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A few days ago, my dear friend Jason e-mailed to remind me that the annual Fat Tire Festival bike race is just a few weeks away… Considering how last year’s race went (hint for the impatient: I came in 54th, and 12th in my class/age-group at 1:10:33), I figure this year I should probably do a little training to prepare for it. It seems Jason has had the same idea, and has been posting training updates (yay!) on his until-recently-long-dormant blog…

They say imitation is the purest form of flattery, so, here are the results of my first two training runs – though taking a slightly more whimsical approach than Jason’s updates…

Training Ride 1

• Date: June 21st, 2010
• Time: 29 minutes
• Rundown: I got lost twice, missed a turn and chopped off about 10% of the course, and hit a tree.
• Thoughts on starting: I can do this, no problem, maybe I’ll do two laps today!
• Thoughts on finishing: *gasp* Holy *wheeze* crap *gasp* I’m *cough* out *gasp* of *sputter* shape!

Training Ride 2

• Date: June 26th, 2010
• Time: 32:53 (including an extra turn around the hockey rink)
• Rundown: I actually stayed on the course, and realized just how out of shape I [still] am. But, on the bright side, I didn’t hit any trees, and did the whole ride in my middle chainring!
• Thoughts on starting: Today has to be better than Monday.
• Thoughts on finishing: I’ll probably die part way through my first attempt at a second lap!

I think it’s apparent that I’ve got a ways to go by July 17th – but with 3 rides a week, and some runs and road rides to balance things out, I think I stand a decent chance of shaving some minutes off last year’s time… Now: will you come out and cheer??

Releases can be busy, exciting and sometimes-scary times for software engineers – you’re about to take your creation from the warm comfort of the incubator and expose it to the rigors of new users, new systems and new conditions. It’s also a hopeful time, as I’m sure my friend (and software engineering colleague) Faisal is finding right now as he launches the private beta of his own market for Android mobile apps, called “Andspot”. Even though Facebook, MySpace and even Google are now tech behemoths, they all at one point did exactly what he is doing now.

From what I know of Andspot, it holds a lot of promise for Android users and app developers alike, improving the way we find and buy apps for our mobile devices. If you want to learn more, you can sign up for the private Beta test at http://www.andspot.com/ (there’s an invite code on his blog to streamline the process).

Update: Andspot has been featured on Wired Magazine’s Gadget Lab blog: Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market

Rarely, in the gargantuan literary spittoon of the Internet and the “blogosphere”, I find someone who has said something that I really wanted to say, except in far greater form and with a better vocabulary. When it comes to expressing my frustration in web-culture’s obsession with oversharing, Mark Dery might as well have taken a transcript of my occasional, staccato, minimally-informed and poorly-constructed thoughts on the matter, reduced them to assembly-language and reverse-engineered them into a gorgeous, scathing prosaic treasure.

You can read it here: Have We No Sense of Decency, Sir, at Long Last?: On Adult Diapers, Erectile Dysfunction, and Other Joys of Oversharing

Of course, the fact that Dery’s indictment of oversharing is itself shared by way of weblog, as is my breathless endorsement thereof, isn’t without a passing wisp of irony – but I think we need to focus on the separation of The Web as a medium for the conveyance of the meaningful, from the web as a patient, reliable, pathologically-willing stand-in for actual social interaction, tangible human connection, and genuine real-life experiences.

"Dad, Cool it with the twitter updates."

(Hat tip: Susannah Breslin)
(Image: @Task Blog)

Yes…so my feeble attempt at Project 52 is completely hosed, though it doesn’t appear I’m alone having fallen off the wagon, watching it disappear on the horizon. While it doesn’t make my epic one-post-a-week failure any more acceptable, there has been a lot going on.

Today is the last day of RIT‘s academic break between Spring and Summer quarters, and Kelly and I spent a good chunk of that break exploring Vermont with our friends Jason and Alicia. From the photo below, which show’s Kelly’s car loaded and ready, you can probably guess the theme for the trip…

Yes, that's 7 bikes

We spent 5 phenomenal days venturing between Bennington, Burlington, Waterbury and Burke – the last of which found us back on the nothing-short-of-glorious Kingdom Trails. Good riding, good food, good beer and good times were had by all!

Since returning home, Kelly and I have more-or-less laid low. Surprisingly, there’s been plenty that’s blogworthy, but little motivation to sit down and type it out. I suspect part of that has a lot to do with the dearth of physical activity that’s accompanied “laying low”, so I’m hoping that getting out for an off-road ride tonight will help bring the spark back…