Jan 20

Thoughts from a first-time marathon runner

Arizona, Sport & Health 2 Comments »

Okay, half marathon, but it makes a better title ;-) I completed the PF Chang’s Rock n’ Roll Half Marathon two days ago and wanted to post some random thoughts. Having participated in this event from two angles now (twice as a band playing on the sidelines and once as a runner) I have a few observations:

  • Holy clockwork! The level of coordination to pull this event off is nothing short of miraculous.

    Holding any event involving more than fifty people is difficult enough – they had something like 30k participants. And that’s not to mention the volunteers who staffed it, the bands that played along the route, the fire and police coordination, the road closure crews, the medics in the celebration area, the snacks and drink servers, the t-shirts and medals and schwag hander-out’ers… the list goes on. For all that took place there were only a few traffic jams and no significant mistakes that I saw. I’m blown away by the Elite Racing folks and everyone that collaborated to make this happen. Thank you thank you to the volunteers that donated their time.

  • Pace is key I now wholeheartedly grok that “slow and steady wins the race” adage. Only a few weeks ago I was sucking wind after a 6mi run with a partner and ended up walking a good portion wondering how I was going to somehow double that distance. On Sunday I was able to complete the 13.1 mi race in 2h19m without being winded (sore but not winded). I’m convinced the key to that breakthrough was in consciously slowing my pace. My goal was to finish without walking any part of it and I was fortunate to make it the whole way with the only slowdown being the trot for the occasional handoff with a water cup volunteer. It’s amazing to me what a difference in endurance it made to back off the pace slightly. If you’re struggling with endurance on a run, try reducing speed by 10% and I bet you’ll see a 2x return in both time and distance.
  • A good use of RFID When I think RFID I typically think of chipping passports and animals and big brotherish-type stuff. This was an awesome use of that technology though- the packets they distributed to runners beforehand included this orange plastic band that you attached to your laces. When you passed over the start and finish lines it clocked your times and sent the results to a central system. By the time we got back home (and probably earlier) our results were already online – that my friends is at least Web 5.0.
  • Ahem, sunscreen You can and will get burned by direct sun in the wintertime in AZ. For some reason I was thinking the sun would be low enough that I wouldn’t need sunscreen. Bad assumption.
  • Gu is good I had purchased some of those gel instant energy packs in advance and then promptly forgot them in the car in the early morning scramble to the starting line. Luckily the volunteers at mile eight were handing them out (and even the good flavor, vanilla). While this is probably frowned upon by race purists and akin to using supplemental oxygen when climbing a big mountain, I have to say it gives you a noticeable boost of energy replenishment when you need it. And to me the vanilla flavored one tastes completely fine and a lot like cake frosting.
  • Rolling storage lockers UPS provided a clever and useful service for runners. They had tons of trucks backed up at the starting line and made it so any runner could check a barcoded bag with them to store belongings. The trucks then drove to the finish line and reassembled in the parking lot like a strand of storage lockers on wheels. What a great idea and a simple yet memorable sponsorship service.
  • GPS fail I’ve been using the RunKeeper Free iPhone app to track my runs. It’s 90% awesome and 100% free so I can’t complain. But on raceday perhaps the cell network in that area was overloaded or something because it never got the GPS lock. I would recommend to anyone who plans to track a run on a raceday to acquire the GPS lock well in advance and then simply reset the clock when crossing the starting line. Trying in vain to fire it up once the race begins is a bummer and a distraction.
  • The rah-rah’s do make a difference The cheers of a complete stranger yelling “you can do it” have a surprisingly real effect. This is something that’s puzzled me about sports- I’ve gotten the camaraderie aspect amongst fans but I’ve never truly understood the adrenaline/supportive aspect from the perspective of the athlete until this race. It’s very real and I will appreciate that relationship in sporting events from now on.
  • Run like an amoeba Not quite sure how to verbalize this one but being in this river of bodies with the same goal all running with similar pace but in constant flux as people slowed or sped up- it just felt being an appendage of a larger organism. I was just one set of legs on this distributed human caterpillar that snaked through the streets of Phoenix. I can’t help but think if there were a way to organize one of these races with warring cultures somehow it would resolve a lot. Or maybe it’s the endorphins from the exertion and the high-fives with random strangers that’s the magic secret sauce. Either way, we need to bottle and share this stuff. I recommend participating in a marathon if you ever get the chance – it was an awesome experience I will remember for a long time.

    • marathon.png

    Jan 15

    Proposal for Phoenix bloggers

    Arizona, Nerd No Comments »

    Submit your blog to Erica Lucci’s “Read Phoenix” site if you haven’t already. And then add this badge to the side bar of your blog:

    ReadPhxBadge.png

    Simply copy that image and host it yourself or paste this code on your site:

    <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/readphx"><img id="ReadPhx" src="https://scrollinondubs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/ReadPhxBadge.png" alt="Read stories from other Phoenix bloggers" /></a>

    It links to a single feed that aggregates the posts of all the authors listed on Read Phoenix. Adding the badge exposes your readers to current posts from other authors in AZ. We’re always doing things to help knit the tech community better. This is a way to boost the visibility of other Phoenix authors and create a “web ring” that introduces your readers to them, and theirs to you. Here’s a post that explains how that feed is generated dynamically.

    And if you’re in the Phoenix area and have no lunch plans tomorrow (Friday), come out to TempeNerds and talk shop with other local nerds.

    Jan 11

    Twitter stole my mojo

    Nerd 8 Comments »

    Curious if anyone else has experienced this effect:

    Twitter has almost completely supplanted my drive to make thoughtful, in-depth blog posts. Its low-friction, sound bite, instant gratification-ness style for interaction satisfies enough of what the lengthier public writing used to provide to where it’s now become the path of least resistance for meeting that need.

    Let me first say I’m not hating on Twitter. It definitely has value as a communication tool and can be used in various beneficial ways (I just wrote about last month). And I understand a device like Twitter can’t be blamed for behavior anymore than a handgun can be blamed for violence. But at least in my situation it has undeniably sapped mental cycles in the way that a mindless primetime TV show being on in the background can suck me in and shut my brain off. I’ve got a theory on the dynamics of what’s happening here but before we examine the heist, let’s rewind and look at what the blog used to satisfy.

    Pre-Twitter

    For me in the past keeping a blog has served as:

    1. a reference for remembering links, random thoughts and non-intuitive things I had figured out
    2. an outlet for airing out observations and wacky ideas and getting input from others
    3. a shaming instrument to call companies out on injustices or crappy customer service experiences
    4. a self-promo tool for our company
    5. a way to give anyone who wants to connect with me more “surface area” to work with
    6. an exercise in persuasive writing
    7. a personal space to encourage deep or thoughtful exchange on complex topics that I find interesting

    Those are the main reasons I have written and continue to write posts (albeit now at an anemic pace).

    Post-Twitter

    So what has changed with the introduction of Twitter as a communication medium? Very simply, Twitter solves every one of those above except for the last two. And it does so with less friction. We naturally gravitate to the solutions that require the minimal amount of effort while adequately satisfying our needs. Whereas before keeping the blog was the path of least resistance, Twitter has become that. The only problem is that #6 & #7 aren’t a part of this new path. Or well okay, let me restate that: it’s really difficult to say anything compelling or thoughtful in a 140-char message.

    But if it’s “really difficult,” that’s a good thing right? A challenge. A hard path. Constraints breed creativity!

    Wrong. In an increasingly-ADHD environment of rapid volleys of thousands of disparate and abrupt communication snippets, I would say the real constraint challenge now is focus and attention, not message length. There’s an addictive, caffeine-like quality to Twitter too where once you’re out there, you feel compelled to stay abreast of this distributed conversation that’s occurring. You begin to feel obligated to keep up with people with whom you didn’t before. While you’re surface area is now quadrupled, your depth in connection is reduced to paper-thin.

    So what

    Well this is all fine and obvious Sean. What do you propose?

    Acknowledging that #6 & #7 are missing (or at best diluted) seems like the first step. You can get lulled into a routine and not realize the mechanics of what’s causing the behavior. Becoming conscious of the deficiency lets you recognize the issue so you can actively hunt for the source of it and make a correction. Personally I’ve discovered I don’t respond well to “push” tactics (ie. telling myself “Sean, you should really write more on the blog”). What I do respond well to is the “pull” of a vacuum when there’s something missing.

    I don’t foresee my Twitter account going away but I now recognize that it’s displaced #1-5 from this blog. The upside of this discovery is that hopefully the posts that do appear here will now be skewed towards #6 & #7. For #1-5 if you are so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter.

    What do you think? Have you experienced this same effect and if so, how do you compensate?

    Dec 28

    Introspective Hacking

    Uncategorized 3 Comments »

    So this is a different kind of hacking and not introspection in the programming sense but here’s a riff that’s been stuck in my head the past few days:





    For lack of a better name I’ll call this song “Introspect.” To me it’s about pondering the past year and the feeling of hopefulness for what’s to come this year. What story does it speak to you? Leave a comment.

    And Happy New Years everybody. Here’s to knockin’ whatever you do out of the park in ’09!

    Dec 22

    How to run a JumpBox on VirtualBox

    JumpBox, Nerd, Tutorials No Comments »

    Long story short: it’s possible. Not officially supported, but possible. Here’s the blog post that lists the caveats to watch for and here’s a hi-def screencast that shows the setup process from start to finish:

    This is significant because right now the main options for deploying JumpBoxes on Intel Macs are two commercial products: Parallels and Fusion.

    Sun’s VirtualBox product is a cross-platform, open source alternative that now gives Intel Mac users a free deployment option. Please post any questions or comments regarding this topic on the JumpBox Blog post here. And if you like the screencast give us a to promote this capability.

    Tagged with:
    Dec 10

    Photo radar in Arizona is out of hand

    Arizona 34 Comments »

    In the next six minutes $1k in revenue will be generated from photo radar cameras in AZ. And another $1k six minutes after that. Now picture the for-profit entity that just snapped your photo reaching into your wallet, extracting $165 and giving a chunk of it to the State of Arizona. I haven’t verified these facts independently but I’ve read five different articles this evening that indicate there are over 200 Redflex photo radar cameras in operation in Phoenix Metro now. Governor Napolitano signed a law into effect this summer enabling the state-wide use of photo radar enforcement and if you drive in Phoenix you know that the situation is out of hand. Here’s why:

    A. A for-profit Australian company (Redflex – RDF) has been essentially granted the ability to levy a tax against Arizonans and split the profits with the State. Last time I heard you needed to be a government entity to have the right tax a population.

    B. You paid for the installation of these cameras with your tax dollars. Doesn’t it stand to reason that the penalties exacted on you from these “safety” devices would flow back into your municipality? They don’t (at least not the majority) – they’re flowing to a publicly-traded Australian corporation.

    C. The most insidious thing about this whole sham is that the people who are collecting the tax get to do so under the guise of enforcing a safety measure. I call B.S. Camp out by a photo radar van or a fixed camera and watch as the flashes as they occur every few seconds. You’ll see an inevitable cascade of brake lights for half the cars on the road- 1/2 of the traffic instinctively slams the brakes for fear of getting flashed and the other half continues at their existing speed. That is a recipe for one thing, and it’s not safety.

    What you can do right this minute

    1. Sign up on Camera Fraud Meetup and get involved.
    2. Print out the signature pages for the initiative and referendum and await instructions.
    3. Tell 10 friends who are as pissed off about this situation as you are about 1 & 2.

    I pulled a stunt with my license plate a year ago because I was so disgusted by photo radar. They should just make the highways toll roads and be straight up about the motivation here. It’s projected that they’ll cover $90MM of a $165MM budget shortfall this year via the new highway photo radar “scameras.” How many accidents will occur during that time from the erratic braking of surprised motorists- and who will pay for those accidents? At the very least if we must live with photo radar, the for-profit entity that implements the cameras should not share in the recurring revenue generated by the cameras. As it stands now Redflex is incentivized to maximize the frequency and amounts of fines and lobby for measures that bolster the use of photo radar.

    Are you aware Redflex and its competitor American Traffic Solutions are both beginning to employ active OCR technology to track the movement of your vehicle about the city? Again, it’s done under the guise of “homeland security” and “amber alert response effectiveness” but a byproduct is that they conveniently get to interpolate your speed between cameras and issue tickets based on that calculation. Oh and your movements over time are logged and kept indefinitely (“limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed”). How long until they successfully pass a bill that gives them the right to have an ACH draw on your bank account to extract the speeding fine immediately?

    This is out of hand folks. Photo radar is not something you need to quietly accept. Get angry. Get dangerous. Let’s stop this nonsense.

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