Category: Doing (Page 22 of 28)

<3 Google+ Photo Sharing

October 5, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’ve shared plenty of photos from my phone on Google+, but in the last couple of days I’ve started uploading larger albums there. The display of photo albums within Plus is very nice (waaaaaaaay cleaner than Facebook), and if you upload through Plus instead of Picasa, your photos get auto-resized and don’t count towards your Picasa limits:

If you’ve signed up for Google+

Free storage limits

Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won’t count towards your free storage.

Automatic resizing

All photos uploaded in Google+ will be automatically resized to 2048 pixels (on their longest edge) and won’t count towards your free storage quota.

Well, sorta. You can only have 10,000 albums and you can only have 1,000 photos within an album. Maybe not enough for pros, but plenty for people who just want to share with the fam.

So all you have to do to back up all of your photos is upload them through Plus set to private. Then go over to Picasa, create new albums and move/copy photos into them to share.

My one complaint is that the beautiful photo album layouts we see on the Plus website haven’t made it to the Android applications yet. It would be nice to get the same broad overview when browsing photos on a tablet.

On Getting “Chicked”

September 28, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Emily has a pretty funny post about mixed-gender running and talks about guys who lie about planning on an easy run only to come out and try to race their female running partners.

Most of the time I’ve spent training has been with women, so I guess I have something to say on this. I’ve trained with all sorts of girls. A couple have been a little slower than me, but they were very experienced runners. I learned a lot from them when I let them control the pace. The Missus is much slower than me, but all I have to do is grab the ~~parachute~~ double stroller and count her miles as a warmup, and I’m happy to run her pace.

A couple of my female running partners have been much faster than me. I remember doing some 1m intervals as part of a longish run with one girl who absolutely took me to the brink on every rep until the last one; that’s when she really opened it up and buried me.

So yeah, I’ve been chicked more times than I can count. And I don’t care. In a training run, it just helps make you faster. In a race, well…there are so many girls who finish so far ahead of me that the one or two who sneak by me at the end are negligible in number.

Most of the girls I’ve run with have had a comparable pace to mine. This can bring out the best and worst of everyone. The upside is that you are in a good position to push each other. The downside is that once the pushing has started, I’ve noticed girls are much more likely than guys are to get mad when you beat them…as if they weren’t participating in the pushing all along.

Of course, their fury (“no…nothing’s wrong…what makes you say that?”) is ultimately expressed in terms like “you drug me into that pace”, not because they got beat.

Bull butter. It’s obvious when you are running with other people exactly who is participating in pushing the pace and who, if anyone, is trying to slow it down. You want to claim after the race that you didn’t want to race? Please.

Personally, I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that they got beat by a guy, at least from my experience. I have a different theory about what’s really going on:

If there’s one thing worse than getting “chicked” , it’s getting “fat-guyed”.

I love fat-guying people.

Correct Swimming Pool Temps

September 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’m going to break this down to levels beyond scientific, based on my test data.

I’m proposing a “bust-yer-aise” scale similar to the wind chill factor or the heat index. 80 feels like 88, provided you’re working hard enough.

If 80 degree water in your backyard pool is too cold for you to cool off in, you need to increase the intensity of your run/bike/walk/row/rugby/training. Or mow/landscape harder. Whatever.

And the max temperature for a lap pool should be ~78. If you can’t make yourself sweat buckets in 78 degree water, consult a physician.

Get Off The Sidelines, Google + Button Update Coming, and Netflix for Kids

August 30, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

These link dumps every few days make it nice for me to keep some fresh content coming, even when I don’t have a ton to say. Of course, if you follow @sadcox on Twitter, you get this stuff almost-real-time…for FREE!

You Can’t Become a Man From The Sidelines – Join your local rugby club this season. Or learn to play an instrument. Or grow and kill your own food. Build a house. Paint a self-portrait. Anything is better than just watching other people live their lives.

Van hits, kills bicycle rider near DeLand – This is Sara McLarty’s father. Be careful out there.

Google+ Share to Specific Circles – Big news for publishers…you’ll be able to decide what images and descriptions are shared with Snippets.

Twitter Based Hedge Fund – Has someone finally found a way to tap the emotions of the market? I’ll stick with logic.

Tenured Professors: Get Out While You Can – This doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility to me. “Get out while you can” may be a little strong, but contingency plans are never a bad idea.

90’s 411: Music, Fashion, Timelines, Movies, TV and More – I’ve perused this site to see if I can find the phrase, “Congratulations Possums on your 1998 Midwest Championship…” Nothing’s turned up yet.

New Swype Keyboard Makes Tweeting And Mapping A Breeze – Best text input method for Android gets better!

Netflix, Now For Kids – Out Netflix is already set up “just for kids”. All of the suggestions are for kids’ shows, because that’s pretty much all that gets watched. Seriously, this is a cool feature!

Hurricane Preparedness – Irene

August 23, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

It looks like Hurricane Irene is going to miss us for the most part, although I’m sure we’ll get plenty of rain and some good surf out of it; more surf than I could handle anyway.

Unfortunately, the rest of the east coast may not be as lucky as we were this time around.

We did the usual things to prepare over the weekend when it looked like we were going to be hit, at least the things a newb like me could think of. Power outage is the biggest concern since we don’t have underground utilities in our neighborhood:

Remove possible projectiles from the yard
Stock up on water, beans and rice, charcoal, flashlights and batteries
Plenty of gas for the car and chainsaw

Next up are a couple of things I’m doing to get ready for a bunch of rain:

Sprinklers off for a few days…I think we’ve got plenty of water coming
Empty the pool down a little…more water
Hex the dead tree in the neighbors’ yard to fall into their yard and not ours

Hopefully I’ll be posting mostly surfing photos and not many damage/clean up photos over the weekend.

Investing for Triathletes

August 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

During yesterday’s market tumble, I saw this tweet from @lokibeat…

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/lokibeat/statuses/100660260204843008″]

It made me chuckle, but it also made me think of a couple of things triathletes and runners can hopefully relate to. First of all, the practical…

I prefer to think of dips in the market the same way I do water stops. At first glance, water stops cost me time in races because I walk them. But the truth is, water stops gain me time because I walk them. Walking the water stops gives me a chance to take in a lot more fluid than I could if I tried to run through them. That fluid is an investment in my total race. So I think of dips in the market as a chance to buy more of the same thing I was buying a couple of weeks ago at a discount. We’re talking about investing, not trading, right? It’s a ironman/marathon, and I’m not selling next week whether the market is up or down.

Secondly, @lokibeat is right…it is more about the trip than it is the destination. I think a lot of us enjoy the day-in-day-out training more than we do crossing the finish line at a race. Even on race day, when we say we “had fun”, we’re talking about the entire race…not just the finish line.

So chill out, walk the water stops, and take in as much fluid as you can while someone’s there to hand it to you.

And you might as well go ahead and make friends with the pain for now. You’ll feel better in a few miles.

UT’s Rugby Coach Retiring

August 8, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Thanks to the KNS for covering Butch Robertson’s retirement and 750+ career wins.

Rugby was just one of the many things he taught. I learned countless lessons from him from 1993-1996, not the least of which was that the way to make a real impact is by showing up every day ready to do work for decades.

The guy never got a dime for his efforts either. In fact, it probably cost him quite a bit of money to come out in bad weather twice a week for all those years and deal with the jetsam of high school soccer, football, and wrestling.

Thanks Butch, for all you’ve done for so many young men!

Yammer Should Be Called “Sweet Potato-er”

July 25, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Don’t “sweet potatoes” sound so much tastier than “yams”?

I posted this to our network this morning, but it’s also worth stating publicly.

My new favorite thing about Yammer:

It’s so much more convenient to come back from vacation and read what people wrote in groups/threads on Yammer over the past couple of days than it is to try to sort through all the messages and replies on email. I can quickly sort out what’s important using the groups and tags, get to the meat, find out what issues are already resolved, and see what I’ve missed. It’s already organized for me!

I’ve loved Yammer for quite a while for reducing emails and helping me sort through information real time, but I hadn’t really considered the benefit of easily catching up from a vacation until our usage at work increased to a level that I could really tell the difference.

Of course, I was never too far behind anyway because I could follow along through my mobile device the whole time I was gone and have a good idea of what was going on. This was pretty easy to do too because I could cut out all the peripheral noise on Yammer and just watch the groups that are of highest priority.

There’s such a high signal to noise ratio compared to email!

Sweet.

July 20, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Stress fractures suck. And they don’t always heal as quickly as you’d think they would either.

Yeah, that’s more of a Twitter-length thing to say, but it just seems more permanent to post it here.

Stupid stress fracture.

July 18, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

DailyMile needs to expand their “add a workout” section to cover things like yard work. I know I’m not at my top level of fitness right now, but I go at it pretty hard in the yard some days, especially when I’m wielding a machete. That should count for something more than a blank spot in my workout log.

Maybe they are aware I’m offsetting the calories with beer as I go?

July 12, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I definitely didn’t set any land speed records. No distance records either. Luckily I didn’t feel any pain in my foot. Of course, I was definitely distracted by the pain in my lungs and knees. Baby steps…two weeks without pain and times will start dropping again.

Training Swim With Manatees

June 27, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I jumped in the river with my buddy Ryan on Saturday for a training swim. It was his first open-water swim, and my first swim in a long time. We’re lucky to have a perfect spot to swim at his parents’ condo with no boat traffic and a loop course that’s about 400 yards or so. The water was nice and calm, except for the occasional manatee poking its nose up to get a whiff of whoever was manning the paddle board. I think they were pretty curious about what we were doing. Ryan bumped into them a couple of times during his session, and I got bumped by a few when I was in the water before we started.

Here’s the thing…manatees feel like sharks.

Not that I’ve ever felt a shark in the water, and I know manatees are really gentle. But when you can’t see exactly what it is rubbing up against you under the water it’s kind of freaky; lots of incentive to swim fast and try to avoid them. It’s actually good race training in a way. It simulates getting bumped into by other swimmers without getting punched or having your goggles kicked off.

Just as we were getting out of the water a couple of dolphins showed up. As fun as it sounds to swim with dolphins, those things are freakishly strong, and they aren’t nearly as gentle as manatees. And while I can out-swim a manatee that’s leisurely goofing off in the water, I’m not quite as fast as a sleeping dolphin…yet. Getting unexpectedly bumped by a dolphin would not only be a little alarming, it would actually hurt.

We’re going to try to do this swim at least once a week, and hopefully we’ll get some choppier water next time to change the conditions up a little bit. And hopefully the critters will keep their distance.

Running, Drinking and Nerding Out Link Dump

June 26, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Long Distance Half-Steppers –

“Self-knowledge is a bitch.”

I have been all of these people at one point or another, and I’ve definitely run with all of them. There are more I could add to the list too!

Desmos Graphing Calculator – I am in nerd heaven. I can’t wait to play with this gadget. I can’t wait until my kids are learning higher math and we can do this together!!!

Get Drunk Not Fat – My knees wish my brain had been supplied this information at an earlier date.

‘Til debt do us part :

Leverage is leverage, and leverage always brings with it increased risk.

True, but what scares me most is the amount of this “leverage” that represents items of depreciating value or Super Value Meals. And that’s just on the consumer debt.

HTC EVO 3D Review – Hope to get mine before it’s obsolete.

iDoneThis – Very cool, very simple service. Every day it sends you an email, and you respond with that you did. Makes TPS reports a snap.

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Provide – Haven’t even read this one yet, but if it’s half as good as the others, it’s a must read.

India’s $35 Android Tablet Finally Ready Ship – Would be hard not to buy at least one of these. HT @_Neville

High-Pressure Tactics Culture At Groupon – More dumping on Groupon. The more details I read about this company, the more I am wary of it.

Forget Student Loans, And Maybe Even College – Can’t say it enough times–student loans are horrible. The whole industry is basically pay day lending that you can’t bankrupt.

Short Groupon – “Groupon is essentially holding a portfolio of loans backed by the receivables of small businesses. If a business goes under, consumers will come back to Groupon for their money back. Unless Groupon is actually doing credit assessments on businesses that it chooses to feature, this is a big risk for Groupon.”

Perfect Iced Coffee – A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give up coffee for 30 days. This post is the first time I’ve regretted that decision.

I’m reading– May 24th through June 9th

June 13, 2011 / Scott / 2 Comments

Make your secondary Google Voice number permanent – Perfect solution for a a reasonable price. I don’t want to give up my old number for old contacts, but only give out my Google Voice number for new contacts.

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Challenge – Part II of this series. Dead on so far.

Texas movie theater makes an example (and a PSA) of a texter – Awsum. This should be rinsed and repeated for pretty much every venue except for phone booths.

Millionaires versus The Aspirationals – I’ll see your $10 wine and raise you a light beer in a can.

TN columnist: No athletics for home-schooled kids – Public school services (classes, athletics, etc.) should be a la carte.

Desmos Interactive Education – Saw this from TechCruch Disrupt. Coupled with Kahn Academy…strong!

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Physicality – Hells yeah.

June 1, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Shrimp and grits inspired by a Throwdown–the best of both recipes. My boredom with food was temporarily paused. The Missus cooks good groceries.

If you’ve signed up for Google+

Free storage limits

Automatic resizing

Gettin’ After It!