Run 495: The recovery rolls along

Run 495
Average pace: 5:26/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:22 pm
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 27:28
Weather: Partly cloudy
Temp: 18ºC
Humidity: 60%
Wind: light
BPM: 165
Weight: 164.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 3865 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone

It was cloudy but with seasonal temperatures today and the sun even shined briefly, so weather-wise it was pleasant enough for the run.

The arc of the run was about the same as it’s been lately, though the first km was a bit perkier than normal, followed by the usual slowdowns from the second to fourth km before picking up again for the last km, which was again my fastest at 5:14/km. This is not an entirely unwelcome trend, as it feels good to end on a high (or fast) note.

No real complications to speak of. The right heel was a bit sore but didn’t seem to affect my pace (it has helped me focus more on my form which is a good thing) and all of my other body parts co-operated.

Overall, a solid effort toward getting back to my pre-cold pace.

Bad design: Staples iOS app

The revised version of Staples’ iOS app lists products but no longer lets you know if a product is available both in-store and online or online-only. This matters when you use the app, find a product, then go to a store and are told, “lol, naw, we only have that online!”

To insure they are not wasting a trip to the store, a customer is forced to call ahead to check for stock, an inconvenience the app should eliminate, not create. This is bad design.

Best Buy’s app, on the other hand, not only tells you if a product is available in-store, it will provide a handy list of storers near you that have it in-stock. That’s good design.

Staples bad, Best Buy good.

This is post #30 for the month

I’m just nakedly padding things out now. My brain is freezing, I want to go to bed, yet I feel compelled to toss up 31 posts for the month. Only one more to go after this. I’m sure the next post will make up for this one by being five thousand shades of brilliance.

This is post #30, though, so it only gets a quarter shade of non-brilliance, sort of like a flickering fluorescent bulb.

Good news: We are still here

It is difficult to summarize all the stupid, awful things Trump has done since taking office since there are so many stupid, awful things to catalog–and it’s barely been over four months since he was sworn in (I’ve been swearing the last four months, too).

The good news is that he still hasn’t blown up the world. Yet.

As of today, his Gallup disapproval rating is 53%. That’s actually below peak disapproval of 59%. Bafflingly, 41% approve. This number astonishes me. It means that, on average, four out of every ten Americans will tell you that they approve of the job Trump is doing.

This is the same Trump who has been a reckless, racist, blithering, embarrassing, narcissistic disaster of a president. He has bumbled more in four months than the worst presidents could manage over eight years. He makes dumb little kids seem smart.

What is wrong with America?

Still, the world hasn’t blown up yet.

E is for Eyeball

A quick doodle made in Sketchable. It’s hard to screw up an eye, but I still tried!

E is for Eyeball

Programs used: Sketchable, Photoshop CC 2017
Hardware: Surface Pro 3 with pen

Book review: The Eerie Silence

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien IntelligenceThe Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Paul Davies, the chair of SETI’s Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup, wrote The Eerie Silence in 2010, a short time after the Kepler space telescope launched. Back then a handful of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) had been discovered. Since then Kepler alone has confirmed over 2,300 exoplanets and estimates for the observable universe go as high as 5.3 trillion.

That’s a lot of planets.

And yet seven years later, the eerie silence Davies wrote about persists. You might think that over 50 years of observation by SETI failing to yield any tangible results would be disheartening and indeed, Davies does admit it can be a little depressing when you focus solely on the lack of any clear signal that we are not alone in the universe. But he remains hopeful that life here is not a one-time fluke among the billions of star systems. That hope is tempered by his adherence to the scientific method, of observation and testing, with minimal speculation.

It is that speculation, though, that forms the heart of the book. Davies presents comprehensive scenarios on how other planets might support life, what that life might be like, how alien races might communicate with us–or if they would even bother. He takes a dim view on fictional portrayals of aliens as malevolent beings looking to wipe us out and constantly warns against falling into the trap of anthropocentric thought. H notes that we might not even recognize aliens because they could exist in a state we can’t comprehend.

Davies also spends time covering how SETI and others would handle the world-changing confirmation of other intelligent life (he doesn’t put much stock in politicians or government handling it well).

In all, this is a wonderfully detailed and engaging look into the possibility of life beyond Earth. Davies keeps coming up with unique angles on how to approach looking for signs of communication–whether intentional or incidental, on how other intelligent beings might act and evolve, and why he is still passionate about continuing the search for other intelligent species beyond the confines of our solar system.

Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

May 2017 weight loss report: Down 2.3 pounds

Before looking back on May’s weight loss/gain/donut catastrophes, let’s first look back on April:

April 1: 166.3 pounds
April 30: 165.2 pounds

A small amount of weight loss. Encouraging, if only slightly so. And now May:

May 1: 166.2 pounds
May 31: 163.9 pounds

Note that only one day into May I had effectively erased the minor but of weight loss for the month of April. However, I managed to actually move in a positive direction for the month as a whole, shedding 2.3 pounds and 2.0 pounds for the year to date.

How about body fat?

January 1: 19.1% (31.7 pounds of fat)
May 31: 17.9% (29.3 pounds of fat)

Body fat is down 1.2%. Not much, but it’s down. If Fitbit’s estimates are even remotely close to accurate it’s kind of grossbuckets to think I’m carrying nearly 30 pounds of fat around with me. No wonder I don’t feel light on my feet these days. 😛

Still, May was a month of progress, so here’s to June seeing the momentum continue as I shed pounds like some efficient pounds-shedding device.

Run 494: Staying dry

Run 494
Average pace: 5:31/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:35 pm
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 27:52
Weather: Overcast
Temp: 12ºC
Humidity: 91%
Wind: moderate to strong
BPM: 157
Weight: 164.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 3860 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone

I was so dang busy on the weekend I did not run, plus it was weirdly warm, like end-of-July warm, so it would have been gross, anyway, especially since I’m still sluggishly recovering from the time off and the head cold.

I did run today, though, just in time for the weather to change from ludicrously nice back to unseasonably cool and damp. In four days the temperature on my runs went from 22ºC to 12ºC. The lower temperature was actually nice for running, not really feeling cold at all.

Luckily, despite a few drops on the way to the river, the showers held off and I actually completed the run without getting soaked. Yay. This was even more impressive considering how much of the day was a torrential downpour.

Looking over the splits, the second and third km were a bit slow but actually kind of comfy. The pace felt just right for my current condition. I did pick it up in the final km, which again was my best at 5:17/km and continued my overall slow improvement, chopping off a few more seconds from the previous run to finish at 5:31/km. My BPM was low again, too, at 157.

I seem to have slept on my right hip funny and it had been acting a bit tricky today at work, but proved to be a non-factor on the run. The right heel was a bit sore but not enough to make an impact (ho ho).

Overall, a small improvement but an improvement all the same. I will take it.

A haiku for summer

A haiku for the summer, officially three weeks away.

I welcome the sun
Delightful and cozy warm
Welcome to the shade

Environment Canada is predicting it will be warmer but precipitation will be about normal. A possibly El Nino could screw everything up. Given how extreme and weird the weather has been the last few years, I feel safe in predicting I have no idea what the next few months will be like.

Sunny would be nice, though.

D is for Dinosaur

This crudely drawn T-rex was done in almost a single continuous line due to how the Autodraw site works. As far as I can tell there is no erase function, though there is a generous undo ability.

But I don’t have the patience to keep doing and undoing so here’s my stick man dinosaur.

Autodraw threw out a ton of completely random guesses so it wasn’t too terribly impressed by my artistic ability. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was never great at drawing or painting and I’m okay with that.

It did include a T-rex head as one of its guesses, though. I’ve included it below my masterpiece.

Program used: Autodraw, Photoshop CC 2017
Hardware: Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet, my uncoordinated mouse hand

D is for dinosaur
Poor one-armed dinosaur 🙁
Autodraw Googlesaurus Rex
Autodraw Googlesaurus Rex

Save

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The Cars have run me over again

iTunes has a bunch of “Classic Rock Albums” on sale right now for under $7. While one might argue over what constitutes both rock and classic, there’s a bunch of good stuff here for old fogeys who fondly look back on the 70s and 80s because they were there.

Like me.

I decided to pick up The Cars’ eponymous 1978 debut and listening to it hit me with a powerful blast of deja vu.

Back in junior high, I took Drawing and Painting, even though I was never terribly good at either. During classes when we worked on our projects we were allowed to play music, provided everyone agreed to the selection. It was an unusual treat and one we savored.

One person in particular–whose name I’ve long forgotten–was the self-appointed arbiter of music and we pretty much went along with his picks.

He really liked Cheap Trick, who were a new band at the time.But he also liked The Cars, another new band.

We listened to a lot of Cheap Trick.

But he also liked The Cars, another new band at the time.

When I listen to the album now, it not only invokes memories of the class, I am reminded of how the album plays like a greatest hits collection. There are a lot of songs here that got radio play. I’m also impressed all over again at Ric Ocasek’s writing skills. The lyrics are funny and quirky and the music is catchy and inventive, effortlessly switching off from ringing guitars to cheesy organ and back again. The album is a brief 35 minutes long and it races from beginning to end, a near-perfect pop joyride.

Plus it has the lyric “Let them brush your rock and roll hair,” which is exactly what you’d expect the good times to do. Right?

Right.