This is from a Costco ad. I have no idea what is on this guy’s head. It tasks me.
EDIT: I checked the Costco site and found out that this is a “Theradome PRO LH80 Laser Hair Growth Device.” That doesn’t seem snake oily at all!
Also, every time I read it, I see “laser hair”.
EDIT, Part 2: I had to ask an AI image generator what laser hair would look like:
I thought the snow had melted enough due to The Rains, so headed out to do a possible river run, my first outdoor run since all the snow and freezing and such. But I was greeted by this at the gate:
Not exactly optimal running conditions. It was also pouring hard. But I was committed, so I set forth…on a walk.
I walked to the dam at Burnaby Lake, slipping minimally, but my pace was much slower than average–over 10 minutes/km for most of the time. No traction.
On the way back, I decided to try running for a bit on the narrow ruts made in the snow by service vehicles, and it sort of worked. I wasn’t very fast, but I never felt I was going to face-plant, which is always a plus when running. But I only ran on and off for 2 km or so. It was just not very enjoyable.
The good news is that with all the rain that’s been falling the past few days, the slush and snow should be even further diminished by Wednesday, so I might be able to do a full, actual run outdoors then. Oh, to dream.
Stats:
Walk 102 Average pace: 9:44/km Location: Brunette River trail/Burnaby Lake Distance: 8.02 km Time: 1:18:03 Weather: Rain Temp: 6°C Humidity: 99% Wind: light BPM: 128 Weight: 174.9 pounds Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Total distance to date: 762.46 km
The real answer is probably both.
I will say this, though, it seems to grow more potent as you get older. This makes sense, as you have longer to look back, and more chances to trigger that nostalgia. I find this is especially true of music, since I probably bought more music in my 20s than at any other point in my life. I was in my 20s from 1984 to 1994, so the music of that era can send me off in a reverie pretty quickly1Excluding excessively cheesy synths and that weird snap drum sound that sounds extremely 19080s now.. Also, this decade saw the rise of rap, hip hop, grunge and R.E.M. probably my favourite band.
I may have more on this later. In the meantime, have a cat:
Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam) Weather: Overcast and foggy, 3-5°C
The Outing
After last week’s deep freeze, we got snow on Wednesday and oodles of snow, at that. Some light rain followed on Friday, but not enough to diminish the snow much, so we donned our metaphorical snowshoes and headed to Piper Spit, which we felt would be the most accessible birding spot this weekend.
Unexpectedly, it was also foggy, which provided a spooky ambience to Burnaby Lake and, later, Tlahutum Regional Park.
The land mass that formed off the pier at Piper Spit had been extended by a combination of the lake freezing and the snow on top, proving a vast plain for a copious number of gulls and poop monsters.
Songbirds were also in abundance, standing out against the bright snow, though this also made for trickier shooting.
It actually went better than expected, and we both got nice shots with the bonus of the above-freezing temperatures meaning no camera glitches, just people glitches. Speaking of people, both places, but especially Tlahutum, were surprisingly busy. I guess people like trudging in the snow. Or maybe everyone was just delighted to go outside and not have every exposed part of their body go numb within seconds.
The gulls were busy splashing about or taking off in great flocks and circling around before coming back and landing in the exact spot they left from (stretching their legs–er, wings?) Meanwhile, a patootie1Yes, this is what I’m caling them of pigeons settled along the railings at the end of the pier, posing for some nice shots before departing back to nearby trees.
And while there were song birds aplenty, we didn’t see any chickadees, which made the outing slightly less delightful. I also didn’t spy any squirrels, but I wouldn’t blame them for holing up in the trees with their nuts and seeds until the snow is gone.
The highlight at Piper Spit was probably a bald eagle that dramatically emerged from the mist, swooped down, caught a fish or something fish-like, then carried it off and back into the mist. Neat!
Tlahutum had no highlights. We saw two song sparrows. One flew off before we could take photos, the other was far away. Oh, and I think we saw a crow flying overhead, too. But the frozen waterways and fog made for some cool (heh) scenery shots, and Nic got enough heart points to lift the meter from Couch Potato to Outdoor Potato.
In all, it went better than anticipated, and it was amazing how any temperature above freezing suddenly felt all balmy.
The Shots
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Waterfowl:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
Apple wants everyone to refer to their Vision Pro headset as a “spatial computer”, not an AR/VR headset, because Apple loves twee-sounding names (that sometimes stick, but mostly just look vaguely silly years later, like “Dynamic Island” does and will). Verge writer David Pierce, in this article, refers to it (cheekily) as a “face computer” and it makes me smile every time I see it.
Also, the image below will always make me giggle. Apple is desperately trying to make wearing a VR headset (sorry, face computer) a perfectly normal, everyday thing, not something out of a Black Mirror episode where the eyes staring back out of the headset display start shooting death rays or something.
NOTE: This post is updated semi-regularly with any relevant news on the mentioned newsletters.
Substack has been in the tech/media news lately, for all the wrong reasons. Their position on moderation can be roughly summed up as:
After re-affirming that they would not actively moderate content on their platform, and only offering to remove a few newsletters specifically brought to their attention, a number of prominent newsletters opted to leave Substack, with most moving to Ghost, which, unlike Substack, is not a platform, just a company that provides a blog/platform service and that’s about it. Others went to Buttondown1My own piddly newsletter, recently renamed Doodlings and Noodlings, is debuting on Buttondown this very month, Beehiiv, other hosts or moved to self-hosting.
My stance on this situation is:
I’ve gone a step further now, by unsubscribing to all free Substack newsletters. In every case, I have written a polite message to the newsletter author letting them know why I have unsubbed. I’m hoping some of them will switch to other hosts, but at this point I think the ones who haven’t are probably leaning more toward not moving. And that’s their choice–as is mine to unsub!
I’ll update this post with any word back I may hear from these newsletters. The two I most recently unsubbed to are:
UPDATE, January 29, 2024: Apparently I subscribed to a lot of Substack newsletters! 😛 Here’s more I’ve unsubscribed from:
Yes, today I got on the treadmill (as it continues snowing outside) and actually did a full 5K run for the first time in about a hundred years. I think the calibration on the watch vs. the treadmill may be off because the laps were going faster on the watch, but I still ran for about 28 minutes, which is about right for a 5K. I may do a short (1-2 km) run later on to recalibrate things.
My shins always seem to get worked over more on a treadmill. I’m not sure if it’s the greater resistance or what, but they did eventually settle down. Since I’m not used to actually running on the treadmill, I contemplated stopping at the 3K mark, but pressed on. Then I thought about stopping at the 4K mark…and pressed on. At that point, only falling off the treadmill would have kept me from doing the full 5K, but when I hit 5K I was delighted and immediately stopped1See below for why this was not a great idea.
Notes:
My overall training status is still listed as Strained, because I’ve been a fat lazy bum, I guess (which has been true-ish this month). But things will improve for the rest of the month.
Speed: 8.7 (6.7-8.7) Incline: 1 (1) Pace: 5:35/km (8:14/km) Time: 28:07 (33.09) Distance: 5.03 km (4.03 km) Calories burned: 348 (387) BPM: 150 (142)
Although I had EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN IT, it has snowed again. It is still snowing as I type this. It’s been snowing for at least 11 hours or so.
There is a lot of snow.
I did not go out running today, as I am neither a Yeti nor a hill giant.
It is pretty, at least until it changes to rain and turns into a slushpocalypse.
But no more after this, thanks!
Compare to January 11th (six days ago, slightly different perspective):
Jason Snell, former editor of Macworld, posted a link on Mastodon to a story he wrote on his own site, Six Colors, about automations. So far, nothing abnormal here.
When I went to read the story, a newer one had been posted in the interim, about how the soon-to-be-defunct news app Artifact had one killer feature, as summed up in the headline of Jason’s story:
Jason: “…what I loved about Artifact was that you could take a meaningless clickbait headline and have the app read the story and write a new headline based on its contents.”
Also Jason: “…in the era of the web and news aggregators, headlines that give away pertinent information have become a lost art. Whole generations of editors have been trained to write coy headlines that will earn a click, even if the people who are clicking will be immediately disappointed by the truth of the story.”
Scroll a little down from this story, and you’ll find another piece linked from Macworld that Jason wrote. The headline on Macworld is a bit different, but essentially the same:
That’s right–it’s a classic clickbait headline, posted on the same day that Jason was complaining about…clickbait headlines. I guess writing good headlines truly is a lost art. 🙂
My Garmin Forerunner 255 gives me a morning report every day. It sums up a few stats, like my sleep score and body battery, then sends me off for my daily adventures. It’s a nice little feature.
Lately, though, it’s been giving me less welcome news. You had a lousy sleep. Too much stress. Try to relax. Get better sleep. Exercise. Then rest. Why are you so stressed?
Through all of this, I haven’t felt notably different.
Take last night. If you asked me this morning to rate my sleep score, I would have guessed around 70 or so (on a scale of 1 to 100). Average, nothing special. But my actual sleep score was 47 and the description was this:
Non-restorative You slept long enough, but not well enough to bring your stress levels down overnight. You might feel higher stress or fatigue today.
Reading this does cause me stress, so it is at least partly accurate. It also meant that my body battery (which can also go to 100) began below 50 and is currently down to 9 at 4 p.m. I’m being told I had an active day and to rest. I’m not sure how low my body battery can go, but I’ll take this as a good excuse to laze around for the rest of the day.
In the meantime, I need to figure out what is causing the phantom stress and poor sleep. While I think the watch is exaggerating things, there may be some subtle change that is actually stressing me out without me being overtly aware of it.
So maybe my watch is just, uh, watching out for me1Really, it’s the natural thing to say. It’s technically not a pun.. I’ll report back if things improve, get worse, or get weird. Basically, I’ll follow-up.
(Yes, I know I had said I was going to hide all my exercise stuff from the blog, but it requires either a plugin or code, and it is not a high priority (but will be done eventually). To compensate, I have included a stock photo of a treadmill with this post to make it more visually interesting, if not stunning.)
Today I debated whether to go outside for a run. It looked like it would be around -5C to -3C in the morning and while that is better than -9C, I dithered long enough that I defaulted to the treadmill.
I kept the incline and speed the same as before, but after hitting 3 km, I started getting fidgety, and instead of stopping, I cranked the speed from 6.7 to 8.7. You can only walk at 8.7 if you have giraffe legs, which I do not. So I ran for about the last km and stopped at 4K, which is also a fine resolution.
The running part was not as horrible as I remembered, so I might just do a run from the start the next time I am on the treadmill.
Wednesday is calling for 0-2C in the morning with a chance of rain or snow, so I am uncertain where I will be running, but we’ll see!
Speed: 6.7-8.7 (6.7) Incline: 1 (1) Pace: 8:14/km (8:30/km) Time: 33:09 (30.00) Distance: 4.03 km (3.53 km) Calories burned: 387 (292) BPM: 142 (129)
“I went to pull up an MLK speech and got hit with a pre-roll ad featuring a busty women talking about the secret to make her man hard”
(From a comment made to this Ars Technica article.)