On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Here's a screen grab from my Ubuntu 8.10 system monitor as I shut down Firefox 3.0.8: Immediately after shut-down, around 100 MB is released. Then after 13 seconds or so, another 900 MB or RAM is liberated. What??? How can a single code tie up a full gig of RAM. How much memory do I need on this laptop? I can start it back up again, same tabs, and I'm fine. For awhile. Then I need to shut it down again. Either this is a memory leak problem (supposedly solved in Firefox 3) or it's a caching problem. In any case, it's out of control. I've tried Opera, but I'm just not comfortable with that. Google Chrome ? Not available yet for Linux. But it's a real candidate.

Sausalito has passed a plan to " ease the bicycle crunch ", including posting signs advising cyclists to "ride single-file". Unfortunately, it's not so simple: cyclists are not required to ride single file, no matter what law makers or enforcers whould like you to believe. Therefore such signs would be misleading. I propose the following, instead: This does a much better job of describing what cyclists must and should do on the roads. Which when you're riding the speed of traffic on a narrow road, has nothing to do with being single-file.

Liar! My riding so far this year has been really crappy. Hardly a bright spot to be seen: never once have I been climbing thinking "I feel really good". However, when I looked at my maximal power curve, there was one shining exception: the Menlo Park Grand Prix. I had been able to sustain higher power for longer there than I have so far on any climb. But did that make any sense? I'd done the same race in 2008, riding in the pack last year as I did this year, and power was lower. I told myself it was the new course, but that didn't add up. The reality is I wanted to believe I was capable of the numbers my computer told me I was generating on that 8th of March. Then this Tuesday, "reconfirmation". Despite feeling especially poor in the extraordinary heat, I was able to put up some confidence-boosting numbers during a 5-minute interval on San Bruno Mountain. Nice. Until I was descending and noticed my power hovering around 100 watts, despite the fa

I was looking at my old (very old) high school year book and I came across the following in the quote section: Li it so - lxu is khg tame pfle lue lid An obvious cipher. Amazing the author got away with it; less paranoia in those blissful pre-9/11 days. But that aside, I was intrigued as to what the message might be. I tried all the obvious stuff I could think of, some not so obvious, but couldn't crack it. The distribution of letters is roughly consistent with the distribution of letters in normal English writing, so there's no obvious signature of character translation. But I tried anyway, using character rotations from 0 to 25 characters: 0: Li it so - lxu is khg tame pfle lue lid 1: Mj ju tp - myv jt lih ubnf qgmf mvf mje 2: Nk kv uq - nzw ku mji vcog rhng nwg nkf 3: Ol lw vr - oax lv nkj wdph sioh oxh olg 4: Pm mx ws - pby mw olk xeqi tjpi pyi pmh 5: Qn ny xt - qcz nx pml yfrj ukqj qzj qni 6: Ro oz yu - rda oy qnm zgsk vlrk rak roj 7: Sp pa zv - seb pz ron ahtl wmsl

I'm a bit better than I was yesterday, but still generally out of commission. I drowned my personal sorrows in my sorry physical state by hacking GoldenCheetah , a great project for managing power meter data. GoldenCheetah has been around for several years, but thanks to a recent infusion of excellent contributions from Ned Harding, it's finally become for me a useful tool. I decided to dive in and try to implement a critical power model extraction technique I've been thinking about. The critical power model says a rider can produce a given level of "aerobic" power (the "critical power", or CP) forever, but additionally has a fixed budged of "anaerobic work" capacity (AWC) which can be spent as extra power. The shorter the total effort during which the anaerobic work is spent, the higher the average power during that period. For such a simple model, it seems to work fairly well. Power-based training isn't typically based on the critica

I've been sick the past few days. "Something's going around." But then around here, it always is... I almost don't remember the last time I felt the euphoria of a nice long ride. But on to today's subject. It looks like the Idaho stop may actually have a chance in Oregon . The Idaho Stop is the a law that in general cyclists may treat stop signs as yield signs, red lights as stop signs. Honestly, it's what most people do anyway when they're on a bike. They roll slowly up to a stop sign, check to see if the intersection is clear of cross-traffic, and if it is evident that it is clear, they ride on through without coming to a total stop. Is it always a good idea to roll through stops? Obviously not. Is it true that every time a cyclist rolls through a stop sign they do so responsibly? Obvious not. But then the Idaho law doesn't say it's always okay for cyclists to roll through stops. What it says is (italics mine): 49-720. STOPP

Every Tue it comes: a new load of fruit and vegetables. And the clock starts ticking. 168 hours left before the next one arrives. It has to be eaten. All of it. 168 hours. Thus was inspired the Way of the Farm Box : Cooking must be done using primarily produce from the farm box. Only produce contributing a small fraction to the total macronutrients, such as spices, may be added. Last week's farm box must be fully eaten before this week's can begin. All edible parts must be consumed. No discarding broccoli stems. The clock is ticking. One week to go. Forever ticking. Week after week. Forever. I don't want to seem to negative. The farm box is a wonderful thing. But I sort of miss eating out more often.