pwiddy's 2 cents

Cycling in Cleveland Tennessee

2011-04-03T07:13:00.003-05:00

I learned an important lesson this week: when you aren't fueling your body you can easily bonk even if you are doing something that normally would be easy... I managed to ride a handfull of 100+ mile rides, run a marathon, and no bonking. I go out on my first ride of 2011 and bike 30 miles, and after not eating much for lunch and going for a ride at 5:30 and not eating before the ride nor on the ride, I completely bonked and was barely able to get to the finish. Lesson learned, you can't neglect your body!

Then two days later I did the Bike to Build a 100k bike ride raising money for the local Habitat for Humanity in Cleveland TN. This year was the 2nd annual and there were quite a few cyclists that showed up. Even though there aren't any bike lanes in the city, and it isn't generally very friendly to cyclists, there were a lot of really strong riders out there. Compared to the rides that I have done in Texas, I would say that the average rider here is much stronger. That being said though I think that's unfortunate because I presume that means that the average person that isn't a cycling fanatic, doesn't feel comfortable biking in this area. And that could be due to the community, safety of roads, the big hills, or a number of other things, but that's another conversation.

This was by far the most scenic organized bike ride that I have ever done. Wonderful rolling hills, with pine trees on the side of the road, horses, cows, dogs (grrrrr), challenging climbs, and fast descents with winding curves. Reminded me a bit of riding in the foothills of the Swiss alps!

Great ride, very friendly people, well organized and made possible by lots of volunteers and great fundraising. I would look to this ride getting bigger over the years as more people hear about it and the number of cyclists in the area increases.

One final note, here is a picture of my new bike. It's a Surly Travler's Check frame so I can pack it up in a suitcase when I travel, with 105 groupo, cantilever brakes allowing it to be used as a cyclo-cross bike, and the frame has mounts so I can use this bike as a touring bike as well. I've coined this bike my "sleeper" bike since I was able to stay up front of the ride and my bike looks like a clunker among all the flashy colored carbon frames. But looks can be deceiving!

Austin Marathon/First Marathon

2011-02-26T06:10:00.003-06:00

Last Sunday I did the Austin Marathon, my first ever! It was an amazing experience and I thought that it would be interesting to share my experiences. Let's start out at the beginning...

Back in January 2010, I had ACL surgery. So much of 2010 was recovering from that and getting my legs back to functioning well. I did a bunch of bike rides in the summer, and started doing longer rides. I did a half marathon trail run and had a lot of fun. But always thought that I would never do a marathon, because, well that's for crazy people and it would surely be hard on my body. But then I did a 24 hour endurance bike ride, and some other endurance events, and thought hmm... maybe I should give this marathon thing a try.

So I made up my mind, talked with Tempo Multisport, and got set up with a training program, that at that point was about 18 weeks. Before I started my training I was in Germany and got hit with a bad staph infection on my calf that sent me to the hospital there for a few days. The doctor there said that my leg would take 8 weeks to heal. So I thought that my plan to run a marathon in the spring was done. But then when I saw a doctor in Austin he said that I could run while my leg healed. And so there I was running around, doing tempo runs, sprints, and starting out my long run while carrying around a wound vac on my back.

The next hurdle came when I was training in Toronto Canada running in the snow. I didn't want to run on the treadmill because I wanted to get used to running outside and the impact on my knees. But I think I pushed too hard to keep my pace when running in the snow, which resulted in a lot of slipping of my foot. This caused me to shorten my stride, in turn giving me some IT band issues and knee problems.

One of my conditions to myself in doing this was that my left knee, the one that I had my ACL surgery, couldn't have any knee pain. If I had knee pain with that knee, I was going to call it quits, because it was just so much work to go through the surgery and I didn't want to undo all the work that the doctors had done to fix up my knee.

This time the knee issues were on the IT band on my RIGHT knee, so I kept going. I didn't know if I could keep going with these IT band issues though. I thought that I might have to call it quits. But before I did that I talked with Tammy from Tempo Multisport and she recommended I go see an ART specialist. And that helped a lot. There were also a few times where I couldn't do all of my long run, but needed to run, bike for a bit to get my knee warmed up, and then run again.

At the first hint of pain from my right knee Tammy put me on a new program where I do 2 long runs back to back, rather than one really long run. And based on my results I'm happy to say that it worked wonderfully for me and probably was one of the defining factors that actually allowed me to come back from the IT band issues while training in time for the marathon.

So needless to say there was a lot of work and challenges to work through to even get to the start of the race. I once heard Bart Yasso say that it's the getting to the starting line of the race that's the hardest thing to do. I completely understood that when I was standing at the start of the Austin Marathon. At that point, all the hard work is done, you can't cram for a marathon, and I felt that I could just enjoy myself. And that's just what I did.

The race was loads of fun! There were 40 bands playing at the side of the road and tons of people cheering us along. The time running seemed to go by so quickly. The first 8 miles went by before I knew it. My plan was to go slowly up hills since that was always when my IT band issues flared up. It also worked out well because the first 1/3 of the race felt like it was the hottest (probably 78F). But after that the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and I was able to cool down. It was challenging going uphill from mile 12-19.5, but I just had tons of motivation stored up and lots of excitement from the race, that I could draw on to get me through that.

Then it was pretty well all downhill from there. I wasn't able to speed up as much as I had hoped in that area, but it was lots of fun being able to pick up the pace a bit. The last 3 miles were the most fun I felt. Because I knew the race was done, I couldn't do anything there to shave off time to get below 4 hours, and I wanted to really enjoy the experience and soak things in. There were two brutal hills to go up just about 800 meters from the finish line. But after that it was to the finish line! I was able to do it in 4:14 which I was very happy with given it was my first one, all my challenges before the race, and it was hot and a challenging course!

The thing that surprised me most was that I wasn't really sore afterwards. Sure my legs were tired, but not sore. And everything that was sore in training and giving me issues, wasn't a problem at all during the race! Two days after ther marathon I was cycling and swimming, and after 3 days I had no signs of soreness at all from doing the marathon!

Many many thanks to Tammy from Tempo Multisport for all of her wonderful coaching, it wouldn't have been possible without her great training and adjustments for my hurdles. Family and friends that provided support and guidance. And of course the doctors that did my ACL surgery, and all the doctors that dealt with my staph infection surgery! It wouldn't have been possibly with any one of those parts not being there!

1st Ever Mellow Johnnys 6hr Mountain Bike Race

2010-11-13T18:40:00.002-06:00

Today I did the Mellow Johnnys 6hr mountain bike race in Dripping Springs, TX at Lance's Ranch, or should I say Juan Pelota's ranch. This year was the first year that they did it and I will have to say that they did an amazing job organizing it! There were ride marshals out there riding the course, helping people, lots of sponsors, Nuun had their drink, and of course Michelobe was out there. Everything was very well organized, except for the person directing traffic not knowing where packet pickup was and directed me the wrong way! The trail was very well marked and well maintained, though having 250 people on it for 6hrs sure did I number on it!

The race started off Le Mans style which was fun. The course is pretty tough, lots of hills to climb, but very fun as there are lots of screaming descents. It is definitely a course that challenges your physical fitness with the climbing, your technical skills with some tricky spots, and your endurance with the 6hrs+ of riding! Each lap around the course is about 7.5 miles. And takes about 34-60 minutes for people to complete.

I had a great time, though unfortunately I had 2 flats. It took me until the 4th lap to figure out the ideal tire pressure to have good speed, traction and NO flats! I also cramped up at the end a couple times on this certain hill climb. Since it was cool, I wasn't worrying about making sure I was getting enough salts and electrolytes... so I paid for that, but seemed to fix things with some emergency, Nuun, chocolate milk, and some salt pills.

It was very exciting to have Lance Armstrong out there racing. He passed me when I was in the pits after finishing 2 laps, and he was already on 3. But fortunately he only lapped me once, though I think he might have done it a second time if he hadn't have had some knee issues! Hope he's alright. Though from what I hear about him it's his own fault with his running and swimming training... Though me on the other hand with my ACL surgery earlier this year, and having had a nice chuck of my calf cut out with a staph infection had no problems!!! Though I was doing it at my own pace, and not busting my balls like Lance (probably a bad choice of words, sorry Lance)! I could have easily fit in another lap if I hadn't have had my second flat, but we live and learn, and I was going out to have fun, and that I did. Mission accomplished.

I put a lot more thought into making sure my diet was healthy compared to the 24hr race I did. I had 3 healthy sandwiches made, a smoothie which was easier to eat and available in smaller portions than a banana. I tried out this Sequel energy drink, but didn't like it too much and wasn't really convinced that it helped me out much since I cramped up even though I was taking the drink that was supposed to have electrolytes. So I think I will ditch that. Everything else worked well. Chocolate milk and orange juice are becoming staples for rides like these!

Well that's all on that. I would HIGHLY recommend this race for those that like to mountain bike and fell comfortable on more advanced trails.

Here's a picture of the event, there are much more scenic views, but unfortunately I didn't want to stop and take a picture during the race!

The Texas Time Trials 2010

2010-09-27T07:44:00.008-05:00

The Texas Time Trials (TTTT) was a blast (look here for background on the event or here for a great blog post on last years race)! It was impeccably well organized and very well supported by volunteers. There were signs along the course telling drivers about the ride, motivating signs, arrows on the road indicating where you should turn, blinky lights on the turns, volunteers at the turns pretty well at all times (there were some hours late at night that understandably didn't have volunteers), and mile markers for every mile. Very well organized.

When I got in on Thursday, I helped crew for a bit in the evening and on Friday morning. That was a very valuable experience because I was able to learn from some very talented, experienced riders what to do to make life as easy as possible for your crew as they work to help you.

It was hard to force myself to sleep before my ride, but I got enough sleep in. I was so excited for my race that my heart rate was way up for the beginning of the ride. I was going to try and keep it low, but that apparently wasn't really an option. So for the first 13 miles I kept it slow, and was battling this one guy for last place :-) Eventually I broke down and started cranking and going fast, didn't think I was going that fast but looking back I probably could have gone a little slower.

The course is incredibly scenic, with great views, rolling hills, and beautiful river crossings. It's a tough course because it is really hilly, but the hills are short enough that you can just power through them and still keep your speed up. This is fine if you aren't going for too long, or if you are a machine. But eventually you will start to get tired and have to climb the hills more slowly. And at that point, the hills are really tough. As you can see from the elevation graph there are no real flat spots:
Riding at night was tough, but also a lot of fun. It made it challenging to know how big of a hill you were climbing because you couldn't see the top. It was also a lot of fun to not have any traffic and be able to go wherever was smoothest on the road.

There were lots of tricks that my mind played on me while I was riding at night. One of which was thinking that there was someone banging on the door of an abandoned building, when in fact it was just a windmill that made noise. There were some rednecks going around in a giant truck blaring a loud train horn at around 2 am. Instead of getting pissed at them I just laughed to myself because they didn't realize that they were doing me a service for making sure that I was wide awake after that! :-)

Riding in the day went well, but started to tired slowly. At my lap number 10 it started to rain. My commuting in the rain really paid off here, and this time I had the goggles I mentioned in my post about commuting in the rain. I was able to really pick up the pace in the rain. I don't know what it was, but I had renewed energy in my legs. So I was biking away in the pouring rain, munching on some dark chocolate, it was awesome.

Unfortunately since I pushed so hard in the rain, the next lap was really tough. At the end of that my feet, and legs were just screaming in pain. I got back to the rest area and told my crew that I was done, 290 miles was good enough for me. I was happy with that. Thankfully they said, "No you're not done, you've got one more lap in you." And after resting for 30 minutes I was ready to go. At that point I knew how to put in a fast lap without taxing my body too much. I had enough energy on the last lap to sprint the last mile to the finish with about 20 minutes to spare.

I realized that this was my very first cycling event that I raced in! Pretty good start I say. And even though I placed pretty well in this event, that doesn't mean much to me. Doing well against my own goals and expectations is far greater than being able to finish in some position, ahead of someone else. As far as I see it, there is always going to be someone out there that's faster, stronger, or bigger than you. But at the end of the day if you are able to do something to the level that you set out to do, or better, then that's what you should be proud of! Though getting one of these bad ass trophies isn't too bad either :-)

Some good things that I learned was that eventually I got so tired of sweet things and having some soup and crackers really saved me there. Having a wide variety of things was great and incredibly valuable because I knew I would get tired of eating certain things. Having a crew is an amazing help. And having a REALLY great crew like I did is invaluable. There is no way I could have done what I did without them!

Fun facts:

317 miles (510K)
~20,000 ft climbed (6000m)
20,000+ calories burned
~4.5 gallons of liquid consumed (17 liters)
1 skunk narrowly avoided by a couple feet

Many thanks to the people that organized the event, it was a job very well done. Thanks to the volunteers, without you the event would not have been nearly as much fun, and probably wouldn't have been able to take place. And the cheers of a person go far further than imaginable when you are tired! Many thanks to Tempo Multisport for the training on nutrition, pacing, and bike fitting really helped a ton! I would highly recommend Tempo Multisport for training and nutrition advice. Here's a recent interview with Temp Multisport if you are interested in learning more. I only reaped the benifits of two brief sessions, think of what you could do with more training further in advance of the event! And of course many many thanks for the crew that helped me. There is so much work that goes into this, and I am so grateful. I am very thankful to my crew and new friends being impressed with what I was able to do. It means a lot to have incredibly talented and experienced people who have done events like this before and RAAM say "great job."

UPDATE: Here is the GPS data from the ride. The elevation doesn't look like quite as much as the other data shows. But this may just be my GPS not being that accurate! Decide for yourself: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/51119863

Ready for the TTTT

2010-09-23T14:59:00.003-05:00

I am rearing to go for The Texas Tim Trials(TTTT) in Glen Rose Texas! Now here's some background on the event. It's an ultra endurance cycling event. It's an event that most cycling folk don't know about, even here in Austin, only 3 hours away. The event is capped at 200 participants. The participants come from all around the US, and there appear to be a couple people from France this year! This is a RAAM qualifying event for those that do the 500 mile distance races. Check the TTT website if you want more details.

I'm really excited about the event. And after tapering and forcing myself not to ride too much this week plus not riding today, I'm very eager to get on my bike tomorrow evening! Plus the weather is looking nice and cool. Might be some rain, but that's no problem so long as there isn't torrential rain! I do have some motorcycle goggles for this though. :-)

There's a lot of unchartered water on this event for me, but I'm ready. With the miles that I've put in this past month, biking daily to work, researching nutrition, doing test rides getting used to eating and biking, great coaching and fitting tweaks from Tempo Multisport, and getting to talk with people that have done this event before and getting support from them, I'm ready!

I'll write about my ride and my experience, but if you want to track things as they are happening follow @tt24tt on twitter. They will have a couple people tweeting things during the event.

Dam Loop Fun

2010-09-12T10:12:00.005-05:00

I wasn't planning on writing about this bike ride, because well it was just a training ride, but lots of things happened on the ride, and felt like sharing some of them.

In my preparing for the TTTT I was needing to test out some nutrition stuff (mainly getting used to eating proper amounts of food while biking), test out some new toys, and get a little more used to doing a hilly long distance bike ride! So I picked out the Dam Loop because it was the only loop I could find that was short (was shooting for something ~25 miles) and hilly. Map My Ride says it's 1200 ft., but I have a feeling that my GPS will say that it's more ~~(I'll update this post when I get the data off my watch Monday)~~. Feel free to weigh in on which you think is more trustworthy!

If you do the Dam Loop make sure that you go clockwise! I think it's a little easier this way, but doing it clockwise will ensure that you don't have to go up the 2222 hill (between 620 and 360) where there is no shoulder! Coming down you will be going a lot faster so you'll be off the hill fast and fit in well with traffic. This loop has lots of rolling hills, fast downhills, long climbs, and beautiful scenery. If you need to drive out, park your car at Southwest Cycle Sport. It's a great bike shop and they said they don't mind having cyclists park there and come into their shop to get water or use the restroom!

I'll get more into the sports nutrition side of things in another post, but my general plan is to have as many different things that fit into what my body needs so I don't get tired of eating something. Worst thing is needing to eat something that you don't want to eat! And for the ride I did it worked out well.

I got some aerobars so I have more variety of positions when I'll be on my bike for a long time. These were a lot more fun than I thought and felt like I got a lot more power as well. The aerobars didn't seem to like me because on my first loop going down a big hill on 360, while I was tucked in and crouched down, one of the pads came off and hit me in the face. Doesn't feel so good when you're going 40+ mph! Zip ties will remedy that situation!

One thing that I have come to realize that I love about cycling is that I have time to think. Most of my life feels so busy that I don't have time to just sort things out in my head and think about things. Well when you're on you bike for 8+ hours you have some time to think about things!

The last thing that I wanted to share, and quite possibly the main reason that I wanted to write about this was that I got to rescue a turtle on my ride! At the 2222 and 360 intersection they have been doing a lot of construction. This seems to have disrupted a lot of the turtles there that end up trying to get away and find themselves on the road. I saw a turtle in the middle of the intersection there, and to my amazement cars were swerving all over the place to miss the turtle. I was able to set my bike down on the side of the road, and safely run and grab the turtle! Poor little guy! There was a girl there who was relocating a couple of the turtles to a creek where they wouldn't be disturbed by the construction.

Update:
Here's the GPS data from the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/48857041

Joys of Biking to Work

2010-09-09T06:56:00.003-05:00

Wasn't planning on writing too much about me biking to work, but yesterday there were a few fun things that happened that I wanted to share. Normally I get frustrated by motorists who don't follow normal right of way and go out of their way to let the biker go. If I've already stopped I want the car to get to go, as they should. Especially when you hear about all the complaints about bikes not stopping at stop signs, that they shouldn't be on the road... yada yada yada. This is the opportunity to show that we do deserve an equal spot on the road.

So yesterday there is a guy who should have gone far before I even got to the intersection. So I stop to let him go. He waves me on, so I accept. He then comes up from behind waving, grinning ear to ear, and giving me a thumbs up. :-) So in this situation, it washed away the frustration mentioned before. I guess he was excited to see someone biking in the rain!

I also got to meet another person from work who commutes by bike! That was fun. I got to show him where we can store out bikes in a covered locked area, away from the rain. This area has been getting some good use with the weather that we have!

UPDATE!
Forgot to mention that I only had one tree blocking my path when riding to work yesterday! And it took me the same amount of time to get to work as normal. No traffic delays for me due to the flooding!

Playing in the Rain

2010-09-07T21:57:00.004-05:00

It has been a long time since I have spent so much time outside enjoying the rain! It started off with my first day to biking to work for my 3 week challenge of biking to work. It was pouring on my way to work, which was lots of fun. Then I started getting weather warnings and alerts in the afternoon. It looked like things would let up after 6, so I stuck around work a little later. But then there were warnings of a tornado moving up from the south and 30-50 mph winds. So I figured I should high tail it out and head home before that hit!

Wow was it ever fun to bike home in that rain! Started out pretty slow. Then I came around a turn and my rear end felt a little off. Did I have a flat? Nope didn't feel like a flat, but didn't feel quite right either. Pulled over and my tire was definitely low, but not all flat. Checked it out and it turned out I had a 1" nail embedded in my tire! As soon as I got my tire off the torrential rain hit. :-) Extra incentive to get my tire changed quickly and done right.

Got back on the road and heading home. The rain was coming down so hard at one point that I felt like I was going as fast as the cars because they could barely see. Truth be told I felt like I could barely see as well. Fortunately I had clear glasses on, but would have been better off with a pair off goggles! It was a lot of fun riding in the rain. I was a little concerned that I would have my tire swept out from under me when going through some of the really deep puddles, but all was good.

Then I got home and wanted to take full advantage of the rain, so went for a nice run! Got a little lost and ended up running about an extra mile. But when you are staying cool, getting covered by wonderful rain, getting to splash in the puddles, and feeling like a kid again, having to run an extra mile is of little concern!

So in conclusion for the ride:

One flat tire
Offered ride while at a stop sign by a friendly old chap
Day one of the challenge done, all the others should be a piece of cake by comparison!
One hell of a fun ride home!

Tips on riding in the rain:

Have some good rain gear, this may not help you keep dry the whole time, but will help you get out the door and stay dry for more than you would have without it!
If it's going to be raining really hard, glasses won't cut it, get some ski goggles or motorcycle goggles, or something along these lines. Who cares if you look a little funny ;-) Plus these will come in handy in the winter when it's cold and you are out on your bike.
Make sure and have good waterproof lights. It may be daytime, but with reduced visibility and big puddles in the bike lanes, you want to make sure that cars can see you!
Be extra cautious when braking. Even with great brakes (unless you have good disk brakes) they won't be as good as when dry. And sometimes will slip at first and catch as they dry which can lead to uneven braking, causing problems when you are on slick pavement! So bottom line be careful!
Sometimes it's lots of fun going through big puddles, but unless you know the road well, you might find out there is a giant pot hole there...
Smile as much as possible, helps ensure that you have a great time, and makes the people in cars think you are even more crazy (the goggles will help with this too) giving you extra room for safety.

Bike to Work - 3 Week Challenge

2010-09-06T22:30:00.003-05:00

I keep wanting to bike to work more often, and I keep coming up with excuses when I have to wake up one hour earlier when I bike. So I figure if I make it into a challenge I can't get out of it by making excuses! It's probably going to be raining tomorrow, but I will be biking anyways! I want to get some more miles in more regularly in preparing for The Texas Time Trials (TTTT). I'm still undecided on which event I will do, but it can't hurt to put in some extra miles!

If you are thinking about biking to work now is a great time as the weather is starting to cool down. Though not bike to work month, there is no time like the present to get started! One big thing for me is having a shower at work, which I'm very grateful to have. If you don't have such a luxury there are some places like Mellow Johnny's that offer a shower/locker service or perhaps there is a local gym near by that you could use.

Funny Blog Usage Statistics

2010-09-03T08:17:00.000-05:00

I hadn't really looked at the usage statistics for this blog before until today. And I found some funny things that I wanted to share. Looks like blogger has been keeping usage statistics since May 2010, or at least that's as far back as you can display them. And in that time the most popular post I have is my first post back in 2007. This post has about 400% more views than any other post. Interesting I think. Then I look at the title that I have... "Initial Posting - virgin no more" Now it makes sense why there are so many people looking at that. No I don't talk about losing my virginity, and no there are no pictures. Ahhh the internet.

Now to take a look at some of the usage statistics by region and browser:

As for the browsers Opera is #2! I didn't realize people still used Opera! And there is a "Java" browser? Thoughts on what actual browser this is? I'm happy to see that there are more "Other Unix" than Macintosh for operating systems :-) The really sad thing is that there are more people in Russia and the Ukraine that read my blog than Canadians! Come on! I guess I've gotta try and stimulate the Canadian readers more. Maybe I need to do something Bobbi Eden esque if Canada say wins... the mens basketball in the 2012 Olympics. Few, I'm off the hook on this one...

Hotter'N Hell Hundred and Triple Threat Wrap-up

2010-08-30T06:58:00.011-05:00

Wow, where to start! So many amazing things. First off the sheer magnitude of this weekend's events was incredibly impressive. There were 13,000+ people that did the 100 mile ride on Saturday alone. I've heard that there were 17,000+ people that participated in the wide range of events. And the organization and support that went into these events was top notch. The indoor expo was great where there were lots of vendors and organizations, including Bike Texas! :-)

Now to start from the beginning, Friday's Mountain bike race on the Wee-Chi-Tah Trail. This was my first mountain bike race/ride of any sort so I didn't know what to expect out of the start in terms of how much I should push myself, and how fast people would be going out of the gate. After the first mile or so when I was seeing people fall and pile up trying to go up pretty basic hills, I knew I needed to get past them! So eventually I was able to get past people, which took some getting used to. The trail was awesome and lots of fun. Pretty tight turns, very smooth, quite flat, lots of 10 foot ups and downs, and lots of bridges. Was fun going through the metal house, culvert, and long narrow bridge. There was a bridge that was about 100 feet long that narrowed to a good 12 inches wide with 3-4 foot drops on either side. This was enough to cause some to panic and fall or put a foot down and walk. Was able to finish 2nd in my age group with was a huge surprise! And the winner wasn't too far ahead of me either, so without getting caught behind people I think I would have been able to catch him. GPS details on mountain bike race.

Then on Saturday was the Hotter'N Hell Hundred mile ride. I have never ever seen so many cyclists all in one spot! 13K+ people is a lot! There was a fly over with 4 jets which got everyone excited and ready to go. Things were a little hectic at the start, but eventually we were able to get into some good fast pace lines and take off. And when I say "we" I mean the SwRI Roadrunners. I'm now an adopted member with a jersey and all! :-) We pushed hard for the first 40 miles, and at that point I felt good and we had a 23 mph speed at that point! We were able to keep it pretty fast until I slowed a little on hill climb probably around mile 55 or so. And I wasn't able to catch up. Also realized that I probably couldn't push that hard and not be sore afterwards for the run the next day. So I went at my own pace mostly on my own from then on out. I was VERY impressed with the rest stops that were every 10 miles and bustling with volunteers. There was a free beer stop less than 10 miles before finish. And I passed it up because I didn't want to add more time with me hanging around rest stops. As I biked passed I thought that there must be something wrong with me passing a free beer stop! At the end they had lots of vendors to buy food and drinks from and pretty decent music as well. One other thing that really stood out for this event was that the signage was very good for the ride. Granted we didn't need it because there were always a ton of people around you, but still. And pretty well all the roads were closed off which meant that you could use the oncoming traffic lane for passing. Very nice not to have to worry about cars! GPS details on HHH ride.

Then there was Sunday and the half marathon. This was the event that I was most concerned about. But I kept telling myself that I had trained for this and now knew the trail, so it would work out. First mile was a little fast, but not too fast that it burnt me out. Then I slowed down and too it easy. Then after 2 miles I started to speed up, every mile taking about 5-15 seconds of each mile split. This way I felt that I wouldn't get burnt out, and if I was getting tired I could always settle at that pace. Plus this way I could finish nice and strong! Running on that trail was so much fun including the steep ups and downs! There were about 3 times that we had to go across suspension bridges which was challenging. Kind of felt like running on a trampoline that was unpredictable in how it would bounce! So I'm definitely going to do more trail running. Running people are incredibly friendly to start with, but trail running people are quite possibly more so. And the run felt much more chill and small compared to other runs I've done.

I was able to finish 26th overall in the Triple Threat and 2nd in my age group! I was really surprised and pleased, especially since I was doing it for fun and not to place! I could have shaved about 20 minutes by not waiting on people in the rest area, but where's the fun in that! Plus the guy that was 1st in my age group was 2nd overall and was ~2 hours ahead of me in the combined time of all events! GPS details on the half marathon.

One note on Wichita Falls. They aren't joking when they say that they have some of the friendliest people in their town. I know we must bring in a lot of business to the town, but the kindness towards us cyclists was awesome. There were so many people sitting out front of their houses cheering us on for the ride, offering up watermelon, or spraying us down with a hose to keep us cool.

Overall an amazing weekend, getting to hang with friends, see people I hadn't seen in a while, meet new people, and have a lot of fun doing the different events. Oh and I got this ol' hunk of wood :-)

Wee-Chi-Tah Trail and a Weekend of Fun!

2010-08-27T07:43:00.001-05:00

Today I get to ride on the Wee-Chi-Tah Trail out in Wichita Falls, TX. I'm really excited since it has been voted the best trail in Texas! So I'm definitely going to be in for a treat! It is only available as a race, so it will also be my first ride as a race... so that should be interesting! I'm doing it as a beginner, so hopefully that will mean that people around me won't be too crazy fast! :-)

The trail looks like a lot of fun from this review. And with this person's GPS data from their ride, it looks like it will be nice and curvy!

So starts a great weekend of fun a the Hotter'N Hell! Lots of fun events, talks, races, and vendors. Oh and LOBV will be there, so I'll have to stop by and say hi to them! Really looking forward to riding and hanging with a great group of friends from Houston! Oh and we are going to have team jerseys! Woohoo!

Working towards something

2010-08-26T13:01:00.001-05:00

I was out eating with some friends recently and one of them got the following in their fortune cookie:

"You don't need to know where you are going to know you are heading in the right direction."

I thought that seemed to fit well for this topic while I talk about recovering from ACL surgery and training for something that I have never done nor never thought that you could do.

A little under 4 weeks ago I was already signed up to do the Hotter'N Hell 100 mile ride out in Wichta Falls, TX. I was looking around on their website because I heard there were lots of other cycling events going on and I was wondering if I could do the mountain bike ride when the trail wasn't being used. Then I saw that they had lots of different categories available to accommodate someone like me that likes to mountain bike, but has never raced before. I then saw that they had a "Tripple Threat" award for those that did the mountain bike race Friday, 100 mile bike on Saturday, and a half marathon trail run on Sunday!

I had been easing back into running, progressing more slowly than originally to ensure my knee wouldn't get sore and so I could understand what I was capable of doing. So I figured why not start training, progressing slowly, and see if I could do it! I wasn't signing up, but was working towards seeing if I could do it. I talked to some different people and got some wonderful information on what I should do, and was given a condensed best of a 12 week half marathon training down to 4 weeks!

The training went really well, and my knee never was an issue. I have really enjoyed the long distance running (otherwise I wouldn't be doing it!). It has also felt good to have the running to keep my body in balance so I'm not just really strong for biking.

Even though I have only run 11 miles as my furthest so far, I feel confident I can do 13 miles and am looking forward to it. Plus it is going to be on an awesome mountain biking trail and with other people. So it's going to be fun!

I have really wanted to do things that I previously couldn't do with my knee. It's like I now have the freedom to do the things that I couldn't before, and I don't want to let that go to waste. Especially if it is doing something that I find out that I enjoy so much. I'm like a rebellious teen leaving home and having freedom at university!

As many know it's a lot of work to recover from an injury and to come back in good form. I recently heard an interview with Bart Yasso, a remarkable person. He has done many things as an athlete in his lifetime, but he has continued to run despite having lime disease, a remarkable feat. He made a comment that resonated with me. It was something along the lines of:

"When you are running it's not getting to the finish line, it's getting to the starting line that is what you should be proud of."

That's exactly how I feel. I have done all the work, feel prepared, strong, and ready. And on Sunday I will have got to the starting line.

Thanks to all of you who helped me figure out what I should do for my training, and for the encouragement, or laughing with me at my crazy ideas. :-)

Ring of Fire and Back to Writing!

2010-08-25T23:09:00.006-05:00

Well I haven't been writing too much recently, but I have had a lot of things that I have wanted to write about, just haven't had the time or felt that they were relevant. So I am going to widen the topics that I write about. Because I have a wide range of interests and I don't want to only write about a select few! So now something cycling related!

A little over a week ago I did my first century and it was a blast! I did the Ring of Fire in Luckenbach, TX. It was a brutal course, but lots of fun with lots of challenging hills, fast descents, and a couple mean long hill climbs. They changed the course a couple days before the ride. Originally it was going to be 110 miles, but the new course was 114 miles. Just a couple more I thought, not big deal. ;-)

One thing that I overlooked was that there were a LOT of hills, which really slowed things down for people and broke up the packs. Map My Ride said that the original ride had a total elevation gain of 3255 ft. Which is quite a bit for a ride of that distance. Yet the modified ride, according to my GPS, had an elevation gain of 4700+ ft. And then you add to that strong headwinds and highs (without the heat index) of over 100 in the afternoon and you end up with a lot of people dropping out...

I got to the 70 mile mark and felt good and decided to keep going and looked around and found myself quite alone. Guess most people threw in the towels then or were a lot faster than me! Apparently they shut off the 100+ mile course, but they didn't tell me. I figured I would keep going, I had water, ride support and time, why not keep going! Unfortunately at 105 miles I started to overheat and decided it would be smarter to stop before things got bad. It was a pretty funny experience looking back at it actually. I was the last person stupid enough to still be out in the heat, and the sag wagon was driving behind me. It felt like I was a dying animal with vultures behind me waiting for me to give up and die!

Looking back I had 1 more mile of climbing and then 8 miles of downhill and I would have been done!!! But overall a wonderful experience and had lots of fun.

So now aside from my experience of the ride, my opinion on the ride.

Cons:

Poor signage and direction at crossings of routes
Very bad planning of routes. Had cyclists on BOTH sides of roads that had speed limits of 60 MPH, single lanes, and no shoulder. This meant that it wasn't uncommon to have a car headed straight for you when passing someone from the opposite direction.
Poor snacks and food at the end. Though this may have been because I was the last one to come in! :-)

Pros:

Great support from various bike shops
Wonderful scenery, beautiful views over the hill country
People manning the rest stops were wonderful and supportive
Great hills to challenge yourself on
Rest stops fairly frequent to keep people hydrated on hot days like this year

So now I know that any other century in the area will be easier than that one :-) Was happy that I was able to keep a decent pace given the hills and that I was riding by myself for most of the ride. Check out my route if you like.

Fun facts:

15 bottles of liquid consumed
360 oz of liquid consumed
2.8 gallons consumed
23 lbs of liquid consumed
6136 (est) calories burned
400 (est) calories provided in meal at finish
105.21 miles traveled

Now on to something a little flatter and faster, Hotter'N Hell!

eMusic Rant

2010-06-13T22:51:00.007-05:00

Apologies, I'm in a ranting mood, so what better spot than to come here and put in my 2 cents worth... After updating to Ubuntu 9.10 (I know 10.04 is out there but I'm waiting until there is Miro support for that...) my eMusic installer no longer was installed. So I go to get the downloader and I find out that they have a new version. Great! Only it doesn't work... all I get is an app that then I click on the "go to emusic" it sits there. Good improvement. Now I've gotta find the older version somewhere... or was there an open source fork that's out there... anyways I digress.

Gotta keep on topic with the rant. The download page for the Linux downloader reads as shown below:

So it looks like this download works with the 2.2.14 Linux kernel... now I hope you don't need that kernel to be able to use this tool... otherwise I will have to go back 5+ years to find a distro with that!

Oh and I can copy my downloads to iTunes and Windows Media Player! Great, no wonder this doesn't work on Linux! Oh well, as a software developer I can understand that features can break and it's tricky to support so many distributions. But come on guys you can do better!

IT how I love thee!

2010-05-18T14:08:00.005-05:00

So here's a little story of me dealing with IT at work, and why I'm ohh so happy that I decided to go into Engineering rather than IT, way back when. For those that work in IT, I know that this doesn't reflect all of you, so please don't take this personally!

Stepping back about 6 years ago, I was going to GE to interview for an IT internship. Interview went well, they were impressed. Since I had traveled about 100 miles to get there, they said while you're here why don't you look at this Engineering job as well. Long story short, I fell in love with the other job and took the Engineering job offer and turned down the IT job offer.

So that brings me to the point where I am today, working as an Engineer with a new lab station that I don't have administrator access to, so I can't install certain software, and can't update the drivers for certain tools that I need to use.

In following with how things are done, I created an IT ticket asking for them to give a certain user account admin access on the machine. 6 days go past, and the ticket is assigned to seven different people who never contact me nor do anything to address the issue. Since the old machine I was using was needed for a critical customer issue this issue needed to be resolved more quickly. So at the behest of one of the managers, I raised the priority of the issue to high (one below critical). This resulted in IT sending me a nasty message telling me that this priority was reserved for certain issues, such as ones that would impact the company's revenue, assuming that what I and my team does doesn't have any impact on the company's revenue. Which is clearly not the case!

In the morning on day 6 I am told that IT is trying to get ahold of me. Great I think, assuming that they are finally going to get things fixed for me! But no they are trying to update the machine since it is out of date with patches. You would assume that a newly imaged machine would have the patches put on the machine but no. The person I talk to doesn't have a clue on how to fix the issue I'm having or just won't do it for concern of the machine's security. Then I get another call from IT, great I think! But no they just want to update the antivirus on the machine since it is out of date and not working (on the new image they just pushed out).

Back to my issue, I decide to find the person who does have admin access on the machine, get them to log in, add the user account to the admin group, and voilà works perfectly. And this took me a whole 60 seconds...

So this is why I'm happy I'm not in IT and in Engineering instead!

Google orders Android ROM to cease and decist. Come on google!

2009-09-25T09:35:00.003-05:00

Apparently Android ROM moder has been hit with a cease and desist order from Google! Come on Google! This is the reason that I bought an Android phone, so I could mess around with it like this person was doing. If there is something that I am missing on this that justifies Google's actions please enlighten me!

Bike Mapping!

2009-08-22T22:16:00.004-05:00

Just found out about Ride the City and how they now support Austin!!! They also currently support NYC and Chicago. Seems to work really well and will give you the most direct route, or safest route and will show you where you will be riding in a bike lane. They also highlight bike shops and bike rental places along your route. If you bike in Austin or any of the other cities this is a must to check out! Very cool.

Miro 2.0 - Review and Comments

2009-02-15T08:58:00.004-06:00

Okay so Miro 2.0 is here! There has been a LOT of work that has been put in to get to this point. I had used various beta versions, but it had been a little while since I had used the 2.0 version. In summary of everything that will follow I am VERY impressed with what has been done in this latest release and I encourage you to try it out: http://www.getmiro.com/

So now into the good and the bad. I'm going to get the bad out of the way first. So the first thing is that I have a LOT of different channels, so Miro in the past has taken ~8-10 minutes to launch. So that has always been a problem in my mind. But since I have a lot of channels I have never really faulted the developers for this since Miro will launch pretty quickly if you don't have ~160+ channels. Unfortunately when I updated Miro to a long time to update the database from the older version of Miro to the latest one. I didn't use a stop watch or anything, but it was 20+ minutes that it took. But everything worked properly migrating from the older version of Miro to 2.0. So that's the important thing. And the other important thing is that the ~8-10 minute launch time of Miro 1.X has now been cut to ~2 minutes. Which is a big difference in my mind. And I don't think that most people will have as many channels as I do so I think most people will see it launching in an order of seconds.

The other problem I've always had with Miro is how much memory it uses. With all the channels I have I have seen it occasionally using ~1GB+. This essentially rendered my 1GB memory laptop pretty useless when I would use Miro + Firefox at the same time. Now I haven't seen Miro consume much more than 600MB. A vast improvement in my mind, and it is noticeable to me since I can now use gnome + Firefox + Miro without having my system slow to a crawl. Before I had to use the enlightenment window manager to have any chance of using Miro and Firefox together. But not any more!

And the last semi negative thing is that Miro after the update was using the xine for the video renderer. I assume that this was because Miro was set to use this from the 1.X versions. Everything worked fine using xine except for when any window/box overlapped the video playback then there would be a black box on the screen unless you toggled the fullscreen. Switching to gstreamer made all these problems go away.

The first thing that you will notice about Miro 2.0 is that it looks much better when viewing the channels, there are different views for looking at the videos/channels. Very nice. Video playback has a different look and everything that has changed fixes little problems that existed in the past, it isn't just a change of look at feel for the sake of making it look prettier, though I guess this might not be a horrible thing. I.e. the fullscreen mode now looks much better and by simply moving the mouse the control bar comes back into view, allowing you to delete or save a video among other things. Before you would need to leave fullscreen and then find the button. Now it's much more efficient.

Another really nice thing is that Miro now has keyboard shortcuts that work in fullscreen and non fullscreen! And the keyboard shortcuts are intuitive and what you would expect them to be! E.g.:
* pause/play - spacebar
* skip forward - arrow right
* skib backward - arrow left

There are more useful shortcuts for changing fullscreen, changing volume, etc. But the problem I see in terms of user friendliness is that the shortcuts that I mentioned above are not displayed in the menue bar. Although all the other keyboard shortcuts are listed... Maybe the devs assume that people will know the shortcuts since they are so intuitive (which they are), but for the new user this might not be completely intuitive. One thing that I find a little odd in the playback window is that the buttons that advance from one video to the next actually look like fast forward buttons... a small thing, but it seems like they should just have the universal "next track" button instead. It only takes clicking it once to know what it will do, but it just seems like it would make sense to have the button match the action better.

Miro also now allows you to un-dock the playback window from the main Miro window so that you can change settings, look at different channels/videos. This is a very cool idea, and I have used it a few times already, and I can imagine that this would be very useful if playing video on one monitor or projector and you are wanting to queue up some content to play right after the current video or if you want to add something to a playlist.

Even though I rambled on here for a while, there are MANY more things that have improved or been added to Miro 2.0 that are great, so give it a try for yourself and see all the great things that have been done. Once again VERY impressive and great job to everyone who worked on this release!

Scott Seigler's Contagious a great Christmas Gift!

2008-12-19T20:02:00.005-06:00

Okay so for those of you other there that haven't heard of Scott Seigler, he as a Horror/Sci-Fi/Action/Adventure Fiction writer. What sets him apart from other writers is that he gives away all his books as a podcast and as a pdf. He also also sells print versions of his books so that he can get some revenue for all his hard work.

He has made me realize how hard it can be to make it in the literary world, when you are competing against such big authors backed by large publishing companies. So I really respect Scott Seigler for stepping up to that challenge and for giving away his content as a podcast for free. This really seems like a huge step forward to opening things up. Even as he gets his books published he has stayed true to his roots and insists that he still be able to give away his podcasts for free.

Asside from all the great things that he has done, his books are adicting!!! There have been many occasions where I have listened to his books while on LONG road trips. They made the time pass so quickly, and kept me awake and on the edge of my seat, which is quite a feat when you get an idea of how long some of the road trips were...

Though not the highest form of literary work in terms of elloquence, it is riviting, real, and fun. And as people seem to be reading books less and less (especially the younger generations) it is really important to have stories like these that can grab people's attention.

Having listened to the Infected podcast, and bought the book, I am extreemly excited to read the Contagious book that comes out December 30, 2008! It is a great Christmas gift (I've put it on my list! :-)) if you are into these sorts of storries. Oh and did I mention that his books can be gory? Ohh yeah they are, so you have now been warned!

So check out his podcasts if you haven't already and consider buying the book!!!

Robed Obama picture ignites row - Deep Stabs and Religous Jabs

2008-02-25T20:33:00.005-06:00

The more desperate Clinton becomes the dirtier the race gets. Read the article first and then come back to read this. It is ridiculous that this even matters and for Hillary to be pushing this is a dirty thing to do. Even though the race is heating up I will have to say that is probably most heated at the Ortiz household where a guy stabed his brother-in-law.

Clearly from all the press and video that I have seen Obama is quite a devout Christian. But one picture of him wearing traditional African garb and he is a Muslim. As Obama pointed out in his rally in Austin TX a few days back, these sorts of comments are not only an insult to himself but to all the Muslim people out there.And when George Bush wears a Kippah when in Jerusalem there is no talk that he is Jewish. Well let's hope that the voters in America are more intelligent than Hillary's campaign is making people out to be.

read more | digg story

Watch for items disappearing from your bags when you fly!

2008-02-19T14:28:00.003-06:00

After hearing two members of my family having items from their checked suit cases go missing, I thought I would look into this a little more. One had a necklace stolen, while the other one had a nice belt stolen. But hey could be that they were "misplaced" when the TSA was searching through things.

Let me elaborate. I would have thought that the TSA would carefully look through your things making sure that nothing gets removed nor added to your bag. I can't claim to have anything removed from my bag, but I did have something added. A few years back after I got my bag from a kind delivery person after my bag didn't make it to my connecting flight (seems to happen about 50% of the time these days), I saw that there was a cloth cover from a baby car seat in my bag. And just as you might imagine, this isn't a small item!

So in this case, I would have to say it was due to negligence, while in the other cases it seems a little too coincidental that the most prized items in the bag happened to be "lost".

And we aren't alone, there are many other people who have had things go missing:

And pwiddy's 2 cents on "My3cents" (sorry I couldn't resist) is that you might have a glimmer of hope in getting reimbursed for stolen/lost items but have have to do it right away! Looks like the TSA has a representative in every major city in the US to help deal with lost and stolen items (Lost and Found Contacts). Plus the TSA has an e-mail address that you can e-mail about lost or stolen items.

So all well and good that they offer these services, but for an official agency that is supposed to be ensuring the airline security it does NOT look good to be employing thieves. If someone doesn't have a problem stealing things then perhaps they also don't have a problem taking a little money to slip something INTO a bag rather than take something OUT.

Anyways, to make a long story short, if you have anything you value that you could not bear to loose (or be apart from for at least a day) then carry it with you on your flight!

New Gmail Mobile!

2008-01-10T00:25:00.002-06:00

I was very happy that I was able to spot this news item. It slipped past me as well. I used the old gmail app on my phone and was happy with it overall. But it wasn't all that great, and didn't offer much beyond setting up imap on my Nokia e61i through gmail.

But now with the new version of the gmail mobile app, things are much better. The big things to me are being able to search and view ALL your e-mail! And also now the key shortcuts are the same as within gmail. E.g. composing a message is done by hitting the "c" or searching with "/" very nice. I hope they don't do this on phones with no QWERTY keyboard!

There are many other features that were added, but these are the ones that stuck out to me. If you use the old one, it is definitely worth the 2 minutes it takes to install a new version.

Take a look at the lifehacker article: http://lifehacker.com/343030/gmail-mobile-for-google-apps

2 Spaces or 1 Again!

2008-01-09T15:54:00.000-06:00

Okay, after another heated discussion with another group of people about how many spaces to put after a sentence, I've decided to write a post and encourage people to vote on this. Anyways vote on what you use when writing professional reports/documents/papers. Go here http://pwiddys2cents.blogspot.com/ and vote on the poll.

EDIT: Looks like google has weighed in, blogger stripps out double spaces and replaces it with a single space. But this poll is for documents, blogs don't count! ;-)

E-mail and Paswords Don't Mix!

2007-12-21T09:02:00.001-06:00

I've been happy to see that all the major internet companies (ie. Amazon, ebay...) will never send your password to your e-mail in plain text. They will have a temporary link that you can click on once and then enter your password and you reset it. Then after that the link is no longer good. In terms of security this is far superior to sending a password in plain text to your e-mail account.

The reason that you never want to have passwords sent in an e-mail is because most of the e-mail that people send these days is unencrypted. Which means that anyone can read that e-mail if they are looking at your internet traffic. All it would take would be one hacked router along the path that your e-mail takes to get your your mail server (gmail, yahoo, msn, your ISP, etc.). Then of course if you are on a wifi connection and are connecting to your e-mail over a non-secure connection (i.e. it is http: rather than https: in the url) then anyone within range of your wifi router will know your password if they are sniffing your traffic.

So the point it that this is NOT secure by any measure! The reason that I bring his up is that I continue to see sites that will send you your password in an e-mail when you indicate that you have forgotten it. Even some sites that have e-commerce, which would put your credit card information at risk (if they store that in your account) should you forget your password.

So if you are a person that has a site that sends out plain text passwords please try to change this! And for consumers, watch out for this! And for everyone, does this issue bother you or am I just being over sensitive on this? Let me know in the comments!

Mall Security on Segways

2007-12-04T23:06:00.000-06:00

So this past weekend after leaving the theatre at the local mall, I saw a security guard patrolling around the doors on a segway! So if your a kid planning on sneaking into an R rated movie, or someone hoping to record a new movie, WATCH OUT, the security guards have segways. Actually I had to try really hard to not laugh while walking by, and was able to get the photo below while walking away. I'm not against segways, they seem like a lot of fun to use, but seeing law enforcement using this just looked ridiculous.

Well maybe this is old news for some of you, but I thought there might be some that haven't been able to see this spectacle yet! Maybe in 10 years you we will think if funny for security to not be using segways. I sure hope this isn't the case. More ridiculousness on segways for security here: Capital Segway.

Wil Wheaton on Numb3rs!

2007-11-29T07:57:00.000-06:00

I was very pleasantly surprised to see Wil Wheaton, the video game lovin', Linux touting, tech expert, from the recently ended InDigital. on the latest Numb3rs episode "Graphic" It wasn't just a little role in the show either! He was one of the main characters in that episode! I won't say any more about the episode, since I don't want to spoil it. But if you like Wil, you should check out this episode. Well I guess I know why he was too busy to keep going with InDigital! :-) It's cool to see people getting large exposure and recognition from the podcasts that they put out!

I was surprised to find out that you can watch Numb3rs on CBS' website, from their innertube (what a name! :-)). What really surprised me was that it worked in Linux! :-) Now if they could just publish a rss feed with enclosures to their episodes! :-0

One or Two Spaces after a Period?

2007-11-27T12:57:00.001-06:00

I'm one of those weird people who put two spaces after a period before starting the next sentence. This just makes the most sense since it separates one sentence from the next a little more noticeable than with just one space. I know I'm not alone! Weigh in on the poll on my blog (on the right bar).

EMI Suing Suing Suing!!! Grrrr

2007-11-25T22:14:00.000-06:00

The EMI is suing MP3tunes, a music service created by Michael Robertson (the creator of MP3.com). MP3tunes offers a service of searching for music that is on the net. They are being sued by the EMI for linking to certain music. EMI is also suing MP3tunes for allowing users to have "music lockers" which allows them to put their music in a password protected online storage place so that they can access it from any where (office, home, school, etc).

This frustrates me to no end. I have been feeling good about supporting artists by buying their tracks on AmazonMP3, and eMusic. This sort of thing makes me want to stop buying music altogether from record labels, and try to only by from small record labels, or direct from the artist like Saul Williams and Radiohead have done.

I remember when the RIAA was suing mp3 manufacturers, before that there was VHS and tape copying, now this. If the music industry spent their money on developing new ways to get their music out to customers, rather than wasting their money on suing people that are actually helping the music industry make more money, they would be MUCH better off...

For more information on the lawsuit look here at Michale's Minute.

read more | digg story

Saul Williams

2007-11-16T19:29:00.001-06:00

I was very excited when I heard that Saul Williams had released his new CD, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!. And when I found out that the downloads of the songs were on his site, I jumped on it!

Saul Williams was a big fan of mine when I was going through high school. I loved is music and poetry. I'm loving his new CD, and to me it's one of those CDs where you can listen to it over and over and you keep hearing new things in the music. The new Radiohead CD, InRainbows, was much the same way for me, where there are many layers in the music.

I tried to see if the new Saul Williams CD was on emusic since I have an account there, but no dice. Does emusic not do a good job paying artists?

On a technical level I thought that the payment process was a lot easier for Saul Williams' stuff than Radiohead. First off the Radiohead site doesn't even work under Ubuntu 7.10 and 7.04, presumable due to the fact that I am using an older version of Flash, thanks to Adobe's steller support of open operating systems like Linux.

I really liked how they have the following options:

192Kbps MP3
320Kbps MP3
FLAC lossless audio

And it also comes with a PDF of the artwork and lyrics! And the PDF isn't just some text, it is a 31.6 MB file consisting of 33 pages with lyrics and artwork, very nice!

One thing that I thought was a little odd was that the payment options for the CD were either $5 or $0. Personally I would have liked to be able to pay more for it, because I think it's worth it!

Writer's Guild Strike, nothing good on TV? Miro 1.0 to the Rescue!

2007-11-15T05:39:00.001-06:00

As most of you have already heard the Writer's Guild is striking because they aren't receiving proper payment for their work relating to revenue coming from DVDs and online distribution of the shows. For more info look here at interesting video on Devorak's blog and some news on Digg on WGA Strike and the Death of Television. and here:

So while there are re-runs on TV, this is the perfect time for you to give Miro a try! This is an especially good time since Miro is coming out with its polished 1.0 release! Personally think that it is a very solid release with lots of features, and more importantly a lot of bugs fixed! Check out the feature list.

I find it rather ironic that these two events are coinciding. In my opinion these strikes are a by-product of the lack of openness that the exists in the model of the Hollywood TV shows and Movies. Their system is not open for users and it isn't open to rewarding their writers! The high-ups in Hollywood clearly know that there is a lot of money to be made in the online TV business, but they are doing it in such a way that they lock down their content. Many networks are moving to put their shows up for people to watch online. But you can only watch the shows if you are in certain geographic locations (US usually) and you have to watch the show in your browser... So no chance of putting it on your ipod, phone, zune, TiVO or home theatre system. Since the system is closed, there is no opportunity for users to use the content in their own way!

From what I have seen in working with and using open source software, there are so many creative ways that existing solutions can be improved and changed for different uses. Though Miro doesn't do everything you would want to be able to do with your media, it is open. So if someone wanted to have Miro work within their MythTV box, or have it sync video to their iPhone, or have it controlled with a TV remote, or bluetooth in your cell phone, they could do it. There is no chance of a user being able to do this with the pre-existing solutions like Joost, or one of the online solutions like Hulu.

Oh and did I mention that there are 2741 channels in the Miro Guide at the time of this writing, and this number is always growing! This is fully open media that anyone can watch in whatever way they choose. Also anyone can submit channels to the Miro Guide. In some ways I hope that this strike isn't resolved so some of these great writers start writing for video that is online and open!
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Miro vs. Joost

2007-10-31T22:44:00.001-05:00

I've been a big fan of Miro for quite some time, and now find myself helping out with the project when I can. Here's a great comparison of Joost and Miro. I have never tried Joost because of how locked down it is and because well, I've been so happy with Miro! But I have been tracking the various updates to Joost and the publicity it has received. Read here for yourself and see what you think, or try them both out to see which one is better! Post comments here on what you may think about these two different software packages. Miro 1.0 to be released ever so soon, with lots of fixes and new features! And Miro version 0.9.9.9 was just released.

Miro vs. Joost Detailed Comparison

Reduce Waste - Bring your own bags

2007-10-28T21:59:00.001-05:00

At times I have bursts of ideas and drive to be more environmentally conscious. So to do something small we decided to get some bags that could be brought to grocery stores so that we don't have to get tons of plastic bags. It really is amazing to realize how many bags you accumulate over a month! Try and you will see! Fortunately you can recycle the bags, but why recycle when you can do away with plastic bags all together!

So today we got some great new cloth bags at Garden Ridge for only $1 (and I will come back to this low price later)! They have many many colors so you can get all flashy should you desire. So the funny part of this story comes at the checkout. Being the joker that I am, I was thinking of asking the clerk to bag up our bags for us. But she started to do it all on her own, so I held my tongue. And yes she was going to do it. I told her that we didn't need to bag our bags...

Unfortunately I found out from this clerk at Garden Ridge, that they try and schedule people's hours to be just below 7 hours so that they don't have to give them a lunch break... very dirty. I would have hoped that they wouldn't have to resort to Wal-Mart tactics, but I guess not. Maybe that's how they get those nice low prices... So just goes to show that you can't help everything all at once... Just have to take it one step at a time.

Initial posting - virgin no more

2007-10-28T21:12:00.000-05:00

The initial posting! Depending on how I like blogger, I will be posting different thoughts that I have on media, news, and technology here. Basically my 2 cents worth!