Run 894: Post-storm, post-cold, post-tree

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. Calm and cool.

Stuff happens and suddenly it’s been 12 days since I last ran.

Just hours after posting my best pace in two years, I felt a scratchiness in my throat and then got a full-blown cold, with all attendant symptoms. I pondered running this past Friday but decided I wasn’t ready.

Today, I was, but not quite fully ready. I opted to do a mini-run of 2.5 km to get back into it and it went well, but I can feel my lungs are still not back to 100%. I think I could have done 5 km, but didn’t want to push it and feel miserable after. My pace was 5:42/km, which is pretty decent after such a long layoff and not yet fully recovered.

Conditions were decent, with clouds and a few bits of blue sky poking out here and there. There was little wind, which helped, with the temperature being down to only 10C when I started. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and two layers, more concerned about not getting cold than I was being overdressed. I may have been fine with the long-sleeved shirt, but I was definitely not too warm.

Signs of the storm that swept through the last two days were everywhere, with twigs and other tree bits scattered all over the trail, some almost too big to move by hand (but which were not directly in the way). One exception came when I approached the intersection of the main trail and then turnoff to the Piper Mill Trail. A barricade was in place closing off the main trail due to “hazard tree”. Presumably, “hazard tree” being down and not yet cut up and moved out of the way.

TRAIL HAZARD CLOSED TREE

I am pretty sure I know which tree came down and if I’m right, it was a huge old tree that has been leaning over the trail at a 45-degree angle for many years. Every time I’ve walked under it, I’ve always thought it was one big storm away from coming down.

I’ll probably be able to confirm in the next few days.

Overall, though, the run went decently, particularly with so many days off. I’ll do the other 2.5 km next time, then go back to my regular routine. Here’s hoping I catch a few more breaks in the weather.

View from Piper Spit, post-run. Light and dark, with ducks.

Stats:

Run 894
Average pace: 5:42/km)
Training status: Strained1
Location: Burnaby Lake
Start: 10:50 a.m.
Distance: 2.50 km
Time: 14:17
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 10-11°C
Humidity: 89%
Wind: light
BPM: 151
Weight: 166.5
Total distance to date: 6,327.5 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (112.5/220/332.5)

Posthaven: Initial thoughts

I decided to give Posthaven a shot. You can view my extensive archive of (as of this writing) one post here: https://stanwjames.posthaven.com/

As a WordPress alternative, it strips blogging down to its basics. Is this good? Is this bad? Let’s make a list (or two)!

The Good

  • It’s very easy to use. I was able to jump in and have things set up in a few minutes.
  • It’s affordable! At $5 U.S. per month, it gives you up to 10 blogs (!) and as far as I can tell, you can only pay $5 per month, which means no year-long commitments. Want out after the first $5? Easy-peasy!
  • It has a few nice themes to get you started.
  • Editing posts is simple.
  • Adding images is easy, and it automatically lets you click to expand on them. Other embeds (YouTube, etc.) are also straightforward.
  • It has tags. I like tags. Maybe too much.
  • People can easily upvote, comment or subscribe to your blogs.
  • An RSS feed is available.

The Not So Good

  • A large part of the ease of use is found through its limited options. You get some basic formatting options, and that’s about it.
  • It only has five themes. If you want to create new ones, you can, but have to dive into HTML and CSS.
  • It has no spelling checker, and LanguageTool does not seem to work in its text editor. This led me to editing my one post about seven times as I kept finding typos. I make a lot of typos.
  • Images are not displayed in any kind of WYSIWYG way and they are sized based on the theme.
  • Its feature request page only has two features as “planned”: more themes and markdown support.

The site describes itself as a work in progress, so I don’t ding it too much for being a bit barebones. The UI is simple, but very easy to use, and it’s one of the few blogging platforms I’ve been able to jump into and get posts out of that both look good and are easy to write/edit.

Still, I’m not ready to go all-in. I must continue to experiment before leaving WordPress behind.

There’s something in the air

Specifically, an atmospheric river. It seems like just a few short years ago I’d never heard the term, now it pops up every fall. I live in a region known as temperate rainforest. Rain is right in the description, so rain is not unexpected.

But rivers of rain? In the sky? That come down to be with the land I walk upon?

I do not like this.

But until U.S. Democrats can perfect their weather machines (topical joke), there’s not much I can do but put on my big boy booties, jacket and suck it up. Well, not literally suck it up. That would be a lot of water. And it would probably taste funny, too.

Here are cats in the rain:

Experimental squirrel

This is a shot of a Douglas squirrel I took on September 30, 2204. I used the online photo editor Photopea to crop, brighten and sharpen the image. I exported it as a JPG file at 100% quality. Let’s see how it looks!

Treadmill workout: Treadmill workout!

It’s been a while, but the weather is gross today (raining, around 9C) and I’m not 100% recovered, so I figured I’d do a nice ol’ walk on the treadmill. And I did!

I did 4 km and started at a speed of 6.5, but ramped up to 7.0 by the end, as I felt I was getting ahead of the machine. I even thought about ramping up to running speed. Maybe next time.

My training status is still Strained due to lack of proper sleep, which is affecting my HRV status (as has the last week of non-exercise). These things should right themselves soon™.

Stats:

Speed: 6.5-7.0
Incline: 1

Pace: 8:47/km (8:14/km)
Time: 35:17 (33:09)
Distance: 4.02 km (4.03 km)
Calories burned: 323 (387)
BPM: 121 (142)

Why is there a bear in Hume Park?

I do not know, but these signs went up yesterday.

Also, this seems weirdly specific, like there’s one particular bear visiting.

Note: Hume Park is not really that big. It also has a giant Amazon warehouse nearby, as well as laser tag place. This bear has options.

The forest area is along a ravine, not very handy, even for a bear.

The trouble with knobs

UPDATE, the next day: The firmware update indeed showed no progress when I checked in the morning, so I unplugged the keyboard, plugged it back in and it appears to operate exactly as before--with one exception. Apparently Windows (or me, unwittingly) had changed the default for sound to one of my monitors, instead of the headphones. I corrected this and the knob is now adjusting system volume as before.

In other words, all the time I spent on this last night could have been managed in a few seconds. Technology is grand.

Sometime in the last few days I noticed the knob on my Keychron Q1 keyboard was no longer working. It normally lets me adjust system volume up or down, which is kind of handy. I can program it to do other things, too, but this was always good enough for me.

I was puzzled as to why the knob suddenly stopped working. It seemed to be OS-independent, but the rest of the keyboard worked fine. In fact, when I adjusted the knob, Windows would still report the volume control working–except it really wasn’t working, it was just showing as if it worked, while doing nothing.

I decided to check the keyboard mapping software to see if something was amiss and it said I could not program the knob because my firmware was too old. This didn’t really explain why it had worked fine before, but whatever. I decided to update the firmware.

The firmware process consistently failed at the same point. I did some internet sleuthing and finally came across a video from Matt Birchler–yes, the guy in my dream who I talked about squircles with–and watched his three-year-old video, which revealed a DFU reset button under the keyboard. This finally allowed the flashing process to start.

It has not finished. It has probably been 25 minutes since it started. It looks like this:

As you might guess, I am afraid to do anything to interrupt, but I also suspect it will look like this if I leave it overnight. But I’m going to do that, anyway.

For now, I have plugged my old CTRL keyboard back in, with its much firmer Halo keys, which I still find easier to type on, though they don’t have that silky smooth feel of the Keychron’s. It also has no knob. But this also means it has no knob that can fail and lead me down a rabbit hole that might lead to me bricking a rather expensive keyboard.

We’ll find out more tomorrow!

Sickfest ’24, Day 7: Mostly just annoying

I am now at the stage where the remaining symptoms–occasional coughs spurred by a tickle in the throat–and the like are mostly just annoyances, so I’m going to say I am now officially recovering.

I did opt out of running today. I don’t think my lungs are quite ready yet, but soon™.

Instead of a sad bunny, I present a nonplussed cat:

Circle beats the squircle: A Birchtree dream

Last night I had a dream featuring Matt Birchler. I have never met Matt. He is a celebrity of sorts in the Apple tech scene, who has a YouTube channel (A Better Computer), a blog (Birchtree), a podcast (Comfort Zone) and probably half a dozen other projects. He writes articles for various tech sites. He also has an unrelated full-time job in UI/UX.

He is a busy guy.

I came across him via his blog and follow him on Mastodon, where much of the former Mac community from Twitter has migrated to.

One of his passions is UX and design (which works out well for him, because it’s also his job). In the dream, we are hanging out in a living room (?) somewhere and discussing design, as one does. Specifically, we are nodding in agreement over how circles provide more space for information over squircles (the rounded-off square icons you see everywhere on Apple devices these days). This is, of course, nonsense. Literally the opposite is true, but in the dream we were right, and the world was wrong.

Then I suggested we play something on “Game Center” on an Apple TV nearby and the dream ended, or at least my recollection of it did.

I’m not a big squircle fan, so I think the dream was just trying to accommodate that. Thanks, subconscious!

WoW: BEST VALUE (except for value immediately below it)

This is a promotion for World of Warcraft I saw in the battle.net launcher tonight. I assume a lack of proofreading here, or my concept of BEST VALUE is different from Blizzard’s.

Fake edit: I checked and both the 6 and 12-month deals save you 13%, so the 6-month deal is just secret best value.

I am not resubscribing to WoW, BTW. But I still have all of my magical memories.

Sickfest ’24, Day 6: Semi-recovered

My watch claims I didn’t get enough REM sleep last night, but I still feel it was the best night of rest since getting sick. I didn’t really cough or sneeze at all.

This morning I am feeling mediocre. I am slightly stuffed up, but I can take a deep breath without coughing. Yay. I may be ready to run tomorrow, a regular run day. We’ll see.

I do have a possible new complication–a sore spot in my abdomen that is subsiding as I type this, but was notable in that I could poke it, and it did not like being poked. I’ve had this before, and it’s been a bladder infection, which would be about right for just getting over being sick to have a new ailment heroically leap in and take over.

But as I said, it seems to be subsiding for now. I will monitor.

Hopefully the last sad bunny, at least for now: