Tales from the jar side: Knees are important, Validating records, Olympic basketball, and the usual collection of tweets and toots

My Saturday was going pretty well until I realized it was Sunday. (rimshot)

Welcome, fellow jarheads, to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of August 4 - 11, 2024. This week I taught my Latest Java course on the O’Reilly Learning Platform.

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Apparently, knees matter

At the end of last week’s newsletter, I mentioned that my wife had knee-replacement surgery scheduled for this week, but I hoped it wouldn’t be too disruptive to our lives. The surgery went well, thanks for asking, but it turns out that knees are involved in a lot of daily activities. I mean, way more than you might expect. Who knew?

It’s been the better part of a week and she’s not back to her old self yet. I’ll give it a few more days and let you know in the next newsletter if there are any remaining issues. My suggestion, though, is that you might want to consider not getting major surgery in the future, if you have that option. Of course, you do you, but it turns out it’s a bit more of a bother than you might think.

(Okay, enough of that. She’s doing fine, but it’s both painful and annoying. It’ll get better soon enough, or so I hear.)

Neither my wife nor her new knee

I asked GPT-4o for some fun facts about knees, and this is what it generated:

“Knees are fascinating and complex joints in the human body with several interesting aspects. Here are some fun facts about knees:

1. Largest Joint in the Body: The knee is the largest and one of the most complex joints in the human body. It connects the thigh bone (femur) to the shin bone (tibia).

2. Triple Bone Connection: The knee joint is made up of three bones: the femur, tibia, and patella (kneecap). The fibula is also located near the knee but is not directly part of the joint.

3. Multiple Movements: Although primarily a hinge joint, allowing bending and straightening, the knee also permits slight rotational and lateral movements, making it a pivotal joint for complex actions like walking, running, and jumping.

4. Meniscus Cushioning: The knee contains two menisci (plural of meniscus), which are C-shaped pieces of cartilage that act as shock absorbers between the femur and tibia. They help distribute weight and reduce friction during movement.

5. Ligament Support: The knee is stabilized by several important ligaments, including the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), medial collateral ligament (MCL), and lateral collateral ligament (LCL). These ligaments help maintain the knee's stability and alignment.

6. Patellar Reflex: The knee-jerk reaction, or patellar reflex, is a common neurological test where a tap on the patellar tendon causes an involuntary kick of the leg. This reflex helps assess the nervous system's function.

7. Evolutionary Advantage: The development of the knee joint played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing for efficient bipedal locomotion. Our ancestors' ability to walk upright freed up their hands for tool use and manipulation.

8. Unique Patterns: Just like fingerprints, everyone has a unique pattern on their kneecaps, though these patterns are not commonly used for identification.

9. Knee Replacement Surgery: Knee replacement is one of the most common and successful surgical procedures, often performed to relieve pain and improve function in people with severe arthritis or knee damage.

10. Animal Knees: In animals, the location and structure of the knee joint can differ significantly. For example, in quadrupeds like dogs and horses, what we commonly refer to as their "knee" is actually equivalent to the human ankle, and their true knee joint is higher up the leg.

These facts highlight the importance and complexity of the knee joint in both humans and animals, showcasing its role in movement and adaptation.”

Okay then. Here I thought they were just the primary reason running backs in the NFL have an average career of four years or less.

More seriously, the people at the Hartford Hospital Bone and Joint Institute have been great, and so far the physical terrorists (er, therapists) have been helpful as well. Also, drugs are good, in case you were wondering.

One more thing: Monday is my wife’s birthday, but I’m not sure she’s considering the new knee her present. I’ll have to ask. I’d tell you her age, but that wouldn’t be taking my own advice about avoiding major surgery.

Technical Content: Validating Records

I’m working on a new video for the Tales from the jar side YouTube channel. The topic is validating the properties of Java records. Here’s one of the big examples:

The code includes a combination of Bean Validation annotations, like @Pattern, @DecimalMin, and @NotBlank, as well as overloaded constructors and a compact constructor used for validating and transforming the input values. The ResponseFormat and Voice types are enums. I have a rather thorough test class that I use to evaluate valid and invalid entries.

In case you hadn’t guessed from the properties, this is an input request for OpenAI’s text-to-speech (TTS) service. The output is a generated mp3 file. Among my examples is a Munch Scream:

Hopefully I’ll finish that video early this week.

Olympic Basketball

I was rather busy this week, so I didn’t catch many of the events, but I tried to make time for both the men’s and women’s basketball. My son and I have been huge Steph Curry fans for years, which is why we root for Golden State. I’m not sure if that fandom will last long after he retires, which should be in the next couple of years.

Still, watching Steph Curry play basketball makes me happy. I love that he’s a David surrounded by Goliaths, he’s a really good person, and he’s fundamentally changed the way the game is played. He’s 36, however, and sometimes that shows, even when he’s on the same team as an ageless LeBron James (nearly 40, but you’d never know it other than the grey in his beard) and a 35-year-old Kevin Durant, among the other all-stars on the team.

Steph didn’t do much in the early rounds, but in the semi-finals and the finals, he basically went nuclear. This image has been making the rounds on the web:

That’s Steph, shooting with perfect form, past the leaping Victor Wembanyama, all 7 foot 4 inches of him soaring on defense. At first glance you might think the image is some weird forced perspective trick, like in the Lord of the Rings, but nope, that’s to scale. Wow.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that older athletes can still do what they could when they were young, but not as often and not for as long. Steph picked the last 3 minutes of the gold medal game to become his 2007 self again, nailing four consecutive three-pointers one after the other. It was glorious, and was the perfect capstone to a wonderful career. If a scriptwriter included that in a movie, it would be rejected as too hopelessly sentimental and unbelievable, and yet there it was. The French team played their hearts out, but when that happens, what can you do?

Speaking of the French, their women’s team played the US in the finals as well, and lost by a single point when Gabby William’s last second shot counted for 2 rather than 3 because her foot was on the line:

Breanna Stewart points at Gabby Williams' buzzer beater on the line in USA win

I’m from Connecticut, and here in Connecticut, we know women’s basketball. I have to say that in that gold medal game, France was the much better team. The Americans won on sheer athleticism and talent, but the French played an actual offense, moved the ball, fought hard on defense, rebounded like crazy, and just barely missed too many shots in the fourth quarter. The US was very fortunate to come out with the gold.

I usually assume that coaches know much more about the game and about their team than I do, which makes me rather unique among basketball fans. But still, what happened to any actual offense? It was hero ball pretty much the whole way. And why didn’t Diana Taurasi play at all? I know she’s 42, but not one minute of playing time, when she’s still a legitimate threat and the US could really have used one?

Yes, they won, and I’ll let it go, but that could have easily gone the other way.

Tweets and Toots

Tim Walz Dad Jokes

They’re not Dad Jokes, exactly, but friendly Dad-type statements, found at Tim Walz Fixed Your Bicycle.

Simple and fun, which is what the web is supposed to be for. :)

LeBron’s shoes

I have to give a shout-out to LeBron’s shoes from the gold medal game:

Nice. I’d buy a pair, but I’d look completely ridiculous, not that that usually stops me. Nike is going to make SO much money off of those.

I feel seen

 Yes, definitely, and this happens way more often than not.

I feel seen, again

I need to send this to all the editors I know.

Silence of the lamb chops

Hannibal Lecter finally opens his own restaurant.

Remember, remember, the 4th of July?

Honor the irony and vote anyway.

9 o’clock

I didn’t understand the value for 5 until I realized that’s a factorial sign. Now I want one of those clocks.

Marketing

Hey, it’s worth a try.

Honesty in labeling

That does sound pretty bad.

And finally:

Brown isn’t my color either

Yeah, brown isn’t my color either, and I have less hair than that. Given the lettering, that image looks AI-generated, but if so, it’s for a good cause.

Have a great week, everybody!

Last week:

• Making New Java Features Work For You, on the O’Reilly Learning Platform.

• My wife got a new knee. I expect she’ll turn into the bionic woman any day now.

This week:

• Two-day private class on Java upgrade from 8 to 17.