the art of writing is discovering what you believe
just thought you’d like to know your old bike is well appreciated and getting good use…. Nice features my old bike didn’t have, like the extra chain ring for going up these Seattle hills.
And speaking of fitness, I got this in my inbox this morning:
just thought you’d like to know your old bike is well appreciated and getting good use. I’ve just about doubled the odometer. Nice features my old bike didn’t have, like the extra chain ring for going up these Seattle hills. Way to help save the planet by putting unused resources back into the ring!
That’s about 500 miles in the few weeks he’s had it. He plainly needed it more than I did.
Seattle offers exercise options a-plenty, but swimming is a good year-round choice, with lots of public pools (I can remember only a couple in Decatur when I lived there, none in Atlanta, though the Y is pretty active there)…. Lots of people had them at their houses (I never lived in a house that didn’t have a pool) but I don’t remember high school swim teams as we have here or any public pool.
OK, maybe not fat (at 6 feet, anything less than 200 pounds is within healthy boundaries and I have yet to cross 200†) but fitter is always possible. To that end, I have been swimming at my local pools, with the added structure of lessons (yes, grown-ups can take lessons). I had no muscle memory of a good stroke so I had to learn from scratch, but things are going well.
The lessons are once a week but we try to build in some other visits and today I swam a quarter of a mile. So what, you might think. But bearing in mind that swimming is a 4 or 5 to one comparison to running, and I’ll take running 1.25 miles happily. Especially when you consider my knees and feet don’t hurt and I am using a lot more different muscles (all of which will let me know what they think of it tomorrow morning).
Add in the low equipment cost (who doesn’t have a swimsuit?) and it’s pretty easy to get into.
Seattle offers exercise options a-plenty, but swimming is a good year-round choice, with lots of public pools (I can remember only a couple in Decatur when I lived there, none in Atlanta, though the Y is pretty active there). Even growing up in Florida I don’t remember any pools. Lots of people had them at their houses (I never lived in a house that didn’t have a pool) but I don’t remember high school swim teams as we have here or any public pool.
†BMI of 26, using BMI = weight in kilograms divided by height in meters, squared. (BMI = kg / m X m) but on the scale that does it by measuring electrical resistance, it’s 25.
Earlier this year, I was privileged to go “on tour†with Jimmy “Jimbo†Wales, the founder and public face of Wikipedia, as we crisscrossed the nation, talking to educators in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.
…Any school principal can tell you its possible to know more, but as I understood it, 150 is the average size of a primate troop and the bigger brains of primates are all about facial recognition, knowing who is a member of the extended family and who isn’t.
From Mark Pesce’s Hyperpeople blog:Earlier this year, I was privileged to go “on tour” with Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, the founder and public face of Wikipedia, as we crisscrossed the nation, talking to educators in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. Everywhere we went, people asked the same question: why is Wikipedia such a success, while my wiki languishes? What do you need to achieve critical mass? The answer, Jimmy said, is five people. Five individuals dedicated to an altruistic sharing of collective intelligence should be enough to produce a flowering similar to Wikipedia. Jimbo has learned, through experience, that the “minor” language versions of Wikipedia (languages with less than 10 million native speakers), need at least five steady contributors to become self-sustaining. In the many wikis Jimbo oversees through his commercial arm, Wikia, he’s noted the same phenomenon time and again. Five people mark the tipping point between a hobby and a nascent hyperintelligence.
I suspect this observation applies to a much wider array of networked activity than just wikis…
[From JOURNAL: The Rule of Five]
Yes, there is a whole world of numbers or more to the point, group sizes, that could be better known. One hundred fifty is another.
Will we see a lot more of these messages? Time will tell. Best case, Flickr is spun back out on its own. Could happen. No idea what their backend runs on and if MSFT might balk at another integration project (5 years to convert Hotmail: think they want to go through that again?).
One thing we’ve decided to do, as a small celebratory birthday thing is, initially for a month, make a book of mine available online, free, gratis and for nothing.
…What I want you to do is think — not about which of the books below is your favourite, but if you were giving one away to a friend who had never read anything of mine, what would it be?
Now this is a fine thing to do for the fans.
As you may have deduced, it’s the blog’s 7th birthday today. On February the 9th 2001, I started writing this thing. And now, 1,071,213 words later, it is still going. (Until the wind changes, as Mary Poppins said.)
One thing we’ve decided to do, as a small celebratory birthday thing is, initially for a month, make a book of mine available online, free, gratis and for nothing.
Which book, though…? Ah, that’s up to you.
What I want you to do is think — not about which of the books below is your favourite, but if you were giving one away to a friend who had never read anything of mine, what would it be? Where would you want them to start?
Click below on the cover of the book you’d like to see out there, online, for free. We’ll keep the voting up for a week, and then announce (and Harper Collins will post, to be read) the winning book.
American Gods Anansi Boys Coraline Fragile Things M is for Magic Neverwhere Smoke & Mirrors Stardust [Display current results] [From The Birthday Thing]
I’m pleased to note that the book I chose (what I thought had the widest appeal regardless of what your prospective friend might think they like) is in the lead.
Well done, Mr Gaiman.
Starting to see the whole Day of Rest business a little more clearly after a few days of knocking out stuff for RPM2008…. Good thing I don’t have that ukulele I was hankering for or I would have to find a way to get some of that in there.
Starting to see the whole Day of Rest business a little more clearly after a few days of knocking out stuff for RPM2008. I’m going to take tomorrow off and see what my compatriots come up with this weekend.
So far, I think I like this one and this one. Not sure the AfroPop energy or vibe can be sustained, but it was fun to put together.
Good thing I don’t have that ukulele I was hankering for or I would have to find a way to get some of that in there.
We have a tyrant in the White House…. President Bush has nothing to lose: he’s comfortable with his 30% approval numbers; he’s a lame duck; he seemingly doesn’t care about his legacy or the GOP’s future; and he’s willing to shred the Constitution, with a smug grin on his face, in order to achieve his goals.
We have a tyrant in the White House. To argue otherwise is foolish. And we should be afraid. President Bush has nothing to lose: he’s comfortable with his 30% approval numbers; he’s a lame duck; he seemingly doesn’t care about his legacy or the GOP’s future; and he’s willing to shred the Constitution, with a smug grin on his face, in order to achieve his goals. This is a perilous time for the nation. [From The Rule of Law]
On the Mittster’s departure suspension:
“Because I love this country, I entered this race, and because I love this country, I am leaving it.â€
On the Mittster’s departure suspension:
“Because I love this country, I entered this race, and because I love this country, I am leaving it.” Unfortunately, he means the race, not the country; [From The Beast is Red, Chapter 5: Soy un Perdidor]
