UPDATE, The next morning: Yep, I have a 100% genuine sore throat. I'd like to hope it's just a sore throat, I'll deal with it, recover and move on, but I know the reality is more likely to be:
- Virus moves into sinuses - Virus moves into chest - Virus hits hard for 3–4 days, then lingers for a week or two after
I am resigned to my fate. At least my watch gave me a rest day.
Late this afternoon, my nose and throat began feeling funny in that, “You may be coming down with something!” way, despite not going anywhere or near anyone that would presumably get me sick. Viruses are funny things. I’m hoping this is just a passing whatever, and I’ll be back to being A-OK and healthy tomorrow morning.
If not, I will update and probably post a GIF of a cat sneezing or something.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. Looks summery, felt like fall.
Two things I wasn’t as a teenager.
My goals today were:
Start a bit earlier
Pretty much maintain the same easier pace as Monday
Get back before possible showers
I achieved two out of three. But it’s not what you might expect.
I got my Garmin Forerunner 255 about two years ago (November 2022) and it has been tracking my runs dutifully since. Today I got two new records on it, one for fastest 1K and another for fastest 5K. How did this happen? I’m not entirely sure!
When I headed out, I mulled just doing the river trail, in a sort of “just get it done” way. Someone had a large dog off-leash, though, and though the dog seemed well-behaved, they can act differently/squirrelly when you are running, so I kept walking to the lake. I initially chose to do a short loop clockwise, but partly through it, and with the skies actually mostly sunny, I decided to just keep going and did a regular 5K.
My first surprise came at the 1K mark, with a pace of 5:33/km, much zippier than expected. My second km was 5:39/km, but the surprises just kept coming. I must emphasize that I was not trying to run faster at all. Conditions were obviously better (the performance rating for the run was +3) and temperatures were lower at 13-14C (which is perfectly comfortable for a run), but still.
The fourth km came in at 5:26/km, which made my eyebrows pop in surprise, possibly with a cartoon sound effect. I normally push just a little for the final stretch, and my last km came in at 5:19/km–the record 1K pace.
The overall pace was 5:30/km, which is 16 full seconds faster than Monday’s run. Which is a lot.
I obviously didn’t encounter any issues during the run. I did encounter other runners, including a topless guy (I mean, 13-14C is fine, but I’m not sure I’d want to do it topless) and the spitfire (technically post-run). My legs felt slightly stiff toward the end of the walk back, but seem fine as I type this. We’ll find out tomorrow.
For now, I will bask in this brief moment of glory.
For some reason it lists the pace here as 5:32/km, but it was totes 5:30.Still Creek, post-run, looking to the west(ish).
Stats:
Run 893 Average pace: 5:30/km (record with Garmin Forerunner 255) Training status: Strained1 Location: Burnaby Lake Start: 11:04 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 27:39 Weather: Mostly sunny Temp: 13-14°C Humidity: 82-80% Wind: light BPM: 153 Weight: 167.3 Total distance to date: 6,325 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (110/215/325)
Strained is defined as “Your training load is optimal, but your HRV status indicates accumulated fatigue. Be sure to give yourself enough time to recover.” ↩︎
UPDATE, October 10, 2024: I manually updated after checking this morning and finding the phone had not updated on its own yet again. I kind of wished I'd waited, though, because I'm curious if the phone would have never updated again without me forcing it.
For the past few days, my iPhone 12 has been sending me notifications about an impending iOS update. Just make sure the phone is locked and has enough power, and it will happen automagically, it says (this is the state my phone is in when I plug it in to charge every night as I go to bed).
It never happens.
But like a scene from Groundhog Day, the notification keeps repeating, promising an update tonight.
Maybe tonight will be that night.
Update Scheduled. I believe you, iPhone1I don’t believe you at all, you dirty filthy liar!
In previous times, I’ve always ended up tapping Update Now, but this time I think I’m going to wait and see what happens if I don’t intervene. I’m feeling adventurous! Updates on the update soon™.
Another excuse to post an old-timey typewriter photo. Photo by Min An.
Short: I still haven’t found one.
Longer: The ones I’ve tried so far don’t have the right level of flexibility and customization that I want.
There are a lot of blogging platforms out there and they all excel at letting you put words onto the internet.
But I want more than words. I am a visual person, so I like including photos, images and things. Some blogging sites focus only on words, some allows images with limits, but very few seem to just let you freely mix both with abandon.
I want abandon.
Ghost probably comes the closest, but it’s $9/month (US, so closer to $12 per month for me) and that’s the basic plan, which doesn’t even let you use custom themes.
There’s Blogtastic, which sounds good on paper, but there’s no way to try it out other than paying, and I have enough doubts about performance, etc. to hesitate.
Beyond that is the world of static site generators, but I don’t want to host, configure and deal with backend nonsense. I do enough of that now. I just want to post words and pictures, to do so at reasonable cost and in a way that lets me relatively easily export my work if I decide to pull up stakes.
Summary: I continue to ponder. I am feeling an urge to start some kind of more focused writing project, though. Maybe I should just write a short story. 😛
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Kind of like late summer.
I was back to a morning run today, albeit a late morning. I pondered whether to give myself an extra rest day, as I was surprisingly sore after Saturday’s run, but in the end I couldn’t resist the call of sunny, summer-like weather.
My plan was to do a short loop and to run at a more relaxed pace. Mission accomplished on both counts, with my pace coming in at 5:46/km, three seconds slower than Saturday. Unlike recent runs, I didn’t sag midway through, but actually picked up the pace after the second km, and had a stronger finish (5:37).
No issues to report: well-behaved dogs and dog people, no bikes, no crazy number of slugs to dodge. It was unusually warm, but only for this time of year. It felt nice, and this may be one of the last warm-feeling runs of the season, so I savoured the sun instead of cursing it, as I sometimes do in the summer.
I can tell I’m going to be a bit sore again, but hopefully not as much as after Saturday’s run, so I should be okay to go again Wednesday.
In all, a perfectly cromulent start to the week.
A Douglas squirrel noshing, post-run.
Stats:
Run 892 Average pace: 5:46/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake Start: 11:41 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:02 Weather: Mostly sunny Temp: 18-19°C Humidity: 62-59% Wind: light BPM: 154 Weight: 167.0 Total distance to date: 6,320 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (105/202/307)
This is borrowed from a thread on Mastodon in which the author posts a single game every day for 20 days, without explanation, that fit the criteria of “games that had an impact on me.”
I’m going to do my own variation here, listing out all 20 games, roughly in chronological order. Because I am olde, this also serves as a gaming history of sorts.
Adventure (Atari 2600, 1980)
Demon Attack (Atari 2600, 1982)
Astrosmash (Intellivision, 1982)
Miner 2049er (Atari 8-bit, 1982)
Star Raiders (Atari 8-bit, 1982)
Lode Runner (Commodore 64, 1984)
Dungeon Master (Atari ST, 1987)
SimCity (Amiga, 1989)
Populous (Amiga, 1989)
Betrayal at Krondor (PC, 1994)
Myst (PC, 1994)
Doom/Doom II (PC, 1993)
Unreal (PC, 1998)
Half-Life (PC, 1998)
Star Wars: Jedi Knight (PC, 1997)
Starsiege: Tribes (PC, 1999)
Diablo 2 (PC, 1999)
City of Heroes (PC, 2004)
World of Warcraft (PC, 2004)
PowerWash Simulator (PC, 2023)
Coming soon: I edit the list after remembering a bunch of games. Also, an explanation behind each game, in defiance of the Mastodon thread, because I make my own rules, baby.
I have a bike and enjoy riding it. I don’t ride it much because I live in a vast urban area that requires me to ride the bike (I have no vehicle to load it into/onto) along busy streets not designed for bikes before I can get to the nicer areas with bike lanes, dedicated bike paths and further out, trails and other places where riding a bike is actually calming and relaxing.
I wish there was some master plan for the Lower Mainland (Metro Vancouver) to add proper, separated bike lanes on basically every major route. Instead, we get weird piecemeal projects like New Westminster’s upgrading of Columbia Street (two blocks adjacent to the Royal Columbian Hospital, which is why it’s happening) and Sherbrooke Street (same reason). It’s nice and so far it looks great (work is expected to be complete in February 2025), but it’s just a few blocks, like a tease of what could be before you’re just dumped back onto the regular street with nothing but a white line separating you and your bike from every vehicle.
But without some central plan that de-prioritizes cars and prioritizes bikes, this is probably the best we’re going to get.
Maybe we should learn French and move to Paris, where they seem to have figured this out.
I didn’t run at all last week. I had reasons, some good, some not so good.
Today, I opted out of birding and by mid-afternoon I felt I should run, which would make it almost seem like I’d run on Friday. I headed off under cloudy skies and conditions that were otherwise similar to the last run.
I definitely felt the difference in having a week off, with a slower pace, higher BPM and feeling the burn just a little more. But it was fine, and I’ll get my proverbial groove back if I resume my regular schedule again.
A few things of note:
The trail was busier, as I started at 3:26 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. This wasn’t an issue, though.
There were horses! Specifically, two. One was being walked by the rider, the other had the rider on it and was near the start of the Avalon Trail. She saw me coming, stopped the horse and let me pass, which was nice. It got weird shortly after when I heard the sound of rapid clip-clopping. When I looked behind me, the horse was…not exactly galloping, but definitely moving faster than a trot. I was wondering if she was now trying to pass me. I’ve never seen anyone ride a horse like this on the Avalon Trail before. It weirded me out. I picked up the pace and hoped she would move down one of the horsey trails, which she did. This led me to deciding to go all the way around the lake rather than run a short loop, to avoid more horses on return. I don’t mind horses, but they are big and scary, and I am just a frail little runner.
I started fast, got slower till the fourth km, then picked up the pace to finish. Pretty standard after some time away.
About 2 km into the walk back, I experienced a lot of abdominal cramping. It went away after maybe 120 minutes or so, but was rather unpleasant.
No dog incidents for a change. Yay.
In all, a decent run on a decent day and a decent return.
West end of the lake, post-run. The lily pads are shrinking and turning yellow.
Stats:
Run 891 Average pace: 5:43/km Training status: Recovery Location: Burnaby Lake Start: 3:26 p.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:44 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 17°C Humidity: 63% Wind: light (basically none) BPM: 156 Weight: 166.4 Total distance to date: 6,315 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (100/194/294)
It may not work for you, but it sure works for me!
Start Windows 11.
Open File Explorer.
Open a tab in File Explorer.
Repeat Step 3 until you have four or five tabs open.
Wait a short time.
Watch as File Explorer freezes, then crashes and restarts.
The good news is it usually restarts. If it doesn’t, press Win + R and enter explore.exe. This will restart File Explorer.
I will add this caveat: I run a lot of apps and background thingies, ranging from PowerToys to Discord, so who knows what dark magic is really making File Explorer upend itself, but whatever it is, it does not seem to like its new tabs being used.
Also, I am really leaning into “posting whatever pops into my head (or social media feed)” lately. I’ll have more substantive posts, too. I’m pretty sure, anyway.
I present cat on shark:
I would give credit, but none was attached. I like the ambiguity of “Is the cat attacking the shark or is it just using the shark as a couch?”
Frank probably made his post in response, but it’s still kind of impressive he got it in when he did, given the article got over 40 pages of comments in about 24 hours.
Myself, I’m using List View now instead of the main Grid view. My issues reflect a lot of what others are saying:
Too much white space (and I see even less of it, since I subscribe and the design takes into account the now-unused ad space), which means a lot more scrolling and a lot less visible content.
Article headers are way too big, both font size and image.
The Grid view commits a huge faux pas by showing a large block of black with white text on it…when you select the Light theme. Not only is this illogical, it’s a legit accessibility issue. Light themes should be light.
Images in circles are small and not particularly easy to scan, which is overall minor.
I knew there would be griping a-plenty when the article about the redesign talked about updating to current design trends (which in many ways are bad and user-hostile). We’ll see where it ends up as they tweak, but history suggests it will be mostly as is and people will just get used to it.
Here’s the Grid view, as seen on the front page (click to see full-size):
That is a lot of dark for a light theme.
The headers on articles in Light view are still dark, too:
This is a 1780×1140 window.
Also, note that despite having my browser window set to 1780×1140 (not counting the address bar, etc.) I have to scroll just to start reading the article text. This seems suboptimal.
We’ll see how it evolves over the next few weeks. I’ll post an update if I remember!
