Read My Mind

A long time ago, on a blog not-so-far away, I promised a post on Google Reader. Like everything on this blog, it just takes a while.

Google Reader is a one of many "feed readers" that are available for free. If you are unaware of the term, a feed reader is an application that allows a user to aggregate all the "feeds" to which they subscribe in one handy place. "Feeds" are just syndication of content. You've probably seen the icon on the right on various websites (including this one). It means that this site syndicates its content, and when there is new content available it will publish that content to its subscribers. This saves the subscriber from having to always go check the site for new content, and allows the publisher yet another way to get its content out to subscribers.

Is this the most exciting post ever, so far, or what? OK, so why this is cool...

The most basic reason to use Google Reader or any feed reader is that it allows you to go to one place to read all the content you normally read. Instead having to remember to go to xtreme-knitting, Angie's Romance Reviews, Curling News, The Antarctic Sun, 99 Sense, (and many more) every day, I just open Google Reader, and the latest content from each of those is right there for me to read.

Google Reader advertises itself as "the inbox of the web" you basically have all your feeds in a column on the left, and the content from each of these feeds is displayed in the center of the window. Content is either displayed as the title of the artical only, or the full article itself (I prefer the latter). You can scroll through the content pane, perusing all the latest content from your numerous feeds, sifting through until you find something you like. You can also apply labels to your feeds, and filter the content pane on those labels.

That's the jist of how feed readers work, but Google Reader has a number of other features besides syndication aggregation. For each piece of content you have the option to:

• E-mail a link to the article to someone.
• "Star" the content. (I think of this as bookmarking it, making it easier to find later)
• Apply new labels to that content (sometimes if I want to read something but don't have the time, I label that particular item with my "Reading List" label. Then later I can filter by "Reading List" and see what I have to catch up on.
  
• "Share" the content. Anything you "Share" will be published into a feed of all the items you have shared. And anyone else can subscribe to that. What is incredibly cool about this feature is that I can subscribe to your shared items, and then I can comment on your items, and anyone else can read that, and a discussion can happen. This "social" feature makes it so simple to see what your friends are interested in, and discuss. And of course, the only things that are published are those that you explicitly mark "Share".

Hopefully now you can see the benefits of Google Reader. It allows you to read and manage the content you want more efficiently, and at the same time share and discuss with your friends! For more animated demonstrations of Google Reader, check out the videos below. I hope you all try it out, and please let me know your thoughts!

You Make The Call! (Or Fold)

Played an interesting hand of poker I thought I'd relay to everyone.

Post-tourney cash game, .50/$1 blinds. I start the hand with somewhere around $55-60. Chris has a little more than me in front of him, but he's stuck on the night. Al has maybe around $30 in front of him.

I'm the big blind. Al raises to $3 from Under the Gun (player to the left of the big blind). Action folds around to Chris, in the small blind, who calls. I look down at 7h-Th (7 hearts - 10 hearts). Calling is a little loose, but it's getting late and in the later hours we all have a little more gamble in us, Al, Chris and myself included. So I make the call. There is now $9 in the pot.

Flop comes Tc-Ts-2c. Jackpot. Chris checks. I check, expecting Al, the pre-flop raiser, will continuation bet. He doesn't.

This is where it gets interesting. Turn is a Qs, putting 2 flush draws on board. Chris bets $2. I pause for a second, and make it $7. Al thinks for a while, and just calls. Chris then raises to $14. Now there is $39 in the pot, and with the call from Al and re-raise from Chris I have to consider that I don't have the best hand.

I have three options here, fold, call or raise. With 2 flush draws on board, having to only call $7 into a pot of $39, and a very strong hand, folding isn't really an option. I glance over at Al and I can see he's holding the rest of his chips (maybe $20) in between his thumb and index finger. He's thinking of pushing. If I shove, I'll be raising a pot of $46 about $45, giving about 2-1 odds to Chris and about 3-1 to Al (as he only has $20 to call with). It's probably a play that would chase Chris and MAYBE Al off a flush draw.

Instead, I elect to just call the $7 to see what Al does, and if he pushes, to see what Chris does after that. If he pushes and Chris calls, I'll have a tough decision. Al makes a tough fold (based on his cursing under his breath). The pot is now $46.

The river is a red 3. Chris takes a few seconds, looks at his chips, and announces all in. Chris has me covered, so I'd be calling all of my $45 to win $91.

I'll post the end of the hand in the comments section in a couple days. But first, I thought it might be fun to give everyone (or at least just Ryan and Coovo) a chance to say what you'd do. I would like to hear it!

Twittermania

A couple years ago, I started hearing all the tech podcasters talking about the newest fad, Twitter. Described as "micro-blogging", well you know what Twitter is. A way to syndicate a quick thought or your location to people who are interested stalking you.

Twitter grew, and grew, and with the rise in popularity came numerous outages in the service (I suppose it's hard to afford the infrastructure for ever-increasing volume when the company doesn't really have a way of generating money). But it just got more popular.

The tech podcasters had a good prediction, though. Once a celebrity (Britney was the oft-cited example) figured out how easily they could easily leverage the app as a way to reach their fan base, Twitter would explode.

And it has. Britney was perhaps one of the first, biggest stars to join (although it's believed that it's her PR people actually "tweeting"... probably because of the lack of grammar and spelling mistakes). Ashton Kutcher got in early. It was one of the many Web 2.0 tools employed effectively by the Obama campaign. Shaq started using it to give away tickets before games. Of course, the adoption of Twitter as a marketing platform by celebrities hasn't come without it's flops and moments of humor.

Then a few months ago I saw Jimmy Fallon using Twitter as a way to let fans send questions for his guests on his show. A month later I saw SportsCenter posting athletes' tweets. Pokerroad has teamed with Twitter to provide up to the minute updates during the WSOP. It's no longer a geek buzzword, it's everywhere now.

And there have been numerous rumors of tech giants in talks to buy Twitter - even though Twitter still has no way of making money!

I personally have no problem if people like to use Twitter to stay in touch with friends, follow people of interest, etc. To each his own. I think my attitude towards it kind of falls in line with this Conan bit, though:



But then, just when I feel somewhat justified for believing Twitter is a little silly, it becomes one of the only methods for getting on-the-scene news out to the world from the riots in Iran. The credibility of Twitter-based news can always be questioned, but it may be the best metaphor for the shift in "breaking news" journalism. The average citizen with a camera phone and Twitter now dictate the stories for journalists to run down.

And it's no different at TLATL. Instead of Coovo telling me what to write, me telling Ryan what to write, and Ryan telling Coovo what to write, we will be following the crowd. And what better way to dive right in than to head to Iran, meld in with the crowd, and work as undercover journalists. And you can follow it all on our Twitter feed! Hope to hear from you all soon.

Yikes!

A friend of TLATL recently went on a float trip. In the morning he put on his shoes (barefoot) and even took a couple steps before he felt something fuzzy and found this guy inside. <<>>

Around The Horn

"All the Hits the Nits Missed."

Hello Sports Racers, it's time for another edition of Around The Horn, or as Coovo likes to call it, "Roller's News Nits Nockoff".

South Korean scientists have cloned dogs. That glow red in the dark. No kidding. When I first heard of this, it reminded me of a trick we computer geeks use to spin our defects as "features".

User: Why was there an "H" appended to all the information I entered?

Geek: Uh, that's our new "Info+H" feature. Do you like it?

User: Can I fix it by rebooting?

The scientist have inserted "fluorescent genes" into the dogs (this is actually similar to another computer science pattern known as Dependency Injection). The success of this experiment suggests that scientists could inject other types of genes. Said South Korean scientist Jin Fong-du, "Having proven that we can inject genes into a living animal, we can now expand our research to include injecting other types of genes. By 2011, we could have dogs that glow blue, or possibly purple." OK, I made that quote up. Pretty cool, though.


Religious fanatics have denounced the testing, noting that if you spell "glowing dog" backwards, you get "god gniwolg". It's hard to argue with that.

This isn't the most recent of news, but has been on my plate for a while. A little over a month ago, AT&T network lines were vandalized in the San Franscisco Bay area. In two separate locations, someone opened a manhole, climbed down 10 feet and cut some network cables. For most of the next day, there were outages to cell phone, internet, land line and even 911 Emergency access.

Conspiracy theorists were quick to paint this as a terrorist rehearsal for a major nation-wide coordinated attack. But I don't think that adds up, as terrorists most likely would have blown themselves up to sever the network cables.

Lending even less credence to the terrorist theory is the fact that the AT&T's contract with the Communications Workers of America expired about 5 days prior to the "attack". Union leadership downplayed the notion that a union member could have been involved. Right. Because everyone knows which manhole covers lead to AT&T's network cables, and which lead to secret Craigslist parties.

Maybe AT&T should follow Texas' lead in equipment protection. Texas fire ants can inflict up to $1 billion a year in damages to electrical equipment (and those are non-arsen related numbers). The solution? As described in a recent US News article, introduce a South American phorid fly that somehow lays eggs inside the ant. Then when a maggot hatches from an egg it eats the ant's brain. The ant still wanders around for a couple weeks like a zombie, before its head falls off and the fly pops out and goes after another ant.

Awesome! Until next time...

You want a post?

I'm your Huckleberry.

Manny. Big news. The primary use for the drug he used is to help increase ovulation. Manny being trans-Manny. I'm not sure I feel caught up on what happened though. I'm watching Mike and Mike in the morning and so far they've only interviewed, Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark, Bob Ryan and Buster Olney. If only I knew what Jose Canseco was thinking. Oh wait, they played audio clips from him too. Remember when Canseco said no one wanted Manny because he was on that list that A-Rod was on? Please stop giving this guy credibility. PLEASE!

There's a few other television related items that are "grinding my gears" so to speak. When I went to espn.com to link the above story, I was met with a video commercial for what is now my least favorite jingle. It was never my favorite, but when I hear "Five. . . Five dollar . . ." I cringe. I love to eat them, but I don't want to hear anyone sing that song ever again. Give me Jared and John Cena arm wrestling.

I fell asleep with the TV on the other night. In my daze, I heard " Oh, it's a double-pisted chesty!" I sat straight up, grabbed my Louisville slugger and beat my TV to a pulp.

Lastly, since I don't have digital cable, DirectTV or Tivo, I still channel flip. VH1 has seemingly cornered the market on sleazy dating shows. There newest is The Cougar. I didn't link it but I'm sure you can find it if you want. Memo to anyone who is considering going on any of theses shows, male or female: You are a dirty human. (p.s. sorry that third chick is only half in the picture).

Country Music Marathon

Late last year, friend of TLATL Matt D. asked me if I wanted to run a marathon with him. I'd always wanted to do one, and I figured it would be great to train with someone else. So we started training at the beginning of February with our sites on the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, TN.

The training regimen is pretty strait forward: run 4-6 miles 3-4 times during the week, and then do one long run on the weekend. The first long run should be about however long you can run at the time, and then add a mile or two onto that each week. Your last long run should be two weeks before the marathon, and should be about 22-23 miles.

Matt and I did as many long runs together as we could, but it became apparent as we got to the 18 and 20 mile runs that he was running at a faster pace. I didn't want to slow him down, and I actually did better running solo anyway, because I wasn't trying to keep his pace. So we decided to run the marathon separately.

We arrived at the race together and split up into our respective "corrals". Each runner is assigned a corral based on their projected finish time, and each corral is released 2 minutes after the previous corral. The idea, of course, is that runners spend as little time passing other runners because the faster runners are ahead of them and the slower runners are behind them. In crowded races that makes a big difference. Just like the previous two half-marathons I'd run, though, there were plenty of "walkers" and people who were obviously not going to finish in their corral's projected time. It's pretty frustrating having to make your way around them. But enough complaining...

My assigned corral was 13, based on a 4:20:00 projected finish (just under 10 minutes / mile). Unfortunately my start was delayed by a... biological issue... coupled with some poor execution by the event planners. Probably not something everyone wants to read about, but in retrospect it was kind of comical. I ended up leaving with corral 18... and off I went on my first marathon.

I have a running playlist in my iPod, but didn't feel like getting to that right away. I'd also enjoyed listening to podcasts/audiobooks on my long runs, as they helped me maintain a consistent pace. But I felt like music... and felt like Gomez' "Bring It On".




I hit the first water stand around 2 miles in and chugged two Cytomax's (some athletic drink that must have paid more money than Gatorade to sponsor the event). The high for the day was going to be 87... way higher than anything in which I'd trained, and generally really hot for a marathon. I decided before the race I'd get at least 2 cups of Cytomax or water at each of the 20 water stands throughout the race.

I also passed the first of 27 bands playing along the marathon route. Pretty cool...

In the commotion of passing people in the first crowded few miles, I didn't actually see a timer at any mile markers until mile 5. I checked my iPod as I crossed the starting line and noticed I was starting 35 minutes late. Some quick math I realized I had done the first 5 miles in 40 minutes. Whoops. I felt great, but that was way too fast for my projected time. I was able to catch the mile markers in the next five miles, and was going about 10 minutes / mile... and felt great.

Next album... Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy" (skipped No Quarter). Around mile 11 the half-marathoners peel away and head for their finish line. It was nice to get some space!

I completed the first half of the marathon in 2:05. A little faster than I probably should have, and I was starting to feel the effects of the heat a little. I put on a podcast in hopes that I could slow my pace a little. The first half of the marathon was pretty hilly, but fortunately the second half wouldn't be too bad.

My gut was starting to churn some more, and as frustrating as it was, it was becoming evident that I wouldn't be able to hold it off the whole race. By mile 18 my biological issues were calling again and I had to duck into a Johnny on the Spot for about 8 minutes (I kept track on my iPod and figured I would be justified in subtracting this from my finish time). Back on the course and feeling a little rejuvenated, I turn to "Paul's Boutique". Haven't listened to that album in a while... it's still great ("Drive By Eggings - plaguing L.A.! - 'Yo, they just got my little cousin, ese!'").

Around mile 20 I'm pretty tired, but I know I only have a 10 K to go. Saw a great sign "UR Feet Hurt Cuz You Kick Ass" on the sidelines. The many people cheering at all phases of the race is great...

My longest training run was a little over 22 miles and as was the case with each long run, I never felt too bad until I eclipsed the distance of the previous run. Then you really start to ache. It's not your lungs at all, like in a short race. Basically everything from your hips on down is just sore, and if you try to push it a little harder your legs yell at you.

Mile 24... Pain, but the end is so close! Lots of people walking at this point, which is actually helpful, as it's a psychological lift to pass them.

Halfway through mile 25 I start "Working Man" by Plants and Animals to carry me in. It's a great running song.

At mile 26 I see Matt and his wife Lisa (who snapped the photo) and their friends. Time to pick it up and cruise on into the finish. Lots of cheering fans on both sides, a fun experience to finish!

After the race I ate a huge meal, took a nap and then went to an old friend's for dinner that night. They asked me if I would ever run another one, and at that point I didn't think so. Up to the race I was planning on it being a "one and done", as most doctors will tell you that being a distance runner is horrible for your body. But by the next day I had the itch to do it again. I can't imagine that I'll do another soon, as it takes too much time away from my family to do these too often. I may or may not ever do another one, but I at least hope to maintain my fitness level - over the course of training I dropped 17 lbs. that I definitely didn't need!

And of course, a special thanks to my wife, who supported me throughout the training and never complained once!

Oh, yeah, I finished in 4:46:44 (that's before subtracting my "break"). A lot slower than I was hoping for, but I'm happy to have completed it. Matt finished in 3:55:48, his best time in the 3 marathons he's run!

Here are the winners (surprise, they're Kenyans!). Just before this picture was taken, the M.C. said "How can you be a Kenyan and NOT win a marathon?"