Here’s what I did last month. The red is on the bike, which was limited. The dark blue is running and the light blue is in the pool, which was especially limited. It isn’t nearly enough for where I’d like to be.
It isn’t nearly enough.
cycling
30
Jun 14
Monday titles always suffer
In the middle or late part of the evening yesterday we decided we’d run a brick, which is a workout where you combine two of the three elements of a triathlon. We decided to ride for an hour and then run for an hour.
So we we rode out of town as far as we could for a half hour. I went 32 minutes, which is nothing, but that got me to an intersection, a gas station and a turnaround. I thought I would race myself back, beat my time and all of that. Which is about the time my knee ligaments started hurting, so I slowed it down and still almost beat myself back home.
After which we started to run. Sometimes when you run, or when I run, at least, you just don’t feel it. You have to figure out when your body is telling you something and when your body is lying to you. Today I decided that it was not a day to run. Didn’t feel it, didn’t want it, didn’t press it.
And so that was that.
We had barbecue for dinner with a friend last night, that made it all a bit better. Tonight we dined with other friends who made jerk chicken, which was even better.
Things to read … because reading makes everything better.
If you don’t pay for it, you are the product. Or the research subject. Everything We Know About Facebook’s Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment:
And on Sunday afternoon, Adam D.I. Kramer, one of the study’s authors and a Facebook employee, commented on the experiment in a public Facebook post. “And at the end of the day, the actual impact on people in the experiment was the minimal amount to statistically detect it,” he writes. “Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you that our goal was never to upset anyone. […] In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.”
Kramer adds that Facebook’s internal review practices have “come a long way” since 2012, when the experiment was run.
There is a possibility that the sorry state of scientific research funding contributes to all of this. There’s also the possibility that, at some future date, some future lawsuits over this situation are landmark things we teach in research.
There’s more on IRB, the APA ethics and the notion of informed consent at the link.
Since we are at the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of World War I, here’s a good historical read with an Alabama hook. ‘There was never a braver lad:’ Alabama’s Osmond Kelly Ingram was first US sailor killed in WWI:
Ingram, 30, was aboard the Cassin off the Irish coast on Oct. 15, 1917 when the ship was attacked by a German submarine U-61. Ingram was cleaning the muzzle of a gun after morning target practice when he spotted a torpedo on a direct course for the ship. The Cassin began evasive maneuvers which seemed to have worked until the torpedo “porpoised,” or jumped out of the water, and turned towards the Cassin, Navy historians report.
Ingram, realizing the torpedo would hit near the depth charges at the ship’s stern, ran to release them in an effort to minimize the explosion and save the vessel.
Sadly, one of the first Americans killed at sea in World War II was from Alabama. The first American killed in Afghanistan was from Alabama too. One of the first Americans killed in Iraq was from here, too.
What will change Twitter? Twitter Rolls Out App Install And Engagement Ads, And New Click Pricing, Globally:
Twitter says that in the last quarter it made about 72 percent of all its revenues (equivalent to $181 million out of total revenues of $250 million) from mobile advertising.
On top of the app install ads, Twitter will also be expanding the kinds of reporting and analytics that app publishers will get around them.
The company says that keyword targeting in the ads will follow that of its other mobile units, with publishers able to set placement based on interest, keyword, gender, geographic location, language and mobile device, among other things.
This is all very logical. This will be very useful for those advertising in Twitter, and will refine things somewhat for consumers.
There is another plan that could come to fruition, which would be less useful. I remind you of, or introduce you to, what my friend @IkePigott said earlier this year:
TWITTER PREDICTION 1: "Mute "is meant to choke down traffic, because Facebook has an algorithm and Twitter doesn't.
— Ike Pigott (@ikepigott) May 14, 2014
TWITTER PREDICTION 2: After Mute is in play, brands will have an opportunity to "purchase" analytics showing real reach.
— Ike Pigott (@ikepigott) May 14, 2014
TWITTER PREDICTION 3: Also, brands will be able to pay for sponsored tweets that will override the Mute.
— Ike Pigott (@ikepigott) May 14, 2014
TWITTER PREDICTION 4: Individuals will slowly abandon the platform, as organic social behavior is no longer rewarded.
— Ike Pigott (@ikepigott) May 14, 2014
In their last quarter Twitter reported $250 million in revenue — and $181 million in mobile advertising. This is all very big business.
23
Jun 14
Golfing with Fin
My old friend Fin and I went out for a round of golf under the bright summer sun this morning and afternoon. We rode 18 and my clothes still changed colors. I hadn’t realized how much I sweat until I got home. Fortunately the course, which is very nice and super long, is just down the street from our home.
Anyway, here’s Fin pulling off some improbable shot or another:
I had two decent shots today. See that line going toward the pin? That’s my chip from beyond the back side of the green. They’d just sanded them, giving us some excellent lines to read:
We couldn’t play best ball, because we often wind up like this. At least once a hole we are within 10 feet of one another, to the good or bad. I would have thought he’d be much better at this than I am by now. I’m not very good at all. I think he was sand-bagging.
Oh, I played the last four holes or so in my sock-feet because I did this to my old, cheap shoes:
Both shoes, within about a hole of each other. Oddly, I might have played better after I took them off. Something to keep in mind for next time.
Despite the heat I felt much better riding my bike this evening, which was abbreviated to only 14 miles because I got caught out in the rain. Usually I enjoy this, it is funny to me somehow, but today I decided I’d wait it out.
We were in a downpour, though, and I’m standing under the protective awning of a church building, staring at radar and marveling at how this system isn’t moving, it is just content to exist and drip. Then I got a text reminding me of dinner plans with our lovely neighbors. So I had to ride home in the rain.
Raindrops start to sting at around 29 miles per hour, just so you know.
Things to read … because reading never stings.
Just two things today, first your regular drone feature. CNN to study drone use for reporting:
The announcement comes amid widespread interest in newsrooms across the country in what’s been dubbed “drone journalism,” and equally widespread uncertainty about the legality of it. The FAA has severely limited the use of drones for commercial purposes, including newsgathering. It is due to develop new drone rules by September 2015.
“Our hope is that by working cooperatively to share knowledge, we can accelerate the process for CNN and other media organizations to safely integrate this new technology into their coverage plans,” David Vigilante, CNN’s senior vice president for legal, said in a statement. “It’s a natural opportunity to work with our neighbors at Georgia Tech, who have experience and insights into this area.”
The headline to this story is great — Police: 4-Year-Old Girl Foils Babysitter’s Burglary Plot — but the quote from the sheriff is even better.
19
Jun 14
Things to read
I am resting my legs. I am resting my legs because I’ve ridden two days in a row. I’ve ridden a paltry 28 miles on Tuesday and Wednesday, my first two rides on a real bike in a calendar month. Both rides felt like bad first rides. They weren’t even particularly demanding rides. I sought out easy routes. My legs are in no kind of form and that’s unfortunate.
And so it seems clear to me that I need to find a way to travel with my bike wherever I go because this is silly.
I have a lot of catching up to do.
Things to read … because I can catch up there more easily, I’d bet.
At the New York Times — A Paper Boat Navigating a Digital Sea:
The morning meeting is one of two large news meetings each day, with the other at 4 p.m. (For the record, of the 23 people seated around the main table, as opposed to the periphery, seven were women; two, both men, were African-American.)
The focus at the meetings, and The Times, has come a long way since the days when “what’s going on page one?” was the biggest question. Clearly, there’s an effort to make this, more than ever, an “all platforms” newsroom.
But the structural changes at The Times and in the larger media world are even more striking. And therein lies a problem that has no easy solution: how to fully transform for the digital future when the business model — and the DNA of the newsroom — is so tied to the printed newspaper.
The source may be anonymous, but the shame is all yours:
How did anonymous sourcing become the rule rather than the exception in American journalism? Journalism professor Matt J. Duffy informs us in a new (and securely paywalled) paper that anonymous sourcing was sufficiently rare in the first three decades of the 20th century that none of the journalism textbooks and guides he examined made mention of the practice. The first textbook mention Duffy encountered was published in 1955 — An Introduction to Journalism: A Survey of the Fourth Estate in All Its Forms, by Fraser Bond. According to Bond, anonymous sources appeared primarily in foreign diplomatic reporting and in those cases that reporters wanted to attribute information from the president.
Luca Forlin, Head of International Product Partnerships at Google, shared several thoughts on where mobile publishing is headed. “There are two things right now. There are two things right now. The first is the around the devices and the second is around usage.”
Around devices, “the interesting element is that we have seen huge growth in smaller tablets – phablets – which are taking a huge share of the market from the bigger tablets. Does that change much in terms of what publishers do? The truth is we are not yet sure. What is clear is that publishers must abandon the idea of designing something one way and move to a world where content actually adapts. Optimisation is really important. The second thing is that, while phablets are taking over, in reality they belong to the smartphone family, which is entirely different from big tablets. That again forces them to abandon their old habits. Small screen sizes require much more simplicity, different design logic and different content.”
Think about it: text is text, but images are hard in some mobile platforms. Some videos work well there, others less so. We have to think not only about the content, but where it is going and, now, how it is going to look in several different places.
10
Jun 14
Another sea day
Before my first cruise, when I was skeptical about the entire idea, I was pretty sure a sea day would be the worst part of it all. Before that first cruise was over I decided I liked the sea days best of all. You can rest and read and relax and there is always plenty to do.
I did some more high-tension climbing on a stationary bike this morning, about six miles worth, just warming my legs. This is the view from the gym:
I ran a 5K on the deck where a guy announced they should kill the engines and run off of me. We’d never make it to Bermuda.
Perhaps that was his point. Maybe he wanted another sea day, too.
Our view before dinner tonight:
We have not felt the ship move at all. The water has been incredibly calm. And we arrive in Bermuda tomorrow.
