Recent electoral events in Greece appear to have been lightly attended to by the usual English-speaking chattering classes, so I thought I'd fill in.
First, there was a national legislative election on Sunday, and the result was fairly dramatic. The ruling left-of-centre PASOK party was comprehensively trounced. The right-of-centre New Democratic Party (yes, a right-leaning NDP, very amusing to all Canadians) gained a bit. Those are also the only two parties, as far as I can tell, that were committed to continuing the austerity/bailout policies.
And now, the guy with no professional credentials in workouts will embarrass himself.
Darren Barefoot linked to a semi-interesting but disappointing article about exercise myths.
Instead, here's my rough-sketched precepts of exercising, which draw on the Lifehacker article, but are more succinct, more coherent, and don't lie to you about the value of hard workouts.
Most people should do strength training. It is far more important than we previously realized*. Shorter, high-intensity workouts and drills are more useful than long-slow workouts; unless you're training for an endurance cardio event, you don't need a cardio focus in your workouts.
Pentax just announced an unusual mirrorless body, the K-01. It continues to use the venerable K-mount, but that also means the mount is still far away from the sensor, to accommodate a swinging mirror that is, ahem, no longer present. What follows is camera-nerdy, and is mainly just a prediction I want to get on record.
Compared to its mirrorless adversaries, the resulting body is thick. Imaging Resource published a preview that has side-by-side pictures of the K-01 against some other cameras, and you can see how much thicker than a small micro-4/3 body this one is. (The Sony NEX was curiously absent from the comparisons, but it's about as thick as a micro-4/3, albeit using lenses that are closer in size to typical dSLR systems, including, ahem, the Pentax K-mount).
Not quite. But I could easily write that one.
It would be the f-word, "HDCP," and then a paragraph's worth of the f-word being used in its adjectival, nominal, adverbial, and verb forms to describe the technology, its creators, its implementors, and its shortcomings.
HDCP has bitten me in the metaphorical ass numerous times, both at home and at work, and only while trying to do stuff that was utterly non-infringing: I don't get bit by HDCP when I'm trying to copy protected content, I get bit by it, repeatedly, while trying to play HDCP sources in boring ways that were non-issues in the Analog Era. It has cost me (and thanks to my professional capacity, taxpayers) a disturbing amount of time, energy and money.
Inspired by last year's summary, here's what I did in 2011:
In January, TLO bought us a car, as we finally surrendered to the reality that our semi-beloved New Beetle was not reliable, and between me and our mechanic, we had neither the will nor the wit to make it right. The Versa has been a quiet charmer: surprisingly comfy seating for four; flip the rear seat, and it eats bikes with no wheels off, no bad habits, driving-wise, and the cupholders can actually hold cups, unlike the comical VW cupholder parodies. (We also sold the Beetle, of course).
In May, my parents invited us to join them for a four-day cruise, which was a first for TLO and I. It was something we will do again.
A friend shared this link covering the dubious financial prospects for professional writers (in Quebec, but I'd bet the prospects look about the same in the rest of Canada, and indeed in the rest of the first world). My response to her seemed to amuse others, so now I'll share it more widely:
Published authorship is a star system, and it sounds like cynical craziness, but widespread literacy means a lot of people have the basic tools to become a writer, which means supply swamps demand at the non-superstar end of the market (think of pro sports, in terms of the rewards at the top, the relative lack of depth in the middle, and the total lack of demand for mediocre athletes) except with a less-clear system for detecting and recruiting superstar talent.
Philosophically, I avoid meddling in the affairs of political jurisdictions where I don't have a franchise, but I'm making an exception here to endorse my friend and club-mate, Alex Pope, who has put himself forward as a candidate for the town council in Maple Ridge.
So here's Alex running for a job as a public servant, and where the decisions are important and have deep consequences*, in a community where transportation is a major civic issue.
I assure you, he's the right man for the job.
Ever since I've known Alex, he's been helping out with things he wants to make better. We met as fellow members of a cycling club that requires members to volunteer in support of races. And Alex did, putting in as needed, at every level of the sport from laying out traffic cones before a race to sitting on the board of Cycling BC.
Rebecca gave me an adventure for my birthday. Just after midnight, she gave me an envelope with tickets to Serifos, a very small island. We went for a day trip on my birthday, and rented a scooter. It was also a great chance to use my other present, a pancake lens for the Pentax. All-manual, it was the only lens I brought. I needed noting else.
We saw the island's lovely chora, another hilltop town with house upon house and only narrow pedestrian walkways and stairs between them, high upon a hill, overlooking but quite far from the contemporary port. Typical pirate-resistant town planning.
A local group who prefers to remain somewhat anonymous (let's just call them the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) decided to put on a very low-key Gentleman's Race, based onthe idea promulgated by Rapha.
I put together a team. The last member joined up, literally, the day before the race, but in the end I had a full team of 5:
Doug Brons
Aidan "Mocha" Mouellic
Cam "maillot pois"
Dan "Buttercup" Spry
Me
We had our share of excuses (interrupted training, new to pacelines, fat, underfed...), but we were game.
I've been ranting online meditating about level and non-level playing fields in sports lately.
Item: Oscar Pistorius, the fastest man on no legs, is in the news again because he is on the verge of qualifying for the 2012 Olympics in the 400-metre event. I see this as being parallel to the previous stories of Caster Semenya and Michelle Dumaresq: in the latter two cases, the question was "who gets to compete in women's events?" (and implicitly, it was "what is the purpose of a separate women's category?") In the former case, it's "who gets to compete in men's events?"
