn’t injured (then I saw the second girl calling the police). I left after I checked on them.
Some minutes latter I returned and saw some young people provoking and addressing both women in a really rude way to both women. They were saying things like:
“I didn’t know that Cyprus had diplomats now”.
“Don’t worry your government will buy you a new (car) one”.
“Let’s go for some gas to burn it all, HAHAHAHAHA”.
“Look at the poor woman, HAHAHAHAHA” (yes the same guy).
“That’s because you put your diplomatic car near the university”.
I couldn’t stop myself and I asked what happened. But I didn’t receive a clear answer. It was something related to a “diplomatic car”, and I don’t remember more. Perhaps my mind couldn’t assimilate such spoon of irrational behaviour.
It happened that ther car had a diplomatic plate from Cyprus. And the woman was waiting for her daughter to come out from the university. Also the woman and her daughter were Greeks. The mother claimed that she also studied when she was trying to get an explanation for what happened.
My opinion.
-1 point rate to:
People who didn’t move a finger to help. Or even just to check if the woman was right. You can die in the middle of Athens and these ones will not help you.
The police for his fast reaction times. I saw a car latter when I was arriving to Omonia square, it was running towards the place of the incident. I also found 4 policeman in Omonia with their motorbikes having a talk about the weather.
The government, because policemen are not guilty for the bad organization in their systems.
The students, because they protect these violent people. They do not kick them from the university, but at the same time they fight against anyone who dares to say about removing the “no police in the university”. Hey folks!, or you clean your house, or the “cleaning lady” will come inside and will make a mess (I prefer to my business and do not wait for others).
The passivity of the typical Athens citizen. Shame on you who didn’t even check if the woman was bleeding or needed medical assistance.
I can understand a guy who needs money for drugs and asks/steals the money from me. Buy drugs -> money. But my mind cannot understand how 4 young guys can attack a woman, a mother, in front of her daughter. And I cannot understand how people can make fun of that latter.
I felt powerless, and I still have some anger inside me after that incident.
Notes
The rear glass and rear left car windows were broken. The picture doesn’t show that.
Perhaps it better for you to hear the poor woman shouting because the panic while I was approaching to car to check on her. Here it is
You can call me troll, but I couldn’t resist it. Few days ago Microsoft released the 2nd beta of the new Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). Many years ago (”long time ago in a galaxy far away”) I stopped using Internet Explorer (IE), so it’s time to check this last preview of what is upon us.
The first test was about JavaScript performance. These days JavaScript “bloated” pages visit our browsers. They do many things like you can see in Google maps or Google mail. But, what about in those synthetic numbers? Here is the answer.
If we say that IE8 is the base speed: Firefox is 2.74 times faster, Safari is 2.24 times faster and Opera 1.90 times faster than IE8. If we add some the upcoming performance for Safari 4 and Firefox 3.1 of 7 times faster than firefox 3.0 then we have that the new safari and firefox are gonna be arround 14 times faster than IE8.
Apart from the technical numbers. IE8 is as IE7 was when it was a beta. The old hacks for IE7 don’t work unless IE8 works in IE7 emulation mode (more hacks for this). Also, pages in standards mode don’t work as expected even if it passes the Acid 2 test. Is strange to see Firefox, Safari and Opera rendering the same site and producing the same results. However, IE8 Acid2 compliant just does strange things. This means more hacks for IE8 (thank you Microsoft, Web Developers are going to love you so much).
Are you thinking about moving to IE8? WARNING TOTALLY BIASED!
If you’re willing to do the change, just download anything else. My personal recommendation is Firefox but whatever else is better.
If you’re using IE6 or IE7 for your normal web browsing and you think you’re gonna go along with the new version, spend your efforts on anything else. You’ll enjoy faster browsing and many other options if you don’t use IE. And over all of these, you’ll save web developers from writing IE hacks.
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