Amazingly sore, that is. So much so that I elected to skip my usual lunch walk today.
Now, I’m not complaining, I’ve come to accept that the combination of age and nine years of jogging has clearly taken their toll on my knees, I’m just surprised that it went from not manifesting in any way while running (or walking) to suddenly doing that on a near-permanent basis. I think I’m also working through the stages of grief at the loss of my old, healthy knees.
Things will no doubt get even more interesting when I reach the bargaining stage, where I’ll start researching kooky, medically unsound fixes and cure-alls. Actually, I think I may be at that stage now, I just haven’t come up with any kooky ideas to pursue yet.
Run 578 Average pace: 6:03/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 1:36 pm
Distance: 5:04 km
Time: 30:31
Weather: Light showers
Temp: 15ºC
Humidity: 75%
Wind: light
BPM: 168
Weight: 163 pounds
Total distance to date: 4475 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8
My last run was on May 12. That was 22 days or two infections ago.
Surprisingly, my pace actually improved after three weeks off.
I was not looking forward to the run for three reasons:
the long time off meant the run would feel a lot harder than it would otherwise
my knees
the rain because I can say with 100% certainty, I never enjoy running in the rain
The knees were not a real factor. I could feel them at the start, but after a few minutes they were fine and not a factor. They felt worse, as they have the last few months, on the walk back.
The rain was fairly light throughout, though it never fully stopped. Still, it was as close to not being obnoxious as it could get, and dry mouth was not an issue. Or dry anything.
Stamina was definitely an issue. At several points (I remember around the 3K mark in particular) the idea of just stopping and not running was a delightful and enticing notion. I pressed on, even as the slight uphill grade on the Cottonwood Trail seemed like a mighty mountain pass.
My pace was fairly steady, slowing a few seconds for the first three km, then actually picking up for the last two. The last km I actually came in under 6:00/km and my overall pace of 6:03/km was six seconds better than the previous run.
Despite the rain there were more people out than I expected and save for a couple at Piper Spit, none of them had umbrellas and many didn’t even have any headgear. I guess people don’t mind getting wet if it’s warmer.
Speaking of getting wet, I ran into some weird technical issues on the walk back that I think were weather-related.
For the run, I shuffled a playlist on the phone and locked the screen of the watch, so wacky things wouldn’t happen if it got wet (I have verified said wacky behavior in the past). After the run I switched to an Open Goal Outdoor Walk, and I did not lock the watch as the rain was very light at that point. That may have been an error, as after .45 km, the walk spontaneously turned into a 5K outdoor run. I was alerted to this when it noted I was at the halfway point after 2.5 km. I stopped the run shortly after, switched to an outdoor walk, locked the watch, and all was well until I got home.
Meanwhile, I assume the wet watch was also responsible for my music playback going bonkers. The music player kept stopping songs early and skipping to the next track. It got so annoying I paused the music and kept it paused. It spontaneously unpaused about a minute later, then started madly skipping ahead of songs again. I paused once more and at that point the watch display was locked, so it behaved after that. Lesson learned. If it rains–even a little–lock the watch.
The rain also brought out the first slugs I’ve seen in a long time, testing my rusty slug-dodging skills. I don’t believe I orphaned any slug families.
Also, as I was nearing the Cottonwood Trail I spotted a cyclist. Before starting my run, a parks worker had set out on the same counter-clockwise route and sure enough, she met the cyclist. They appeared to have a pleasant exchange, she asked him to dismount and walk his bike, then they parted ways, so he apparently got off with a warning. About 1.5 km father along I passed a young couple riding bikes, heading toward the same park worker. I figure there was a 50/50 chance she fined rather than warned them, having already used her “friendly reminder” up on the first guy (also, there is no way to enter the trail without passing at least one “No Cycling” sign, so claiming ignorance is not an especially convincing strategy). I can’t say I wanted the couple to be fined, but I wouldn’t have been sad, either.
Overall, the run went a little better than expected, though my BPM was on the higher side at 168, but that was perhaps to be expected with the amount of time off between runs. I really ought to start going out more often, knees willing.
(In which I took some time this afternoon to stroll around Central Park in Burnaby.)
Okay, I can’t really say woodpeckers would offer much in the way of therapy, unless you were looking for the cheapest, most excruciating trepanation possible. But I did see a woodpecker, not up in a tree, but sitting on a fallen one (also known as a log) and it was following script, merrily pecking away at it.
I didn’t want to get too close and scare it off, so the photo is kind of blah (optical zoom is something I definitely miss on typical smartphone cameras), but here ya go:
And at the lower pond, things were ducky. It’s also tough to shoot ducks (with a camera), not because they frighten easily, but because you have to be a worm to get down low enough for a good angle.
I took a photo of some of the fish they have stocked in the same pond, but due to reflection, refraction and the dull colors of the fish, I have not included the photo here. Just imagine a beluga whale majestically breaching or something. Yes, I know whales aren’t fish. But they breach a lot better.
There’s no Waldo hiding in this shot, I just like the interplay of light and shadow. The weird, bleached out color is accurate.
And now flowers!
And a few more on the way out of the park:
Finally, on one of the trails I don’t usually hit I saw this atop a giant tree stump. I don’t know.
If I have posted this before, it doesn’t matter. This is the most amazing cat image ever and the best way to start June, the official first month of summer.
True, a large part of it was due to a kidney infection killing my appetite for the better part of a week, which led to an impressive 3.5 pound weight loss over a 24 hour period, but still, I stayed on track even after getting my appetite back. If it wasn’t for a small uptick right in the last two days of the month I would be down even more.
For May I dropped 5.2 pounds. For the year I am still up 0.7 pounds, but that may actually change by the end of June to a negative number. Woo, I say.
I have largely curtailed the snacking and when I do snack, I am sticking to lighter, healthier things like apples and yogurt.
The stats:
May 1: 168.2 pounds May 31: 163 pounds (-5.2 pounds for the month)
Year to date: From 162.3 to 163 pounds (up 0.7 pounds)
And the body fat:
January 1: 18.5% (30.2 pounds of fat)
May 31: 19% (30.9 pounds of fat–up 0.7 pounds)
Tonight after a yummy sushi dinner I got a call on my phone. Strangely it showed as No Caller ID. This is strange because even spam calls usually show the number. I assumed it was spam. A short time later a voicemail showed up, which I assumed was spam in voicemail form.
I was wrong.
Instead, it was VanCity Visa calling to verify several suspicious transactions made today. I called the number they provided and it turns out that at least three transactions were made, up to $189 or so, to companies or places in Winnipeg. I confirmed I had not made these transactions and was rewarded with my Visa card being cancelled.
I’ll have a new card in 3-5 business days, delivered to a nearby branch. Then I’ll have to go through the process of activating the card, creating a PIN and updating the info for everything that uses the Visa as the form of payment–which is basically everything online. I’ll also be getting a call from a fraud agent in a few days to ask questions. I’m not sure what kind of questions, since I assume they can see my transaction history and will have the list of fake transactions. I’m hoping they can confirm where the info was grabbed. The guy on the phone tonight said it was through some online source. The last two online services that processed payments were Netflix and Branzone, which hosts my websites.
In all, a big pain in the tuckus and confirmation that some people suck (on a side note, if everyone committing fraud of this sort got beamed to an island–let’s call it You Are a Bad Person and Should Feel Bad Island–how big would the island need to be? I’m thinking pretty big). Apparently the fraudster in this case is well-known in terms of the purchases they use with the ill-gotten numbers. The worst part is I now have to rely on my debit card in the interim, which would normally not be a big deal, but it was getting fairly unreliable on POS machines, which is why I’d switched to using the Visa.
Maybe I’ll just pay for everything using cash. Crisp one dollar bills from 1987, perhaps.
Or just never buy anything ever again and learn to appreciate a simpler life, free from the trappings of rampant consumerism.
But yes, that island would be neat, if we could beam all those people to it.
This is a good book. It’s a short book. You should read it.
The End.
Okay, I should probably elaborate a bit. If you’ve read David Gaughran’s two other books on self-publishing, Let’s Get Digital and Amazon Decoded, then Strangers to Superfans will nicely complete the trilogy, and unlike some trilogies, the Shire doesn’t get burned to the ground in the process.
Superfans is less nuts and bolts than the other books, discussing some of the intangibles of self-publishing, focusing on the potential pitfalls (the failure matrix, as Gaughran calls it) in trying to capture and hold readers, then turn them into willing promoters of your work. In this sense, the book is going to be more useful to those with one or more books ready to be set loose into the sea of millions of other self-published efforts. Amazon is once again the focal point of discussion and rightly so, as it utterly dominates the ebook market, but Gaughran doesn’t ignore other markets, and even highlights how they can present unique opportunities given their smaller size.
And while there may be fewer specifics in this book compared to his others, there is still plenty of sensible advice on advertising (he is a strong advocate on newsletters), positioning and categorizing your books, along with tips on how to hook the reader at the end to keep them engaged and wanting more.
Overall, anyone thinking of self-publishing would do well to read all three of Gaughran’s books, in the order of release: Let’s Get Digital, Amazon Decoded, and Strangers to Superfans. There’s no guarantee his advice will make you rich, but your odds will certainly be better. As a bonus, his writing style is so utterly friendly and engaging you can’t help but feel more excited to self-publish afterward.
I usually have two speeds at Burnaby Lake: fast and faster.
Today, I tried a new speed: not fast. That’s not entirely true, as I did power along for six km to reach the Nature House and Piper Spit along the trail. But once there I took my time to saunter around, enjoy the feel of the sun, watch the birds do bird things and then strolled back out of the park, stopping to take pictures along the way.
In other words, I acted like my alternate universe opposite. Slow, mellow, taking in the sights.
The walk into the park off of Cariboo Road parallels a commercial complex for a few hundred meters, though there are some nice plants and flowers along the fence that divides the two. Just be careful if you try to pick them.
At the Nature House:
Baby ducks, adorable as always:
Duck butt:
Birds on the boardwalk. I want to caption this with something funny, but I don’t know what kinds of funny things birds would say to each other.
This is from the viewpoint looking back toward the boardwalk pictured above. You can see most of the lake from here, the opposite of when I am running around it.
Baby geese. Not as adorable as baby ducks, but pretty cute. Too bad they grow into poopmonsters (seen to the left and right).
I have never seen a turtle in this turtle area. (The area is fenced off, I’m just standing right beside the fence.)
I have added what I think is probably a pretty accurate depiction of a turtle, if one ever actually showed up here.
A lot of the land around the lake is marsh, which tends to be quite soggy. This has a certain effect on trees in the area. I call this The Leaning Tower of Treesa (sorry).
On the way out of the park I didn’t see too much to photograph in the way of flowers, but if you imagine a hundred pictures of thousands of buttercups, it would be a good approximation of what I could have shot (ironically, none are visible in the shot above, one of the few stretches that wasn’t festooned with the things).
That three-day antibiotic treatment for my kidney infection was apparently supposed to be 10 days, but the pharmacy only had three days’ worth of medication on hand (it was a total of six pills). I was expected to come back and get the remaining seven days’ of medication a few days later. They called and left me a message informing me of this.
I never got the message.
I was never told initially that the prescription was incomplete, either.
I’m actually a little ticked, because now I have to pick up the seven days’ of additional antibiotics, start taking them, then let my doctor know in case the lapse in treatment means I need to tack three more days of antibiotics onto thee seven.
And now I’m wondering if I can feel the kidney starting to act up again. Psychosomatic, perhaps. I feel like Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III. “Just when I thought I was out…”
I sat down at the computer tonight to write about…something. I’m not sure what, as it was one of those “see what happens when I start typing and find a funny cat picture if all else fails” sessions.
Instead, I somehow ended up doing another look at distraction-free writing software. Note this is distinct from markdown editors (which number in the millions now), though a program casn be both. Most of the apps I’ve tried before have been updated, though none with revolutionary new features that radically change or improve them. I didn’t see anything new that was compelling.
I continue to be vexed by the simple lack of first line indentation on most of these programs. This is a common feature in word processors–you’d be hard-pressed to find one without it, but official markdown does not support indented paragraphs. You want to separate paragraphs? You’ll hit the Enter key twice and you’ll like it!
But a few programs have included both. WriteMonkey 2.7 for Windows does. Alas, the author, busily working on version 3 (currently in beta) has said he will not be supporting this in the new version:
Right now wm follows markdown rules, i.e. Double return is new paragraph, single return is soft line break. First line indentation is not supported in wm3.
Sad trombone.
Ulysses supports both markdown and first line indents, but switched to a subscription model and is Mac-only.
Another sad trombone.
Scrivener has no problem with this and has a Composition Mode that is meant for distraction-free writing. And I’m okay with it, I just still have fears that the program will gobble up my text with no hope for recovery, having had that happen once several years ago (I’m willing to admit it in part user error and I know more now than I did back then. Still, it makes me nervous).
Having looked again at some others, I can eliminate the following based on my own peculiar needs and preferences:
iA Writer. An otherwise decent minimalist editor, it now has a Windows version–yay–but still doesn’t handle indents. It sort of supports them if you import or paste in a document with them, but that’s a clunky and unreliable hack. It’s a shame, because the program is fast and looks great.
WriteMonkey 3 (beta). As noted above, no support is planned for indents.
Q10 does support indents–but it only runs full screen and was last updated in 2011.
Quoll Writer has an interface that weirds me out. It supports indents, though I couldn’t find out how. Also, when I try to update it, it downloads the update and is supposed to install it when you exit the program, but nothing happens, so I dunno!
Typora. It supports indents, but only if you edit a theme. Kind of awkward and there’s nothing about Typora that makes it seem especially worth having to tinker with it for basic functionality. It’s not too bad, though.
Ulysses. Subscription model–boo. Mac-only. Also boo.
yWriter has an interface that scares me. I appreciate the depth it brings, but I’m not a fan of windows/frames all over the place. This is kind of like maximalist software.
FreeWriter has a paid version, so the name is a bit deceptive, though technically you can use the free version forever if you’re fine with the limitations. The UI is tab-happy and non-standard and sometimes aesthetics matter, even when it may seem less than rational.
Abricotine sounds like a medication or maybe a liqueur. Preferences are in a config file you must edit. Also no indents.
UPDATE: The author of WriteMonkey replied back to a discussion thread, saying there is still hope for a first line indent feature eventually: “It is possible. I received so many requests to allow first line indentation that I’ll do it eventually. It is not trivial to do it since changes to 3rd party libraries are necessary.”
Now onto the remaining contenders:
Scrivener. Pretty much does everything, my main concern as expressed above, is that I might lose work due to a saving snafu, especially now that most of the saves are in the ephemeral cloud.
GhostWriter. A markdown editor that sort of supports first line indentation. It allows you to set a tab as x number of spaces, and once invoked, it will continue to pseudo-indent every paragraph otherwise. Still, there’s not much support here for long form documents, so I’m not sure.
WriteMonkey 2.7. This is the current version and I’ve used it a lot without issue. My main concern now is it’s EOL and so won’t receive support if there are issues. It’s also a tad fiddly, though quite powerful.
Microsoft Word. There’s always good old Word, but I really don’t like not being able to see the plumbing behind the words, because it’s a mess back there. If the formatting goes awry it can be a daunting challenge to fix things. It can be run in a sort of distraction-free mode and headers can be used to act like chapters for navigation. Still, meh.
[unknown contender here]
In all likelihood, I’ll keep using Scrivener for now and see how it goes. The Windows version is still in beta but should be caught up to the stable Mac release sometime in the next few months (my hunch is the beta that will launch at the end of this month will be the final one before release. But I’ve been wrong a grabillion times before).
The coolest thing ever (when I was 10 years old). A weird list of food, places, objects and seasons.
dinosaurs
sharks
fire trucks
realistic Matchbox cars (I never liked Hot Wheels. I was kind of weird in how I preferred realism)
dioramas
roller coasters
amusement parks
canyons (as long as I didn’t get close to the edge)
summer days
fudge
Peanut Buster Parfaits
Filet-o-Fish
snow days
Mad magazine
raw peas
Now I want a time machine so I can go back to the summer of 1975 to savor these things (I’m okay with missing the snow days). Some of this list is clearly nostalgia-driven, but a surprisingly large number of these items still rank up there as pretty cool even to my sensible, more jaded adult self.
In fact, the pleasure I’d feel while eating some fresh-baked fudge while ogling a diorama of, say, dinosaurs, on a warm summer day, would be downright intoxicating.
Instead I’ll just do a GIS for fudge and lick the screen of my laptop. Or…maybe not.
