5 Borough Bike Ride

So, I headed into Manhattan last weekend with a few guys from church to do the Bike New York 5 Borough Bike Ride. Good times were had by all.

Statue at St. John the DivineWe got into the city on Saturday afternoon. We stayed at the New York Youth Hostel, upper west side. Walked around for a long while after we got there, and managed to put back both a plate of pasta at the hostel’s carbo-loading supper, as well as half a small wood-oven pizza (with whole wheat crust!) at a great restaurant down the street Saturday night. We also walked up to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine Absolutely amazing, but an odd vibe. Even though it’s an active church, it felt like I was walking through the Cloisters more than the church. Then, there was this bizarre statue outside. It had something to do with peace, but I just kind of liked that everyone was standing on a scary looking crab. And the avenging angel’s pretty darn sweet – ought to be a comic about him.

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Podcast Workflow

Chris Brogan asked for podcast workflows today. Mine follows:

We use an Roland Eridol MP3 recorder patched into the PA to capture the audio feed. One of the chior members turns on the recorder as they go out at the beginning of the service, and turns it off at the end of the service. We capture audio at CD quality (44100 sample rate, 24 bit).

After coffee, I go grab the SD card out of the recorder, and take it home. I use Audacity and my MacBook to trim the file – start just before the Gospel reading, and end at the end of the post-sermon prayer.

Once the file is trimmed, I do a high-pass filter with a cutoff at 70 Hz to get rid of any 60Hz that we picked up from the electrical system, and a low-pass filter at about 3.5 KHz to get rid of any higher frequency noise. I’ve experimented with the “Noise Removal” effect, but it either
1) Doesn’t do much; or
2) Adds digital artifacts.

I then export the file as a 44.1KHz/24 bit WAV, and run it through the Levelator.

Re-import the output into Audacity, and use the Lame MP3 encoder to export as 11.5KHz/8 bit MP3.

Our platform is WordPress with the PodPress plugin. I use the FireFTP plugin in Firefox (Flock, actually) to upload the file.

Then, it’s a matter of New Post -> Include audio file -> Post; and we’re done.

The only trouble we ran into was trying to figure out why our initial posts sounded like chipmunks in the flash player included with PodPress, but that turned out to a non-standard MP3 bitrate on our part.

Dialogue

Setting: A three-year old’s bedroom, morning, before work. We’ve been watching Zabomofoo, and Nate is putting on pants (YES!)

Characters:

Daddy

Nate (the three-year old)

D: (Sings) While walking with the Nate one day, Daddy and Jacob saw something strange, a bouncing little creature who loved to jump and play… (Spoken) Nate, what do you think we saw in our yard?

N: A monkey.

D: (Laughs) That would be cool, but I was thinking a squirrel. You know there’s no monkeys in our yard.

N: (seriously) There ought to be. (Smiles)

Exunt

links for 2007-05-11

Not another one…

A long-time friend’s kid – about the same age as my youngest – got diagnosed with cancer this week. It’s a type and a prognosis where the kid’s likely to live, but it’s going to be a tough 18 months or so for the family.

This type of stuff ought not happen.

There’s not much I can do about it – they’re across the country. So, I’ll pray, and stick a couple of bucks in the Dana Farber can when they pass it around the movie theatre.

Fsck.

There are not many things that can wrench me from sleep in a cold sweat, and not much that can flap me. Generally, I can rationalize and relax as soon as I’m sure that nobody’s in immediate danger. But the thought that something like this could happen to one of MY kids – stops me cold.

Now that I’ve brought everybody down, I had a good run today. Jamestown, 4+ miles, went and got wet in the North Atlantic at the end. The ocean was painfully cold.With the arrival of spring, the fog’s back in Newport. It’s tough to comprehend exactly how much of an elemental force the fog can be, but the combination we’ve got now with extremely cold water and warm, humid air – watching the fog roll up and down the bay is incredible. It’s like a living organism, changing from minute to minute.

It was good to strap on the sneaks and iPod and just not think for a while. To feel the water suck the warmth out of my legs at the end of the day.

Forgotten Literature

I’ve been following the RSS feed of Project Gutenberg for a while. Don’t read much of what comes across, but I’ve been “thumbing” through any old magazine that comes across. Today, they published an old issue of the Atlantic Monthly, featuring a tale of alien abduction:

 After supper my captor led me to a separate arbor, and pointed to a bed of soft, white straw, upon which I immediately stretched myself, and he retired. Presently I arose and attempted to go out, but found that he had fastened the door on the outside. It was not pleasant to find myself a prisoner; but that subject was instantly driven from my mind as I looked out through the lattice and saw Sagittarius, with no signs of the planet Mars. I returned to my straw; and, after the excitement of the day had subsided, I fell asleep and slept until after sunrise. 

No Agent Scully, though.

links for 2007-05-09

So, heat might suck, but it’s why we’re on top of the food chain.

This article’s absolutely fascinating. Not only are we evolved to run, but we’re evolved to run in crappy conditions. What great inspiration for summer

All together, Lieberman said, these adaptations allowed us to relentlessly pursue game in the hottest part of the day when most animals rest. Lieberman said humans likely practiced persistence hunting, chasing a game animal during the heat of the day, making it run faster than it could maintain, tracking and flushing it if it tried to rest, and repeating the process until the animal literally overheated and collapsed.

Humans hot, sweaty, natural-born runners

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Belated Bloggeversary

So, I completely missed my annual chance at narcissism – 21 April marked three years of my blogging about not running nearly as often as I should.

What have I learned in that time?
1) Wet cotton tees and humid days make bloody nipples
2) Running and eating crap keep you fat
3) It’s a lot easier to keep running when you know that people are checking up on you
4) There are fewer freaks on the internet than we’ve been lead to believe

Three years ago, I was starting out at about 190 lbs, where I’d been for about three years. I’ve been between 170 and 175 for the last 30 months, more or less. Back then, three miles was a stretch. Now, it’s a minimum. I’m two marathons, a handful of tris, and a bunch of shorter races to the better.

And a whole lot of inspiration from wonderful folks around the world.

You guys rock.

**** Added ****

Dave, in the comments, mentions I’m not looking for freaks in the right places.  I suppose that I wasn’t specific enough – the RBF is full of running freaks. Maybe “creeps” would have been a better word?

I love you freaks.