Lately I have gotten back into bicycling in a big way. I had fallen out of the habit a few years ago, and had several aborted attempts to rekindle the cycling mojo. But the recent diet and exercise plan, and the fact that I can ride without it causing my plantar fasciitis to flare up is all good. About 16 miles of my usual route are on well paved paths that happen to follow the irrigation canals...
Guilty Pleasures: Absolutely Fabulous
To there are a few things that give me guilty pleasures in life. One is the BBC comedy show “Absolutely Fabulous”. It is a ridiculous series, introduced to me by a long forgotten ex-girlfriend, but it never fails to bring a smile to my face. The tales of Edina Monsoon, Patsy Stone, and Saffron always put me in a happy mood. One of the best episodes is “Small Opening” a...
So you want a Website – let’s get started
I get a lot of people asking me how to create a website. They see this page, or the site I run for the Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption group, or my professional site, and wonder what they need to do to play. It can be confusing to a neophyte, but hopefully I can clear the confusion. First, you need to honestly assess your technical ability. Do you view yourself as a bit of a nerd? Are you...
How you know you are from Phoenix
When it is 103F outside, and it feels cool.
When your pool is a tepid 92F
When people you know from around the world feel the need to joke about the “dry heat”
But mostly, I just don’t mind the heat.
Fitness then and now
Back in 2003/2004 I lost a ton of weight. I went from a peak of about 265#’s to ~185#’s where I stabilized for a long time. I did it the old fashion way, by eating less and exercising more. I counted calories, targeting ~ 1,400 a day (give or take). I started exercising in a gym (because I was really out of shape, it seemed the safest way to get serious), but graduated to running and...
I thought I could live with iPhoto
As part of my migration to a MacBook Air (from my macbook pro with beaucoup disk space) I figured I would just live with the “as delivered” iPhoto. Alas, that was not to be. I did one (small) import of photos, and I about barfed. For a program that takes about 1.5 G of disk space, it pretty much sucks when you are used to using Aperture. iPhoto lacks a lot of what I have come to expect in my...
Favorite Movies: Blade Runner
Whilst I was working on the preparations for the grilling feast tonight, I popped in one of my all time favorite films, Blade Runner. Released on June 25, 1982, it was a epic piece of cinematography, and a fabulous translation of the Phillip K. Dick short story: “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Some phenomenal performances by the cast, including one of my favorite villains...
Grocery Store Observations
This afternoon I did a little shopping for the holiday feast tomorrow, and I got to observe some prime high quality behavior. First, how hard is it to put your damn shopping cart in one of the little corrals that they provide? Seriously, there are at least three per row of cars, but alas, it is too damn far for most people to put them where they are out of the way of other shoppers. There must...
Google Analytics weirdness
I have a few websites, and I have all of them (except this one) in my Google Analytics account. I don’t obsessively watch it, but I keep track of trends. My main site, Tralfaz, I run on Joomla! which does a pretty good job of internally monitoring the page visits. I find that on days where I make a new post, I typically get 100 – 130 page views of that (mostly from the Product...
More on life with the Nexus 7
I have been trying really hard to use my Nexus 7 as my tablet and media consumption device. In general, it is a worthy competitor to the iOS based iPad’s, but there are some notable differences. 1) The built in Safari “Reader” function is something I use heavily. If you are unfamiliar with it, it takes a web page, strips out all the marginal things, formats it in larger, more...