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Everyone takes their eyes off the goal. Everyone. Who remembers Michael Phelps’ incident after the 2008 Olympics? What about Ryan Lochte, did you even know he was debating skipping the 2016 Olympics, but recently changed his mind? See, even gold medal athletes get distracted. Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal. Vince Lombardi Staying Motivated There are thousands of articles on how to stay motivated. The best way to stay motivated is: ...

Since creating the first rendition of the Structured Page Titles for Umbraco, I decided it would be worthwhile to revisit and clean up the size of the file and make it much more readable. Umbraco makes it easy to define page titles, but this script helps reduce the repetitive nature of titles in larger sites. To use this code you will need to create a shortPageTitle and pageTitle in your document type(s). Skip this step or change the script to work in your install. ...

With my first collegiate season under my belt, I am definitely looking forward to my second year (and more, if possible). We wrapped up the season with 20 individual records (more with diving) and had two compete at the NCAA Division III National Championships. Challenges Being a first-year (first-time collegiate) coach was intimidating. While I felt the need to approach the athletes different, I didn’t. They were responsive to my critiques and criticisms, inviting the views from a coach they didn’t know that well. ...

Some code from a side project using the events build out from Noel Tock. Event Shortcode <? /* ------------------- THEME FORCE ---------------------- */ /* * EVENTS SHORTCODES (CUSTOM POST TYPE) * http://www.noeltock.com/web-design/wordpress/how-to-custom-post-types-for-events-pt-2/ */ // 1) FULL EVENTS //*********************************************************************************** function tf_events_full ( $atts ) { // - define arguments - extract(shortcode_atts(array( 'limit' =&gt; '10', // # of events to show 'description' =&gt; '150' // # of Chars to show in description ), $atts)); // ===== OUTPUT FUNCTION ===== ob_start(); // ===== LOOP: FULL EVENTS SECTION ===== // - hide events that are older than 6am today (because some parties go past your bedtime) - $today6am = strtotime('today 6:00') + ( get_option( 'gmt_offset' ) * 3600 ); // - query - global $wpdb; $querystr = "SELECT * FROM $wpdb-&gt;posts wposts, $wpdb-&gt;postmeta metastart, $wpdb-&gt;postmeta metaend WHERE (wposts.ID = metastart.post_id AND wposts.ID = metaend.post_id) AND (metaend.meta_key = 'tf_events_enddate' AND metaend.meta_value &gt; $today6am ) AND metastart.meta_key = 'tf_events_enddate' AND wposts.post_type = 'tf_events' AND wposts.post_status = 'publish' ORDER BY metastart.meta_value ASC LIMIT $limit"; $events = $wpdb-&gt;get_results($querystr, OBJECT); // - declare fresh day - $daycheck = null; // - loop - if ($events): global $post; foreach ($events as $post): setup_postdata($post); // - custom variables - $custom = get_post_custom(get_the_ID()); $sd = $custom["tf_events_startdate"][0]; $ed = $custom["tf_events_enddate"][0]; ?> <div class="full-events"> <?php // - determine if it&#039;s a new day - $longdate = date("l, F j, Y", $sd); if ($daycheck == null) { echo &#039;<br /> <h3 class="title">' . $longdate . '</h3>'; } if ($daycheck != $longdate && $daycheck != null) { echo '<h3 class="title">' . $longdate . '</h3>'; } // - local time format - $time_format = get_option('time_format'); $stime = date($time_format, $sd); $etime = date($time_format, $ed); // - output - ?> <table> <tr> <td class="time"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> </table> </div>

Recently, I received a series of text messages from a former swimmer. I only coached this athlete for two high school seasons and not only did he have an impact on my life, but these messages clearly showed that I had an impact on his as well. Hey Coach Greg! I just wanted to shoot you a quick text here. I just wanted to let you know how grateful I was to have had you as my head coach senior year. I know this might be a little late, but my family and I were discussing swim season and I was describing my senior season to them and out of all the sports and coaches I have had you were the most inspiring to me. You inspired a goof of a kid with some talent to put his mind and will to a sport and team and I will always appreciate that. You taught me valuable life lessons that I will carry for the rest of my life…senior year was such a blast and seeing you behind us not only as a coach but as friends too meant a lot to me. Seeing you get emotional at conference truly I feel was the moment that defined you as a coach. Emotional, yet reserved and fully supportive of everybody on the team. Not just varsity, but also JV. Even if you may have some things you would’ve changed or done differently if you had a second chance, just know that I wouldn’t have changed a single thing. That season, that team was the best of my high school career. You believed in me when other coaches didn’t, and sometimes that’s all someone really needs is someones belief in them. The only thing I might have changed is to have you as my coach for my whole high school career (haha). I just thought I should give a long deserved thanks from me to you Coach Greg. I hope that you have luck in coaching because you’re one damn good coach. ...

If you are looking for some code to generate tiered page titles within Umbraco here is an example that worked for our site. This code assumes you are using pageTitle as a DocType element.

Over the weekend, a friend asked me to do something I’ve never done before. Photograph their wedding. While I wasn’t the official photographer, I was asked to take one of the last photos of the night. The one posted below. I have never done photos like this and was impressed with my results. I have done zero post work (yet) and am looking for tips/tricks/advice on post work and general thoughts of how it turned out. ...

When creating WordPress themes, sometimes it’s necessary to create your own menus. With 3.0+ you are able to create menus as well as a fallback menu. Within the fallback_cb, you can actually call your own functions to create a customized menu (helpful when developing for network of blogs). Here’s what you’ll need to do. 1. Activate Custom Menus How to Add Custom Navigation Menus in WordPress 3.0 Themes 2. Place your Menu in the Template Ex: ...

For the last three weeks, I’ve been working towards finding my own way. The people at Rose-Hulman have made my transition extremely easy and incredibly fun. I’ve been introduced to a large group of people and have already been given a large project that will change the way this school looks at social media. I’m looking forward to getting it off the ground. This new position I’m in has been a very large change compared to where I was previously, they are embracing technology and putting the latest and greatest tools in front of me. Giving me the best opportunity to succeed. Heck, I’m typing this post on a brand new iPad. ...

Decided to make another new recipe with Sarah this week. From a pampered chef cook book. A very colorful meal with lots of fresh veggies. {: .full}