Around the Bay - almost, but not quite a disaster

This year's Around the Bay 30k was a tough slog for me! Mentally and physically. My target was to come in around 2:50.

From running

For whatever reasons wet rain is a trigger to causing muscle cramps for me. And guess what, this year's edition (the 115th - North America's oldest road race) featured drizzling cold rain with a chilly wind off the lake. I was thoroughly drenched.

At about 12k (!) my left calf cramped. Which is ridiculous because it's not like I hadn't trained leading up to this point (And I ran the 12 normally, at about a 5:30 pace, so it wasn't a case of overzealotry at the beginning leading me astray). It was EXTREMELY frustrating, because normally at 12 I'm just about warmed up and ready to push a little. I mean, if you cramp at 27 or 28, that's fine, you're in the home stretch -- but 12?! I have never had a DNF but when you have 18k of ugliness ahead of you, bonking out is a serious option to consider. I chose to slow down to a 6min/k jog where the cramping was held in check. Nevertheless, it was touch and go between 14 to 18k.

Once I hit twenty I knew I would just grit it out (in the worst case, I could just walk 10k). I felt like a zeppelin with a leak, slowly being forced to descend from the sky. The rolling hills section in Burlington didn't help either. I thought I might have an outside chance to hit three hours but the Mountain brutalized me. My right quad started locking up too. Cardio wise everything was fine, since I was going at a turtle's pace. Huffing along at slower than 6 minute kilometers is not enjoyable for me.

My chip time at the finish was 3:01:27. Oh well. It still felt good to complete the course; it was like an exercise in humility and perspicacity. I felt like I earned my finisher's medal the hard way and will wear my race jersey (a somewhat lurid orangey-red longsleeve tech shirt) with pride.

Normally ATB is on the training schedule leading up to Ottawa or some other marathon in the spring, but this year I'm taking it easy. I might still do the Waterfront marathon or Toronto Int'l in the fall, we'll see!

Next thing on the menu: climbing in Kentucky!

Dear Mr. Gates, here's another couple hundred bucks

Once again, despite my best efforts, I find myself meting out hard earned dollars to the great and terrible Beast of Redmond. I'm not as fanatically anti-Microsoft as many of my ideological colleagues and associates are, but nevertheless I try to avoid using software from that particular organization wherever possible -- at least with respect to personal use.

The software license that I bought? Office:mac 2008, Home and Student edition. Yes, that specific eye-rolling suite. Aren't there other fantastic alternatives available, you're asking. What about Open Office? Or iWork?

[In case you're wondering, ethically I feel bound not to pirate software. I make my living with a software company, and even though piracy is endemic in today's youth culture, I can't be a hypocrite and pirate someone else's work. Just a personal choice I've made.]

Success in software deployments often hinges upon the use case scenario. And the use case here involves my parents. My parents have a Mac, which I purchased for them because -- generally speaking -- Macs just work, are easier to use, and are simpler to configure for non-computer adept users like my parents.

Inter-format compatibility is the driver of my purchase. The marketroids for iWork (and to a lesser degree for Open Office) claim repeatedly and assuredly that the long and dark age of incompatible formats is over, and that what's editable in one suite is importable in another.

If someone sends you a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, you can open it in iWork.

And you know what? That's true. Probably ninety nine percent of all Word, Powerpoint, and Excel documents are openable in their respective iWork and OpenOffice equivalents. Asterisk.

Guess whether or not the documents my parents use are affected by the asterisk.

Yes. It turns out there's an edge case where the files are not truly, truly 100% compatible. In my parent's case, it's specifically Powerpoint presentations with embedded music. The music doesn't play in Keynote. I know this because I have a license for iWork and -- ahem -- it doesn't work. Sure, the file opens. The slides play. But no music.

I know what you're thinking. Big deal. The presentation opens, what's the problem?

I have made an amusing anthropological discovery: within the particular extended social community of retirees that my parents belong to, everyone uses Powerpoint as a multi-purpose multi-media communication tool. Got a photo album? Nobody uses Picasa or photobucket or flickr or facebook -- instead they slap together Powerpoint presentations. Got a music track you want to share? Forget imeem or Last.fm -- they stick it in a Powerpoint presentation! And that's what they e-mail around. Unbelievable.

The hilarious part of it is, that's their mode of behaviour and it's not going to be modified. The community is barely computer literate to begin with and highly, highly resistant to change. Education is not an option. And nevermind the Office Open XML glossolalia!

So 90% of the documents my parents receive from their social community consist of Powerpoint presentations. With embedded music. Out of all the Office suite functionality that exists, this particular incompatible segment turns out to be the one that gets used.

I could either cut my parents off from their social community, or swallow my discomfort and purchase an Office license. After all, I kept telling them 'Macs just work', right?

Filial piety is a heavy obligation. Chalk up another victory for MSFT.

At least the license permits me to install it on more than one computer! Guess it's going on my home machine... And now I have a ready excuse for the inevitable question, 'Why the heck is this installed on your computer?!'

impressive cigar box work

Increasingly juggling seems to be synthesized with other performance disciplines such as acrobatics and dance. It's about the manipulation in time and space of objects, as well as the interrelationship between the body and those objects.

Oh, and check out the abs on this guy. I gotta go work out now.

Asymmetry and calculus in architecture

I found this talk by Greg Lynn tremendously thought provoking, specifically because of my reaction -- the idea of complex non-linear structures whose interrelated parts form an organic whole excites me, yet I instinctively disliked every example shown. I could see the sense of what Lynn was trying to communicate in every example, yet was disturbed by the results. Have I been brainwashed by what Lynn calls symmetry and the problem of 'ideal shapes'?

There's one shot in his presentation where he shows a mass of structural steel beams that are curved and loop all around -- fascinating. With these sort of techniques one can imagine structures that are almost alien to our present experience.

Staggering honey bee colony losses last year

35% of honey bee colonies in the U.S. were reported totally lost last year. Don't you think that's frightening?


A new overview survey was recently published outlining the scale of honeybee colony losses in the U.S. from Fall 2007 to Spring 2008.

The authors estimate that between 750 thousand and one million honey bee colonies in the U.S. died in that time period, many from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). They speculate about numerous factors such as varroa mites, stress from constant colony relocation (use of bees for agricultural pollination is heavily industrialized, more than the layperson might expect), weather, starvation, and poor quality queens. Some kind of contagious element is hypothesized as the key factor behind CCD.

The rate of death appears to be significantly higher than in previous recorded years. It will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on food commodity prices.

Photo by autan on flickr.

Unfinished Game debate

I've been reading the comments in Jeff Atwood's post about this problem:

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl. What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl?

The number of people who instinctively think it's 50% is high, as you'd expect. But the number of people who continue to insist that it's 50% after being shown that it isn't, is disturbing. What's most disturbing is that the target demographic for Atwood's blog is the software development community - programmers! Yikes.

Boulderz - a fun new bouldering gym in Toronto!

Last night I went to Boulderz, a great new climbing/bouldering gym that recently opened up here in Toronto. I was fairly excited as I tend to stick mostly to my home gym, Oasis.

Boulderz is run by a friendly gentleman named Andrew.

He started Boulderz after having to move and take down his home climbing wall (of course the story's a bit longer and more involved than that...). Congratulations Andrew -- building and starting a climbing gym on your own is a significant accomplishment you should be proud of.

Consulting with Vertical Solutions, Andrew built Boulderz over the course of about 8 weeks. Some 4000+ holds pepper the walls of the gym, which is primarily oriented towards bouldering, although a few short top-rope routes are also available.

There are a variety of different overhangs and angles to try out. What was particularly fun was topping out -- climbers can finish problems by going over the top at the end of problems, and then take stairs to go back to the ground floor.

The problems were a solid mix of beginner, warm up, moderate, hard and insane. What I liked was that Andrew was soliciting qualitative feedback about the problems, as well as the fact that the boulderers there were taping up their own. It just means that attention is going to be paid to make sure the problems are fun and that there's a mix for everyone.
The facilities are decent too. A/C in the summer. Changerooms, washrooms, lockers, a shower. And a drinking fountain!!

I wound up getting a good workout, though I definitely felt out of climbing shape. Add a couple of requisite bloody knuckles (the wall friction and all the holds are sooooo new!), and it made for a fun climbing session.


Boulderz is located east of Dupont and Landsdowne. (I took the subway to Landsdowne, then the bus up to Dupont.) It's a little bit hidden -- from D&L, walk west under the bridge and then turn right at 1444. You won't see the entrance from the street - you have to enter the parking lot to find the specific building.


More pics here. Tell your friends!

LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google. Amazing.

Despite my ongoing antipathy towards Google (having to compete with them for talent tends to bias my perspective), periodically I have to admit they do cool stuff. Like this.

Google has arranged to make available LIFE magazine's photo archive, online via image search. The collection spans over 10 million photos. And you can view them in large size instead of some crappy web reduction. Try it here or just enter

source:life

as part of a normal google image search.

The political spectrum - where are you?

I came across this test while surfing the net. It's a simple survey that plots where you fall politically onto a grid; in addition to the usual left-right axis they added a vertical authoritarian/libertarian axis.)

The results were predictable (in the sense that I scored exactly where I thought I would.)

Economic Left/Right: 6.00

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.85

It's disheartening to know that there really aren't any mainstream politicians who serve my particular leanings. It's lonely in Ayn Rand territory. Haha.

Try it out and see where you wind up!

Your Call Cannot Be Completed As Dialed...

It finally happened. I canceled my home phone line.

The customer service representative gamely tried to upsell me on a bundled internet service. The gall! But the fact is, I had stopped making or receiving calls on my home line. In terms of usage I had switched over to my mobile long ago. A lot of my friends have done the same already.

Fare thee well, ebony northern telecom rotary! Godspeed, 416 204 9357! May you go to someone who cherishes your dial-tone.

Now I have to decide what to do with the savings. Skateboard apparatus? Subscription to the Economist? Upgrade to an iPhone? Suggestions welcome...

Why is Dolly Parton against use of white space spectrum?

Are wireless microphones so important to Dollywood? Thank goodness the FCC made the right decision and allowed unlicensed usage of the spectrum. Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Ants are awesome.

Yay ants.

Watched the Toronto Marathon today...

Actually it was more like portions of the half. Normally on a Sunday the routine calls for a late morning snooze but I wanted to get up and cheer for two different friends of mine who were participating. I was going to do up a sign for them but surprise surprise, I was too lazy. I need to get a cowbell for these occasions!

It was a great day, if a bit chilly to start. I stationed myself a bit past the 10k mark just before the downhill Aylmer/Rosedale Valley Road chunk, to catch the 1:40+ group. Most people looked pretty strong at that point. There was one guy dressed up in a Captain America suit.

After the ~2:15 crowd passed, I then ambled over to the finishing stretch at Queen's Park. People were a lot more stressed there. Some people would say thanks when you encouraged them; others would merely grimace and glare at you. My one friend I surprised a bit unfortunately, I think she was trying to concentrate on maintaining form over the last kilometer and I distracted her when I yelled out her name.

It compels me to set a personal running resolution for next year. This fall I was thinking about a 10k or a half but I have been lackadaisical in the training. I think the right goal is to go for my
favorite race, the Around the Bay 30k. And then depending on results and ambition I might go to Ottawa, likely for a half. I just have to get a consistent training regimen in place. And pop the 10k mark properly. Wish me luck!

the banana split

A banana board push race October 5, 2008. The rules were simple -- you had to race on a banana board. No street decks or longboards. We did fudge the conditions a bit and permitted participants to swap in modern bearings and wheels.

 

Sweet!

Cody Jarrett > the Joker

I saw the seminal gangster film, White Heat, starring James Cagney. I couldn't help but compare it to Batman: the Dark Knight. Both flicks feature homicidal crime-lords who ruthlessly slay their own gang members as casually as they do innocent bystanders, and who revel in their manic impulse to destroy.

Cody Jarrett: the original Joker?

Structural similarities abound: Unrelenting violence. A prison break out. A hero who must assume a false identity in the name of good. The use of technology to fight crime.

Yet Cagney's performance as Cody Jarrett is thrilling and disturbing, where Ledger's portrayal of the Joker is to me, fairy inscrutable. And to be honest although the action sequences in Batman were spectacular (particularly in IMAX), I was significantly more engaged and stimulated by the plot in White Heat. The dialogue was crisp and memorable - I'll certainly be quoting Cagney, whereas I can't recall a single line from Nolan's opus.

I have to say that I think White Heat made for a better film than Batman.

White Heat movie poster

What is it about crime movies that make them so intriguing? What does their popularity reveal about our inner nature? Do we secretly yearn for a world where the strictures we live by may be broken with impunity?