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March 31, 2005

1M

It's been almost 11 months. When I export this blog, it now takes up an entire MB of disk space:

$ du -h mark.blog
1.0M    mark.blog

That doesn't count the images:

$ du -h images/
2.4M    images

Almost 3 1/2 MB. I'm so proud.

Posted by Mark at 07:21 PM

Speed... or lack thereof

It hit me like a brick when I stopped to think. Rep 15 during my intervals today seemed fast. Then I divided by 2 to get the 100 m speed, noticed it was 3 min/km, multiplied by 42.195, and got 126.585, in other words 2:06:35.

A 2:06:35 marathon is slower than the current world record.

So all I need to do is run the whole exercise about 2% faster than my fastest rep today, cut out the rest intervals, and do that a little over 14 times in a row. I'm pretty sure it won't happen for mid-April.

Posted by Mark at 07:09 PM

UNIX, Sherlock Holmes, the moon

Although I never read the original story, Sherlock Holmes apparently once summed up his approach to knowledge for Dr. Watson. Holmes's approach fits the mentality of good hackers, and explains some of what seems weird to people on the outside looking in.

Watson was astonished at one point to learn that Holmes didn't know whether the moon went around the earth or vice versa. Holmes of course said it was elementary: why bother to try to fill up his head with things he didn't need to know.

Posted by Mark at 04:38 PM

30:59/166

The time on this one means nothing, but the heart rate is interesting considering that the real workout lasted less than 10 minutes and the rest of the time I was either standing still or jogging slowly.

The core of it was 3000 m, chopped into 200 m slices. I gave myself a minute including each slice plus the recovery interval, running the 200 m slices in just under 39 seconds at the slowest to 36 seconds at the fastest, which was the last of the 15. This was therefore close to Matt's killer interval workout suggestion of 15 reps with 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off.

By the end I was only barely managing to stop wheezing before having to launch into the next 200 m. Since I don't recall thinking about my form after about the 10th rep, my form was probably falling apart. But I feel much better after this workout than the last time I did it, long ago. My recovery rate is significantly better. Looking forward to more concentrated speedwork this summer.

Posted by Mark at 01:03 PM

March 30, 2005

Climbs

Matt, who rode up to Col du Coq today and got a flat 500 m from the end, located a nice Italian site for bikers in Europe.

File of the slopes of Europe has links to data on literally thousands of climbs. For the Col de Granier it shows four. The one I did last fall up from Chapareillan rates a difficulty of 135.75. It has one kilometer that drops 3.1%, but unfortunately the kilometer after that gains 17.9%.

The one Matt did today has a difficulty of 128.26, slightly more than Alpe d'Huez, which is what they did in the Tour.

Matt's aiming at doing the 12.8 km Col du Coq climb, gaining just about 1100 m altitude, in 53 minutes. I'd definitely have to lose about 20 kg without losing muscle mass to follow him uphill at that rate.

If you want a dismayingly hard climb, check out Nebelhorn.

Posted by Mark at 09:04 PM

1ère étoile, part II

Tim got the star today with a little card the ski instructor signed.

star20050330.jpg

Or maybe that's his flocon. Anyway he was proud.

Diane meanwhile had tried to feed some grass to a horse and got her hand pinched. She was upset, but seems okay.

Posted by Mark at 08:45 PM

Birthday season, part II

Last night the balloon I used for the piñata had a slow leak.

pinata20050330.jpg

That would never do. So I tried again this evening, hoping this balloon remains intact until tomorrow.

PS for Tilly: I'm getting more and more practice -- now three birthdays per year -- also making them thinner than before. Pretty soon I'll be able to make one for your birthday ;-)

A couple of years ago, probably for Tim's 6th birthday, I used plaster instead of flour and water to hold the piñata together. Of course no 6-year-old could smash it, especially not a blindfolded 6-year-old. After he hit me a couple of times, I took the stick... and broke it getting the piñata open.

Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | Comments (1)

Back tire

Racing tires do not seem to last very long. After riding Monday, I noticed the inner tube peeking through the sidewall of my rear tire. I also notice a couple of cuts in the surface that looked deep and relatively new.

So today I replaced the rear Michelin Pro Race tire with another. This one has gray sidewalls, meaning it's reinforced with Kevlar. The real problem may be that I need to lose 20 kg in order to be a light enough rider for a fussy racing bike.

I also noticed that when rolling on the freewheel my rear hub rotates slowly and very slightly on its axis. It should not do that, right?

Posted by Mark at 08:21 PM

1:13:44/149

Ran the 14.5 km (9 mi) route, starting with Didier at a slow jog for the first 5 km, then accelerating into the middle, throwing in a couple of strides and warming down to race pace, then slower.

Tried using one of those sugar gels which Matt and Colette recommend for the closing miles of the marathon. Don't think I'll try to take any along with me. Not only do I have to carry the packets in my hands up to 30 km, the gel's also hard to eat at race pace without suffocating.

Posted by Mark at 12:52 PM

March 29, 2005

Birthday season

It's birthday season again. Time for the inevitable birthday piñata. Total ecstasy for small children.

20050329.jpg

The aim this year is to make it thin enough to break easily.

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

37:24/162

Felt tired and slightly sore for today's roughly 8 km (5 mi) run. The sun's shining. It was warm enough to run without a shirt. Concentrated on my form, keeping my back straight, and picking up my legs rather than forcing the pace.

Posted by Mark at 12:42 PM

March 28, 2005

Spring ride, part II

One of the reasons I like running is its simplicity. Not only are shoelaces the most complicated apparatus you have to adjust, but the most cleanup you have to do for your equipment is scrape off the dirt and chuck it in the clothes washer.

After riding for 77 minutes this morning, I spent half again that much time this afternoon removing crud from the bike, and cleaning, then oiling the chain. My saddle bag came unzipped during the ride, causing the inner tube to fall out somewhere between here and Chambéry. And I hit something somewhere that caused a small rip in the rear tire sidewall. Going to have to replace both the missing tube and the ripped tire before I ride again.

Posted by Mark at 08:32 PM

1:17:34/157

Today is a day off in France, Easter Monday. It was supposed to rain. It did rain in the early morning. But the sky started clearing at 9:30, so I got out for a late morning ride.

The roads were messy. My legs felt sore from the run Saturday. My average speed to Chambéry and back was 30.5 kph (not quite 19 mph). I did it as a tempo ride, working the hardest down the stretch of bike path after crossing the tracks outside Chambéry out to Myans and along the road through Les Marches to Chapareillan.

I actually rode the 39.13 km in less than 1:17:34. But I wore winter gear including gloves and had to start and stop the heart monitor before and after the actual ride. It turned out I'd worn too much clothing. By the end felt like an overweight guy riding in a rubber suit, pretending the weight lost was fat.

Rereading Hal Higdon's chapter in Marathon entitled "The Magic Taper," I realized that this third-to-last week is more a step back from a hard week than a serious drop off in training. So today included speedwork, a couple of sprints and a lengthy push in the middle. Thursday might be a good day for a last dose of what Matt calls "potent medecine," the longest 14:40 you'll ever do, with an 8-10 minute warm up and warm down on either end.

Posted by Mark at 11:28 AM

Leg of lamb

While on the subject of things to eat, let me tell you how we did the leg of lamb for Easter.

If you cook leg of lamb in the French style, rare to medium rare, you may find it stays too rare next to the bone. Nathalie had a 2 kg leg that I therefore deboned using a utility knife Mom gave us as a present. Proceed carefully, and keep the knife very sharp. Leave the lamb out so it's at room temperature when you cook it. The meat cooks more uniformly, medium around the outsides, medium rare at the core.

To get the meat ready for the oven, rub herbs all over the leg. Don't salt the meat until after cutting it. Do apply liberal quantities of coarsely ground pepper, herbes de provence, and garlic powder -- not garlic cloves, and place the leg in an oiled dish that'll go in the oven. You can oil the leg a bit, too, to get the herbs to stick. Form a roast of the leg in the dish, fat side up. You may want to pull the end of the calf through the place where the bone was. If you don't have to wash your hands with plenty of soap before continuing, you probably didn't apply enough herbs and oil.

Next, preheat the oven as hot as it will normally go. While it warms up, peel enough cloves of garlic to cover up the corners of the dish not covered by lamb leg. Put the dish in the middle of the very hot oven, close the door, and turn the heat down to hot. The idea -- rough equivalent to browning -- is that high heat crisps up the outside of the meat, but you don't want to leave it so high that it burns or gets dry.

Leg of lamb needs to cook about 15 minutes to the pound in this style, so our roast yesterday cooked for an hour. After the cooking's done, turn the oven off. Lamb needs to sit for a few minutes before you slice it.

Put the lamb on the cutting board and prepare the sauce with all the garlic cloves by adding something vinegary and salt to taste. You can also use plain water if you're going to serve mint sauce. I used liquid from pickled cherries.

If you want to stay in the French style, also serve flageolets (essentially green bean seeds) heated in a pan with olive oil, garlic, pepper, and salt, potentially some tomato paste, finished with a tablespoon of vinegar, and with duchesse potatoes. You'll also want red wine with plenty of flavor and character. Get all your vegetables ready, the wine opened, sauce in a dish, everyone at the table. Then slice the lamb thin across the grain, arrange the slices on a platter, and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Get it to the table before it cools.

Posted by Mark at 08:10 AM

Visitor

Someone's pheasant wandered over into our yard yesterday.

pheasant20030328.jpg

We already had a leg of lamb, and we don't have a shotgun, so he left after tramping around on a pile of sticks.

Posted by Mark at 08:06 AM

Brown's Requiem

James Ellroy wrote L.A. Confidential, which inspired a film you may have seen about a guy who uncovers corruption in the L.A.P.D. and almost dies for his trouble. Brown's Requiem is apparently Ellroy's first book. It has the same Série noire, L.A., corrupt, violent plot and tone.

Ellroy says in his preface that, "Brown's Requiem is heavily beholden to Raymond Chandler." It also recalls the book of Dashiell Hammett stories someone gave me years ago. In that way Ellroy is making new antiques, like a carpenter turning out Louis XIV chairs. If you look closely you see some of the new chairs are more uniform than the old ones, the joints fit together more closely and the upholstery has a more even weave.

Brown's Requiem is probably not Ellroy's masterpiece. I haven't read the others. This one fits together well, without too many of the misaligned dovetails you find in bad novels where the author writes outside of his experience but inside yours.

Posted by Mark at 07:42 AM

March 27, 2005

Easter egg hunt

The Easter Bunny almost got rained out this year. I left the garage door ajar so he could put some inside.

Diane
Emma
Tim

The rest he left around the perimeter of the house.

Posted by Mark at 08:36 AM

Crafts

Mom sent the children a packet for making woven postcards.

Emma Tim

Emma kept pestering us until we let her make some cards. Her brother got involved, too.

Posted by Mark at 08:33 AM

Spring in Barraux

The flowers and buds are starting to appear.

magnolia flower
forsythia quince

Soon the magnolia will bloom.

Posted by Mark at 08:29 AM

March 26, 2005

Training times, part IV

Another week averaging over an hour of exercise a day, even if I rest tomorrow. This week I ran about 74 km (46 mi), counting what I did to run to and from the gym but none of the running inside. At this point, the longest run I have left before the race is 19.6 km (12.2 mi) next weekend. Time to start tapering.

Somehow I'm going to have to taper my appetite as well. Don't want to get to the starting line weighing in at 100 kg, which is roughly how bad it was two years ago when I started running. (My weight now is about 83 kg.)

Posted by Mark at 02:59 PM | Comments (1)

2:24:45/166

Yesterday I told Matt I didn't know what pace to run in the marathon. He asked me how much training I had left. I told him today was going to be my last long run, about 20 miles. He suggested I try my marathon pace today, which come to think of it is what Hal Higdon suggests in his book for novices like me.

So I ran my circuit in Pontcharra, which is 4.9 km, 7 times. That's 34.3 km (21.3 mi). My pace was 4:13/km (6:47/mi). The last lap became unpleasant at that speed, especially the very end. My form was starting to fall apart. In other words, I don't think I could do a whole lot better at this point in my training.

Greg McMillan's calculator doesn't have a slot for 21.3 mi. But 20 is to 21.3 as x is to 2:24:45, where x = 2:15:55, my approximate time for 20 mi. Greg's calculator predicts a 3:01:01 marathon.

My legs are sore right now, but I'm tempted to go for it in Lyon, to try to hang in there with the 3:00 pace team. Will have to see how I feel over the next 48 hours.

Posted by Mark at 11:53 AM

March 25, 2005

Spring ride

Dana sent mail, having gone for a spring ride of 22 mi (over 35 km) at 43-44 F (6-7 C) with pretty strong ENE winds. He'd been riding inside on the trainer. When he went out he clothed himself thoroughly, writing, "I dressed quite warm since I do not use your strategy of simply riding harder if you get cold." True, that only works up to a point.

Maybe I'll go for a ride here to unwind after tomorrow's run, but for now Metcheck.com shows lots of raindrops, and Yahoo Weather shows rain until next Thursday.

Posted by Mark at 08:38 PM

What's this salad?, part II

Dad has the recipe with lemon juice and tomato juice. He sent it the other day:

The substrate:

The salad dressing:

I'd still go for finely chopped shallots rather than onion if you can find shallots.

Posted by Mark at 08:31 PM

1:10:02/147

Took it easy at the gym today to avoid being tired for tomorrow's big run.

Posted by Mark at 02:14 PM

Green

This morning I noticed the grass was more green than yellow. Soon it will be time again for olympic grass cutting season. I wonder if the bees have reclaimed their residence in the middle of the yard.

Posted by Mark at 11:13 AM

March 24, 2005

Piano

20050324.jpg

Someone has learned to record noises on the keyboard.

Posted by Mark at 09:59 PM

Hacks, part II

Luke and I were looking at running VNC. He's working up in Paris, and I installed Solaris 10 on his workstation. He'd been running a local copy of vncserver with the $defaultXStartup set to start CDE or whatever. I wiped that off during the installation.

Then I gave him a fixed copy of a script we had on the network, set unambitiously to use twm. Luke got this running, but felt cheated.

So for him, I Googled to something on the Solaris Forum. First it says:

As for VNC, try google, lots of people run VNC and chances are, someone's already written a set of instructions.

Then later, in a script listing after a whole bunch of cases for different window managers:

*)
echo
echo "Put the crack pipe down and step away from the computer ..."
echo "You either ran startx without an argument or the window"
echo "manager you want to run is not configured in your .xinitrc."
echo "Check windows managers available and update your .xinitrc"
echo "accordingly."
exit 1
;;

A typically kind, generous response to user error.

Posted by Mark at 09:18 PM

Hacks

Speaking of things in the eye of the beholder, from a certain angle all of UNIX is a series of hacks, including the stuff that built up atop it. What makes it worthwhile is that what's left over in that kind of system has been stressed and ground down by users sharing the culture of the hack, once explained metaphorically as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

The difficulty when you first come to the system is that you want to impose on it. You decide you shouldn't have to learn vi for example because it seems so archaic and user-feindlich. You continue to feel comfortable with files not based on text. You think, "I just want to use this, not have to understand it." You use other people's configuration files as is.

Later on you finally decide you need to swallow your pride and learn some vi, a bit of scripting and programming. You still run X, but you have more terminals open than anything else. You see both simple and hard looking problems as not understood yet. Other people start interrupting you for help, and you notice how little you know, but how little difference that makes, too.

My father-in-law, Michel, doesn't use UNIX as far as I know. He has the idea, however. Last time he came to visit he ran out of things to do, so he took an old washing machine apart to look for salvageable spare parts. I wonder how much stuff he would've accumulated in his home dir.

Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM

Beauty and ugliness

Andy's wondering about beauty, specifically about the alleged beauty of highways.

I agree with him. I looked beauty up at Google. One of the definitions was:

That quality which gives pleasure upon being seen by the eye of the body or the intellect.

So a freeway or the inside of a server could be seen in one sense as beautiful, but it does depend on who's looking.

The good news is that ugliness is then also in the eye of the beholder. I'll try to keep that in mind next time I see dirt-colored air above the A41.

Posted by Mark at 08:30 PM

J'vous ai apporté mes radios

Guy Carlier was on the 7-9 at France Inter for a while, reading his letters. The 7-9 is flat without him. Hearing the humor yourself is harder than letting Guy do it for you. And you'll never quite manage his clichéd but pinpoint caricatures.

J'vous ai apporté mes radios is a best of collection of all those letters those of you reading this in English probably never heard. Nathalie asked me a couple times why I was sniggering. Carlier's book was it. There were a few I hadn't heard yet.

Posted by Mark at 08:10 PM

49:08/146

Gentle run 9 km up to Rochasson and back with Jerome. Taking it easy before the long run this weekend.

Posted by Mark at 01:58 PM

March 23, 2005

1:10:37/168

Today's 16 km (10 mi) run is the longest Wednesday in what Matt refers to as my Fat Fighter's Marathon Training Program. I did it out and back twice on the 8 km route.

Couldn't decide what I was trying to do until after looking at my split for the first 4 km, which was about 18:46 or something like that. I started thinking it would be nice to do it in under 72 minutes, which is 4:30/km. Only too late did I realize I probably still could've done it in under 70 minutes (7:00/mi) had I been paying attention.

The weather is warm today by comparison, 17 C (63 F), and sunny. I took off my shirt for the second half as I was losing the tape to prevent chafing.

Posted by Mark at 02:37 PM

Admissions

I'm updating some old docs we converted to SGML and just noticed the following comment in an example:

/*
 * Perform other work while polling for results. This
 * doesn't do anything useful, but it could.
 */

That comment precedes a placeholder function, but you've got to wonder about the scope the original author actually had in mind. Who was it who first said, "Honesty is the best policy?"

Posted by Mark at 08:53 AM | Comments (2)

March 22, 2005

Shallots

While trying to remember how we spell échalote in English, I noticed Shallot.com, an entire site devoted to shallots. If I ever had to move away from France for a while, shallots would definitely be one of the things I would miss quickly.

Their recipe of the week at Shallot.com is a pâté. But another nice recipe with shallots is fried shallot vinaigrette which you cool and pour over mâche. I don't know what mâche is in English, but it looks like this:

mache

1-2 finely chopped shallots
Salad oil
Wine vinegar
Salt, fresh pepper

First you heat the oil until it starts to smell, then you take that off the heat and drop in the shallots. You need a deeper pan than you think because otherwise the oil splatters. The shallots should brown. You may even need to heat the oil a little more, depending on how much you use.

Next you grind on the pepper while the oil is still hot to get the flavor of the pepper. Finally you add the vinegar and salt. The vinegar will evaporate a bit in the hot oil, so be careful not to add too much.

Posted by Mark at 09:32 PM

What's this salad?

Several of us had lunch at Antonia's today. She had me bring salad, so I made my variant of the one Mom makes with parmesan, walnuts, tomato juice, and some other ingredients. The dressing for a head of lettuce was (approximately -- I really only measure exactly when baking):

1/3 cup wine vinegar
2/3 cup salad oil
1 large shallot, finely chopped
2 tbsp. Maggi Arome
2 tbsp. liquid from pickled garlic
Freshly ground pepper
Walnut meats
Grated parmesan

Maggi Arome is one of those seasonings based on soy sauce with other flavors that give it a sort of nutty taste in salad dressing. I pickled the garlic cloves in sugar water and vinegar plus Alsatian pickling spices (mustard seed, coriander, bay leaves, red pepper, anise, etc.).

What's the name of this salad?

By the way, the same vinagrette (without the walnuts and parmesan) works quite well over grated carrots with a little celery salt, which is the other salad I brought.

Posted by Mark at 09:14 PM

42:37/153

Went up to Rochasson with Stu today. Nice day to run, about 10 C (50 F) and almost raining.

Took it easy until I got to the climb and then worked hard uphill. Tried to glide back down, but it's hard to stay smooth enough. Everything feels okay right now, however.

Update: I measured the climb to Rochasson and back on an IGN map with the map wheel. The total distance is 9 km (5.6 mi).

Posted by Mark at 12:18 PM

March 21, 2005

Real work, part III

Nathalie told me when I got home that she'd taken the car to the garage. The problem was a bolt on the front left wheel that I hadn't tightened enough, causing the other three bolts to come loose. Had she removed the hubcap, this would've been obvious, which reminded me of the time she ran the car until there was no oil showing on the dipstick at all, then took it into the garage when the light came on.

The mechanics of the car are, by definition, not her problem. To the auto industry's credit she mostly gets away with it.

We'd like to do that in software engineering, too. Maybe in a few years we'll get as close as the auto industry. Maybe we'll still be doing it like we are today.

Posted by Mark at 08:30 PM

1:15:40/150

Ran over to the gym today, which I usually don't do on Mondays because it's about 2 km away and I don't take the time. This session was cardiovascularly easier than Friday. We did more muscle work. My legs are tired.

Posted by Mark at 01:37 PM

Real work, part II

Nathalie called me this morning, worried about a grinding sound in the left front wheel. Sounds like my real work wasn't done real right.

Posted by Mark at 09:57 AM

March 20, 2005

Weaving

Emma had me thread her loom this morning. She was try to get the hang of weaving.

Weaving

Weaving again

The tough part was going all the way across with the shuttle before getting bored. Several times she stopped in the middle. We had to clip the yarn often.

Posted by Mark at 02:47 PM

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Finally reading the foreword by Geoffrey Keynes, I notice the original print run of William Blake's revolutionary Marriage of Heaven and Hell stopped at only 9 copies, none of which seem to have be reproduced until 1927. Keynes's edition from Oxford University Press was first bound in 1975. Mine is a paperback 10th printing.

Like Blake's contemporaries as seen by Keynes, I find the author quite beyond my comprehension. Of course anyone who reads English would be bowled over by the prose of the straightforward plates, and at least distracted by the allegorical passages. But do I understand the guy? Uh, no, not really.

Keynes seems to have understood. He's doubtless infinitely better read than yours truly. When I turn to the cover illumination, the prime connotations I get are Dr. Seuss, H. R. Geiger, and Frank Zappa's monologue before Ms. Pinky on YCDTOSA, Vol. 6. (I'd scan the images, but would need copyright waivers from all the publishers first.)

Posted by Mark at 02:20 PM

Real work

Although I have a paying job and get a reasonable amount of exercise, I don't do much real work.

This morning was an exception. At first I was feeling lazy after lying around reading Guy Carlier's book of letters he read on France Inter during the 7-9 a couple of years ago, waiting for Nathalie to get up. When she got up and could watch out for the children I spent nearly two hours doing real work, the kind that wears out your lower back and puts grunge under your fingernails that only detergents and scrubbrushes can remove.

First I turned and weeded a bunch of earth with a pitchfork so Nathalie could plant strawberries and I could plant rhubarb. Next I put the summer tires back on her car. Very manly stuff.

It took me almost 30 minutes on the couch eating peanuts and watching Carte postale gourmande to recover.

Posted by Mark at 02:06 PM

Last day of winter

Today is the last day before spring.

Swings

Shoots

The temperature outside is probably almost 20 C (68 F), warmer in the sunshine.

Posted by Mark at 01:52 PM

March 19, 2005

1:43:09/161

Ran the first 21 km (13 mi) in 1:37:12, jogging for the first 17 km, then picking up the pace to finish fast. My last not quite mile, 1500 m, was over in 5:57 ending in an all-out sprint, as suggested on McMillanRunning.com for fast finish long runs.

My actuals are updated. In my program, which is based on Hal Higdon's but includes cross training too, this is a step back week. Given the ride Monday, however, I managed to average over an hour of aerobic exercise per day including a complete rest day tomorrow.

Next week builds up to 32 km (20 mi) for the long run.

Posted by Mark at 10:34 AM

March 18, 2005

Forecast

Metcheck.com forecasts good running weather for tomorrow morning. 8 C (46 F) at 7 am, heating up to 14 C (57 F) at 10 am. No light rain however, just sunshine.

Posted by Mark at 09:13 PM

Addition and multiplication, part II

Tim tried his first set of 20 addition exercises. We decided he should be able to do 10 a minute at least if he really knows his stuff.

The good news is he got the first 16 right. The bad news is that it took him two minutes to do 16. Will have to drill him until he memorizes single-digit addition.

Posted by Mark at 09:09 PM

Taxes online, part IV

Nathalie finally gave up. It's going to cost us 20 euros more to declare by paper. But since it just doesn't seem to be possible to sign our tax return online, we're afraid we won't be able to do it on time to avoid incurring a penalty.

Posted by Mark at 09:06 PM

Debuggable shoes?

C|Net's running an article on the new Adidas shoes Dana mentioned to me a while ago.

The Adidas-1 sneakers use a sensor and magnet to feed information to a microprocessor, indicating whether a runner's cushioning level is too soft or too firm. The processor then actuates a motor-driven cable system built into the arch of the shoe that changes the amount of padding applied to a person's foot.

Adidas says the battery lasts for 100 hours running, which they say is the normal life of a pair of running shoes (in the neighborhood of 600-800 miles for most people I guess). Slowly it dawns on me that if you buy their shoes and train seriously in them -- for example, 50-75 mi/wk -- you could go through 4-5 pairs of those shoes a year, or $1000-$1250/yr for running, without counting the cost of all the extra food you'd be wolfing down.

Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM

1:15:11/160

Relatively hard workout at the gym today. Matt says you can overtrain for a couple of days, then take it easy to have a big recovery. Just need to find the time to take it easy...

Posted by Mark at 03:51 PM

Lure of RSD

The lure of RSD (Rapid Slidedeck Development) is leading astray our best and brightest. Rob's been doing so much slideware and meetings his brain's going soft.

He told me yesterday that Windows is great, Linux is trailing. He bought a Dell laptop with Windows. The only intelligible thing he said was that the Windows application he had lets you remove redeye from photos with one click. According to Rob you have to learn advanced Fourier transforms to do the same with The Gimp. (Slight exaggeration on Rob's part, but in 2003 when that was written you did still have to have enough working brain cells to follow simple directions.)

Don't get me wrong, I use Windows for photos too, basically as a hugely bloated device driver for a proprietary PCI Sony Memory Stick. It's a shame to cripple an entire system just because a $30 flash memory chip.

When confronted with the inevitably obvious question for anyone buying a PC who knows UNIX but wants lots of eye candy -- So if you really just wanted it to work without hassle, why didn't you get a Mac? -- Rob of course answered that Windows was cheaper.

Windows is well monopolized. They manage to squeeze even otherwise sharp thinkers by pushing hardware manufacturers to support only Windows or more expensive solutions, facilitating slideware approaches to reality, and making things just good enough that you get used to how bad they are.

The free market at work? The lure of RSD? Laziness seems more fit to survive than the alternatives.

Posted by Mark at 08:12 AM

Taxes online, part III

Okay, it doesn't work at night. But this was at 5:46 am:

Votre demande n'a pas pu aboutir.

L'accès au service est momentanément indisponible. Veuillez nous
excuser pour la gêne occasionnée. Nous nous efforçons de rétablir le
service dans les meilleurs délais.
Merci de bien vouloir vous reconnecter ultérieurement.

Pour plus d'informations, le service d'assistance est accessible selon
la modalité de votre choix (assistance téléphonique, mél ...).

Pour retourner à la page d'accueil du site, veuillez cliquer sur le
bouton situé en haut de cette page.

So when can you sign your form? Do they have someone performing the crypto algorithm by hand?

Posted by Mark at 08:07 AM

March 17, 2005

Addition and multiplication

Tim's having some trouble with arithmetic at school. He ended up learning to read early, so they had him skip a grade. But he wasn't that far ahead in math even as he missed the year where they learn to add. So he still counts in order to add single-digit numbers.

Nath and I plan to use worksheets found on the web and gold stars or something equivalent to get him trained. He'll have the same problem I did. I hated multiplication tables because you have to memorize the answers. Working the answers out from basic principles takes too long, yet there's enough that you actually have to work at it for a little while. Anything longer than instantaneous was too much for my willpower.

On the other end of the spectrum is UNIX, which is like learning to read a language where the alphabet has 100,000 letters. Why don't I hate that?

Posted by Mark at 08:57 PM

The Art of War

Sun Tzu's commentaries on The Art of War cover the subject from the general's or statesman's point of view. Some critics find this book appropriate for business people as well, but Sun Tzu didn't leave us something that translates into The Art of Commerce. Business is not war.

How far can one reasonably stretch Sun Tzu's descriptions of how to go about warfare? How far can one read The Prince into business, or politics, or everyday life?

In many ways these books were not aimed at me, nor probably at you either. We're not conquering generals or hereditary aristocrats, right? Are those positions worth aspiring to from this point in history? If they're no longer worth aspiring to, what would it look like to move away from those bygone aspirations?

Posted by Mark at 02:00 PM

35:00/169

Did 8 km (5 mi) as a two-part run. For the first half I steadily sped up until at the halfway point I was going almost all out, 95% of max. heart rate. My split was 16:12 for the first 4 km. Then I turned around and jogged back at a reasonable pace for the second 4 km.

Could've run faster for the first 4 km, but I didn't really decide how I was going to do this run until I'd gone about 2 km.

It was so warm today I didn't have a shirt. Last week I was still running with a winter hat and gloves.

Posted by Mark at 01:53 PM

March 16, 2005

1ère étoile

Tim earned his 1ère étoile skiing today.

That means he can keep his skis somewhat parallel and turn around obstacles. He is quite proud of this, so proud he forgot to bring his ski boots home.

Posted by Mark at 08:22 PM

1:05:01/165

This was a 14.5 km (9 mi) tempo run, starting slowly, building up to and holding it at 93% of max., then gradually coming back down to finish slowly again.

After slowing down from over 90% for a while it felt like running on prostheses made of wood.

Posted by Mark at 03:52 PM

Case sensitive

I understand why man(1) needs case-sensitivity for arguments. But why can't we have a flag to turn that off?

Posted by Mark at 03:47 PM

March 15, 2005

Taxes online, part II

So I cheated, downloaded the library, sewed things back up, and Nathalie did our French taxes online... but " votre demande n'a pas pu aboutir. "

They've actually posted a note this year telling people to try signing their tax returns between 3:00-4:00 am to avoid the rush.

Posted by Mark at 09:44 PM

Taxes online

A year ago I looked into doing my federal income tax return in the US online. The federal government had left that up to the private sector. I didn't manage to find a free tax program that could handle someone residing outside the US. So I resorted to paper ever since.

Last year we also tried the French online system for the income tax return. We got as far as trying to provide a digital "signature," and got what seemed to be the equivalent of a busy signal. At one point, I tried reiterating the connection 30 times in a row without success.

This year the French online system is even more broken for us. You have to get a cert to get started. As part of that process, it tries to install a .jar in $JAVA_HOME/lib/ext, which is:

drwxr-xr-x    2 root     bin          4096 Jul 19  2004 ext

Of course I'm not running my browser as root. So I guess if I want to use their system, I have to work around Java security. Really rachets up your confidence that your taxes declared on line won't end up in somebody else's pocket.

Posted by Mark at 08:51 PM

43:20/146

Managed to hold myself to 75% of maximum heart rate for about 8 km (5 mi).

I can only hope there's some long term benefit to working at that rate, because it put me in a bad mood. It only felt smooth momentarily a couple of times during the run. Trouble is if I want to increase the mileage significantly, I'm going to have to do more runs at this level of effort.

Posted by Mark at 01:30 PM

March 14, 2005

Niche news

C|Net's running a 2-page story on a forthcoming update to gcc. They consider it their top headline right now.

Is news just very slow? Has the general nerdiness in the population risen?

Since when is an as-yet-unreleased optimization of a C compiler a top story?

Posted by Mark at 09:12 PM

Distance

Average geographical distance between tech writers and the people whose work we write about seems to be growing faster than our ability to understand what people at a distance are up to.

If that's true, what are the implications for tech writing?

Posted by Mark at 08:57 PM

Random biking notes

Posted by Mark at 08:40 PM

2:03:34/154

This time's for riding to Pontcharra and back. It includes about a minute on either end where I was getting the last bits of clothing on and getting the from the building to the road and vice versa.

I don't know how far it is. Thought I zeroed everything but the odometer on the bike computer, but then noticed in Pontcharra I'd only thought I'd zeroed everything. The only two measurements I watch while riding are the current speed and current cadence.

Avg. heart rate 154 on the bike feels harder than 154 running. I tried to keep the cadence around 100. Maybe riding slower would improve my endurance and leave my legs feeling stronger.

This is faster than the last time I rode to Pontcharra by almost a minute.

Posted by Mark at 01:52 PM

March 13, 2005

Watching

Diane

Emma

Tim

Heightened powers of concentration

Posted by Mark at 08:15 AM

Lire, part II

What's next? I'm having trouble solving this one for x, y:

(speaking, writing, y, ...) <==> (listening, reading, x, ...)

Any ideas?

Posted by Mark at 08:11 AM | Comments (2)

Brumont's Vendemiaire

We had our other bottle of Vendemiaire Octobre 2000 Pacherenc du Vic Bihl from Alain Brumont's Château Bouscassé. Brumont bottled the wine 500 ml at a time. A dark golden white with lots of fruit and caramel, the Vendemiaire's only downside is the overly strong aroma of oak cask. You may have trouble stopping at just one glass.

Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM

Justine

Larger and more hideous than real life, this 200-year-old porno paperback got on my shelf a long time ago. My French instructor at summer school in Dijon years ago, Olivier, studied de Sade's life and work. I probably bought Justine for 10 francs and found it difficult to read. I still find it baroque. A strange book to read now almost simultaneously with Richard Dawkins's.

What I didn't realize then was how much time de Sade spent in prison. He was even in Miolans, where we took the children. From a certain angle Justine looks like the prison we build for ourselves. The only ones claiming to be free are those who choose a role in the prison.

Posted by Mark at 07:43 AM

March 12, 2005

Training times, part III

Another backwards weekend with a rest day on Sunday. Just republished my actual training times.

A bit less than 6 1/2 hours of aerobic exercise this week. Next week is another step back before the push to a approximately 64 km (40 mi) week. Then the taper begins.

Posted by Mark at 02:03 PM

Misunderstanding

Phil and I misunderstood each other a couple of days ago. I thought he was talking about a song written by Bob Dylan, which Google reminds me is titled Ballad of a Thin Man.

He wanted me to sing it for him. I couldn't recall the tune, only the refrain:

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

If you cannot remember how the tune goes either, check out this mp3 cover version done live by the Grateful Dead. It's a bit approximate, but you get the idea.

Or maybe you don't, which is what I was trying to tell Phil. He told me something evident then. He said it's hard to understand the lyrics in a foreign language.

I only realized much later how nicely that observation sums things up.

Posted by Mark at 01:46 PM

2:23:20/157

No breakfast, only water with a small cup of coffee, and water throughout the run. Oddly I didn't hit any sort of wall. I was indeed starting to tire. Maybe the wall is out there at 20 mi.

Maybe a life of overeating has given me a liver like a force-fed goose. Other people hit the wall. I just reach into the warehouse-sized glycogen stores of my overgrown liver, stores sufficient to keep a family of 5 Kenyans running from here to eternity. Either that or my body's getting better at burning fat.

I covered a distance of about 29.4 km (18.3 mi) at 4:53/km (7:51/mi) with all but about 2 minutes of the work in the 65-85% heart rate zone, averaging just over 80%. I should practice running more slowly. It's hard for me to find a comfortable gait at around 70%. It's not such a big deal yet. If I want to add another 50-100% per week to my distance, it might become a big deal.

When I run at a medium or slow pace, the distance seems to have less impact. I can finish a run like today's feeling tired, but not particularly sore.

The temperature was too low for me to dress comfortably. Below freezing when I started. By the end I was foaming at the knees. By that I mean I had foam on my tights like horses are supposed to get when they run a long way.

Posted by Mark at 12:59 PM

March 11, 2005

Psyching up

Metcheck.com suggests good weather tomorrow, though a bit cold in the morning, with little wind. I'm getting myself psyched up to run without eating beforehand and taking no carbs during the run, just water. Greg McMillan writes:

It's important to remember that feeling tired is what training is about. You receive many benefits in marathon training only after you're tired.

Almost 30 km (18 mi) at a slow, steady pace without any calories except those I can glean from fat should take me to the wall. I'd rather get an idea what that feels like during training than during the marathon.

Posted by Mark at 09:12 PM

Maraboutage

Jean Véronis blogged a pretty good one the other day.

If you read French, check out the new docs.sun.com or Mark's Blog.

Posted by Mark at 03:26 PM

56:33/148

Took it easy at the gym today with 41:29 in the 65-85% zone, average at only 76%, and only a few minutes of hard work. Preparing to run long this weekend.

Posted by Mark at 03:12 PM

March 10, 2005

What is this?, part II

More spam bouncing back from my ISP. I got this image and message:

spam-20050310.gif

Letter build kind green, have. Cover, follow, learn. Winter too have. Man seem, doctor engine. High way develop under family. Life never way capital. Don't most correct window, black push. Began, bird finish they. Knew animal, began. Yet girl list fair hard. But inch radio hole blue. On fly, six voice. Little, special possible, stood see cent.

Here's the technical contact for the spammer's site, which was JJKAMAHIBD.COM:

Technical Contact:
    Potapova, Valeriya  vapotapova@mail.ru
    Donskaya 3 kv. 75
    Dushanbe, 676 127221
    RU
    +7.9262375937

Posted by Mark at 10:56 PM

Sports apparel

From DRS, in response to someone wondering what to wear for an upcoming triathlon:

I tend to find that the tri-shorts with the thin cycling pad tends to obscure the details, like the Desoto brand stuff.

But after all, we all know who the boys are and the girls are anyhow, so why bother? I spent the weekend on the beach in Florida, and I am still left puzzled as to why the women wear very small tight suits (puzzled but delighted), and the men wear huge baggy bloomers than come down to mid-calf?

I post this for those of you still wondering why there are so many guys at the gym on Mondays and Fridays compared to those going and getting a real workout at the track, cycling up top a mountain pass, cross-country skiing, pumping iron, or whatever.

Posted by Mark at 10:39 PM

Lire

1. Combien lisez-vous de livres par an ?

Hmm. 25 ? 50 ? Quand on aime, on ne compte pas.

2. Quel est le dernier livre que vous ayez acheté ?

The Selfish Gene de Richard Dawkins.

3. Quel est le dernier livre que vous ayez lu ?

Justine du Marquis de Sade. Ou presque. Elle est encore au sous-sol avec Roland et Suzanne.

4. Listez 5 livres qui comptent beaucoup pour vous ou que vous avez particulièrement appréciés.

Il y a les 2 que je relis une fois par an minimum et parfois en boucle, Labyrinths (histoires et essaies de Borges traduits en anglais), et VALIS de PKD.

Das Schloss de Kafka, bien que je n'aie jamais vraiment réussi à rentrer dedans.

A People's History of the United States de Zinn, livre que Rob m'a fait lire au bon moment, dans le bon état d'esprit pour comprendre le message.

Le 5e, je ne m'en souviens pas. Sans doute un premier livre oublié qui m'a donné envie de continuer...

5. A qui allez-vous passez le relais (3 blogs) et pourquoi ?

Ludo et Andy pour leurs reponses à la 4. Puis Geoff à cause de cette entrée-ci.

Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM

Hope, love, and faith

Some Craigslist classifieds shall be beamed into deep space.

Here's one from the lost+found pile.

Posted by Mark at 09:16 PM

38:41/162

Ended up running at a higher heart rate than I wanted to. Hectic week.

Posted by Mark at 04:42 PM

March 09, 2005

Emma's favorite site

20050309.jpg

Tim gets the photo credits.

Posted by Mark at 10:04 PM

Localization and support

Ludo showed me Norbert Lindenberg's entry, Localization Reduces Support Cost. At first all I noticed was the graph:

Incidents per language before and after localization.

Wow! Then I saw this was Sun’s Consumer Java Support team. Does that make a difference? It would be neat to see the results for software aimed at people who read man pages.

Posted by Mark at 09:51 PM

Where they look

In his review of an article on how people read Google results pages, Darren Barefoot writes that he, "Never, ever look[s] at the ads."

On the one hand, the search in that image was for "digital camera" cheapest, so scanning the ads makes a bit more sense than when you search for "Directory Server 5" nsslapd-cachememsize. (Huh, that set of results came up ad free. Nobody wants to sell me extra memory?)

On the other hand, as Carole explained, those ads aren't for us. There are lots of people out there who still literally see the formatted content of a web page without preinterpreting it. My guess is that results of a study on people who ever think about website design or even just write web pages would show a different scan pattern.

Posted by Mark at 09:35 PM

Natural anonymity

Ludo's writing about what's in Tim Bray's blog, where I notice Tim seems to have read some of the anti-blogging spin, and come to the obvious, but gracefully unstated conclusion.

In words, why go read a journalist's article about something when you can get it straight from the horse's mouth (or blog)? Especially if the horse is not some polished executive from the upper echelons but somebody like Ludo or Bryan Cantrill who has and can convey more than an academic understanding of the interesting details. The easier it gets to search and scan feeds, the harder it is for generalists to justify their positions. Pretty soon they'll have to start ghostwriting white papers for these guys and leave the news up to people who know what's really going on.

Thankfully many of us can continue in natural anonymity, churning out more entries on running that anybody but the bots will read. As Tim writes, "Blogging is a good way to meet people." If you're hankering for a conversation, that is.

Posted by Mark at 08:47 PM

Heart rates, part II

I definitely need to relax the pace, quit doing my workouts over 80% average heart rate. Haven't worked out at less than 80% average since February 28.

I'm going to run tomorrow at 75%, then run this weekend's long run -- about 29 km -- in no less than 2:30.

Posted by Mark at 08:28 PM

Steady-state run

According to Greg McMillan's calculator, I was in the right range this noon for a steady-state run. Greg writes that stamina training like today's run is good for pushing back the lactate threshold.

Trouble is my heart rate was several percentage points too high, at almost 90% average, for a steady-state run. I seem to work too hard over long distances, not enough over short distances.

Posted by Mark at 08:05 PM

1:02:59/175

Okay, tomorrow I'll take it easy. I'm not sure exactly how far this was, somewhere close to 14.5 km (9 mi).

Posted by Mark at 03:17 PM

March 08, 2005

Censor thyself

Somebody from C|Net must fear their advertising will go away if people in tech continue to blog about their work. Their FAQ: Blogging on the job reminds you:

Can my employer fire me if I blog from home on my own time?
Yes. The odds of your company perusing your blog is slim. "But if your boss should see your blog and be offended by something there, in most states you have virtually no protection against being fired."

Frank, if you have time to read this, you don't have enough work to do. Let me give you some of mine.

Don't worry. We auto-censor ourselves anyway. But check out this decision allegedly by a federal judge in the US:

The FBI theoretically could also issue a (secret request) to discern the identity of someone whose anonymous online Web log, or 'blog,' is critical of the government.

Isn't that heartwarming?

Posted by Mark at 09:19 PM

International Women's Day, part III

Checked News.Google.com to see if there was anything on International Women's Day.

Top story is titled Bill Clinton to Have Scar Tissue Removed. Nothing on International Women's Day.

I still feel bad about my failure to get any flowers, but I seem to be well within one standard deviation of the mean for my nationality.

Posted by Mark at 09:07 PM

Pepsi generation

jwz blogged a site of Soviet anti-alcohol posters.

Sick List

Is it just me, or does that look like a Pepsi bottle on the right?

Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM

International Women's Day, part II

Failed once again. Tried to get out of work early enough to buy flowers, but was too late. I was trying to figure out doc impact of some new features we'd like to add to the next release.

So my very weak compromise was to let her wash the dishes instead of getting the three of them to brush their teeth.

Posted by Mark at 08:36 PM

25:35/166

Ran this noon. Too busy to write down my time since then.

Assuming Stu's old measurement of the distance is correct, the pace was pretty quick for me, 3:56/km (6:20/mi) for 6.5 km (just over 4 mi). Today's pace felt only "comfortably hard" today. So I guess I'm well rested after a step back week. Legs felt fine, but I was a little stressed out and wasn't running loose.

I plan to take it easy for tomorrow's 14.5 km (9 mi) run, trying to find the groove rather than doing a tempo run.

Posted by Mark at 08:18 PM

International Women's Day

Tim asked why today is International Women's Day. We told him it was because the other 364 days this year are for men.

Couldn't find much news coverage on the web in the US, except for a press release from CARE's president, who is a guy.

Instead of the news, I read part of Emma Goldman's Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation. Emma Goldman was an idealist to say the least, and her idealism comes across in that essay. She lost her citizenship and spent time in jail, including time for protesting the draft for WW I.

Posted by Mark at 06:35 AM

March 07, 2005

Mind readings

Antonia told me today she'd dreamt I was laid off.

My wife often tells me she has dreams in which I run off, cheat on her, or do something otherwise distressing.

I suspect women read men's minds. Unconsciously. They do it not because they want to invade our privacy, but because we have such a difficult time hiding anything, except from ourselves.

The mind readers, appalled, horrified, bored by what they find, then block it out. Some of it occasionally comes back distorted during the night as shadows of thoughts seen during the day are integrated into whatever dreams create.

Posted by Mark at 08:57 PM

Bedside reading

On my night table right now:

No running books. I'm having a hard time finishing the first three. The others I've already been through at least once.

Posted by Mark at 08:46 PM | Comments (1)

58:37/158

The lower average masks the sort of interval-style training we did near the end of today's session at the gym. My muscles are tired, especially the upper body.

Posted by Mark at 01:37 PM

Noncontroversial

Running times, training actuals, software configuration are safe topics like the weather. The further it is from the core of what you really care about, the less you have to think. The less you have to think, the easier it is to write.

Posted by Mark at 11:53 AM

March 06, 2005

Smaller pages

The cover page of this blog was getting too long. I now show only the last 7 entries, with the previous 7 entries in the Recent Entries list on the side.

This change consisted only in adjusting the main index template to use the lastn and offset attributes of the MTEntries element, so if anyone were to care, it would be easy to change back.

Posted by Mark at 09:04 AM

What is this?

Although I cannot find the email address I got from my ISP through Google, I get bounces roughly weekly that show somebody's using it. But for what? An excerpt of one of the bounced mails:

Century office, down. Use pass grew. Minute yellow held if. Girl
will finger low plane friend. Even tire early it, after. Group
air where, written this look. Vowel, their here. Tell farm any,
other colony, practice. On can job.
--
Phone: 348-499-6730
Mobile: 628-542-9681

Then there's attached images that aren't images when you base64 decode them. Here's the base64 encoded "image" called reached6.gif:
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When base 64 decoded, the "image" contains bogus characters according to the Gimp. Gimp cannot read it.

The "images" are linked into the body of the message with stuff like:

<A href=3D"http://www.raster.nnjahglgdd.com/?p.XcrWpFVt0Tbdp00ccdb37">
<IMG alt=3D"" =
hspace=3D0=20
src=3D"cid:e100ccdb37@myIsp.domain" align=3Dbaseline=20
border=3D0></A>

The cid: seems to be some sort of Windows thing. Don't know what the 3D bits are.

Nnjahglgdd.com's home page:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Frameset//EN"
   "_THE_LATEST_VERSION_/frameset.dtd">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<script>
var targetieSP2 = false;
</script>
<frameset frameborder=0 border=0 framespacing=0
 onload="if(targetieSP2) {IfSP2_load();}">
<frame 
 src="http://www.raster.nnjahglgdd.com/¤ê266/?affiliate_id=234227&campaign_id=0"
 name="list" marginwidth=10 marginheight=10 scrolling=Auto frameborder=no
 framespacing=0 >
</frameset>
</html>
$ whois nnjahglgdd.com
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.opensrs.net]
[Querying whois.opensrs.net]
[whois.opensrs.net]
Registrant:
 NA
 1753 Botany RD
 Banksmeadow, Sydney NSW 2019
 AU
 
 Domain name: NNJAHGLGDD.COM
 
 Administrative Contact:
    Platt, Mather  mather_platt@yahoo.com.au
    1753 Botany RD
    Banksmeadow, Sydney NSW 2019
    AU
    +61.294750668    Fax: +61.294750668
 
 Technical Contact:
    Platt, Mather  mather_platt@yahoo.com.au
    1753 Botany RD
    Banksmeadow, Sydney NSW 2019
    AU
    +61.294750668    Fax: +61.294750668
 
 
 
 Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
 Record last updated on 28-Feb-2005.
 Record expires on 28-Feb-2006.
 Record created on 28-Feb-2005.
 
 Domain servers in listed order:
    FIRST.XBCBCDEE.INFO
    SECOND.XBCBCDEE.INFO
    THIRD.XBCBCDEE.INFO
 
 
 Domain status: ACTIVE

That email address brings me to a Japanese blog full of blog spammer stuff, http://swatteam.blog.ocn.ne.jp/my_weblog/2005/03/.

Explanations?

Posted by Mark at 08:12 AM

Forwarding at Gmail

Roch, Gilles, and I were listening to Carole tell us about her parents' experiences using their PC, especially browsing. I finally understood why pop-up ads continue to exist: Some people still notice them! I almost had to have another coffee to recover from that realization.

Most of us more or less in the trade abstract away much actual UI content. Myers-Briggs idealists probably abstract away even more than those with natural sensing capabilities. (Yes, this is also an excuse for why I use the default MovableType template and my blog looks so ugly and plain.)

Gmail had a New Features! link at the upper left and I didn't notice until today. You can now automatically forward from Gmail to your other accounts, and do that as part of filtering. A good thing if you want, for example, if you're planning to do a backup.

Unfortunately Google's Desktop Search still, "Requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+," so is only available to people paying the Microsoft tax.

Posted by Mark at 07:51 AM

Snow, part VIII

Last night after the temperature dropped definitively below freezing the snow started sticking to everything.

snow1 snow2
snow3 snow4

Metcheck.com says there's more where that came from. Yahoo Weather says at least until Wednesday. The extended forecast at Weather.com says there might be warmer temperatures for a long run next weekend, potentially as high as 7 C (45 F).

Posted by Mark at 07:32 AM

Ski season, part VII

Nathalie and Tim left this morning about 15 minutes ago to go skiing. They're taking the bus with a group of people from Barraux up to Les Saisies for the day. Should be plenty of new snow, but here the cloud cover remains dense.

Posted by Mark at 07:29 AM

March 05, 2005

Sports drinks with protein?

When I run more than an hour, I drink during the run. It seems likely my injury last summer was due in part to slight dehydration.

I've been using a carbohydrate-only mix to make sports drink rather than trying straight water. You may think it's silly to drink sugar water, that it perhaps prevents you from burning fat, but when you go 10 or more miles, you're still going to burn more calories than you'll take in through your sports drink.

I'm now thinking about perhaps adding protein. PoweringMuscles.com has some articles on endurance running performance that suggest taking 1 gram of protein for every 4 grams of carbohydrate during exercise can protect your muscles during the run, and help repair them faster afterwards. They also cite research suggesting hitting the wall might be as much the body's reaction to muscle damage as to glycogen depletion.

So far I've only had one running experience where I hit the wall. That was in the half marathon at the Wanzenau in Alsace I ran one April having done almost no training during the winter. It happened about a mile before I finished. My time to finish then was about 2 hours. After the race I was thoroughly exhausted. Probably hadn't had enough to drink in addition to being in relatively bad shape for running.

Posted by Mark at 04:31 PM

Training times, part II

As I ran today and will take my rest day tomorrow, I've already updated my actual training times page. Tomorrow marks the end of the 12th week in the 18 week marathon training program. 2/3 of the way there.

Posted by Mark at 03:42 PM

1:28:01/162

Last time I ran only 4 laps around Pontcharra, I suffered. This morning it only cost me an average of 2 heart beats per minute to run the same distance 17:40 faster.

Today's time for 19.5 km (12 mi) works out to a 4:31/km (7:16/mi) average pace, counting three drink stops and one stop to relace my right shoe a bit. Don't read too much into the exact pace. The mileage is an approximation of the kilometrage, which is a sort of careful estimate using my map wheel. I don't really know that exactly how far it is. The last digit I believe is pretty close, however.

Today's run I did almost as a 3/1, or fast finish long run. I couldn't quite get myself to a sprint at the very end. The trouble was when I picked up the pace at the beginning of the fourth lap, I started sweating more. Then my legs started getting cold and tightening up.

Unfortunately this pace was not fast enough according the Greg McMillan's calculator to make it into the steady-state bracket, but too fast to be an endurance run. It would get me to a 3:10 marathon, but I don't think I'll try to do that in April. 20 km is currently a comfortable distance for me. I can do it without feeling too tired. I'm sure that beyond 30 km things will get interesting, though. I don't want to get out there having already burned up my reserve energy and have to run more than 10 km on will power alone.

The temperature when I ran was close to freezing. It was snowing the whole time. Snow was melting immediately on the salty road, but not on the sidewalks. If the temperature had been 7-10 C (45-50 F), conditions would've been ideal for a medium long run like this.

The only trouble I had was the lacing on my right shoe. Maybe I had the laces too tight around my ankle early in the week, or maybe it was my street shoes. Anyway, it felt quite sore where the top of the shoe hugged my ankle, so I loosened that. I wish the people who make running shoes would put wider tongues in their shoes -- why skimp on the tongue in $80-$100 shoes? -- and figure out a more appropriate way to hold the shoe on the ankle than laces.

Posted by Mark at 10:42 AM

March 04, 2005

Olfactory increase

Since I took an elbow on the bridge of the nose during a basketball game at Rose-Hulman when I was 19, my sense of smell has been diminished.

Something has been happening this week to heighten my sense of smell. I'm experiencing the following:

It's not clear whether this means I'm starting to go nuts, or whether I should be opening the better bottles of wine from our cellar. Maybe both.

Posted by Mark at 09:57 PM

In vs. out

In a way it'll be cool when blogging has gone out of fashion, just because you won't see stuff like this:

La ville de Boulogne-Billancourt (Le Pôle / Extrapôle) organise une journée entièrement consacrée aux blogs, qui se tiendra le 19 mars 2005.
blogs_boulogne.jpg

(Source: Cyril Fiévet)

Cyril Fiévet seems to be a professional blogger at this point. I'm happy for him, but would rather be seen in public dressed up like Karl Lagerfeld than admit to being a professional blogger.

Posted by Mark at 09:27 PM

Snow, part VII

Emma and Nath took some pictures of the snow this morning in Barraux.

snow1-20050304.jpg snow2-20050304.jpg

Winter's not quite finished yet, but spring'll soon be on the way.

Posted by Mark at 09:04 PM

When to run

I'm going to be cutting it close tomorrow morning. Metcheck.com shows the weather in Chambéry tomorrow morning -4 C (25 F) with 1 mph winds out of the east at 7 am, but -2 C (28 F), 9 mph winds out of the northeast, and snow at 10 am.

The run tomorrow is 19.5 km (12 mi), but I cannot do it at 7 and have it over with before 9. I have to take Tim to school at 8:30. I can almost already feel the chill of the wind as I round the first turn of my laps in Pontcharra.

Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM

57:21/161

Fairly good workout at the gym today, keeping my heart rate at 83% of max.

Posted by Mark at 05:31 PM

March 03, 2005

To blog or not to blog

Dad was wondering whether to start a blog. If you've gotten far enough along to wonder, I say go ahead. The worse that can happen is that you waste a little bandwidth, disk space, and time.

My brother Matt suggested maybe you should have something to say, or blog when your company pays you to. Concerning the latter, thankfully for the human race most of us do not have jobs involving primarily hot air management. Lost of Sun bloggers do it as an extension of their jobs. Few are getting paid specifically for that.

Concerning the former, you won't figure out what you have to say unless you write it down (or at least say it out loud). The good thing about writing it down in a blog is that you can erase it as fast as you come up with it. The good thing about writing it down in a potentially public place is that you will erase most of the really outrageously indefensible nonsense as fast as you come up with it.

The bad thing is that a blog is public enough that you'll censor yourself more than you probably should. But it's about as easy to drop an entry in your blog as it is to keep a journal, and it's definitely easier to search. Also there's some motivation to keep on adding entries. So it can be a good way to encourage yourself to write things down.

Posted by Mark at 08:58 PM

37:35/158

About 8 km (5 mi) with tired legs. The weather was nice for a run, about 5 C (41 F) and partly sunny, but I felt sluggish today.

Posted by Mark at 02:13 PM

Interface culture

A couple of years ago during a meeting in a library room on Sun's Menlo Park campus, I noticed the title on a book jacket, Interface Culture. I have not read Steven Johnson's book, but found out at Amazon.com that it was about computers more than culture. I had instead imagined something entirely different behind that title.

What I imagined was an explanation of US social culture as an interface production system. By that I mean a treatise on how social interaction in the US involves primarily interface definition and elaboration. We define what's yours, what's mine, and where the dividing lines are.

On either side of the interface, our underlying assumption is that we're free to do what we want on our individual sides. We may of course have some pointers for you about how to do things on your side. Yet we expect that in the extreme case of contention, we'll resolve things to a contract about the interface between us, and the rest remains free.

This social model stands in contrast to the models used in other places such as France. In France we seem more to consider how we can accommodate one another than at how we can keep apart. Here I see much more interaction and discussion concerning the model we share for how to live, than definition of how not to step on each others' toes.

The boundary between you and me is only a thin, imaginary line that we can probably redefine at any time, as long as we agree more or less on how we'll do it. Why spend so much time agonizing over the boundary alone, when we have so much to discuss and to learn from each other?

There can be an urge to want to determine which culture is better. This urge appears to arise when you plunge into an unfamiliar culture, or when you experience people from two or more cultures getting all twisted up misunderstanding each other. I don't think it makes sense to waste effort determining which whole approach to life is better in general, although it would be cool to know.

Posted by Mark at 05:55 AM

March 02, 2005

Social Security

Jo Anne B. Barnhart, Commissioner of the US Social Security Administration, has sent me a letter. In the letter I learn that, "Social Security is a compact between generations," but that, "by 2042 the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted."

So if I retire in 2037 at age 67, after having been unemployable since about age 52, there may be some benefits for 5 years. Except that I've been out of the US too long, not paying into Social Security over there.

ss20050302.jpg

If I return to the US at some point, I literally cannot count on Social Security for retirement, disability, family and survivor benefits, or medicare, at least not for a few years, during which time I'd probably become ineligible for any benefits I've accrued in France.

Oh, well. If you want to be safe, don't leave the country you're in. (Except when local conditions force you to leave for your own safety.)

Posted by Mark at 09:14 PM

Calories per mile, part II

Dana observes that 115-120 calories per mile sounds low. Dana's basing his observation on figures from Consumer Reports -- ConsumerReports.org appears to have at least one article on the subject, but I'm too lazy and cheap to sign up right now -- suggesting you burn 20% more calories than that.

I wonder why the guys selling sports gels would want to underestimate the number of calories you're going to burn, given that they stand to gain more when you eat too much. I mean, the disparity should be the other way around.

Dana's probably right, though. Consumer Reports probably does make more of an effort to get their facts straight. CarbBoom.com doesn't specifically state where they got their JavaScript:

These numbers are approximations based on industry standard calculations. Use these numbers as guidelines only. Your mileage may vary.

Posted by Mark at 08:51 PM

Design documents

Jack W. Reeves wrote a paper some years ago about software design, defining the design to be the source code. He recently wrote his own review of the discussion and criticism of his ideas, in which he states what he means by a design document:

When the document is detailed enough, complete enough, and unambiguous enough that it can be interpreted mechanistically, whether by a computer or by an assembly line worker, then you have a design document. If it still requires creative human interpretation, then you don’t.

That's still a refreshing view on what purpose source code serves, and suggests why you might need to revise, revise, revise even after you get something that seems to work according to the requirements identified. It also makes me think that most software design is beyond the comprehension of anybody not working on the software. It explains as well why good software design is hard.

Posted by Mark at 02:39 PM

About an hour

Forgot my heart monitor and watch at home today. I ran 13 km (8 mi). The time was something on the order of an hour. It was warmer than I expected, so with a hat, windbreaker, and gloves I was a bit overdressed. My legs felt tired. In fact I feel tired all over.

Posted by Mark at 02:35 PM

March 01, 2005

Dynamics

The car I drive is a dark green 1995 (or 1996?) Citroën Ax, best summed up as basic transportation. 165K km, 1.0 liter; I can no longer get the driver's side window to open; the locks don't work too well anymore; it's loud on the highway. This is the environment where I'm free to listen to music.

So maybe it's the cheapness of my listening environment, but I was listening to the first disc of Great Deceiver, which is a compilation of live King Crimson from the 1973-74 lineup. It sounded so awful, I wonder why I bought it years ago.

Probably because the two studio albums from that period I have on CD are so good. Starless and Bible Black came out in 1974, but the brilliant one is Larks' Tongues in Aspic. Unfortunately I cannot actually hear some of the good parts of Larks' Tongues in my Ax on the highway.

Larks' Tongues features wide dynamics, a whole palette of sounds. My impression is that when it was put together, in the studio, these guys were listening to the sounds they made on good speakers or headphones, concerned primarily with creating the kind of performance you'd sit and listen to in the same way you might read a book or watch a film. With most if not all of your attention.

Several years later, bands like Van Halen were listening to tunes on their car stereos when mixing them down to make sure they sounded good under those conditions. Lo-fi music, road noise competing for your fickle attention as you swirled through the radio stations looking for something distracting. Dynamics disappeared. Even a lot of Frank Zappa stuff sounds compressed into a narrow range.

A long time ago, people used to sit and listen to performances that took hours. The average pop song lasts how long? Less than 3 minutes? In the future, it'll all have to be over in the time it takes to surf to the next channel. An entire performance in a fraction of a second.

At the other extreme, the reaction is going to leave other people searching for the richest hues, the widest dynamics, the most involving performances, the musical equivalent of Borges's story about Nolan's work on Fergus Kilpatrick.

Posted by Mark at 09:45 PM

Calories per mile

Somewhere I found a link to the Dead Runners Society mailing list on which people have been discussing energy gels for long runs. Somebody at CarbBoom.com has posted a Marathon Gel & Calorie Calculator to help you determine how many gel packets to eat during the run. They claim someone of my weight should eat 4 or 5 of their gel packets during a marathon, and probably a few before and after. At about $1-2/oz. for flavored maltodextrin, I may take a rain check on that. (You can get bulk maltodextrin at iHerb.com for $0.18/oz. apparently.)

The interesting feature of CarbBoom.com's calculator under the above link is that it estimates the number of calories you'll burn per mile if your weight is between 100 and 240 lbs. and your pace is between 5:20 and 12:00 per mi. So if at my current weight I run a 3:30 marathon, I'll be burning on the order of 3000 calories.

Interestingly I'd only burn about 5% more calories at a blisteringly fast 2:20 marathon pace.

Even more interestingly, the calculator suggests at 2:20 marathon pace I eat one gel at 12 miles, then another at 20, and that's it during the race. However, if I run at a 5:15 marathon pace, I'm supposed to eat one gel at the 5 mile mark, then a gel every 4 miles, totalling 6 packets. I wonder how many you're supposed to eat if you lie on the couch and watch a TV broadcast of other people running a marathon.

Posted by Mark at 08:38 PM | Comments (1)

Hard to tell

As I enter my time into the spreadsheet where I'm still logging that sort of thing, I notice 24:07 is actually not that bad for about 4 miles. Maybe I somehow overestimated the distance with my map wheel. Maybe the novice marathoner's program is getting me in shape.

Posted by Mark at 08:20 PM

24:07/168

For today's short (6 1/2 km, 4 mi) run, realizing I'm probably going to take it easy for the longer ones this week, I gradually picked up the pace, finishing quite fast. I feel better than before I went out. Good way to burn off some nervous agitation.

Posted by Mark at 12:56 PM | Comments (2)