Couch to 4K

Nine days since my last run. I know that run­ning this infre­quent­ly just makes the whole process more dif­fi­cult, but I have to take my oppor­tu­ni­ties when I can. While I’ve been kept pret­ty busy with a full sched­ule late­ly, I can’t say that I don’t have oppor­tu­ni­ties. In this case, «oppor­tu­ni­ties» trans­lates to «win­dows of motivation.»

This morn­ing I had more get-up-and-go than usu­al. I’ve done laun­dry, cleaned the cat­box, tak­en the trash out, and topped it off with … Read the rest

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Back on the road

After feel­ing that I need­ed to give my knees a rest in July I took more time off of run­ning than I had pre­dict­ed. Com­ing back after months of inac­tiv­i­ty I knew it was­n’t going to be an easy return. My weight has increased a notch in the last months and extra weight means more stress on the joints as well as the mus­cles. Mind­ful of the impor­tance of start­ing slow, I chose a short, famil­iar, and flat route: out … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Who’s afraid of s3804?

by 8 Comments on Who’s afraid of s3804?

There’s been a lot of bad leg­is­la­tion pro­posed con­cern­ing copy­right, and it is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to tell the good from the bad with­out an attor­ney inter­pret­ing every word. Blog­gers like me get up on a vir­tu­al soap­box and declare that bills will pro­tect or destroy (usu­al­ly destroy) all cre­ative thought. Usu­al­ly such dec­la­ra­tions say more about the writer’s prej­u­dices than the leg­is­la­tion. There are those who believe that copy­right is a a sacred trust and that no one should ever … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Steve Jobs: how can you be so brilliant and so clueless at the same time?

by 3 Comments on Steve Jobs: how can you be so brilliant and so clueless at the same time?

My fears have been con­firmed: the rumors of a 7‑inch iPad are only rumors. Steve Jobs has set his foot down and there will nev­er be an Apple device larg­er than the cur­rent iPhone but small­er than the cur­rent iPad.

For all that Apple has going for it in the realm of user expe­ri­ence and user inter­face, how can they be so far off the mark when it comes to ergonom­ics and human mechan­i­cal inter­face issues?

I’m not the … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Going to Open Studios? Don’t forget to check out Kentucky and Army Streets

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ImageActu­al­ly, you’d have to go back in time to find the inter­sec­tion of Ken­tucky Street and Army Street in San Fran­cis­co. Army Street was renamed Cesar Chavez Street in 1995 and Ken­tucky Street was annexed to Third Street some­time prob­a­bly around 1920. But the inter­sec­tion itself is in the same spot, at Third and Cesar Chavez, and that’s where my stu­dio is.

As Octo­ber is the month of Open Stu­dios here in San Fran­cis­co, once again I’m open­ing my stu­dio … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Stop holding «contests»

by 6 Comments on Stop holding «contests»

I use a ter­rif­ic piece of soft­ware in my busi­ness called Time Mas­ter. It’s a time track­er and invoice gen­er­a­tor that runs on the iPad. I’ve gone through sev­er­al time-track­ing pack­ages in the last fif­teen years and even con­sid­ered writ­ing one when I was unsat­is­fied with the avail­able options. It speaks well of Time Mas­ter and the devel­op­ers at On-Core Soft­ware that they have pro­duces a soft­ware pack­age that pass­es muster.

Recent­ly On-Core released a new ver­sion of Time … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Lying with statistics

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In the wake of Jimi Hes­elden’s trag­ic Seg­way acci­dent Mon­day, media out­lets have seized upon a small study done at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal and breath­less­ly issued sen­sa­tion­al head­lines. MSNBC says, «Seg­way Scoot­ers Can Lead To Seri­ous Injuries, Experts Warn» ABC News asks, «Are Seg­ways Safe?» Even Web­MD claims, «Seri­ous Injuries From Rid­ing Seg­ways Increas­ing» with­out any indi­ca­tion of whether the increase is in pro­por­tion to the use of Seg­ways. 383,000 peo­ple … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

…and the winnah is

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ATT vs VerizonVer­i­zon.

My ear­li­er AT&T ver­sus Ver­i­zon post was labeled «part one» for a rea­son: it was writ­ten before I had any basis for com­par­i­son. Now, three weeks and two days into my con­tract with Ver­i­zon, I’ve yet to expe­ri­ence a dropped call. There are places with strong sig­nals and places with weak sig­nals; that’s no dif­fer­ent on Ver­i­zon than AT&T. But the most impor­tant dif­fer­ence is that I can hold entire con­ver­sa­tions with­out being dis­con­nect­ed a half-dozen times in suc­ces­sion. … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Two companies that get design: iPhone versus Palm Prē

by 2 Comments on Two companies that get design: iPhone versus Palm Prē

A few months ago Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look com­pared the iPhone with the Nokia E75, eval­u­at­ing the device with all the fea­tures a user could ask for against the device with a focus on user expe­ri­ence. It was evi­dent that Noki­a’s approach of cram­ming tech­nol­o­gy togeth­er into one pack­age left some­thing to be desired with­out atten­tion to the user interface.

Now for a quite dif­fer­ent chal­lenge: a com­par­i­son of the iPhone with anoth­er device designed with the user in mind. … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Here’s another one I don’t understand

by 4 Comments on Here’s another one I don’t understand

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0728-target-politics-20100728,0,6274128.story

There’s been a lot said about Tar­get’s $150,000 con­tri­bu­tion to Min­neso­ta State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tom Emmer’s cam­paign for Gov­er­nor as well as the Supreme Court’s Jan­u­ary deci­sion in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. Any­one can guess that I dis­agree that cor­po­ra­tions should receive the same rights and pro­tec­tions that indi­vid­u­als do, but I don’t real­ly care to weigh in on it right now.

What I don’t under­stand from … Read the rest

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