Day: January 31, 2008

Staying a Step Ahead of Aging

Staying a Step Ahead of Aging – New York Times: “Train hard and train often,” said Hirofumi Tanaka, a 41-year-old soccer player and exercise physiologist at the University of Texas.

Dr. Tanaka said he means doing things like regular interval training, repeatedly going all out, easing up, then going all out again. These workouts train your body to increase its oxygen consumption by allowing you to maintain an intense effort.

“One of the major determinants of endurance performance is oxygen consumption,” Dr. Tanaka said. “You have to make training as intense as you can.”

When you have to choose between hard and often, choose hard, said Steven Hawkins, an exercise physiologist at the University of Southern California.

“High performance is really determined more by intensity than volume,” he added. “Sometimes, when you’re older, something has to give. You can’t have both so you have to cut back on the volume. You need more rest days.” [Plan for February: Ride (out or in) Sunday through Thursday. Intervals will be sprinkled into the schedule. It’s time to regain some fitness. Last year was a fitness disaster. Little steps people. Little steps.]

What’s This Crap About a Ruby Backlash?

What’s This Crap About a Ruby Backlash?: Zed’s rant triggered some patently false anti-Ruby memes that have now been bouncing around the programming blogsphere echo chamber for a few weeks. Disturbingly so. It’s time to put a bullet to the head of the idea that Ruby is experiencing a widespread backlash, that it was just a fad, or that it is inferior to competing technologies such as Groovy. As far as I can tell, the originators of these ideas are people that betray agendas against the success of Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails. Specifically, I’m calling one of them out by name: [It’s never dull ’round these parts.]
Source: Obie Fernandez

Pricing Recs to Include Residential Parking Permits

Pricing Recs to Include Residential Parking Permits:

The Congestion Mitigation Commission will vote on a plan today at 3 p.m. A source who has seen the final draft of the Commission’s report tells me that it includes the following recommendations:

  • Congestion pricing revenue goes directly to the MTA. 
  • A residential parking permit program with revenues going towards funding streetscape improvements and bike infrastructure.
  • Making 60th Street the northern boundary of the pricing zone rather than 86th Street as Mayor Bloomberg originally proposed.
  • A surcharge on taxis and black cars operating inside the pricing zone.

[Why do I think this is going to get entirely messed up?]
Source: StreetsBlog

Raising the (Clif) bar

The folks that make Clif bars and other somewhat organic snack/energy foods have a cool program running where they ask that you ride your bike for errands within 2 miles of your house, since a lot of the miles we collectively put on our cars are for these short trips. Unfortuantely there are only two trips I make in a car that are within 2 miles of my house. Food shopping and gasoline. Sad.

Anyway, I was in a local organic produce store and saw some new flavors of their Mojo bars. Surprised in this day and age of blogging and tweeting that a new flavor of a product could be released without seeing some mention of it. I wrote to the PR department asking why they don’t send some stuff out to the bloggers (in this case me) and at least try to get some word of mouth out there. As of yesterday, there wasn’t a single Google entry for their new stuff and no mention on their own website except buried in the press release section of a very search engine unfriendly site.

I’m curious to see if they write back.

[Update: They did. More news as it develops.]

Driver who killed teen cyclist sues for damage

The Denver Post – Driver who killed teen sues for damage: MADRID, Spain—A speeding motorist who killed a teenage cyclist is suing the boy’s parents over damage to his luxury car, the government says. [What a mess.]
[Update: “Hundreds of people had gathered outside the courthouse in the town of Haro in northern Spain where the case was to be heard when Delgado’s lawyer announced his client was dropping the lawsuit.”]