Day: December 29, 2011

Bill Strickland’s Year-End Top 1 List

Bill Strickland’s Year-End Top 1 List:

The only thing that really, truly matters in cycling is that I’ll be out there, and that I got out there today, and yesterday, too, and however many days I made it on a bike in 2011. Maybe some of you haven’t been out riding in a week. Maybe some of you doubled up today. You might be in a big training block right now, or plummeting down a holiday-season spiral. The jackets we own might not be one of the ten best according to some blogger. Our socks might not be the Pantone color of the year (it’s 17-1463, tangerine tango, for 2012).

That stuff? It all ranks somewhere between number two and infinity. Get out on your bike. I’m thinking I’ll take Shimerville.

[I’ll be out tomorrow at some point. 12 miles to hit my goal. Less than an hour.]

inrng : tinker, tailor, cyclist, spy

inrng : tinker, tailor, cyclist, spy:

The “Russian global cycling project” wording on the jersey, team bus and website is not a slogan, it is a statement of fact. These billionaire oligarchs, with vast wealth and power, curiously run a cycling team. Just as the Soviet Union once sought sporting success, Moscow is today aiming for similar glory. Cycling is a chosen sport but there are others, the 2014 Winter Olympics are another part of this impressive spend and Katusha even sponsors a sailing team, making it surely the first cycling team to be a sponsor, rather than sponsored. And note the overlap between the state and sport, for example the Russian intelligence services knew a week in advance of the announcement that Russia would host soccer’s 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The pro team is just one part of Russia’s spending on cycling, there is the Rusvelo development team (previously Itera-Katusha). With a man in the UCI it can only be a matter of time until Moscow gets a World Tour race and if the Putin kommanda retains power for long enough, we can probably expect the World Championships there before 2020.

Some teams sell flooring, banking or satellite television. Katusha sells Russia. This is a team like no other.

[Sheesh.]

Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99%

Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99%:

Knutson, Boyer and the other Occupy geeks don’t have to build everything from scratch. “These are standards that have been around for a while, and we are not reinventing the wheel,” said Boyer.

For instance, the projects will rely on set of technologies known as Open ID and OAuth that let a user sign into a new website using their logins and passwords from social networks like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Those technologies let you sign up for a new service by logging into a Twitter or Google account, which vouch for you to the new site without giving over your password or forcing you to get yet another username and password to keep track of..

[snip -Ed.]

“I think any type of small or medium-sized group or a team that has one person in eight different cities,” could use it for collaboration, says Knutson. And he sees no reason against spinning off the tech to businesses.

“Every small and medium business owner is a member of the 99%,” said Knutson.

[Sooo let me see if I have this correctly. A system that is being built because the Occupy movement doesn’t want to rely on corporate hosts will… A) Rely on the current corporate identity systems. B) Rely on crafting human agreement that historically has never happened around RDF C)Is trying to solve too large a problem. D)Is willing to spin technology off to business (and says I with some cynicism, vaulting the coders into the 1%? Oy. Despite my “never bet against youth” belief, I don’t think these efforts will come to anything. Either way, building a social network is either about inclusion or exclusion. Neither works in this case.]

Dave Winer had this to say…:

4. Now there are news reports that some people associated with Occupy are taking aim at Facebook. They want to make the Facebook for the 99 percent. Oy. Here we go again. There is no market for that. Facebook is the Facebook for the 99 percent. The goal should be to make something open and non-monolithic that provides many of the most valuable services of Facebook without the silo walls. It should not be something that an individual does, or a small group laboring heroically, rather it should be something that the Internet does.

[I totally agree. He also mentioned the solving small pieces of the problem thing that I spoke about to a couple of you. I wish they would, they’d stand a better chance.]

A hundred little things

A hundred little things:

Sure, you can copy one or two or even three of their competitive advantages and unique remarkable attributes, but no, it’s going to be really difficult to recreate the magic of countless little decisions. The scarcity happens because so many businesses don’t care enough or are too scared to invest the energy in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being extraordinary.

[It’s really hard to do this even when you plan to create more than one store, shop, restaurant from the outset.]

Source: Seth’s Blog

The Fat Trap

The Fat Trap – NYTimes.com:

The research shows that the changes that occur after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about 250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

[This article seems spot on to me. I know I can’t eat like a typical person does. If I do, I will put on weight. For me, the path has been a stair stepped. I lose 10% or more, keep it off for a while, then gain some of it back, then refocus and continue. A times along the way my weight has stabilized and the living is easy. Other times, it hasn’t and I have to work harder and focus more attention. Right now is one of those focus times. But I’m certain that it can be done because I’ve done it. I’m not the hyper vigilant, food logging, portion weighing type, but I am very aware of what I eat, when I eat it, and it’s composition. It’s not always fun or easy, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay for what I hope is increased health. The really hard part is not knowing whether all this work pays off. I hope so.

Makes me wonder about determinism. Namely, I wonder if hiking and biking appealed to me because their long distance nature was “easy” for my body because of that efficiency… so it wasn’t that I like them and as a bonus their effect as exercise is beneficial, but I like them *because* I’m well suited to the slow twitch efficient nature of my body and those activities.]