Scott Adcox

The new Digg has launched, and gives us Oregon Trail when it doesn’t work!

Grilled Cheese Academy – A real education

Financial Illiteracy Is Killing Us – Seriously, are there any non-profits focused on teaching financial literacy to kids? I will volunteer to help.

Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings – Just ordered up some jelly beans to celebrate this news.

Facebook Places vs. Foursquare – Foursquare has a game/awards (kinda). The question with FB places is “why?”. Then again, you could probably ask that question about 90% of the content there.

Furman’s FIRST Running Program – No. Junk. Miles.

Lifehacker: Our List of the Best Android Apps – Already using most, so I’m linking to this mostly to validate my choices.

“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb” –John Mellencamp – Sounds like Johnny Cougar doesn’t like having his cheese moved.

What Should I Do About My Virtual Life After Death? – Adding this to my list. It’s pretty far down, but on there nonetheless.

Real Estate’s Gold Rush Seems Gone for Good – hmph

Moving on – An early shot fired against book publishing. There will be more.

Fake Drink Spills save seats – Genius!

Lottery Ticket Art – Don’t throw away those scratch off tickets…you could still be a big winner!

Disney Princesses, Deconstructed – All you can really do to fight it is to push a fascination with ocean dwelling killing machines instead of Princesses. But it’s an uphill battle.

Muscles Remember Past Glory – I strongly suspect fat bellies have the same memory ability.

Thanks No For Skipping Your Immunizations! Whooping CoughIs Back – I wouldn’t let Jenny McCarthy give me dating advice when I was 19. Why would I listen to her parenting tips?

What Happened to Yahoo – Bottom line–nothing was happening at Yahoo, so things started happening to Yahoo. And why is that when I change my Yahoo! password, my Del.icio.us password doesn’t change. Exhibit A.

Ragnar Central Florida – Always wanted to do one of these…I may have found a team!

Endless Bummer – Don’t worry, it’s safe for work.

Unsuck It – Pretty useful, especially if you are low on bandwidth and need to bucketize terms.

The Third Stage of Personal Finance – Good motivator to start your day.

Facebook bug spills name and pic for all 500 million users – Uh….awsum?

Complete Guide to Maximizing Your Android Phone’s Battery Life – When following these instructions, make sure you’re holding the phone correctly.

14 Famous Man Caves – And not one has a spin bike or a punching bag. Where does all the anger go?

7 Discipline-builders for Remote Workers – I found this article very distracting.

Girl quits job on dry erase board – I like TechCrunch too, but if you spend an hour a day there, you must be reading at a remedial level. It’s not Faulkner.

Michael P. Fleischer: Why I’m Not Hiring – Interesting…and I thought it was just because he was a racist.

The Great Reset of Urban Development in Economic Downturns – Metropolitan corridors. I don’t like the sound of that.

Internet gambling freedom boosted by House committee vote – It’s comin’….

Rdio – Even more music.

Zone 12 Project gang: Little Blue Egg – I will put this right next to the outdoor shower. Or maybe inside the outdoor shower.

Build Your Own Outdoor Shower – Coming soon to a side of the house near me. I hope.

I first started running in 2003. Not that I didn’t run before that, but that’s when I became “a runner” (arguably). That’s when I started running with running performance as the end goal instead of running with rugby as the end goal. The first thing I did was seek out some people who were already runners and drain their brains of whatever info I could. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to keep a training log. Back then, lots of people who logged their training did so in a hand-written training diary, but I was lucky that I was beginning at a time when CoolRunning was already available. This meant I could have all of my training logged online without having to go back and re-enter old information.

CoolRunning was great–nice analysis tools, kept up with miles on shoes, etc. But then they sold out to Active, and I didn’t like the interface as much. So I started trying other sites like MapMyRun and Livestrong. It’s great to have the ability to map training courses, but they are all lacking something. There are either too many ads, not enough analysis tools, whatever. As a result, I have training data spread out across multiple logging sites, and what I really want is one place to keep all of my data.

Now I’m the one who has to re-enter old information when I find a logging tool I like.

I recently started using DailyMile, and I like it a lot. Sure, there are a couple of issues with it too. The analysis tools and interface are great. It’s also social–sort of like the “Facebook for training”. But you can’t go back and do analysis on lifetime data (yet). It’s also difficult to import old data. They have an API, and some guys have started a Java client library, but there’s still a lot of going back to the sites I used before and collecting the data.

What I’ve been doing is entering my new workouts as I do them, then going back and entering the data from the same date on previous years. If I have time, I’ll go back and enter some other old workouts as well. This seems like a hassle and something that would be best to do automatically.

But there’s an upside to doing it manually too. As I’m going back, I’m actually reading my old training logs and doing mental analysis on them. It’s helping with my current training. For instance, it’s encouraging to see how far I’ve come in the swim compared to the first swims I logged back in 2005. And holy crap…I was on a training tear in the summer of 2004. And while I feel like I’m so much slower right now than I was when I was marathon training in 2003, it’s nice to see that my times and splits are comparable to what they were then.  I’ve also noticed that I was much more negative about my training back in 2003 (maybe pressing too hard?). I expected every outing to be a PR and to feel great all the time. That’s funny to me now, knowing how “normal” it is to go out and have crappy training days every once in a while.

What I’m getting at is that it’s great to keep a training log, but it also may be worth your time to go back and review it periodically so you can see your growth and improvement. That isn’t always going to show up in the calculated pace from the workouts. A big part of it will show up in the notes you kept. Even if you have hand-written training logs, it may be a good idea to spend a few minutes each day going back and reviewing your logs from the previous years on that exact date, just to help keep things in perspective.

Keeping a training log is a good tip. I’d say reading your training log is a good tip too.

Image Credit

Oh yeah, this is going to go over really well…

First, it was kegs, then couches. Now, Cocoa Beach will consider banning booze on the beach.

It’s a sad day when a man can’t sit on his couch and drink a coldbeer (on the beach). Why don’t they just ban “acting-like-a-drunk-idiot”. That would give them the ability to not only persecute the intoxicated, but also the people who are stupid without the help of alcohol.

I will admit that there have been times that drinking coldbeer and acting like an idiot weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive for me. It’s a long process, but that’s actually how one learns to eventually enjoy one without the other.

I say we go after the people who leave their cigarette asses on the beach first.

Free Nature Work/Sleep Mix You Control – Awesome…sometime music is too distracting. Want to try an mp3 for running.

Gmote Turns Your Android Phone Into a Remote Control for Your PC –

TweetEffect- When did you lose or gain twitter followers? –

FreshBooks – Online Invoicing, Time Tracking & Billing Software – Pretty cool for people who are one man shows.

Hey, Michael Moore, I’m calling you out – Random Mumblings – Big stick time.

Shit My Kids Ruined – I caint have nuthin' nice.

Appcelerator Developer Center – This looks cool…write your app in JavaScript and Appcelerator maps it to native code for multiple mobile platforms. Hmm…..

101 Fast Recipes for Grilling – Grillicious! Can't wait to get back to regular grilling. And by that I mean entertaining the kids in the pool while the real grill master does her thing.

Dishwasher Rules to Clean By – The "Quick Rinse" is my new favorite dishwasher feature.

Fannie Mae Cracks Down on Strategic Default – Do you really need someone to tell you that "strategically" defaulting on a mortgage is wrong? Sorry, but I don't feel pity for someone who is behind on their mortgage while they have sea doos and dirt bikes in their garage.

It’s days like today when I reminisce about all the times I visited the Wal-Mart Super Center in Alcoa. Oh the things I saw and heard..

“Upon getting the cell phone to ‘unlock’ and work properly, the Wal-Mart employee saw a picture on the phone of a female subject that was topless and whose breasts were exposed,” the report said.

At that point, the man who brought the cell phone into the store became “furious about anyone seeing his ‘private pictures’ and demanded that the cell phone be destroyed.”

The employee complied with the man’s request by hitting the cell phone repeatedly with a hammer until it was in several pieces.

…

But at 3:11 p.m., video surveillance at the store recorded the man re-entering the store through the Tire-Lube Express entrance while carrying a plastic bottle containing what appeared to be “a brownish colored substance,” which he allegedly poured onto five laptop computers at the store.

…

The brownish substance was believed to be tobacco spit.

…

The suspect was recorded by video surveillance driving away in a green-colored Pontiac sedan with hubcaps missing from both front tires.

If I could make stuff like this up, I’d be independently wealthy.

HT Michael Silence

Photo Credit

The next time someone thinks you are crazy for going on a “short” 10 mile run or spending three hours on your bike, let them know about Charlie Wittmack’s World Triathlon.

12,000 miles total, beginning with a 275 mile swim down the River Thames and ending with a climb of Mt. Everest. And sandwiched in between:

The 9,000-mile bike ride might seem relatively easy compared with the swim and the climb up Everest, but even there Wittmack has his work cut out for him.

“I have to get to the border of China and Kyrgystan by the end of October in order to get over the Tibetan plateau to India,” Wittmack said. “I’ll be riding over harsh deserts through areas with political instability.”

So…(talking to myself now)…you probably can squeeze in that workout today you’re not sure you have time for.

If this passes, hopefully someone with some sense will just install a “switch” in the Oval Office and put a label under it that says “Internet”. It won’t do anything, but that’s ok. The people involved clearly have little understanding of what they’re talking about anyway. We could give Al Gore a lifetime position that requires him to flip the switch when he turns in for the night to cut back on the global warming or whatever other crisis the interwebs contribute to.

Even if the president ordered all U.S. Internet companies to block, say, all packets coming from China, or restrict non-military communications, or just shut down access in the greater New York area, it wouldn’t work. You can’t figure out what packets do just by looking at them; if you could, defending against worms and viruses would be much easier.

“Shutting down” the internet isn’t anything like closing the freeway. It’s like shutting down radio, television, and newspapers all at once. We don’t even have a radio, cable, or a TV antenna at our house, so how would we know the webs had been shut down (for our protection)? You know what that means…get ready for the phone systems to get wrecked as part of the collateral damage with people calling up their internet providers because they can’t do the Googles or log on to the Facebooks.

HT Les Jones at NoSilenceHere

The SIL sent me a link to this site which lets you sign up to have your name included on a microchip that will be sent to Mars on a rover.

I sort of assumed that lots of my information and various encrypted passwords were being sent into deep space when the Space Bigfoot is playing jokes by moving the satellites I’m trying to bounce data off of.

Mars Schmars. I’m not giving up on hope that I can aspire to have my name sent to an asteroid. I’m not 100% sure this isn’t a trick by the gov’ment to give our personal information to the Martian overlords.

I’ve been substituting my regular run scheduled for Thursday evenings with 7s rugby practice for the summer. Thursdays aren’t really long runs, so I figure I can go out and burn more calories playing rugby while having fun and getting a good run in. It’s good cross training because it works every muscle, especially core muscles. I end up spiking and recovering my heart rate instead of keeping it steady like a would in a normal training run too. It’s just fun to mix it up, and I love playing rugby.

Plus there is beer afterward.

I’ve discovered Coach Brett over at ZenTriathlon recently, and I’ve really been enjoying his podcasts. There’s some really good stuff in there about triathlon in general, and his style totally vibes with the way I like to train. One of the things he talks about are “Push/Pull Workouts” where he’ll do a 6 mile run, stopping at each mile to do pushups, squats, pullups, etc. I realized that’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve been doing at rugby practice, although the intervals of running are much shorter intervals and at a much higher intensity.

I wore my heart rate monitor for the first hour of practice last night and kept splits just to get an idea of the intensity of the non-contact drills we were doing. I averaged right at 135 bpm for the first hour of practice (that included water breaks and the dynamic stretching warmup), but I spiked it close to 180 during the two most intense periods.  I know it got at least that high later in the practice when we were scrimmaging and I had long sprints.

A bonus in disguise was that I forgot my rugby boots at home, so I trained barefoot. I haven’t been doing much barefoot running at all, and it was probably good for me to get a good two hours of action without shoes. The only part of practice I skipped was the repetitive tackling drill, but I made good use of the time, doing “Jacos” around the field during that period.

Jacos is a fitness drill we used to do in college. Many rugby teams do variations, but we called the drill “Jacos” in honor of the coach who brought it to our club. It’s a not-so-fun way to run laps.

You start in one corner at the goal line, sprint to the halfway, jog to the opposite corner, stop for exercises–pushups/situps/burpees/squats/jackknives/mountain climbers–jog across the field to the opposite corner for a different exercise, and so on. So it’s sprint, jog, exercise, jog, exercise, sprint, jog, exercise, jog, exercise….

You get the idea, right? This is a great rugby fitness drill because it simulates a lot of stuff that’s going on in a game–high intensity bursts with lower intensity recovery runs and “lifting” sprinkled in. Lots of moving your own body weight around and getting up off the ground.

Keeping my triathlon goals of getting a core workout and staying in a training zone in mind, I like to add two exercise stations at the halfway line on either side of the field and substitute the jogs and sprints with a steadier, more intense pace. I got in four laps of that (about a mile) barefoot while the tackling drill was going on. Sounds a lot like a modified Push/Pull Run, huh? That’s what fitness end of rugby training is like for the most part, and why I think it’s a good substitute for at least one of my workouts each week. It also does me a lot of good mentally because it throws a curve into my training and involves something I really love doing.

Check out this guy…95 years old and still working out with weights, doing cardio, and starting out his day with 1,500 crunches. Most people 1/3 of this guys age start their day out with 1,500 calories of Cap’n Crunch.

“All the doctors that have treated me can’t believe what they’re seeing,” Matzinger said. “That’s encouraging, to go to the doctor and have compliments rather than prescriptions.”

I remember doing a 10 mile race a few years ago and a guy in his 80s finished in under 2 hours. People like that are amazing. I hope I live long enough to have an opportunity to be like that, and I hope I don’t blow it.

Understanding Your Motivation – I stay in all 6 states at all times.

FamilyShield is a No-Setup Adult Content Blocker for Your Router –

Best Place to Set Up Shop Online? –

Greener Than You — Entrepreneurial Foraging – This is nothing new. Broke college students have been foraging in bars for half drunk bottles and in the student ghettos for morning-after "yard beers" for decades.

Banksimple – Long overdue, and supposed to be launching in 2010. You can sign up for an invite right now. Loooooong overdue.

The Breaking Point for Children in Sports – The middle ground between letting kids live a sedentary lifestyle and pushing them to the point of injury and psychological distress is pretty wide. I can see where parents at both extremes would point to the opposite extreme for justification, but it's only a justification.

Soluto – This looks like a promising solution to help you diagnose and end PC problems. I'm signed up for the beta, hope to get my account soon, and will let you know!

Mark Twain autobiography to be published in November – Can't get enough. This is one I'll be looking forward to.

And by “your” music, of course I mean music you ripped from CDs that you own or downloaded legally online. Also, the files have to be unencrypted.

Click over to mSpot to sign up and upload your music.

Oh, and you need an Android device to use the mobile version of the service.

The free version includes 2Gb of storage. Can’t wait until Google comes out with their own version of this service.

HT Gizmodo

Don’t be surprised if you see more stuff like this as school administrators realize that rugby is not only a very affordable sport to promote in comparison with other sports, but it’s also relatively safe and full of positive life lessons:

“There’s a new attitude in the house,” Del Valle said. “The girls are taking ownership. Rugby promotes character, trust, loyalty and honor. You represent your program on and off the pitch.

HT: ScrumhalfConnection and RugbyBuzz