Winter Bike to Work Day.

Third annual event. The ride in was easy. The ride home,...well much easier than driving. It took me 45 minutes to ride home, normally it takes 30. But driving the same for many took two hours or more.

Oh the Irony

Stay away Aron Ralston.



For those who don't know the story, Aron Ralston, in 127 hours, talks to the camera about the cheap multi-tool his mother gave him that came with a flashlight for $15 and how he couldn't find his Swiss Army knife. The comment was to say, "don't buy the cheap deal."

Fish Lidar in California

Starting out installing in Montague, CA.


Mount Shasta, nearby.




The install...

Me testing the laser.



Installed in the plane.



Our pilot, Geno.



Plane with me, pilot and aircraft engineer.

Separation Anxiety

My rear rim decided to spit....Yikes.


I thought it sounded kinda funny....click click click...on every revolution.



Amazing how major this was but it was still ridable. I've been lucky that way this year. A broken frame earlier with only a clicking sound too.

Four Mile Canyon Fire Photos

Rides in the heat.

Hot in Boulder, but good riding...]

New Singlespeed

I broke my old commuter Singlespeed. It was a commute bike with 32-12 gearing. Great for riding to work but not for trails.

I got a new frame and decided to make it a two-option SS. I sometimes want to take it on the trail. So now I can.

Commuter gearing is 32-13 and Off road it set for 32-21. After commuting on it, I want to go back to 32-12 but I don't have a fresh cog. The 32-21 is pretty easy for most SS but I will try it first. With the cogs I have available, my next available cog puts it at 32-18...kinda tough for my legs on the front range.

The change is made by removing the quick link and putting in a 4-link section. The idler pulley is moved over. In theory a two minute job.

Freak-Flat

Bike tire flats are common; stickers, pinch flats, and sidewall tears on rocks occasionally.

But this is one unlikely event.

I was riding across some rocky terrain, and hear a snapping rubber sound as the rear tire pops off a rock. I guess somehow that rock flipped up, into the wheel at just the right moment to intersect the tube stem and crush it.

Awesome Onion Article

The Onion, the satirical newspaper, is always great to read.

This article, like others, digs deep into the real issue the earth faces.

Eco-Smokes

BP spill video

The most distracting an memorable part of the video of BP's effort to stop the gulf oil leak is going to be the brain and stem (rope) in the foreground.







I guess it represents the effort of constant thought to stop this thing.

All-Pay Auction

Swoopo is an all-pay auction site where you buy bids at $0.60 per bid and use them to bid up the price on items by one penny. If you win, you pay the price when it ends. The other cost is the cost of your bids. It's close to gambling and there are many sites that talk about these auctions.

Here is a hilarious example of a recent winner. The bidder won a voucher of 300 bids for $10.79. The funny part is that he used 403 bids to do it.



That is like buying $180 for $252.59.

Go figure out that logic....

Ok, someone did....Brilliant....


Martin Shubik Dollar Auction

Bike shuttle

Not sure what to say here. This is a caption opportunity.

Bike light around the house

My LED bike light makes a great around the house light.

New Weight Loss Plan-WORKS!

My bust my gut project (a while back) seemed to fail. Mainly because I didn't keep strict track of calories eaten. Only a motivation from exercise. I mean it sorta worked. But that is just it....it sorta worked. I lost a small amount of weight.

I'm not young anymore. It takes both exercise and calorie monitoring to get to and maintain a good weight.

My current plan uses a "pay by cash allowance" idea. It's kinda like weight watchers or Richard Simmon's deal a meal idea. It uses an iPod touch or an iPhone with loseit.com software to keep track of the progress.

The idea is classic and simple.

You get a budget of calories for the day based on your weight, age, etc and weight loss plan. I chose a one-pound per week plan back on December 25, 2009.

Using the iPod, I enter my calories as I eat them. I started with an allowance of about 2000 calories so as I eat during the day, I spend the allowance. Nothing innovative.

But the key thing here is that it's on the spot and active during the decision making choice. This is a huge deterrent to eat too much in most cases. The other big thing is that it's like paying cash for something instead of using a credit card. If I eat a huge breakfast, I have less for lunch and dinner. But the cool part is that Working out with exercise, is like a job. It rewards the allowance with the ability to eat more for the day. It's an immediate reward too. I can exercise and have that ice cream or beer right then. It motivates exercise for the reward of food.

The other big idea I added to this goes against all diet plans I read about....and that is, I skip breakfast.

They say it's important but I beg to differ, especially if you have excess weight and exercise. Sure, if you don't have body fat, your body will suffer. But if you do, not eating breakfast allows exercise to force your body to look for energy somewhere. It taps those fat reserves. You can't exercise too hard though because it will tap muscle tissue for energy, but moderate exercise will induce fat metabolism. It has to. It's like bonking in a marathon. You run out of juice so your body goes after the fat. You push through it.

Oh wait, Did I say this plan has no suffering? Sorry. Nothing is free. That is why it works. You do suffer.

Since I'm not a doctor doing research, I'm probably wrong. But least that is my wild theory. So far my wild theory works for me. Consult a doctor before attempting my wild theory.

Regardless. I can survive till noon without breakfast and so far, it's working for me. I do this even though I ride my bike to work. I feel like the reward of a bigger meal at night makes up for skipping breakfast.

By the way, part of my theory comes from the fact that a person can actually survive without food for nearly a month. No, I'm not kidding. Primitive man was used to not having food on a regular basis, not like we are. When you woke up in the morning not having food, you had a long day ahead of you searching for it. Thus, The body can deal not having breakfast.

Oh, did I mention the price you pay is hunger? It's not all that simple after all. I'm usually famished by noon.

One other thing I am doing here is eating really healthy foods. The more healthy the food, the less the calorie density. A Burger King small burger has 450 calories while a large spinach salad has less than a couple hundred. I can eat a lot more salad and get full this way. This is a key thing....but I do miss those burgers!

I set my goal for 170 lbs on December 27th, 2009 and made my goal today. As a result I set a new goal of 165 lbs. Not sure I need to since I feel great, but I feel I might benefit from another five pounds for my bike rides.

I actually did a little better than 1 lb a week. I'm shocked and happy with the amazing results.



So the keys for me are

--skip breakfast
--earn by exercise
--eat healthy
--record everything

The graph for my new goal. Lets see how it plays out.



I'm feeling better about doing my White Rim in a Day ride with much better results than 2008.

Most erotic animation

I was watching one of my favorite movies of all time, Pink Floyd--the Wall again and the first part of this has got to be it. Art-erotica. perfectly executed.

Simplified Acquisition Procedures.

I found this while looking at my photos from 2003. Funny government stuff.

Good to visit New Mexico Again

The state of the Zia.



The barbed wire.



The Cactus.



...and Contradictions.

Snow riding in North Boulder

Good stuff on a Sunday morning.

Progress of computers

I know it's an endless story, but I was reminded of it as I built up a new computer over the last few days. It's amazing to think of the pace of computers has been over the last three decades that I have been using them.

My first computer, circa, 1980 was a zx81. I was a teenager eager to learn how to program a computer. It had 2k of memory and a very slow cassette storage mechanism. But it used a standard audio cassette player. Does anyone even know what that is?

Then I got the color version, sold in the US as a Sinclair 2068. This was the age of the Apple IIe.

Not being able to afford an Apple, I got my hands on a Commodore 64 and had a blast. It had 64 k of memory but a slow 5-1/2 disk drive that stored around 170k of data.

Finally after college, I got a decent PC (1991 or so) that sported Windows 3.1 and a huge drive of 220 MB. I sweated over the details on this one since it was around $3000. All that sweat was rendered obsolete soon after.

The story remains the same; Yesterday, I built up a new computer which has 4GB ram and a 1-Terrabyte hard drive. Yes, 1-Terrabyte = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.

And the scary part is, it's really not a big deal these days.

My first real pc (1991) cost $3000 and had
200 MB Hard Drive
Intel 486 processor running at 20 MHz or something like that
8 MB RAM
cheeseball graphics
Windows 3.1

The computer I built yesterday (A very conservative build) cost less than $600 and has
1 TB Hard Drive
AMD Athlon II 4-core processor running at 2.6 GHz
4GB RAM
High speed 512 MB3D graphics card with two DVI outputs
Windows 7






I also found some interesting things while cleaning up:

Lotus 1-2-3. It pushed the need for computers to go beyond the 640k memory barrier in the 1980's



Mosaic. One of the first ways to browse the web.

Big Snow In Boulder

Seems every other year the front range of Colorado gets a huge dumping of snow in October. Likewise, another in March.

This one might have come close to breaking--or broke--a record. I think the tally is 22 inches and counting--it's still snowing lightly.

Unfortunately, some trees that are still bearing leaves have felt the carnage. We lost the upper half of a Hawthorne tree that was full of berries.





The broken Hawthorne.



Nala doesn't mind.









Interesting features deep within a collapsed tree.