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Archive: January 11, 2009
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Yesterday I rode the PCH Randonneurs 200K, kicking off the riding season. It was a flat course, started in Ventura and down the coast to Malibu and back, and then up the coast to Montecito and back. In the morning it was super windy, making things a bit "interesting", but the wind died off during the day and it ended up being gorgeous.
mile 15: sunrise over Mugu rock
mile 20: Pacific scene
mile 35: first turnaround: Starbucks at Trancas Canyon
mile 40: self-portrait
mile 45: this place will host 100s of bikers later
mile 50: Team Astana out for a training ride!
mile 75: Ventura checkpoint; feeling good
mile 90: surf's up: California in January
mile 110: the freeway in Carpinteria
mile 125: Rincon Beach
For the record it took me 7:07 riding time for 125 miles (200K), an average of 17.5mph; not bad considering the wind. Oh, and I finished third! (Two guys on recumbants beat me; I never even saw them.)
Next up: The Stagecoach Century in Ocotillo, next weekend. Should be fun...
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 I spent last night recuperating from the ride (and re-watching L.A.Story with Shirley, how great was that movie?) so I didn't make time to blog; but here's a filter pass for your perusal...
Don't you hate dislike it when bloggers put up a "test post"? I can understand wanting to test - I do it all the time - but after the test, why not delete it? By leaving it up, you're assuming we care about how you blog. Wrong. We care about what you blog, how you do it, not so much. Especially not test results. 
 Last night I watched the Ravens squeak by the Titans; great game. (I was rooting for Baltimore, of course, because if they won and the Chargers win today that means the AFC Championship will be in San Diego next weekend!) And this morning I watched the Cardinals dismantle the Panthers; not a great game. Interesting how you just never know. Just now I'm watching the Eagles - Giants game which stands at 7-5, baseball anyone? And then of course this afternoon we have the BIG game, Chargers against the Steelers (dum dum dum). I predict the winner of that game will win the AFC Championship, and the Super Bowl. Stay tuned...
During football there are a metric ton of commercials from Verizon for the Blackberry Storm. (So many that I can tell even Tivo-30-second-skipping through them.) Funny how it looked so cool a week ago, but now with the Palm Pre announcement it seems rather dated. Today's cheese is tomorrow's rind.
 Speaking of the Pre, Palm's CES presentation is now available online. Pretty nice job by John Rubenstein and Ed Colligan, but the star was Mattias Duarte, who led the team that developed the webOS UI and conducted the demo on-stage. Really compelling. You could tell he knew he had a tiger by the tail.
Palm have now introduces the App Catalog, a place for developers to market their Pre applications. Note the positioning; catalog instead of store. Palm seems to be doing a lot right, it will be interesting to see how consumers respond.
One more Pre -note; there are rumors that the device will cost $399, and various "analysts" are saying it must be priced at $250 to compete with the iPhone. That is not even wrong. Smartphone pricing depends heavily on the service plan, so the up-front-cost by itself is irrelevant. And the Pre really is a game-changer, especially for someone [like me] who is unwilling to switch to AT&T... I'd be delighted to pay $399 for it, provided the monthly service cost is similar to my Centro's...
 Dave Winer: How investigative research happens in the blogosphere. He gets off to a great start with this diagram, pointing out that bloggers do opinion as well as the pros, and do event reporting better than the pros. From that it could follow that they do the reporting in the middle, too - and they do - but the example he uses, how he collaboratively designed some thumbnail upload facility, is weak; that is navel gazing about some random technical matter, not investigative research. Still his main point is valid.
Truth is stranger than the Onion: Zimbabwe introduces $50B note. "John Robertson, an economist in Zimbabwe, said he's puzzled by the introduction of the $50 billion and $20 billion notes. 'I am not really sure what these notes would be for,' he said. 'No one now accepts the local currency. It is a waste of resources to print Zimbabwe dollar notes now. Who accepts a currency that loses value by almost 100 percent daily?' In August, the RBZ slashed ten zeros from the currency. But the zeroes have bounced back with more vigor." It would be funnier if the Zimbabwean people weren't suffering. The true joke is Robert Mugabe.
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 Hi y'all... well, I'm trying something new with Twitter. If you're a regular reader you know I haven't found tweets to be particularly exciting; there seems like a lot of "chatter" and not much actual information. But so many people are finding Twitter to be so useful that I'm continuing to hang in there; maybe I just don't get it yet.
My friend Gary suggested that I use Twitter as a way to notify people that I've posted something new. Sort of like an RSS feed, but immediate PUSH instead of delayed PULL. Who knows, maybe you would find that useful :) Therefore, as an experiment I've rigged it so that every time I post to my blog, I tweet about it. You could follow me and thereby know immediately if I post something.
We'll see whether y'all find this useful; if you have an opinion please share it!
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 Hi y'all, again... well, I'm trying something new with Facebook. Unlike Twitter, which I really don't get, Facebook definitely has a "there" there; I can see the attraction. I have certain friends who post messages, pictures, status, etc. on Facebook, and it's a pretty cool way to know what they're up to. There is a signal to noise problem because the friends with the most Facebook activity aren't necessarily the friends who I'm the most interested in following closely, but so be it.
Now that I've wired Twitter to my blog, so that when I post to my blog, I tweet about it, I've also wired Facebook to Twitter, so that my tweets go into my Facebook status. This means if you're one of my friends on Facebook, you can see when I post something to my blog from my Facebook status. Who knows, maybe you'll like that :)
Like with Twitter, we'll see whether y'all find this useful; if you have an opinion please share it!
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