BUY NOTHING

It's a beautiful night, we're looking for something dumb to do
Hey baby, I think I will Konmari you

Supposedly that's what I said to my attic, but it's a major work in progress.  Marie Kondo is all the rage these days but I haven't read her book or watch the Netflix show.  What I've done over the years is try to give things away via Yahoo! Freecyle and more recently via my local Buy Nothing Facebook group.  "Local" or maybe even "hyper-local" is the key word with Buy Nothing.  There are Buy Nothing groups in many neighborhoods and members can be in only one such group, among a few other restrictions.  The idea is to give very locally and in the process know your neighbors better.  Find your local Buy Nothing group below and give the idea of giving locally a shot:

BUY NOTHING!

STRAVA CLUB - STRAVA ART

First there was "Strava or it didn't happen", meaning unless you can show that Strava recorded your run/walk/ride it didn't happen.  Everyone is on Strava, so it seems.  Next came Strava Art, the art of drawing pictures or spelling words using the Strava app.  Strava, the company, wanted to be more than just record people's exercise.  They want to be part of the social media phenomenon, thus born Strava Club, where like-minded people can get together and share info.  Surprisingly, there was no club for fans or practitioners of Strava Art.  So I decided to create one.  In the beginning, it was just my "GPS writing" or "gwriting" but lately there are a few good drawings of animals and other objects.  Check out my little Strava Art club in Strava at the link below

Strava Art Strava Club

PPTC GROUP RUN - LOVE RUN 2019

Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote, "How do I love thee? Let me count the miles." And count the miles I did, with nine other runners.

Check out the Relive video

https://www.relive.cc/view/2134496363

From the practice run I had a few weeks ago, I learned that the "i" looks better, less slanted at the bottom, if I start the run on the side of the Grand Army Plaza arch. We would basically run along Eastern Parkway, so the closer I was, vertically, to the bottom of the parkway the better.

While doing the left side of the heart, Strava almost messed me up. I just paused it while at the intersection of Park Place, Grand Avenue, and Washington Avenue, ran around the corner of Prospect Place and Grand Avenue, as I was about to Resume, I noticed that the Pause point was actually at Sterling Place and Washington Avenue. Strava does act weird sometimes, in this case it was a block behind where I actually was. Being the perfectionist run-artist that I am, I ran back the intersection of Park, Grand, and Washington, press Resume, waited a few seconds, then Paused again. Ran around the corner of Prospect and Grand, verified that all was good, then pressed Resume. And that's how we had the first relatively rounder corner of the heart. There were many more Pause and Resume, each time I paused the run to show my running mates the progress.

Also from the practice run, I realized that I should take advantage of the width of Eastern Parkway to make a rounder bottom of the heart. It came out pretty good. The group had to be careful crossing the wide Parkway, NOT at the zebra crossing, but we did wait for red lights, so it worked out. Very worthwhile, as we all know round-bottomed hearts make the rocking world go round.

DIY I {heart} U

While I would love to have you join me at the Love Run on Saturday the 9th of February, 8:30 A.M., by Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza, should the timing not good for you, here's a turn-by-turn direction on how to get it done.  One slight change I will implement is the start will be on the northern side of Union Street, where the tail of the first arrow is.  (The run starts from the green hexagon and ends at the red hexagon.)  The baseline of the letters and symbol is Eastern Parkway so we might as well start as close to it as possible, vertically.

The letter P means you pause your watch or app at those locations, then resume recording where the letter R appears.  Most of the time, the app or watch would be fooled into drawing a straight line between the two points, so we get a less blocky heart.  One time I tried to spell MISSY but Strava at the last minute changed the Y into a T, so it really happened before.  Hopefully it won't happen to you.

There ya go, have fun spelling "I {heart} U" on your own.  Some people may be able to learn guitar by watching YouTube videos, but others may need Dan Smith to teach them, so no guarantee my little turn-by-turn instruction will get you there but give it a shot and share with me the outcome.

I {HEART} U

If spreading love is the Brooklyn way, you can do it with me this coming Saturday the 9th of February.  I will lead a run for the Prospect Park Track Club that will spell out "I {heart} U", as shown below.  It'll cover about 4 miles, at least that's what Strava recorded when I did the test run last week.  I made a sleight of hand, or rather sleight of foot, to make the lines that seem to cut through the block, like the right side of the heart symbol.  I suspect Strava measured the distance along the straight line.  We'll actually run along the two legs of the right triangle, so it's a longer route.  The shortest distance between two points if a straight line, ya know?  See, who said high school math/trig isn't useful?

PPTC hosts the event but it's free to the public.  Your fellow runners may encourage you to join the club and we may retire to some cafe to grab a much-deserved breakfast, Dutch treat.  An hour or so of your time is all you'll spend.

See you 8:30 A.M. at the corner of Union Street and Prospect Park West on Saturday the 9th of February!

"PARK" ART-RUN WITH A TWIST

A week from today I'll lead a run that spells out the word "PARK", but with a twist.  In place of the letter "A" is the logo of the Prospect Park Alliance.  I made a test run some weeks ago and the result is shown below.  I learned some lessons and they were applied to the Gmap-Pedometer link at https://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=7218671

There is a Facebook event to RSVP but you will need to ask to join the PPTC Members Discussion group, https://www.facebook.com/events/1463953043734534/.  If you don't have a Facebook account, or rather not join the group, simply show up at the side of The Picnic House at 9 AM on Sunday April 8, 2018.  That would be the left side when you face the building from the road.  Note that the word is spelled backward, starting with K and so on, so that when it's done we'll be near some businesses for coffee and such.

The better-designed map in Gmap-Pedometer above saves a side trip to the edge of the park to connect the R and the "A".  Also, the "A" is better executed with no extra lines on the left side.  When I did the run, the Green Market was in full bloom and there was only narrow path to go between the park and the arch.

Here is very wordy instruction for making R and K.

Start at the bottom left of the letter K, which is the side of The Picnic House. Follow the road to a T intersection then go right until you hit another T intersection then trace your way back to the other T intersection. Note that as there is no street corners like when we run on the street, I try to make use of the road intersections as often as possible.

Go up to the next intersection but don't actually touch it. I want a little gap between the top of the K and the bottom of the R. Again trace your way back to the T intersection. Make your way diagonally across the meadow. You should finish at another T intersection. The K is done!

To make the R, make your way across the meadow again, also diagonally to another T intersection on the other side. First do the bottom of the R by going down toward the top of the K, but don't actually arrive at the intersection because I believe the letters look better if they don't actually touch each other. Turn around and go up the road, follow the curve to form the top of the R as well as the right side. Again look for another T intersection then make your way across the meadow one last time. Go up the right side of the R one more time toward Grand Army Plaza.

I love serifs and probably will make them for the K and the R in the actual run.  Just stick with me if you want it done.

"A" is a bit more challenging because a few times it involves stopping the watch and resuming it.

So we finished the R should have traced our way back to the top right corner of the R. Take the path that goes under West Drive toward Grand Army Plaza. Where the letter P is on the map, pause your watch/app then run through the arch, past the fountain, all the way to Plaza Street East. The letter R on the map means you resume the watch/app. Run back toward the arch but along Plaza Street West. Don't cross the street to the side of the Green Market. Instead, go to the fountain, then pause the watch/app again. Run to Plaza Street West and Lincoln Place then resume. Run back to the arch one more time, along Plaza West but this time go as far east of the plaza as you can. Go across the street back into the park to where the letter P is and pause. One more time run through the arch, past the fountain, and onto Plaza Street East, but a little distance off the other point you made earlier. Resume watch/app. Run back to the arch along Plaza Street East. Do not cross the street to the Green Market. Instead go to the fountain and pause watch/app. Run to Plaza Street East and Butler Place then resume watch/app. The really difficult A is finally done!

Run along Plaza Street East to Vanderbilt, turn right to go up Vanderbilt to St. Marks Avenue. Turn right to go along St. Marks then turn right into Underhill Avenue. From Underhill, turn right into Park Place. Go past Vanderbilt a few step and stop watch/app. The whole thing is done!

To have a rounder letter P, do not wait until you are actually at the corner of Underhill and St. Marks to turn. Instead, run on the northern side of St. Marks and start crossing St. Marks when you are about the length of three cars from the corner. Likewise, don't start going straight down Underhill after making the turn. Run to the western side of Underhill and aim for the middle of the block. Execute similar maneuver for the turn at Underhill and Park Place.

NYRR FRED LEBOW HALF-MARATHON 2018

I think Fred Lebow's spirit doesn't like me.  Back when there was an NYRR Manhattan Half-Marathon I ran it twice.  It was cold, very cold, but I run better in cold weather so I had a Personal Record with the first Manhattan Half.  There was no medal, maybe even just a shirt.  Not even a tech shirt, I think.  I'm sure I can dig it up.

At some point it became the Fred Lebow Manhattan Half-Marathon.  I signed up one year and it snowed that day so the race was declared a fun run, an unscored event.  I didn't even bother to go fearing it may be slippery.  Some years later I signed up again and again bad weather happened.  That time the entire race was cancelled but if runners wished they could go to the temporary NYRR office to pick up the medals.  It was a win-win situation for everyone - the runners got some mementos and NYRR didn't have to store the medals, or worse, toss them out.  I got the medal but of course it was quite meaningless.  I happened to work not far from the NYRR office so it was no big deal to go get the medal, even though I didn't earn it.

Fast forward to this week.  The cold grip finally let go, even if just temporarily, and the weather was beautiful.  No way there would be a cancellation or any interference from snow.

I have this week-long bout of cough that interrupted my sleep the past few nights.  The night before the race I couldn't sleep, perhaps from unnecessary worry, and the coughing made it worse.  At one point I woke up at 3 AM then went back to sleep.  Next thing I knew I woke up at 7 AM!  Pachelbel's Cannon in D as an alarm tune used to be able to wake me up before but I guess this morning my body just decided to ignore it.  The race was to begin at 8 AM, but the thing with NYRR races is that there are long corrals and staggered start times, so for a slowpoke like me it meant 8:30 or worse.  So I went to the race anyway.  Of course, just my luck, as soon as got out of the house, I saw that a subway train just pulled into my station.  So I spent some time waiting for the next train.  Thanks to a Facebook post, I knew that there would be no train going uptown to the 103rd Street Station, which would put me closest to Race Day Central.  The alternative would be to take the #1 train from Columbus Circle then get off at 103rd Street and Broadway, or something like that, and make the mad dash from there across a few avenues.  I didn't feel like running so soon so I stayed on the D train and went to 125th Street then waited some more for a downtown train.  I discovered today that those countdown clocks that the MTA installed relatively recently don't necessarily tell the truth.  If there's a delay the "3 minutes" until arrival just stay 3 minutes even if you've been waiting anxiously for more than 3 minutes.

At lost last I dropped off my stuff at bag check and ran for the start line.  The course started at 94th Street and West Drive then loop around at 72nd Street, repeated, then repeated again but ended in the 103rd Street Transverse, basically two and a half loops between 72nd Street and 110th Street.  When I entered the park, people were already doing their first loop.  Fearing there was no more start mat, I ran for 94th Street.  Mat was still there, I thought I was all set.  Soon I saw here and there a few clusters of cheer zones with teammates from Prospect Park Track Club (PPTC).  A good word here and there really helped.  As usual there were a few pairs or trios of runners who run-walk and somehow kept playing leap-frog with me.  I went along with the "race" but deep down I know it was really pointless.  I was one whole loop behind them, at some point they would just go left to finish and I would proceed to the right for my last loop.

The time came.  I started to count the number of "competitors" left on the course.  They were mostly walkers.  I was worried that Aid Stations would disappear soon, understandably, so I stopped for water at the foot of Harlem Hill.  And proceeded to walk up it.  There was so much running I could do with the mediocre running program I've been doing.  I had a short chat with an old member of PPTC, Aaron, although I couldn't find him in the team result list later on.  He wore a PPTC shirt with the design from years ago.  I learned that he was a member for some 35 years!  At the top of the hill I resumed running and passed a few more people.  We all run our own races and somebody already won but it's still good to have some targets to pass.  At Cat Hill I again walked it.  Downhill from there and it was already Mile #12.  Just another mile and 0.1 to go! I made sure I would at least run non-stop from that point on.  Finally, I reached the end and as a bonus got medalled by a PPTC team member.  I finally ran the NYRR Fred Lebow Half-Marathon and earned its medal!

Some time later, I found out my time couldn't be located.  They had me as a participant but with no finish time. As if I didn't run it.  Later in the evening, the result database showed that I finished the run in 3:47.  That's probably just gun time, starting from 8 AM.  Strava says I ran 2:47, but even that included the half-mile run from the 103rd Transverse to the start mat at 94th Street.  Strava also showed that I started running on the other side of some pond, straight across the pond to the West Drive.  I actually started running shortly after dropping off my bag on the Transverse.  Chances are my time should be 2:40, still bad compared to the 2:30 I got last year, at other half-marathons.  I guess even though the start mat was still in place, it wasn't set to record anything.  I thought maybe it was there as a checkpoint, since runners were required to pass by that point 3 times.

Just to see how things work, I'm going to write to NYRR to see if my time can somehow be corrected.  If it can be done, great, if not no biggie.

So I was able to run in a race even though I was half an hour or so late.  I normally arrive an hour early just to be safe.  I don't recommend seeing my experience as encouraging people to be tardy.  It is unfair to the organizers if they have to wait around longer than necessary.

DO NOT ALWAYS LISTEN TO GOOGLE MAPS

I love Google Maps.  Maybe Waze too, if I take the trouble to use it.  The Google universe is just too hard to resist.  I often wonder how we got around in the past without these GPS-enabled digital assistants.  However, there are times when you don't necessarily need to listen to Google Maps and such.

I recently had to be somewhere near Prospect Park, where there's a station for the Q train.  I live near the D train and can switch to the Q at the Coney Island terminal.  Alternatively, I can also catch the Q if I go the other way, but I'll have to go further for the transfer.  Google told me to go to Coney Island but I knew better.  It was early morning, like 5:30 AM or so.  There was hardly anyone going toward Coney Island but there were many people going to work, or whatever, toward Manhattan.  So I took a Manhattan-bound train and felt safer with many more people on the train.  Sure, it took longer to get to the Q later on but safety first.

Occasionally, I have the need to go from the area of Bayshore, NY to Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn.  The straightforward route is to take the Southern State Parkway to the Belt Parkway.  And fight traffic near Wantagh and Meadowbrook Parkways.  Normally I opt to take the Robert Moses Causeway to Ocean Parkway (the one on Jones Beach Island that runs parallel to the Southern State, not the tree-lined boulevard in Brooklyn that is the route of the NYRR Brooklyn Half Marathon).  I still have to hit the Meadowbrook in the end but it is a lot more relaxing.  It adds some distance to the trip and may not save any time, even with the smooth ride, but for me it's worthwhile.

Similarly, I usually avoid the Belt Parkway section near the JFK Airport by taking 133rd Avenue.  Or use Avenue J to avoid a section of Flatlands Avenue.  Or a combination of northbound roads to avoid the Cross Island Parkway.

The town of Leonia, NJ recently appeared in the news for their attempt to control traffic that flood their neighborhood during rush hours because of people using Waze and such.  With the new local rule in effect, drivers can be fined $200 for using streets that are now available only to local residents.  Great solution for the town but it sucks to be those drivers going through.  In general, drivers and arseholes who don't yield to anyone, so there were reports of people not even able to get out of their driveway because of the constant flow of traffic.  In the ideal world, some combination of state and town traffic agents would help control traffic flow.  I am sure money is a problem, who will pay for what.  Whatever, now we have some local rules that effectively ban the alternative routes and drivers will just have to suffer on the highway.

OUTLOOK RULE - ADDRESSED TO ME

I just sorta cleaned up my Apple iCloud mailbox.  Basically I sorted it by Unread then clicked the first item, scrolled down a bit to find the next bunch of unread messages, held down the Shift key and clicked one message, to select a big block of messages.  On the right window I had the option to set them all to Read status, just so I don't have to see the thousands of messages flagged as Unread.

For work I have a process to organize my Outlook mailbox that is a bit more elegant.  First I created, just one time of course, a folder named for me, let's call it Addressed To Blah.  Next I set up a rule that named where my name is in the To or Cc box.  The action is to move all such messages into the folder created above.  In the picture it's called Addressed To Blah.  When you work in a corporate environment, your name may be added to multiple distribution groups.  Some are really relevant to your job, others not so much.  At past jobs I wasted some time wading through all these emails to find the one that were assigned to me specifically, which usually means an answer is required or the issue at hand is really relevant to me.  I wish I can give credit to whoever came up with this rule, as I am sure I read it somewhere years ago.  With this rule in effect, the first thing in the morning I would first look at my own folder and take care of any issues that need my attention.

You can go one step further by setting this Addressed To Blah folder as the folder that's opened up when Outlook first starts.  The Options is under Advanced / Start Outlook in this folder .  This folder is already so useful, why bother even looking at the Inbox folder when Outlook first launches?  Put out any fires in your own folder first then go look at the other folders.  Chances are they are just noises, but as a responsible corporate employee, you want to at least know what's out there.

PPTC RUN BROOKLYN

Running is supposed to be an inexpensive sports.  All you need is some set of clothes and a pair of sneakers, right?  Not so if you figure in all the races you register to run in.  If you live in Metro NYC and participate with the running community long enough, you may already know about NYCRuns' volunteer program, from which you earn credits for their races.  Relatively new is NYRR's volunteer program with their OpenRun.  Every ten times volunteering for OpenRun gets you into one of the lesser highly-demanded races for free.  I have to stress the OpenRun part because volunteering at NYRR regular races do not get you any free races.  At most you get guaranteed entry into one of their highly-desired races but you still have to pay.

One other way to kinda get free races is through the Prospect Park Track Club's Run Brooklyn program.  There are a few conditions to be met, like being a paying member of the club and running only Brooklyn races, but if you are the lucky person chosen for one of the money prize, it's worth a try.  Read more at

http://pptc.org/runbk/

I just updated the big list this evening.  If there are any Brooklyn races you know about but is not listed, please let me know.

MY I.T. TOOLBOX, NOW AND BACK THEN

When I first started in the Information Technology business, MS-DOS was the standard interface.  Sure the Mac already came out but Microsoft was already the king of the hill and most businesses use DOS-based applications, clunky as they were.  The nice thing with working with MS-DOS was that I was able to walk around with a few floppy disks containing some tools of the trade.  I am sure I still have those disks in the attic somewhere, finding them is another story.  I wish I write this particular post sooner, as now my memory of those tools are vague.  For sure I know there was Norton Utilities.  Recall that this was the DOS era, command line stuff.  You can type some command (NU ?) to launch Norton Utilities with a quasi-graphical interface, kinda like two Windows Explorer window so you can copy things left to right or vice versa, among other things that at the time would take many kludgy commands to execute.  However, you can also type some two-characters commands to do a bunch of other wonderful things.  I think it was TS (text search?) to scan through the entire 20-megabyte hard drive (whoa!) to find a certain series of characters.  Some other commands allow changing the date of a file, something that couldn't be done before!  Outside of the Norton Util bundle I recall two other commands.  BAC from Byte Magazine (or was it PC Magazine?) lets me backup files from the hard drive to multiple floppy disks.  The program would pause to wait for a new, empty floppy disk when one is full.  The other was some kind of print screen command.  Maybe it was one of those Terminate-and-Stay-Resident thingy that lives in RAM and comes to the foreground when you press certain key sequences.  Sheesh, I really forgot much of this stuff, not that they are needed any more, just something from a simpler time.

The toolbox for my current work are mostly hardware.  Sure I have access to some network drives where there are certain scripts or utilities but I think of them separately.  As I go from sites to sites, or projects to projects, to setup new computers, printers, etc I find it very helpful to have the following items handy.

Wireless service is nice but when it comes to imaging of computers via pulling files over the network, a physical Ethernet cable is still needed.  From time to time, I would need to borrow some existing computer's network connection to do my work.  On more than one occasion, it was much easier to disconnect the cable from the lender computer, snap it to a Ethernet coupler, connect the other end of the coupler to the computer I need to build.  The alternative would be try to trace the cable back to some jack that may require moving tons of stuff.  Back when Internet access involved dial-up service over regular phone lines, I used to have a few couplers for telephone cables.  Same idea with Ethernet couplers.  I got mine from Micro Computers in Queens, NY on Kissena Boulevard but they can be bought in most stores catering to technicians, so I would rule out Best Buy and such, unless you go through their web site.

If I have my way, I wouldn't need to drive to my work sites.  All my work sites would be reachable by NYC subway, or maybe even by PATH trains, so I wouldn't have to deal with traffic jam, parking, and other drivers.  But the nice thing with driving is I can keep in the car a bunch of things that I might need for work.  Like network cables, VGA cables, DP-to-VGA adapter, power cables, printer USB cables, etc.  I even have a keyboard with a PS/2 connection.  There was a time when the computer image I used did not have the proper driver loaded and mouse or keyboard connected via USB wouldn't be recognized.  Luckily the computer had a PS/2 connection and I was able to make it work with the PS/2 keyboard I keep in the car.  Sometimes old technology works better than the new ones!

Last but not least, attached to the lanyard that holds my work ID I have a pair of screwdrivers, Philip and slot.  They are useful most of the times, but occasionally I need to use something like the Eclipse Enterprise 20-in-1 Telescoping Magnetic Screwdriver, http://www.microcenter.com/product/206265/20-in-1_Telescoping_Magnetic_Screwdriver .  Call me Inspector Gadget if you wish, but I like to be prepared.  There's only so much MacGyvering one can do, in real life anyway.

HEY GOOGLE

This evening I just started watching the old Arnold Schwarzenegger mover The Running Man.  Funny thing is I noticed from the text scroll in the very beginning of the movie says the story happened in 2017.  Just last year, in real life!  We certainly had some weird political events last year but thankfully no reality TV show that features someone running for their life.  Not last year anyway but who knows what is coming out this year or the next.

Something else that I noticed was that in one scene upon returning to her apartment a woman spoke to the "computer" to have the lights turned on, coffee machine start brewing, and the TV set to a certain channel.  Hello, Alexa!  Or Siri, or Google!

A Google Home Mini recently invaded my home and I've played a bit with it. Back when Siri first came out, I still had some non-iPhone and sorta wished I had one.  When I actually owned an iPhone, I barely used Siri.  With Google Home, I already played around with these commands and questions:

• Who let the dogs out?
• Who shot J.R.?
• Why is the sky blue?
• Play music from the 1980s
• Good morning
• What is being played at United Artist Sheepshead Bay?
• Open the pod bay door
• Sing Happy Birthday
• Sing Old MacDonald
• Sing the United States National Anthem (no dice there, I would need to subscribe to some music service)

I like the gadget.  Sometimes I wish "she" would somehow know the question is silly and be wisecrack about it instead of giving the scientific answer.  It's a great speaker too.

THIS WEEK IN CITYSTRIDES: BROOKLYN, NEW YORK AT 20%

Happy New Year!

I started the new year by volunteering for my track club's handicap race and pot luck party.  One aspect of the event is a storytelling session after the race, with anecdotes about the club's past and current members.  I especially like the story about them interacting with Fred Lebow - yes, the Fred Lebow of New York Road Runners Club fame.

The last week of the year I had a few time-off days to burn, it was a use-it-or-lose-it situation.  Everyday of the week was cold but I wanted to maintain my tiny lead for New York, NY* in CityStrides so everyday I was out there running a few miles to add nodes.  Every little bit helps and currently I'm at 20% completed for Brooklyn and 9% completed for New York, NY.  Deep down I know that, because CityStrides round off to the nearest integer, I don't really have 20% and 9% but more of 19.x% and 8.y%, but it looks better this way.

In case you wonder, CityStrides has a little gadget at the upper left corner used for rotating or tilting the map.  I used it to achieve the view below.  Brooklyn, NY's height is longer than its width so that in order to include its northernmost portion, the area below Newtown Creek, I would normally have to zoom out further.  However, by tilting the map along the Z-axis you can see further without zooming out further.

* New York, NY in the CityStrides sphere means New York City itself, comprising of the five boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island.  It does not mean the New York, NY as used by the United States Postal Service, which means just Manhattan and nearby islands plus Marble Hill, which is physically part of the Bronx but was originally part of Manhattan Island.

RESOLUTIONS 2018

Yes, it's that time of the year to make a bunch of promises that we won't be able to keep.  For shits and giggles, here are my 2018 Resolutions:

• Make more money somehow as my son will start college in September.  Ask for a raise at work, find another better-paying job, sell a kidney...  I don't know, there must be a legal way to get it done.
• Keep on running regularly, ideally everyday.  Recently I started to practice run-in-any-clothes.  As long as I have a pair of comfortable shoes on, I can run.  I do keep a pair of shoes in the car, so technically as long as I don't end up working long hours into the evening, or have something at home I need to rush home to take care of, I should be able to run everyday after work.
• Better leverage my unique skill of "writing" while running.  Maybe there is some ad agency out there looking for such talent.  I should try to market myself better, who knows.  Think Humana, Runner's World magazine...
• Less lurking on social media.  There is only so much usefulness, if any, to be extracted through looking at the "news" on social media.  This includes "planning" in CityStrides.  It is no use planning so much on where to run to hit the most number of nodes.  Just do it when you are physically in the area.
• De-clutter a lot more.  With my recent experiments with Amiga emulation, I couldn't find the $70 disc containing KaraFonts I needed.  I was lucky that the fonts were available on Aminet, but with other things I wouldn't be so lucky.  It's been a few years now that many kinds of plastic are accepted for recycling in New York City, I should take advantage of that and recycle stuff without feeling guilt.

READY OR NOT, HERE COMES 2018!!!

FOND OF ANIMFONTS

At work I have no choice but work with Windows computers but at home I mostly compute with my MacBook Pro.  At one time years ago I actually got things done on an Amiga computer, or on various Amiga computers as I did go through a few of them over the few years.  It was fun and useful for a while but at the time when most people would easily get on the Internet to surf the web, with everything needed included on 3.5" floppy disks or CDs, all free, the Amiga platform would require so much more additional work.  You would have to buy the dialer, some TCP/IP stack, the web browser, the email client, argh, too much work.  I went Windows for a while, with its clunky Windows 95 and all, then went Mac, with a Wall Street Powerbook.

One thing I miss greatly, and not able to reproduce on Windows or Mac platform, animated text like the ones shown below.  They are made with the use of animfonts (animated fonts).  Based on a blog post of mine back in 2005 (http://www.qaptainqwerty.com/2005/11/amiga-forever.html ) I created some animated GIF (animgif or GIF for short), possibly on a Packard-Bell PC running Windows 95, via the Amiga Forever emulator software.  When I went over to the Mac platform, no more Amiga Forever.  Cloanto developed Amiga Forever only for the huge Windows market.  Sure Amiga Forever is based on the publicly available UAE (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator) software but I don't have the time or willingness to muck around with Unix codes and such to make these things work on the Mac.  Every few months or years I would Google "Mac UAE" and probably tried to make MaxUAE work but failed.  Most recently I tried FS-UAE and that effort too got nowhere.  Luckily, while looking for ROM files on an Amiga Forever 2010 disc, to feed to FS-UAE, I came across E-UAE, some Amiga emulation software for the Mac, again based on UAE.  After a few hours of tweaking and configuring, I finally have the ability to generate animated text again.  Only twelve years since 2005!  Maybe someday I'll share my experience jumping through hoops to make E-UAE to run on my Mac.  In the mean time, enjoy the messages below.

RELIVE

With Relive, I can playback my runs in all their glory.  With a premium account, you can keep all the videos in your account and do other things with them.  For me, I just share them to Facebook and Instagram, and occasionally here on Blogger.  Still, ain't technology great?  Click on the individual video to play it, there is an option to play at full-screen too.

Amy rules

Bergie

Menorah

Linda

THE YEAR IN GWRITING, PART TWO

In 2017, I actually won a contest with my run-art/gwriting/StravaArt, did some special requests from fans, and saw my work went to the dogs, in a good way, and, last but not least, created a menorah.

Just donut {swoosh}

Some time in August I found out from my track club's Facebook group that there was a donut-themed contest.  Draw anything donut-inspired for a chance to win a dozen donuts and entries into the Montclair Bread Company 5K Doughnut Run.  I actually came up with two designs, one of a donut being dunked into a cup plus the "Just donut {swoosh}" above.  Supposedly competition was light but I won that's all that matters.

Amy rules

In November, I asked for suggestions of what to write during future runs and one of the response was "Amy rules".  What's interesting with this particular task was that on that day I went for an NYRR OpenRun at Cunningham Park.  I planned to get there ahead of time to gwrite "Amy rules" before OpenRun started.  However, I made the mistake of trusting my memory, instead of Google Maps, and ended up getting lost briefly. Not totally lost, mind you, I still know my Queens geography, just enough to lose time and not able to finish the gwriting prior to OpenRun.  I used Strava app to do the writing so I simply paused it when I was done with "Amy".  Went to do OpenRun with Runkeeper app, then returned to where I was and un-paused Strava and proceeded to finish the whole two-word sentence.  Oh yes, it was no coincidence that I made "Amy rules" in the borough of Queens.

Bergie

Another suggestion came from the owner of a dog named Bergamot Grey, or Bergie for short.  Other dog names that I made in 2017 were Bandit and Beemer.  Just by coincidence that they all start with the letter B.  Yes, I am a dog person, but I do have a not-too-strict rule that dog names shouldn't be names normally reserved for people, such as Michael or Peter.

This Menorah Was Really Good

With the holiday season approaching, a Jewish friend asked if I could draw a dreidel.  Or a menorah.  Sure, I can.  New York City has many rectangular city blocks and a menorah with squarish branches could be drawn in many places.  But what if we want one that has nice, round branches?  As I reviewed the map for NYC, my first choice was the Mill Basin peninsula in Brooklyn.  However, unless I can walk on water (Jesus Christ!) or if Moses can part the water for me, there was no place draw the handle of the menorah.  A better choice was the crescent-shaped streets of Rego Park, Queens.  A few people were interested and we ended up having a small convoy of cars to make the trip from Prospect Park to Rego Park.  Shown above is my test run, during which I mistakenly lit the candles in the wrong spot.  I should know better that a few things in the Judaica world go from right to left, not unlike Chinese.  For the group run, we did it right to left but the flames didn't show that well.

THE YEAR IN GWRITING

The first title I thought for this blog was “This Week In Gwriting”, which is a nod to Leo Laporte’s podcast "This Week In Tech". I didn’t get around to writing the blog post and the year 2017 is almost over, so without much further ado, let us review some of the Gwritings, or StravaArts, I made this soon-to-be-over year.

Linda

My most recent oeuvre, made just this Christmas Day.  It was not the first time I made a Linda route.  Back in August while vacationing in the exotic island of Aruba, one hot steamy morning I ran Linda but the non-grid streets threw me off.  It took a while before I found the chance to redo it, on the streets of un-exotic Brooklyn, New York.  While I can easily cut through a city block to make the middle section of the letter "a", I try to avoid relying on the trick.  While planning the run, I picked Flatlands Avenue as the street that will naturally provide the needed line.

Grab A Bite With Jimmy




"Grab A Bite With Jimmy" is another run-art that makes good use of the existing environment, i.e. no Dark Magic via the use of GPS app's pause function.  Well, to a certain extent.  Jimmy is this friend of mine who seems to have a very healthy appetite.  The quasi-roundabout near Zucker-Hillside Hospital provided the perfect round-ish food that Jimmy seems to eat a lot of.  However, to achieve the bite mark I did have to use Dark Magic.  While I have no plan of drawing offensive pictures any time soon, this was my early foray into drawing, not just writing.

Make Some Noises With Adam

I followed the success of "Grab A Bite With Jimmy" by making "Make Some Noises With Adam".  Adam won two awards earlier in the year from the track club.  Instead of wooden plaques or paper certificates, the prizes were cowbells.  Very useful for a cheerleader like Adam!  To get the trapezoidal shape of the cowbell I did have to resort to my special trick to make the slanting lines.

Resist With Lisa, Sort Of

Back in February, I made "resist" and dedicated to Lisa LMK and others who, duh, resist the current administration.  In November I wanted to make the both the fist and the word "Lisa" but I ran out of time.  Yes, these things take time.  Sorry, Lisa LMK!  I still have the area where "Lisa" would be, I'll return to the area some day to do it.  "Lisa" and fist will appear together in CityStrides, that web site that gives me so much joy and aggregation aggravation.

There are more but there are a few more days left of the old year.  I might make another post just yet!

SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OTIS AVENUE

I love it when two of my areas of interest intermix.  The title of this blog post refers to the phrase SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OTIS.  I don't know anyone named Otis or why he was told to sit on the pan.  It's just that the phrase is a palindrome – it spells the same from left to right and from right to left.  You'll have to ignore the comma and move the spaces around, of course.  I first learned about palindromes in a computer class for the BASIC language.  Recently I found a new love in CityStrides.com.

CityStrides.com let runners and walkers overlay a map of places they visited.  It seems like an impossible task – literally travel along all the streets in your town or places you visited.  In my case, that would be primarily New York City.  For some reason, out of the five boroughs, Brooklyn and Manhattan are also considered their own individual city.

Work and family constrains do not allow me to cover as much of my hometown Brooklyn as I want to so for now I try to maximize my coverage of NYC instead, as I regularly get sent to Staten Island and also travel through the Bronx.  The way CityStrides calculate percent completed has nothing to do with a street's length.  For example, let's say a city has a Main Street that goes for miles and miles.  Then there are also many streets that only stretch for a few hundred feet.  If someone were to focus primarily on completing Main Street while someone else covers all the shorter streets, guess who will have a better completion rate?  Yup, not the Main Street guy because by the end of the day, he may have just one out of the total streets completed.  Fair enough, really.

In trying to take advantage of this seemingly erroneous percent complete (which really is not erroneous), I try to cover all the short streets whenever possible.  Streets that are identified as Place or Lane are usually very short, one- or two-block long.  Then I came across Otis Avenue in the Bronx, in the Schuylerville area.  Imagine my surprise after walking along it and not finding it considered completed per CityStrides.  I searched for it in CityStrides and lo and behold there actually are three different Otis Avenues in New York City.  One in the Bronx, another in Queens, not far from Flushing Meadows Park, and yet a third one in Staten Island, just north of Miller Field.  The three locations are shown as series of green hexagons in the picture below.  Personally I think it is a mistake to consider the three Otis Avenues as three parts of one thing.  They just happen to share the name Otis and then also happen to be avenues.  New York City was not composed of the five boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens.  So at some point before the merger, streets were named independently and Otis Avenue happen to appear three times in the three different boroughs.  Just my semi-educated guess, of course.  CityStrides gets its data from OpenStreetMap, so if anything is to change it would have to come from OpenStreetMap.  Maybe I'll study OpenStreetMap and somehow I.D. the three Otis Avenues with suffix to make them unique to the borough and not considered part of "one street".  Highly unlikely I'll mess around with OpenStreetMap, as it seems to be a lot more involved than editing a page in Wikipedia.

Lucky for me, I happened to start participating in NYRR Open Run at Flushing Meadow Park.  I usually get there early and have time to walk around.  Otis Avenue of Queens was knocked out during my first run at FMP.  Next came Otis Avenue in Staten Island, where my son attends high school and I also work there regularly.  Easy for me, but I am sure the typical runner who have a job with a fixed office will find it hard to complete these erroneously longer streets.  Take that, Otis Avenue, go sit on a pot for all I care!

BED-STUY RESTORATION 10K AND INAUGURAL IMAGINE ACADEMY 5K

I love my "job" with the Prospect Park Track Club.  The Club has a program whereby members are encouraged to run with local races, i.e. those that are based in Brooklyn.  The program, Run Brooklyn, dictates that participants should run in six Brooklyn races that are professionally-timed then get a chance to win money prizes at the Club's annual award dinner.  "Brooklyn races" means the run course must start and end in Brooklyn, such that events like the Tunnel To Tower, which starts on the Brooklyn side of the Battery Park Tunnel but ends in the old World Trade Center site, does not count.  The "professionally-timed" condition eliminates fun runs like the Color Run series, whereby participants' time isn't recorded.

By way of suggestions, announcement of the Run Brooklyn program would list a handful of Brooklyn races, just the names.  I volunteered to maintain a spreadsheet containing the race names, dates, URL for registration purposes, and additional tidbits like whether the race coincides with a popular event.  After a few years of maintaining the spreadsheet, I also maintain a calendar that is embedded into the PPTC.org site.  The info in the spreadsheet and the calendar is mostly the same but the calendar has the advantage of also listing NYRR races, the big gorilla in the market, so that when events happen on the same day, participants can make an informed decision which race to register for.

I made such an informed decision today when I forwent the NYRR Staten Island Half and ran in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration 10K.  Staten Island used to be a mysterious place that I drive through along I278 from the Verrazano Bridge to the Goethal Bridge, or some other bridge, but after spending a large amount time working there, along with running in a few races there as well, the novelty is not there any more for me.  I like to run in different locations and this year the Bed-Stuy 10K fits the bill.

The Bed-Stuy 10K had its staging area in Restoration Plaza, which is near the corner of Fulton Street and New York Avenue.  All under one big white tent on the Plaza were a stage, DJ stand, registration table, refreshment tables, and some vendor tables.  Refreshment included coffee, bananas, half-cut bagels, small apples, and orange juices, which I believe was all donated from the nearby Super Foodtown supermarket.  In a nearby building, runners were treated to indoor plumbing for their sanitary needs, as well as a bag check area.  Maybe I was not too aware of my surrounding but I found out about the bag check purely by accident.  I think there should be more signs to point out the restroom and bag-check service.

The first event this year was the Kiddie Run.  Some five little kids, two as young as four years of age, ran a few yards to the Finish Line on Herkimer Street behind the Restoration Plaza.  Next we had a workout session led by an instructor on the floor of the big tent and three leaders on the stage.  It was a good workout, plenty enough to loosen all your muscles for the upcoming race.

There was no music along the race course but if there was "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds should be played.  Look at the course map!  I was afraid that I would run the wrong way because there were so many turns.  At the start, I asked a few runners near me if they were familiar with the course but they either were running the untimed 5K or not know the course.  Luckily the corners were well-staffed, either by event personnel or by NYPD.  A safety cone with the proper directional arrow also helped in case you missed the instruction from the staff.  Something else I could use along the course was more water.  There was a station at Mile 2 and again at Mile 4, but by the time slowpoke me got to Mile 4 there was no more cups.  I think there was some water left in the water cooler, yes, the sort used in your typical cubicle office, but I didn't want to stop completely to drink from the faucet.  Luckily, it was rainy for most of the race and I cooled down enough to not need water that much.  I don't know the history of the race course so it might be that way all these years, with the many turns, so maybe not much can be done about it.  During the last two miles, I so looked forward to seeing the finish arch from a distance to get me going stronger.  It never came as the arch was just down the road after the final turn.

For every run turn turn turn / There is a reason turn turn turn

Bed-Stuy 10K, now in its 36th year, was well-organized despite all its turns.  A few weeks back I ran an inaugural race that had some teething pain.  From the elitefeats mailing list I discovered the inaugural Imagine Academy For Autism 5K in Marine Park, the actual park, not just the neighborhood.  The race course was just the outer loop of the park, which I ran many times already with NYRR Open Run, so the novelty attraction wasn't there for me.  Open Run covers 3 loops, for a total of about 2.5 miles, the Imagine 5K went for a little over 3.5 to reach about 5K.

The race was supposed to start at 10 AM but there was a speech or two and the race didn't really until 10:30.  It was a hot day so the extra half-hour made a little difference.  Although the course was just a few loops of the park, there was no water station anywhere.  After I did my 3.5 loops, the finish line was totally blocked by finishers.  People were just milling about in front of the finish mat, chatting, taking photos, snacking etc.  Perhaps because it was the first time for these people to participate in a race but the situation could be helped by having the refreshment table a few yards AFTER the finish line, not mere feet in front of it.  Lastly, there was no trash container anywhere to collect all the wrappers, fruit peels, etc.  Responsible runners had to go a few yards away to squeeze the trash into already-packed receptacles.  Hopefully next year these issues won't be present.