Archive: July 21, 2009

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TDF stage 16 / climb - Astarloza attacks to win / jerseys unchanged after battle

Tuesday,  07/21/09  10:51 PM

(refraining from descriptive titles until a couple of days later, for you Tivoers out there...) And so after a rest day we had a day of fireworks in the Tour, with two massive climbs between Martigny and Bourg-Saint-Maurice that resulted in a further selection.  Mikel Astarloza won with a daring last minute break, but the real battle took place among the GC men behind him.  The Schleck brothers attacked, Contador and Kloden followed, and for a while there was a split between the contenders, with Lance Armstrong powering across the gap.  Ultimately the leaders came back together but some of the pretenders gave up more time, like poor Cadel Evans.  You could really see who was "on the rivet" and who wasn't; Bradley Wiggins looked really strong (pic at left), as did Contador, Andy Schleck, and Kloden, Lance showed a flash of his old power crossing the gap, and Frank Schleck, Vincenzo Nibali, and Christian Vande Velde were able to match the pace.  Also up there today was Kim Kirchen, who looks to be getting stronger. Tomorrow is a maniacal stage with five massive climbs (the "queen" stage), but I don't look for any further selections until the TT on Thursday.  That's really the only and best chance for Lance or Bradley Wiggins to take time from Contador.  And/or for Kloden to move up into a podium spot.  There will be more attacking tomorrow because the Schlecks really can only gain on a climb, and perhaps one or more of the leaders will fall by the wayside; we'll see. On a sad note poor Jens Voigt pulled out in the early break, fell back to power Saxo up the first climb, and then crashed heavily on the descent.  I sure hope he's okay, and it is sad to see him out of the tour. One more note: check out this video of Fabian Cancellara descending on stage 7; this was while he was still in yellow, after he'd flatted, and with the peloton charging down the hill.  Wild bike handling skills on display as he weaves through the motorcycles and team cars at 60+kph :) [ Tour de France 2009: all posts | index ]

 

Tuesday,  07/21/09  10:55 PM

Still tired.  I seem unable to sleep enough, and then spend the whole day tiring myself out further :)  Busy day of meetings as our company absorbs our growth plans, and then a hard 30-miler with my friend and colleague Craig.  And then dinner and too much wine (Mahi Mahi and Sauvignon Blanc if you must know). Pre-report: Battery life A-OK.  Lovin' it.  I always say "precelebration is the root of all failure", so I don't mean to Pre-celebrate :) but so far so good.  Sounds-like-an-Onion-headline of the day: Entire moon added to Google Earth.  Pretty amazing technology, that we even have these data.  Ben Rometsch: Google Wave, first impressions.  I don't "get" Google Wave [yet]; it seems to be a super-email, sort of a wiki-ish attempt to share information.  I distrust things like this which aren't simple enough to explain, but I'll keep trying because there seems to be a there here.  Stay tuned...  Something I continue to believe doesn't have a there here is Twitter, and I see where Trent Reznor agrees...  Raise your hands, how many of you find Twitter useful?  See, there's no there...  Hilarious: the Bio-Comedian.  ( Powerpoint comedy :)  News you can use: is it safer to drive drunk or on the phone?  I so fear that using a phone while driving is going to be made illegal; granted, it may be [somewhat] dangerous, but so are a lot of things and it really isn't the government's job to protect us from ourselves.  Jeff Atwood makes a great point: nobody hates software more than software developers.  I, too, dread it when something I buy comes with a software CD.  Invariably the software sucks and it breaks your machine.  Not sure whether to blame Windows for this or software developers in general, but it is so...  Wow, this is cool: Cellscope, the cellphone microscope.  Now with a UV-upgrade.  People sometimes ask me about this technology, wondering if it will be an "attack from below" on high-end diagnostic equipment like that made by Aperio.  Not sure.  The performance gap is still large.  Alex Payne: Fever and the future of feed readers.  "Today, at least in the web-tech echo chamber, feed reading is quickly falling out of fashion. Too many sites producing too many feeds of dubious quality means information overload, and a creeping sense of obligation to keep up with a torrent of questionably relevant content."  I'm not sure I agree with that; sure, there are a lot of bad feeds, but a lot of good ones too.  Just stick with me :)  Anyway the main point is Fever, a new feed reader, which filters feeds based on keywords etc., and in theory at least can extract information from data...

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