Palomar in snow

Sunday,  01/24/10  11:23 AM

Today I made my annual pilgrimage to the top of Mount Palomar, accompanied by my British colleague and friend Peter.  We start at Lake Henshaw, ride about 10 miles along the base of the mountain, then ascend the South Grade, 8 miles at 8%.  (Yee haw!)  Visit Mother's, visit the observatory, and then descend the East Grade, 13 miles at 5%, for a nice little 40 mile ride with about 4,000' of climbing.  This year's incarnation was made more interesting by the fact that Palomar is presently shrouded in snow (!), and in fact we were unable to go all the way to the observatory because the roads were closed.  We also shared the day with hundreds of families who thought to take their kids to the snow.  And yes, it was a bit nippy at times, but all in all it was a great day.  Anecdote of the day: Peter rented a [nice] Cervelo from Nytro in Encinitas, which happened to have a 36x25 as its low gear.  We're climbing, and he says he wishes he had a 27, and I said yeah I have a 27, wish I could give it to you, since I'm not using it.  (What I didn't tell him, I didn't use my 25 either; did the whole climb in my 23.) Some pictures: on a clear day you can see for miles and miles and miles and... yes this is a real climb, an epic climb, Lance even said so :) self-portrait, top of Palomar in the background (going around a switchback) relaxing in the "front yard" at Mother's the back yard was filled with white stuff surreal scene descending the East Grade, Californian winter wonderland

 

week of 1/18/10, redux

Friday,  01/22/10  09:39 PM

Wow what a week, sorry I've been gone...  meetings all day and all night all week.  And rain!  Man, have we had rain; I've lived in Southern California just about my whole life and I can't remember water falling from the sky like this.  NO possible way to ride, so I've had lots of eating and not much exercise, and I'm a bit grumpy about that...  still it wasn't a bad week, in fact some parts of it were excellent... ...but enough about me, because it's all happening! And so how did you feel last Monday?  Blue?  "Today is officially Blue Monday - the most miserable day of the year.  A combination of Arctic temperatures, Christmas debt and the next pay day feeling like it's months away leaves many of us depressed and unable to face work."  Huh, who knew? News of the week was of course Scott Brown's incredible victory in Massachusetts, a Republican elected to fill "the Kennedy seat"!  I guess it really was the people's seat after all, and they proved it.  John Hawkins reviews five memes which were destroyed. Ann Althouse had a great suggestion for what Obama should have said about the election.  "We won't agree on every issue... But we do agree that we love America equally, that we're concerned about the future of this country, and that we will do our very best to address big problems... The American people expect us to rise above partisan differences, and my administration will do its part...."  Those were of course the immortal words of George W. Bush, after the 2006 elections gave the Democrats a majority in the Senate. Gerard Vanderleun asks the question: Are we better off now than we where a year ago? Conservatives certainly are; as the review on Hot Air shows, it was a good week: Brown's victory, healthcare's defeat, Supreme Court's first amendment ruling.  Charles Krauthammer says it was his best week since spring break :) The always-interesting Dave Winer has A breakthrough for the NYTimes.  "I’m not paying to read the Times.  I used to, but I don’t anymore.  It’s not like buying the latest gadget from Steve Jobs.  Paying the Times to read their stuff doesn’t give me sweaty palms.  But blowing a few bucks to get my thoughts into the flow alongside theirs, now that’s something I’d pay for." Interesting: Humans were once an endangered species.  "Scientists from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the U.S. have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably only around 18,500 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000). This made them an endangered species with a smaller population than today’s species such as gorillas (approximately 25,000 breeding individuals) and chimpanzees (an estimated 21,000). They remained an endangered species for around one million years." Here we have Ten celebs who give PETA the middle finger.  Don't get me wrong I love animals - medium rare, with a wine reduction sauce :)  seriously I do love animals and I think animal cruelty must be avoided, but raising animals for fur and food doesn't raise my ire, somehow...  it is what it is.  PETA seems to have moved beyond reasonableness. In the run-up to Apple's iTablet announcement next Tuesday (!), one recurring theme is the likely impact on Amazon's Kindle.  As a preemptive strike Amazon have opened up their platform somewhat, and ZDNet wonders Can the Kindle work as an App platform?  The move makes sense, but I wonder how successful this will be - seems like a virtue of the Kindle is its simple focus on being an electronic book, period. BTW I have the same reaction to iPods; I do have an iPod Touch and I like playing with it, but for actual listening to music I much prefer my four-year old iPod nano, with its simple focus on being a music player, period. Interesting iSlate speculation: will it have a multitouch *back*?  Who knows, we definitely await this announcement with great interest :) Joel Johnson: Show and Sell: The Secret to Apple's Magic.  "When Jobs reveals the company's next product, there's a critical difference: It exists."  I think there a little more to this - it's cool, and it exists - but the point is well taken. The Palm Pre Plus reviewed.  "So why choose the Pre Plus on Verizon? To answer that question, you have to figure out if you believe in the potential of webOS devices; Palm doesn't have the fastest phone, or the phone with the highest resolution, certainly not the biggest app selection, and it doesn't have a massive community behind it.  What it does have, however, is a brilliant platform with huge potential to change the way you work and live with your phone." Isn't is amazing how Bittorrent just works?  You try all this stuff for downloading large files, and it all doesn't really work, ever.  And then you try Bittorrent and BAM you are downloading 5GB datasets at 300K for hours on end.  My hat is fully off to Bram Cohen. Will this be important?  YouTube launches HTML5 support.  Seems to work just fine in Chrome.  I sure won't miss the shenanigans required to get Flash to run, the <embed> inside an <object> and all the rest...  stay tuned! Once in a blue moon MSDN magazine has an article which has useful information; at year-end we had a blue moon, and sure enough here it is: Web Application Request-Response Testing with JavaScript.  Way cool. A sad note: Popeye admits to spinach use.  "Popeye finally came clean Monday, admitting he used spinach when he delivered a savage and unlikely beating to romantic rival Bluto in 1998. Popeye said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that he used spinach on and off for nearly a decade."  Sad, really. ZooBorn of the week: a baby Gibbon.

 

Edie Brickell: Good Times

Sunday,  01/17/10  10:17 PM

Do you remember Windows 95?  Cast your mind back, waaay back in time...  ah yes, I sure remember; in fact I was running pre-release builds of "Chicago" for nearly two years before it was finally released.  One of the key cool new things in this groundbreaking OS was support for multimedia.  What a concept!  Previous to Win95 there was Video for Windows, an add-on to Windows 3.1, but with Win95 for the first time the OS itself had support for audio and video and graphics and so on...  big stuff.  And to demonstrate these new capabilities, Microsoft bundled a video with the OS, and it just happened to be Edie Brickell singing Good Times.  I remember that so well, double-clicking that movie, and watching it play.  I liked the song and the video (and the artist!) but I loved the way it just worked, kind of like a peek into the future. Just the other day I came across this very video on YouTube, and it took me back with incredible nostalia: Good Times indeed!

 

Jets shock Chargers

Sunday,  01/17/10  09:24 PM

And so today my friend Yogi and I made our annual pilgrimage down to Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego to watch the Chargers in a playoff game.  Last year the Bolts shocked the Colts, in one of the best games ever (overtime, baby!); this year they fell short against a Jets team that just wanted it more.  Not to mention, the Charger's all-pro placekicker Nate Kaeding missed three field goals, any one of which would have kept them in the game.  So be it.  The view was wonderful (front row again!) and the hot dogs were great, and it was a day well spent. the obligatory panoramic view of Qualcomm Stadium (click to enbiggen) me and my football watching friend Yogi he claimed to be rooting for the Chargers, but is a closet Jets fan, I know (note the lack of anything between us and the field :) Nate Kaeding prepares for one of his three missed field goals perhaps he shouldn't have warmed up once again this year we forgive the Charger Girls for blocking our view dance dance dance as the clock ticks down to 0:00, the Jets prevail argh!  wait 'till next year Some random observations: The front row is all very exciting, but next year we're sitting higher.  And I do mean sitting, because in the front row you stand the entire game.  Not great on a day following riding a century :) One of the cameras is mounted on a cherry picker which drives up and down the sideline, all game long.  Except in this game, they had two cameras on two cherry pickers right next to each other.  Huh?  Aha - ESPN is recording everything in 3D.  They don't have a way to show it yet, but they're getting ready.  Excellent. Those Charger Girls are not only attractive, they work hard.  They're dancing pretty much continuously for three hours, what a workout.  Yes I did happen to notice. Once again I was struck by the physicality of crowd noise.  You think you're hearing it loud on TV, but that's a mere echo of the WALL OF SOUND generated by a screaming crowd of 70,000 people.  Wow. Until next year...  over and out.

 

the mark of sarcasm

Saturday,  01/16/10  07:43 PM

Know what this is?  Of course you don't, why would you?  You don't have any need for a punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm!  Why, you're never sarcastic anyway, and if you were, you'd be sufficiently obvious about it that no explicit mark would be necessary. And if you somehow did need such a mark, you would definitely license it from Sarc Mark © software, there's no way you would just use it, right?  Right.  Because we all know something as subtle and complicated as a punctuation mark must have been invented, and is hence copyright-able. Honestly, this defies parody.  You would think this came from the Onion, right?

 

Riding the Stagecoach (Century)

Saturday,  01/16/10  07:38 PM

Man, today was a  l o n g  day...  got up at 0400, drove from Carlsbad to Ocotillo, rode the Stagecoach Century (more about that below), drove from Ocotillo to Westlake (took approximately forever), and now I'm blogging.  Whew.  And tomorrow I'm driving down to San Diego to watch the Chargers beat the Jets!  And driving back.  And Monday, back to Vista... But about the Stagecoach Century - well, I did it last year, and it was much the same, and actually I did it slightly faster, 5:22 riding time.  It's a nice out and back - on the way out, you're somewhat climbing, so you know once you make the turn "it's all downhill coming back".  It isn't really but it's a nice mental image.  The skies were threatening but no rain fell, and the wind was moderate, and overall it was a great day.  I am hobbling around but feeling great. I have to relate a little story; on these rides it is all about pacing with other riders, and at 75 miles I was with one other guy and he was blown.  So I went into a rest stop for water, but really to pick up some riders.  No good, nobody there.  Just as I'm getting back on my bike, a paceline of four riders blazes by.  I realize if I can power for a few minutes and catch them, I'm set.  So I ride as hard as I can but it's no good, one rider against four and I can't catch them.  Suddenly they hit a little climb and slow down, and I'm able to hook on.... and I can see they're four women, riding as team.  (The Stagecoach has team racing as well as individuals.)  They're all strong and working well and we're blasting through the desert at 30mph.  I go to the front to take my turn, and the lead rider says she can't hook on, as a team they're not allowed to have any help.  I can draft, but I can't pull!  So for the next fifteen miles I rode caboose on the paceline, being towed along by four women.  How excellent is that? A few pictures, of course... the desolate beauty of the desert is ever-present on this ride turnaround point - 50 miles down, 50 to go this guy is going to stamp my hand to prove I made it so far so good, still able to smile knowing there was more climbing in the first half than the second helps the final approach to the checkpoint, check out that sky! (click to enbiggen) my paceline from mile 75 to mile 90 they let me draft, but I was not allowed to pull so be it self portrait riding through the finish 5:22, yay Well it was a great day, even if it was a little long...  onward!

 

blazing sunset

Friday,  01/15/10  08:10 PM

blazing sunset over Malibu

 

week of 1/11/10, redux

Friday,  01/15/10  07:55 PM

Quite a nonstandard week; most of my colleagues were traveling all week for one reason or another, so I worked quietly at home - got quite a bit done, yay, and shipped a crucial fix - but today everyone was back and so I'm back too, in Vista, on a Friday.  And in fact I'm still there, because tomorrow *early* I'm riding the Stagecoach Century in Ocotillo, whew.  So I need sleep but first, a filter pass... Victor Davis Hanson: Truths we dare not speak.  1) Illegal Immigration and California, 2) Iraq, 3) Affirmative Action, 4) The Ivy League is a Naked Emperor, and 5) The Middle East is a Fraud.  Wow.  Read the whole thing, as they say...  I find I not only agree with VDH often, but find he is thinking ahead of me. And questions we should ask: Why is Haiti so poor? Transparency redefined: President Obama has not held a press conference since July 22.  No comment. From the LAT: Obama personally joins Massachusetts quake relief.  This is quite interesting, if Scott Brown wins - as is now appearing possible, if not likely - then Obama has a lot to lose by associating himself with this election. A new anti-pirate ship, the U.S.S. Independence.  Cool.  A 200' long amphibious speedboat, capable of over 60 knots.  Who knew we would need these in the 21st century, but we do...  [ via Gates of Vienna ] MG Siegler on TechCrunch gives an iPhone lover's take on the Nexus One.  "I’ll come right out and say what everyone will want to know: Do I think the Nexus One is better than the iPhone? No."  He does like it, though... tellingly the biggest shortcoming is the applications. Eric Wiesen considers More Platforms?  "Startups have limited resources. If you are care about your mobile app, build a great app that can and will be used by the people who use apps all the time. Today, those people are iPhone users. Unless your app is deeply specific to another platform (like Viigo, for instance), you are better off trying to really succeed in the low-hanging fruit garden that is the iPhone."  This is the incredible value of the network effect Apple has created, the same as Microsoft did with Windows on the PC.  If people only develop for one mobile platform, it will be the iPhone, and if they develop for more than one chances are their iPhone implementation will be their best. Apropos: From GigaOM: The Apple App Store economy, an info-graphic.  Click through to see it all, amazing.  This is a platform in action.  [ via Cult of Mac ] The amazing Onion's highlights from CES.  I particularly like the "noise-postponing headphones", and as Boing Boing notes, "the TI-101 Graphing Bassoon", at last! I love this so much: Electrosensitives tormented by radio tower that had been switched off for six months.  "A group of South African "electrosensitive" activists had been tormented by their local packet-data radio tower, with terrible symptoms that only subsided when they left the area.  They're suing.  Only one problem: during a six week period while they were experiencing their symptoms, the tower was switched off, but the symptoms persisted.  So, either the symptoms are psychosomatic, or these people are allergic to very tall pieces of inert metal."  Of course, they're still suing. Priori Acute.  Massively cool, a 3Dish typeface.  As John Gruber notes, "if M.C.Escher had been a type designer". This reminds me of the great Univers Revolved project, in which I took Wired magazine's circularly symmetry font and made an actual TrueType font out of it...  who knows how I ever made time for something like that! TechCrunch reports Google GDrive Launches. Just Don’t Call It That.  Aka an online repository for, well, everything.  "You can soon upload any file type at all to Google Docs, not just the dozen or so Office formats that the service allowed as of yesterday.  Video files.  Images.  Audio Files.  Even Zip files.  As long as those files are 250 MB or smaller, you’re good.  The new feature will roll out over the next several weeks, says Google."  Huh, cool. Microsoft Office, the movie.  Hilarious.  Yes, you must watch it, but first please set down any sharp objects or hot liquids...  too bad Microsoft themselves don't do stuff like this, I think it would work for them. Salon's cheat sheet for the best wine values... anywhere.   Print it out and carry it with you, in case of emergencies!  I do agree with finding nonstandard appellations for better prices, seems like the market has been chasing me around the world for years, first Chilean Cabs, then Spanish Tempranillo, then Argentinean Malbec...  now stay away from New Zealand Pinot, okay! Huh, Flash on your iPhone, right now.  A Flash runtime written in JavaScript.  I don't even know what that means, exactly - does this interpret a Flash movie at runtime?  It seems cool, but I can't connect the dots.  I guess if this is a real solution to running Flash on iPhones, we'll know it soon enough :) Wow what a concept: MIT's food printer.  "Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by Cornucopia's chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal."  I can has cheezburger? Hey guess what?  Michael Rasmussen is back, with a Continental team called Miche Silver Cross.  "Rasmussen had wanted to ride for a higher-ranked team which would enable him to race one or more Grand Tours.  'I had hoped that I would return to a higher level than what is now the case.  But there is so much hypocrisy in cycling, it was not possible,' he told Danish website politiken.dk."  Unfortunately we won't see him in the grand tour pelotons this year, but perhaps it is a stepping stone back...

Posts and articles in the last month:

01/11/10 09:15 PM -	the Landing
01/11/10 09:06 PM -	Monday,  01/11/10  09:06 PM
01/10/10 10:01 PM -	Full house, tens high
01/10/10 09:21 PM -	Tesla test launch
01/09/10 06:54 PM -	Saturday,  01/09/10  06:54 PM
01/09/10 10:09 AM -	my dinner with Mr. Intensity
01/08/10 05:30 PM -	Friday,  01/08/10  05:30 PM
01/08/10 08:06 AM -	the power of forward movement in platforms
01/07/10 11:15 PM -	Thursday,  01/07/10  11:15 PM
01/07/10 10:56 PM -	grand canyon flythrough
01/06/10 11:34 PM -	Act Three
01/04/10 08:46 PM -	out to new worlds (BlPh)
01/04/10 07:03 PM -	Monday,  01/04/10  07:03 PM
01/04/10 06:37 PM -	on book ownership
01/04/10 08:25 AM -	very not really
01/03/10 10:43 PM -	Rockstore! (the video)
01/03/10 01:58 PM -	onward
01/03/10 09:22 AM -	time to start the new year
01/02/10 08:49 PM -	first ultra of the decade
01/01/10 09:19 PM -	Friday,  01/01/10  09:19 PM
01/01/10 01:01 PM -	Happy New Decade!
12/31/09 05:45 PM -	my last naughty post
12/31/09 09:39 AM -	Thursday,  12/31/09  09:39 AM
12/30/09 09:12 PM -	the hour of Pink
12/27/09 10:23 PM -	Sunday,  12/27/09  10:23 PM
12/27/09 09:49 PM -	Mountain High
12/26/09 08:35 PM -	blind wine tasting
12/26/09 08:12 PM -	rodeo Pinot

For older posts and articles, please visit the archive.