Marathon toys

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One thing I do enjoy about taking up new sports, even ones as painful as marathon training, is examining new gadgets. I thought that a simple sport like running would be immune to gadget excess, and for the most part it is, but not completely. For the runner without a budget:The only real gadget I've used is the Timex Bodylink System (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Bean bought me a stick of Bodyglide, and that's been a lifesaver also; it sounds vaguely kinky but protects against distinctively unsexy running maladies). The Timex Bodylink System consists of a watch, a GPS unit you wear on your upper arm, and a heart rate strap. When it works (which is when the GPS unit has a decent line of sight to the sky), it's great. It provides your mile pace and total distance covered, and it can be set to record mile splits automatically. My first month and a half of marathon training, I didn't run a long run in the same city twice, so having a device just track my distance allowed me to just focus on running and enjoying the views.
I ran in Seattle around Greenlake a couple times, then to the base of Golden Gate Bridge from Bean's place in Nob Hill, then through Stanford campus (including a pass by The Dish), then along Manhattan Beach near my sister Karen's new apartment, and finally all over Central Park in Manhattan. I love the view of the city skyline at night from the north end of the Reservoir.
The variety and often stunning views really helped, because otherwise I find running to be slow and painful. If I were Kenyan gliding across the land at a five minute mile pace, I'm sure I'd feel differently. Others speak of runner's high and of how they can't wait to get a run in. I just don't feel that way about the sport. In fact, with the marathon just a month away, I'm realizing that marathon refers to the training, which seems interminable. My knees ache, and this tendon that runs under the big bone on my ankle throbs all the time. Laura said she had tendinitis there also, and hearing that helped, because I wasn't sure there were any tendons in that part of my foot. When I run, it seems like everyone and their mother and their grandmother blows past me. So frustrating for someone prone to overcompetitiveness.
Can you tell I'm dragging a bit?
I am looking forward to the marathon itself. I'm ready for that day to be here.

Gourmet, August 2004

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I don’t usually purchase cooking magazines (correction: Gourmet bills itself as “the magazine of good living”, a broader lifestyle claim, though it is grouped with the cooking magazines at the bookstore, rather than with, say, The Robb Report or Cigar Aficionado) though I do subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated (the cooking magazine for gadget geeks, what with its scientific-method laboratory tests of cooking methodologies, kitchen tools, and foods). Cooking magazines are dangerous for a pack rat like myself. I can’t bring myself to throw out magazines that contain useful information I might someday need or use, however remote the possibility. By that definition, cooking magazines are almost never disposable, filled as they are with recipes and articles on various foodstuffs and magical cooking techniques and secrets. However, I purchased the August 2004 issue of Gourmet because it included an essay by David Foster Wallace.
I go out of my way to collect magazines with essays by Wallace or Malcolm Gladwell or short fiction by Tobias Wolff (in the case of Gladwell and Wolff, nearly always the occasional issue of The New Yorker). I enjoy Foster Wallace’s fiction (okay, let’s abbreviate to DFW, as his fans refer to him), but I adore his essays. His essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is, in my opinion, his finest work. It is in his essays that DFW's odd writing tic of inserting copious footnotes throughout his writing (to a shallow inspection, it’s the habit that most identifies him as a sui generis of the writing world) is most effective and endearing rather than ponderous, as it can be in his fiction. I admit to a similar tendency (one could argue that it’s a symptom of being a writing pack rat, unable to jettison the least relevant train of thought), albeit in HTML my digressive train of thought manifests itself in an abundance of parentheticals due to laziness (creating footnotes in HTML is a hassle, and for longer works not broken up into separate web pages, anchor links are necessary to prevent the reader from having to scroll back and forth vertically, an action which, if performed multiple times in succession, might lead to repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome).
DFW’s essay for Gourmet is a paragon of the DFW essay style. What makes him such an unique and engaging journalists is not just his cool, perceptive, and almost clinical eye, or his flat and just slightly satirical, acerbic tone, but his complete disinterest in writing a conventional half-investigative, half-advertorial piece that most travelogues or celebrity interviews turn out to be. Gourmet commissioned a piece on the Maine Lobster Festival. A third of the way into his essay, DFW abruptly shifts gears from a straightforward overview of the logistics of the Maine Lobster Festival and the taxonomical and culinary history of the lobster itself to raise the real topic of his essay:
”Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”
It’s a question DFW spends the rest of his essay attempting to answer with his usual cubist mind. But enough on DFW and his essay. His work is nearly impossible to describe simply through a few excerpts. The footnote-laden style demands a journey to the source material.
This issue of Gourmet also contains another article that fascinated me, one that investigates whether or not wine glasses, particularly Riedel wine glasses, actually make a difference in how wine tastes. It’s particularly relevant in light of the recent news that Riedel purchased Spiegelau, creating the world's largest wineglass producer.
The article recounts how Riedel claims that their glasses improve the flavor and aroma of wine. How do they do this? At a Riedel-sponsored seminar, a Riedel representative explains that their glasses are engineered to deliver the wine to precise areas of the tongue, taking advantage of the "tongue map" which charts which regions of the tongue experience which tastes (e.g. sweet, acid, bitter, salt). Riedel has glasses for just about every variation of wine you've heard of, and many you haven't.
There's only one problem. The tongue map is a myth. It's one I was taught in grade school health class, and even I hadn't heard that it had been debunked until reading this article.
Furthermore, the article points to all sorts of scientific studies that have not only shown that in blind taste tests, the type and brand of glass makes little to no difference. It also cites one famous experiment in which wine experts were fooled into thinking a white wine with food coloring and another in which wine experts pooh poohed a mass market wine while praising a luxury wine to the heavens, only to discover that the testers had reversed the two wines.
Wine has always been a front in class struggles, bolding otherwise imperceptible lines between the highbrow and lowbrow. Non-wine snobs always suspect that they’re being bamboozled, victims of an elaborate hoax, and perhaps they’re right. Price disparity of wines is high, and objective measures are lacking. I often find myself in the wine aisle of the supermarket or a wine store, baffled by the selection of wines, the hundreds of brands, all priced seemingly randomly.
On the other hand, as the article concludes, expectations can have a huge impact on one's enjoyment of an experience or product. If you believe that paying more for a bottle of wine will buy you a better wine, or if you believe that a $40 Riedel glass will improve the taste of that Pinot Noir, that belief may indeed improve that bottle for you. Certainly Riedel wineglasses are more aesthetically pleasing than a Dixie paper cup or your average wineglass from Target. Disentangling form and function altogether in assessing a product is counter to how we experience them in everyday life. Despite the fact that most golfers would be better served by spending their money on lessons, sometimes it helps to spend it on a fancy new driver that they believe will improve their drives. If you feel more confident with a certain club in your hands, that can translate to better swings. Mind over matter.
Many people wish to affirm their purchases after the fact, like reading a Pauline Kael review after seeing a movie in the hopes of finding her in agreement with your opinion. After reading this article, I won't feel quite so bad snickering at the wine snob at the next party I attend. There's always one.
Related: Ordering lobsters online
Kinky sex secrets of the lobster (in which Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters, debunks DFW's Gourmet article)

What's yours is yours

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Poker great Johnny Chan. "It doesn't matter to me if I'm dealt two aces or a three and a five," he says later. "In fact, I don't need any cards. I just play the person."
Breakable: A few days ago, someone in Bike Forums broke the story, so to speak, of how to unlock a U-Lock using a plastic ballpoint pen. Now the NYTimes has picked up on the story, writing that "Many cyclists erupted in disbelief and anger this week after videos were posted on the Internet showing how a few seconds of work could pick many of the most expensive and common U-shaped locks, including several models made by Kryptonite, the most recognized brand." After having two bikes stolen in college, both secured with U-Locks, I long ago recognized that U-Locks were nothing but an inconvenience for bike thieves, a way to slow them down. It's hard to believe many cyclists would still think a U-Lock is some foolproof security mechanism. The best security for your bike is to keep it next to you indoors or to own a bike so awful you wouldn't feel any sorrow if someone stole it. Here are links to the videos.
Stunning animation from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, opening this weekend.
The Law of Large Numbers: Events with million-to-one odds happen 295 times a day in America.
The predominant ideology of our age: anti-Americanism?
Nikon announces a new professional digital SLR, the D2X. The specs are sweet, but unfortunately it doesn't hit dealers until winter 2005, so this is all premature elation.
Amazon takes A9 out of beta; new search engine amalgamates results from a variety of sources, including Google and Gurunet. Bookmarks are a handy way to drag in potential winners from a search for future reference.
Google Accounts. Bwahahahahaha (maniacal laugh of Google emperor as his plans for world domination several years down the line continue to gel).

and so on and so forth

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Trailers for movies from some hip directors:
Sports nicknames that sound dirty, some vaguely, and some not: The Big Unit (Randy Johnson), The Thorpedo (Ian Thorpe), Horny (Jeff Hornacek), Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown, Hammerin' Hank Aaron, The Splendid Splinter (Ted Williams), Walter "Big Train" Johnson, The Big Red Machine, Harvey's Wallbangers, Monsters of the Midway, The Italian Stallion (Rocky Balboa), The Chicoutimi Cucumber (Georges Vezina), and any nickname involving the word Rocket. Sexual euphemisms that won't catch on.
Qualia, Sony's new super high-end line of electronics, all identified simply by three digit codes. The minimalist (okay, empty and pretentious) website reminds me of the first Nissan Infiniti commercials which showed ocean water crashing on beaches, or fields of trees, but no cars.
Stuff to listen to on your new Qualia system: music from Iceland, much of it not available on CD in the US. However, you can order direct from Bad Taste.
A new study shows that one's inability to express a concept in language may limit one's ability to understand that concept. Is it a good or bad thing that most of us only learn a few dirty words in foreign languages?

Money can buy happiness, and some sweet earbuds

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[via kottke via Peter Kaminski]
Robert Frank writes that money can buy increased happiness if spent not on more expensive goods like bigger houses or more expensive cars but instead on inconspicuous goods, like more time to travel or hang out with friends and family.
Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of certain inconspicuous goods

This week's NY Times Magazine

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Lots of good articles and photos in this week's NY Times Magazine, focused on Olympic swimmers.

A slideshow of a few of the high tech items used by Olympians to shave precious hundreds of seconds off their times in various sports, including some hot looking sprinter's shoes.
Another profile (and a good one) of Michael Phelps, one that states that Phelps is the best swimmer in the world.
Slideshow of some US Olympic swimmers in the water.
Another slideshow of the swimmers.
Photographic collage (Flash plugin required)
What is the ideal Olympic athlete? If the early Greeks are to be followed, the ideal is more like the egotistical, self-promoting, self-interested Achilles portrayed by Brad Pitt in Troy than the friendly sportsmen proffered by the media.
Finally, an Olympic-level vacuum cleaner, the Dyson vacuum, whose primary selling point may be that it showcases all the nasty gunk it sucks up out of your carpet with its 100,000 g of centrifugal force, in the process convincing you of its efficacy and indispensability. Reminiscent of the Biore nose strip, which shows you the results of its deforestation of your nose in a display both disgusting and satisfying. Needless to say, if I had $500 to spend on a vacuum, this is the one I'd buy. Available at Amazon.com.

Motorola V600

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I've had the Motorola V600 cell phone for a few months now, and I love it. Bluetooth, integrated VGA camera, vivid color screen, polyphonic speaker, sleek metallic look, and a strong antenna. It's available now for just $99.99 after rebates from Cingular, which acquired AT&T Wireless a few months back. While I travel around, my phone often reads Cingular now instead of AT&T. One would hope the merger of their two networks would improve overall coverage, and thus far it seems to have fulfilled that to a minor degree.
The v600 handles the basic functions of a cell phone well, and that's most critical to me. I've also decided after using all the various form factors that I prefer flip phones. Sure, Verizon probably provides the best nationwide coverage, but why do their cell phones have to be so damned unattractive?








Dial 4811

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The 4811, the $15 starter thong of choice. Ah, the miracle that is the thong, occupying that fine line between G-string and panty.
StubHub, an alternative to eBay for swapping tickets to shows, sporting events, etc. Somewhere along the line, though, Ticketmaster will rob someone.
Butch Harmon, Tiger Woods' ex-coach, supposedly told Sky Sports: "Tiger Woods is not playing well, he is not working on the right things in his golf swing although obviously Tiger thinks he is. He should have felt 'I could win this tournament by six, seven, eight shots.' That was the old Tiger Woods. But for him to stand there at every one of his interviews and say 'I am close, I feel really good about what I am doing', I think it might be a bit of denial." Ouch. I was hoping they'd reunite, but knowing Tiger, statements like that make that a long shot.

As cool as every side of the pillow

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The Chillow is a decidedly low-tech soporific: an insert to keep your pillow cool all night. The manufacturer cites a study that claims that subjects using the Chillow fell asleep 68% faster and spent 21% more time in REM sleep. Of course, they only used 20 subjects and the differences were a matter of just a few minutes.
I do love a cool sleeping environment, though. When I travel, I crank up the A/C in hotels to counter the stimulating effects of the strange environment. I may just have to try this Chillow. Wired Gadget Lab gave it a 10 out of 10.
I could also sleep naked, lounging around on furs, like Brad Pitt in Troy. Usually I just catch a cold when I try that.

Love at first sight

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I lost my compact digital camera, a Minolta, while down in Miami for James's bachelor party. I've begun searching for a replacement because a compact digital camera that fits in your pocket is just too precious to live without in this day and age.
My main pet peeve with digital cameras is lag time. Digital cameras can be slow to turn on, slow to focus, slow to snap. Not endearing when what you're seeking to capture is often a fleeting moment in time.
Then came the Casio Exilim Pro P600...

Fairly compact, the specs that caught my eye were the 1.5 second startup time and .01 second shutter release time. Throw in the ability to snap 3 frames per second in burst mode, decent battery life, 4X optical zoom, exposure bracketing, and up to 6 megapixels in resolution, and I'm out looking for the engagement ring.

Sony Grand Wega LCD DLP HDTVs

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Sometimes I just get the feeling that a new technology has hit a pricing sweet spot and is poised to go mainstream. My tech-spidey sense is tingling after seeing the new Sony Grand Wega LCD DLP rear-projection HDTVs. They're less than half the price of comparably sized plasma TVs, and while they might not be quite as nice a picture or quite as thin, they're close enough in all respects that it's difficult to justify climbing the price ladder for the plasma. And while other manufacturers have already jumped into this market segment with comparably priced models (e.g. Samsung), the Sony brand name carries greater sway with the mainstream home electronic shopper.

These things are going to sell like hotcakes. The 70" retails for $6999.99, the 60" for $3999.99, the 50" for $3299.99, and the 42", likely to be the most popular model, for $2799.99.
Perhaps finally, the HDTV revolution in the U.S. is poised to gain momentum. When people tell me they're ready to upgrade to HDTVs in the next six months, I'll probably point most of them to this product line.

Three CCDs for the price of one

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A Jake Ludington newsletter bought this to my attention. A mini DV camcorder with 3 CCDs has broken the $700 price point: the $699 Panasonic PVGS120. This is huge. Is there any nother 3CCD camcorder even close to the $1000 price point? Not that I'm aware of.
This deserves to be a big seller for your average camcorder shopper looking for the best model for the buck. I'm personally more excited about the prospect of Sony's 3CCD HD Camcorder, but that will be a sub-$5000 camcorder. The Panasonic is within reach of the masses. Their home videos will still be dull and shaky, but at least the picture will be sharp.

VIM

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Alan and Sharon, my parents, Jeff, and now James all have webcams. Once Apple released an iChat beta that was compatible with AOL IM on Windows PCs, I could no longer be the family holdout. I recently purchased an iSight. Video and audio chats over broadband? Surprisingly clear.
Now we just need to get Joannie, Mike, and Karen hooked up and get into the same time zone so we can hold family conferences online. The novelty of this old, old technology hasn't worn off yet, so if you're webcam and AOL IM enabled, ping me.
UPDATE: If you need a webcam, this one is pretty sexy.

Beware the cellphone company that comes bearing gifts

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I recently received postcards from AT&T informing me they'd be mailing me a free cellphone, the Sony T226, to replace the Sony Ericsson T68i I've been using for over a year and a half. Very suspicious--when's the last time the phone company did anything out of kindness? Not that I love my T68i. It has certain usability problems which I've lived with b/c I purchased it with a generous rebate and because sinking money into new cellphones is a waste of money.
I knew there was a catch, though, and Engadget exposed it. The replacement phones are compatible with the newer 850 Mhz spectrum in which AT&T Wireless is building out its GSM network, and the phones they're replacing are not. Perhaps this explains all of the complaints about AT&T Wireless's coverage in the Seattle area. The Sony T226 I'm receiving shortly will be less functional than my T68i and won't offer the Bluetooth compatibility needed for my headset.
That's evil, and it means I'll have to call and use my big, mean voice on some customer service rep shortly.
We have cellphones that shoot lousy photos, offer games, surf the web, play MP3s, change channels, and yet I've still not found a cellphone/service plan combination that excels at all of the features I desire most: compact form factor, long battery life, an awesome antenna, a usable interface for storing and finding phone numbers, and an affordable nationwide calling plan. Perhaps that's why I've been such a conservative cellphone buyer. I've owned only four cellphones in my life, and two were replacements for one I lost and one I crushed in a snowboarding incident in a half-pipe. Am I jealous of those around me who flip to new phones seemingly every 8 months? A bit, though the cost that people sink into new cellphones is ridiculous (you either pay for it in the phone or, if the phone is free after rebates, in the long-term plans they lock you into).
Nokia's phones have impressed me the most, though their antennas haven't blown me away and their feature set usually lags the competition. But Nokia's on-screen interface is the most usable. Motorola has strong antennas but lousy battery life and a terrible on-screen interface. As cellphone functionality has broadened, the user interfaces have suffered. With my T68i on its last legs, though, it's time to dip back into the marketplace. I can even switch service providers with no penalty as I've been month-to-month with AT&T Wireless for quite some time now.
Has anyone had a good experience with a nationwide cellphone plan?