Steps:
I like it. I may do more of this sort of thing.
After taking yesterday off to recover from my many days o’ activity, I headed out this morning under sunny skies, pondering how best to do a 10K at the lake while negotiating possible detours.
I settled on running clockwise, knowing I could get at least 8K or more before hitting a possible detour. At that point, I’d probably turn around, do 2K more to finish the run, then probably walk to the nearest SkyTrain station and ride home, as it would otherwise be a lot of extra walking after the 10K.
But I didn’t need to do that, because there was a detour way earlier in the loop and although technically I might have been able to squeeze through, I chose to just turn around and head back, knowing I’d be able to finish the run relatively close to where I started.
They have been doing some sewer repair/replacement near the bridge at Still Creek:
Today they somehow were doing something right at the bridge itself, with a large truck and a giant hose or something. Who knows. I mean, the people operating it know, but I could not suss out what it was doing. It looked crowded, though, so I opted to just turn around. I was just past the 6K mark at this point, so it meant retracing about 4K of my route, then walking 5K+ after.
The weirdest part was probably not having a sense of where I was on the trail as I turned back, in terms of distance/pace.
As for the actual running part, conditions were downright reasonable–it started out at 18C and stayed there for the entire run. Humidity was around 72%, which is high, but fine when it’s 18C. I sweated, but not a lot. My first km was 5:38/km, but I felt good, so I only eased up a little. I slowed somewhat toward the middle of the run, and on the 8th km I hit 6:00/km. I was determined to not go over 6:00/km, so kept goosing the pedal, as it were, and finished with an average pace of 5:50/km, my best 10K of the year. Weirdly, the watch gave me an award for my fastest 10K ever, which it is definitely not, so the stats must have gotten reset at some point. Still, the award is very shiny looking:
My overall BPM was higher at 153, but was fine in context. Thanks to the cooler temperature, I did not feel at all like I was overexerting myself.
I’ve updated to iOS 16 and watchOS 9, so there are more stats to look over, like a breakdown of heart rate per km, rather than just overall. I’ll look through these and see how they make me feel about switching to a Garmin Forerunner 255, which I’ve pondered for a few months. SOMEWHAT FAKE EDIT: I don’t know if it’s a one-time bug or not, but the map of my route only shows the starting location and nothing else–no finish and no actual route at all. So that’s a bit of an oops.
Overall, a good run under pleasant conditions. I like it.
Stats:
Run 714 Average pace: 5:50/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, then CCW) Start: 10:40 a.m. Distance: 10.05 km Time: 58:38 Weather: Sunny Temp: 18ºC Humidity: 72% Wind: light BPM: 153 Weight: 160.1 Total distance to date: 5242 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (350 km)
Not really, I’m just being dramatic.
In Stable Diffusion, I entered this prompt and set it to 50 steps (the default is 25):
sunrise over a verdant field in the countryside. Oil on canvas.
And I got this lovely pastoral scene about a minute later:
And I thought, “How long would it take me to actually paint this, even using a digital canvas?” It would not take about a minute. It would take many minutes. It would take hours. It would take time to experiment with colour and tone, adjusting texture and light. But I feed the text into the AI and it produces something that is actually pretty good–probably better than I could do (I was never great at using paint as a medium) and it gives me pause and think about all the articles out there raising flags over AI-generated art.
I must ponder this. I currently think of AI-generated art as an actual form of art, but a different one. It requires a human hand to do anything (ostensibly, at least) and the prompts can result in dramatically different results with some seemingly minor tweaking. There is art in the crafting of the prompts themselves. But still, I get why people are concerned. This stuff is already shockingly good, and we are in the early days.
Does this mean some guy will no longer have to paint hundreds of black velvet Elvises to make a living? That it can be done in moments by an AI instead, freeing him up to do something more meaningful, possibly with orphans? Or does it just mean this guy has lost a job?
Ponder, ponder.
(And yes, I will do a black velvet painting of Elvis prompt later.)
(Also, amusingly and fittingly, the spelling checker did not recognize “Elvises” and suggested “pelvises.”)
iOS 16 came out today, and Our Holy Tech Saviours of Apple have allowed some lock screen customization.
I have customized:
Thank you, Apple!
I used this Github one-click installer to get Stable Diffusion, another AI tool that generates images based on text prompts, running on my M1-based Mac.
The initial results have been amusing, interesting, and sometimes just weird.
Using the default parameters, I used this prompt:
Cat wearing a top hat
And got this:
I then used the same prompt, but set the steps from 25 to the max of 50:
This is one dapper feline.
Next, I tried:
Dog on a cow. High detail, photorealistic.
And got:
As the kids say, there is a lot to unpack here.
Undeterred, I adjusted the prompt:
Small dog riding on top of a cow through a grassy field.
The result looks like an alternate version of the album cover of Atom Heart Mother. I like it.
I’m going to keep playing with this, since my invitation to join the DALL-E beta went into a black hole, never to be seen again. More images soon™!
The smoke haze of yesterday was still present, but eased up a bit, affording us decent light for our bird outing. Here are a few shots.
With the high today forecast to be 30 or 31C, I decided to duck out in the morning to get a walk in before it got Africa Hot. As I walked down the river trail, a crazy thought entered my mind: What if I went to the lake…and then walked all the way around it?
I just ran at the lake yesterday and had over 31,000 steps, so today would have been a good day to rest, but I followed that crazy thought and did a complete loop around the lake, pausing occasionally to take photos here and there. The total distance was 18.7 km, and it took me 2 hours and 53 minutes to complete. By the end, I was definitely glad to be off my feet, but I’m also glad I gave in to the impulse and did it. Although it was quite warm, the humidity was actually closer to normal. On the negative side, the taste of smoke was in the air, likely carried in from a forest fire in the Fraser Valley (you can see the smoke haze in the shots I took, which I will put in a separate post).
The only real running I did was for about 30 seconds, to put some space between myself and a pair of people walking behind me, one of whom was carrying on their part of the conversation at maximum volume for reasons unknown to me.
Tomorrow: I’m going birding at Reifel, so there will be walking, but no Mega-Walking™.
One shot, from the viewing tower just west of Piper Spit, showing the smoke haze:
Stats:
Walk 83 Average pace: 9:16/km Location: Burnaby Lake and Brunette River trail Distance: 18.70 km Time: 2:53:10 Weather: Sunny Temp: 24-29C Humidity: 21-34% Wind: light BPM: 102 Weight: 160.2 pounds Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12 Total distance to date: 633.02 km
These companies are making it easy for me to slim down my reading list.
In the case of Pocket, it’s ironic, because they’re all about providing reading lists.
A while ago, Pocket switched from a weekly newsletter to a daily one, with an option to change the frequency, so you could go back to a weekly newsletter if daily was too much.
I stuck with daily for some time, but eventually did decide it was too much. I switched to weekly, which seemed more manageable. It was fine at first. But then I got my weekly newsletter, and it was “sponsored” by The Wall Street Journal. This means every article was from…The Wall Street Journal. I subscribe to the Pocket newsletter to get stories from a number of sources, not just one. I don’t know if their answer is to go back to daily (which I won’t do) or pay for the premium version, which will somehow spare me the sponsored newsletters.
This morning, my weekly Pocket newsletter was again sponsored, this time by MarketWatch. I don’t even care about MarketWatch! Or its stories.
So I unsubscribed.
I’ll still use Pocket to occasionally capture interesting stories I want to read later. It works well enough for that, though it would not surprise me if the free version eventually gets crippled in some way to make it too annoying to use. Which may make you ask, why not pay for the premium version? And the answer is I don’t use it often enough to feel it’s worth the money (it’s $4.99 US per month or $44.99 annually). If they did make it horrible to use the free version, I’d probably just create a temporary bookmark folder as a “read later” dumping ground. Not ideal, but it would be functional.
So thanks, Pocket, for helping me in my ongoing quest to digitally declutter!
FAKE EDIT: I also emptied the Pocket folder in Outlook, deleted its category, then deleted the Pocket folder itself. Doing these things was strangely satisfying.
I am weird in that rather than have items from Amazon (yes, they are evil and terrible, but I do order stuff from them sometimes) delivered to the condo (with attendant condo-specific issues) I have them delivered to an Amazon locker–but not the locker that’s closest, the one that’s next closest, because I get a little extra exercise walking to it (I occasionally regret this when there’s a downpour but in the summer it’s great).
The route to this particular locker takes me down a street that has a resident Calico cat that is often out and about. Tonight was such a night. The cat was sitting on the sidewalk, chilling out and I said hello, but continued on, as I wanted to just grab the package and get home before it got dark and the werewolves came out. At first, the cat seemed to be okay with this. It looked up but made no move. But as I walked further past, it suddenly bolted ahead of me, then flopped directly in my path, demanding attention and affection. I spent a minute or so scratching behind its ears and petting it, and it seemed content to allow me to move on.
If I ever get another cat, I want one that is as friendly and gently demanding as this one.
Yesterday I felt off. I didn’t want to run, skip, walk, think or engage in any other similar activities.
I wanted to eat and just float away on a big puffy marshmallow cloud.
Today I vowed to change course and headed out in the morning, determined to do a 10K–and I did! But to say it did not go as planned would be an understatement.
First, the good news: I beat the heat. With a projected high of 29C, I made sure to get started no later than mid-morning. It was 17C when I started and 21C at the end. This kind of jump is very noticeable when it’s warmer, but starting at 17C, not so much. I actually sweated very little, so little I didn’t even need Nipple Guards™. I also ended up running mostly under canopy, so I probably could have skipped the sunblock, too.
I started counter-clockwise and as I approached the bridge at Silver Creek, near the start of the run, I saw tractor treads in the gravel–the work on the foot bridges had begun. Dun dun dun. I continued and at the fork between the main trail and the Spruce Loop, I noticed the treads heading down the Spruce Loop, so I took the main trail, being a smart runner and all.
But my smartness was to no avail. When I got to the next fork, between the main trail and the Conifer Loop, a sawhorse was blocking the main trail. Undaunted, I went down the Conifer Loop, only to find the Spruce Loop also had a sawhorse (with bonus KEEP OUT sign), forcing me to go back to the start of the trail. As I did, I contemplated what to do for the run and decided after hitting 2K just past the dam, that I would run clockwise until I hit the 6K mark, then double back to complete the run near the Avalon parking lot. A solid plan.
This is also the only time in recent memory that I’ve run twice over the dam. The new mesh they have on the surface to prevent ice build-up tends to kabong when you run over it.
But even this solid plan was thwarted, once again, by trail work. As I progressed along the Southshore Trail, I passed a sign reading MOWER WORKING AHEAD and rolled my eyes. Of course there’s a mower working ahead. I went a fair way without any sign of the mower (nor its melodic buzz saw song) and was beginning to think it was actually finished. But no, on a curve just ahead of the second boardwalk, there it was, just sitting on the trail, engine shut off, not mowing a thing. I don’t know why it was sitting on the trail doing nothing, but it had the trail completely blocked on both sides. I probably could have paused my run and gently picked my way through the vegetation on the sides of the trail, but this was close enough to where I was going to turn around that I just turned around, anyway.
I’m sure I confused some people, as I ran by a few up to three different times during all of this.
By the ninth km I was coming down the Avalon Trail again and was starting to feel tired. I don’t know if my body just assumed the run was over or what, but I was flagging and still had a km to go. I decided to run to the 0K marker, turn around and head back up the Avalon Trail, then turn with about 1 km left to make it feel like a “proper” finish. I even put on the gas a little for a final pace of 5:45/km, but my overall was 6:00/km even.
Still, considering how many times I had to change my route and backtrack, I’ll take it. I felt pretty decent otherwise, save for some creakiness in my lower back right toward the end (I think I slept funny/poorly). It was a perfectly cromulent way to end the week.
Here’s the map of the router. The long yellow stretch doesn’t really show it, but it actually forms a loop. Again, the maps of the runs are pretty terrible. Pour a couple of billion dollars you find under the corporate couch into improving this, Apple!
Stats:
Run 713 Average pace: 6:00/km Location: Burnaby Lake (all directions--see post for details) Start: 9:55 a.m. Distance: 10.02 km Time: 60:06 Weather: Sunny Temp: 17-21ºC Humidity: 64% Wind: light BPM: 150 Weight: 161 Total distance to date: 5232 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (340 km)
I am weirdly fascinated by R.E.M.’s 13th album, Around the Sun. It was a commercial and critical flop (though there are some people who really liked it), and I think Peter Buck’s assessment, circa the release of its follow-up Accelerate, though unduly harsh, has the right general sentiment:
[It] “just wasn’t really listenable, because it sounds like what it is: a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can’t stand it anymore.”Peter Buck
I don’t think it’s not listenable (and Buck probably doesn’t either, really), but I remain intrigued by how the whole album is so refined and carefully constructed, yet utterly tepid.
And then I came across this, which is actually a follow-up to the person’s full review, and it made me laugh out loud because that’s the kind of mood I was in:
Random music thought: The song “Aftermath” is actually pretty decent, but could have been better if the tempo had been boosted. It feels like it’s always running about two beats behind where it should be, if that makes sense (I am not a musician or even musician-adjacent).
Today is normally a run day, but I did some stuff in the morning, then watched the long and utterly surprise-free Apple “Far Out” event, then decided I should do some kind of physical activity, so off to the river trail I went!
There was a bit of a breeze blowing, which is unusual for this summer, and both temperature and humidity were reasonable. It felt odd!
I walked to the lake (to use the loo), and snapped a few photos before heading back. Upon return to the river trail, I ran for two km, turning in brisk paces of 5:23/km and 5:33/km respectively. This is what I can do on a wide, unobstructed path when the weather isn’t actively trying to kill me.
As I neared the end of the trail, I spied a dog standing and facing toward the traffic of North Road. It had an aspect of “How will I get across without getting smooshed?” about it. I also recognized a moment later that it was not a dog and was a tan-colored coyote. I debated taking some photos, but it was directly blocking my way off the trail, with no real way to go around, so instead I waved my hands over my head, started talking loudly to it and waited. It turned toward me, seemed uncertain, then I took a step forward, to show I was the alpha male or something (which was dumb, in retrospect, but I was getting impatient). It eventually decided I was a bother and headed off into the brush, albeit reluctantly. It stood not too far in and watched as I passed, no doubt keen on returning to ponder crossing the road again.
I also saw a young, fit-looking woman who seemed dressed for a workout smoking within sight of the FIRE DANGER – NO SMOKING sign. Again, this is the only time I EVER see people smoking–when the signs go up during summer expressly banning it. I have no explanation other than a) fantastic coincidence, b) pointless acts of rebellion because “no sign is the boss of me!”
Anyway, it was nice and I was happy to get out.
Here’s a shot from Cariboo Dam, showing the water all ripply and stuff from the breeze.
Stats:
Walk 83 Average pace: 8:05/km Location: Brunette River trail Distance: 8.68 km Time: 70:10 Weather: Sunny Temp: 21ºC Humidity: 54% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 122 Weight: 159.7 pounds Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12 Total distance to date: 614.32 km