Oxyfish

A great site with custom-built bikes of incredible creativity. And a couple of awesome trip reports. The bike/canoe one is one I’d like to try sometime. The couchbike story had me laughing out loud…

The Bicycle Forest

Louisa was signed up for this, but she hurt her hip and couldn’t run. So, I took her bib, and with almost no training, decided to go for it. After all, I ran a marathon just a few months ago, so how bad could it be? Famous last words…

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A pretty biting and complete article on why the media gets science stories so wrong.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Don’t dumb me down

Update: Because of some of my complaints, and those of many others, Runner’s World has decided not to sponsor the SF Marathon next year. Too bad – SF deserves a great marathon.

San Francsico Marathon

Well, I finished, which is great, but in 4:25, which was a little disappointing as I was shooting for under 4 hours. I ran the first half in exactly 2 hrs, and kept the pace through about 18. Then I slowed a bit, and was hit with crippling hamstring cramps around mile 21. So I walked and ran the rest whenever I wasn’t howling and hopping in pain from cramps. I guess maybe 6’7″ 225lb guys weren’t meant to run marathons.

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I discovered CellarTracker about a year ago, and halfheartedly entered a few bottles. But a recent Napa trip gave me the wine bug again, and I did some reorganizing in my wine “cellar”. This prompted me to revisit CellarTracker, and I now have entered much of my inventory. Nearly every wine I have, even some of the more obscure ones from Australia and South Africa, were already in the database, which is great. And the best feature in my opinion is the tasting notes from other users of the software. A perfect example of a collaborative web site where the value is built through the community. Hmm…wonder if they want to raise some venture capital…

CellarTracker!

Paul writes a nice, if a bit long, essay on what he wishes he had known in high school. Treat high school like a day job, but don’t let it define you, and spend your time working on interesting things that provide options down the road.

What You’ll Wish You’d Known

Well, I’ve been out of commission for a while, but I’m back! The main problem was that my crappy old server (an old desktop machine) finally had a disk failure, and I decided the time was ripe to upgrade to a real machine. I’m now on a Rackable 2U unit, and I switched from Linux to FreeBSD to boot.

I was fortunate that I could bring up the old machine enough to copy off most of the data, and I do remote backups to my home machine via DSL, so I had a reasonably good copy of everything. Over a weekend, I was pretty much able to get everything back up and running. Of course, there are always a few gotchas!

The one that killed Movable Type for me was not that I needed to install Perl (I did) and not that I needed to change the config a bit for the new version (I did that too), but a basic problem with Berkeley DB hell.

Read on if you want the gory details. Suffice to say, after a few hours of struggle, I beat it into submission. Please also note that I posted a couple entries that I wrote while it was down, and backdated.

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I had a magical late afternoon in Quebec City. We arrived by car at around 5pm and checked in to the Chateau Frontenac, which is a Fairmont property. It is huge, and spectacularly placed on the edge of the bluff overlooking the mighty St Lawrence.

Although it was cold and a bit blustery, John and I put on shorts and went for a run. First we headed down to the promenade and happened to see the Queen Mary 2. It is the hugest ocean lner on the planet, and awesome even from some distance. The people swarming on the dock and decks were like ants.

We headed along the promenade, not knowing we had to climb several hundred steps to get up by the Citadel. We huffed our way up, and then headed through the park, past battlements and cannons set in nicely manicured lawns. After a mile or two we turned around, and went back on the road, through the arch and into the old town.

John had to get back, so I left him and headed up and along the wall through the old city. After a few more sights, I came back up along cobblestone streets lined with old apartment buildings and tiny alleyways. It reminded me of an old European city, where people drive small cars because big ones don’t fit down most of the roads.

As I came back to the promenade, I saw more people gathered to look at the QM2. My high school French was just enough for me to get the gist that it was preparing to embark. I cooled off quickly in the cold – it was about 7 degrees (that’s centigrade – about 45 fahrenheit), but I stood and watched. I could see activity on the ship, and even some turbulence in the water, but it didn’t seem to be moving. Finally, glacially, it separated from the dock. Over 15 minutes – which is a long time in shorts in 7 degrees – it seemed to move about 100 yards. Finally it picked up a little speed, but still seemed hardly to be moving.

I was surprised that I didn’t see any tugs. There were police boats at 4 corners, keeping back a few pleasure boats, but she seemed to go under entirely her own power. There was a wake up near the bow when she pushed away from the dock, so there must be a screw or something for maneuverability. Just before I froze and had to go in for a hot shower, I saw a small boat pull up to the bow for a few minutes, presumably picking up the pilot to bring him home.

I was surprisingly excited by the whole event. It reminded me of the beginning of Titanic, where everyone is so excited to be taking the trip of a lifetime to the new world. There was a mixture of anticipation, excitement, and finality in the whole thing – once the ship has sailed, you can’t go back.

-ts-

Aubrey de Grey has devoted his life to curing the “disesase” of aging. He argues, somewhat convincingly, that breakthroughs could occur in our lifetime. Time to re-think the life insurance policy?

Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS): A practical way to cure human aging

Other resources:
The Longevity Meme
The Methuselah Foundation

I got this on email, and found it funny enough to post:

Finally, the guys’ side of the story. We always hear “the rules” from the female side. Now here are the rules from the male side. These are Men’s rules! Please note, these are all Numbered “1″. And that is for a reason!!!

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

2. Sunday = sports. It’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

3. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

4. Crying is blackmail.

5. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!

6. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

7. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

8. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

9. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.

10. If you won’t dress like the Victoria’s Secret girls, don’t expect us to act like soap opera guys.

11. If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

12. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done.
    Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

13. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

14. Christopher Columbus did not need directions and neither do we.

15. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

16. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.

17. If we ask what is wrong and you say “nothing,” we will act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

18. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, expect an answer you don’t want to hear.

19. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really.

20. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as sports, the shotgun formation, or monster trucks.

21. You have enough clothes.

22. You have too many shoes.

23. I am in shape. Round is a shape.

Thank you for reading this; Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight, but did you know men really don’t mind that, it’s like camping.

Pass this to as many men as you can – to give them a laugh. Pass this to as many women as you can – to give them an education!! Peace on Earth, MAYBE.