cycling

cycling / I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / running / things to read / Tuesday / Tumblr / World Cup — Comments Off on Tuesday’s thousand words
15
Jul 14

Tuesday’s thousand words

We’re in something of a mild stretch of weather. Not too far north temperatures are 10 to 20 degrees below average. At least, for a brief time, our sky looked like this:

sky

The high today was 88 and it was mostly cloudy. I rode a few miles, just down through the back of the neighborhood and then out and up over the top of it. Of course it was raining by then. The plan was to use my legs a little bit before running a 5K through the neighborhood. After an Olympic-distance triathlon last weekend I get to simultaneously rest and taper for a sprint triathlon this coming weekend.

A real triathlete would probably find no problem with that schedule. I’m trying to figure out how to not work (rest is an important part of training) and train (because there’s clearly a lot for me to do) especially since I need improvement (a lot of improvement).

Things to read … because reading always brings improvement.

Two World Cup stories, to wrap up the mega-event. North Korea Is Telling Its Citizens That Their Team Is In The World Cup Final:

The report says North Korea’s brave side crushed Japan 7-0, USA 4-0 and China 2-0 in the group stages, before going on to reach the final… against Portugal.

I think the scores against that fictional group indicate a lot about North Korea’s geopolitics, too.

I wonder how many times North Korea has won the World Cup in their propaganda.

Dutch beat Brazil to claim bronze:

There was no lap of honour for the hosts as they trudged off down the tunnel with their heads bowed in shame.

Fragile in the back, runs that couldn’t produce from the middle and when they lost Neymar they lost their entire offense. They simply weren’t a good side, but they deserved better than they got from their crowd.

Here are two versions of a big local story: GE Aviation selects Auburn for $50 million 3D printing facility and GE Aviation in Auburn: Details on the new manufacturing project, incentives and how to apply for jobs. It is described as a first-of-its-kind facility. The plant now has 70 employees and should have 300 by the end of the decade.

Two more things about the Renaissance Man Triathlon: Husband and wife coordinate triathlon in Florence and some advice I received, in the comments.

A few other quick stories for varied interest:

New @congressedits Twitter Account Tracks Anonymous Wikipedia Updates

New Cosby show could debut as soon as next summer

Research: Human friendships based on genetic similarities beyond the superficial

Sydney Cromwell, the new editor of The Samford Crimson got an opinion piece published in Editor & Publisher. We’re excited for her for this and plenty of other reasons. She’s a talented student, strong young journalist and she’ll be a great editor, too.

Here’s a timeline for word nerds. “Language evolves”: The AP Stylebook during the last 30 years. Some of the changes are better than others, of course.

We knew this was coming: Sports Illustrated’s ‘Dirty Game’ articles spark false-light lawsuit.

This may be one of the best reads of the week: Retargeting Is Flawed; the Future Is Pretargeting:

There is no time in my life I am less likely to buy some white pants, a toaster or a flight to Los Angeles than after I’ve just bought these items, yet that’s precisely the time I see ads for these products or services.

These ghostly images stalk our internet journeys like shadows. While ineffective, these ads come to us by some of the most advanced technology there is. By some measures, they are the most appropriate ads to serve us; they can be the most noticeable, but they are also the most pointless.

The subhead reads “The future lies in targeting based on what we’re about to do, not what we’ve just done.” That’s very true. If you look at retailers, and some of the more forward-thinking online locales like Amazon, you’ll see the solutions coming in algorithms based on your habits, locale, where you are in the store, what you’ve looked at or purchased. It is based on your history, and trying to peer you up with other previous customers. Algorithms, by their very nature, have to improve, and the user experience will improve with it.

There’s a great chart in this story which deserves a careful examination: Which Types of Ads Do College Students Pay Attention to?

Our parents were all felons. Remember when your mom or dad told you to go outside and get lost? North Augusta Mother Charged With Unlawful Conduct Towards A Child:

A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time, more than once.

The mother, Debra Harrell has been booked for unlawful conduct towards a child.

The incident report goes into great detail, even saying the mother confessed to leaving her nine-year-old daughter at a park while she went to work.

The little girl is fine, but some say an area the mother thought was safe could have turned dangerous.

On the basis of “coulda” a child was entered into the South Carolina Department of Social Services. There is a fund raiser in the mom’s name.

So every time I was in the woods, walking in my neighborhood or spending a Friday night at the mall, the movies or the mini-golf place, to say nothing of the hundreds and hundreds of hours at the YMCA were all an opportunity for the authorities to step in. The silliness of this story, and the coverage, suggests there may be some changes in the charges. This is a simple and sad overreach.

I feel safer already: TSA Agent Stops Reporter Because He Didn’t Know Washington D.C. Is Part Of The United States.

I recently published three pictures on Tumblr that I haven’t yet mentioned on the site. You can find them here, here and here.

Today’s Weird Al is a catchy little ditty, guaranteed to make word nerds swoon:

adventures / cycling / I do not know what is happening. / running / swimming — Comments Off on Renaissance Man Triathlon
13
Jul 14

Renaissance Man Triathlon

One of the benefits of having family that lives within 15 minutes from the race start is that you actually get there on time.

This is the first year of the Renaissance Man Triathlon. I’ve never been in a first race before. Even if you had, how would you know what to expect? This one was all handled very well. Parking was within a few hundred yards of the race start, so you didn’t have to carry your things far. Already things are going well. I’ve marched a half mile to a starting line before …

The turnout was strong. They said there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 racers, and most from out of town. Being the first race in the city, this is not surprising. But here we are, a race I just found while surfing the web one night, in my second Olympic distance triathlon. The swim is just under one mile. The bike ride is 25.36 miles. The run is 6.1 miles. The full race measured 32 miles, or 51.5 km.

Here’s one portion of the transition area:

triathlon

The swim was in the Tennessee River. We actually got set up early enough to do a bit of swimming before the race. The water was warm and calm, much like a lake, except just upstream is the historic Wilson Dam. The start of the race was with a self-seeded time trial start. You estimate your swim time and they put people in that order. The idea being that fast people aren’t surrounded by slow people, and vice versa. We all went in one-by-one.

I’m terrible at the swim. Have I mentioned that?

I was not the last person out of the water, at least. There may have been six whole people behind me. I am bad at the swim.

I rode part of the bike route during the week, leaving out the first few miles because they held the two most prominent hills. My pace today was a little bit slower than the practice run, because of those hills and being gassed from the swim.

But, hey, I put on my shoes like real triathletes do. You put the bike on the rack with the shoes already in the pedals. You run the bike out of the transition area to the line where the race officials let you actually mount the thing. You pedal away barefoot, with your feet on top of your shoes until you can get them worked inside and the shoes tightened up.

You aren’t supposed to try new things on race day for a host of reasons, but I figured it would work or it would be obvious that it wouldn’t work, and I could just pull over. But it worked and I pedaled away.

I passed several people on the bike course. No one was strong enough to hang on to my wheel. (The real riders having been long gone already, because they are swimmers, too.) I realized on a day like today two water bottles wasn’t enough. Others realized this too.

Back into the transition area just as some people were heading in to finish their race. That’s not demoralizing at all.

So I do all the cool bike things: I take off my gloves while I’m still riding, worked my way out of the velcro in my shoes and pedaled the last bit on top of my shoes. I stopped, dismounted and had a boring and too-long transition into the run.

And then I ran. The first half mile was flat, and then there was an actual hill. And every volunteer you passed said “The first water station is just around the corner!”

You hear things like that a lot. We discussed it as we ran, the wonderful and helpful volunteers (who are wonderful and helpful) at these races are always pathological liars. “Almost there,” means nothing to these people. “You’re doing great,” is an obvious one. The ones you’d like to be true, though, on a sunny July day in Alabama especially, are “Here’s the water” and “The rest of the route is full of shade! And downhill!”

The run goes through downtown Florence, the University of North Alabama campus and one of the nice older neighborhoods in the area. It is scenic. And hot, and almost devoid of shade.

On the first part of the run I went through one intersection and the first car there, waiting for the police officer to tell her there were no more slow runners in her way, was my mom. She came down to see the finish, still five miles away.

The last mile of that run is perfectly flat and, during the time of day I did it, in total sun. If I were faster there could be shade. I got passed in the run by three or four people, and I picked up six or seven people on the way, too. The last one I got at the very end, a lady who’d had enough, but I talked her into finishing with a run, which was awesome to see.

And there, at the finish line, with the local DJ calling out racers’ names, and the big sign overhead and my wife off to one side taking pictures as she’d finished long ago and my mom shooting video, I made it in. There was a woman with a water bottle. Another person took off the timing chip. Someone came up and adjusted my runner’s bib for some reason.

We discussed how they’d lied about the shade. And then someone mentioned they had ice baths.

Every race should adopt the ice baths. They were just two kiddie pools, all of the ice had of course melted by the time I got back, but the water was still amazingly cold.

The race was fun, but the finish was better.

triathlon

The Yankee finished in second place in her division. I finished fifth in my race. I now have two Olympic-distance triathlons under my belt.

I do not know what is happening.

cycling / family / Friday / history / I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / photo / running / things to read / Tumblr / Twitter — Comments Off on Scene chewing
11
Jul 14

Scene chewing

Today I changed a doorknob. Four screws out, the new hardware in place and four more screws to install it.

road

I was listening to Pandora at the time. It took less than two songs, and that was because one of the screws was stripped.

But that wasn’t even the height of my industriousness today. I also built one of those shoe racks that you hang over a closet door and immediately regret having purchased! There’s just no end to my usefulness, it seems.

The door knob was on one of the houses that my great-grandfather built, let’s say, 60 years ago.

Here he is, the older gentleman:

WK

He built three on some of his property for rental income. They’ve all stayed in the family over the years. A few years ago I sanded down door frames in one of the houses and went through all those decades of paint. It was a smooth glimpse of archeology.

WK

At the time I wrote:

And suddenly I’ve found myself kneeling in the dust of the place, sanding smooth at least six layers of paint, peeling away the canvas of perhaps a dozen lives or more, letting that old lumber breathe again for the first time since the Eisenhower administration.

Sometimes I overwrite.

I walked around the side of that little rental and saw this, and wondered much the same thing as I did about the paint: Did he hang this?

hinge

That’s a small question that’ll never be answered. Who would remember? Who is left to know? Who would pay attention to the details of when a screen door went in? And is that the original, or something put up during the Reagan years?

I noodled up and down the road for five miles and then jogged one, the last effort before the Sunday race. We’ll see how much I come to regret that.

Usually, by this time, I am very much aware of how unprepared I am for the thing. This time I am choosing to not consciously acknowledge how unprepared I am.

Because, you know, I am.

Played with my grandparents’ dog:

road

She’s a smart one.

Things to read … so you can be smart, too.

There’s a super moon tomorrow night. Pretty large tonight, too.

US GIVEN HEADS UP ABOUT NEWSPAPER DATA DESTRUCTION:

In a statement to the AP, the Guardian said it was disappointed to learn that “cross-Atlantic conversations were taking place at the very highest levels of government ahead of the bizarre destruction of journalistic material that took place in the Guardian’s basement last July.”

“What’s perhaps most concerning is that the disclosure of these emails appears to contradict the White House’s comments about these events last year, when they questioned the appropriateness of the U.K. government’s intervention,” the newspaper said.

The White House said Thursday that the British government had acted on its own in destroying the Guardian drives.

Digital advertising will pass 25% of total ad spending this year:

Global spending on advertising will hit $545.4 billion this year, according to a report from eMarketer, and digital ads will make up more than a quarter of that spending.
Digital ad spending is likely to hit $140.15 billion this year, with $32.71 billion spent on ads for smartphones and tablets.
Growth in total media ad spending should be 5.7 percent this year, eMarketer said, more than twice the growth rate a year ago, which was 2.6 percent.

A properly sanitized report, from ESPN. Pete Carroll headed to Trojans HOF

And when ESPN disappoints you like that, they redeem themselves like this. Marcus Lattimore doesn’t walk alone

The Widespread Effects of Facebook’s Latest Outage:

The lesson, therefore, is a poignant one: When utilizing any third-party tags, particularly ones that have such a big effect on your end users interaction with your site, it’s imperative that you make sure the code is asynchronous with your own to prevent it from affecting your entire site’s performance.

Whoops. Anthrax investigation turns up ‘distressing’ issues at CDC

Stuff on my Tumblr: The mysteries of modern shipping, an examination of modern currency, an old Scout and an older swing.

On Twitter:

Leonard Nimoy had just stolen all of William Shatner’s scene chewing.

I made fun of the Horta episode, with plenty of photos. Check it out.

cycling / history / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / photo / things to read / Thursday / Tumblr — Comments Off on There’s a can’t-miss offer at the end of this post
10
Jul 14

There’s a can’t-miss offer at the end of this post

I had a V8 for breakfast this morning. “Start the gut,” they say. And I thought to myself, “I’ve forgotten how much I like V8.”

And then I read the nutrition label, remembering what I would find there, and realizing why I liked V8.

It is the potassium.

Oh, the old days in radio, when I would get to the studio at 4 a.m. and do three hours of air work and then rush down the mountain to the gas station for a V8 and a juice and some snack or other to get me through lunch. There’s nothing like faking energy on the air before 5 a.m., but, then, getting off before 2 p.m. had perks, as well.

Finally, about the time I convinced all of my friends that, no, really, I have to go to bed at 8 or 9 p.m., I was out of broadcasting. Sleeping in again never felt so good, and I probably haven’t had a V8 since.

I had lunch at a barbecue place, today, a little chicken, a little potato salad, it was delicious. And then later I went for a ride on my bicycle. I checked out 22 miles of the route for this weekend’s race. Here’s the beginning, and the end:

road

I didn’t do the very beginning, because it involves a small climb up from the river bank. I joined the circuit three miles in, where the country roads begin. This area will offer some long, gentle, slow climbs, rather than the rollers we normally ride. Always it felt like I was going uphill, or that I had dead legs, or both.

Then I’d look down at the computer and see my speed and be pleasantly surprised, except for the two hills of note. It will be a fast course through neighborhoods and beautiful corn and soybean fields and beyond pastureland stuffed with cattle. I think the layout only calls for six places where you have to slow down for turns, and so it is technically easy, and very pleasant. The roads are good. They are quiet.

Though I did have a car round a curve from the other direction so fast he was entirely in my lane. Not “I’m in the country and I can hover over the centerline a bit because I clearly see no one is coming,” but instead “For a moment there, I thought I was in England and driving on the left.”

And there was also, at the very end, the minivan full of children that wanted to pull up a little too close. People are people.

Anyway, the race planner has done a nice job, at least in the bike leg. I suspect several triathletes will come away very pleased with their times. (I will finish behind them all somewhere.) I hope I am. I didn’t even work very hard and had a high pace and absolutely bombed my way through the last turn and downhill.

Now the never-answered question: How much harder should I work during the race, knowing I have to bluff my way through a 10K after that?

Things to read … because if you read all of these you won’t have to run later.

Look out Hawaii, Samoa and Spain! We’re coming after your stuff! Or: Finally, Y2K arrives. 14,000 DRAFT NOTICES SENT TO MEN BORN IN 1800S:

The Selective Service didn’t initially catch it because the state used a two-digit code to indicate year of birth, spokesman Pat Schuback said. The federal agency identified 27,218 records of men born in the 1800s, began mailing notices to them on June 30, and began receiving calls from family members on July 3. By that time, it had sent 14,250 notices in error.

All the voter fraud people are surely wondering how many of them are still voting.

One commenter notes that perhaps they can find the IRS’s missing emails. Chinese hackers broke into computer network containing personal data on thousands of federal employees

I did this about 10 years ago. Man angry over child deaths videos self in hot car to prove a point:

“I’m sitting in the car with the windows rolled up cause I want to know how it feels to be left in the car, strapped in a car seat with the windows up, and the doors probably locked,” Williams says on the video. “I would never leave my kids in the car like this, man.”

The thing the story doesn’t mention is that babies can’t regulate their temperature as well as adults do. So when he locks himself in or, as I did, road 25 minutes from work to home at 3 p.m. at the apex of a summer in the South, there is an advantage we have. And, yes, it gets incredibly hot.

I think we’re down about a third in this category, based on the last numbers I recall seeing. I also recall working the statehouse beat, sometimes all alone, and seeing cobwebs in the old rooms that used to be the news bureaus’ — and all of that was a few years before the big cuts. It is sometimes worse on the local level. This means a lot when the politicians start to notice. Pew study: New media outlets attempt to fill void in statehouse coverage across the U.S.. The report says less than a third of the nation’s daily newspapers staff their respective statehouses. That is an embarrassment. Here are the state-by-state numbers.

First 5 Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellows Named:

The Fellowship provides a unique platform for U.S. Fulbright awardees to build awareness of transnational challenges, comparing and contrasting cross-border issues. Fellows will share their stories on nationalgeographic.com.

Finally, I made my triumphant return to Tumblr today, the place where I publish the random pictures I take so that they can one day be published on Tumblr. Today, you can enjoy amazing things like This 18-wheeler! A truly incredible chair! Or how about this postcard with a classic note? And, finally, the most amazing peanut cans ever!

There will be more tomorrow. See you then!

cycling / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday / World Cup — Comments Off on Did Frost like fries?
9
Jul 14

Did Frost like fries?

My alarm went off. I hit the snooze button. Music started playing again. I snoozed. It sounded off once more, I rolled over and started having weird snippets of strange dreams. There were happy dogs to pet, and I was happy to do it, but there was a sense of foreboding, the kind you have when you know something bad is about to happen to the character on TV. Only I am not a television character and have no reason or real sense of why anything bad would happen. So I try not to acknowledge it or let on, for the happy dogs.

I hit the snooze button again.

It is part of my charm.

I watched the Tour de France stage, which everyone hyped beyond belief yesterday. And, with the announcers, lost track of the number of crashes, which took us to the sublimely ridiculous moment of asking the cyclists, before they’d had the chance to wipe the mud from their faces, if this stage which they had hyped so much, so not be included in the future. Television is a curious thing. When it steps unselfconsciously out of its element that is when it is most in its element, though the players never seem aware.

There’s only so many times you need to see guys lose control of their under-inflated tires in a roundabout and smack the asphalt. The cobblestones and rain together, it seems, were not worth it today. I should just go back to watching the mountain stages. I only watch the bike races for the mountains and the scenery anyway. But I watched that today.

Here’s a race I’d watch, Women’s Tour de France Needs You:

In one of the biggest developments in the history of the Tour de France, women will take their place in the iconic race this year…but now it’s up to you to help them.

Following a massive worldwide push for women to have their own Tour de France the UCI and ASO have responded with a one day race on the final stage.

[…]

This may just be one day, but it’s not a token gesture. It’s a trial. A test to see how popular, supported and lucrative women’s cycling is. It won’t remain a one day race forever, moving forward it will grow and develop in the sporting landscape and in people’s consciousness.

And a trailer for a related documentary:

I finished the laundry. I moved things around.

I had Whataburger for a late lunch and, there in the parking lot, got to watch two teenagers have a marginally dramatic disagreement. She was mad at him about something. And he loved her, you know. She worked at the Whataburger and her coworkers thought enough of all of it to come outside. He, in trying to demonstrate his love despite whatever had made her mad, parked behind her car and mine.

So I saved the day. Move the car, bub. I have fries to eat and many miles to go, etc.

Judging by his reaction, this guy had never read Robert Frost. But he had the sullen look down. And while he did that, she went inside to work and he left.

I wonder what he did wrong.

I did a full inventory of things at work. I wrote emails. I repaired tripods. You don’t know fun until you’ve fixed tripods with nothing more than a pair of pliers.

I listened to the Argentina-Netherlands game. Glad I didn’t watch that woof-fest.

All of that kept me longer than I’d hoped, but it did give me these views:

sunset

sunset

sunset

sunset

sunset

So, you know, a perfectly wonderful and stunning day.

Things to read … because reading always makes your day.

We’ll start off across the pond. Ed Miliband’s scare tactics will not cure the NHS:

A report published by the Royal College of Surgeons and Age UK shows that rationing is being extended to cover life-saving operations on elderly patients. A study found that in large parts of the country, hardly anyone above the age of 75 was receiving surgery for conditions such as breast cancer and gall bladder removal. This is wrong. There should be no automatic cut-off age for treatment, not least because the elderly have contributed sufficiently in taxes throughout their working lives to expect to be afforded decent and proper care.

Is it just me, or should that last sentence have a full stop at the comma?

Another interesting story about the U.S. you’ll find more prominently abroad. US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research

This is one of the more thorough and cogent essays of the day. Media Ignorance Is Becoming A Serious Problem

I opened a closet door in my inventory efforts today. Don’t think I didn’t think of this. Misplaced Vials Of Smallpox Found Abandoned In Storage Room

There is a lot of interesting stuff to unpack here. A lot. Implementation Of Europe’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ About As Absurd As You’d Expect

Closer to home … Pathway to Graduation helps struggling readers succeed:

“I like the program because I got the nicest teachers and I like what we do in our decoding and fluency and we get into small groups and we work together and we try to figure the problem out,” Hicks said.

The college part goes two ways. It teaches younger students to dream of a future and furthering their education and it gives students in Samford’s School of Education valuable experience.

Service learning is such a great tool. I wish there were more ways to implement it in every field — and it is in place in a lot of areas to begin with.

Police: Mother of missing boy didn’t remember letting cousin take him home when she was intoxicated As always on al.com, avoid the comments.

Two interesting data points here. How Obamacare has changed the rate of Alabama’s uninsured

Words to live by. CNN’s social news editor: Engagement doesn’t have to mean clickbait

This is becoming a common refrain, I know. Mobile Leads Rise in Media Ad Spending

But … in that context …

The whole world is changing. The great disruptor in your pocket or purse is a part of that. Interesting feeling, no?

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