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cycling / Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
2
May 25

The fickleness of the breeze

It’s Friday! Right? Friday? Yeah. Sometimes you have to check a calendar, just to be sure. I wrapped up the week’s grading in yesterday. And I have done the updates to my computer, cleaning a month’s worth of files, creating subdirectories for May, updating site statistics in the site statistics spreadsheet.

And, hey, we’re well ahead of last year’s numbers here, so thanks for that. I don’t know why people come here, but I’m glad you do.

So one class wrapped up this week, and their final is due next Monday. My online class has another week-and-change to go, with a lot of work still to come. And a lot of things to grade, and then grades to submit. The next two weeks, then, are busy. A lot of sitting here staring at computer screens, plenty of little study breaks, but then right back to it.

I never learned that skill young, but there’s nothing like impending deadlines to teach new skills.

I set out for a 25-mile ride after a day of sitting in front of the computer. One of the regular routes I established last year. It is a route that, on the map, is roughly shaped like a bullet, though I am not nearly as fast as.

I went into town and through it, doubling back and through a crossroads that has the word “town” in its name, but it is nothing more than a red light, a farmer’s market, a gas station and a small car dealership. Then, out into the countryside.

I took a turn that sends me back to the river, but crops, woods and a few houses and developments in between. Usually this is a road that gives me five or six miles without any cars. And, once you’ve done this for a while, those experiences stand out, and you make note of them, so that you may ride them again.

When the road ends, it is time to turn right. You have a nice wide shoulder-slash-bike-lane-but-mostly-shoulder, where you can do four miles super fast, which you also make note of, and visit as often as you can. And then back on the road for home, a seven-mile stretch … into the wind.

This is a mistake. The conventional wisdom is that you start into the devise a route that puts you into a headwind first, and then the tailwind on the way back. Economy of efficiency when you’re more tired. Because I was doing a rectangular route, a squishy bullet, I should have had a tailwind to start, and a tailwind to finish.

But, if you live in a place like we do, this is a challenge. Nearly an impossibility. Today, on that same road, a straight line with flags flying at regular intervals, the wind blew from every direction on the same road within 80 minutes.

What even is that?

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11
Apr 25

The problems of spring

This is a glorious time of year. The changing of seasons, the warmening of the soil, the bluening of the sky, the wettening of everything, these are lovely things, full of the promise of the future. The promisening of the future, if you will.

But there are things to complain about. There’s the pollen. And there is the impermanence of the weather. Granted, this one differs based on where you are. Some places spring just two or three days before you’re slouching your way into a bone-melting summer. Some places spring comes non-too-soon. Perhaps it just feels like a flirtation of spring. There’s the inconsistency, for a time, of the greenening of things. And there’s all of that winter and fall to deal with. Where do all those extra leaves come from?

Then there are the flowering buds.

Here’s what I’m urging the horticulturists and the botanists, the agronomists, the biologists, the bio-technologists and the plant breedologists to do: develop an attractive shrub, or dwarf tree, that blooms throughout the growing season.

Sure, this will take a little more energy, blooms are consumers, but think of the propagation possibilities of a plant that can offer bugs and bees pollen for months on end —

I now see the problem with this plan.

But maybe it’d be worth it. Isn’t everything so beautiful in the spring?

We’re going to have a brief hiatus on the blog. I’ve spent this week catching up, just in time for the end-of-semester pace to kick in. I’m hoping that, next week, I can get ahead of things for a change. Which will be great, because it will allow me time to get behind again in the weeks that follow. That’s the run to mid-May, just trying to stay in touch with the schedule and its demands.

But I’ll be writing here again on April 21st.

Maybe someone will figure out the ever bloomening tree by then.

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21
Mar 25

The Friday random

This week flew by, somehow, and now it’s time to get back into class mode. So I’m starting to work on next wee’s classes. And wondering where this week went. And wondering how the next two or three weeks will go. There’s a lot to work through. So I must get to it.

But, first, there’s this.

I dropped a piece of paper in our Chicago hotel room and it just … disappeared. I’m glad there was nothing vital or embarrassing on the note, because it’s gone. My best guess is that it fell and slid under this improbably heavy and immovable bed frame. While I was looking for it, I somehow accidentally took this photo. For an accident it is a pretty decent composition.

I like how it blurs in the foreground but becomes clear as it goes forward. I’m looking for a metaphor there.

I updated the front page of the website. Go check it out. It looks something like this right now.

As we were waiting to take off from Chicago, I made the mistake of looking at the flight monitor screen on the back of seat in front of me. Despite the snow we drove through to get to the airport, conditions must have been radically different on the tarmac.

So it was a good time to leave, I guess. But that was last Sunday and this is Friday and next, for us, is Monday. I’ll see you then!

cycling / Rowan / site / Thursday — Comments Off
6
Feb 25

True or false or maybe

I am floating rib deep into grading. I have 60-something quizzes to work through, and of course, there are plenty of other things as well. So let’s just get through this, shall we?

I have updated the art on the front page. It looks a lot like this.

Head on over to kennysmith.org to see the whole thing. If you sit with it for 50 seconds, you’ll see the whole assortment of 10 new photographs that I took on a beautiful spring day in central California last year. We were waiting for a lunch order over this beautiful bit of sand and sea. And I’ve held on to these photos specifically just to get through the interminable second half of winter.

I had a short bike ride this evening. It took me high into the snowcapped mountains. But I want you to look off to the side of this photo. Do you see that road?

That’s the radio tower bonus climb, sure to strike fear in the hearts of every exhausted rider, who has already slogged their way up the Epic KOM, climbing 1,364 feet over 5.9 miles from sea level. That bonus climb is an even sharper three-quarters of a mile, with an average gradient of 12.8 percent, demanding another 492 feet of ascent. I hate it.

But the route didn’t take up to that tower. I just pedaled right by, to my great relief (I don’t always know where a route will take me) and then back down into the tree line, where the green things grow, and the windmills mill.

In total, it was just a 22 mile ride, and pretty slow, even for me. But I did somehow collect four PRs on Strava segments along the away, including on two climbs.

Small wins are huge wins.

And, now, back to getting ready for more work.

cycling / Friday / site — Comments Off
17
Jan 25

I finally left Meta behind

My god-sister-in-law (just go with it) has a friend who is in a two-man band and they played a restaurant nearby this evening. So we braved the chill night air and drove to see them play. Gen X covers. They do a nice job. They can fade into the background or grab the room’s attention. Whatever is required at the moment. Good music! Very average cheeseburger!

Before that, I did this. It felt good.

I also changed up the buttons on the front page and the top of this page. No reason to have links to things I don’t use anymore.

I don’t want to say it was cathartic, or even a big decision. I ignored Threads almost immediately because it was terrible from the start. I never got a lot of traction on Instagram, because I’m not especially popular, I guess. Facebook never appealed to me all that much. So these things were easy for me. They’ll be less easy for some, I realize that. And I know that some people will be fine with the direction Zuckerberg is going.

I could thunder away at that for a few thousand words. The content moderation, dismissing the very notion of fact checking, the filters, the misinformation, the changes to their standards which will have continued negative effect on users. People you know are going to be brought further into risk by Zuckerberg’s decisions to cozy up, or read the moment, or try to be relevant — whatever the true motivation is. And whatever that motivation is, users barely figure into it. That’s not a new thing at 1 Hacker Way. Cambridge Analytica should have been the wooden stake in the heart. What they did to news media, their legendary pivot to video nonsense, how they’ve data mined you and gleefully put their thumb on the scale of distribution, the surveillance, any one of these should have all had them tossed with the bathwater. But here we are. They think they’ve got you, because you allowed for all of that. And now, at this moment, we are at a place where none of what’s going to occur is worth whatever you think you get in return.

That’s a personal decision for everyone, but even before they make it, people have got to know about it. The chronically online are the first to see what’s happening. The rest will figure it out for themselves later. (Maybe. Depending on what media environment they’ve cultivated for themselves.) If it does bubble into their consciousness, people will make their own decisions based on toleration and habits and needs.

Thing is, we don’t really need any of these things for much. We certainly don’t have to tolerate the coarseness and continued enshittification. There are better alternatives when it comes to how one spends their time, keeps in touch, or what have you. Some of them are much better.

So I didn’t have great habits in Meta’s walled garden. I don’t need them. This was an easy choice. Moreover, it’s the right one.

Wish I’d done it much, much, sooner.

I said yesterday’s bike ride was perfectly uninspired. Today’s was even more ho-hum, if that’s possible. Just 20 miles. Nothing of interest to report. Some days you’re just keeping the legs turning, and that was today.

But I did go by the best fake storefront in the fake Zwift world.

I blame the weather. We’re due some snow this weekend and then a week of bitter, bitter cold. That’s no way to begin a new semester, which starts on Tuesday.