26 May Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (acoustic). Haunting acoustic…
Reblogged from my Tumblr page. Check the original post here.
Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (acoustic). Haunting acoustic version by the Boss for a cloudy Friday
26 May The Great Unknowns – Las Vegas. Some all-stars from my college…
Reblogged from my Tumblr page. Check the original post here.
The Great Unknowns – Las Vegas. Some all-stars from my college music scene, including my band Second Act’s bassist @Altay, made the great album “Presenting The Great Unknowns” in 2004. More at http://www.greatunknowns.com/music.htm
26 May Growing up in a touchscreen world… err, my 1st computer…
Reblogged from my Tumblr page. Check the original post here.
Growing up in a touchscreen world… err, my 1st computer experience was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing
From http://laughingsquid.com/a-2-5-year-old-uses-an-ipad-for-the-first-time/
My iPhone-savvy 2.5 year-old daughter held an iPad for the very first time last night, and it turned out to be an interesting user-interface experiment.
As you can see, after geeking out on my Sutro Tower homescreen, she took right to it — including figuring out how to enlarge some of her favorite iPhone-legacy apps to 2x to display full-size on the iPad screen. If you’re good at understanding kid-speak, you’ll also notice that she immediately saw its potential as a video-display device. She lamented the lack of a camera, and wondered about its potential for playing games.
On the downside, she had the same frustration as many adults, where touching the screen-edge with your thumb while holding the iPad blocks input to all home screen icons. Notice also that she was confused by the splash page for FirstWords Animals, her favorite spelling game: Because the start button looked like a graphic, rather than a conventional button, she couldn’t figure out how to start the game.
Most of all, though, it’s cool to consider that as one of the new Children of Cyberspace, her expectations about computing will be shaped by the fact that she’s growing up in a touchscreen world.
20 Jan My company Zedmo joins Bootup Labs
This is very exciting news for me, Vancouver, and my company Zedmo. As posted by tech journal Techvibes, Bootup Labs’ blog, and Zedmo’s blog, Zedmo is going to join private fund and startup accelerator Bootup Labs. My co-founder, Daniel Wolfe, and I will be in Vancouver as of next week building our company in this beautiful and tech-savvy city. Stay tuned at Zedmo.com!
10 Nov Marathon #2: Victoria, Canada
As if completing 2/4 endurance goals for 2009 wasn’t enough, I had to put in one last attempt at a third. And of course I had to choose a marathon. What a dumb idea! I had been doing 40-50km weeks, then went traveling abroad for a month to England and Scotland. Impressively I managed to keep up some volume there. You see, I was planning on potentially doing the Victoria Half Marathon, but alas it was sold out WAY in advance. Seems like everyone wants to do half marathons these days!
Ok, let’s go for the full. I registered in the final week after determining that my body could handle a big 120km week (not sure how my body handled that torturous bump), then a 95km week, and a taper week. I was running great, but could I handle a full marathon at race pace (4 minute kilometers)?
Standing at the start line, I thought, just enjoy each kilometer. Get into a comfortable pace, eat and drink properly, and take it as it comes.
I was nailing my paces according to my GPS watch. At the halfway, I started working the km’s down to 3:52s, but always preparing for the pain starting at 32km. I actually didn’t even feel it until the last 5km. The km’s went down to 4:10s. And I slipped across the line in 2:49 plus change — much closer than I thought!
01 Aug Retirement is fun! Free mp3s from my band Far From Shore
After a fun run with this indie rock band in Montreal, we’ve moved on, well at least temporarily. Now, all of Far From Shore’s 13 songs are now free as mp3 from http://FarFromShore.com. Go get some great free music. Retirement is fun!
14 Jul Triathlon #2: Subaru Vancouver International Triathlon
I completed my second triathlon on Sunday, the Subaru Vancouver International Triathlon. I’m still working my way up the race volume (read: racing swim distance). I’m still happy having the swim less than 1km, and this race was close to home.
I finished 10th overall, first in my age group, but I’m most proud of my bike and run. Yeah, I was 67th out of the water, but had the 2nd fastest bike (26km) and 3rd fastest run (5km in 17:39). This means I passed 57 people after coming out the water?! Yeah I need to get working on this swim thing.
Congrats to all the other finishers!
Next up is figuring out races for the rest of the summer and fall. Maybe an Olympic triathlon, maybe a marathon!
15 May New site launched: TwitterOfTheDay.com
Last week, I launched a fun, new site called Twitter of the Day. Check it out. Everyone finds there’s just too much noise on Twitter these days, but there are a few real gems: great posts and inspirational thoughts by the world’s greatest influencers and your close friends. On this site, you can nominate any tweet and vote on the entries for the day. At the end of the day, the winner is chosen and tweeted out by @twtotd on Twitter.
It’s aimed to give some quick browsing of what’s cool on Twitter and help users find new people to follow. If you haven’t joined Twitter, well… everyone else is doing it, and for good reason… it’s super easy to use. Give it a try!
23 Mar Race goals for 2009
There. Now it’s in words. I’m making goals for 2009:
- Sub 2:10 Olympic triathlon. This won’t be easy as I’ve never done a triathlon yet and just starting to teach myself how to swim competently in November.
- Sub 2:50 marathon. Came close in 2008
- Sub 35 minute 10k. I think I just missed it in 2008 on a supposedly long course
I’ll mix these up with bike road races, time trials, duathlons, 5k running races, trail running, and adventure races, so might be spread thin.
I’ll be very happy to break at least 2 of the 3.
There. It’s in writing. Bring it.
Update: Today, April 19, I did accomplish #3, running a 34:48 in the Vancouver Sun Run 10k. I thought it was fairly hilly for a 10k, but that means downhills too which is good for me. The first km was downhill, and people flew off the line. I started easy and must have passed nearly 50 runners from 1km mark to the end, passed only by 1. It’s an incredibly deep event, with 80 runners faster than me (and, well, about 59,920 slower). This bodes well for a distance I really enjoy and is new to me. I’ve only been running 40-60km a week these days, balanced with all my cycling and swimming and skiing. I think with 100km+ weeks and later in the season, I could make a run at 33:xx.
Update: I did my first triathlon, a sprint distance (so about half an Olympic), today, the Delta Triathlon. So I can finally call myself a triathlete?! It was early season so the swim was in a 25m pool (not open water thankfully), but it was still plenty hectic with people piling up at points, getting punched and kicked, and missing breaths. That was a fair first swim for me! Bike was strong, but it was windy and the faster guys seemed to all have plenty more aero gear than me! Run started tough, but picked it up and finished the 5k in 17:42. Total time was 1:02, which got me 7th overall, 3rd in my age group, and which should make a sub 2:10 Olympic very realistic for me this year… well that is if I can find an exact, standardized Olympic tri! They seem to love half Ironmans only here in BC.
Update May 3: I didn’t mention I also wanted to break 1:20 in a half marathon. For some reason that seemed a longshot, but thanks to a lovely morning today at the Vancouver Half Marathon and despite the ominous Prospect Point hill in Stanley Park, in the second half of the course, I was able to negative split the course and run a 1:17:37! I’m thinking that there’s more speed there — I went out conservatively for the first half as I haven’t done many runs this year over 21km, but had lots of legs in the second half. I also hooked up with a fast fellow from Seattle who had lots of speed coming down the hill.
19 Feb Vancouver cycling: big climb to Cypress
Just outside of Vancouver, you can ride big mountain climbs, like this one to the base of the Cypress Mountain ski area. The main part of the climb is over 15km, up to an elevation of 3000 feet. And it’s even doable in the winter. What a way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.
Here are the details from Map My Ride. Here’s the route profile:
Here’s how it unfolded:
Vancouver cycling: big climb to Cypress from Noah Bloom on Vimeo.