The runners start their day at 7:30 a.m., meeting at a duck pond beside a packed-dirt trail. Most end up running 120 to 140 miles a week. Brian Sell, the team’s best hope for making the Olympic team, runs 160 miles a week.
This is why I will (voluntarily) never progress beyond a half-marathon.
# 2007 Oct 31
“The candy makers were so desperate for this that besides lobbying for years, they went and put pumpkins filled with candy on the seat of every senator in America,” Mr. Downing said.
The lobbying effort, which was allied with the retail and sports industries, was unsuccessful that year and every year until 2005, when it piggybacked on the Energy Policy Act and managed to get daylight saving time extended by a month.
# 2007 Oct 31
This might be the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever seen. And not the “cute” kind of obnoxious that leads to every store on College Ave. selling “Notre Lame” t-shirts.
Sorry Ohio State. I still hate you and all, but I hate some of us more.
# 2007 Oct 30
So Apple’s sold over two million copies of Leopard in the first weekend. My copy is counted amongst those, but still sits wrapped in its package.
I’m in the middle of a project, which means the “Don’t be an idiot and run updates much less a major OS upgrade in the middle of a project” rule is in effect. So for a few more days, Leopard stays caged.
The only time I violated that precept was with Final Cut Pro 4 and OS X 10.2. Random FCP crashes plagued my workflow, so the instant Apple releases 10.3, I upgraded and my problems went away.
However, it looks like I might other reasons to pause. While not owning the worst Leopard incompatibility, Adobe does seem to have their share. My most sticking concern is Lightroom:
The Print module may not load
The Import dialog and other dialogs can “disappear” below Lightroom’s main window. The dialog can be retrieved by switching to another application and then returning to Lightroom.
Lightroom’s web module may not provide a visual update after a setting is changed
The left-side panels in the Develop module may not display properly. Resizing or closing/opening the panels will correct the issue.
The interaction between Leopard’s Time Machine and Lightroom’s catalog files is unknown at this time. Running Time Machine backup or restore operations while Lightroom is in use is not recommended until more information can be obtained
The UI bugs are annoyances (at least for a limited time). I don’t use Lightroom to print, or the web module. I can deal with the magical disappearing Import dialog. With an update due in mid-November, I’m leaning towards a few weeks with limited/no Lightroom instead of further delaying Leopard.
So Apple’s sold over two million copies of Leopard in the first weekend. My copy is counted amongst those, but still sits wrapped in its package.
I’m in the middle of a project, which means the “Don’t be an idiot and run updates much less a major OS upgrade in the middle of a project” rule is in effect. So for a few more days, Leopard stays caged.
The only time I violated that precept was with Final Cut Pro 4 and OS X 10.2. Random FCP crashes plagued my workflow, so the instant Apple releases 10.3, I upgraded and my problems went away.
However, it looks like I might other reasons to pause. While not owning the worst Leopard incompatibility, Adobe does seem to have their share. My most sticking concern is Lightroom:
The Print module may not load
The Import dialog and other dialogs can “disappear” below Lightroom’s main window. The dialog can be retrieved by switching to another application and then returning to Lightroom.
Lightroom’s web module may not provide a visual update after a setting is changed
The left-side panels in the Develop module may not display properly. Resizing or closing/opening the panels will correct the issue.
The interaction between Leopard’s Time Machine and Lightroom’s catalog files is unknown at this time. Running Time Machine backup or restore operations while Lightroom is in use is not recommended until more information can be obtained
The UI bugs are annoyances (at least for a limited time). I don’t use Lightroom to print, or the web module. I can deal with the magical disappearing Import dialog. With an update due in mid-November, I’m leaning towards a few weeks with limited/no Lightroom instead of further delaying Leopard.
# 2007 Oct 30
The end result of holidays like National Candy Corn Day? People are too fat for a Small World:
The problem, quite simply, is that the flume that the boats ride in, and the boats themselves, were designed and built in 1963 on the assumption that the male adult riders would average 175 pounds and the women about 135, which they pretty much did at the time. Alas, those figures are as outdated today as the Rocket to the Moon ride.
# 2007 Oct 30
We’ve posted recently about how to fight back when a business screws you over, and we’ve posted a lot of executive contact info over the years. Now we’re packaging the two together into one big mega-post of usefulness: a one-stop-stop for figuring out what you need to do to start a customer complaint, or how to escalate a stalled one so that it can be resolved.
# 2007 Oct 30
Raptors retcon themselves to fit updated continuity established in Jurassic Park:
There had been no evidence of pack hunting, however, or that the dinosaurs had lifted the deadly-looking specialised claw found on one toe of each foot to keep it from wearing on the ground, another behaviour shown in the movie.
Now a trackway found by Rihui Li of the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology in China shows footprints left by six Dromeosaurs - the more formal name for raptors. Their paths do not overlap where the animals walked alongside a river or stream.
# 2007 Oct 30
The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year—or for that matter, ever—is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware.
Who knew?
# 2007 Oct 29
An associate athletic director at Michigan apparently finds the games too noisy:
Dr. Stevenson said that noise level in stadiums should be kept low enough to make sure that the opposing team does not need to use hand signals on offense. He pointed out a Michigan-Ohio State game in which he was aghast that Ohio State incurred one false start after another on a drive because of fan noise. He thought this was horrible fan behavior.
The M Zone’s response:
Hey, maybe they can pass out tea and crumpets, too. And make it a 15 yard penalty if the coach yells at a player and damages his self-esteem. Better yet, since the grass is already there on the field, get rid of the pads, hand out clubs and call it golf!
The worst thing about this is the person saying this stuff is the associated with the athletic department! WTF!?! How old is this guy, 106? “You kids get off my lawn! And keep the noise down or I’m callin’ the cops!”
It’s funny because Michigan’s not even that loud.
# 2007 Oct 29
The ability to eliminate the warning dialog when changing a file’s extension.
We also appricaite John Siracusa’s choice of music.
If you have the time, I recommend reading the entire article.
# 2007 Oct 29
Scrubs returns to NBC tonight at 9:30 Eastern, for its final season.
Here’s hoping it returns to the at-least-mildly-anchored-in-reality-ness of seasons two and three, and pulls back on the cartoon-and-clown-show-osity of seasons five and six.
Scrubs returns to NBC tonight at 9:30 Eastern, for its final season.
Here’s hoping it returns to the at-least-mildly-anchored-in-reality-ness of seasons two and three, and pulls back on the cartoon-and-clown-show-osity of seasons five and six.
# 2007 Oct 25
Newton’s writings suggest that one of the main goals of his alchemy may have been the discovery of The Philosopher’s Stone (a material believed to turn base metals into gold), and perhaps to a lesser extant, the discovery of the highly coveted Elixir of Life. There is no evidence to suggest he was successful in either attempt. (emphasis mine)
As of 2007 October 25, 12:36.
# 2007 Oct 25
Jason Kottke, on Errol Morris’ investigation into whether Roger Fenton staged “Valley of the Shadow of Death”, a pursuit in which Morris has invested considerable resources:
Morris’ investigation sticks out like a sore thumb, especially compared to most popular media (newspapers, magazines, blogs, TV news). Why isn’t Morris’ level of skepticism and doggedness the norm rather than the delightful exception? Choosing the easy answer or the first answer that seems right enough is certainly compelling, especially under limited time constraints. Once acquired, that easy answer often becomes tied up with the ego of the person holding the belief…i.e. “this answer is correct because I think it’s right because I’m smart and not easily duped and it proves the point I’m trying to make and therefore this answer is correct”. Morris encountered dozens of easy and plausibly correct answers and rejected them all based on a lack of evidence, which allowed him to finally arrive at a correct answer supported by compelling physical evidence.
# 2007 Oct 24
A commenter on Ezra Klein’s blog points out impeachment doesn’t work quite the way the founders envisioned it anymore:
The fundamental problem is that, when they wrote the Constitution, the Founders failed to foresee the emergence of political parties (which they disapproved of). Checks and balances between branches don’t work if the leaders of the different branches are all from the same party. The Framers placed a big bet on the nonexistence of the party system, and they lost. This became clear as soon as 1800, when the Constitution had to be amended to change the Presidential election process after the Burr/Jefferson fiasco. That, unfortunately, also eviscerated the impeachment process because it meant that another member of the President’s party would take power. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. (emphasis mine)
# 2007 Oct 24
Wired ran an article on Susan Kare, who designed the typefaces and icons for the original Macintosh, and now creates the gift images on Facebook:
After two decades of front-end work for clients like Microsoft, Sony, and IBM, the Mother of the GUI now spends hours a day in her cozy San Francisco office sculpting virtual birthday cakes, bouquets, engagement rings, and other icons sold as gifts in Facebook’s rapidly growing social network.
Launched last February, the site’s gift shop offers icons for every occasion, from balloons, puppies, and champagne to mojitos, handcuffs, boom boxes, and a can labeled whoop ass. To date, users have exchanged more than 20 million virtual gifts, paying up to $1 for each, making them one of the site’s most successful revenue streams.
Kare went to high school round my parts, and the typefaces she created for the Mac originally borrowed the names of local train stops:
The first Macintosh font was designed to be a bold system font with no jagged diagonals, and was originally called “Elefont”. There were going to be lots of fonts, so we were looking for a set of attractive, related names. Andy Hertzfeld and I had met in high school in suburban Philadelphia, so we started naming the other fonts after stops on the Paoli Local commuter train: Overbrook, Merion, Ardmore, and Rosemont.
Also in my backyard, The Lovely Bones) began shooting in Malvern this week. Peter Jackson is apparently unhappy with the local trees; summerish temperatures delayed the leaves from changing color.
Wired ran an article on Susan Kare, who designed the typefaces and icons for the original Macintosh, and now creates the gift images on Facebook:
After two decades of front-end work for clients like Microsoft, Sony, and IBM, the Mother of the GUI now spends hours a day in her cozy San Francisco office sculpting virtual birthday cakes, bouquets, engagement rings, and other icons sold as gifts in Facebook’s rapidly growing social network.
Launched last February, the site’s gift shop offers icons for every occasion, from balloons, puppies, and champagne to mojitos, handcuffs, boom boxes, and a can labeled whoop ass. To date, users have exchanged more than 20 million virtual gifts, paying up to $1 for each, making them one of the site’s most successful revenue streams.
Kare went to high school round my parts, and the typefaces she created for the Mac originally borrowed the names of local train stops:
The first Macintosh font was designed to be a bold system font with no jagged diagonals, and was originally called “Elefont”. There were going to be lots of fonts, so we were looking for a set of attractive, related names. Andy Hertzfeld and I had met in high school in suburban Philadelphia, so we started naming the other fonts after stops on the Paoli Local commuter train: Overbrook, Merion, Ardmore, and Rosemont.
Also in my backyard, The Lovely Bones) began shooting in Malvern this week. Peter Jackson is apparently unhappy with the local trees; summerish temperatures delayed the leaves from changing color.
# 2007 Oct 24
The MAC and the Pac-10 stand on the precipice of the sort of outbreak that has brought the Big Ten to its proverbial knees over the past month and a half: with the exception of Purdue, each of the teams infected by Michigan has won at least one game since contracting TFH, and several of the teams they infected have in their turn spread the disease to yet another vanquished foe. At present, ten of the Big Ten’s eleven [sic] members are carriers of the virus, with undefeated Ohio State the lone exception.
I will never stop laughing at this. Ever.
# 2007 Oct 24
Nice one, Mr. Yglesias.
# 2007 Oct 22
Lou:
I’ve got Ohio State as my No. 1 team, but I do think Penn State has a great chance of beating the Buckeyes in Week 9. Keep in mind the last Big Ten team to beat Ohio State: It was the Nittany Lions on a Saturday night in Happy Valley. I think there’s a good chance we’ll have a new No. 1 by this time next week.
# 2007 Oct 22
NPR ran a story this morning about an event I was entirely ignorant of, The Year Without Summer.
A volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused atmospheric havoc during the summer of 1816 in the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, and northern Europe. The huge amounts of dust thrown into the atmosphere caused wildly fluctuating temperatures, summer snow, and frozen lakes and rivers as south as Pennsylvania.
Famine spread across a war-racked Europe, China faced rice shortages, and the devastating effect on farming led to many Americans migrating from the northeast to the midwest in search of richer farming.
The miserable weather kept authors Mary Shelley and John William Polidori indoors, leading to Frankenstein and The Vampyre, respectively.
Wikipedia: Mount Tambora, Year Without A Summer.
NPR ran a story this morning about an event I was entirely ignorant of, The Year Without Summer.
A volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused atmospheric havoc during the summer of 1816 in the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, and northern Europe. The huge amounts of dust thrown into the atmosphere caused wildly fluctuating temperatures, summer snow, and frozen lakes and rivers as south as Pennsylvania.
Famine spread across a war-racked Europe, China faced rice shortages, and the devastating effect on farming led to many Americans migrating from the northeast to the midwest in search of richer farming.
The miserable weather kept authors Mary Shelley and John William Polidori indoors, leading to Frankenstein and The Vampyre, respectively.
Wikipedia: Mount Tambora, Year Without A Summer.
# 2007 Oct 22
Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.
The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.
Despite claiming not to, Comcast is totally blocking Bit Torrent traffic.
# 2007 Oct 19
Tracking the time wasted waiting on the spinning pizza of death.
The large version on their site is mesmorizing. Maybe Apple should make the actual wheel that big, I might not mind looking at it so much as my mind clouds over, and I’m getting sleepy, very sleepy…
Via Daring Fireball.
# 2007 Oct 19
The main problem with Evite is the uninformative email. “You are invited to Heather’s Divorce Party,” says Evite, with a personal message from the host but no actual information. To make a decision as a guest, I have to click over to Evite; that cramps my style if I’m trying to be at all productive with my inbox.
Use Socializr instead.
# 2007 Oct 19
The bickering in the comments is pretty funny too, if you’re a fan of “U SUCK/NO U SUX MORE” exchanges.
# 2007 Oct 19
Brooklyn Brewery Brewmaster Garrett Oliver:
Industrial beer is still the vast majority of the American market, and it’s not going away tomorrow, but there is no future in it. While industrial beers suffer flat or declining sales, craft brewers are experiencing double-digit growth. The big brewers now try to copy craft beers. European brewers, who once laughed at watery American beer, now look to the United States for inspiration.
So true. While there’s those to whom “beer” = “Miller/Coors/Bud Lite”, it’s become increasingly more common for my friend’s fridges to be filled with local brews, micro brews, seasonal brews, homemade brews, etc. Walking in with a case of Miller Light is considered the height of social unacceptability.
And speaking of beer, it’s about time for my annual celebrating Back To The Future Day on October 26 with a case of Miller High Life.
# 2007 Oct 19
In an analysis of 80 weight-loss studies, researchers found that approaches that focused on trimming calories — with or without exercise — were most effective at keeping the pounds off over four years.
# 2007 Oct 16
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.
# 2007 Oct 16
That fake ending and subsequent jam at the end of “Home”?
Wonderful.
That fake ending and subsequent jam at the end of “Home”?
Wonderful.
# 2007 Oct 15
Bill Watterson (yes, the Bill Watterson) reviews the new biography on Charles Schulz:
Once he finally achieved his childhood dream of drawing a comic strip, however, he was able to expose and confront his inner torments through his creative work, making insecurity, failure and rejection the central themes of his humor. Knowing that his miseries fueled his work, he resisted help or change, apparently preferring professional success over personal happiness. Desperately lonely and sad throughout his life, he saw himself as “a nothing,” yet he was also convinced that his artistic ability made him special. An odd combination of prickly pride and utter self-abnegation characterizes many of his public comments.
# 2007 Oct 15
It looks like JoePa’s side of the road-rage incident is out:
According to sources, Coach Paterno was following a car that he thought was being driven erratically, and observed the driver of said car nearly cause an accident to take place. Paterno, upon witnessing the near accident, confronted the woman driving the car to make her aware that he witnessed the incident and that he was taking down her license plate number. The source claims the encounter between Paterno and the motorist was both brief and civil.
Unable to exercise control over his own players, it looks like Joe’s turned to coaching random motorists.
It looks like JoePa’s side of the road-rage incident is out:
According to sources, Coach Paterno was following a car that he thought was being driven erratically, and observed the driver of said car nearly cause an accident to take place. Paterno, upon witnessing the near accident, confronted the woman driving the car to make her aware that he witnessed the incident and that he was taking down her license plate number. The source claims the encounter between Paterno and the motorist was both brief and civil.
Unable to exercise control over his own players, it looks like Joe’s turned to coaching random motorists.
# 2007 Oct 10
Fucking became the subject of congressional debate in 2003, after NBC broadcast the Golden Globe Awards. Bono, lead singer of the mega-band U2, was accepting a prize on behalf of the group and in his euphoria exclaimed, “This is really, really, fucking brilliant” on the air. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is charged with monitoring the nation’s airwaves for indecency, decided somewhat surprisingly not to sanction the network for failing to bleep out the word. Explaining its decision, the FCC noted that its guidelines define “indecency” as “material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities” and Bono had used fucking as “an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.”
Really fucking brilliant article on cursing.
More:
As secularization has rendered religious swear words less powerful, creative speakers have replaced them with words that have the same degree of affective clout according to the sensibilities of the day. This explains why taboo expressions can have such baffling syntax and semantics. To take just one example, why do people use the ungrammatical Fuck you? And why does no one have a clear sense of what, exactly, Fuck you means? (Some people guess “fuck yourself,” others “get fucked,” and still others “I will fuck you,” but none of these hunches is compelling.) The most likely explanation is that these grammatically baffling curses originated in more intelligible religious curses during the transition from religious to sexual and scatological swearing in English-speaking countries…
# 2007 Oct 10
So I’m driving home today to pick up lunch. We live about five minutes from campus by car. I turn onto the road before our street, which often gets a lot of traffic. A pickup truck comes up fast behind me (I’m driving ten mph over the speed limit already, and the road is fairly curvy and narrow, with no shoulders, blind turns and no passing lanes.)
The truck is tailgating me. No, scratch that. Tailgaiting is too ordinary a description for what he was doing. I haven’t really seen anything like this before. He is about six inches behind me, at 45 mph. I kid you not. I gradually slow before the left turn into my home street simply because if I brake any more abruptly, he is guaranteed to rear-end me. I turn. He turns behind me, keeping his close distance, and then suddenly lurches around me to the left on our small residential street, swerving wildly around me at around 50 mph and almost losing control of his truck. Our driveway comes up, I turn left into it, shaken. He jams on the brakes at the stop sign that’s about 75 feet from our driveway, coming to a tires-smoking halt. I get out of my car and stare at him in amazement.
I live five minutes from Swarthmore as well, and I can tell you this:
If Captain Road Rage drives regularly around Swarthmore, I’m surprised he hasn’t exploded in a mushroom cloud of impotent anger because you can’t spit in Swarthmore without seeing some sort of left-leaning message - whether it be a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker, or the house that pained “Stop War” on the sidewalk. It has the highest per-capita of hippies in the entire county.
# 2007 Oct 09
“Do you know who I am!”
The story still hasn’t completed the distance from rumor to fact, but it looks like it’s nearing the red zone.
# 2007 Oct 09
Salon’s Patrick Smith on air traffic congestion:
For the most part, the existing problem is not the result of air traffic control shortcomings, bad weather or any of the excuses passengers are used to hearing. It’s an airline scheduling issue, plain and simple. Carriers have created this mess through a self-defeating insistence that frequency of flights is the ultimate key to success. Over the past several years, they have portioned capacity onto smaller and smaller planes making more and more departures.
# 2007 Oct 05
More iPhone-age, including this just wonderful analogy:
You willingly purchase a cow, which, the purveyor of said cow makes explicitly clear, is intended only to be used to produce milk. You buy it and figure out a way to make cheese. Two months later the purveyor of the cow offers you a pill, free of charge, which, if administered to the cow, will result in slightly better-tasting milk, but which pill comes with a stern and plainly worded warning that, if administered to a cow that had been used to produce cheese (which, recall, was made clear from the outset the cow was not intended for), the pill might kill the cow, and that, even if it doesn’t kill the cow, will prevent all previously known cheese-making hacks from working.
# 2007 Oct 05
Mark Pilgrim:
I have nothing to say about the iPhone that hasn’t been said already. Apple made it very clear what they were offering: a carrier-locked, closed-development mobile computing device where every aspect of the user experience would be controlled by Apple. I’m told it can also make phone calls. If that’s what you want, then buy it. If not, then don’t.
# 2007 Oct 05
Lou Holtz just stole my reality and drove it into a retaining wall at 90 miles an hour. Instead of exploding, though, it turned to butterflies and dollar bills.
# 2007 Oct 05
Millions of women may be jogging their way to sagging breasts as they set off on New Year fitness regimes without suitable bras, research suggests.
Also:
“Proper support for breasts will reduce the stretch to the Cooper’s ligament.”
We couldn’t agree more.
# 2007 Oct 04
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fil-Aime on the upcoming holiday season:
“I can’t guarantee that we’re going to meet demand. As a matter of fact, I can tell you on the record we won’t.”
I’ve still yet to see a Wii on a store shelf.
# 2007 Oct 03
You don’t know what Zookiosity is? Ron Zook would like you to know.
Zookiosity us understanding that chaos, like herpes, can be more damaging to your partner the other team and should be spread shamelessly to all you come in contact with.
Zookiosity is continuing to aimlessly throw the ball long after it’s blatantly clear Juice’s box is empty and still ending the day tied for first in your conference.
Unassuming teams travel lightly to Champaign, only to wake up the next morning with their faces covered in caked Zookiosity.
Zookiosity reigned last weekend, tripping some, and slamming others into the dirt.
Doc Brown harnessed Zookiosity into his flux capacitor, enabling time travel and pre-maternal incest.
Zookiosity is here.
Be prescared. Be very prescared.
You don’t know what Zookiosity is? Ron Zook would like you to know.
Zookiosity us understanding that chaos, like herpes, can be more damaging to your partner the other team and should be spread shamelessly to all you come in contact with.
Zookiosity is continuing to aimlessly throw the ball long after it’s blatantly clear Juice’s box is empty and still ending the day tied for first in your conference.
Unassuming teams travel lightly to Champaign, only to wake up the next morning with their faces covered in caked Zookiosity.
Zookiosity reigned last weekend, tripping some, and slamming others into the dirt.
Doc Brown harnessed Zookiosity into his flux capacitor, enabling time travel and pre-maternal incest.
Zookiosity is here.
Be prescared. Be very prescared.
# 2007 Oct 01
These are all the posts on scotttroyan.com during October 2007. Recent posts are listed here.
All contents copyright 1995-2008 by Scott Troyan unless differently noted.
