Ragnar Relay - Exchange 18
July 25th, 2009Now we’re waiting at the third major exchange for van #1 to finish up legs 13-18. It’s going to be a longish night, but we’ll try to get some shut eye after we trade off at exchange 24.
Our first set went well, i did my leg under 8 minute pace, which is what I’d hoped for. We had one runner mishap where our 12th runner took a turn incorrectly (60 degree turn instea of 90) and ran an extra 3.4 miles than he was supposed to - 10.4 vs. 7.0. The extra he ran is more than the entire length of my first leg, and he did it faster than I did mine! But, he was complaining that he didn’t have long enough to run, so it serves him right.
Overall it has been pretty fun, but next time I’d like to train more and get some longer legs to run.
Van 1 just checked in to say they’re on their last leg, so it’s almost time to move out and run some more. Gotta go!
Ragnar Relay - Exchange 6
July 24th, 2009We are hanging out at Bellingham High School during the Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage (www.ragnarrelay.com/NorthwestPassage/index.php), waiting for runner #6 to come into the exchange so our van can take over and run legs 7-12.
Here are some pictures of our newly decorated van.
Now we're off to run!
Nothin’ like painting at midnight! (Yes, I took a 2 month break, but now I’ve got two coats on, one or two left.)
May 22nd, 2009
Germany Day 1: Mannheim
April 1st, 2009Finishing off our first day in Germany. Today we were in Mannheim, where @meikay’s sister lives, walking around the downtown area.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamkevin/sets/72157616233374994/
I’ll have a few more pictures to add to the set, probably tomorrow, but for now we are exhausted and going to bed.
Tomorrow we’ll head to heidelberg, on bicycle!
so i guess i have a blog
October 1st, 2008i haven’t posted anything in a long time so it is time for exciting (lame) tech post maybe? i know the ladies love posts about software.
I installed google chrome a few weeks ago an have been using it on and off (mostly off lately)
here are some random thoughts on it so far:
- fast, it loads things faster than Firefox and IE do.
- somewhat buggy - there are some UI elements that don’t work correctly, the dumbest of which (as they are both google products) is some gmail + gtalk stuff, like tabbing between conversations, and the hover window in your contact list.
- No middle click for scrolling is annoying.
- No keyboard shortcut to get to bookmarks is annoying. I’m sure there is one, but i have no way to find out what it is.
- Very little in the way of options. I don’t know how to change default programs for anything (i.e. download videos/mp3s instead of playing them in iTunes)
- random crashes are always fun
- doesn’t seem to follow standards just yet, but it’s still in actual beta (as opposed to “google beta” which is a final product in which they can write off any bugs because it’s still a “beta.” see gmail.)
- no plugin/addon/extension support (yet?)
- no adblock. not a big issue for me, but i know a lot of people hate not having something like that. although it is something of a conflict of interest since google serves lots of ads…
I also got the new iPhone update, 2.1, which fixes a bunch of things that were annoying: -
- a lot less hang-y, especially contacts.
- somewhat less crashy for apps and safari.
- updating Apps keeps their position instead of putting them at the first available empty slot.
- supposedly more accurate signal meter. I still lose signal every once in a while, but it might be better. I don’t really know, it seems mostly the same, but now with more bars!
- battery life is supposedly better, can’t really tell but it might be.
And finally i got a new zune 120gb, and the zune 3.0 software! I really like the new zune software - without a zune pass most of the fixes on the device are minor, but there are some nice things:
- a clock! the zune didn’t have a clock before, now you can turn one on.
- playing podcasts - they added a “Play all” button before, but even if you started playing from a specific episode, it would still play all. Now it is a Play New button, and it works correctly, plus playing a specific episode will only play that one.
- I like the zune pad a lot. sometimes i hit up or down instead of clicking it, but i still think it’s really good.
- Marketplace over wifi from the device is really cool. If i had zune pass it would be even better, but even without it, it’s very good.
- there’s a bug where the zune will look like it’s not playing - the time progress bar doesn’t advance - but it continues to play. I’ve only hit this once, but it was weird, and didn’t go away until i powered off the device by hitting Back + Down for a few seconds.
The software is also much improved, more than the device was.
- more options in the UI, without being more cluttered
- mixview is really nice to see related artists, songs, albums, and influencers/influencees, and friends or users who listen to the same artist.
- artist info is more complete now, they even show tour dates if available.
- marketplace added some nice stuff - picks are suggestions based on yours and your friends’ music, and for zune pass subscribers there are channels which are automatically updating playlists.
- social added more complete info on yourself and your friends, plus it loads way faster, and you get mixview for users as well, although for some reason it shows my brother on my mixview, and he has to my knowledge never used zune software or hardware in his life.
- other stuff but i am going to bed now :)
iPhone
July 31st, 2008I got an iPhone last night, without too much trouble; I just called around and saw that the store in Lynnwood had phones. I drove up after work, waited about 15 minutes, and I had a new 16 gb iPhone! I stayed up way too late playing with it, and then realized I still had to pack for Chicago, so I stayed up a little later yet.
Now I’m trying out the wordpress app, it seems to have a nice clean interface. I’ll try to post some stuff about lollapalooza, though I might just fall back on twitter, well see.
Time to go to work!
SP3 stole my address toolbar
July 11th, 2008For no apparent reason, I decided to upgrade my dinosaur-puter to Win XP SP3 last night. When I turned it on this morning, I was surprised to see that the address toolbar that I use in the Taskbar was nowhere to be found. I looked around and found out that the functionality had been removed due to legal reasons, something about too much IE integration into Windows. Obviously the integration still exists, all they did was get rid of this feature to make it seem less integrated.
However, after looking around some more, I found a way to get my precious address bar back:
1. Click and drag “My Computer” to the top or side of the screen or desktop. This creates a new toolbar.
2. Right click on the new My Computer toolbar and select Toolbar->Address
3. Click and drag the new “Address” bar to the Taskbar.
Stupid laws, always trying to infringe on my rights. or something.
Misadventures in Camping
June 23rd, 2008I went camping this past weekend with a big group of friends, had a lot of fun (except for one part, more on that later). We stayed at an unofficial campsite on Cle Elum Lake, a couple hours east of here.
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