Archive: February 21, 2010

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Camino Real Double

Sunday,  02/21/10  09:58 AM

Yesterday I rode the Camino Real Double, my first of the year (first of the decade!)  I had a good ride; although it started a little rainy and was coldish and windyish all day, it was on the whole pretty pleasant.  I spent a good part of the ride alone, and finished in 13:43 elapsed time, ended up 30th out of 170 riders, not too shabby...  I am quite pleased with myself.

Some pictures:


Sunlight off the water, passing through San Onofre


The beauty of the Camp Pendleton wilderness adjacent to the ocean


at the 150 mile mark, still able to smile
then the climbing began, and then it got dark

During this ride I ate hardly anything, instead I ate as much as possible beforehand, and drank Hammer constantly.  It seemed to work.  Near the end I got some string cheese and at the last stop they had soup and chili...  that was pretty nice.  The memorable part of this ride is always the last leg through Santiago Canyon in the dark, surrounded only by cactus while you are only a few miles from the urban sprawl of Orange County.

Next up is the Solvang Spring Century on 3/13, despite being a mere Century I always seem to bonk.  Stay tuned!

 

Sunday,  02/21/10  08:33 PM

Still in recovery mode from yesterday's double century, hobbling around but feeling great.  (And eating everything in sight :)  That's how it goes with ultra cycling.  I do have another busy week ahead - with a bunch of travel - but let's make a filter pass first, shall we?

Tesla's Elon Musk wins the 2010 Automotive Executive of the Year Innovator's Award.  Congratulations!  Richly deserved; Tesla are clearly going where everyone else wants to go but nobody else has...  true electric cars. 

Is Yahoo doomed to the be the next Alta Vista?  Short answer: yes

Little known fact about Elon Musk: he sold his first company Zip2 to Alta Vista in 1999, back when Compaq owned them.  Compaq?

Here we have the world's 18 strangest airports.  Islands, short runways, long ones, runways with hills in the middle, and roads crossing; they're all here.  Very cool.  The runway at Saba airport, shown at right, is barely longer than a carrier deck.  Whoa. 

Slashdot considers cheaper pico-projectors as standard equipment on cell phones.  You know this is only a matter of time, right? 

Slate: Why there are so few great, inexpensive wines from California.  The simple explanation is that markets work.  If an inexpensive wine is great it is soon becomes not-inexpensive.  Especially in California. 

Wildlife picture of the day: a leaping polar bear.  Beautiful!  (click to enbiggen...) 

Ha, you could see this coming: "Miss Me Yet?" Bush Merchandise a Hit Online.  Truly a sign of the times :) 

Dave Winer: what we don't understand.  Truly computer UI complexity it too high.  One reason iPhones have been so successful is that they're so simple.  It may bode well for the iPad, we'll see... 

AppleInsider: Inside Apple's iPad: Adobe Flash.  "The iPhone's lack of support for Flash does not appear to have had any impact on its popularity, but clearly has played a significant role in devaluing the importance of Flash in mobile devices, even if other platforms are enthusiastically embracing Flash."  It seems pretty clear that iDevices will never support Flash, so Adobe's Flash to iDevice cross-converter is the best solution.  It also seems clear that over time Flash will be less important as a result. 

Slashdot: Why Flash is fundamentally flawed on touchscreen devices.  The argument is that mouseovers aren't supported, but that's pretty weak; there are plenty of ways to build a great Flash UI without mouseovers...

Autoblog reviews the Jaguar XF Supercharged.  "There have been very few cars like the 2010 Jaguar XF Supercharged, and that's a shame. Yet it's difficult to explain why this car is so special..."  This really seems to be the first Jaguar in some time which *is* special, recapturing some momentum for the brand. 

Ice dancers Ben Agosto and Taneth BelbinAnd the Olympics featured Ice Dancing tonight!  Yay!  Truly one of my favorite "sports", especially when Tanith Belbin is involved.  Slate has a round up of ice dancers and their costumes :)  Some of them are rather unusual... 

And our ZooBorn of the weekend would be: a baby Meerkat named Picasso.

 

 
 

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