The New Road

Swimming

Ok, so I had 10.3 miles a couple of weeks ago. And I have done five miles since then, bringing me to 15.3. I would have done two this morning, but I was getting some twinges in my right shoulder and I don't want to push it. I'd rather hang back at a mile or a mile and a half than get an injury which takes me out of swimming for an extended period.

What's sad though is that right around the end of this mornings workout I was really starting to get a nice form going. In particular I was keeping a really low head profile in the water, and my legs were high up on the surface, making a nice clean line. Where I normally dip my tail (since I'm not naturally buoyant) and bring my head a little too much out of the water. I'm far better than I used to be, but I was watching these two speed demons this morning and they keep their heads really low in the water.

Rather than going for longer and longer distances with the next few swims I think I'm going to concentrate on interval training. Go one or two laps flat out, then go back to my normal speed for one or two laps, then into high gear again and so on. Interval training works for runners and bikers to increase their speed, it will work in the pool as well.

Intervals will help my form as well because I'll get used to moving faster. I'm already not freaked out when water gets in my mouth as a result of being low in the water. This morning there were a few times when I sucked in nothing but water on my breath because of the wake. A couple of months ago I would have sputtered, stood up and choked for a bit. Today I just spit it out and waited until the next breath cycle to get some air. I'm definitely far more comfortable in the water than I was at the beginning of the summer.

What I did find interesting was that the speed demons in the pool this morning were taking a breath per stroke. I'm a lot faster when I can avoid that. So either they aren't they have a lot of speed they aren't showing, or one breath per stroke is ok, or I could beat them and I don't know it yet. They were doing 100 yard sprint sets this morning. I could probably compete with them if I pushed myself. A couple of months from now I should be able to keep up with them full time. 

Tiger

What can one say about Tiger Woods at this point? His performance this year was beyond understanding, and that's without taking into account the death of his father. He is certainly the best golfer in the world, but beyond that, I would say easily one of the best athletes overall, given his ability to focus and execute.

Already courses that are hosting majors that are three, four or five years out are planning on hosting the major where Tiger will break the record for most major victories. The crowds are already huge when he plays now, those will likely expand two or three fold as he gets closer to the record.

I used to hear guys like Mickelson complain about how they live in the era of Tiger and thus have a harder time winning. That may be, but these events are so huge that second and third place money is still a fortune.

Runner's high

Wow, I definitely have a runner's high this morning. I did two miles in the pool. The first mile without any breaks at all. The second mile was a slog. The first half was ok, but the second half was like blood from a stone. I was able to do the last length in a flat out sprint, which I think annoyed the life guard a little bit.

Anyway, I don't often get the runner's high, or realize that I have it. Normally I'm just wrecked. I'm laughing at the drop of a hat. I'm also really airheaded, which is how I always get into trouble. I always end up shopping and getting the wrong/right thing. For example, I get mouthwash, but it's the flavor that tastes like ass. And I think later to myself, "Clearly I misread the label, but for fuck's sake, first, why do they make a mouthwash that tastes like ass? And second, why didn't the checker say to me, 'You know, this is the ass flavor.'"

Anywho... Ah, a good runner's high this morning.

Oh, one last thing, not sure why this is relevant. Well, whatever. Anyway, surfing around yesterday found out that a nickname for the TV show "24" is the "Jack Bauer Power Hour". No doubt. I was never really able to get into 24, but I do admire the show for it's action density. It's like a big block of chewy chunk action show cheese all in one hour sized pill.

No more victory talk

I was taking a political ciesta for a week. I got back into it for just one show while I was doing the elliptical trainer a couple of nights back. Just in time to hear Bush tell me that I was wrong about the Iraq war and that we will be staying as long as he's in charge (whatever that means).

Whatever, the man is an idiot. But one thing I did notice was that he doesn't talk about 'victory' any more. When reporters asked him about victory before, he would smirk, do his Beavis style, 'heh heh.' Then in a condecending tone say, "The plan... heh, heh, heh... is victory." They even came out with a 'plan for victory' at one point. But since then, victory, not so much. Now it's just back to the old 'stay the course' line; Americans 'stay the course', anybody else is a commie pinko gay immigrant flag burning stem-cell killin' traitor.

When did the job of the man in the oval office become the 'divider in chief' anyway? 

I went to Thai with a friend of mine yesterday. On the wall were pictures of the King and Queen of Thailand presented as a kind of homage. Would anyone put a picture of Bush in their restaurant today? 

Face match

MyHeritage.com has a service where they can match your face against a celebrity database. Here is mine:

Apparently I look like Ben Kingsley, or even better, Danny Glover. What's strange is that I didn't match with Anthony Michael Hall. When I came back from Australia I was a dead ringer for a young (pre-Johnny Be Good) Anthony Michael Hall. He bulked up a lot for "Johnny Be Good"

Actually I don't mind the connection with Lance Armstrong, though it's tenuous at best. I can live without the aged Paul McCartney and Jack Nicklaus. Dennis Quaid is ok. And a Patrick Swayze circa "Roadhouse", please.

Stargate SG-1 cancelled

Stargate's been cancelled and to me that's good riddance to bad rubbish. Stargate has jumped the shark so many times it's hard to distinguish between shark and show. Major characters have come and gone, and come again. Actors have phoned it in for entire seasons. It's just a joke at this point. I mean, come on, season 8 ended with O'Neill fishing for God's sake. What the hell was that?

It's interesting that the injection of Claudia Black and Ben Bowder couldn't rescue the show. These are great actors and good creative folks. I think the problem is with the production of the show. It's designed to create formulaic packages at regular intervals with a known set of characters, costumes, sets, etc. In short, it's the franchise problem. The same reason that Pierce Brosnan, who should have been the ultimate Bond, sucked as Bond. Because he couldn't break free of the shackles of the franchise.

Frankly, why Stargate Atlantis was not cut is beyond me. I haven't been able to sit through an entire Atlantis show in two years, and from what little I watch of them they are only getting worse. All of the characters, save Ronin and Tala, are annoying. Tala is not much better since her writing is just like dry white toast. And Ronin isn't given enough to do to be interesting. The only thing that could save that show is if Ronin killed all of the other characters, then set up shop on Atlantis as "Ronin's House of Metal, Dreadlocks and Badassary".

Expect an announcement from Sci-Fi Channel next week; "Whoops, Stargate Atlantis is cancelled too. We either forgot about it, or thought it was part of the original, or something. Anyway, 'Startgate *', or anything with Stargate in the title, or around in the title, is cancelled. Forever. Ben Bowder and Claudia Black, please report to BSG central casting."

World Trade Center

Lori and I went to see World Trade Center on Sunday. I think it touched Lori a lot more than it did me. I thought it was very well done, and that the acting was great. But I thought it kind of plodded and small things about it started to annoy me. For example, the actress who played Cage's wife in the movie used blue contacts to get these piercing blue eyes. But the pupils didn't dialate, so in a very dark room she still had half-closed pupils. Why it was important for her to have blue eyes is beyond me, and whey they didn't do it in CG in post is even further beyond me.

Anyway, all that beind said, still a quality movie and definitely worth the rental. Why the rental? Because, as always it seems now, Lori and I accidently bought tickets to the audience participation show. Three ladies behind us were kind enough to provide us with insightful comment through the entire film, despite our loud admonitions to the contrary. For example, one woman decided it was important to let us know that the characters were trapped after the building had collapsed on them. You don't say? What clued you in? Perhaps the rubble? Or the faces of the main characters stuck in the rubble? I'm so glad the audience members decide to provide this running commentary. Mainstream Hollywood films would be so tough to follow otherwise.

Oh, yeah, and the cellphones ringing... and then being answered... that's particularly delightful as well. It's your world, and we are just living in it.

Honestly, I don't remember it being this bad before. Now people won't even be quiet after you ask them to. Some of the kids at these shows even argue with those who shush'ed them. What the hell is that? 

I mean, if we had gone to see Snakes on a Plane or Scary Movie #45, then I would expect some audience stuff. But this is a serious, deep movie, with lots of silence and room for copious tears.

What a great day

What a great day I had today. I spent most of the morning with Megan doing some errands and what not. When Lori got her down to a nap at 2PM it was time for a three hour nap. So I could get in some workout time. Lori suggested that I swim, then had a great followup suggestion of biking to the swim. Turns out the round trip to the pool was around 13 miles (the sprint triathlon distance). While at the pool I swam a full mile (a little more than the long olympic distance swim at 1500 meters). When I got back to the house I figured I would give the triathlon a go. So I hopped off the bike, took of the helmet and ran the three miles that remained in the sprint triathlon. Completing my second ever triathlon.

This one was for you mom. I got healthy so that we could play the golf game that never was. And it was that incentive to get fit that gave me the strength to get through this. Hopefully the first of many.

Gotta say, a year ago, I could have never imagined doing another triathlon. Certainly not one with an olympic swim distance in it.

On top of all of that we all went to a great party tonight and had lots of fun. What a day! 

Snakes on a Plane

I was wary but excited about 'Snakes on a Plane'. Especially given the fact that the movie wasn't screened for critics, which is always a really bad sign. But apparently not this time, I checked Rottentomatoes this morning expecting to see 20% and instead see 81%. Wow. I was going to see it either way, but now I'm really looking forward to it.

Swimming

With a mile and a half swim today, and a mile swim on wednesday that brings my total to 10.8 miles! Rock on! I passed the ten mile mark. Very cool. I made good time this morning to. I did the mile in 37 minutes. But the half mile was much slower, primarily becuase I was tired, but also because there were three other people in the lane as well.

I think they need to reconfigure the lanes at the pool in the mornings. There are two huge slow lanes, a medium lane and a fast lane. I think they could fit everyone in the slow lanes into just one lane, then make two medium lanes. As it stands the medium and fast lanes get crowded really quickly. 

Descent

I saw Descent last night. It's a quality horror flick. There are some solid scares, even for the seasoned viewer. The only problem I had with it was that the characters almost looked identical save the Asian girl. It was tough to tell who was who at some points since they were all skinny blondes.

Of course the theatre came equipped with the moronic kids in the back row who would rather joke loudly through the entire film than actually watch it. When someone yelled at them they yelled right back and just got louder. Why do I go to the movies again? Why do I pay $10 bucks for that type of crappy experience? 

1 mile swim

Lori and I will be doing a 1 mile swim for the Women's Cancer Resource Center of Oakland. Any contributions you would like to give would be greatly appreciated. My nickname is 'jack'.

Weeds

The season premiere of Weeds is tonight and the PR campaign is out in force. As I walked up out of the Embarcadero station this morning I was offered mock "pot brownies" as a promo for the show. I refused the brownie but said that I would watch anyway.

Embarcadero station is the spot to do promo work downtown. Companies buy out the entire ad space of the station and put up specially designed ads. When "War of the Worlds" came out every single ad spot had the hand, or some spooky phrase, there were enormous walk-over posters on the floor. It was amazing. Of course, the movies was pretty metza-metza, but the promo stuff was good.

Latest terror warning - bullshit

Whenever the Bush administration was feeling the heat from an incident that stemmed from their disastrous foreign policy they would always push the terror alert level up. That would pop the story out of the headlines and get people talking about duct taping their houses. Now Lamont won over Lieberman, proving that a directly anti-war candidate could win. We had been talking about that for two days in the media, and then...

A miracle happens, the UK foils some plot, and now we are talking about security again, with the terror level at it's highest ever. Poeple are being asked to dump their toiletries before they get on planes. And the one thing we are not talking about is... Lamont and Lieberman and what that means for the disastrous Iraq war. Rove is right, fear is power.

How sad is it when I can't trust my own government on issues as critical as terrorism? This administration is pathetic. Instead of actually addressing the issues in our foreign policy they choose to stick their head in the sand, and let their proxies run fear campaigns to keep critics off their tails. Why can't they just do their job? Why can't the administration just look at Iraq critically and make the decision to get out? 

Crazy Bay Area job market

Today alone I have recieved three emails (probably more that were caught as spam) with job interview requests. Yesterday I got a call on my cell with one. This market is crazy. It used to be two or three a week. Now it's continuous. The job market out here is just smoking hot. As we used to say, anyone with a pulse could get a job, and many have only that level of qualification.

OhMiBod

Yet another way to get your iPod groove on, or in.

Code Generation in Action

After I gave my talk at Google a guy came up and told me that David Heinemeier Hansson, the inventor of the incredibly popular Rails framework, mentioned on his blog that he was influenced in that work by Code Generation in Action.

I figured it would be good PR to get a quote from him for the back of the book if there was ever another printing or edition. So I asked him, and here is what he sent back: 

"Jack does a fantastic job of illuminating the world of code generation. Whether you have code building code for compilation with the static languages or for run-time interpretation with the dynamic languages, this is a great book for taking your thinking about programming to another level. Many of the ideas and thoughts presented in this book were applied in my work on Ruby on Rails."

This really makes me happy and proud. A big part of what created Web 2.0 was the advent of new lightweight frameworks, and in particular Rails. I'm glad that I could play some part in that, if even a small one.

Swimming

Just for my own records; 1 mile this morning, total is 8.3, time was 41 minutes.

Polish PHP Hacks Even Cooler

I took a look at the Polish translation of PHP Hacks when I got back to the house yesterday and was blown away. Not only was the text translated, so were all of the strings in the code, the figures, and even the screenshots. I probably wouldn't have even noticed had they used a different picture of Megan in the slideshow hack (which I am totally fine with). Even the file names for the pages were changed into Polish.

This translation is some fine work, and it had zero impact on me. Amazing.

Ridiculous retro car ad

Check out this ridiculous retro car at for the Isuzu Gemini. It reminds me of the kind of video I usually see in the TV behind a bar, when I can't hear the audio but still I'm completely glued to the insane antics on the screen. Actually, come to think of it, losing the audio in this case would not be a bad thing at all.

Weeds is back

Weeds is back on the 14th. Sweeet. Great show. Podcast sucks though. Turning on to the show, turning off to the podcast.

PHP Hacks in Polish

Lori just called to say that she received my copy of PHP Hacks that's translated into Polish. It's just a guess, but I think it's reasonable to assume that this means the book is selling well. If it's that much in demand that they are willing to go to the expense of translating it, that's got to be good news.

Megan Swimming

Megan has been swimming up a storm this year. This afternoon I took Lori's new camera to the pool and took a few pictures and movies. It was a good time for it. She swam her first lap, and did this amazing bit of backstroke. What's really amazing about it... we didn't know she could do the backstroke.

Aquatice mile and a half

I hit my other aquatic goal this morning of doing a mile and a half in the pool. I was dead beat by the end of it. Though I think I did pretty well overall. I hit the mile right at 44 minutes, which is a little better than last time. I was doing continuous sets of 12 laps.

There is a contest at this particular gym to do an aquatic marathon (26 miles). Not on one day, of course, but over a couple of months. So I'll keep track of how many miles I do. Currently with today, and the 1.8 miles I swam in South Carolina I'm at 7.3 miles.

Speaking at Google tonight

I'll be giving an interactive lecture on using Ruby for Code Generation at Google tonight at 6:30 in Building 43. It's part of the SDForum lecture series. It's $15 for non-SDForum members, but I think pizza is provided as usual. So at least the food will be good. ;-)

Real war is not like Risk

I'm listening to Fiasco on iTunes. It's a book about the Iraq war, and the title says it all. The basic premise is that the war was created by a set of pencil pushing academics who have never been in battle. The kind of people who think agressive action is always correct. Primarily because that's what wins paper war games, like Risk. But real war is not like Risk.

To make Risk like real war you would need some new rules. The first would be local attrition. If you take a country that isn't your own, then every turn you will lose a unit in that country if you stay there. This simulates some part of a local insurgency. Actually, to refine the first rule you would need a matrix of countries. So American invading Iraq would leech 3 units a turn, or invading Afghanistan would leech one unit a turn.

Next we would need a rule to simulate public waning and waxing public approval for the war in a Democracy. First, if the ratio of wins to loses is positive then the player gets an extra two units per turn. If negative the player loses an extra two units per turn. In addition the player loses two units the turn after any military movement.

Finally we would need something to simulate the number of troops required to simply hold a country. So that below four units in any country means you can't attack from that country. And below three units means that you lose the territory altogether.

Anyway, with all these changes the game of Risk would be unplayable since nobody could ever attack and hold any countries long term. Hey! That's like real life. Turns out real war isn't like Risk after all. 

45 minute mile

I did the mile in 45 minutes this morning. Yes! My rascal scooter running on a half-drained battery rocks!

Seriously though, this was in the pool, and for me that's pretty good. I've refined my approach a little bit. Instead of looking at it as 72 laps I now look at it as 36 sets of 50 meters each. So I never do a single lap, I'm always doing a set of two. And I either do one, two, three or four of those in a row. So either two, four, six or eight laps at a time.

I'm able to keep my heart rate down by breathing more often. With some laps I breath after every stroke set, while with others I go for two stroke sets between each breath. To work the endurance there I think I'll try laps where it's 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2, then move on to 1-2-2-1-2-2, and so on. Gearing towards continuous laps where I have one breath for every two stroke sets. It's a lot faster if I can manage it.

To put this in perspective, the world record for 1500 meters (a little less than a mile) is around 14 minutes. So I'm at 3x that pace. But I also run a 10 minute mile, which is 3x the current world record of 3:43. So I think it evens out.

I definitely think I can get my time down to in the high thirties. I still have some small recoup time at the end of each lap, and at the end of each set. Plus if I can reduce the breath count and work on my form I can get the lap speed up. 

More rapture fun

The rapture index is a tracker for signs of the coming rapture. We are pretty up there at the moment, firmly in the 'fasten your seatbelts' level of 'prophetic activity'. Paradoxically the index was at it's all time low under the Clinton presidency, and at it's all time high during the Bush era. Perhaps Clinton was not the anti-Christ after all.

Why is it that Christians deny that they look for signs? There are signs in the book. The preacher on the radio gave some nebulous hair splitting about whether there are or aren't signs. Do they think they sound silly when they talk about the signs? Believe me, that's just the cherry topping on the mountain of silliness which is religious fundamentalism. 

The Rapture Right

I had a chance as we were driving through Georgia to listen to a bit of the rapture right on the radio. If you aren't familiar with them, they are fundamentalist Christians who believe strongly that they will be teleported to heaven during the rapture. And the rest of us will be left behind to deal with the four horsemen of the apocolypse and what not. This was all detailed in the insanely sucessful Left Behind series. Bush is a rapture-head. His administration even has a rapture plan about what happens if he (and/or Cheney) is teleported to the promised land.

Anyway, it used to be I could tune into Sunday morning preaching and get a bit of porn-bashing, or gay-bashing, or what not. But now it seems that all they want to talk about is the rapture. Why? Because of the signs. This Isreal/Lebanon war is great news for the rapture right. They think it's one of the signs of the end times. (The rightie war mongers also love it because it's an opportunity to broaden the Iraq war into Iran and Syria). No wonder Condee isn't brokering for peace. No wonder Bush doesn't pick up the phone and tell the Syrians to "cut this shit out" as he says.

This all just reinforces my opinion that people who want desperately to depart this world shouldn't be the ones running it. I like this world. I want to stay. That means a clean, healthy, stable ecology and economy. Can't we get people into power who want the same thing?

One thing that I did find interesting was how the preacher sounded so much like Donald Rumsfeld. He used Rummy's way of asking himself a question and then answering it. I guess the base like hearing the government use the same rhetorical method as their church.

Back to the main point... Can someone explain to me how believing in the rapture is any more factually legitimate than those morons in L.A. who killed themselves around the time of Hale Bopp? I realize Christianity has a lot more followers and a much older book. But the plot line between the two is exactly the same. So why is it crazy for a cult to kill themselves for an E-ticket ride on a comet, but sane when people talk about surprise teleportation to heaven ahead of the apocolypse?

Bad timing

Eric mailed me last night with an article about how Ruby book sales had surpassed Perl. Wow, that's cool. It's funny how three years ago I had to beg, plead and fight to use Ruby in Code Generation in Action. And when I went around to talk it up it would be to packed houses of, mmm... ten or less. Now Ruby has exploded and the feedback I'm getting is that I should have written more books in Ruby.

I used to have to hide the fact that the book was in Ruby, now it's a selling point. I can't seem to get the timing right on this stuff. I think Code Generation in Action would be embraced today. A book about how to use Ruby to accelerate your development in other languages using active code generation. How cool is that?

Just way ahead of it's time.