commentary

Winning Sweetwood

Winning Sweetwood: There was a climb up Fifth Street last year when I nearly cracked the Animal then blew up and finished fifty feet behind him, and that means more to me than any of the times I’ve finished ahead of everyone else. [I know exactly how he feels. Last Sunday on the short and steep opening climb I passed a friend who says she’s not a fast climber, but certainly climbs better than I in general, and nearly caught someone else whom I never have caught, and may never catch, on a climb. It meant more to me to almost latch onto his wheel than a lot of other cycling related things. I don’t finish climbs ahead of everyone else, but it’s nice to think that one day, with continued perseverance, I might. Head for the hills!]
Source: Sitting In

The Joys Of Life…

The Joys Of Life…: Watching 4 guys in a pace line, with full-on Time Trial gear, going -maybe- 12mph while Chloe and me passed them at 19mph, with Chloe honking her newish Honka Hoota and shouting, “EYE OF THE TIGER BABY… EYE OF THE TIGER!!!”. [Not that long ago I witnessed a similar happening. I was pulling Noah in the trailer, and there were signs and then cops and then hordes of people at the usually quiet park. The signs said “Biathlon” (well, there was a sponsor’s name, but they’ve never done me any favors…). For one split second I wondered who was going to the shooting with images of cyclists jumping off their bikes to take aim at something… and realized that someone was trying their hand at marketing and failing (apparently the name is changing next year to duathlon eliminating my vision and possibly a fatal misunderstanding). Anyway, so the competitors start arriving in all their racing glory, and behold the always enjoyable sight of someone on a “townie” bike (upright, non-aero position) in shorts and t-shirt, passing someone in full tri gear… skinsuit, aero bars, disk wheel… the works. I burst out laughing, but only Noah heard me, and there was no way to explain… It’s not about the bike (or gear).]
Source: Large Fella on a Bike

The Gospel of Consumption

The Gospel of Consumption | Orion magazine: This was the stuff of a human ecology in which thousands of small, almost invisible, interactions between family members, friends, and neighbors create an intricate structure that supports social life in much the same way as topsoil supports our biological existence. When we allow either one to become impoverished, whether out of greed or intemperance, we put our long-term survival at risk.

[…continues]

Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip.

Of course not everybody has been able to take part in the buying spree on equal terms. Millions of Americans work long hours at poverty wages while many others can find no work at all. However, as advertisers well know, poverty does not render one immune to the gospel of consumption.
[A not to be missed article.]

More of the Great Clif Mojo bar Taste Test

So a while back, when I started the Great Clif Mojo bar Taste Test and we’ve had a very cold spring. What that means is that the results are taking quite some time to accumulate. Sure the folks are riding and doing, but not the sort of long rides where somehow tastes change in odd ways, or where they need to pack energy along in the first place. (Little known secret, unless you’re a skinny sort, working out all the time etc. you don’t need extra calories (generally) for a two hour bike ride. I tell you three times.)

However some more results were written up a while back, and I never got around to posting. SO without further ado I present the always lovely, impossibly snarky, funny, and joyous Jenni on her Mojo bar experience.

The first thing that I’d add before I move along to the next bit of commentary, is that Jenni didn’t even know these existed… which doesn’t say much for Clif marketing. Sure this seems a bit like biting the hand that fed us (we did get the bars from clearly happening and with it Dean Mayer of Clif Bar Inc. afterall) but one so generous and kind will surely understand that I’m merely trying to point out that they are not achieving nearly the market penetration they should out here in the East, at least with Mojo bars.)

Next up was a partial report from David. Besides being the President of the Rockland Bike Club, he’s also an incredibly talented and created soul who authors columns, reviews, and books on photography, software, and stuff. He travels a lot, seems to find more than his fair share of food poisoning, and has done stuff like biked across Alaska. So without further ado, his rejoinder and first comments.

More comments to come soon… I’m sure. Right? Hello? Seth? David? What’s that? I haven’t finished yet either? Yeah, yeah. It’s coming. Soon. Really. No, seriously.

Thoughts on Google App Engine

Thoughts on Google App Engine: I’m more than a little concerned, though, by how much vendor lock-in there is with App Engine.  At first glance, it doesn’t look like the apps will be portable at all.  If I want to switch providers, or add in other providers so I’m not relying solely on Google, I’m outta luck.  

I’m hopeful other languages get supported, too.  I think Python is great – don’t get me wrong – but we have a lot more experience with other languages, so there’ll be a learning curve.

Finally, I’m dying to find out what pricing for an application of our scale will look like.  I can see some immediate, obvious things I’d like to try to do on App Engine, but the beta limits aren’t gonna cut it for us.  :(

[snip -ed]

My favorite bit?  In theory, Google has solved the data scaling problem.  I don’t mean raw binary (blob) storage, which S3, SmugFS, MogileFS, and plenty of other things have solved, but the “database” scaling problem.  Every popular web app runs into this problem, and it’s typically solved with a combination of memcached, federation, and replication.  But it’s messy.  In theory, Google has automated that piece for us.  I can’t wait to play with it and see if that’s true.

I also can’t wait to see who else is going to wade into this fray.  Sun?  Microsoft?  Yahoo?  IBM?   [More info from the field…]
Source: SmugBlog: Don MacAskill

Let my People Have Root

Let my People Have Root: App Engine is certainly convenient for Google because it maps exactly to what they have already built for internal use. But does it mean that Google has solved the hard problem of how to manage a cloud computing offering while simultaneously giving developers the freedom of full root control? And is root access important? [Granted they have a self interest, but they still make a good point…]
Source: Joyeur

Generation Squeeb: Barack Obama’s Reverend Wright controversy, and America’s squid-heart

Generation Squeeb: Barack Obama’s Reverend Wright controversy, and America’s squid-heart: We can’t focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we’re constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense — while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we… shit, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m just tired of this tone that’s always out there when these scandals break, like we can’t fucking stand the existence of this Wright fellow for even a minute longer, not a minute longer! — when we all know that come Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, Jeremiah Wright will be forgotten and we’ll be jumping en masse in a panic away from the next media-offered shadow to fall across our bow. What a bunch of turds we all are, seriously. God help us if we ever had to deal with a real problem. [Too much truth here.]
Source:

Mr. Silver Does It Again (Congestion Pricing Killed)

Mr. Silver Does It Again – New York Times: New Yorkers should remember Monday as the day Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, used the power of his office to deprive them of $354 million in federal funds to help mass transporation, ease traffic congestion and improve the air that all New Yorkers breathe.

Backed by his Democratic conference, the speaker killed congestion pricing in the most cowardly way: without even holding a vote. Mr. Silver said so many members of his own conference were against the plan that it would never pass. How many? Who knows? The speaker hid behind closed doors to keep the public from watching his cronies do the deed. [Shameful!]

Coda Confidential (The birth of RSD)

Coda Confidential: We had just recently finished Coda, and with one hour to fill and a lot of Coda-related things still swirling around my mind, I pretty much just started talking. What followed was a whole lot of hyper-warp thoughts about all things Panic. [So what caught my ear was the story of the first product they did which was an early version tracker which got shelved because they realized they’d either have to have access to “version tracker” or the like, or maintain their own database of latest versions.

This was kind of how RSD got started. I had a docs page which discussed the settings Archipelago (the blog editing software I had authored) needed for several of the major blogging platforms. As I was updating it for the millionth time with yet another engine I realized that I could write a document that Archipelago could use for setup, and the customer service emails (which is what caused me to update the page) would probably go away to a great degree. All I’d have to do is keep, say an XML file on my server up to date, and having done it once all Archipelago users could benefit.

Happy with the thought, I was dissatisfied with how this wouldn’t reduce the problem to near zero because while I had all the major cases covered, it would always be my problem to keep “database” up to date. I looked for an existing format so that I wouldn’t have to sell anyone on a format and found really dense hard to understand formats that were very general and didn’t seem to cleanly fit the use case. I floated a couple of versions past the indie developers I know, found some support initial support from two vendors I cared greatly about, and the rest as they say is history.

It was a nothing to lose story in that if I had received a big yawn, I could have hosted the file for my users, and they at least would have had a better experience most of the time. But this result was far better since everyone has benefited, and we all continue to benefit from the support of the blog engine folks.

Anyway, years later it comes as little surprise that a lot of software small and large have similar birthing stories…]
Source: Coda author