In which I did the same thing as Sunday, swapping The Dark Side of the Moon with Wish You Were Here. As a bonus, this album is about four minutes longer. Toward the end I was getting a bit stupid and tired, but saw I was close to getting 500 active calories burned, so that became my new goal and necessitated me adding the Pink Floyd classic “San Tropez” to the mix. I hit 500 before the song concluded and celebrated by sweating copiously.
In all, this was my longest treadmill walk and my latest. I started at 9:13 pm and ended at 9:59 pm. At this time last night I was climbing into bed.
My pace also matched my ending time, ten seconds slower than Sunday, but I walked farther, so I call it even(ish). My BPM was lower, which was nice. My total time was exactly four minutes longer than the previous walk, which is weird.
The stats:
Speed: 6 km/h
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:59/km
Time: 46:11
Distance: 4.62 km
Calories burned: 502
BPM: 146
I got off the SkyTrain. You may be thinking I actually do this a lot and you would be correct. During a normal work week I exit a SkyTrain 28 times.
What was different this morning is that I exited at Royal Oak station instead of the usual Waterfront. Was there a system malfunction? Did I suddenly develop an allergy to rapid transit? Did I decide to play hooky and irresponsibly gallivant around Burnaby?
No. Or at least not this time. Rather, I was on one of the original trains and with SkyTrain just this month celebrating its 34th anniversary, that means the train I was riding was significantly older than many of my coworkers. Jeff and I affectionately (?) refer to these trains as three wheelers because they are noisy and tend to offer a rougher ride than the newer ones.
This morning that rough ride was, as they say, turned up to 11. The car was swaying enough that I looked out the windows to see if trees were bending in half from high winds that might also be buffeting the train. But it was calm, with only a light rain falling.
As the train traversed from Edmonds to Royal Oak it began to pitch from side to side strongly enough that I put a hand on one of the poles to steady myself.
I was sitting at the time.
I’d had enough. Carefully hanging on, I got up and exited at Royal Oak, waiting in the light rain for the next train and hoping its twin was not coming. A woman also got out and stood by me in the rain. We exchanged knowing looks.
Fortunately the next train was a Mark II and the rest of the ride was uneventful.
But I’ll be on the lookout for 046. If I want to feel like I’m on a boat pitching in the high seas, I’ll get on a boat that is pitching in the high seas. I prefer my commuter trains to be a little steadier.
UPDATE: Today (the 17th) Jeff reported experiencing the same thing on another train, this one 152. We have your numbers, SkyTrain!
Today I would normally walk to the lake and do a 5 or 10K run (I’m currently doing 5Ks again as I build my stamina back up). It was cloudy, but without a real chance of rain, thought it was cool, hovering around 4-5 Celsius in the morning. I had breakfast, did some chores and thought about running and a persistent voice keep saying, “I don’t wanna.” And I listened to that voice, because I am fat and lazy.
Normally that would be the end of the story, but now I have my good friend, treadmill. I mulled over a few plans–maybe a combo of a walk and a run or something. I decided to start with a 30 minute walk on my now-standard settings of 6 km/h and a 10 incline (yes, it really is walking uphill all the way). I then put on The Dark Side of the Moon because I’ve been in a Pink Floyd kind of mood recently.
And then I decided to walk for the entire album. As a side note, the final track, “Eclipse”, is a rousing way to finish any workout. The choice of music seemed to inspire me, as I walked at a very brisk pace, finishing with the following stats:
By way of comparison, a 5K run usually nets me about 330 calories or so burned, so walking uphill definitely burns better, though it’s not as intense, given the lower BPM. But I sweat way more. Somehow it all evens out.
Anyway, it was a good workout and offered proof on how having the treadmill is too convenient for me to avoid exercise without feeling massive guilt. Well, so far, anyway. Hopefully it stays that way.
P.S. I have created a new tag cleverly called treadmill walks to record such events apart from treadmill runs.
This type of story is catnip to me: high concept present-day science fiction wrapped around a slick, fast-paced action-adventure.
The story asks a simple question: Do our memories determine our reality? What if we could not just revisit memories, but control them, effectively making the past, present and future exist simultaneously? Could our minds cope with multiple timelines occupying them?
This is a story best read without too much knowledge of the specifics before hand, so I’ll simply say I enjoyed watching the main characters of police detective Barry Sutton and neuroscientist Helena Smith interact as they grappled with the very nature of reality. While the nuts and bolts of the depicted science are kind of hand-wavey, it’s perfectly acceptable for the type of story Crouch is telling, which is less about how we might be able to manipulate memory, but whether we should, and what the effects could be.
As with any story that dabbles in time travel, you can pull apart the plot and argue about how things wouldn’t really work this way or that—the characters themselves even have these kinds of conversations—but this is a romp, full of both spectacular disaster and quiet moments that show what it means to be human.
If you like this kind of story, Recursion comes highly recommended.
The internet is aflutter over the announced price for adding wheels to the new Mac Pro. They cost $400 ($480 Canadian). The jokes, of course, write themselves.
Could these $400 wheels on a $6,000 computer turn out to be a surprisingly reasonable value?
No, of course not. They’re wheels. I’m pretty sure the fourth wheel will start wobbling in a few years just the same as any cart-like wheels would.
The only weird part is these ludicrous transportation units or whatever Jony Ive might call them (if he still worked at Apple) stand out against some actual reasonable things Apple has done recently, like upgrading the 15 inch MacBook Pro to a 16 inch model without raising the price (though it ain’t exactly cheap to start with), and actually dropping the price of this year’s equivalent to the iPhone XR while improving the specs.
The price doesn’t actually bother me as the Mac Pro is very much in the “maybe if I win the lottery” category and it probably still sucks for gaming. But given Apple’s track record with Macs (inconsistent at best, a disaster of neglect and quality control issues at worst), if I were one of those so-called pros who wants a pro-level machine, I’d be casting back to 2013 when Apple released the last Mac Pro.
It didn’t receive any updates in 2014.
Or 2015.
Or 2016.
Or 2017.
Or 2018 or 2019. It was, in fact, never updated. Apple essentially killed it the day it was released, they just never formally announced its death until four years later, then they continued to sell it for two more years before finally re-inventing a basic, modular PC that optionally comes with $400 wheels.
What I’m saying is if you want to get a new Mac Pro, keep in mind that what you unbox may be the exact same thing you might unbox in six years. And it will be the same price, too.
The first day of winter is 10 days away, December 21st. This is the shortest day of the year, with approximately 30 minutes of daylight. The bears are warm in their caves, while humans are in full thrall of the whole holiday thing, crushing against each other in malls for last-minute gifts and possibly some nice frozen yogurt at the food court.
I generally don’t like winter because I am not a big fan of the cold and dark. But in the spirit of being positive, here are five things I do like about winter:
If it’s officially winter, we’re less than one season away from spring and t-shirt weather
A little snow looks pretty and gives the world a fleeting peaceful quality
You can skate outdoors if it gets cold enough
No need to run the air conditioner
Risk of a sunburn drops dramatically
Hmm, that’s not really a great list. Let me try a few more:
A warm mug of hot chocolate can hit the spot
Running a base heater to warm your toes is far more satisfying than it ought to be
Watching TV under a thick blanket is nice and relaxing
The obvious theme here seems to be, “Winter is cold, the fun is in finding ways to stay warm.” Some people will argue that it’s easier to get warm than to keep cool, that putting on a sweater will warm you up on a cold day, but taking it off on a hot day may not do much to cool you off on a hot day. This is perhaps true, but given how hot it generally gets here (note to historians reading this in the far future: in late 2019 the metro Vancouver area is not yet a tropical paradise), I don’t find it a big deal to keep from profusely sweating during the summer. And removing layers is somehow better than piling more on.
Anyway, that’s the best I can come up with. To stay positive, we are only 192 days away from summer. Yay!
This motto still exists in their official Code of Conduct, right near the end of the very long document:
And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
Since changing their official motto to Do the right thing, Google has seen itself increasingly mired in controversy, most of it borne from the fact that the company makes its money through selling the data of its users to companies that then use the data to target users with ads, ads which often follow them around the internet. Google is essentially a series of services—most of which are free to the user—designed to harvest data and sell it for ads.
Put more simply, Google is an advertising company. Nearly everything it does is in service to advertising. This is the code of the company and is likely to remain so into the foreseeable future.
Is this bad? Is it evil? On a relative scale, not so much. To paraphrase Stockard Channing, there are worse things it could do. But what it does is enough to have finally given me pause after years of using their free services:
The Chrome browser is near Internet Explorer 6.0 levels of dominating the browser market, with sites increasingly being tailored for and only tested with Chrome. This is not good for the web, web standards and basically everything a free, open web stands for.
Gmail, Google search and other free services are tracking users across the web, feeding their surfing habits, random clicks and more to companies that use that information to target the users with ads and services. Most of this is done surreptitiously, without the user being aware.
Chrome is easing restrictions on some kinds of ad-blocking, for obvious reasons
Basically, I’m not comfortable supporting this model anymore. I think it makes for an unhealthy web. So I’m making changes. Some are days, some are more difficult.
Let’s start with the easy ones:
I haven’t used Chrome as my primary browser for quite awhile, having switched to Firefox long ago. If I need alternative browsers for whatever reason, I can use Edge (!), Vivaldi or Brave.
I’ve switched from Google search to DuckDuckGo. Plus DuckDuckGo is way more fun to say. Are the searches less comprehensive? Maybe. I can’t say I’ve never not found what I was looking for yet. In fact, the searches are more accurate because I no longer have Google trying to shape (or contort) the search results to better “fit” what I am allegedly looking for.
I no longer use Google Drive for cloud storage (I use OneDrive and iCloud Drive)
I have long abandoned Google’s office apps, like Docs and Sheets
And now the harder stuff:
Google Maps is still by far the best map site/software, though Google is doing its best to clog it up with services, suggestions and generally getting in the way of what should be simple directions on how to get from A to B. The alternatives are still not quite there. Apple Maps is improved, but it’s limited to Apple platforms (which, honestly, is kind of dumb—Apple should have a browser version, and I don’t mean one that requires Safari). Apple is also way behind on its equivalent to Street View. Then there’s Bing Maps. It’s okay, but it lacks in so many little and some major ways. I will keep using these and hope they improve, but it will be a meaning process. I don’t use maps much, anyway.
Gmail. This is the big one. I have had a Gmail account for a long time. I have thousands of messages and many subscriptions and services tied to my gmail address. I can direct new subs to an alternate email address—I have a more “serious” email address at outlook.com, for example, or I can use one from my own domain, @creolened.com, though that looks a little weird, really. This is a long term project, one I’ll probably tackle piecemeal. There is always the fear that whatever other service I switch to could disappear, while Gmail is one of the handful of Google services that seems relatively safe.
All said, I’m making these moves to help simplify my interactions on the web, to get less ads and less shaping, to find what I am looking for, without handing over information that really sin’t anyone else’s business. Excelsior, as they say.
Today I slept in a wee bit, then had breakfast and thought about going for a run. Instead I noodled around for a bit, then walked to the mall, which, given my walking pace, burned 341 calories.
When I got home I thought about going for a run, but time was running out to get to the lake before darkness set in.
So I had a bubble bath, because I bought bubble bath at the mall.
After the bubble bath, I did not think about going for a run, because I was all fuzzy and warm and relaxed. Instead I had dinner.
After dinner I did a 20 minute walk on the treadmill with a speed of 6 and incline of 10. I sweated profusely. After the sweat dried, I got back on and did an open run, planning to stop when the watch declared I had been running for 30 minutes.
Thirty minutes later I stopped. I started the run at a speed of 10 again, but after awhile I wanted to get my heart rate down a bit, so dropped the speed to 9.4, then 9.2. I bumped it back to 10 for the last minute or so.
Overall, it went fine. The first few minutes all the muscles that get worked out in running, rather than walking, yodeled in protest. Things settled down after that and I was left to ponder thoughts like, “Why is my phone randomly pulling up so many Coldplay songs?” By the last few minutes I was getting into that “will be glad it’s over” state of mind because I am still soft and flabby. Then it was over.
A few takeaways now that I’ve done multiple runs on the treadmill:
I definitely need a fan, because I sweat buckets on this thing. The fan on the treadmill is equivalent to having a baby wave its hand in front of your face.
Maybe a towel to go with the fan.
Running without a shirt is kind of nice. I may do this outdoors once I lose most of the tire.
The downside of going without a shirt is a well-designed shirt pulls the sweat away from your body. With no shirt, the sweat is all, “All right, I’m staying right here.”
I’m tempted to cover up the display while running. I don’t really like seeing my stats in front of me for the entire run. Maybe I’ll start playing racing videos on the iPad or something.
And the stats:
Distance: 4.47 km
Time: 30:06
Average pace: 6:44/km
Speed: 9.2-10 km/h
BPM: 153
Calories: 333
Total treadmill distance: 54.11 km
Device used: Apple Watch Series 5
Tonight I got back on the treadmill to try the Sole app, which can sync to the treadmill through the magic of Bluetooth, which is neither blue nor has teeth.
The app has a measly 1.5 star rating in the App Store, but I didn’t check on why. It could be a single disgruntled ex-employee or maybe the app actively kills other apps while they innocently idle in the background. In any case, I use the Apple Watch to track my runs for real, so this app is just be a bonus or alternative to the monochrome LCD on the treadmill itself.
And that’s what it was. There are three views, one that closely mimics the treadmill’s display, but in color, and two others that show the same stats, but in different layouts. It’s nicer than the built-in display simply because it’s in color and higher resolution. It also makes it easy to start a timed run, something I haven’t quite uncovered on the treadmill’s actual controls.
Reaching out to interact with the iPad while running is a good test of balance, of which I have very little. Fortunately, you can still control the run from the treadmill’s panel and buttons, too.
For this mini-run I set a 10 minute goal and in that time I ran 1.51 km and my BPM was a low 148. This was with a speed of 10 km/h, so close to my normal running pace (I’m going to start recording the speed in my treadmill stats, but it will generally be set to 10 km/h). I burned 103 calories or two Timbits. Mmm, Timbits.
I next did a test walk to see how using a mix of incline and speed would turn out. This time I didn’t set a timer, I decided to walk until I had burned another 100 calories. Interestingly, my BPM was 145, nearly the same as for the run. It took me 9:56 minutes to burn 106 calories using the following settings:
Speed: 6 km/h Incline: 10%
This put my walking pace at 10:17/km, which is pretty decent for a 10% incline. I sweated copiously. I may tinker with the settings a bit more, but this may be as close to the sweet spot as I’ll get, as the incline can only be set to a maximum of 12% and at 6 km/h I was able to keep pace, but nudging the speed up from there made it a fair bit more difficult to keep from moving toward the end of the treadmill and a spot on America’s Funniest Home Videos or whatever the YouTube equivalent is now.
Here are the stats for the run part:
Distance: 1.51 km
Time: 10:04
Average pace: 6:38/km
Speed: 10 km/h
BPM: 148
Calories: 103
Total treadmill distance: 49.64 km
Device used: Apple Watch Series 5
I think I may try doing at least a mini-run of 10-15 minutes every day, along with the longer 5K runs and, of course, the outdoor runs on the weekend, except when there are blizzards and such.
The second time was more like a “real” treadmill run. I put on the AirPods and listened to music, which made me realize that I was apparently concentrating so hard during the first run that I didn’t notice the sound of the treadmill’s motor at all. It’s not loud, per se, but it’s kind of hard to miss. I could still hear it underneath the music with the AirPods in, but not to the point it was annoying.
I tried the built-in fan. It moves a tiny bit of air and adds to the noise. I stopped trying it.
This time I ramped up to the usual jogging speed of 6 (mph), which translates to about 9.7 km/h. This is the best combo of comfort and speed to approximate running outdoors, though it’s slower. Adding a 1% incline brings it closer and I might try that in the future.
I ran 15 minutes on my first bit of treadmillin’ and went for 20 minutes tonight. I’ll try the full 30 minutes or 5K the next time out. Tonight I definitely felt better on the treadmill and best of all, my left foot feels fine, even wearing the cross trainers without the orthotic. Yay. I also ended the run at 20 minutes on the Workout app, but let it go a few minutes longer on the treadmill itself, ramping the speed down to give me a recovery period, something I neglected the first time. It’s a much nicer way to finish.
Plans for the future may include mounting a better fan, setting up the iPad app that works with the treadmill to see how it compares to the built-in display (the treadmill has a place to hold a tablet) and other stuff I haven’t thought of yet. Jeff brought his magic fingers to play after by helping to execute the right key combo to enter maintenance mode and change the units from miles back to km. That should make it easier on my brain to track progress on future runs.
The stats:
Distance: 3.09 km
Time: 20:04
Average pace: 6:30/km
BPM: 160
Calories: 241
Total treadmill distance: 48.13 km
Device used: Apple Watch Series 5
After thinking about for a good long while and doing research for awhile longer, I finally went out and bought a treadmill so I can run when it is dark/wet/scary outside. It’s a Sole F80, which is what might be considered a basic or entry-level commercial grade treadmill. I was willing to spend on something commercial grade because I’ll be using the treadmill regularly and I wanted something that could hold up to daily use.
Unlike a lot of treadmill purchasers, I’m not in the planning stages of running, since I’ve already logged 4,800+ km over the last ten years, so I don’t expect this to become a glorified coat rack in a couple of months.
Setup was east, because I paid the fitness store to do it. The manual shows an exploded view of the treadmill, so named because looking at it will make your head explode. It took three experienced builders an hour to put the treadmill together. It would have taken me a week and I’d have had parts left over, wondering if they were important or not.
I programmed in settings for User 1 (me) and User 2 (Jeff) and did a trial run (ho ho) of 15 minutes. I didn’t listen to music, just my own clomping, as I wanted to listen for any odd sounds the first time. I heard no odd sounds, just the relatively quiet whir of the motor and, as mentioned, my clomping. Shortly into the run my left shoelace came untied, which was weird, but I figure I must have tied it a bit lopsided and got an end caught under my shoe. Because I had been un-manlike and read the manual, I knew how to pause the run, tied my shoelace back up and completed the run.
Because I haven’t been running much lately and also I’m fattish now, even 15 minutes felt like more than 15 minutes. But I’m going to run again in a couple days and keep it up as much as I can comfortably manage.
I do like the ease of just changing and hopping on. It really can’t get more convenient, so my excuses for not running will need to be extra-lame now:
“I might break the treadmill!”
“What if I pull a muscle again? I’m good at pulling muscles.”
“What if I fly off and go through a wall?”
“What if I run so much my legs become like tree trunks and suddenly I can’t get through the door?”
And so forth
The stats for my first at-home mini-run:
Distance: 2.32 km
Time: 15:06
Average pace: 6:30/km
BPM: 157
Calories: 175
Total treadmill distance: 45.04 km
Device used: Apple Watch Series 5
