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December 31, 2004
Concert
Yesterday we had a free concert in our bedroom.
No matter what noises Tim made, Diane would dance to them.
Emma played all the instruments, too.
Posted by Mark at 03:58 PM
Snow, part V
Some people were happy we had snow this week.
Posted by Mark at 03:55 PM
Winter ride
I've actually done two other rides since December 21, but this was the coldest. I wore all this:
Starting clockwise from nearest the washer:
- Bike helmet
- Hooded windbreaker jacket
- Light gray fleece top
- Black fleece top
- Windbreaker pants
- Navy blue sweat pants
- Black tights
- White t-shirt
- Blue ski socks
- Black overshoes
- Black shorts
- Bike shoes
- Ski gloves
- Liner gloves
- Red balaclava
The temperature was -7 Celsius this morning, but up to just under -1 when I left just after lunch. There were a few patches of ice as I rode to Chambery, making awful time. It took me almost 90 minutes to ride 40 km, clothesbound as I was.
I did spend 1:18:27 in my 65-85% heart rate zone, with an average heart rate of 146. It's tougher to maintain an even heart rate on the bike than on foot, however. I had patches where I went out the top of the range, and downhill stretches where I coasted through the bottom.
Posted by Mark at 03:50 PM
Down time
mcraig.org seems to be down right now. (I'm writing this as a text file, not a blog entry.) This is the first time I've noticed the site has been down.
Posted by Mark at 07:37 AM
41 bpm
My lowest heart rate this morning, measured according to the same process as yesterday morning, registered as 41 beats per minute.
Posted by Mark at 07:34 AM
December 30, 2004
Ski season
Nathalie was happy with the new skis she got for Christmas. We left this morning at 9 am to spend a few hours at Collet d'Allevard. Too bad I didn't have another arm to hold the camera.
A lot of snow has fallen recently, but last night was clear and cold. The result at Super Collet was lots of powdery snow and bright sunshine, but little snow on the roads leading up to the station. Nathalie and Tim skied the green slopes from 10-12, taking Emma with them for the last half hour. We ate lunch together after that, partly because the kids were hungry but mostly to warm up. After lunch Tim and Nathalie went for another 45 minutes, until Emma accidentally filled her boot with snow and I decided to flag her mom and brother down.
Diane and Emma went sledding for a while. I ended up nevertheless spending plenty of time holding Diane on my lap. Luckily Emma showed more independence. She couldn't convince her sister to get on the sled with her, but she did manage some fast runs down the slope by the children's ski school area.
Nathalie could take the bus at Allevard and spend the whole day skiing with Timothee. We're more than a year away from being able to do that with the girls.
Posted by Mark at 06:02 PM
24:39/147
The roughly 5 km today was mostly at low intensity. I managed to stay in the 65-85% heart rate zone for 20:19. The last 3+ minutes, I had to run uphill, and used that as an anaerobic finish with a short warm down the last 150 m before the house, then walking around and stretching to finish cooling.
I'd run downhill to Pontcharra, not at the track. Tim and I tried the track in mid afternoon. We found it icy in spots, soupy in others. We'll wait for it to dry out before we go again.
Posted by Mark at 05:49 PM
47 bpm
My morning resting heart rate was 47 beats per minute today.
Yesterday I had a hard time taking it in the dark. Today I got up, walked out to the mezzanine, flicked on the lamp, laid down, waited for my heart to slow, and noticed the rate was 47 bpm, same as last night at 9:30 pm. I'd guess it's slightly lower during sleep.
For someone who's supposedly in reasonably good shape, my resting heart rate seems high. Maybe that explains why I'm not laid back.
Posted by Mark at 05:40 PM
Cross training
Last night, Nathalie didn't feel like riding her exercise bike. I decided to ride it for a while.
My resting heart rate then was lower than yesterday morning, 47 bpm. I rode for 45 minutes, aiming for the low end of my aerobic zone, actually averaging 134 bpm, about 72% of my maximum heart rate. The readout said I burned 586 calories.
Maintaining an aerobic training pulse on Nathalie's exercise bike turns out easier said than done. It would be more straightforward on a trainer where the resistance increases with speed.
Posted by Mark at 05:30 PM
December 29, 2004
38:49
When I went to run this morning, I checked the thermometer on Tim's window. It read 2 degrees Celsius. Clearly some heat escapes through the window, because the snow and ice on the picnic table next to the window had not started melting. I moved the thermometer out onto a dry spot next to the snow and ice, then checked it 5 minutes later. The reading was -1 C (30 F) when I left to run.
I decided to run 6.5 km today on the track in Pontcharra at 130 bpm, the low end of what's called my aerobic zone according to an article at the Sports Coach site. Perhaps the cold played a part. In any case, I had to run slowly indeed to keep my heart rate that low. Whenever I stopped paying attention, the pace drifted up. I would catch myself at 140 bpm and have consciously to slow down. It turns out my average was 134 bpm, but I had to slow down to almost 6 min/km (around 9:30 miles) to hold it there.
It seems I have huge room for improvement in efficiency. I tried making as little sound as possible. The snow still crunched. I tried to keep my head very steady. My heart rate tended up a little. I tried alternately preventing lateral and up and down movement, then running with my upper body as loose as possible. Only giving up seemed to result in a slower heart rate.
Running at this pace led to one weird side effect. After about 7 laps, nearing the 2-mile mark, I started falling asleep. My concentration vanished. I temporarily forgot what lap it was. I felt myself drifting off to sleep while running along, having turned my back to the sun. It was almost pleasant.
In retrospect it seems I might have cooled off too fast. Right when I finally started sweating normally, I turned away from the sun and into a winter breeze. I'll wear a hat next time I plan a slow run in the cold.
Posted by Mark at 03:28 PM | Comments (2)
49 bpm
My morning resting heart rate was 49 beats per minute today.
Posted by Mark at 02:59 PM
Words, part IV
Lately this blog has focused mainly on endurance sports. If procrastination were a core activity, I'd have a hard time getting around to it. Unfortunately for me, it's peripheral, and thus consumes nearly all my energies.
Realizing this, I went back briefly this morning to thinking about getting a real job. It turns out that one of the two US schools I checked out, University of Illinois, has a distance learning program for the MS. They call the program LEEP.
I listened to Christine Jenkins's account of teaching course 406. She seems to have done a better job than most of our phone conf leaders. According to her, anyway. I don't know if they managed to measure students' performance afterwards somehow. My experience with long-distance synchronous communication is that at least part of the assembly engages in what Bill Joy called multitasking.
In information science, multitasking refers to running more than one program or at least thread of execution at the same time. That is, doing multiple things at once. Computers handle multitasking by storing program context in fast memory and switching quickly between tasks. Each time the computer changes tasks, it switches context. To the human being, the computer switches so rapidly it appears to be doing multiple things at once. (More recent chip designs allow computers to execute multiple threads in hardware. Computers with such chips, and computers with multiple chips, do in fact run more than one program at once.)
Bill Joy apparently convinced Scott McNealy that he could multitask effectively. So Scott let him read magazines during their staff meetings. My take is that Bill observed Scott and his staff enough to be able to predict appropriate behavior with only a few clues, and that Bill was a smart guy and fast learner in that type of setting anyway. He therefore didn't need to concentrate his full attention on meetings he found unnecessarily repetitive.
Dana does multitasking as well. He'll typically read the paper at the same time he watches television. Most parents do multitasking. They let the children do what they're doing, checking mainly for boundary conditions while actually doing something else.
I contend that whatever your level of effectiveness when multitasking, it's less than your effectiveness when monotasking. The more human beings need to grasp something difficult, the more they need to concentrate.
We find concentrating amazingly hard to do in practice, however. Mom seems to be able to do it while reading. If you call her name and she doesn't respond, the story's pretty good.
Mustering the same lack of distraction to follow something online requires more than dedication. Going to class over a browser and Real Player sounds tough. The asynchronous part I'm sure I can do, though. Worked fine to get a BS in Computer Science.
It's reproducing the "classroom" experience that leaves me dubious. We're a long way from The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Posted by Mark at 08:53 AM
Gmail, part II
Google mail seems to have offered me 6 more invitations. Let me know if you're interested. First come, first served.
Posted by Mark at 07:12 AM
December 28, 2004
Mpegs
These are accidents we made while taking pictures with the camcorder:
Courseton, I (2.8 MB)
Courseton, II (3.3 MB)
Courseton, III (5.7 MB)
Diane climbing (0.7 MB)
Diane slide (0.6 MB)
Nose blowing (0.8 MB)
Remodling (0.2 MB)
Skieuse (0.1 MB)
Snow (0.2 MB)
Download a small one first to see if you can read it. I use mplayer on Linux.
Posted by Mark at 06:53 PM
Snow, part IV
Good thing I didn't plan to ride after lunch.
Snow started coming down about 3:30 pm, when I took these pictures. At 5 I had to go pick up Emma at Olivia's house on foot. We didn't have too much snow, but cars were slipping and sliding. The plows didn't arrive until almost 6.
Posted by Mark at 06:14 PM | Comments (1)
Heart rates
I'm reading at MarathonGuide.com:
Some trainers recommend that runners should not run two consecutive days over their 70% level, setting that value as the ceiling for recovery days. Most agree that hard days should be run at the 85% level, if not higher.
This would suggest I'm working too hard too often. If on a day like today -- an impromptu cross-training day during an "easy" week -- I spend 1 3/4 hours at 83% level on average, my body may not have time to recover enough.
A Runner's World article says:
Your aerobic training pulse is important because it's the pace at which you should do approximately 80 percent of your weekly running, including easy days and long runs.
The trouble with my adaptation of Higdon's novice training program is that I doesn't involve enough exercise in the beginning to keep me from feeling antsy.
Need to stick with it, though, reducing the intensity of the exercise if necessary. Even worse than underexercising is getting injured then not being able to exercise at all.
Posted by Mark at 03:19 PM
1:44:14
Dana must have been right, that I significantly overestimated the distance between work and Pontcharra. I worked hard today to cover only 51.05 km, averaging only 29.6 km/h (18.4 mi/h).
(Doesn't add up, does it? It's possible the elapsed time doesn't stop when you have to stop at a stoplight, although you don't have to average the 0 km/h minutes into your speed. I stopped at two lights, the second one for the long haul since the police were right there.)
I rode over several hills today that slowed me down to 13 km/h for a minute or more at a time, once for something like a kilometer. That one felt even worse than the one out in front of the house. There's only one hill like that between work and Pontcharra on the Belledonne side, the hill on this side of Goncelin.
From the bridge over the river in Pontcharra uphill to the roundabout near La Rochette, I only averaged 27-28 km/h. Past La Rochette, I had a gradual downhill for several kilometers. It was easy to ride at 34-36 km/h while keeping my cadence high, 90-95 rpm. It was harder to keep that cadence riding at 38-40 km/h. I seem to gravitate to a slower cadence, probably in the low to mid 80s. I slowed down to keep the cadence. I was afraid I'd wear myself out trying to keep up the 38+ km/h pace.
My guess is that keeping the cadence higher ensures the workout is more aerobic. Cycling should build my base for running longer and faster, not cause me muscle or knee problems. Sure enough, my average heart rate was 154 bpm, with 58:27 of the ride falling in my 65-85% zone. Interestingly, when I arrived at the garage door, the heart monitor read only 158 bpm, compared with 173 bmp Sunday, when instead of cycling up the incline I'd run.
From La Rochette, I rode to a roundabout next to Bourgneuf, then took the D204 back west and south. The D204 lies one valley back from the Isère, and brings you back to Montmélian. It's not flat. Instead, it's sprinkled with hills that start when you have no momentum. None of the hills are particularly high, however. My maximum speed came on the downhill to the Autoroute entrance by Montmélian, only 56.5 km/h.
At Montmélian, shivering, I decided to return via Pontcharra rather than Les Marches.
The cyclocomputer works fairly well, although I noticed flakiness near the end of the ride. I'd be going along at about 31 km/h and suddenly the speed would drop off, once down to 18 km/h, another time to 22 km/h. Need to double check the sensor on the rear wheel. Also, when I was on the cold, high stretch, the LCD seemed slow sometimes. Kept functioning, though.
Bothersome points:
- Rear derailleur needs adjustment. It sometimes gets mushy in the center and even skips gears.
- Took the wrong drink. I'd run out of the energy drink mix, so tried green apple syrup the kids drink with water sometimes for a treat. It doesn't taste bad when you're drinking it with a snack, but it's positively vile when you're exercising.
- Never warmed up. I did sweat a lot and my core was okay, but my fingers, knees, toes, and even butt felt cold the whole way. The thermometer here said 2 degrees (36 Fahrenheit). Up past La Rochette the roads were clear but the fields still had snow cover, snow that did not appear to be melting. The air felt charged with humidity as well.
It could be worse. A quick weather check indicates -4 degrees C in South Bend, -7 in Indianapolis.
Posted by Mark at 02:38 PM | Comments (2)
December 27, 2004
Opportunity
It turns out the Lyon marathon is scheduled for April 17 next year, which by coincidence marks the race day on my winter training calendar.
If the organizer for the half marathon in St. Marcellin doesn't write back soon, I may have to consider doing Lyon instead.
Seriously, if I hadn't already said to Stu and Joanne that I'd do the half marathon, I'd sign up for Lyon. Having one nearby in April would be a great test. It would also leave me time to train for a second marathon in the same season. If I still want to do a second marathon, that is.
Posted by Mark at 02:23 PM
Freezing line
Our guess is that snow melts where the temperature is above freezing. If that's true, you can see the freezing line in the valley clearly along the foothills of the mountains.
Posted by Mark at 02:07 PM
23:12/156
Ran tomorrow's 5 km today at the track in Pontcharra. I spent 16:13 in the 65-85% heart rate zone, most of the rest above 85%.
I ran 6 x 400 m gently to get my muscles warmed up. Then I ran laps 7, 9, and 11 at high speed, finishing lap 11 at a sprint. My final heart rate for lap 7, likely the fastest lap, was 181. For lap 9, 183. On lap 11 I managed to max. out at 187, one beat per minute above my theoretical maximum.
After laps 7 and 9, my heart rate dropped back into the zone (158 bpm) after 200 m or less at a jog. After lap 11, it took 220 m.
I also tried to focus today on my form, which currenly means lengthening my stride and keeping my head from bobbing up and down. In other words, I'm trying to run smoothly. The basic idea as I understand it is to convert as much energy as possible into forward motion, and as little extra as possible into lateral and vertical motion.
Posted by Mark at 01:46 PM
Wet
The weather's too wet and chilly to go cycling. The 48-hour forcast for Chambery at Metcheck.com shows a break in the precipitation tomorrow morning, but also says it may be -3 degrees (about 27 Fahrenheit). Not sure trying out the new bike computer is worth braving sub-freezing cold.
People are slipping and falling, too. Mom said Grandma slipped and fell, breaking her right knee and raising a big bump on her head. Hope they can make her comfortable while she recovers. Tim and I went to the track yesterday after lunch. He needed to get outside and burn off some energy. We were fine until he decided to climb up the side of a sheet metal ramp for skateboarding. He got too confident, stood up, and prompty fell. No physical harm done, but he slid into the puddle at the bottom of the ramp and came up soaked. Luckily the car was only 2 minutes away.
Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM
December 26, 2004
Cookies
Emma and I made chocolate chip cookies today from a French recipe Nathalie found on the web.
We followed the recipe meticulously. I cannot remember the last time I did that. The cookies turned out almost perfect. They have crusty surfaces and edges but the centers melt in your mouth, the butter clogs your arteries instantly, and the brown sugar shifts your pancreas into high gear.
I thought about going out and jumping rope for half an hour after eating a couple, but I'm supposed to be going into an easy week.
Posted by Mark at 06:21 PM
52:59/157
This morning I ran about 7 mi. (11.2 km) going over through Pontcharra and back. It was raining and chilly, about 2 degrees (almost 36 Fahrenheit).
This was the first run for which I used the heart monitor. I spent only 31:19 in the training zone, mainly because my average was just one beat per minute lower than the max. of 158 for the zone. According to their calculations, 158 bmp is supposed to be 85% of my maximum.
It's not clear what that means. I am still a little bit ill, but was not running hard. When I noticed I was going off the top end of the zone, I'd slow down. As Hal Higdon writes, these weekend "long" runs -- they vary from only 6 mi. to as far as 20 mi. -- are supposed to be done significantly slower than your race pace. I think he writes something about 60-70% of your max. heart rate.
The Courir en France web site says 157 is in the middle of my résistance douce range. Apparently it's too high for endurance, but they also have a résistance dure range that goes up to about 95% of my theoretical maximum.
If I get a chance this to go back and see Dr. Rantz, I'll ask him about the heart rate range. It would be nice to be able to run 15 km/hr. with a heart rate like I had today.
Posted by Mark at 11:40 AM
December 25, 2004
Day off, part IV
Today I'm resting. My only exercise was 1 1/2 hrs. raking leaves and picking up branches after lunch. The schedule has me running 7 mi. (about 11 km) tomorrow.
Posted by Mark at 05:01 PM
Presents
Nathalie bought me Da Vinci Code in French. I know nothing about the book. She says she bought it in French in case she wanted to read it after I do.
I also received a Polar A3 heart monitor. This was not a big surprise, since I wrapped it myself at the store where I bought it. This morning my heart rate was around 50. That was after coffee and with small children competing for my attention, so maybe it's a beat or two lower when I wake up.
Mom and Dana gave me a CatEye Astrale 8 cyclocomputer with a rear wheel sensor for speed and distance, and a left crank sensor for cadence. I mounted it this morning and checked that everything works. Unfortunately it has been raining since 1 pm, so I haven't taken it out on the road.
Michel and Colette gave me a basting tool and special oven mitt, made of synthetic rubber so it cannot get soaked through. The basting tool came with a brush inside for washing it. Will try it out tomorrow if we have enough appetite left to make the roast Nathalie bought.
Dad contributed a big chunk to one of Nathalie's skis, but the heart monitor counts as coming partly from him. I'll be using it tomorrow when I run.
I can also perhaps negotiate a little bit more shopping (very little, with Christmas money from Evelyn). It would be great to get some cool weather cycling clothes if they ever go on sale at Decathlon. I might even be able to ride faster with 2 kg less sweat on my upper body.
Posted by Mark at 04:55 PM | Comments (2)
Merry Christmas
Christmas in Barraux...
...you cannot even tell Diane kept us up all night.
Posted by Mark at 03:52 PM | Comments (1)
December 24, 2004
2:04:27:14
This is supposed to be a rest day, but today's weather forcast looks much better than tomorrow's. Also, Gilles was shutting down the NFS server for repairs from 12-2. So I cross trained today, riding to Pontcharra on the Belledonne side of the valley. (70 km round trip)
Maybe I'm not eating enough fruit this week. I now have two water bottles and drank plenty along the way, but had a couple of near cramps in my left calf, and one uncomfortable cramp in my chin right near the end.
The SPD pedals are a little bit looser than Look pedals, but still fine. I don't think the tune up the other day did much for my derailleurs, however.
Posted by Mark at 02:18 PM | Comments (3)
December 23, 2004
Visions of sugarplums
Almost time for Santa to arrive...
Only a matter of two dodos now.
Posted by Mark at 09:07 PM
Le blogue de Tilly
Just in case anyone asks for the French translation, now you know that Babel Fish is wrong.
Babel Fish is wrong anyway, translating blog as blog. Blog comes from weblog, that is oueb'logue, which is franglais for something like journal sur la toile, which doesn't exist. Read more about the phenomenon in Libé (where the author just writes "blog").
Tilly has the good judgement with her blogue to wait until she has something to say before typing. The signal-to-noise rating is therefore than you'll find here. Tilly liked Jean-Jacques Vanier's show.
Here you find echoes of Woody Allen in Annie Hall about two women at a restuarant:
"The food's terrible here."
"Yes, and such small portions!"
Posted by Mark at 08:55 PM
54:48:27
According to Hal Higdon's plan, I was supposed to run 5 km again today. But Jerome called at 11:30 and wanted to run, so we jogged together.
Jerome goes out once a week, runs out around a nearby lake. When we got to what I reckon is the 5 km mark, we'd been jogging for almost 27 minutes, so this probably represents somewhere on the order of 10 km.
Posted by Mark at 01:25 PM
Slaughterhouse Five
Slaughterhouse Five I reread after probably more than 15 years and found it both engaging and depressing. Lem's HMV ends on a hopeful note. Vonnegut's story recalls mail from Andy suggesting I practice detachment at work: Trafalmadorians tell us to accentuate the positive rather than dwell on the problem of evil in the world. Optimists live better longer.
So why does Vonnegut tell this painful story anyway? Vonnegut is from Indiana. Maybe that's why those positive moments are so precious.
Posted by Mark at 11:02 AM
His Master's Voice
37 years ago, Stanislaw Lem finished His Master's Voice. Many years later the title for a book explaining the human condition from the point of view of an idealist occurred to me, Autobiography of a Loser, but the outline remained hazy.
Lem's book contains, as a sideline, a better version than I'd ever write. Lem recounts the tale from the point of view of a mathematician engaged in a massive project to crack what was understood as a complex encoded message emanating many light years from earth. The action in Lem's story strikes me as hilariously formulaic for an author with so many new ideas he can in every few paragraphs expose, review, and discard an imaginary insight on which a lesser author might base an entire novel.
The core question: What the human mind can do with something truly new and different? Lem's answers make HMV richer than carrot cake.
Posted by Mark at 10:44 AM
December 22, 2004
19:37:45
Today is supposed to be a hard day, according to Hal Higdon's novice training program. Ran as fast as possible under the circumstances. The circumstances involved choking on phlegm from time to time.
Posted by Mark at 02:08 PM
December 21, 2004
Two more
Tim swimming in a very small indoor pool
Diane at the children's Christmas show Sunday
Posted by Mark at 09:15 PM
Intellectual property, part VIII
We did try again today. I filled out two forms on our Invention Disclosure Tool. We'll see in a couple of months whether this is better than the lottery.
Ludo was upset with me for filing without asking around to make sure I got all the potential inventors names on the applications. He's right about that. We should look around more carefully, so next time I will. We don't appear to have appropriated anyone's ideas unfairly. He seemed quite irritated with me, though. Of course, even if we had taken credit for something somebody else might have thought earlier -- and I don't think we did -- we were only doing on a tiny scale exactly what our employer is doing to us by contract on a huge scale day in and day out. The entire system of intellectual property is based on some people appropriating what essentially could not realistically exist except in common. But two wrongs don't make a right.
I cannot put my finger on what was bothering him. The thing is, Ludo usually has good reasons for what he thinks, even if you don't understand right away. So I'm likely to be missing something important.
Posted by Mark at 09:11 PM
Princess, part II
Emma on the couch after having her top front teeth pulled
Posted by Mark at 08:55 PM
22:51:70
Another short run, 5 km. Started very gently, as the temperature is only slightly above freezing. Ran harder in the middle, and finished more slowly. My aim is to get my stride long and smooth.
Posted by Mark at 01:06 PM
Princess
Emma in disguise at Lea's birthday party
Posted by Mark at 09:06 AM
Carrot cake
On this, the darkest day of the northern hemisphere year, I've come to work bearing carrot cake. It's atonement for sharing the box of German Christmas goodies Frank sent from Hamburg immediately after its arrival last Friday afternoon. I didn't realize so many writers were out of the office.
Adapted Evelyn's traditional recipe for local ingredients. Here's the source:
2 cups sugar 1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups flour 1 1/2 cup veg. oil
2 tsp. soda 4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder 1 cup nut pieces
2 tsp. cinnamon 4 cups (1 lb.) carrots
Peel and grate carrots. Mix dry ingredients. Add
oil, eggs, nuts, and carrots. Batter will be heavy
and hard to mix. Bake in 9 x 13 greased pan at
350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until done.
I buy cream cheese icing.
My prime substitution was levure chimique for the baking powder and soda. Cream cheese icing is probably illegal outside the US, since laboratory tests have shown it transubstantiates directly to unsightly bodyfat in anyone less fit than Lance Armstrong. I made some myself by mixing an obscene amount of confectioner's sugar with cream cheese (65% de matière grasse). After melting the mixture atop the warm cake, I sprinkled extra ground walnuts over the top.
Who knows if my European colleagues will be physiologically able to eat this without scraping off the icing.
Posted by Mark at 08:13 AM
Snow, part III
More pictures from La Porte county.
They were snowed in so well Sunday, Mom was able to go cross-country skiing across the neighborhood.
Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM | Comments (2)
December 20, 2004
Day off, part III
Taking another day off running today. Good thing, because my nose is running and I'm coughing. I do feel much better than yesterday.
Posted by Mark at 06:13 PM
Snow, part II
Mom sent me pictures of the heavy snowfall in La Porte county, Indiana.
The kids would love to have that in our backyard.
Dana's lucky to have a snowblower. I have a shovel and gravel driveway, and therefore prefer this sort of stuff stay up in the mountains.
Posted by Mark at 02:36 PM
December 19, 2004
Baby tooth
Emma lost her first tooth moments ago. It was her lower left front tooth. She was afraid to see her own blood.
Posted by Mark at 06:21 PM
Video capture, part XII
Kino is capturing video from the fifth source cassette as I write this, including footage from today's Christmas show. We were there for three hours. It was quite a production, complete with Hungarian folk songs, disco lights, and a thin Savoy Santa.
Not sure I got Santa on video. Nathalie bought cassettes that are not Hi-8. Although they're advertised to last 60 minutes, they run out in 42 on our camcorder. Nathalie shot each class doing their show. We only have 6 classes, but had some special dancing and encores thrown in. I was regretting not having brought a book after the first hour.
Posted by Mark at 05:50 PM | Comments (1)
Christmas show
This afternoon, Tim and Emma are putting on a show at Fort Barraux. They're going to sing and dance, the same way they do at the end of the school year.
Emma has to be there at 1:45 pm to get dressed for a 2:30 pm show. We'll probably take everyone at the same time, although Diane really ought to sleep. She finally went to bed the same time I did last night, 10:30 pm.
Posted by Mark at 10:43 AM
48:31:51
The rain is still falling here, likely turning to snow at higher altitudes. There was slush on my car when I drove downhill to run this morning.
I woke up with a low-grade fever, sore throat, and stuffy nose. Had a hat, socks, and fleece jacket waiting for the sun to rise. Tim and Emma got up before 7. They didn't think it was particularly cold, so it seems to have been me. The thought occurred that maybe I shouldn't go, but I only had to run 10 km today according to the plan. The plan also says tomorrow is a rest day.
At 8:15, it was light enough to go. I'd mapped out a course on access roads and foot trails following the river, leaving from the Super U parking lot. A good map and a piece of string helped me find a roundabout precisely 5 km away from the starting point. I hadn't eaten breakfast, but had a couple glasses of water and a glass of juice.
I ran with several layers, hat, gloves, ski socks instead of running socks. Nothing felt right, so I plodded along. Hal Higdon suggests taking the longer runs at a pace significantly slower than you intend to run in a race, 45-90 seconds per mile. Somewhere in his book about marathon running, he may also suggest not to run much when you're sick. (I assume 10 km counts as not much, even though it's considered the first long run in his novice marathon training program.)
I must be sick now, because even after eating walking up stairs is a chore. Good thing I didn't have a 20-miler scheduled for today.
Posted by Mark at 10:39 AM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2004
Late fall
The days are short. The kids cannot wait for Christmas.
I get to rake quince leaves. Don't have a picture of all the broken boughs Tim and Florent dragged in a straight line across the yard this afternoon.
Posted by Mark at 05:28 PM
Fall ride, part X
SPD pedals make it easy to release your feet. With cleats like that, there's no reason not to stop at red lights, for example.
I rode to Chapareillan to check out the tune up. My suspicions about the indexed front derailleur were confirmed; the chain grinds against the derailleur in almost the same way it did before. Maybe I can learn to fix that by reading Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance and playing around with it myself.
The brakes feel snug now. I practiced my form, revving high and trying never to bounce in the saddle. Once again, the mountains looked splendid, this time with late afternoon sun on the Belledonne side. Snow causes the shadows to stand out as though the landscape were done in oil paint. The most postcard-ready view came half a mile north of Barraux where the shadow of the fort stood out against the snow-covered range. You could even see the beams in the bell tower. I'd left our camera at home, though.
Posted by Mark at 05:23 PM | Comments (2)
Snow
Too bad I didn't have the camera when grocery shopping this morning. Great views from the parking lot.
The Chartreuse range has new snow sticking to it. The cliffs seemed to glow around the snow with morning sun shining on them. The Belledonne side remains shrouded in storm clouds.
Maybe all the folks coming here from Paris next week will be able to ski after all.
Posted by Mark at 11:22 AM
December 17, 2004
Index shifting, etc.
Today at lunchtime I picked up my bike from the shop where I bought it. They'd given it the free three-month checkup. It only took them a day.
The pedals had been loosened once, enough to unscrew them, so I removed the Look pedals and put the SPD pedals on. It was too dark, rainy, and cold to try to ride at 9 pm. So I leaned on the bench to try the pedals out.
Look pedals are easier to clip on and seem to fit tighter, but being able to walk in your bike shoes is a big advantage if you plan to dismount at all. The shoes feel okay. I'd like to take a ride to be sure.
Index shifting on the front derailleur may not work perfectly with the triple in front. It seems the derailleur won't halt in the spot where it should to prevent friction when the chain is on the smallest ring in the front and the near-largest (not including the largest) rings in the back. Need to verify that on the road. Perhaps there's something I can adjust.
The folks at the shop certainly left plenty of grease on the moving parts of the bicycle. Maybe they thought I was planning to ride home in the rain today.
Posted by Mark at 09:37 PM
21:37:85
Slower than yesterday. I only ran at pace for the middle of today's 5 km, continuing the gradual buildup that should go on for months.
Posted by Mark at 01:19 PM | Comments (2)
December 16, 2004
Web width
The New York Times sends email headline teasers so you'll sign in and read. They must have to get you to sign so the advertising money will flow.
Today they're running an op-ed piece from Maureen Dowd on advertising money, "Why Not the Coalition of the Shilling?" Dowd suggests the US finance continued deployment in Iraq with corporate advertising money. ("If the Olympics can attract top corporate sponsors, why can't Rummy's Global War on Terrorism?")
A few IP networks away, you can read Iraq Dispatches by Dahr Jamail. One recent post Jamail calls "Fallujah Photos." Check out the "Dead boy holding white surrender flag" and similar snapshots.
I wonder if Maureen and Dahr read each others' articles. Jamail seems to have read at least one NYT article:
A New York Times article devoted to the US takeover of the Fallujah General Hospital (which like all major US coverage, was uninterested in the leveling of another Fallujah hospital two days prior), for instance, said only that the hospital has been “considered a refuge for insurgents and a center of propaganda against allied forces” without bringing to light the kernel of such propaganda: doctor’s reports of US military use of cluster bombs, shooting of ambulances and civilians, and related war crimes.
Jamail posts pictures of two Iraqi men holding what may be cluster bomb debris, and a bullet-ridden ambulance and car.
Posted by Mark at 09:41 PM
20:34:82
5 km a little faster than yesterday. Added 5 strides up to about 400 m pace, and only really slowed down on the last quarter.
Was supposed to rest today, so will trade this against the scheduled run Saturday.
Posted by Mark at 11:49 AM
December 15, 2004
Small talk
People write how-to books on making small talk. (The author of that one is Director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University.)
After 11 years here in France, I realize to what extent good small talk requires mastery of the language and popular culture, especially for the wittiness-challenged. My rhetorical incapacity trips me. The overflowing wheelbarrow of my mind lurches into soft dirt and tips over. Self-consciousness raises the wheelbarrow onto stilts. The bull stands still in the middle of the china shop.
Posted by Mark at 09:48 PM
Googling the library
According to The New York Times:
"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head librarian.
Other sources have also taken up the story. Michael Keller's hope may not be realized, however, as publishing houses aim to protect copyrighted material by showing only a few pages as a teaser, the way Amazon.com ("Look inside") does it today.
Soon we'll see librarians getting arrested for sharing copyrighted arcane journal articles researchers wanted to read but couldn't afford. Pirated copies of Sociology of Health & Illness and Pastoral Psychology. Worse than music downloading.
Posted by Mark at 09:11 PM
26:44:45
Ran a very slow 5 km today. At that speed, I can give a speech without a microphone.
Stu came back Monday from business in California. I've been eating things like fruit and bread, riding in Matt's wake, and Stu's been eating three meals a day in restaurants on an expense account, running only on the treadmill of the hotel. Our conclusion is hardly scientific, but we think it's healthier to stay here.
Posted by Mark at 02:03 PM
December 14, 2004
Cutting down
During our weekly team meeting today, we discussed how to cut down on the interruptions that prevent us from writing. (Ostensibly writing is what technical writers are paid to do.)
Of 18 weekly meetings, we identified a third we can perhaps ignore except for the minutes, provided we have an agent representing us inside. We also think we might be able to rotate some email chores, having a weekly designated reviewer/responder for the key aliases to monitor and handle. I drew the short straw for the first round.
I'm not sure how things work out for contract writers. They seem to spend more time writing, but doubtless also end up having to produce when they don't know what they're writing about. I prefer the pressure of having too much information rather than too little, but we need to find a more productive balance.
Posted by Mark at 10:41 PM
Saint Marcellin
Stu, Joanne, and I are planning for the Semi-Marathon de Saint Marcellin in April, if they do it again this year on the same date. I wanted something between now and a marathon next September.
I've adapted Hal Higdon's novice marathon training program to fit what I think will be more than enough for a half marathon, giving me an opportunity to build up my base.
My winter training in this case includes the condition physique cross training I've been doing.
I cannot quickly find a way to combine the cross training, biking, and all the running necessary to build the marathon base. It may be too cold for biking soon, though. Matt and I went out at lunchtime today. Although the sun was out, anywhere we found a shadow, the grass was covered with frost. I wore ski gloves. They led to trouble shifting sometimes.
Since it's only a half marathon in April, perhaps I can slip bike rides in here and there. The tougher exercise will be working out a summer schedule where I can nevertheless ride while building up to the marathon itself. The condition physique cross training ends in June, though, and Hal Higdon's novice marathon training program -- we're all novices for our first marathon -- only has you run four days per week.
Posted by Mark at 10:19 PM
December 13, 2004
Condition physique
Since September, I've been going Monday and Friday lunchtimes to a condition physique hour, where the facilitator, Vincent, takes us through a tough workout that hits both the muscles and the cardiovascular system.
After the ride yesterday, I expected to be in bad shape for today. I was fine, however, just holding back a little during the toughest leg exercises.
I'm aiming at taking Thursday off this week, so may try to squeeze in one more ride tomorrow before taking my bike the shop for the free tune up.
Posted by Mark at 05:59 PM
Less as more
Sun blogger Joey Shen reflects on writing and using documentation in his blog.
Documentation is supposed to be understood instead of showing how smart the authors are.
(Or how clueless.)
Given the way we read documentation, the writer has an uphill battle making himself understood. Sometimes we read the docs before using the object of the documentation. I started Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance that way yesterday evening.
More typically, we dip into the documentation looking for the answer to a particular question, one we could not find the answer for elsewhere. In other words, we come to the documentation as a last resort and hope to find the answer quickly.
When you're asking Joey directly how something works in his software, standing next to him in his office, you don't mind at all if he starts drawing diagrams on the whiteboard, effectively telling you, "Hang on. The answer to the question you've asked won't make sense unless I tell you all this first." You don't mind because, first, it sure looks like Joey's going to answer your question in the most direct way he can, and second, you have confidence that he wouldn't do all this with you if he didn't care about answering your particular question.
Neither of those conditions holds when we're the readers, piecing together bits of documentation written by somebody who in many cases couldn't have anticipated our questions. We'd rather Google for it. At least that way we don't have to dig through many pages yet come up emptyhanded.
Some people suggest minimalist documentation as a solution. Makes you do less digging. Trouble is, the writer has to be able to anticipate what you're going to ask, which is easier said than done in the real world of complex software.
One partial engineering solution to the problem is to make things a simple as possible (though no simpler). In other words, if what you're creating can work without documentation, do it that way. We might even extend that to say that if what you're creating would be easier for almost all users if it didn't require reading the docs, go ahead and slightly frustrate the 5% of users that really want tweakability. Or make the default behavior something that works for 95%, even if it makes things slightly harder to tweak for the other 5%.
Posted by Mark at 05:53 PM
December 12, 2004
Marathon
Since yesterday, I've been reading Hal Higdon's book Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide. Hal almost motivated me into getting out on my day off yesterday.
Then I read further to the part where he covers how much training you need to do. His message is clear. Do as little as you can get away with to meet your goals. Any more and you're courting injury.
Hal says a first time marathoner, even an experienced runner, should have one goal: finish the race. I'm particularly attentive to all this since I injured myself last summer increasing mileage too rapidly and overriding signals from my right leg that I needed to back off. In the end, when I should've been able to train for the Chambery marathon, I had to stop running all together. (To people who don't get much exercise, that may sound like a lucky break. But people who run either can imagine or know from experience having to stop is as much fun as catching a cold that won't go away.) This year, I don't want to let that happen.
So I'm not going to try to qualify for Boston. I'm going to finish uninjured, establishing the base that will let me work on improving my time after that. If I still want to.
In any case, I recommend reading Hal Higdon's book if you're thinking about running long distances.
Posted by Mark at 06:28 PM
Fall ride, part IX
This afternoon I rode for 3:07:04:48, adding the trip down to Tencin then across to La Terrasse to what I did last Sunday. That's roughly 30 km more riding.
Yahoo weather says the high today in Chambery was 9 degrees Celsius, but I never saw our thermometer go above 4, and when I set out it was about 3 (almost 38 F). When I got back, it was about 2 (almost 36 F). I need warmer clothing at those temperatures. In the sunlight, that's about as cool as it can get without becoming uncomfortable. When the mist comes out, or you go in a direction where there's a mountain between you and the sun, fingers and toes start to hurt. Also, all the sweat underneath my windbreaker outfit starts turning to icewater. In terms of weather conditions, the roughest 15 km were in the valley over to La Rochette and back from Pontcharra. Shadowy and damp.
After 2 hours, my waterbottle was dry. Now I know why they put an extra set of waterbottle studs on the downtube. Surely In the summer I'll need an extra bottle at least.
My aim today was to deplete the glycogen in my muscles. Don't think I got all the way there. I'm exhausted, but don't feel like I hit a wall. My energy was fading fast after La Terrasse, however, so perhaps I was getting close. The last hill in La Buissiere was rough. Even in my lowest gear, I had to get out of the saddle several times.
Posted by Mark at 06:13 PM | Comments (2)
December 11, 2004
Day off, part II
I worked hard Thursday and Friday, Thursday chasing Matt and Xavier, Friday finishing at our gym session with my calves almost cramping, my arms so tired I couldn't lift them, and pain in my back muscles from straining on the exercises we did for the arms. I'd also gone anaerobic, keeping the rhythm steady during the main stream of the workout, and going for broke during the sprints and laboureurs. (For the laboureur, you work with a partner of your size and strength. One plays the ox and the other the driver. The ox drags the driver across the gym; the driver works to keep ox from moving. If you do it right, the laboureur is the equivalent of sprinting with someone on your back.)
Today has to be a day off anyway. Nathalie had things to do this morning and has lace class this afternoon. I'll be babysitting. Maybe tomorrow I can go out for one more ride before taking my bike in for the free 3-month tune up. If it's warm enough, I'd like to extend what I did last Sunday. I ought to go out for long runs, but cycling's too much fun.
Posted by Mark at 12:43 PM
December 10, 2004
Comment spam, part VII
Yet another rash of comment spam yesterday and today.
What these folks are managing to do is send each spam from a different IP network. MovableType 2.661 does not have the right tools to handle this.
MovableType 3.1 looks like it might have the right set of tools to handle comment spam. It appears to be free for 1 author and up to 3 blogs. If I ever have time, maybe I'll check it out.
Posted by Mark at 08:21 AM
December 09, 2004
Fall ride, part VIII
Today, I rode out with Matt and Xavier at lunchtime. We were originally aiming for Pontcharra, which is about 35 km from work, but Xavier had us turn around at Tencin. We were riding quite hard. Unlike me, Xavier seems best when he varies his speed a lot. Going up the valley, we were just slogging it out. Matt's a tough act to follow, especially on long hills. On the flats, I can roughly follow those guys, however, since I run regularly.
At Tencin, we came over to the Chartreuse side of the valley, which is at La Terrasse. There we decided to go uphill on the road to St. Hilaire. 15 minutes into the climb, Matt and Xavier decided to take a small road back down. I couldn't follow them. I just don't feel comfortable riding downhill yet. In the car, it would probably feel slow, but on the bike it feels too fast. I have the same problem downhill skiing.
Coming through St. Ismier, I didn't have much left and fell behind. Matt had sprinted most of the way uphill in Bernin, and in trying to follow him, I realized my leg muscles are not sufficiently developed for hill climbing with guys who are good at it. Need to work on that.
Posted by Mark at 09:50 PM
December 08, 2004
Nonspecialist
Dad clipped an article from The Economist about software development and managing the complexity of the problem. The author claims software projects fail due to our tools not being up to the task. The author interviewed a few top tools division managers at Microsoft, Borland, and elsewhere, claiming that the solution to the problem lies right around the corner. All they need to do is write some more new software that they will kindly sell to us.
Yeah, right. As it stands, we build software -- in itself a difficult thing to get right even under optimal conditions -- from inadequate specifications, most of which we don't want to use as is anyway. Instead, we try to generalize from one user's or customer's (poorly understood) need to come up with a one-size-fits all solution. And that's what we do when we have a relatively clear understanding of what's needed, which is, believe me, not all the time, not even most of the time.
The tools we use are far from perfect. Yet, when a wall falls down, you would not immediately suspect the spades used to smooth the mortar, or the hammer used to drive the nails.
In most fields, we're like this journalist. Nonspecialists trying to grasp something, but missing so much background we can hardly apply our normal ability to reason.
Posted by Mark at 09:23 PM
41:11:34
I ran gently up to Rochasson and down at lunch today. It only took about 1 minute longer than running hard. In any case, I didn't get any cramps or have any problems like that this week.
Posted by Mark at 09:05 PM | Comments (2)
December 07, 2004
58:35:38
Cross training has not improved my pace. I've run less, and come to runs often as I did today, feeling good, but feeling tired. 58 1/2 minutes for 14 km, about 14 1/3 kph or not quite 9 mph is a kind of in-between speed, too fast to give up and consider myself a jogger rather than a runner, too slow to run a respectable distance event.
Posted by Mark at 09:02 PM
cocolicious.us, part II
My brother Matt has his web server running at cocolicious.us. Evidence:
The cats seem to like to pose for the camera.
Posted by Mark at 08:32 AM
December 06, 2004
Workout level
Xavier explained to me today that it would take about twice as long on the bike to get to the same level of workout as running 90 minutes. So I guess I'll need to go back to running on Sundays. Perhaps I can take a day during the week off, and ride Saturdays instead.
Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM
December 05, 2004
Fall ride, part VII
I rode for more than 2 hours this morning, leaving at about 9:55, and getting back at about 12:05. First I rode to Chambery, then rode back through Les Marches and out to Montmelian. After coming around to Pontcharra from Montmelian, I headed uphill to La Rochette. I'd like to know how fast I managed to ride. Maybe I should ask for a cyclocomputer for Christmas.
My fingers and toes felt cold perhaps 1/3 of the time. The humid air chilled me on the downhills.
For runs and rides longer than an hour, Matt suggested drinking one of those glucose and vitamin mixtures instead of water. I don't generally take anything with me when going for only an hour. I don't know how much difference drinking sugar water with vitamins makes. I didn't have any problems with cramps. Maybe I didn't work hard enough to have cramps.
With the glucose drink I feel much less hungry than I normally would after a long ride. Perhaps it keeps your blood sugar at a normal level despite the effort.
Posted by Mark at 08:28 PM | Comments (2)
Marché de Noël
This afternoon we went to the Christmas market in Chambery.
It didn't hold a candle to Strasbourg. The children enjoyed it however. They even had a chance to sit on Santa's lap. Santa in this case was fat with a snap on white beard, but probably only 25 years old. Timothee recognized he was a fake.
Posted by Mark at 08:06 PM
Fall ride, part VI
The temperature this morning is about 6 degrees Celsius. According to Yahoo Weather, it won't get much warmer today. That's not warm, but it's warm enough to ride.
I've not gone yet, but am dressed for it, and have pumped up my tires. Unless I get too chilled, I'll go for a long ride to replace a long run this morning. (Nathalie decided we should go to the Christmas market in Chambery this afternoon instead of the skating rink this morning.)
Hal Higdon wrote somewhere that running for 90-120 minutes gets you to the point where your muscles start to conserve glycogen, so it's an important training point. The time may be 120-180 minutes on a bike, I don't know. I won't be out there three hours. Then again, I'm not training for a race, just getting some exercise.
Posted by Mark at 09:43 AM
Video capture, part XI
Four cassettes turned into seven SVCDs.
It's probably too late to get them home for Christmas. Not sure that 7 CDs of video is really a Christmas present anyway. It seems more like a long-term viewing project.
The video from the analog source is of considerably lower quality than that from the digital. Rubin had said that in his book, but you have to see it to believe it. Digital home video is clearly a technological jump forward.
Posted by Mark at 09:36 AM | Comments (2)
December 04, 2004
Video capture, part X
We have 5 source cassettes that I'm willing to bother with. These span the period from April to November 2004, starting with Emma's birthday, and ending with Timothee climbing a pine by the light of his bicycle lamp.
Since for the middle cassette I edited a VCD already, I'm not capturing that video for this round. Of the other four, I've captured three onto 5 SVCDs with about 350 MB of MPEG left. The last one, a 60 min. analog cassette I think we didn't finish, I'm capturing now. In the end, I'll have 7-8 SVCDs, or about one per calendar month.
Posted by Mark at 04:59 PM
Buying a flight
Looking for fares to fly the family to Chicago and back during summer vacation, I've tried expedia.com, opodo.fr, and now directly the Air France site.
Expedia.com won't deliver paper tickets outside the US. You find that out near the end where they have all the details you entered and just want your credit card number.
Opodo.fr -- "appartient à Air France, Aer Lingus, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa et Amadeus" -- recommends starting with the train to Paris. Opodo.fr's cheapest finds are about 50 euros more expensive than what I get directly at the Airfrance.fr site!
Is it the software alone? Opodo.fr probably has to look up flights that are in some shared place, whereas Airfrance.fr can look directly in the Air France backend. Still, I wonder where I can get a real price comparison.
Then there's the problem of layovers. How short is too short? When they propose a 50 minute layover although my query includes 3 children under 12, and you have to take your shoes off and get scanned for most international travel, why didn't they think to let you set a minimum plane-change time? Or, better yet, why didn't they do that for me?
How well do they think they're doing? This software stuff is hard, isn't it.
Incidentally, I do have a real problem with the Airfrance.fr site: Your party can be no larger than 4 max., otherwise you cannot reserve your flight. Too bad for people with families of 5.
Posted by Mark at 02:48 PM | Comments (2)
Video capture, part IX
As mentioned before, SVCD is the output format I'm using for raw video right now. I threw away the master version of my first effort at editing something.
At this point, I'm not culling at all. I'm not even actually watching all of the stuff I'm capturing. When I capture with Kino, there's no sound, and it doesn't update the display unless you drop focus and put it on the window again. So I'd have to watch all the output separately. Instead, I've just been checking the results with mplayer.
The longest step is the transfer from DV AVI format to MPEG2 for SVCD. The transcoder has to recalculate each frame.
Posted by Mark at 12:43 PM
December 03, 2004
Video capture, part VIII
Last summer, getting ready to rockclimb.
Posted by Mark at 10:06 PM
Ultra
Nathalie heard somewhere about a race she thought I should know about. The Furnace Creek 508:
Furnace Creek 508, a non-stop 508 mile bicycle race from Santa Clarita to Twenty Nine Palms via California's Death Valley and Mojave Desert, is the world's premiere ultramarathon bicycle race.
Here's a writeup of one contestant's experience. You could do even worse.
No, thank you.
Posted by Mark at 09:36 PM
Chevallier 2003
Ludo and I went to the Salon des vins de Bourgogne et du Jura this afternoon. We both bought Chevallier's 2003 Chablis, which is ready to drink now.
Mr. Chevallier told us years ago they used to harvest the grapes in the first week of October every year. Then throughout the 1990s, they started harvesting at the end of September. In 2003, he harvested the first week of September, but some of his colleagues harvested as early as the August 25. The grapes had already started to dry out, and were quite mature. He managed to wait until a tiny bit of rain fell to make it easier to harvest the grapes.
The regular 2003 is quite fruity and seemed to hold its flavor 7-8 seconds. His Montmains 1er Cru lasted 10-12 seconds. Very round and smooth.
Posted by Mark at 09:23 PM
Ski season soon
Tim went over to Chapareillan to sign up for the ski club this winter. Nath and Tim came back late (about 8:30 pm) with Tim claiming he wasn't tired at all. He's enthusiastic about earning his first star this season.
Posted by Mark at 09:02 PM
Video capture, part VII
Michael Rubin is right, you shouldn't save up cassettes such that you have to capture and handle 60 minutes of video at a time. I couldn't get myself to capture a cassette in the evenings this week, so the next cassette had to wait until now.
The same is true of writing. Revising a mountain of work, looking for diamonds in the dirt, is enough to prevent most of us from ever writing anything worth reading.
Posted by Mark at 09:00 PM
December 02, 2004
EU constitution
News in France today was that Socialst party members had voted in favor of the treaty to establish an EU constitution. The draft runs to 265 A4 pages in PDF.
This compares with 11 US letter pages in PDF for the US Constitution, printed from HTML at http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html.
Posted by Mark at 10:16 PM
Less TV
According to The Register, research shows people with broadband watch less TV. The article includes some quotes from media folks saying they need to think about taking up the slack.
But people with broadband are not primarily reading online papers. I think Matt's experience last night is more common. He downloaded a 400 MB demo of Doom 3 for his new PC. He got it installed straight away. Trouble is, he finally peeled himself away to go to bed at 4 am.
Posted by Mark at 04:43 PM
Shoes, part II
Felt much better today. The ankle bruise seems to have gone, and although I have a stuffy nose, my body felt good at the end of a brisk 14k.
Dad suggested by email maybe my body's trying to tell me I'm overworking things. But I figured:
The root cause of my shoe problem seems to have been running on a road, as opposed to a trail. The road I was running on is humped in the middle, presumably to allow rain to run off. If you cannot run right down the middle, you're running on a slope. I believe the solution to that problem is to go run on a trail.
A bike trail might be a good starting point if the other trails are too bumpy.
Posted by Mark at 04:35 PM
December 01, 2004
cocolicious.us
Matt seems to have managed to setup cocolicious.us at home using dynamic DNS. No web server yet, but I've already received email from him.
I'd run a site from my basement, but we have too many power cuts in my neighborhood.
Posted by Mark at 09:47 PM
Shoes
The front of my left ankle's sore from last Sunday, running down the side of the road, and having the laces twist the shoe tongue taut. My regular shoes, a pair of Nike Air Pegasus, have great cushioning, but I realize now are too wide, and the problem's getting worse as I wear them to the gym on Mondays and Fridays.
I bought a pair of narrower Decathlon-brand shoes today. They cushion less, but fit better. On a gentle 10k at lunchtime I did my best to get them adjusted. It's almost impossible to get the laces right on a sore foot. I must've stopped 5 or 6 times.
Posted by Mark at 09:37 PM