Current State of Everything

I've been away from the blog for a while now. Along with work, I've been dabbling on two side projects; they have consumed most of my time.

One project I'm not ready to share yet since I don't have a tangible result for it at the moment. So for now it's in stealth mode. Anyway it's more fun to share it when there will be evidence of it.

The other is training for the cherry blossom run. A combination of a 4 - 5 day a week exercise program and a revised diet has gotten me in pretty good shape. I'm feeling confident about completing the ten mile run. For environmental and health reasons I've cut back my meat consumption to one meal a day; to avoid the vending machine at work I keep around different variety of nuts or granola; for lunch at work instead of getting chips I buy a piece of fruit. So far I've lost 15 lbs and I've gone from 2 miles to run 7 miles in 61 minutes. Props to Mark Bitten and Food Matters.

Remixes I've been listening to:




Back to hacking.

Bicycling Physics

This article, How you steer a bicycle, is a very cool nontechnical explanation why you steer left to turn right.

The Idaho Stop

In Idaho, cyclists are allowed under law to treat stop signs like yields. Oregon is now considering the Idaho Stop. Cool right?

Well I posted this story, http://www.howwedrive.com/2009/02/10/when-is-a-stop-sign-not-a-stop-sign/, in my gchat status message. Most people replied back with "this crazy cyclist did this or that" or "this car ran me off the road" stories. I'm glad this article stirred reactions from both sides, because roads are a space for both cars and bicycles; unfortunately, they are not designed for both cars and bicycles; they are designed for cars.

The article's point is the following:

• Bicycles are supposed to be on the road.
• Roads are designed for cars.
  
• Not all rules of the road make sense for cyclists
• Example, stopping/accellerating for cars is easy, push the pedal. For cyclists it requires much more energy, push the pedal many times over. That's why they don't stop at stop signs. This discourages them from cycling in a predictable manner.
  
• In order to make roads safer for cyclists, you cannot continue to discount cyclists' concerns.
  

This is just one example, and a great one, of the fact that bicycles don't get special treatment; they're different. (Note: I don't feel the Idaho Stop is not the only solution to the problem at hand. Other options include timing of traffic lights for cyclists, called green waves, or adjusting the enforcment of laws.)

In the future, cyclists will continue to ride on the road. Our planning and laws need to account for them. The hope is that it's safer for cyclists and it encourages more people to ride. DC is taking a nice step towards multiuse roads with the redesign of U St/16 St/New Hampshire; they are installing a contraflow bike lane and bike only traffic signal.

For more coverage check out GreaterGreaterWashington, WashCycle, and StreetsBlogs.

Bicycle Style

I'm obsessed with bicycles. I've got two; I'm looking for a third. Part of it's about style.

Check out the style from Copenhagen or in every day clothes at Velocouture.

The RSS Clutter

There's a fair amount of news out there. I use Google Reader to capture it all; however, it still can't make sense of the noise.

News and events are viral; they disseminate quickly throughout the internet. Take for example what happened today. Google accidentally labeled the whole internet as malware. Below every search result there was a nice warning: "This site may harm your computer." Even Google.com was labeled harmful. Interesting mistake.

While the dust settled and Google fixed the glitch, everyone blogged about it. Everyone. No everyone. I looked at Google News and there are 407 articles from 89 sources about the story.

As I went through my Google Reader articles for the day I heard about it at least 5 times. Makes sense, I follow tech blogs. But we can do better. A nice feature for Google Reader would be analyzing the content of my unread items and showing the unread articles by story. A way for it to say, "this article about Google malware is similar to these four; look at all of them now." Or one step further, look at your unread item by category: iPhone, Kindle, Google, etc...

This is hard; language is complcated. The fortunate part is that we know much more about the articles then what they say. We know when they were published, what sites and press releases they link to, the main subject (the tags), and the source. These content clues along with learning from the users - allowing them to teach the computer and say "Yes they're similar." or "No they're not" - you could build a very good content grouping engine.

Google News does it on a larger scale with the "All news and articles" link below each result. Let's try and leverage that for Google Reader.

Back from Baltimore - Staying in.

Back from Baltimore. Went the Lexington Market, got crap cake, saw some fish, saw some dolphins, and headed back.

Stopped at Wagshal's Marktet on the way back. Got delmonico steak for tonight and the superbowl package - 24 wings, 2 lbs ground beef for chilli, 6 bratwurst, and 6 kielbasa - for tomorrow. The steak melted in my mouth, and I'm sure the superbowl package will come through tomorrow.

In the car on the way back, we rolled along an elevated 95 - above the warehouse and vacants of industrial Baltimore - and watched the sun fade behind the trees; Bruce Springsteen coming through the stereo was just right. Currently, this song makes the moment:

Ooh La La (LP Version) - Faces

Staying in tonight, just what I need.

In Baltimore

Twitter and Breaking News Search

TweetNews:

This is an old hat by now in the blogosphere, but using Yahoo! BOSS and Twitter an yahoo engineer was able to make an excellent breaking news search engine. The tweets on Twitter measure freshness and the Yahoo! BOSS leverages the relevant search results and articles, so what you get are articles about what people are talking about now. On his blog you can download the source and play around with it. Or try it out at TweetNews.

Google News RSS:

I spent sometime fiddling with GoogleNews to put together a decent search about bicycles. Then I was able to grab a RSS feed for the search (click the RSS link on the left side of the screen). Now get updates on bicycle news from across the country in my google reader. One disappointment was that I wasn't able to make it prioritize certain sites like WashCycle or Streetsblog, but maybe I should make a Yahoo! BOSS mashup for that.

Borough Invasion

How many people did you meet from Brooklyn during inauguration weekend? I met a million.

Hopes and Dreams

Now I am going to see Beyonce for reals. Seriously I am. Inauguration Concert.

Hopefully Will.i.am appears via hologram.



holla-gramYO!

Saturday: Single Ladies

Stuck in our heads all day. "Uh Oh Oh...." on repeat, but no Single Ladies to be heard.

Then, there we were playing grown up - wearing suits, dresses, and dinning with red wine - listening electro-indie pop-all star-fashion darlings MGMT. Transition to Beyonce; Single Ladies; hit it; spontaneous dance party. We shook it.

Unfortunately, I busy enough getting down that I fumbled my phone and lost my opportunity to capture the moment forever on the microSD card in my phone.

Friday: Single Ladies

I listened to Single Ladies twice at work. I watched the music video once. The music video, similar to the song, rules. I wish I could embed it on my blog, but youtube user "beyonce" has disabled embedding. Lame.

Anyways, it was a mad dance party. See below:


Well, and I'm listening to it right now.

That makes four times, and I haven't even made it to Wonkette's Patriotic Inaugural Ball.

This Weekend One Thing is Certain

This is Inauguration Weekend. Social calendars are full with galas, balls, dinner parties, and concerts.

Only one thing is certain: you will hear Single Ladies.

I'm going to learn the dance, and each time I hear it I'll live blog the occasion. Stay tuned. Until then watch the music video over and over and over and over....

Pump it Up

There was a time - a glorious time, in the early 90's before iPods, before small stylish iPod speakers - where loud music blarred, pop, and fuzzed out of boomboxes. With cardboard and a boombox propped on your shoulder spontaneous dance parties could held anywhere: an alley, parking lot, parks, the sidewalk.

The Cheapest Car Insurance

Allstate claims customers who switched save an average of a couple odd hundred dollars. Of course they saved money. Who would switch providers if they didn't save money?

1 person could have saved $318 by switching while 9 were given quotes the same or higher than their current provider. It doesn't quite add up.