There have been a couple of snowfalls, so I suppose it is safe to say that winter is upon us. My time on the bike has been limited by finishing up school work, and also weather, but I have gotten out a handful of times for short rides.
Clothing-wise, I've adopted a three-ish layer method for my commutes. Leg covering has been mostly bib shorts, compression tights and jeans, with cycling socks and then wool ski socks. The wool socks have been awesome, and I'd like to get some more. I had some slight toe coldness on a 17 degree F day, but it was tolerable. Upper body covering is compression long sleeve, long sleeve outer and hooded sweatshirt. For warmer weather around 30 degrees, I've been ditching a layer, usually the outer. I've been using an underarmour balaclava with a skull cap over it for my head, and it works well. The balaclava also tucks into my long sleeve outer jacket well. Gloves have been the big problem lately. My odyssey gloves are far too cold and prone to water. I've been trying a set of 180s GTX gloves which are great and keeping the water out, but aren't that warm, plus the liner is a pain to get in and out of when my hands are sweaty. I'm still not sure what I'm going to try next.
I think I've made the decision to switch back to my urban bike for the winter. I really don't want to trash the specialized with all the grit and crud that comes with winter and rain riding. I'm currently running platforms on the urban bike, but I'm debating going SPD. Platforms may be advantageous for winter riding.
The fixed gear bike is finished and I've put a few miles on it. Sadly, my lack of gearing research has left me at an easiest gearing of around 69 gear inches, which is too tall for me to make it up Lafayette's hills. My bike money is pretty much all spent up for the moment, so the fixed gear will only be for walgreens/BBQ runs until spring.
As for training notes, I still haven't made it too far in a winter plan development. My cadence work seems to have begun paying off, if only a small amount, but it's worth it. Since I'm mostly limited to the stationary bike at this point, I'm just doing intervals of 140/210 watts right now and slowly increasing my time. I am still hopeful I might find a cheap trainer before spring, but we'll see. I recently acquired some cycling books, so I am hoping to have a more thorough plan in coming weeks.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thoughts about the physicality of communication devices
I saw a website article a few weeks ago displaying new conceptual models of iPods/iPhones. Most were wearable items like a ring or bracelet. After some time, I realized that these concepts were kind of sitting uncomfortably with me. I guess I just have a difficult time believing that the next generation communication technology interface will be something you wear. I'm prone to thinking that we are already at a pretty efficient interface ideal with the iPhone/Android/etc. At least until such devices are more bio-integrated and worn on the inside of our bodies. That is a subject for another time. For now lets focus on the current crop of smart phones.
The brief physical anthropology of communications devices:
I think it's definitely possible to see an evolution in electronic communication devices. Skipping the obvious face to face methods that have existed for thousands of years, I think the telegraph is a reasonable starting point for a communications technology as the term has come to be generally understood. The interface was stationary and passed information serially using only boolean data. Next came radio transmission, which in retrospect seems like more of an underlying support technology, allowing the telegraph to be mobile. Then the telephone, which began as a stationary unit for parallel audio transmission. Then we slid the radio technology under audio transmission and had what we now know as AM/FM radio, which at the time supported stationary transmitters, movable receivers. The receivers were too large and heavy to be moved regularly. Next the radio technology came to the telephone and we had wireless handsets which were very mobile, but had limited range. Soon the first cellular phones appeared, with gigantic battery packs and resigned largely to emergency use in a car, or for military communication. They slowly shrunk in size, and picked up more casual use and overlapped with the user base of landline phones. Computers also came on the scene, initially adopting a typewriter like interface for input and output. This hasn't changed much from the keyboard/display setup we are still using with computers today. And lest we forget the fax machine, which I feel was already obsolete shortly after it hit the scene, yet for whatever reasons still has quite a user base.
So at this point, this is probably looking like the so-and-so begat so-and-so bit from the book of genesis in the bible. We're about caught up to current though. There already seem to be a few instances of convergence when a new technology or social use comes along. So here we are with a rapidly shrinking cell phone, and highly mobile laptop computers with wireless connectivity as well. These user bases overlap, and we start seeing the functionality of computers in phones (instant messaging, email, web browsing) and phone functionality in computers. (VOIP such as Skype, et al) it kind of makes sense to combine the two, and here we are with iPhones, Blackberries and Androids.
The actual interface:
Ok, so we understand a bit of the physical anthropology of the communications device, lets take a closer look at the interface. The profile we're looking at is an object that can be operated with one hand and stored in a pocket, like a cellular phone, with an approximation of a desktop/laptop computer's capabilities for high resolution display, data storage, input capability and processing power. Along the way we also convergent-ly picked up the functionality of digital cameras and music players. It's interesting to me that we seem to have taken more functionality from the computer and shoe-horned it into the small package of the cellular phone. I believe that this illustrates the strongest aspects of each device. It's also interesting that the camera and music capabilities are easy to tack on since the requisites for computer functionality provide an easy infrastructure to add these other functionalities.
Since the general form is more like a phone than a computer, it's easy to see that the interface of the phone functions will be similar to that of a standard, non-smart, cell phone. The physical form of the computer on the other hand, was large, and this size was mostly occupied by the I/O elements. A smaller screen, and likely lack of a physical keyboard show the need for a modified interface. It's very important to note that there is a trade off here. What we have wound up with interface wise is a stripped down version of what MS windows and MacOS have been all along - a list of clickable icons. In absence of a mouse, we are now using touch screens. A keyboard is emulated, but almost all incarnations of this idea pale in comparison to the efficiency of a standard computer keyboard.
What am I getting at:
After all that, I hope you can see my point. We have arrived at the modern smart phone handset through a kind of natural selection, adopting traits of communication devices we find beneficial and leaving others behind in favor of more favorable traits. The beginnings of a move away from a physical keyboard illustrate this idea - the small, portable size of smart phones might be more important than the typing efficiency of the old keyboard. As a result, we also see the social ramifications of this with truncated language (O I C. U R welcome. LOL.) use starting on mobile devices and spreading to more traditional forms of communication. Could we assume that the use of mobile devices for communication is more important than maintaining traditional language norms?
The future:
I personally cannot see any immediate jumps away from the current smart phone hand set. It seems like a very flexible platform that has not been fully tapped for functionality yet. I believe that a more functional voice control, such as the one in the iPhone Google app, and the Android maps feature, will be the next step with this platform, allowing information request and retrieval to take place over a headset with limited physical interaction with the hand set. This would be highly dependent on voice recognition technology, which on the iPhone and even on desktop computers seems to be a ways off. If and when the VR technology catches up, concepts like the iPhone ring or bracelet will make a lot more sense, but until then seem like they would just be a hassle to interact with.
For more realistic future implementations I hope to see gesture control and perhaps more accelerometer control. But who knows what we will see.
Photo credits:
The brief physical anthropology of communications devices:
I think it's definitely possible to see an evolution in electronic communication devices. Skipping the obvious face to face methods that have existed for thousands of years, I think the telegraph is a reasonable starting point for a communications technology as the term has come to be generally understood. The interface was stationary and passed information serially using only boolean data. Next came radio transmission, which in retrospect seems like more of an underlying support technology, allowing the telegraph to be mobile. Then the telephone, which began as a stationary unit for parallel audio transmission. Then we slid the radio technology under audio transmission and had what we now know as AM/FM radio, which at the time supported stationary transmitters, movable receivers. The receivers were too large and heavy to be moved regularly. Next the radio technology came to the telephone and we had wireless handsets which were very mobile, but had limited range. Soon the first cellular phones appeared, with gigantic battery packs and resigned largely to emergency use in a car, or for military communication. They slowly shrunk in size, and picked up more casual use and overlapped with the user base of landline phones. Computers also came on the scene, initially adopting a typewriter like interface for input and output. This hasn't changed much from the keyboard/display setup we are still using with computers today. And lest we forget the fax machine, which I feel was already obsolete shortly after it hit the scene, yet for whatever reasons still has quite a user base.
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So at this point, this is probably looking like the so-and-so begat so-and-so bit from the book of genesis in the bible. We're about caught up to current though. There already seem to be a few instances of convergence when a new technology or social use comes along. So here we are with a rapidly shrinking cell phone, and highly mobile laptop computers with wireless connectivity as well. These user bases overlap, and we start seeing the functionality of computers in phones (instant messaging, email, web browsing) and phone functionality in computers. (VOIP such as Skype, et al) it kind of makes sense to combine the two, and here we are with iPhones, Blackberries and Androids.
The actual interface:
Ok, so we understand a bit of the physical anthropology of the communications device, lets take a closer look at the interface. The profile we're looking at is an object that can be operated with one hand and stored in a pocket, like a cellular phone, with an approximation of a desktop/laptop computer's capabilities for high resolution display, data storage, input capability and processing power. Along the way we also convergent-ly picked up the functionality of digital cameras and music players. It's interesting to me that we seem to have taken more functionality from the computer and shoe-horned it into the small package of the cellular phone. I believe that this illustrates the strongest aspects of each device. It's also interesting that the camera and music capabilities are easy to tack on since the requisites for computer functionality provide an easy infrastructure to add these other functionalities.
Since the general form is more like a phone than a computer, it's easy to see that the interface of the phone functions will be similar to that of a standard, non-smart, cell phone. The physical form of the computer on the other hand, was large, and this size was mostly occupied by the I/O elements. A smaller screen, and likely lack of a physical keyboard show the need for a modified interface. It's very important to note that there is a trade off here. What we have wound up with interface wise is a stripped down version of what MS windows and MacOS have been all along - a list of clickable icons. In absence of a mouse, we are now using touch screens. A keyboard is emulated, but almost all incarnations of this idea pale in comparison to the efficiency of a standard computer keyboard.
What am I getting at:
After all that, I hope you can see my point. We have arrived at the modern smart phone handset through a kind of natural selection, adopting traits of communication devices we find beneficial and leaving others behind in favor of more favorable traits. The beginnings of a move away from a physical keyboard illustrate this idea - the small, portable size of smart phones might be more important than the typing efficiency of the old keyboard. As a result, we also see the social ramifications of this with truncated language (O I C. U R welcome. LOL.) use starting on mobile devices and spreading to more traditional forms of communication. Could we assume that the use of mobile devices for communication is more important than maintaining traditional language norms?
The future:
I personally cannot see any immediate jumps away from the current smart phone hand set. It seems like a very flexible platform that has not been fully tapped for functionality yet. I believe that a more functional voice control, such as the one in the iPhone Google app, and the Android maps feature, will be the next step with this platform, allowing information request and retrieval to take place over a headset with limited physical interaction with the hand set. This would be highly dependent on voice recognition technology, which on the iPhone and even on desktop computers seems to be a ways off. If and when the VR technology catches up, concepts like the iPhone ring or bracelet will make a lot more sense, but until then seem like they would just be a hassle to interact with.
For more realistic future implementations I hope to see gesture control and perhaps more accelerometer control. But who knows what we will see.
Photo credits:
Monday, November 2, 2009
Time trial outcome and first solo ride of any significant distance.
There was only one week between the penultimate and final time trial, and I was still feeling kind of beat up, so I took it really easy and didn't do much exercise between the two. I also had a pizza pig-out the day of the last TT since I usually seem to be in a shortage of energy. The ride went a little better than the previous one. No major discomforts, and I still had enough left to work up a reasonable sprint at the end. I was still having problems with my right heel kicking out for whatever reason. I also was kind of feeling that I wasn't getting as much power out of my stroke as I should have been. I don't know if my seat is too low, my cranks are too short (172.5mm) or if I just need to get used to it - I realize that my BMX riding has made me much more of a masher than a spinner. My time was 0:32:43, up from 0:33:02. Not an awesome improvement, but not bad. FWIW, my initial time was 0:37:46. In reflecting on the TT experience, I can understand why I made such a big improvement up-front - I didn't know what to expect. As a result, I went full out the first time, not realizing there was a big hill in the middle. I almost passed out the first time I went up that hill, but I think that level of exertion led to marked fitness development. In later weeks I attempted to ration my energy and had an easier time making it up the hill. Had I used the same level of exertion and went as far past my comfort level each successive time as I did the first time, I think I would have continued to make big progress. 
Saturday I went on my first solo ride longer than 10 miles in quite a while. I opted for the Long Lilly Route since it's the one that I'm most familiar with, although I've only done it 2 or 3 times. The first thing I'll note is that iMapMyRide seems to be losing it's tracking a lot lately. As you can see from the photos, my route on the left has all the corners cut off and skipped about 2 miles of my ride from campus, back home. You can compare most of the route to the map on the right of what it actually is. The end result is a reading of 19.8 something miles for a 25+ mile ride. I had to exit iMapMyRide several times to check my
directions, but it appeared to restart acceptably. I don't know if that was a contributing factor or not. I ordered a bicio (formerly ibikemount.com) "GoRide" iPhone holder in hopes that being able to see what the phone is doing will be helpful.
Weather was a factor on this ride. I think it was around 50 degrees when I started a little before 7p, and it started to get darker and colder about halfway through. I wore compression tights and long sleeve shirt with a short sleeve jersey and my regular bike shorts on the outer. Skull cap, and odyssey gloves were also worn. When I left the house my arms were pretty cold, but became livable (yet still cold) once I warmed up. My face was really cold too, but it also warmed up. My hands as usual were pretty cold the whole way, with some numbness at around 60% of the way through. Mostly thumbs. My feet also were really cold, and probably the most uncomfortable thing the whole ride. I think I will start wearing foot warmers anytime it's under 50 and past noon. Not sure yet about gloves. I got some snowboarding type gloves at TJ Maxx, but I kind of feel like they are too nice to sweat in. I may take them back and order some Pearl Izumi stuff from
performancebike.com. The compression tights worked really well, however my shorts didn't seem to fit right over them, so my chamois was totally in the wrong place. As a final clothing note, this was the trial run of my new
glasses, which were $3.40 at home depot. They fit my fat head pretty well, and my only complaint is that they had a slight glare issue, but I think I can deal with it at that price until I can shell out for something nicer from http://www.rudyproject.com/ .
Speaking of glasses, lack of daylight became an issue and I had to take the glasses off even though they aren't dark at all. For whatever reason, I totally neglected the fact that I might run out of light. I was also riding out in the country where there weren't any street lights. I couldn't see my computer or heart monitor, though I could still see the road acceptably. I should probably get a headlight at some point. I'm not sure if I'd rather have one that mounts to the bike, or one that goes on my helmet. (so I could see my instruments)
Another first, I was chased by a dog.. twice! I ordinarily wouldn't think much of it, but I'd recently read this post on bikeforums about a guy who had a dog take a chunk out of his calf and the ensuing dealing with the owners shady insurance, which put a little of the fear of dog into me. The first one was early into the ride in a wooded, but still residential area. The dog appeared out of the trees. I shouted at it to try and scare it off, which had no effect. I sprinted and he eventually fell back and gave up. The second one was in the middle of a bunch of cornfields. I saw him rolling around in a ditch and hoped he would ignore me, but he gave chase. I again yelled, which again did nothing. I grabbed my water bottle, as I've been told that spraying them can be deterring. I was feeling like I had the speed advantage and despite this one having more stamina than the first, I slowly pulled away. I think I'm going to get some kind of dog repellent spray and keep it velcro-ed to the bike.
I am still noticing the foot issue, and this time I was also noticing some sit bone pain on the same side that seemed to be linked to the weird foot position. Need to try some pedals with less float. Despite that, altogether it was a good ride. I like riding in a group because it can make me push my limits and it's nice to have someone to talk to, but riding alone is good too because I can keep my own pace, and the quiet is kind of nice. The scenery of cornfields and tree-rows in the distance framed by orange and purple sunset skies is really beautiful. This route also had several miles of straight, flat road that I really enjoyed. I was able to keep up a 19-20 pace for a long time with a good, non-painful effort and work on my cadence.
odometer is currently at 215.1.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
"What the hell is Brizzly?" or "Twitter as a wrapper for data transfer"
Some of you may have seen Brizzly.com, a site with very vague information regarding what it is - "Brizzly is a simple way to experience the social web. You can request an invitation code below and we'll let you know when we have them ready. (Soon!)" I recently received an invitation to the site from @BrandonButram and figured I'd check it out despite my limited interest.
What Brizzly seems to amount to is a slightly thicker client interface for twitter. Functionally, this means that shortened URLs like those from tinyurl and bit.ly will appear as the full URL that they refer to, as well as links to images or youtube videos showing up as the actual content rather than just a link to it. I find this mildly handy, but currently of limited actual use.
BUT, whats interesting to me about this is that it kind of shows twitter posts as encoded or compressed messages. ie: a small message that represents something larger. This isn't a ground-breaking concept since URLs are basically the same thing, but I suppose we take this for granted. So this takes us back to the initial benefits of twitter - messages are short for maximum interoperability with low bandwidth devices. Rather than using this as just 140 literal characters, we're now including representative links to external information. This is cool in it's own right, but to get back to the original goal of high interoperability on low bandwidth devices, wouldn't it be cool to be able to compress larger data into these 140 character packages so there would be only one small data transfer instead of one small transfer and then one big transfer from the referenced site? a quick google search yielded just such an idea in practice by a couple of fellows attempting to encode an image into 140 characters.
Another example of binary data transfer via twitter is encoding and breaking up a file over several tweets. Personally, I think this method misses the point, but interesting nonetheless and reminiscent of long-ago floppy disk installs and BBS based transfers.
At the end of the day, I am unsure if any of this really matters since bandwidth is relatively abundant in most homes, portable computing/communication devices and even the International Space Station. I suppose developing countries could benefit from some kind of generic 140 character packet size protocol for wireless data transmission, but even such countries are advancing rapidly. It will be interesting to see if the future of twitter lies in continued social media in a "What are you doing?" way, or if it will come to be more than that.
What Brizzly seems to amount to is a slightly thicker client interface for twitter. Functionally, this means that shortened URLs like those from tinyurl and bit.ly will appear as the full URL that they refer to, as well as links to images or youtube videos showing up as the actual content rather than just a link to it. I find this mildly handy, but currently of limited actual use.
BUT, whats interesting to me about this is that it kind of shows twitter posts as encoded or compressed messages. ie: a small message that represents something larger. This isn't a ground-breaking concept since URLs are basically the same thing, but I suppose we take this for granted. So this takes us back to the initial benefits of twitter - messages are short for maximum interoperability with low bandwidth devices. Rather than using this as just 140 literal characters, we're now including representative links to external information. This is cool in it's own right, but to get back to the original goal of high interoperability on low bandwidth devices, wouldn't it be cool to be able to compress larger data into these 140 character packages so there would be only one small data transfer instead of one small transfer and then one big transfer from the referenced site? a quick google search yielded just such an idea in practice by a couple of fellows attempting to encode an image into 140 characters.Another example of binary data transfer via twitter is encoding and breaking up a file over several tweets. Personally, I think this method misses the point, but interesting nonetheless and reminiscent of long-ago floppy disk installs and BBS based transfers.
At the end of the day, I am unsure if any of this really matters since bandwidth is relatively abundant in most homes, portable computing/communication devices and even the International Space Station. I suppose developing countries could benefit from some kind of generic 140 character packet size protocol for wireless data transmission, but even such countries are advancing rapidly. It will be interesting to see if the future of twitter lies in continued social media in a "What are you doing?" way, or if it will come to be more than that.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Time trials - slowed progress
Wednesday was time trials again, and I opted to forfeit my points so I could ride the road bike. I expected that the bike change as well as actually having a computer would gain me significant time, and it really didn't. I only had a 40 second improvement over the last TT.I'm guessing that the reason for the smaller than expected improvement was mostly because I was still not recovered from the longer Saturday ride. I have noticed that pushing my limits on distance or speed usually take me out of commission for a while. In addition to recovery issues, my right ankle has been hurting a bit, and I've noticed that as a result, my right foot is taking a larger angle on the pedal. Finally, I seem to have a more difficult time breathing in the position that the road bike puts me in, especially when I'm on the drops. I suspect that that will improve with time as the muscles in my back and shoulders get better at supporting me and also as my gut gets smaller, allowing more breathing room.
In addition to the TT, I also rode to work in the morning, rode out to the TT, back home, and then downtown and back later in the evening. I figure I got about 25-30 miles for the whole day.
Lately, I've been wondering a bit about crank length, since both of my multi-geared bikes appear to have 170mm cranks and I've always run 175 or 180mm cranks on my BMX bikes. I would really love to play around with some power measurement tools, as I kind of feel that all the time spent riding BMX bikes causes my physiology to operate a little differently than people who have always ridden road or mountain bikes.
Monday, October 19, 2009
First ridelog. rlog?
I've heard that it's a good idea to keep ride logs so you can check up on training progress and also so you can look at past years conditions, so I guess I will start logging. I've still not grasped the intricacies of the new version of iMapMyRide, so it looks like the ends of my routes are cut off. It also sends an annoying stream of tweets to my twitter. :/
I spent some of last week with a cold. Once I was feeling better, we had a string of rainy days. The forecast for friday was 10% chance of rain, so I settled on riding to work. It started spitting mist as soon as I left the house. The ride in was probably good for about 5 miles. In the evening, I went on a group ride for another 15 miles.
Saturday, I thought it would be a good idea to go on a longer group ride. Prior to this, most of my riding was relegated to 3,5,10 and 20 mile distances. The big fail here was that I didn't eat enough. A bowl of cereal at around 11a, and a power bar at 1p were not enough to sustain me on what turned out to be a 45-ish mile ride. I took a protein drink along with me, but I don't think I got much out of it. I managed pretty well most of the way - there were a handful of hills, which I usually fell back a bit on, but I kept up. I started bonking as we were along I65 approaching SR26 after a long hill. Through Lafayette there was a crosswind and I was fighting to stay with the pack. By the time we were back to campus, I knew I didn't have anything left, and I had to stop halfway up Chauncey hill. The post game traffic had me pretty uncomfortable too. Now, on Monday, my legs, back and neck are still sore despite daily intake of potassium and protein. Also, kind of surprising, I seem to have gained about 2.5 pounds since before the ride. I don't know if that's mostly bad stuff like lactic acid, or if I've got that much gain in lean muscle.
Equipment wise, the new shoes are fitting better than I had expected. The speedplay X/5 pedals are good too. I'm still not great at getting back into them quickly, but getting out is no problem at all. I've been trying to stand more lately. Not that it's particularly rough, but I'm not used to the geometry and feel particularly unstable. I did notice though that while clipped in and standing, I really seem to get a boost on the hills; it's almost like running. Lifting up provides a lot of power and then my weight handles the downstroke.
I'm still not terribly comfortable with my seating situation. I still feel too far forward on the seat. Sunday I went to Hodson's and had them put on a 75mm stem. I really hope it helps the situation, because I'm not sure what to try next.
It was in the low to mid 40 degree area. As for clothing, I wore my under armour skull cap, odyssey gloves, a lycra long sleeve shirt, short sleeve jersey and saucony tights over my regular bike shorts. I was a reasonable temperature the whole ride except for my toes which were pretty cold the whole time. I got some cold weather covers to try out next time, although I'm thinking it might make more sense to get some smaller toe covers. I guess my hands were a little cold at times too - I couldn't move my left thumb enough at one point to go to the middle ring on a hill. That sucked. I'm going to see how long I can go before getting more winter-y gloves.
Also, as a result of my bonk experience and also because the club needed to fill some boxes on the sponsorship order, I went ahead and got 30 GU energy gels along with their Gelbot and a pair of socks. The Gelbot seems kind of overkill, but ultimately, I think I would prefer to use it than to 1. have to stop to open and eat the gel, 2. Carry around the empty, goopy gel packet.
Speaking of sponsorships, I'm _really_ tempted to get a SRAM rival group set while we have access to them at a discount. It would be a pretty healthy upgrade over my current Sora setup, although I do feel kind of bad upgrading so soon into the life of the bike. I'm hoping to test ride a bike with a rival setup soon to see how I like it. I think the biggest contingency is on the shifters. the Sora shifters aren't terribly comfortable when I'm on the hoods, and I don't like the thumb switch. Going to a double / 10 speed setup seems beneficial too, although I may have to get a new rear hub / wheel for that.
Currently 128.1 miles on the odometer.
I spent some of last week with a cold. Once I was feeling better, we had a string of rainy days. The forecast for friday was 10% chance of rain, so I settled on riding to work. It started spitting mist as soon as I left the house. The ride in was probably good for about 5 miles. In the evening, I went on a group ride for another 15 miles.
Saturday, I thought it would be a good idea to go on a longer group ride. Prior to this, most of my riding was relegated to 3,5,10 and 20 mile distances. The big fail here was that I didn't eat enough. A bowl of cereal at around 11a, and a power bar at 1p were not enough to sustain me on what turned out to be a 45-ish mile ride. I took a protein drink along with me, but I don't think I got much out of it. I managed pretty well most of the way - there were a handful of hills, which I usually fell back a bit on, but I kept up. I started bonking as we were along I65 approaching SR26 after a long hill. Through Lafayette there was a crosswind and I was fighting to stay with the pack. By the time we were back to campus, I knew I didn't have anything left, and I had to stop halfway up Chauncey hill. The post game traffic had me pretty uncomfortable too. Now, on Monday, my legs, back and neck are still sore despite daily intake of potassium and protein. Also, kind of surprising, I seem to have gained about 2.5 pounds since before the ride. I don't know if that's mostly bad stuff like lactic acid, or if I've got that much gain in lean muscle.Equipment wise, the new shoes are fitting better than I had expected. The speedplay X/5 pedals are good too. I'm still not great at getting back into them quickly, but getting out is no problem at all. I've been trying to stand more lately. Not that it's particularly rough, but I'm not used to the geometry and feel particularly unstable. I did notice though that while clipped in and standing, I really seem to get a boost on the hills; it's almost like running. Lifting up provides a lot of power and then my weight handles the downstroke.
I'm still not terribly comfortable with my seating situation. I still feel too far forward on the seat. Sunday I went to Hodson's and had them put on a 75mm stem. I really hope it helps the situation, because I'm not sure what to try next.
It was in the low to mid 40 degree area. As for clothing, I wore my under armour skull cap, odyssey gloves, a lycra long sleeve shirt, short sleeve jersey and saucony tights over my regular bike shorts. I was a reasonable temperature the whole ride except for my toes which were pretty cold the whole time. I got some cold weather covers to try out next time, although I'm thinking it might make more sense to get some smaller toe covers. I guess my hands were a little cold at times too - I couldn't move my left thumb enough at one point to go to the middle ring on a hill. That sucked. I'm going to see how long I can go before getting more winter-y gloves.
Also, as a result of my bonk experience and also because the club needed to fill some boxes on the sponsorship order, I went ahead and got 30 GU energy gels along with their Gelbot and a pair of socks. The Gelbot seems kind of overkill, but ultimately, I think I would prefer to use it than to 1. have to stop to open and eat the gel, 2. Carry around the empty, goopy gel packet.
Speaking of sponsorships, I'm _really_ tempted to get a SRAM rival group set while we have access to them at a discount. It would be a pretty healthy upgrade over my current Sora setup, although I do feel kind of bad upgrading so soon into the life of the bike. I'm hoping to test ride a bike with a rival setup soon to see how I like it. I think the biggest contingency is on the shifters. the Sora shifters aren't terribly comfortable when I'm on the hoods, and I don't like the thumb switch. Going to a double / 10 speed setup seems beneficial too, although I may have to get a new rear hub / wheel for that.
Currently 128.1 miles on the odometer.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Choices in computer based music players.
So I have this dilemma. I only play MP3 based music these days, yet I am crippled by habit. I still cling to Winamp as my MP3 player of choice, despite the fact that it really hasn't had an new features useful to me since the 90's. I've finally weaned myself off of Winamp for digital video viewing, largely because it didn't have all the codecs I need built in, and VLC did.
I could just keep on using Winamp for music, but here's the bigger problem - since I've had an iPhone, I'm using it more and more for MP3 playback. This is fine and good, but with few inconvienient exceptions, I HAVE to use iTunes for management of my music library. I really don't like iTunes. It's slow, I find it's interface cumbersome and un-intuitive, and simply put, it's restrictive. I've grown accustomed to "manually" managing my music library, storing artists by folder, and adding them the same way. iTunes makes this kind of management a real pain, especially since I have a lot of music with missing or incorrect tags.
Lately I've been making an effort to use iTunes for listening to music on my computer more, just to I can get the feel of it. I don't really think I like it, but at the same time, I haven't fully gotten into it. For example, the idea of "playlists" is still rather foreign to me.. Probably doesn't help that I generally listen to albums more often than individual songs.
It strikes me as strange that the experience of listening to the same music via different applications or platforms can be so different. I wonder if design cues from outmoded devices help transition to new applications. Maybe I like Winamp because it has a cassette/CD style transport control, while iTunes just has play and a non-linear web-based navigation system.
I could just keep on using Winamp for music, but here's the bigger problem - since I've had an iPhone, I'm using it more and more for MP3 playback. This is fine and good, but with few inconvienient exceptions, I HAVE to use iTunes for management of my music library. I really don't like iTunes. It's slow, I find it's interface cumbersome and un-intuitive, and simply put, it's restrictive. I've grown accustomed to "manually" managing my music library, storing artists by folder, and adding them the same way. iTunes makes this kind of management a real pain, especially since I have a lot of music with missing or incorrect tags.
Lately I've been making an effort to use iTunes for listening to music on my computer more, just to I can get the feel of it. I don't really think I like it, but at the same time, I haven't fully gotten into it. For example, the idea of "playlists" is still rather foreign to me.. Probably doesn't help that I generally listen to albums more often than individual songs.
It strikes me as strange that the experience of listening to the same music via different applications or platforms can be so different. I wonder if design cues from outmoded devices help transition to new applications. Maybe I like Winamp because it has a cassette/CD style transport control, while iTunes just has play and a non-linear web-based navigation system.
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