Furthermore: December 2005

December 31, 2005

The Goodies

I watched the Goodies anniversary show on BBC2 last night. I dimly remember some of the sketches from my youth - mainly the tomato ketchup squirting one, and the beanstalk one for some reason. Having watched the show, I feel it’s probably best left in the past - I don’t think I’d watch it if it was on now, although I think my older daughter would enjoy it.

The thing that struck me though, was how much visual humour there was in the show, and of course it was all done with “real” effects since there was no CGI to speak of in those days. Tastes in comedy have moved on since then of course, but what goes around comes around, and I wonder whether we won’t see some kind of blend of comedy and computer graphics. Where is the Terry Gilliam of machinima?

Just as I wrote that, I thought - why would I expect to see that stuff on TV (although no doubt it will appear eventually). It’s already happening on the internet. You only have to look at sites like b3ta or somethingawful to find photoshop parodies and funny little animations in Flash. I can’t think of any individual creator who I recognise, and I’m not sure if it’s just a matter of time, or whether the medium has become more like the joke-telling culture - you never know where the originals came from.

December 30, 2005

Secret Sites and Personal Blogs

I just linked to this piece: Secret Sites at Kottke. It’s about using “private” web journals as personal journals. I’d been thinking about similar things for a while - one of the things that I’ve begun to find frustrating about Furthermore is that I don’t feel comfortable posting a lot of personal stuff here because it’s effectively going to be preserved for ever, which is a long time for transient thoughts to be kept. At the same time, it is meant to be a personal blog, rather than being “about” some particular topic - I’d quite like to keep all my personal stuff in one place rather than have a lite and full-fat journal. Possibly what this shows is that you shouldn’t associate a personal blog directly with your real identity.

What I really need I guess, is fine-grained access control. Maybe I should move the blog elsewhere and just keep Furthemore for projects (which I never get round to).

Feh. Maybe this is all just a post-Christmas slump - I feel like I’ve had a week off and accomplished basically nothing at all. Which would be fine, but I don’t really feel relaxed either. Just fed up.

Links

• Meat - fantastic Terry Bisson short SF story showing us as others might see us.


• Kottke - on secret sites. Maybe more to say on this one in a bit.


• Cringely - on the Google box. Very interesting speculation.


• Bike videos - insane urban cycling around New York, SF etc. Mrs Furthermore found these videos made her feel nauseous because of the movement. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.



• Alternative Last Calvin and Hobbes - apparently well-known on the internets. I’d never seen it before though, and I thought it was good.


• From Google Cache - The Harry Potter Nimbus 2000, with all the original comments still in place.

December 23, 2005

Out of the marathon

Unfortunately, I’m out of the 2006 marathon I think. My right knee started hurting after my run on the 11th, and it’s the same problem as before - PFS. So until I can work out what’s causing it (gait, footstrike, could be various things) and whether I can fix it, I’ve had to stop running, which is basically going to destroy my training schedule for the marathon. So I’m pretty much decided that I’m going to defer until 2007, unless I recover by a miracle.

By some sort of irony, I saw this link the other day: How Running Made Us Human - quite interesting theory.

December 22, 2005

External Links Clicked

I’ve been using MyBlogLog to track outgoing links from the site since about July. The free service seems to work pretty well. I’ve aggregated all the outgoing links and the top 12 are below. Why 12? I had about 920 outgoing clicks, so I took the top half. As you would imagine, the distribution looks like it follows some kind of power law.

• Gmaps pedometer (120 hits) - the original site. You should probably use this link now.



• my survey of Cambridge blogs (90 hits) - somewhat moribund. Try Geoff Jones wiki for this instead


• Realist personality type (60 hits) - from the BBC Myers Briggs personality test show


• Gmaps pedometer route (37 hits) - a running route around Cambridge


• Freesat from Sky (33 hits) - I was surprised how many hits I got on this.



• AAA Watch Club (22 hits) - 24 hour dial watches


• ThinkGeek (18 hits) - more 24 hour dial watches


• cam.misc (17 hits) - lunch recommendations around Cambridge


• pic of me from Wiki Wednesday London (17 hits) - taken by Geoff Jones, I now notice


• Myers Briggs personality types (16 hits) - a more in depth site than the BBC show



• Tony Robinson (15 hits) - but not Baldrick. A chap in Cambridge who had a site with info on estate agents


• Dunster Castle (12 hits) - well worth a visit

December 8, 2005

Marathon Training

Well, I got up at 6 today and on Tuesday and ran a four mile circuit. Took me just under 50 minutes both times - which is pretty slow, but I’m not so worried about times at this stage. Just getting out and round is enough.

I’m going to try skipping the short run for a while at least - I’m not sure if I’ll get the benefit from it. I may try to start doing it if the training isn’t hurting me too much later on. I discovered that running to work is not a sensible idea - I’d realised I’d have to take in spare clothes the day before in order to have something to wear when I got to work, but I forgot about a coat, and at that point, the idea just began to seem absurd. All these logistics? Why bother when I can just do a circuit from home?

Useful things so far:

• gmap pedometer - I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s really handy for working out distances for run routes. Here’s the coming Sunday’s 8 mile run from my parent’s place.


• Google Groups search - on energy bars. Pro-bar opinion seems to centre on CLIF bars (not tried yet myself). The anti-bar sentiment seems to think it’s all hype, and you’d be as well to eat, say, a Jordan’s Frusli. I looked at those in Sainsbury’s but the sugar looked very high as a proportion of the carbs. I got some reasonably priced bars from Holland and Barrett (3 for �1) which were quite nice: CarbWise Caramel Peanut Crisp. V popular in the Cambridge store apparently. I may stick with those unless I find something better.

December 4, 2005

London Marathon

Fantastic news this week - I’m in next year’s London Marathon. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but the amount of training has always put me off. Ironically, now I have two children, I have less time to run in than when I was single and lived in Blackheath (where the race starts), but what the hey.

Moments after the initial elation come the doubts about whether you can actually do it. Fortunately, I had read about this book:

which sounded ideal for me - I think I saw it on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools. A quick Amazon later and I’m reading it.

Jeff’s method, in short, is that you have to run and walk from the start. There’s a lot more to it than that, but the idea is to stop your legs getting so fatigued. Also you run the full distance before the day itself, so you don’t have a “wall” to hit.

The program is really for 26 weeks, but I only have 20 till the race, so I started at week 6 of a 4 hour time program to see if I could do it. Today was to run 11 miles. I got round okay - the run walk thing really works well. He also recommends short, low steps, and eating while you go. Anyway, it’s by far the longest run I’ve done recently, and my knee problem didn’t bother me, so I’m sold so far.

In the coming week I’m supposed to do two 40-50 minute runs on Tuesday and Friday + a 30 minute run on Wednesday. I’m thinking I can do the longer ones by running to work (although it’s a bit further than is ideal and it means I have to use the godawful buses to get home). The short one maybe I can do at lunchtime, but I may just have to drop it this week as I’m not sure how I’m going to fit it in really.

I’ll try to blog what I’ve done against the program, and how I think I’m going to do. I’m hoping for about a four hour time, but my run today suggests more like 4.30 - 4.40. Still, early days.