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February 28, 2005

Kafkaesque

John Gilmore cannot fly because he won't show ID. PostGazette.com is running an interesting article on his skirmish with the government concerning security regulations that you have to take on faith because they're not disclosed.

Posted by Mark at 09:38 PM

59:05/151

Felt weak working out at the gym today. This is a step back week anyway, so I'll do workouts at a relaxed pace and see if I feel stronger later in the week. Maybe I'm fighting off a bug.

Posted by Mark at 01:40 PM

Polar fritz, part III

As hypothesized when I removed the polar fleece top this morning at work, Zap! the heart monitor went dead. Will have to remember to take off the heart monitor first.

Posted by Mark at 09:34 AM

February 27, 2005

Shorts

Hmm. Why are there so few short tights for sale out there?

Road Runner Sports puts short-length tights in their "Fitness" category, a word I thought was internationally reserved for people who exercise only occasionally and then feel they're overdoing it if they break a sweat. Serious runners must either be so thin their flapping inseams never touch the opposite legs, or must masochistically revel in bleeding, chafed inner thighs.

I run wearing short tights, what ChampionCatalog.com calls "Compression" shorts. These have the advantage of not chafing, but the "compression" feature makes them less than optimal for runs much longer than an hour. Once you've sweat enough that even Lycra stays thoroughly soaked, their lack of support for the male nether regions, and tendency to compress liquid near the low-lying portions of the fabric where it can become very effectively chilled by icy wind mean these shorts that are great for a 10-K can become torture after 20. This is also the case if you run with short tights under regular long tights, except there's fabric enough for twice the chilled sweat.

So I'm looking for a good selection of distance running shorts normal people would wear. Either that or I need to lose another 20 kg, 10 from each thigh.

Are the baggy ones somehow okay? What's the secret? The fabric?

Posted by Mark at 06:08 PM | Comments (2)

Portrait photographer, part III

A few of Tim's close ups:

Nath

Diane

Emma

Tim

Mark

Posted by Mark at 05:24 PM

Almost 56 min/day

With the mileage mounting to 52 km (32 mi) I got 6:31:05 of aerobic exercise this week, an average of 56 min/day with Friday as day of rest. Over two of those hours were cross training on the bike, however, separate from the 52 km running.

Posted by Mark at 02:39 PM

52:41/151

Before setting out I intended to ride to Chambéry. As soon as I turned right onto the D590a to Chapareillan, the steady, cold draft from the north had me wanting to stop. My fingers were getting numb by the time I reached Chapareillan. The scarf wrapping my head was coming undone, and my nose was running continuously. Despite my efforts I was averaging probably only 26 kph (16 mph) until I got to the downhill section through Chapareillan.

I ended up turning towards Montmélian at Les Marches and returning home over that route, rather than continuing north. In Montmélian the snowflakes started falling, but the road was still dry and salty, so I rode quickly back down the valley to Pontcharra, probably averaging over 35 kph (almost 22 mph) while the wind was to my back.

The only time I didn't feel uncomfortably cold was coming up the hill to the house. The hill and trees protected me from the wind, and I'd slowed to a crawl for a warmdown up the incline.

Posted by Mark at 02:19 PM

Runner's log

I found Run at Sourceforge.net, and have been trying to set it up at Mcraig.org. Cannot get the access straightened out.

Until security is easier to understand for the administrator than for the crack, the outlook is bleak. In other words, the outlook is bleak and will probably remain so until beyond the end of time.

Posted by Mark at 09:39 AM

Winter ride, part IV

When I looked at the thermometer outside Tim's window a few minutes ago, it registered -1.5 C (29 F), significantly warmer than expected. It is also light enough at 7 am to read, and to see that it doesn't look like snow. Perhaps I can go for a short ride this morning after all.

Posted by Mark at 08:02 AM

Polar fritz, part II

My heart monitor screen went blank again last night. It happened when I took off a polar fleece top that crackled with static as it slid along my body. The Polar A3 may be sensitive to static electricity.

Posted by Mark at 07:58 AM

February 26, 2005

Wild ones

Emma's had her friend, Laure, over for the last 3 hours or so. I took the first 2 1/2 with the girls, now Nathalie is handling them.

The girls were fairly quiet and reserved until Tim got back from a check up in Chambéry. Emma posed as being much more insolent than she usually is, just to show her friend that she can keep Dad in line. Other than that, they played with markers and stamps, then makeup and costumes.

By now they're almost completely out of control, just as Laure's mother is arriving. It sounds like a herd of wounded elephants is on the loose downstairs. Tim really seems to have been the catalyst. He was home only long enough to hang his coat up before the screaming began.

Posted by Mark at 05:31 PM

2:08:54/160

Hal Higdon writes in Marathon, "Most coaches feel that once you reach 16 miles, you're in long run territory." According to that definition, I ran my first long run today.

Higdon's novice marathoner training program only includes two more long runs before the race itself, an 18-miler (29 km) and a 20-miler (32 km).

The pace today was an even endurance jog, just over 4:57/km (8:02/mi) for 26 km, which includes 6 stops to drink. That's the right speed if I believe Greg McMillan's training calculator. It didn't take me long enough to meet Benji Durden's criteria, but I'll worry about that later this year when it warms up.

An hour before I left, the temperature was -8 C (less than 18 F). It warmed up quite a bit as I ran, but I didn't see any ice melting.

My legs got tired after about 18 km. I was dressed for the temperature but not for the wind. After about 15 km, my tights were soaked. No problem on the gentle downhill, south-facing, sunny half of the laps I ran. But each time I turned around, I had an insistent cold breeze on the sweat covering my uninsulated legs. Hard to run smooth with that happening. Quite painful as well.

Posted by Mark at 04:59 PM | Comments (2)

February 25, 2005

Partial solutions

Michael Gorman has a way with hyperbole. First I saw this in Revenge of the Blog People! on LibraryJournal.com:

Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief.

The Blog People subclass in question must not have a very close relationship with real software.

Gorman wrote that as rebuttal to blog entries in response to his Los Angeles Times editorial suggesting the hullabaloo over Google's project to scan old books is akin to personal commuter helicopters and briefcases of microfilm to carry the entire Library of Congress, solutions looking for problems. Right.

But in the first article he also suggests that Google hits "may or may not be relevant," and come back "in no very useful order." Since he didn't include a link, I Googled to his original editorial, Google and God's Mind. It was the third hit after a couple of blog entries at MemeStreams.net referencing the editorial.

Gorman's right, and Google's right. Or they're both slightly wrong. Googling for something when you don't know what you're looking for -- doing research rather than looking something up -- seems as pointless as Gorman concludes. Yet Google provides a fine tool for retrieving something you know is there, but forgot where you or someone else put it on the web.

Google's okay if you already researched the French prison system in the 19th century and need to find that quote about "few murderers in the prisons of Nantes in 1874." It works even better if you cannot quite remember what flag to pass the Linux kernel so it'll boot from CD-ROM over PCMCIA on a Vaio laptop. It does it better than other general purpose search engines, and that's why you use it.

At the same time the folks heralding Google as the electronic equivalent of "the mind of God" have had too much of the CoolAid. If you want to learn something about the French prison system in the 19th century, or about how Linux works, of course you read a book prepared by someone who knows the subject and writes well rather than scan a bunch of Google hits in the order they occur. Retrieval is only a small part of the story. Even someone with a PostIt pile life knows that.

Partial solutions are a good thing, though, for the problems they're originally supposed to solve. It's only unfortunate when they get overhyped, overrated, and oversold. Scanning books, putting them online, and getting them indexed is a good thing. Expecting people to learn what's in the books by scanning the index would be unfortunate.

Posted by Mark at 08:59 PM

Cold run?, part II

MeteoFrance.com and MetCheck.com concur. The prediction for tomorrow morning at 7 am is -7 C (19 F). It's supposed to be a balmy 3 C (37 F) by 1 pm.

Probably won't wake up early enough to eat breakfast before my 26 km (16 mi) run, so I'll take sports drink rather than water as antifreeze. This one's almost certain to take me more than 2 hours. If I give myself 5:00 per km that would add up to 2:10 for example.

Posted by Mark at 08:41 PM

Schema repository, part XII

Trying to code with small children who haven't taken naps is like trying to write at work with people in and out of the office. It explains why life resembles a collection of PostIt notes, and why some people consider long distance running a relief.

Posted by Mark at 04:55 PM

A Kauai Blog

Andy's started his blog, using WordPress. It looks great, though a few teething problems remain in the links.

As Patrick Chanezon noticed, blogs could serve as a link between the culture of email, and the culture of websites.

It depends on the topic, but if you're going to write something semi-permanent, it's nice to know it'll remain postend and searchable. How offended will you be when instead of answering an email directly, I post a response in my blogs and send you a link?

Posted by Mark at 01:34 PM | Comments (3)

February temperatures

February is the second coldest month around here. January is supposed to be colder. We're having a cold snap, though.

This morning just before 8 AM the thermometer outside Tim's room registered just under -8 C (about 17 F). That's only slightly below the average minimum February temperature in La Porte, Indiana. (Source: WorldClimate.com)

No wonder many people stop running outside there in the dead of winter.

Posted by Mark at 08:10 AM

February 24, 2005

Blogging down

Blogging. Why have I made this a habit? Less than keeping a journal, worse than journalism. 872K of text in the past 9 1/2 months to what end?

A blog lends itself to quick notes. I also have perhaps 700 pages of notes on meetings and ideas from work in the past several years, that and entire software manuals.

It's a great gimmick for creating a living home page, and a terrible way to think anything through. Un divertissement, like most everything else.

I'm going to be reincarnated as a pile of PostIt notes.

Posted by Mark at 08:47 PM

Meltdown

C|Net's running a feature showing how global warming has caused glacial meltdown.

Before

After

That disappearing act was Muir glacier in Alaska first in 1899, then in 2003.

Posted by Mark at 06:13 PM

Netbeans 4, part III

In playing again with my schema repository idea, I've started to realize how cool some of the upcoming refactoring features in Netbeans will be. Most of my refactoring involves moving methods, and extracting hardcoded stuff into constants.

Something that might also be cool is extracting constants into an external Properties file and adding initialization code to load the properties.

Posted by Mark at 06:02 PM

Sun Fire v40z

Although I work at Sun, hardware is not something I spend much time thinking about. For the most part I leave hardware in the lab and forget about its physical existence, handling systems over the network. But there are times when looking inside the cases can be instructive.

As mentioned on Slashdot, AnandTech has a review of the v40z that makes us look good, both in terms of performance for an entry-level, 4-way server and in classic terms of Sun engineering. Cool, open, easy to manage, and fast. I can imagine why system administrators like this gear.

Posted by Mark at 02:24 PM

Portrait photographer, part II

Diane's Nose

Tim and Diane

Tim's Foot

Above are Tim's favorites of the photos he took yesterday.

Posted by Mark at 01:42 PM

27:03/148

As I'd run an easy 8 km with Stu Tuesday, I jogged only 5 km today, experimenting with breathing through my nose and keeping my mouth shut. It was a bit too cold for that at -3 C (less than 27 F). Will try again when the weather's warmer.

Posted by Mark at 11:18 AM

February 23, 2005

Not slow enough

When I ran 24.5 km in 1:50:19 last Sunday, drinking sports drink each 5 km, I was probably not doing the right thing to get ready for the last 10 km of the Lyon marathon in mid-April, according to Benji Durden quoted in a Runner's World article, Breaking Through the Wall:

Durden advises aiming for long runs that last within 30 minutes of your predicted time for the marathon. For example, if you're training to run the marathon in 3:30, your long runs should last 3 hours. Marathoners shooting for 3:15 would do long runs of 2:45.

...

How many of these long runs should you do? Ideally five or six, but four is the minimum you need to keep from struggling through the last 10-K on race day.

According to my training schedule I only have three longer runs left before April 17: this Sunday's 26 km (16 mi), a 29 km (18 mi) run two weeks later, and a 32 km (20 mi) long run two weeks after that. I guess that last 10 km will not be pleasant.

Posted by Mark at 10:11 PM

Priceless spam

Yesterday I received spam congratulating me for having an email address that qualified me as one of ten finalists to win 1 million euros in a lottery sponsored by Bill Gates, "To enhance and promote the use of Internet Explorer Users and microsoft-wares around the globe."

One of the reply addresses was at a free mail account. The other was... infocofidis@netscape.net.

Posted by Mark at 02:43 PM

Snow, part VI

Front Side

Winter is still with us. Nathalie and the two big ones are thinking of skiing again tomorrow.

Posted by Mark at 02:20 PM

Portrait photographer

Timothee's trying his hand at portrait (and more abstract) photography again.

Tim

Diane

Emma

Good thing we don't have to develop them with chemicals and paper. The success rate is about 5%.

Posted by Mark at 02:13 PM | Comments (2)

41 bpm, part III

Today I'm not going into the office. This counts as a day off under the réduction du temps de travail agreements, whereby those of us on salary get a day off a month instead of working 35-hour weeks.

Before walking out of the garage, I noticed my heart rate was slower than it usually is when I head out the door to run at work. It was down in the mid-60s rather than the mid-70s. Am I that much more stressed out at work? Do I drink too much coffee? (Sun offers employees free coffee and tea.)

Anyway, I sat down for a moment and sure enough could drop to 41 bpm. I didn't have the patience to try for 40.

Posted by Mark at 01:46 PM

55:56/170

After an easy 8 km yesterday, I ran today's 13 km (8 mi) as a tempo run pushing the pace well beyond 10 km race speed during the hardest stretch. I didn't get myself to run quite as hard as with Matt two Wednesdays ago, but did get going fast enough that I could only hold the top speed for about a kilometer before burning through my willpower and maybe my VO2max.

Although the first 5 km was mostly at a heart rate under 80%, and the next 3 km was probably under 85%, I managed to average 87% of my max heart rate over the whole run. No wonder my thighs felt wooden for the warm-down finish.

I count on tempo runs to help me improve oxygen processing capacity, lactate threshold level, and running economy, saving the interval work until summertime when I've quit going to the gym. According to Greg Crowther at the University of Washington:

"Long" intervals and tempo runs are probably our best training tools for maximizing VO2max, lactate threshold, running economy, and overall fitness.

(Source: Training to improve the "Big Three")

Posted by Mark at 01:21 PM | Comments (2)

February 22, 2005

Full text, part II

As Tilly alludes in the comments for my entry on this topic yesterday, Jean Véronis's Technologies du Langage blog covers the problem in more detail. In a recent entry Véronis demonstrates some amusing bugs in how Google references web pages, but suggest the crux of the matter lies deeper:

Or, la grande faiblesse de Google est justement son manque de chercheurs dans le domaine du traitement des langues. L'analyse des domaines de compétence de ses chercheurs à travers leur CVs et leurs publications fait apparaître une absence quasi-totale d'expertise dans ce domaine. Une telle expertise existe chez les développeurs de petits moteurs (notamment en France), mais les petits David semblent bien faibles par rapport au grand Googliath.

(Source: Référencement: Drôlement verni !)

Interesting point, and a good reason to keep alternative engines alive. But going back to Jeanneney's plea, in getting the full text on the web are the Davids in competition with the Googliath? After it's out there, will it really matter that Google makes a hash of the work of referencing the content?

Granted there won't necessarily be buckets of stock options and $3M bonuses, 1000 new millionaires, when the software editors do quality work rather than focus first on advertising revenue. (Unless David sells out to Goliath in return for quickly vesting options.) But fast bucks don't seem to be the goal. In the case brought forward by Jeanneney, we're talking about availability of texts selected by European librarians. The problems are separate. The solutions may be as well.

Posted by Mark at 09:44 PM

Looking for a good cowboy

Both times I turned on France Inter talk radio today the question was, "How should we interpret Bush's response to someone's question about whether he'd invite Chirac to his ranch?" Way to feature la question du moment in international diplomacy, guys! Will George invite Jacques to tap Texan cow butts like he does at the Salon de l'agriculture?

Posted by Mark at 09:09 PM

50:03/130

Stu and I ran 8 km (about 5 mi). We left in sunlight and came back under a cold cloud pushed by a piercing breeze. At this speed I concentrate on form, aiming to tap my feet only lightly against the ground, making as little sound as possible while keeping my body loose.

Posted by Mark at 08:58 PM

Polar fritz

My heart monitor serves as a watch as well. The last few days it has been going blank daily. It did this before, then ran for a month without incident. Just got it for Christmas. If this were a battery problem, why would I have the trouble only intermittently?

Posted by Mark at 10:58 AM

February 21, 2005

Full text

C|Net is running an article about a plea from Jean-Noel Jeanneney, head of France's national library, for a European program to mirror Google's plan to scan a bunch of books and make the text searchable online. He's calling for, "the European Union to balance this with its own program and its own Internet search engines," according to C|Net.

Sounds like a good idea, but why push your own Internet search engine? Why not just put the texts online and let the bots sort it out? Could you get a European search engine to fund the scan job?

Posted by Mark at 10:02 PM | Comments (1)

EU constitution, part II

Big news today on the radio was that the Spanish voted for the EU constitution, something like 3 to 1 in favor.

Only 42% of eligible voters turned out. I thought someone on the radio mentioned a poll finding only 10% of those who voted claimed actually to have read the text. One commentator suggested a series of debates between legal experts, rather than sound bites from politicians regarding the 265-page document.

Evidently lots of French politicians on both sides of the argument found reason to rejoice following the Spanish referendum. Reminds me of a verb, preside:

Preside, v. i. imp. & p. p. Presided; p. pr. & vb. n. Presiding. L. praesidere; prae before + sedere to sit: cf. F. pr'esider. See Sit.
  1. To be set, or to sit, in the place of authority; to occupy the place of president, chairman, moderator, director, etc.; to direct, control, and regulate, as chief officer; as, to preside at a public meeting; to preside over the senate.
  2. To exercise superintendence; to watch over.
Some o'er the public magazines preside. --Dryden.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Posted by Mark at 09:22 PM

Winter ride, part III

While taking my bike out of the car this evening, I noticed the timer registered 3:39:43.

28.6 kph may represent the average over the last 3 2/3 hours of riding, not the 1 1/4 hours today.

The maximum speed was 66.9 kph (41.3 mph), which I must've reached coming down to Montbonnot from St. Ismier. If I really want to set a personal speed record, I should probably ride up to La Chapelle Blanche and down the more or less straight road on the descent towards La Rochette. Not something to try in winter, however.

I met a young guy, maybe 17-18, on the way out to Tencin. He told me he races with a club in Pontcharra. They don't start climbing until later in March. At this time of year you might run into a patch of ice or a layer of snow.

Posted by Mark at 09:00 PM

1:16:28/159

A chilly ride up to Tencin and back. My average speed was a pitiful 28.6 kph (17.6 mph). Although my legs felt fine this morning, when I got on the bike I noticed I'd worked out yesterday.

Posted by Mark at 02:13 PM

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene in the mid-70s. Maybe it's old news now. I found it nevertheless fresh and enlightening. It left me with the impression of reading it far too quickly, although it was also slower going than most books.

Dawkins's book centers evolution on the gene, functional and physical unit of heredity, rather than the organism. At the core of his whole argument lies a tautology. Genes that survive tend to produce effects leading to their survival. From that starting point, Dawkins manages to explain a whole range of phenomena, from why parents take care of their children rather, to behavior that appears altruistic when the unit of observation is the organism, to why it makes sense to see the gene's influence beyond the edge of the body.

His book gives you page after page of quality ideas, the kind that seem simple and natural once you've seen them, like elegant solutions to problems. As you'd expect, he borrows many of those ideas from fellow researchers in biology to game theory, though many are his own ideas and improvements. Dawkins also does a thorough job covering counterarguments and presenting the case for and against them. He writes such that it's easier to learn something from his exposition of somebody else's idea than from reading that person's original exposition, e.g. Axelrod's investigations of strategies for the iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma game.

Highly recommended.

Posted by Mark at 07:57 AM

No heat, part II

Although it's only down to about -5 C (23 F) out there, it's cold in our house this morning. Our radiators were all cold, too. It seemed like the heater had turned itself off again.

But that was not the case. I had hot water to wash my face, and the heater also warms the water that comes out of the faucets. The heater has a timer attached to it, one of those circular, mechanical timers with the plastic sections you slide toward or away from the center to set hours of operation. The timer covers 7 days. It is set to scale everything back each night.

The thermostat gets its data from a probe on the north face of the house above the garage, and from a thermometer built into the control unit in the hall near the door to the basement stairs. The system functions well when the flow of air through the house is mostly uninterrupted. But we've been closing the doors to the living room this week. The interior thermometer must've been in a stagnant temperature pocket as temperature in the exterior rooms dropped but their air didn't circulate.

Since we cannot read the thermometer inside, I don't know what the real temperature was. I'd guess about 16 C (61 F). The heaters are probably working now, and the kids are probably already up, fighting over which cartoon to watch.

Posted by Mark at 07:42 AM

February 20, 2005

Timing

Oddly my time this morning was at the pace to run a 3:10 marathon, which is roughly what the calculator at McMillanRunning.com tells me to shoot for.

My time it turns out was only 6 minutes slower than Greg McMillan's calculator predicted as my 15-Mile race time. That's encouraging. Except for the fourth lap, I was running comfortably slower than I'd expect to in a 15-Mile race.

That doesn't mean I can run a 3:10 marathon yet, but it does suggest I could do it eventually. Unless I injure myself, I might even be able to do it this year.

Posted by Mark at 04:59 PM

Cross training blues

Metcheck.com, Yahoo Weather, Meteo France all predict snow and cold weather for tomorrow. I'm contemplating putting my bike in the back of the car anyway. Vincent, the guy who leads our gym hour, is on vacation this week.

Posted by Mark at 04:18 PM

Beliefs

While gathering papers for the 2004 tax declaration, I came across a Christmas card Mom found in Grandma Tuenge's stuff. The card was from me, saying that I had prayed, asked Jesus back into my life and wanted to do God's will. I wrote about being "entrenched in my own mess."

What the perceived mess was then, I cannot recall. From a distance it looks like I was inside the punch line of a Zen practical joke or a Kafka parable. I'm still working to dig my way out of the trench.

My belief in God never seems to give in to anything, even the belief that I've had for the last few years that I'd be better off eliminating beliefs, looking instead for evidence and plausible explanations. It won't even give in to the incapacity to explain what I mean by believing in God. Maybe the belief came from my family, early enough that I cannot remember any time before it. Maybe it came from God.

Richard Dawkins suggests God is a long-lived idea, particularly fit to survive in the world of ideas. He cites God in his explanations of memes, which like genes replicate. Memes reproduce from one human mind to another. His explanation holds up fine as long as you stick to the argument and don't try to get an understanding of what's underneath. In mathematics you're fine as long as you stick to the relationships and don't try to understand what 1 or 0 "really is."

Maybe that's what I should focus on, what God "really is." That ought to stretch my mind. Perhaps it would work like Matt claims running hard works, where eventually your body gets better at going faster so it won't have to work as hard.

Posted by Mark at 03:46 PM

1:50:19/162

It was 1 degree C (34 F) when I started the first lap this morning. We had 2-3 cm (1 in) of snow on the ground, so I ran on the road.

It didn't start feeling right until I'd done the first 4.9 km (3 mi) lap. I sped up somewhat for the second lap, then slowed again slightly for the third lap. The fourth lap I ran hard enough to build up lactic acid. Then I started the fifth feeling the same as the first, out of rhythm, stiff legs, though I was also a bit tired. My heart rate seemed to stay higher than necessary on the fifth lap.

I wanted to see if I could recover after having too much lactic acid build up. The answer seems to be somewhere between yes and no.

This 24.5 km (15 mi) run was at a faster pace than 21 km (13 mi) two weeks ago. My guess is that I'll enjoy running long on Sundays more when it starts warming up. That run two Sundays ago was definitely more fun.

Posted by Mark at 11:22 AM

February 19, 2005

No heat

Michel installed a sink for Nathalie down in the utility room. He had to rewire the outlet behind our heater which does both heat and hot water.

After he did that work, our heater went out.

We couldn't figure that out. Spent several hours trying to understand from the doc and get in touch with someone who could fix it.

Finally we got a guy who diagnosed it over the phone. Michel had put two wires in backwards, which didn't matter for the lights over the sink but caused the heater to shut itself down. Now it's gradually getting warmer again.

Posted by Mark at 07:33 PM

Netbeans 4, part II

Netbeans 4 is fine, but the code I hacked together is a mess, strewn with hard-coded values, methods made public for no apparent reason, no doc.

I started with a task I could've done in any editor: write some doc, trying to figure out what the public interface to my schema repository should be. After a couple of hours, I've managed to see again what the original goal was, something only related to, not centered on generating reference documentation.

That vision led me to the realization of how far away I am from the intended endpoint. Next step is to write some tests and refactor. Netbeans should help nicely with that.

Posted by Mark at 04:03 PM

Out to pasture

But the pasture's going to be bleak. Gilles and I have been joking about learning to grow vegetables instead of building software. It's not a joke.

Tilly spotted the article at CadreEmploi.fr, Seniors : le chômage fatal ?.

Lots of handwringing, head-shaking, and fatalistic words from old guys at the peaks of their long careers, explaining to the rest of us why it's inevitable we'll be kicked out younger and younger.

In the US we have our irony glands excised at birth so we don't notice. All of us that can end up heavily invested in the market. Then we get kicked out by companies who need to replace expensive experienced workers with cheaper up-and-comers, thereby increasing pressure on companies to perform for investors as we move from getting paid to getting dividends. So everyone sides with the old guys explaining why it's all inevitable, those guys reap progressively huger rewards, and some of us potentially get modest financial security at the expense of everyone else.

I really ought to get better at growing vegetables.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 AM | Comments (2)

More Gmail

Something I only noticed yesterday, and am reminded of by this C|Net article, Gmail no longer provides only 6 invitations at a time, but 50.

There was some hubbub about the safety of what you store there. I consider it another virtual desk surface, browser-accessible, full-text-searchable, and backed up by someone else. As Scott McNealy once said before Sept. 11 and before everybody recognized Identity Management as a huge market:

You have no privacy. Get over it.

What you do have is anonymity. Nobody cares about you like you care about yourself. Not even your mother or John Negroponte.

Let me know if you want 1 GB on their server.

Posted by Mark at 09:17 AM

Slower and slower, part II

mcraig.org and in particular the CGIs that make up MovableType seems slower and slower. Not sure whether they're doing maintenance when I create entries. When I rebuild, it takes a while. Perhaps there's something that gets longer to do the more entries you have.

Posted by Mark at 09:09 AM

Ski season, part VI

Tim and Emma went skiing again yesterday with Nathalie and Colette. Nathalie was exhausted. Emma never did complain about her legs hurting. Colette did.

Posted by Mark at 09:06 AM

Spoons

spoons20050219.jpg

Diane's latest game involves taking fistfuls of spoons from the silverware drawer away from the silverware drawer. This originated in imitation of a parent going to the silverware drawer after the meal to get spoons for yoghurt. Then it sort of got generalized. Now we turn up these piles of spoons around the house every once in a while.

Posted by Mark at 09:00 AM

IDORU

Andy sent me William Gibson's book IDORU. I started reading it already because the other books I have open, The Selfish Gene and Madame Bovary, require more effort. (The Selfish Gene obliges you to think. Madame Bovary starts out mostly about Charles and other people you don't feel attracted to. I'm not over the hump.)

IDORU was fun to read, though it might have been more entertaining in 1996, in other words before Kurzweil published The Age of Spiritual Machines and before your brother gave you that Nanosystems book that you still plan to read. The science fiction parts look like they might age quickly.

But the characters entertain, the pop postmodern references keep it light, and you zoom through the book. Let me know if you want it and I'll send you the paperback.

Posted by Mark at 08:48 AM

Out to eat

Yesterday all seven of us went out to dinner. It was mainly Emma's idea. She said she wanted to go to a restaurant where they give you a menu with all the choices written on it. This was in disagreement with her sister, who had been repeating that she was going to Mc Do.

We went to a place in La Rochette. Tim and Emma were happy to share a mussels and fries. Diane just ordered fries, and all the adults ordered pizzas. Diane ended up eating from everyone's plates.

The big deal for Emma was getting the second menu to choose her dessert, even though she had to have her grandfather's help to finish it.

Posted by Mark at 08:40 AM

February 18, 2005

Politics

Stu sent a link to an article in The Guardian about somebody calling himself Jeff Gannon. Apparently this guy works for the White House to parry tough questions from journalists, but he's done so by pretending to be a journalist himself.

The author of the article alleges Jeff Gannon's real name is James Dale Guckert. Before this came to the surface, Mr. Guckert, << had asserted that John Kerry "might some day be known as 'the first gay President'". >> The author then claims the following came up during investigation of Guckert's identity:

"Gannon" owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen websites with names like Militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com, WorkingBoys.net and MeetLocalMen.com, which featured dozens of photographs of "Gannon" in dramatic naked poses. One of the sites was still active this week.

As you read down to the bottom of the article, you get to the byline:

Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars

At least they didn't leave that part out. Sometimes I wonder if all this stuff is invented to keep people from thinking about what's really going on.

Posted by Mark at 03:32 PM

1:14:01/159

Another workout at the gym. Felt okay, though jogging back to work my right calf cramped up twice. It may have been the cold outside air.

Posted by Mark at 03:14 PM

February 17, 2005

Ski season, part V

No pictures, but Emma decided to ski today near St. Hilaire du Touvet, where the trails are flat. She did the easy trail for about 2 hours, then was proud to go with the others. Only fell twice. She was proud enough to call me at work about it.

Tim apparently did three loops around the top of the téléski because he got hung up and was too light to weigh the contraption down. But he said he had a great time.

Posted by Mark at 08:46 PM

Recipe for software

Jamie Zawinski published some interesting suggestions on doing the right software. Here's one:

Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

Trouble starts when somebody marketing new software, having read jwz's blog en diagonale while attending a staff meeting, becomes determined to address this point in the Golden Pitch slides.

Posted by Mark at 04:04 PM

40:25/157

Was supposed to run 6.5 km (4 mi), but ended up going a smidgeon over 8 km (5 mi) so I wouldn't have to run through the mud with my new shoes, yet could turn around at a clear landmark and stay on the flats.

157 bpm represents just over 80% of my max. If I feel okay at the start, 78% is roughly the pace it feels like I could maintain forever. Maybe I should have as a goal running 8-minute miles for an hour at 78% of my max. (152 bpm).

Posted by Mark at 02:03 PM

Map wheel, part II

Bought a map wheel.

It turns out that my 41:22 run yesterday covered 10.5 km (almost 6.5 mi), translating to a 15.2 kph (9.4 mph) pace. That would suggest I'm perhaps getting faster rather than slower and slower.

Posted by Mark at 11:44 AM

February 16, 2005

Parking lot rates

We're planning a trip leaving from Lyon airport (LYS). LYS lies on this side of Lyon, a bit over an hour away from Barraux. We'll be traveling with the children, so we've looked at renting a car, taking a taxi, taking the train, or taking our car and leaving it in the parking lot. It looks like leaving our car in the parking lot may be the least expensive solution.

But that's not why I'm writing this. What surprised me was that somebody at the airport hacked together a web page for calculating the cost of parking at each of the LYS parking lots. Nice unexpected customer service idea.

Posted by Mark at 09:12 PM

Chocolicious

chocolicious20050216.jpg

Intense Nutella appreciation

Posted by Mark at 08:39 PM | Comments (2)

41:22/173

Well, that course I thought was 11 km must not be.

The pace was fast enough that pushing it would cause my legs muscles to tighten up, but it was maintainable. That's what I understand running physiologists call the lactate threshold. I started cold, so the median heart rate was probably more like 176 bpm.

I felt fine. Didn't try my new shoes. Too much melting snow and mud.

Posted by Mark at 01:18 PM

New shoes

Bought new shoes today, Asics Cumulus VI, after trying four pairs at Training 7.

The reviews at Road Runner Sports are divided, and this is not the shoe I would have picked on my own. Yet the guy I bought them from goes to Vincent's gym hour Mondays and Fridays and has watched me run there. He says I pronate too much in the Nike Pegasus that I have, that I need a shoe less cushioning if I want to run more distance. He told me the shoes I have, which I'd worn too long, would eventually cause me knee pain. In fact, I did experience knee pain when running long.

He looked at my orthopedic inserts and said the big deal is not the plastic around the outside to flatten how my foot hits, but the high ridge on the inside that hurt a lot when I first ran on them. That ridge is supposed to hold my arch and keep my foot from rolling inward. He suggested special lacing, where I use the last two holes to make a loop on each side and snake the laces through the loops. He says my problem will be attenuated if I can get the shoe to hug my heel.

We'll see how it all works out.

The guy selling me the shoes also says he coaches runners. Sounds like a potential coach if we get a club together at work.

Posted by Mark at 11:43 AM | Comments (2)

DITA in public review, part II

DITA seems to have plenty of elements.

You find both <kwd> and <keyword>, which seems strange when you look at the elements in alphabetic order. It might not be so strange when you see them in context where your editor gives you only one choice.

What's cool is that instead of verbose, DocBook-style markup, DITA borrows from HTML for frequently-used elements like <dd>, <dt>, <li>, <p> and so forth. They've also gone against the ayatollahs of strict separation between content and format to include <b>, <i>, and <tt>. How refreshing.

Posted by Mark at 09:01 AM

DITA in public review

The Committee Draft for the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) 1.0 is available for public review. As mentioned in email:

Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person via a web form found on the TC's web page at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita.

Standardized modular documentation. Neat idea. Looking forward to the applications.

Posted by Mark at 08:23 AM

February 15, 2005

Freedom to complain?

Another C|Net article hints you too could lose your job blogging. One legal expert observes that:

Employers have considerable leeway to discipline employees over any public expression touching on the company's business or reputation.

Lucky for people where I work, Sun tends to have people good at defining public interfaces, such as the one you need to respect when blogging. Of course everyone has been warned multiple times that it's dangerous to be caught criticizing the company in public, but the rules are easily stated. I only noted 4 don'ts.

What's interesting is less any particular company's reaction to a particular blog and more the general legal situation, how employers can discipline employees but employees cannot even make notes in their public diary (i.e. blog) about stupid things happening at work. Is that because in the aggregate companies never do anything stupid? Is it because bad news travels faster than good? Is it because our legal system is designed from the ground up to protect the powerful from the weak?

Since most of these stories are coming from the US, what about the first amendment to the US Constitution?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of speech is of course open to interpretation, since my freedom to mention something stupid happening at work may impinge upon the freedom of sales folk to book orders without having to handle embarrassing questions their mark turned up while Googling, or the freedom of upper management to decide to lay people off before they read about it in The Register.

On the other hand, it's a shame we cannot build up the trust needed to relax and let it all hang out. How much success have you had solving problems you refused to identify or discuss?

Posted by Mark at 08:50 PM | Comments (2)

Blog roll

With nary a thought of filtering I've subscribed to the following feeds at Bloglines.com:

That's still an order of magnitude fewer blog subscriptions than the number of mailing lists I'm subscribed to at work not counting external aliases. (Last count: 197.)

Will browser support for RSS feeds turn that around? Maybe we should hope not.

Posted by Mark at 08:17 PM

Expecting snow, part II

During the night we actually got some of the snow we were expecting.

snow1-20050215.jpg

snow2-20050215.jpg

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It was perfect for making snowballs and sledding in the back yard, too.

Posted by Mark at 07:04 PM

30:31/129

Very easy 5 km recovery run today with Stu. You may wonder if running so slow does any good. The effect is psychological. I finish feeling more upbeat and ready for the rest of the day. I'm not sure a short, slow jog like today's makes any noticeable physical difference at all.

Posted by Mark at 01:47 PM

February 14, 2005

Video capture, part XV

Another couple of SVCDs burned. 42 minutes of video comes to over 800 MB of mpeg, so I'm breaking it into two CDs worth. As I burn this last CD, the computer can only handle one keystroke per second. Almost impossible to type.

Posted by Mark at 08:32 PM

58:32/154

Neither the time nor the average heart rate is correct. My heart monitor was malfunctioning for the first few minutes of the workout at the gym. I restarted it three times, and on the third time did a couple of laps where it registered 0 bpm.

Posted by Mark at 01:37 PM

Overeducation and running

Dana has remarked high proportions of medical doctors, teachers, and other people with advanced degrees running marathons, especially in the population of those running fast enough to qualify for Boston for example. I'm tempted to see a logical connection between educational level and propensity to prepare for marathons. But the connection I see is not that marathoning's a smart thing to do.

Maybe there's some truth to the idea that overeducated people are more likely than average to seek leisure activities involving considerable planning, long-term training, and delayed gratification, e.g. marathon training. I wonder if much of the phenomenon can be explained directly by environmental circumstances that, when extended to any group of people regardless of educational level, would produce more marathoners.

Doctors, teachers, people with lots of schooling may tend to wind up in jobs where they use their heads more than their hands, and use their heads to meet longer-term challenges. First this would leave their bodies ready for exercise rather than needing a rest. Furthermore, people who work with their heads would gravitate to leisure activities where: 1) use of your head gives you an advantage; 2) use of your hands and body doesn't depend as much on force or dexterity you (didn't) develop in your job; 3) the way you use your body hones how you use your head to engage in long-term challenges.

In addition, the overeducated are doubtless more likely to plan their own work, and then to extend this habit to their leisure. Not only do they plan their own work, but they may also be more likely to organize their own work as well, permitting them more easily to set aside time to run. They may even work in an environment that facilitates this (with showers in the building, for example).

Finally the overeducated probably tend to earn more than average, but are maybe not more likely to be independently wealthy. So they run, bike, or even play tennis and golf, but are more susceptible to train for a marathon than for a sailboat race, polo tournament, or the Paris-Dakar.

Marathon running is one sport where you're pitted against yourself more than in competition with other people. It's natural that anyone capable of sticking it out and following the training would find getting ready for a marathon gratifying, because you're almost sure to improve. Maybe that and the trend towards more head work, what I think of as no-collar jobs, explains why the number of people running marathons keeps increasing.

Posted by Mark at 07:56 AM

Moving MovableType, part IV

I've decided to allow comments without and use mt-close.cgi, nofollow.pl, and the new interface in MovableType 3.x to combat comment spam. If you see something telling you to wait for approval, let me know.

Posted by Mark at 07:53 AM | Comments (2)

February 13, 2005

Video capture, part XIV

Part of what I was capturing goes back to 2004.

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Can you make out the presence of both champagne and ketchup?

Posted by Mark at 08:27 PM

Video capture, part XIII

Video capture with year-old hardware, Linux IEEE 1394 modules, and a 2.4.21 kernel makes for a CPU-intensive job.

sysmonitor20050213.png

It's a drag for the user, since you don't see anything happening except the system slowing down.

Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM

Training times

Except for the first two workouts of marathon training, I've done thorough job tracking exercise times when cross-training, running, or cycling through this first half.

My actuals show more jogging as the distance creeps up.

Posted by Mark at 06:21 PM

Expecting snow

According to Metcheck.com and Yahoo Weather, we should expect snow for the next three days. It's been raining for the last three.

The driveway has become spongy where we park the cars, full of water. Tonight the sponge is going to freeze. This afternoon we've seen the freezing line come down the mountains behind Barraux and across the valley, with the mountains becoming white as it descends.

Posted by Mark at 05:47 PM

Slower and slower

Looking back at the last three 16 km runs, I've been getting slower and slower. Today's took 1:19:36, but last time it was 1:18:18, and the time before less than 1:16:33.

What's more, I ran slower this time with more heartbeats per minute than last time, 163 vs. 158. Next time I have a step-back week, I'm taking it easy.

Posted by Mark at 04:05 PM

Choucroute

If you feel like eating a big Sunday dinner when it's cold out, but don't feel like working hard to cook one, choucroute may be what you want to make. Michel and Colette like it, so it's what we had today at noon.

Traditional recipes for choucroute have you start by frying sauerkraut in onions and lard. That makes it unnecessarily greasy.

I start at least two to three hours before we want to eat by covering the bottom of a heavy pot with sauerkraut, topping that with an onion stuck with cloves, a few cumin seeds, a bay leaf or two, juniper berries, cracked peppercorns, coriander grains like the ones you'd use to make pickles, and a little bit of thyme. Then I layer on peeled carrots, potatoes, pieces of salted or smoked pork, and any sausages that can cook for the duration, like saucisses de Montbéliard. To top it off, I shake on some dry garlic and wet the whole dish down with Riesling. Not too much Riesling, but enough that it won't all evaporate while you cook the choucroute.

The trick is to cook it covered, slowly enough and long enough that the potatoes and carrots are done when most of the wine has evaporated. Some recipes have you add lots of wine and broth as well. Those cooks may be preparing their vegetables on the side and finishing the choucroute with the top off. Otherwise they'd be cooking the vegetables to mush and ending up with the whole dish swimming in broth.

If you like, add a tablespoon or two of butter 30 minutes before it's all done. 5 minutes before the end, put some knacks on top. The kids are more likely to eat something like a hot dog anyway. For large quantities in big heavy pots, you can turn the heat off when you've added the knacks.

Make sure you have both mustard and horseradish as condiments.

Some people put out pâté or sausage as a starter, but that's overkill. I served a starter salad of tomatoes, lettuce, and corn, topped with a few scallops cut into slices and fried quickly in a hot pan with almost no oil. I shouldn't have used corn. Flavor's too strong. But I'd run out of the palm hearts I wanted to use and didn't have much lettuce. Scallops work well on a salad with malt vinegar dressing. It all goes well with good Riesling.

Plan a light desert.

Posted by Mark at 03:12 PM

1:19:36/163

Last summer when working on fast 10 km runs, I invariably ran an out-and-back circuit. The hardest part was turning around at the halfway point to face the 3rd quarter.

This morning's step-back long run, 16 km (10 mi), marked the halfway point (in time, not distance) of my training for the Lyon marathon in April. It was raining a bit too hard, with a few granules of snow mixed in with the downpour. Nathalie and I had gone out to eat last night. I got to bed late, then got up too late to eat (and digest) breakfast before heading out at 8 am. My body felt tired before starting the run. So I jogged for a couple of minutes and stretched, but still felt weighted down.

First I started out too fast in an attempt to get my blood flowing. That felt okay for a while, but not great. Then I turned around at Chapareillan into an inhabitually strong headwind, which was full of rain. I got sopping, dripping wet in the first 8 km (5 mi). My top started rubbing and my legs felt like someone had doused them in icewater. Everything tightened up, making it a challenge to run smoothly. When I got back to the house for a drink, I'd already been going more than 39 minutes.

As I reached the 10 km point, the sun broke through the clouds and the rain cleared up, but I was slowing down, losing my concentration. My head was falling forward. My heart rate had dropped to 78% at the bottom of the hill in Chapareillan. I'd run out of gas.

I then tried something Hal Higdon suggests, speeding up to get through the bad patch. A medium-sized tree stands to the left of the road a good way up the first hill from Chapareillan. I aimed to push the pace just to that tree and see how I felt. As I neared the tree, I decided to surge another 100 m or so to the crest. That helped get me going. I managed to pick up the pace enough to come in just under 8-minute miles.

Posted by Mark at 10:50 AM

February 12, 2005

Asynchronous debate

Computer Scientist Alan Kay claimed in a recently published ACM Queue interview that got slashdotted, "All creativity is an extended form of a joke." Kay's generalization may be debatable, but it's also not clear whether he was kidding or explaining computer software.

Depends on how you see it?

Old young woman

It's not clear either whether my brother Matt was serious in email today when he said his next hack will be online debate software, but it sounds like a good joke, good enough to play with. I suggested he check out Jon Bosak and Ken Clements's Parliamentary Assistant idea, but I cannot find a trace of that getting standardized. Just email, in which Jon remarks:

I still believe that this is our best hope for a realization of the deliberative process that works online, but realistically, the implementation of such a mechanism is a long way off.

He probably has the full-strength version in mind, one that works as well as somebody with experience and firm understanding of Robert's Rules of Order. Maybe Matt can put 20% of that into PHP and SQL, meeting 80% of our needs.

Posted by Mark at 06:48 PM

Certifié

Dr. Rantz looked me over this morning and pronounced me apt to run in Lyon. All I have to do now is another 431 km (266 mi) of preparatory training.

Posted by Mark at 11:00 AM

Run Fast

Hal Higdon's 2nd edition of Run Fast excited me less than Marathon, but did give me more advice than I need right now on improving my running speed.

Hal of course also cautions us not to go overboard in training, good coaching for someone training right. Looking back, I realize Wed., Thurs., and Fri. included intense speed work, although this is a step-back week. That's probably not what I wanted to do. Every time I reread something from Hal Higdon, it becomes clearer that without a long-term view you're liable either to drop out bottom by not training enough, or to push yourself over the edge by overtraining. He's definitely good at getting you enthusiatic enough to be chomping at the bit, but then reminding you enough about overdoing it to keep you from running headlong into injury.

If you've hit a plateau at your current distance or mainly want to gain speed in shorter races, read this one. I also plan to reread this book during my summer training, before going to the track or running hills. As Matt says, your upper speed limit is where you're most likely to force your mind and body to find out how to move ahead with less brute force expended per meter covered. So in some sense, every runner with stretch goals needs to consider running fast.

Posted by Mark at 10:30 AM

February 11, 2005

Analytic cycling

Matt sent me over to the Analytic Cycling site, where I saw why a 29 kph (~18 mph) pace on the flats is so much easier than a 40 kph (~25 mph) pace. The second requires about 2.5 times the wattage of the first.

The Analytic Cycling site targets the rider who's ready to obsess about wheel drag coefficients, differences in coefficients of rolling resistance for different types of tubular tire glue, air density to 3 significant digits beyond the decimal point, and stuff of that order. It also has some basic stuff for the rest of us. Mainly, though, it reminds me that I'm not enough of an engineer to be a cyclist. Better off running.

Posted by Mark at 08:50 PM

Moving MovableType, part III

After moving the blog, I regenerated the whole thing from the exported content. Links to articles in this blog came up as http://mcraig.org/mark/archives/000690.html.

Should be no problem, right? Theoretically that's correct. But a couple of times I had to delete articles, leaving holes in the numbering. I don't think MovableType left holes in the numbering when it regenerated the blog from exported content.

So W3C-LinkChecker online found only valid links, except for the ones to Amazon.com which didn't support getting just the head and so gave 405s. But some of those links might have been misdirected, semantically speaking. Cannot think of a way to let the machine check for those kinds of errors.

So if you go trolling through the archives and get a link to apples when you're sure it should be oranges, let me know.

Posted by Mark at 03:58 PM

Moving MovableType, part II

Andy and Dana had posted comments I wasn't seeing right away. MovableType 3.15 is configured by default to require that the blog owner approve comments before they appear.

It's a good idea, but not all of us read the release notes or the changelog very carefully. (Less carefully than we write them, anyway.)

Posted by Mark at 03:09 PM | Comments (1)

1:02:01/162

Ran over to the gym late and then did a fairly hard session, with 31:51 in the 65-85% heart rate zone. This is a step back week, so I added a little more intensity during the week and expect to take it easy for the 16 km (10 mi) run this Sunday morning.

Posted by Mark at 02:30 PM

February 10, 2005

Map wheel

Carole lent me her map wheel today.

Jpeg of a map wheel

I need to get one of these. Much better than a piece of string for trying out running or riding routes. The mechanical one appeals to me more that the digital kind, and it's also cheaper. That's probably reason enough for manufacturers to stop making them.

Posted by Mark at 10:01 PM | Comments (5)

Visitors

Michel and Colette arrived this evening on the train. The kids were quite excited, but nevertheless managed to go to sleep more or less on time.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 PM

Honesty

Today on an internal alias at work a guy asked how to delete his blog. He decided he didn't have anything important to say. The idea has of course occurred to the rest of us, but it hasn't slowed me down yet.

Posted by Mark at 09:19 PM

24:32/164

5 km gently with 3 x 200-300 m sprints thrown in to work on keeping smooth form. My body and my mind are not yet in sync on how to run smoothly, though by the third sprint I was able to control my gait at almost top speed. I have lots of work to do to improve my running economy.

Posted by Mark at 03:47 PM | Comments (2)

February 09, 2005

Wedges

Dad sent me a link to a graphic from Investor's Business Daily a while ago.

IBD graphed what they call the wedge -- the sum of employee and employer taxes as a percentage of total income for workers at average earnings -- for a range of countries. The number for France is 48.3%, lower than only Germany and Belgium, and more than 3 times higher than Korea (14.1%). The US level is only a little more than double that of Korea. IBD concludes a lower wedge gives the US an edge in creating jobs. They don't graph wedge levels vs. unemployment under the above link.

Google led me to a brief presentation from someone at Cornell explaining why French unemployment was (and is) higher than US unemployment. The presentor's conclusions are that French employers need to be able to pay their employees less, and that the state should permit employers to renew temp contracts more than once, lower unemployment benefits, shrink the wedge, and have people work longer for the same money.

Posted by Mark at 08:15 PM

47:09/171

Except at the very beginning, where Matt stopped off to order a kebab for lunch while I stood there with my heart monitor running, we ran about 11 km (7 mi) reasonably well.

171 is almost 88%, which is good considering we did it as a 3/1 run, ending fast. At the very end I got to 99% of my current theoretical max. and must've held it over 95% for a while. It's not easy to run that fast away from the track, but easier to do when you have a partner to keep pushing the pace.

Posted by Mark at 02:46 PM

ChiRunning

In Danny Dreyer's book on ChiRunning he gives you the elevator pitch of a much larger story. Now I have to spend some time running to learn what he hints you can only truly know by experiencing proper form, making physical habits of improvements in the way you run. Theoretically, I have enough runs left before the marathon to start forming the proper habits. Just need to keep at it, and not develop new bad habits.

To develop new good habits while not developing new bad habits. That's why real coaching would help.

If Hal Higdon has come to the right conclusions about the relationship of distance running to speed improvements, then increasing distance is part of what I need to do to reach my longer term goal. To put that longer term goal into words, it's to run as fast as my body can over long distances, without injury.

By long distance, I mean anything significantly longer than a half marathon, at least two hours of running. Distances beyond the wall of glycogen depletion, in endurance concentration territory. ChiRunning seems the kind of approach you need to work beyond that frontier while building yourself up rather than breaking yourself down.

Posted by Mark at 08:38 AM

Going the distance

Last night and this morning I began reading Hal Higdon's book Run Fast. At about chapter 3, Hal suggests running two 90-minute endurance runs per week to improve your speed. Okay. But then my winter training, based on Hal's first-timer training program for a marathon, does not include enough long slow distance to speed me up. There's a lot of foundation-building to do before I'll be able to go the distance at a fast pace.

I'm glad I didn't start reading this book before now. Might have been discouraged.

Posted by Mark at 08:10 AM

February 08, 2005

Carnaval, part II

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Pictures from the parade today in Barraux

Posted by Mark at 08:44 PM

Embroidery

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Emma working on her Snow White portrait

Posted by Mark at 08:38 PM

Running club?

Jerome first suggested we organize running with a coach to prepare as a group for a big event such as a marathon.

The more I speak with people here at work about the idea, the more it's clear not everybody wants to run a marathon. In fact, I haven't found anybody else who does, though several would like to do a half marathon.

More seem interested in having someone to run with and someone to help them reach their own goals, anything from running a half marathon to getting into better shape. Getting into better shape sounds like a good reason to get out and run regularly. It's what led me in the end to wanting to get into even better shape. Now I enjoy running more than I ever have before.

Marie-Odile mentioned a cardiologist who runs and coaches runners on the side. Karine suggested I ask around at local running clubs for recommendations. If it's to start later this year, I ought to get to it in the next month or so.

It's not entirely clear why this idea keeps turning over in my head, but it does. I'm fine running alone, and am not having trouble getting out there and putting in the kilometers. The showers will be more crowded than they are now at lunchtime. Yet maybe I stand to benefit the most from coaching, and this would be a good way of getting some real time with a good coach.

Posted by Mark at 02:01 PM

33:53/139

Slow 6 1/4 km jog this noon with Joanne and Stu at the bottom end of my endurance range. It's hard to keep consistent form at that rate, and doubly difficult when you try to hold up a corner of the conversation.

Posted by Mark at 01:10 PM

46 minutes

A fender bender after the St. Ismier entrance caused bumper-to-bumper traffic from the stretch after Crolles almost all the way to the exit for Montbonnot. What a mess. I should be taking the train.

Posted by Mark at 08:19 AM

Carnaval

Mardi gras, it's almost time for lent. Today the children are dressing up to march around Barraux. It has them too excited to sleep. Tim was the first at 6:08 am. Then Emma, at 6:27. Finally Diane at 6:43. It's going to be a long day.

Posted by Mark at 06:53 AM

Avoid performance anxiety

Reading Peter Seebach's article, "Where does all the processing speed go?" I notice both the irony in the author pointing out, "I've talked about some of the worst offenders this month: applications that require processors to do extra work that isn't really useful to the user," then having the site posting the article try to open a popup window to show me some sort of ad, and also the observation that most people are getting bogged down using things I try to avoid: word processors and systems like Windows, where as soon as you get an IP address you need to start running virus scanning software.

At the end Peter suggests I "Launch a few applications simultaneously and time their start-ups." Firefox is already running, but it did take a couple seconds to start. Thunderbird's about the same. Booting the whole system took a while, with the slowest service to start being the PPPoE connection to my provider, though getting Gnome going is long as well. Maybe 3 minutes for the whole thing, I don't know. It still takes too long to get the system going, that's true.

Yet the apps I use once things are actually running usually start quickly and remain quite responsive. Bash, vim, various tools like sed, grep, and find are all quick enough that I don't notice performance problems unless rlogin'd to a slow machine over a bunch of hops. Even ssh seems mostly okay with even a 512/128Kb connection and a short network path.

In the end, "Program complexity is probably the biggest culprit when your supposedly speedy processor still runs slow." The UNIX/Linux metaphor, a large box of specialized tools, leads naturally to less user-perceived bloat since you string together a bunch of small, well adapted tools for each task. In other words, the main reason you don't perceive the bloat is that it's already in your past, having consisted of you spending a long time learning about UNIX so you naturally reach for the write tool, avoiding performance anxiety.

The more you use software tools, the more sense it makes to learn to use the right ones. Peter Seebach published his article last Wednesday, but he remarks increased processing power hasn't led necessarily to a more responsive user experience. Hasn't necessarily, but definitely can as long as you sidestep the bloatware and use the right tool for each job.

Posted by Mark at 06:14 AM

February 07, 2005

Directory Server 5 2005Q1

As Ludo mentions in his blog, Sun's released an update of our Java Enterprise System with patches and some new features for Directory Server. Check out Ludo's entry for what's new, links to the software, and a pointer to the release notes.

Congratulations go to Heather, Janetta, and Joanne for this revision of the Directory Server (and Directory Proxy Server and Administration Server) docs.

Posted by Mark at 10:57 PM

Moving MovableType

My brother Matt moved mcraig.org to a new provider. Getting my blog working again took more time than it should've.

I tried reinstalling first. Got nothing but 500 (Internal Server Error) back from the web server for the CGIs. That seemed weird to me because other CGIs worked just fine right off the bat. Stuff like the oracle.

Finally got it right when I copied the old files over without changing anything, reconfiguring by hand. Then tried TypeMover, which had made what seemed to be a great backup. Unfortunately, that great backup got restored somewhere like /dev/null. If you find it, let me know.

So I manually reconfigured, which is probably why the blog now uses the updated templates. Hope you don't mind. Then I reimported the entries I had and rebuilt.

Hope I didn't lose any of your comments in the process. Who know what'll have happened to the links.

Posted by Mark at 10:38 PM

57:02/151

Gentle endurance-level workout at the gym today. Legs feel okay, although I have a little soreness in the back of my left calf but without any stiffness in the shins.

Posted by Mark at 10:35 PM

February 06, 2005

1:48:40/156

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Nathalie didn't take a very close close-up, but you can see some of the drops of mud. I ran 21 km (13 mi) down on the flats behind La Gache, trying to learn ChiRunning after having read the first 4 1/2 chapters of the book. (And it's clear that I'm not standing right in the photo.)

Although I ran at about the same speed as last week, I felt hugely better. Most of that was due to being healthy yet still running slowly in good weather (1 C (34 F) when starting out, 5 C (41 F) at the end). Yet I think part of it was from the changes even an imperfect adoption of ChiRunning made. In a nutshell, instead of pulling forward with your legs, ChiRunning has you falling and catching yourself with your legs. The faster you want to go, the more you lean forward.

I still have lots of work to do on my form. In particular, my knees bother me a little. I get the impression I was not relaxed enough, and was putting my legs too far forward. Its tough to wait until the very last moment to catch yourself with your leg and to do that smoothly. But my muscles and especially my shins are remarkably refreshed after a run that long. If I didn't know rest is a key part of training, I'd hop on the bike this afternoon.

Posted by Mark at 02:28 PM

Runner's high?

Andy added a link to an article on this topic in the comments on a running journal entry the other day. Today I finally took the time to go back and read the article by Sarah Willet in its entirety.

I have not yet run far enough to experience what people call a runner's high. Maybe I'll feel that way March 27 when I run 32 km (20 mi), or April 17 when I run my first marathon.

What I do feel when running is moments of exhilaration. Usually those happen not because I'm going fast, but because I'm going smoothly. When everything works right, you feel you could keep going a long, long way. In those moments of exhilaration you are in touch with what is happening in your body and its interactions with the environment, which are mainly your footfalls and breathing, but also how warm or cool you feel, the way things look to you, the light, etc.

You're focusing closely on your running. That focus clears your head and takes the stress away. It's like sitting in the forest or on the water's edge on a nice day and not thinking about anything, just observing... except you could be feeling that way running down the side of a relatively busy, salty winter street with the temperature in the low single digits (below 40 F). You're also doing something that's probably good for your body if you don't try to force it.

Posted by Mark at 02:05 PM

February 05, 2005

Relaxing

Getting ready psychologically for the last build-up week long run at a distance I've already done. Tomorrow morning I run roughly a half marathon, 21 km (13 mi). After that I have step-back and taper weeks where I do less, but I also have 5 training runs longer than a half marathon while preparing for Lyon in April. I don't think I've ever run much further than 21 km in one go.

The key for me now seems to involve aiming for ever-smoother form, and not pushing too hard, especially at the start. In a word, relaxing. Funny that the longer you want to be able to go, the more important it gets to relax, rather than to get psyched up.

Posted by Mark at 09:12 AM

Haircuts

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Three people got their hair cut at about the same time.

Posted by Mark at 09:09 AM

February 04, 2005

1:13:31/161

Good workout today. I peaked at 98%, which is 191 bpm, and spent 40:14 in zone, with the vast majority of minutes outside the zone above 85%. Tomorrow is a day off before Sunday's half-marathon distance.

Posted by Mark at 03:43 PM

TypeMover

Made a backup with TypeMover last night, which is great.

The only thing missing if I want to move the blog are dozens of photos.

Posted by Mark at 03:40 PM

February 03, 2005

Ella Tuenge

My mom's mom, Ella Tuenge, died this morning at 11:47 local time where I used to live in Indiana. Grandma had a bad fall recently, and she was already having a rough time with congestive heart failure, low blood sugar, and other difficulties.

Here's a picture from happier times.

grandma.jpg

Grandma I remember as patient, stoic, and generally a whole lot of fun, especially when we were little kids and got a kick out of having someone share in our silliness and even encourage it. Grandma generously spoiled us with more attention and treats than we deserved.

She had some quirks, too. Used to get our names mixed up. Not just the human beings in the family, but also the cats and dogs. It got so you didn't even think to correct her when she looked you in the eyes and called you by the name of her youngest dog.

Despite the extent she went to spoiling us rotten, Grandma also could exhibit an old-style, depression-era approach to waste, combined with a humble duty to eat life's burnt toast. A pizza she once served us with leftover green beans was the funny side of that.

Later in life, when she got tired, this developed into campaign contributions for socially conservative candidates. Some of the mail she got from those folks was hilarious. But the impulse to help came from honest living, and the sense that people need more honest living. You don't throw away perfectly good green beans just because you'd rather have mushrooms on your pizza. You do your best to accept the situation God gives you and make do with what you have.

I admire that, but didn't inherit it. Must've been a recessive gene.

Posted by Mark at 09:32 PM | Comments (1)

MovableType 3.15

Yet another upgrade, this one to take advantage of a security fix and generally to catch up with the Joneses after feeling guilty about my laziness.

My brother Matt and the geeks he hacks with are apparently constantly on the bleeding edge of Gentoo, so I'm pretending to be an early adopter by relation. (Note: as suggested, I also reinstalled a couple of workstations in the lab with Solaris 10.)

Ludo reminded me today at work that my problem last night was not reloading the page when the CSS got stuck in a cache somewhere. The 3.x CSS does make MT look cleaner than the old version.

Posted by Mark at 09:19 PM

MovableType 3.1, part II

Looks like whatever CSS issue I was having yesterday has worked itself out, as if by magic. The pages looks fine in Firefox 1.0 here at work.

Posted by Mark at 02:34 PM

34:02/127

Went for a very slow 6 km jog today. 127 bpm is 65% of the current theoretical max.

Basically spent the entire time trying to pep talk Stu into pushing further and committing to prepare for some sort of event. My hope is to find a few other people who want to train running. If there are 5 of us, we can form a club that gets Work Council subsidies so we can hire a part-time coach.

Posted by Mark at 02:30 PM | Comments (5)

February 02, 2005

MovableType 3.1

Just upgraded to MovableType 3.1.

The upgrade went smoothly, but there's something horribly amiss with the CSS for this page for editing the blog in Firefox. Everything is stuck inside the column on the left edge of the page.

Posted by Mark at 10:40 PM

49:31/160

The run was supposed to be about 10 km (6 mi) today, but ended up being a little further. I guesstimated an approximately 10 km route while running it. 160 bpm today seems much easier than 163 bpm yesterday.

We're having nice weather down in the valley for early February, several degrees above freezing, blue skies, only a slight breeze. Hope it's like this for the long run this weekend.

Posted by Mark at 02:20 PM

Comment spam, part VIII

The Register's running an interview with a blog spammer suggesting how easy it is to add comment spam.

I haven't seen much of it since I started using mt-close.cgi regulary and added the MovableType rel="nofollow" patch.

Or maybe not enough of you gentle readers need PPC (pills, porn, and casinos), whose pushers are cited as the major benefactors of blog comment spam.

Posted by Mark at 07:16 AM

February 01, 2005

Stomach flu, part VI

Looks like we've perhaps reached the end of it.

Tim was healthy enough to want to go sledding on the snow today. (But he just woke up after having a nightmare.) Not healthy enough to want to go to school. (So he didn't get to sled.) Nathalie's tired and has a sore back, but managed to eat dinner. I ate dinner with less stomach rumbling than after lunch. Diane ate like a horse all day. Emma seems fine, too.

Other folks at work are still coming down with flu symptoms. Maybe it won't come around again.

Posted by Mark at 10:21 PM

Laziness

Have become very lazy about software upgrades lately.

Matt, my brother, is eventually going to move this domain somewhere. I'm too lazy even to have untarred the new version of MovableType I downloaded last month. Need to have a look.

I'd also been too lazy to upgrade to Thunderbird 1.0 and Firefox 1.0. That's like watching commercials because you're too lazy to push the button on the remote. Finally got around to that.

Ludo reminded us to upgrade to Solaris 10, which he observes runs faster on his workstation than the previous version he had. I've only installed Solaris 10 on an old PC I rarely use, and even then it was mainly out of laziness: easier to install the machine fresh than to patch it before installing some software I needed to test.

On a laptop I use, I've been running a beta version of our iWork Java Desktop System ever since the beta eval started.

On this system at home, I'm still running Red Hat 9 with a 2.4.21 kernel.

I have an old Vaio laptop still running Windows 98 (for device support to transfer files from a Sony memory stick that I couldn't easily get working with Gentoo last time I tried).

I've even been running Directory Server 5.2 patch 2 for months and months on my old workstation that's now in the lab, yet I doc the new versions for that.

Maybe it's not pure laziness. Part of the problem is that the existing stuff actually works pretty well.

Posted by Mark at 10:07 PM

23:01/163

Felt much better today, in spite of a little queasiness. I sped up for the second half of the 5 km.

It's warmer out there today, almost freezing, with a covering of new snow. Running atop fresh snow I felt almost as much adhesion as when the ground is dry.

Posted by Mark at 01:16 PM

Star

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Michel Polnareff's granddaughter, except with red glasses.

Posted by Mark at 08:47 AM