Today under sunny skies and with the temperature a positively balmy 15ºC I headed back to Mercer Stadium to do one more calibration run.
My plan was to do four laps or 1.6 km and I completed the run with a corrected pace of 4:59/km. Pretty slow compared to a typical pace but being able to clock under five minutes after four months off is not too bad. The little Achilles tendon lump in my foot could be felt for the first lap or so but I didn’t notice it for the rest of the laps. My stamina felt a wee bit improved over the last calibration and this time I was able to calibrate to the actual distance I ran so in theory it should be accurate as all get-out.
The only incident of note was when a small kid (maybe 3 or 4) stood by the inner lane on the playing field. I watched as he was poised to directly enter my path. He father, a distance away, was calling for him to come over. The kid did exactly what you’d expect–he stepped off the field and into my path just as I approached. Fortunately I had expected the worst case scenario and scooted by in the next lane over without incident.
It still amazes me that any kid survives long enough to become an adult.
My next planned run is on Monday and will probably be a 2 km gate-to-gate dealie at the Brunette River trail. This will be my first official™ run of the year.
Take 2 of my calibration attempt was made under sunny skies at Mercer Stadium again. Once more, I opted for 800 m (two laps) and reminded myself to not screw up the calibration like last time.
In a hopeful sign, my lungs, while still burning fiercely, took ever-so-slightly longer to do do. Even better I actually set the calibration properly. The only point of concern is that calibration can only be set within a certain range. I ran exactly 800 m (on the inside lane, just as they recommend) but I could only adjust the calibration up to 770 m. This is still fairly accurate and I can probably boost the accuracy by running farther so I may adjust it again sometime in the weeks ahead. I was a bit surprised that it was off by as much as it was, reporting 200-300 m to go as I finished. My pace was 4:43/km, not bad for 4+ months off, except my fastest km is 4:15/km. Rusty!
The right foot is still sore from the injury (meaning if I press a finger into it I can feel it) but it seems to be a build-up of some sort and my doctor is convinced that stretching and running should be okay. It doesn’t hurt while I’m running so I’ll keep ramping up for now. Next time I’ll see if I can run for over five whole minutes!
I came home from work on Wednesday to find my PC shut off. This may not seem unusual except I keep my PC on 24/7. A quick perusal of clocks and such confirms no power outage. I brace myself for Bad PC News.
I press the power button. Nothing. I press it again. Nothing.
I jiggle the power cord, then swap it out and try another one. Nothing and nothing.
The amount of nothing is pointing toward one thing: the power supply, which has worked faithfully for over three years, has died. The only way to confirm this was to put another one in and I don’t exactly have a bunch of spares kicking around.
It wasn’t until today that I was able (or willing–picking things up after work during rush hour is a certain kind of madness) to get a replacement. I would be turfing my modular 700 watt OCZ for a modular Antec 620 watt. I felt safe getting a lower wattage PSU because I’m running two drives now instead of three, one of which is a low-energy SSD.
I pulled the PC out from under the desk and set it on the table in the living room. Both the underdesk and the inside of the PC case were resplendent with dust. Compressed air in a can was generously blasted all about and the resulting dust bunnies collected with a broom and pan. I extracted the dead PSU and noted how it resembled the head of Medusa, with its twisty cables the snakes. Having not turned to stone by gazing upon it, I set it aside and installed the new Antec power supply, plugged everything back in and hit the power switch, hoping for more than nothing.
It came on without a hitch. Hooray.
Ironically, after spending time working inside the cavernous interior of my MegaCase™ I was left with a desire to go small for my next PC, whenever I might get it. I’d like something that plays games decently but can sit on a desk, run quietly and work more like an appliance. I think this means I’m over my mid-life crisis or something.
Today was the day I finally started my road back to jogging regularly. Which is somewhat ironic, given that I don’t jog on roads.
Instead Jeff took me up to the zany looking track at Mercer Stadium (pictured below courtesy Google Maps, as I lack a blimp with which to fly over the track to take my own photos).
After four months to nurse my right Achilles tendon back to health my goal tonight was simple: don’t break anything and complete a couple of 400 m laps to calibrate my new iPod nano.
Some observations:
It felt great to be running again.
The actual running felt like agony, with my lungs on fire after a piddly 400 m lap.
I defeated the entire purpose of the run by screwing up the calibration at the end. I had set the distance to 0.8 km (two laps) and at the end of the run when it pulled up what it thought I’d run vs. what I’d really run, I adjusted it to 0.40 km, exactly half the intended total. I couldn’t bear the thought of running again to fix it so it will have to wait until the next time, probably in a few days. My real pace was around 4:20/km, which is remarkably good for a four month layoff (and probably explains the lungs of fire, too).
The problematic right foot did not hurt, though I could feel where it had been hurt. Ominous sign? Perhaps. The good news is it feels perfectly fine now.
No more clickwheel. Woo!
Here’s hoping that the next run goes smoothly, that I calibrate my iPod properly and that the properly-calibrated data uploads to the Nike+ site without blowing everything up.
I’ll go into more detail at some point but for now here is my ranking of the 10 albums released by The Alan Parsons Project, from 1976 to 1987. It is telling that the best albums are the earlier ones. The Alan Parsons Project is an example of a band (in as much as they were one) devolving its sound into one that became slicker and less interesting with each album before finally getting back to the wacky and evocative sounds of their earlier work.
Eye in the Sky (1982). The first half of this album is some of the most beautifully-crafted progressive rock recorded.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976). By turns weird and wonderful. It sounds almost alien today.
The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980). An entertaining precursor to Eye, stately and always catchy.
Pyramid (1978). A short album with no filler and perhaps the broadest range of material, with the mood ranging from melancholic to bombastic and even playful.
Eve (1979). Not exactly an anthem to women, the lyrics are the most cutting of any Project.
I Robot (1977). A bit dated now but the best tracks hold up well.
Ammonia Avenue (1984). The follow-up to Eye apes that album in a number of ways but has its own standout tracks, especially the title track and the ‘wall of sound’ in “Don’t Answer Me”.
Stereotomy (1986). A decent attempt to return to form that mostly succeeds.
Gaudi (1987). The pop part of the Project was getting a little too glossy by the final album but the closing instrumental is stirring.
Vulture Culture (1985). Not a bad album but not particularly memorable. Without the orchestra a number of songs feel plain. Oddly, the bonus track “No Answers, Only Questions” which is a spare acoustic number, is one of the best.
There’s a thread on Broken Forum about dreams titled “Last night I dreamed…” After the inevitable quote from The Smiths the thread has become a storehouse of dreams that range from the banal to the predictably bizarre or disturbing. I thought it might be interesting to adapt one or two into short stories. Dreams lend themselves well to the format as they tend to be fragmentary experiences that are either short on narrative or lacking it entirely.
After requesting submissions from the dozens of dreams posted, I went with the two that were suggested and will be working on them over the next month or so. If the results are promising I’m contemplating an entire short story collection using the same idea of pulling together dreams and adapting them as short fiction. I’m sure someone else has done the same thing already, as any decent idea has been worked and reworked countless times. But what the heck, I’ve never claimed to be original and the idea intrigues me. I may even have a few of my own dreams that could lend themselves to this kind of project.
I was recently invited to take an online survey by Probit (which, I know, sounds like a robot you wouldn’t want to get too close to in a medical lab) and among the questions about political preference and such was this one:
I’m pretty sure I answered it correctly (I chose ‘3’) but now I’m curious what this means for the number 3 in the future. Have I helped it? Hindered it? Will a future poll shed more light? So many questions.
Nic and I wanted to go watch some mindless spectacle so we settled on Oz the Great and Powerful. This is a great example of a movie filled with CGI for its own sake. So much of the movie looked fake–deliberately so in the case of the backgrounds, which were callouts to the look of the original Wizard of Oz–and was distracting because of it. Just because you can CGI a bunch of butterflies doesn’t mean you should.
James Franco was okay as Oz but lacks the presence the role needs. When he smiles he looks like a goofy kid, not an oily con man. Michelle Williams did what she could with the role of Glinda but had weird eye makeup or something that made it look like she was always on the verge of weeping. Plus I’d just seen her again in Brokeback Mountain and was half-expecting Ennis to show up and ask her how she could afford that g-damn fancy dress she was wearing.
The battle between Evanora and Glinda at the end of the movie was wholly unnecessary and brought to mind the Gandalf/Saruman fight–not a flattering comparison. And Evanora obviously went to the Emperor Palpatine School of Discipline.
The flying monkeys were baboons and didn’t look as scary as Zach Braff (human or monkey form). Disappointing.
Overall I found it mediocre but not entirely objectionable, like eating a bag of chips that aren’t your favorite flavor. You’d miss nothing by waiting to catch it on video.
Recently it was announced that J.J. Abrams would be directing the next Star Wars movie, due out in 2015 after George Lucas sold the keys to the kingdom to Disney for 400 billion quatloos or thereabouts.
Once people were done with all the lens flare jokes and reassured of at least the promise of a coherent story since Abrams wouldn’t be writing the script (I’m thinking here of his ‘every idea gets added to the plot’ approach to Super 8), speculation turned to what the actual story would be about. The least interesting approach for me is the most obvious–set the events roughly the same amount of time as has passed since Return of the Jedi (32 years by the time Episode VII rolls out), bring in as many of the old cast as possible and make it all about their kids. And it looks like both Harrison ‘Grandpa’ Ford and Carrie ‘drugs are bad’ Fisher are already signed, with Mark Hamill a distinct possibility so there’s a good chance this is exactly what the story will be.
This isn’t bad, per se. I’m a sucker for some good nostalgia so it will be nice to see the old characters, even if they more resemble Jabba the Hutt now than their 1983 selves, but with an entire universe to create new stories in and without being constrained by the nonsense of the prequels I am hoping for something a little fresher than ‘Luke has a kid and OMG he has the Force and will he be good or bad?’ plus space battles and several hands being lopped off along the way.
One of my best gaming memories was going to Super Software and indulging myself by buying not one but two games. It felt positively decadent. This was in 1989 so the Internet effectively didn’t exist yet and magazines were still my main source of gaming news and previews. Super Software was a large software-only store in Richmond that carried games for nearly every major system. At the time that meant everything from the Apple II and Commodore 64 to the Atari ST and Amiga. I had my trusty Amiga 500 and there was a good selection of games for it.
As I strode in on that day in 1989 I found two games that were both part of what would become called ‘god games’ or sandbox titles: SimCity and Populous. Each went on to be massive hits, spawned numerous sequels and I sank many an hour into constructing urban paradises or smiting my computer opponents.
In the long term SimCity got its hooks into me more deeply. I’ve always enjoyed making things–not necessarily in the woodshop sort of way. In fact, I hated woodshops as a kid. Saws and other sharp tools held little appeal except as tickets to the hospital for a klutz like myself. A virtual way to build and create, though, that I could get into.
The original SimCity was fairly simple and only nodded in the direction of realism. You could construct a city with a rail-only transit system (no roads at all) and it would work. It may be that the pseudo-realism was part of what made the game click. When the sequel, SimCity 2000 came out, it introduced numerous improvements, an increased level of sophistication and an entirely new (and glitchy) water/pipe system that was almost universally disliked. Sure, having to make sure the water flowed added realism but the process of laying pipe and making it work felt more like an uninteresting chore. By the time the eminently charming SimCity 3000 appeared, the pipe-laying was gone.
SimCity 4 was the most ambitious of the titles yet, with full regions that could interconnect and layers upon layers of charts and simulation. I confess I never played it much because the drive to be more realistic–while perfectly logical–just didn’t have the same appeal to me as the slightly goofy earlier titles.
And so we come to the newest version, just released today. It’s not called SimCity 5, just SimCity, as if being framed as a reboot. And in a way that seems about right. The cities you can build are smaller but the simulation is even more detailed and realistic than ever. The game requires an always-online connection and while it doesn’t force you to build alongside other players, it does take away the option to save your city at certain points, instead relying on EA’s cloud storage to do the work (and in the first 24 hours it is working with predictably spotty success). While I marvel at the look of the game and genuinely applaud the game moving even more toward being a true simulation, I can’t help but feel that this is the next step in me being pushed away from the series permanently.
Maybe I can’t reconcile my creative drive with a proper simulation. If I want to build something silly, I don’t want to be (unduly) punished for it but the new SimCity torpedoes that philosophy.
I guess there’s always Minecraft and its (literal) castles in the air.
I promise I’ll scan more than one of these for my next trip down mediocre teenage art memory lane.
In the meantime I like this minimalist but slightly goofy perspective exercise. It’s simple and has a looseness that I probably couldn’t have captured if I was actually going for that. It’s not dated but judging from some of the work from the same book it looks to be from early 1982, a mere 31 years ago!
I deliberately allowed the image on the reverse side to bleed through on the scan because hey, art!
Note: If you reference the previous post, I lied. The teacher did not grade this particular piece. But I can pretend I got an A for it.
