Posts from — August 2005

I ran 6.4 miles today, from the New Street Bridge, past Stefko, East to another bridge, in some town whose name I don’t know. On the way back, I went by the Bethlehem Sewage Treatment Plant. What a treat to run by that! For some reason, this plant is in the middle of nowhere and has very high security: barbed wire, cameras, no trespassing signs, etc. So I’m wondering, who is trying to break into a sewage treatment plant. The only idea that came to mind was that local mobsters would use it for drowning people. They could put cement shoes on them, and tell them to go “sleep with the feces” (that one kept me entertained for a while on the run).

Once I was almost back, I stopped at the club fair to visit with people, and give John R a big wet hug. Hmm, I can’t end an entry with that awkward sentence, so I’ll just put this one in.

After talking with Prof Davison today, I realized that Fundamentals of Internetworking was probably below my level and not really worth my time. So, I began looking for a new course to take in its place. I’m not particularly interested in advanced networking, so I didn’t want to take the graduate course in it (one semester of Cheng-Chenggery was enough). This left me with Game AI, Bioinformatics, and Data Mining.

Game AI and Bioinformatics are the most trendy and probably easier courses, but as of now I’m leaning toward Data Mining, since it’s related to document processing, and it’s regarded as one of the hardest (or at least most work-intensive) courses in the department. Since I’m taking 3 courses and not working or doing a thesis this semester, I might as well do it now.

I guess I need to buy books for these things eventually.

Amarok, my music player of choice, now integrates wikipedia information about the artist, album, etc. It’s actually quite useful. The information on wikipedia about bands and albums is usually really good, filled with trivia, history, context, and links to related music.

Take a look at this optical illusion. If you stare at the crosshairs, it first looks like there’s a green dot going around. Then, it looks like the dots disappear (in a rotating order). If you stare directly at one of the dots, you can see that it’s just turning on and off.

Some links that may be worth reading….

The Onion’s A.V. Club interviews Steve Carell – Lots of interesting information about how Daily Show field reports work, how awkward it can be, etc.

Slate has a very good debate on Intelligent Design – Very well reasoned and respectful on both sides.

“Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About” Tops Book Charts – There are very few people I actually hate, but Kevin Trudeau is one of them. I’ve watched his ads before for the comedic value (though it’s no “Magic Bullet”), but it’s really disgusting. He preys upon people with serious diseases and feeds them snake oil. The Daily Show has a good segment on it. I’m not sure what I think about the people who buy this. On one level, I feel bad that they’ve been duped, but it’s also their own fault for not thinking critically (or at all). To be honest, I think I’d be happy if I found out that Kevin Trudeau died of cancer in a couple of years.

It seems like there’s been an increasing mistrust of science lately, and I’m not sure why.

I ran in the Fountain Hill 5K (3.1 mi) race yesterday morning. I hadn’t raced for at least a few years, and I had no idea how I’d do. In retrospect, my speed is ok, but my endurance and pacing are absolutely terrible. I ran the first two miles in 6:10 and 6:30 and finished the race just over 21 minutes. I’m not going to compute how slow that last mile was, I don’t even want to know. I went out too fast and couldn’t handle it.

The thing is, I had no idea I was going too fast. I felt fine after the first mile (I was really excited for the race at the start line, I think that contributed to it). I seem to have a problem in the last few months where my comfortable running pace is a bit too fast so I can’t seem to go as far as I’d like to, so I think this is related.

If I were twice as old, I would have won my age group!

The race was nice, it had a small town feel, with the mayor of Fountain Hill presenting scholarships to a couple of local kids and stuff. I talked to a couple of guys, one of whom was from Runner’s World, about Runstoppable and related sites. I got his email, so hopefully he’ll be a good resource (it was Bart Yasso, who has run “over 150″ marathons all over the world).

Around the 1.2 mile mark, we passed by the emergency room at Saint Luke’s hospital. I said to the guy next to me “I think they should have put the finish line here, we could go right in!”. Sadly, he didn’t think it was as funny as I did, so I awkwardly ran away from him. Oh well, I tried.

Oh yeah, I was beaten by a 54 year old and a 14 year old (I came in 30th place of 200 or so). The oldest runner in the race came in 4 minutes after I did… pushing his grandson in a stroller.

I woke up at about 6:45 this morning. My alarm had been set for 8:15 so that I could try to go running before work. Not quite sure why I got up early, but I had just had some sort of dream. I remember part of it being a good analysis of recent happenings, but I don’t remember what the analysis actually was. At the end, I was standing in front of WaWa (the one on North side) talking to Tim about predictability of the universe, and tangentially Chaos Theory (yeah, sad but true). Tim said something like ‘everything can be predicted’, so then I yelled “CAN YOU PREDICT THIS?” and ran into the brick wall with incredible Superman-like speed. Then I woke up.

So that was amusing.

Anyway, since I was awake, I decided to run early, leaving the house at about 7am. The run was fairly easy, almost exactly 3 miles. My left quad has been sore for the last couple of days, so I’m not sure that I’ll race tomorrow, I’ll probably decide tomorrow morning.

The morning time slot is pretty good for running since it’s cool out, light out, and there aren’t a huge number of cars on the road. I should have eaten something light (like a piece of bread) before going out, since I did get hungry, but other than that I was ok. I ran at about a 7:20 min/mi pace (maybe a bit slower). I need to start doing more distance, I should find time this weekend for that.

“The hardest thing about running a half-marathon is explaining it to my non-running friends. They ask me why I didn’t run the whole way.”

I’m not sure that’s the hardest thing about it, but the quote is funny.

I also need to find some lighter running music for the morning, some of it was really overpowering. Maybe “My Blue Heaven” will make it in. The opening theme from Chariots of Fire is a nice way to start a morning run.

Overheard in New York. People submit things they overhear… lots of hilarious out of context lines there.

Favorites:
“Guy: That’s the last time I date a girl with a cape.”
“Bag lady: Can I have a quarter? The Irish have taken over the YMCA.”
“Drunk hobo: I have a lottery ticket. My father played the lottery every week. Must’ve had about a hundred fucking tickets. What if I find out I won and I’m on the subway? No one’s getting away. I’m taking down everyone’s number. We’re going to dinner. Your family too. No cousins.” (last sentence certainly makes that one)
“Fratboy: She was like an ugly Paris Hilton, but not rich.”

It could be fun to start one of these at Lehigh. Too bad I’m not taking classes that tend to generate more great lines (i.e. Spanish and cog sci).

I tried out a few other running log sites today, just to see what was out there. I got a couple of new ideas, but for the most part the sites were terrible. They all seemed to lock-in their users data (Runstoppable won’t do that), and generally either seemed impersonal or unprofessional. None of them integrated mapping. A couple had graphical statistics, but it was just a limited set of statistics that could be displayed… you couldn’t generate your own graphs. Most of the graphs were on non-free systems, anyway. Despite not being too good, all of the sites seemed to be reasonably active. Getting someone to switch running logs is really hard since they might need to lose their data, but making the switch easier is something we’ll be working on.

Pete and I have determined that I destroyed the band last year by accident. Oh well, it had a good 97 or so years.