Skinsuits

Well, the home page says it: I got myself two new skinsuits! One is from the Republic of Anaerobia, a small outfit up in the North Bay; the other one is an eBay find. Both of them will reach me in the next few days – thank goodness eCommerce works!

Why skinsuits? Well, for one, they make you look even more ridiculous than the conservative duo of black shorts and jersey (which is really a lot to say!). Then their colors are usually much brighter than anyone else’s, so that you can be sure that everybody is going to look at you in bewilderment (decreasing chances of being overlooked or run over).

Short Ride

I seized the opportunity and did a quick (50min) ride at sunset. Actually, it was six to seven, so that it is still very warm and bright outside.

It is amazing how peaceful a Sunday evening can be. People are gone, the masses of summer bikers are home already, and it is with some amazement that I actually found a rider from Phoenix getting home. He must have been exhausted, because I saw him on the downslope in front of Stanford, three minutes before heading back, and still I caught up with him.

Almost There

Fk, fk, f**k!

I was so ready for it! I had slowly crept down Foothill, chosen Arastradero over Page Mill, done Portola to avoid the stupid hill before OLH, stopped for ten minutes (sharp!), drank my soda and ate an energy bar.

I shot up, I even spun a round just to get into it with a little speed advantage. I had computed that an average ascent of 60ft per minute would get me there, with the initial part being slightly easier and hence slower (ascent-wise).

A Short History of Byzanz

Midway through the abbreviated version of the history of Byzanz. The author started out with a three volume history that he had to abridge for the general public – and since I am general public, that’s what I chose to read.
First things first: the history of Byzanz itself is immensely fascinating. We are talking about an empire that understands itself as the SOLE successor of Rome (with a certain appropriateness), but is actually not a real power player. Instead of expanding and conquering, this empire never reached the size and power of its predecessor. Instead, it started shrinking early on, besieged as it was by enemies on all frontiers. Still it managed to thrive and survive for over thousand years, almost beating its forebear.
This said, the book is clearly an abridged version of a much more thorough oeuvre. The casual museum stroll that is so typical of history books feels like on fast-forward, and what would otherwise be an endless recount of things and events, with footnotes sprinkled left and right to make the reader feel appropriately bored, turns into a fast-paced, exhilarating experience.
Style: maybe it’s the morbid nature of (at least this) man, but the hints to the disgusting tortures, unspeakable depravities and incredible religious finickiness in the face of overpowering forces are amazing. I am sure if there were a mini-series on the Eastern Empire, not one episode would be boring.
It stands to be asked what part of this amazement is an accomplishment of the author. Regardless, he is able to bring a dead world alive, and to make it feel real. An incredible achievement, considering how little we care any more about Byzanz, Constantinople and all that happened there until it became Istanbul.
Must read for anyone that thinks history needs to be boring.

Defeat at Old La Honda

So that’s how it went…

I rode the usual Alpine uphill, having given a little too much on Foothill to swerve around the morning traffic. Stopped at the bottom of the hill, after having passed four guys from Phoenix Tech. After they started (and another one, and another one), I jumped on and tried to go as fast as I could.

Man, I made it up 880ft (ascent), and then somehow the steam went out of me. Weird. It wasn’t even pain, or fatigue, or anything else – just no desire to continue. The nagging: “Why am I doing this again?” that stands behind all failed athletes. I turned around, hopefully far enough for the Phoenix people (that I had passed a while down) not to know that I had, indeed, been defeated. On the way down, just to make my life more interesting, this moron passes a group of bikers on the far left of the road, on a perfect collision course with me.

Another Flat

Trying to ride home yesterday after a long pause (due to nothing but laziness and good excuses!) I found myself with a flat and no tools. How stupid is that?

That’s how I found out that I average 18 mph on the way home on the bike, and just 3.6 mph walking… 🙂

Only the Paranoids Survive (Andy Grove)

That’s one book that came with high praise!
Only the Paranoids Survive is the kind of book you have to have read to be able to keep up with everyone else that constantly talks about it. And like any required reading, I was a little uncomfortable with this one, trying to fend it off and push it away as long as I could.
The first chapter than did it for me. A long rant about things that I already intimately knew, with definitions of things that were absolutely obvious: PLEASE!
Turns out that what was so familiar to me actually required definition, and that from that first chapter of setting the stage, the book soon entered incredibly valuable territory. Grove charted what was tantamount to one of the most radically success stories in today’s business world, proving how there was method behind the choices that Intel had made.
All in all, the book was an amazing read. FInding out that Grove’s team thinks of conflict in meetings as a way of expressing creativity was refreshing, considering the level and ‘nice’ way of behaving in the Valley. That there actually had been a major crisis in the company BEFORE the Pentium debacle; not only had I forgotten that, I was reminded by the book that it was quite a terminal danger for the company.
Towards the end, the book starts looking at the present and past, and starts reading like Nostradamus’s prophecies. As long as they talk about the past, everything is in perfect order and logic reigns supreme; but as soon as the then present and the then future are concerned, predictions are random and arbitrary and ultimately, in hindsight, plain wrong.
The one chapter on the Internet is particularly interesting, given that the book was published in 1998. It shows, at least, that indeed Intel must accept better judgement, since the company did not follow the predictions of the chairman.
The language of the book is very narrative and gets lost only when Grove talks about abstract things or the future. As many leading business people, he is best where he is comfortable, and his passion surely comes out best when he talks about Intel and Intel’s achievements.
Oh – the title: it is meant in a much nicer way than I had interpreted first. Sounds like ‘Only the Paranoids Survive’ just means: ‘Watch Out, Or They’ll Eat You’. Nothing of the world conspiracy that it seemed to imply.
All in all a ‘must read’ for people in the computer business. Or people stuck in a culture in which consensus is a must, niceness a requirement, and hence everything needs to be dumbed down.

Eureka!

I finally got to implement combined graphs in Perl. In the end, it was real simple, and it was mostly fighting with GD::Graph that held me up.

The new graphs have a few implementation changes that I found really important:
1. The scale of x and y coordinates is constant, so that you can compare two graphs directly. Right now, if you do a mostly flat ride, it looks like a mountain climb no matter what. If you ride twice as far, you end up with sharp mountains. Combined, a long flat ride looks like a short mountain pass. Needed to fix that, will increase motivation… 🙂
2. Data points are not as interesting as averages as far as speed is concerned. Changed that, too – speed is now averaged, and speed points are added on top.
3. I combined several workouts to generate a single graph. The old problem of the lazy biker that stops to look at the mountains (and catch breath) and then moves on, realizing that his/her Polar stopped and requires a new workout (bitch bitch)
4. I finally got rid of the speed spikes. I know that it seems absolutely possible to you, but I do think that riding on a flat at 65 mph is a bit unrealistic. So the code now throws out those values automatically and replaces them with the average of the adjoining data points (or undefs them, whichever I implemented 🙂

Alto Velo Again

Saturday, and for some mysterious reason no desire to ride. Maybe it’s the broken espresso machine, maybe it was the ton of chocolate I ate yesterday, freshly spurred by a visit to Albertson’s.

Still, I made it all the way to Canada. Turned around at the intersection where they usually stop traffic on Sundays, because it was turning greyish after that.

I was out at the same time as the Alto Velo B ride. What a nightmare those guys are: pass you downhill, then start rushing around you, just in time to slow down on the next uphill, where I have to pass them again. Can’t anyone tell them how you pass when you are in a big group?

Tired

Tiredness overcame me yesterday. It was a long day, and I got out of the office only after 7:30. While I had started on the path of doing an extra circle riding home on Monday, Tuesday saw me barely crossing the traffic light on Foothill to get home just in time to feast on a ton of chocolate.

Interesting how work can work that way! Monday was intense, and Tuesday even worse – and as a consequence, my energy level sinks…