prstat(1M)

Sleep Can Wait! Cycling Series #1

2012-01-27T00:59:00.000+08:00

What a way to kick off a cycling series even if there were only 2 participants.

Taking advantage of the 2-day Chinese New Year holiday, we organised an evening ride that will take us to some of the more popular riding routes. The plan was to remain fairly flexible both on timing, distance and speed. Unfortunately, some of the riders had other commitments and that left us with just 2 roadies.

The route was simple. Meet Francis at his place, and ride towards Pasir Ris, Changi Village, Changi Coast Road, East Coast Parkway, and decide what we want to do after reaching Fort Road. Stops were planned every 20km (or so) to refuel and rest the hopefully tired legs.

The first section was a 20km route from Paya Lebar Road to Changi Village via Old Tampines Road, Pasir Ris Dr 3, and Loyang Ave. The section was fraught with somewhat difficult terrain that we eventually conquered with our relatively fresh legs. And we managed it with pretty good average speed of almost 28kph. The terrain forces great variance in the speed that ultimately ranged from 18kph pushing towards Loyang Ave, and over 50kph reaping the hard work invested earlier.

The most memorable hills must be along Old Tampines Road and just before turning towards Loyang Ave. Old Tampines Road, Pasir Ris Dr 3, and Loyang Ave all looked a little more hilly than they did in a car.

The reward for that hard 20km riding was an extended break at a 24hr Changi Village Coffee Shop. The stop took over an hour -- longer than our ride so far. We also made a mental note _not_ to stop here in future.

The next section is another 20km of super flat riding from Changi Village to our next stop at Playground@Big Splash. This rides through perhaps the most popular cycling route of Changi Coast Road and East Coast Park. The aim for this section is to push a consistent pace. With the long rest, we managed to maintain a speed of 29-31kph along Changi Cost Road. East Coast Park presented some challenges of being dark and my head lamp decided to run out of charge there. We slowed down to 26kph using safety as an excuse over our tiring legs.

Mr Teh Tarik waved us into Playground@Big Splash. This proved to be a much more efficient pitstop. Drinks with food are both done within 15mins and we moved off just as a team of fixie riders rolled into the joint.

The final section was venturing into uncharted waters. We wanted to do Nicoll Highway but there wasn't much plan after that. So Nicoll Highway came and gone, and we shot past Shenton Way. Shenton Way is always so quiet in the wee hours of the morning. We pushed on into Pasir Panjang Road and turned towards Lower Delta Road. By then, energy level was already low so we made no attempts at Mt Faber. At the moment, I'm just not confident to attempt Mt Faber without a granny.

We started heading home via Scotts Road, Moulmein Road, and finally MacPherson Road. The route was carefully chosen to avoid any major hills. I finally broke away from Francis as he headed home along Paya Lebar Road. With the little energy left, I bumped up the speed to 31kph, attacked Siglap hill and barely made it home.

A total of 80km was clocked in the evening's adventure lasting till 3:30am. Not too bad for the inaugural midnight ride.

Cycling for Weight Weenies.

2012-01-23T01:20:00.002+08:00

I was just about to step out of the bike shop after getting my Argon18 Gallium Pro built up when I remembered to answer the necessary question -- how much did the bike weigh?

I was never a weight weenie. I never really cared that my bike was the lightest in the bunch as long as it does not become a burden. I maintain that the 20kg of tummy I could lose is more than any of my bikes ever weighed. Still, almost every conversation with any rider about equipment ends up about weight. Perhaps, with all the different material, construction and mechanical design, weight is the single metric that is easiest to quantify.

This post proposes a framework to examine the weight of a bicycle from a budgeting perspective, both in terms of cost and actual weight of the component.

A weight budget works exactly like a company budget. Figure out the weight for each component on your current (or future) bicycle. Next, figure out what you want your bike to weigh, and work from there. E.g. if your current bike weights 8kg and you wish to bring it down to 7kg, you have to decide the strategy that will rein in this 1kg deficit.

Generally, a bicycle consists of 3 sets of components.

The first set consists of only 3 components. They are the frame/fork, wheelset and group. These individually contribute significantly to your bike's weight (between 1-2kg each) and also happen to be the components that you are least likely to change. From the weight budget perspective, these 3 components tend to already account for 60-70% of your bike's weight. Any savings here will have a significant impact on the overall weight of the bike so this is the most effective places to look for weight savings.

The next set are components that are fairly significant like saddle, seat post, handlebar, stem, chains, tyres/tubes and pedals. These components are each in the regions of 100-300g. These components still contribute their fair share of weight to the bike due to their large variability in weight. E.g. the same handlebar design could be offered with up to 150g difference in weight. The more exotic material used in the lighter bar will cost a lot more than a 7075 extrusion. Most components in this set can be replaced by any mechanically proficient rider. This is a good place to look if you are already within say 200-300g of your weight target. Any more than 300g will usually incur significant cost in replacing many components.

The final set consists of components and accessories that weigh less than 100g and hence offers you even less potential savings. The set includes handlebar tapes, cabling, skewers, seatpost clamps, and waterbottle cages. Other than cables, the rest are trivial replacements. The weight savings from this set tends to be fairly negligible. A good test if you are a weight weenie is if you bother with this set. In other words, unless you enjoy counting cents, do not look here!

Obviously, if you are looking to cut weight, you will look at the heaviest components due to the most direct gain there. Unfortunately, the difficulty in replacing these parts usually mean you have to get it "correct" from the start. The second set is where you should be looking if you are lightening your ride after building it up. Be aware the limitation of gains possible in this set and the cost of doing so generally sprints towards diminishing returns quickly.

Personally, I have no idea why anyone will be looking at the final set unless he is a true blue weight weenie. Savings tend to be only a couple of grams for significant investment.

Looking back at 2011...

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000+08:00

2011 is definitely an exciting year with a few very noteworthy events. It is time to take stock now to basically sum up 2011 and herald in the new year!! So here's my top 3 personal triumphs in 2011.

I finally changed employer after 12+ years in NUS. Most who knew me (including myself) never expected me to ever leave NUS. In fact, I just learnt that a few of my ex-colleagues thought I was still with NUS. NUS is a great company to work for but a dozen years and being my first employer necessitated the move. I hesitate to say it's the same job because my boss embellished me brand new opportunities every 2-3 years as I moved across different domains and experimented with different things.

So far, the move has been mostly good. In the half year with the new organisation, I have gained a lot of insights I will not otherwise have. I engage with many more people here (previously mostly vendors) and this has certainly extended my views since they approach the same subject with a different desired outcome in mind. The part I do miss about my old job was the fun in hunting down system bugs no less with users breathing down our necks. I kinda miss tinkering with other people's box for a paycheck.
I committed over 7 hours of my life to Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon. Yes, the full 42.192km and I took almost 7 hours. All my objectives for the marathon was met. I completed it in good spirit (means happy) and health. I made a slight detour towards the emcee to give him a high-five. My feet complained quite a bit towards the later part of the run and I struggle to walk after the run. However, I was walking only slightly awkwardly the day after without the marathon telltales.

The commitment before the run was intense. I had to sacrifice a weekend morning to wake up earlier than for work and forgo all my weekend badminton sessions to make the training. Annetta has been super supportive and I could not have done it without her.

The reward of all the training and running the marathon was immense. I made a lot of new friends and the strong sense of achievement at the finish line was just beyond words.
I published my app in the Android Market after a few failed apps ideas (and code). I just needed to get this one out before my new employment starts.

I have been writing codes for different purposes and for different audiences for as long as I can recall. I had been coding in x86 assembly to C to C++ before getting to college. Then it was all the higher level languages like Jave, Scheme, and scripting languages like Perl, Ruby and bash. I have coded at different levels from bashing together a couple of commandline, to web development (Rails, PHP, Perl and Java), to writing system codes (usually C), and dipped my toes into OpenSolaris and Linux.

Publishing in Android Market was a milestone because I have never published my code.

So those are my top 3 personal accomplishments to sum up a very fruitful 2011 indeed.

Office Internet...

2011-12-20T22:43:00.000+08:00

went down again. Well, email still works but there was no connection out to the WWW.

I started work after the Internet era and have never been disconnected for anything more than a couple of hours without at least partial recovery. Not quite the scale of what our SMRT service just experienced but I will nevertheless put this down as an extensive outage.

The experience does make me wonder how office life must be like before the invasion of the Internet. Most of my colleagues are on facebook and while we do meet up in the pantry for an occasional chat (in person, not the electronic type), face time (again, not the IOS app) is somewhat limited to colleagues in the immediate proximity around our cubicles.

Today, we seem to hang around and chat more. Being only 2 weeks to Christmas definitely has an impact as many of us are taking our vacations and work is winding down. It is pretty novel to receive updates in person that is fresher than on the facebook wall. This novelty must extend even to those who do not do facebook. For once, your always online colleagues are crippled without their regular newsfeed of the latest happenings around the office.

Towards the end of the day, most of us who could succumb to the urge to just tether out from our mobile phones. The order of online presence restored by my trusty Nexus One. Facebook walls are being updated, and blogs like this one published.

As a colleague commented, the office is quite a miserable place without Internet connection. I find it hard to disagree.

Are Singaporeans Bad Drivers?

2011-10-19T22:50:00.001+08:00

I was scanning through the Highway magazine article when the following segment caught my attention,

A female member agreed, describing how the majority of larger cars she has encountered on the road always try to muscle their way into her lane.

Damn, she's so correct. Singaporeans are bad drivers. The only reason those cars need to muscle their way into her lane is because she refused to give way. She obviously do not give way to most of those larger cars so she is such a bad driver!

Not every bad behaviour observed is misplaced. The few good ones are inability to drive within allotted lane, inability to keep to speed limits, inability to stop at red lights, and, my favourite, inability to stop using the handphone while driving.

Unfortunately, the article continued to take a victim's stand on other attributes like drivers not signaling early. The Singaporean thing to do when someone signals is to close up the gap quickly. I have learnt from my years of road training to only signal just before switching lanes to increase my chance of successfully switching lanes.

We (Singaporean drivers) need not be as bad. There are always bad eggs out there and there is always the urge to retaliate bad behaviour with worse behaviour -- an escalation in psychology terms. Yet, instead of behaving like victims of circumstances, we can just as easily take charge of the situation.

In my own attempt to encourage my fellow drivers to signal, I ALWAYS give way to anyone signaling. When somebody gives way, I make it a point to show my gratitude by raising my hand to thank them. Whether it is placebo, I find my road journey improving just from these simple gestures.

Chrome, Lion and the Macbook Pro

2011-10-01T22:44:00.001+08:00

Web browsing after upgrading to Lion had been a little less than awesome. One of the features I missed dearly was the 3 finger swipe for navigating between webpages. For a while, I had to make do sniping at the miniature back and forward button in the toolbar or reaching for the keyboard. Further, the new full-screen feature in Lion left me wondering when Google will update chrome to take advantage of the new clean layout.

Turned out I didn't have to wait very long. With the release of Chrome 14 (and 15 beta), Google introduced a number of improvements to browsing experience.

The first that I notice is swipe browsing is back. Not quite 3 finger swipe but better. The natural scrolling gesture using 2 fingers on the multi-touch trackpad pages backward and forwards. While a little confusing as to the paging point initially, the feature is easy to internalise at least for me. Now, I find myself reaching for the trackpad again for scrolling and the rather seamless experience of web browsing is back again.

The other feature worth talking about is the full screen mode. Chrome featured a full screen mode since I started using it. It is especially useful for presentations especially when the slides are online. Further, it is easier to read when the page fills up the entire screen without the usual clutter around. The full-screen mode can be invoked with shift-cmd-F. Unlike in previous version, Chrome now hides the menubar as well so you get the page that is devoid of clutter.

Finally, Chrome can now hide the scroll bars. Now, this continues to be a hotly debated feature, just like the "natural scrolling". I personally like both as default in Lion. Natural scrolling feels more correct and I never liked having the scroll bars around anyway.

If there is one enhancement I want for Chrome, it will be the ability to turn off the use of external graphics card. For some reason, simply starting Chrome causes the MBP to engage the external graphics card and that is detrimental to battery life. In fact, the battery life is more than halved when Chrome is on.

Despite that, I am still a happy camper and have been browsing using Chrome since 2008, and actively persuading users to switch to this more pleasant browsing experience.

Oh Tablets 2.0!

2011-10-01T12:49:00.000+08:00

The powers that be has bestowed upon me an iPad2. I had previously lambasted the lack of use cases; for such intermediate devices that includes, well, all tablets. As luck may have it, I gained possession of a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and an iPad2 a couple of weeks ago.

The growth of tablet devices continues and I continue to ask my tablet wielding acquaintances what they use it for. Invariably, they use an iPad (whichever) and they use it for reading, games, note taking, email and web surfing. That does encompasses over 95% of my uses. My hesitation remains with the in-between nature of the device. I love big screens and mobility at the same time.

For the two weeks I had the iPad, I also had the chance to commute to work in a public transport, attended several conferences where the laptop is not that convenient, and buzzed between work areas. Basically, the stars all aligned to test out the iPad in its waters, where whatever limited mobility it has mixes well with the limited screen real estate and really limited keyboard.

To save you from reading further, I am not entirely pleased.

Firstly, being a keybaord person doesn't help. I'm too lazy even to reach for the mouse most of the time so VIM remained my favourite editor. The position of the huge trackpad on the MBP is godsent and I usually use my thumb for moving the cursor. With the iPad keyboard occupying half the screen without the tactile feedback of a real full sized keyboard, I estimate I am typing at a fifth my maximum possible speed.

If there is anything I really appreciate about the iPad2, its the extensive battery life. In comparison, Galaxy Tab's battery life is abysmal, requiring recharging on a daily basis. Sure, the latter device is half the weight and only 2" smaller but even then, I hardly found any use for it.

In conferences and meetings, I tried to take notes to no avail. The crippling feature was the keyboard. Despite perhaps having one of the best on-screen keyboard, the keyboard still doesn't click with me. In all cases, I eventually gave up in frustration and had to whip out my laptop. On my Android device, I use Swype and Swiftkey that are both easy to operate with one hand, and the predictive text, especially Swiftkey's, makes text entry so painless. If the iPad could just dedicate a tiny corner of the screen to either of these keyboards and leave the rest of the screen for display, I would be a happy camper. As it stands today, half the screen in landscape mode or a quarter the screen in portrait, and without predictive text simply doesn't cut it for me.

That relegates the iPad to reading, gaming, web surfing and tiny email.

The iPad generally works well for web surfing except the known lack of flash support. The screen is large enough and device is plenty fast. Gaming works well too and I spent hours on Zombie Highway.

On my train ride to work, the iPad proved a little too big. The iPad needs to fit into whatever space is available in the sardine can. This makes any activities requiring any but the simplest interaction with the device a challenge. With gaming and web surfing out, the device is only good for reading. Even that means contorting my body in the least comfortable way although I'd imagine how much better this would be if I am seated. But then, if I had a seat, the laptop is not too unwieldy either. Still, I manage to get quite a bit of reading done. The discomfort (of body) proved less detrimental to reading speed than the much smaller screen of my Nexus One. Under the same space constraint, the 7" Galaxy Tab proved the best compromise. Of course, for longer journey, the iPad will eventually emerge the winner since the reshuffling of people in extended journeys provides a chance to optimise body-tablet placement.

The one place I found the iPad exude the greatest strength is, uninspiringly, the loo and specifically on Saturday mornings. I love reading the Economist on the iPad mainly because the Economist App downloads all the articles so flipping through them is fast, faster than reading it on my laptop. I'd love not holding the iPad but that will be a small compromise compared to holding my 15" MBP. So I spend my saturday morning loo sessions flipping through at least 3-4 articles. Weekday mornings are too rushed for the luxury of reading, and weekend afternoons are just too warm for enjoying the experience.

For a lifestyle device, I can start to appreciate how the iPad may work. It reminds me a lot of the now demised Palm devices which does a couple of things really well. The Palm eventually gave way to more powerful devices that provided better convenience by integrating Palm's organising ability with the mobile phone.

The iPad (or tablets in general) will not replace my laptop, at least not in its current iteration or perhaps even the next few. There is a constant tug of war between mobility and function and I am still leaning towards a mobile phone and laptop for the best of both. I will always have my mobile phone with me so the incremental function the iPad provides does not justify bringing it around. All the time I had the iPad 2, I still lugged my 15" mbp around. It was the same with the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Cleaning the VFF

2011-09-19T22:46:00.000+08:00

Did the Yellow Ribbon Prison Run yesterday and noticed that there is a stark increase in VFF users compared to last year's run. In fact, I'll hazard that perhaps 1 in 10 runners are using the VFF which makes Vibram a relatively significant brand even compared to mainstream brands like Adidas and New Balance.Having run in the VFF for over a year, the main complain is the stench. VFF's are not exactly sock friendly and it stinks up quite quickly as a result. Also, I'm into my second week of the Operation Sunbird (Fatbird Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon training) and have been running a lot more compared to previous periods. My Bikila is seeing a lot more action with the regular Thu runs and again the base building 2+hr Sat runs.If you need to turnaround your VFF fast and really worry about the smell, here are some tips (which worked for me).

Washing the VFF

Ordinary laundry detergent works for giving the VFF a general cleaning.I use an old toothbrush to brush the toe and the entire footbed. Then I take the toothbrush over the entire shoe, both inside and outside, to give me the confidence that any gunk is removed.Rinse a couple of times with clean water to remove excess detergent.

Decontaminating the VFF

Now, just washing the VFF cleans it but the bad smell returns on by the 2nd run. This is where you need dentures tablets.Yes, those magic tablets for dentures works wonders on your VFF.I simply drop one (or two if it's been a while between washes) of these magical tablets and leave the VFF to soak for a couple of hours.

Drying the VFF

This final step is almost a science.You see, the VFF is not the easiest shoe to dry. The heel area is generously padded so won't dry easily if left on the heels, and it seems wrong to leave the shoes on the toes as well. After numerous experiments, it turns out that leaving the shoe tiptoe-ed is the ideal way to dry it. That's because the toes are fabric (for my KSO and bikila) so they drain out quite easily.I usually leave the shoe to drain out in the bathroom overnight so they are just damp by the morning. I leave out to sun on my balcony from the morning and the shoes are usually dry by evening.There you have it.. the entire recipe to keep your VFF fresh. Hope you found it helpful and enjoy your runs with your VFF.

Upgrading the Neato XV-11

2011-08-30T22:01:00.000+08:00

The idea of the Neato XV-11 employing a laser distance scanner (LDS) for mapping the room was one of the reasons I decided to get it. What really sealed the deal was that it included a USB port. The USB port implies that software upgrades to the XV-11 is possible.

So, a year after the XV-11 is launched (and 4 months after mine started working for me), Neato finally released a new firmware. The only problem is the Windows needed for the upgrade.

Parallels seems to be the only virtualisation software that works. Coming from VMware Fusion, Parallels is a little more troublesome due to the different file format. Converting the Windows XP vmdk file to pvm is automatic but still a hassle nonetheless if you have a sizeable vmdk. Fortunately, mine is still a smallish 8GB.

Upgrading the XV-11 from a Windows XP virtual machine running in Parallels should be little different from Windows on raw iron. A window asking if the XV-11 should be connected to the windows instance or the mac pops up when the USB cable is plugged in. No guesses where it should connect but its all a couple of clicks on the web browser and the XV-11 is up and running with the latest firmware.

There are several obvious changes up from the menu.

There are now a whole slew of new languages including both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Japanese. There is also French, Italian, Spanish, and German on top of the default English. There is a new option for "Spot Cleaning" to vacuum a smallish area.

The option to "return to base" has disappeared. Just as well since it's a fairly useless option anyway. My XV-11 has little problem locating its base and on the rare occasions it has to start off its charging station, "returning to base" serves little purpose anyway.

What's more important is the robot's effectiveness after the firmware upgrade.

Lets attack docking first. Due to the design of the charging station and the under-designed contacts on the XV-11, there are quite a few instances that we found the robot dead even though its at the charging station. The problem could be that the XV-11 stopped just short of contacting the station, or it came in at an odd angle that prevented charging. We had better success after cleaning the contacts at the rear of the XV-11.

With the new firmware, the XV-11 approaches the charging station very cautiously. When it used to position itself then reverse nonchalantly into the charging station, and at times failing to make contact, it now takes baby steps towards the base, swinging a few degrees to either side. This should increase the success rate of charging for the XV-11. We will have to see after another week.

Neato also claimed that the new firmware improved the XV-11's navigation. It is not clear what exactly this means but there are some changes in the way the robot navigates around the house.

The XV-11 used to prefer to hug the wall around the hall before moving to the more open parts of the house. With the update, it seems comfortable to attack the open area first. Further, for the first time, I caught the XV-11 traverse across the hall diagonally cutting it into triangular areas instead of the previous rectangular. The cleaning within that triangular area is still done systematically in directions parallel to the hall.

Overall, I did not think there is any difference in the overall area covered. Annetta thought otherwise that the edges are not as clean. After the cleaning session, the XV-11 was able to locate its charging station without excessive hunting despite some minor adjustments to furniture configuration.

What will be really nice is if Neato can allow the end-user to play around with different cleaning strategies and make micro behavioural changes. E.g. I may want my XV-11 to move closer to the walls and the expense of speed, or the shapes and area that the XV-11 should use to map the room when cleaning.

It is great is to see Neato standing behind their product (their only product really since the XV-15 is practically the same as the XV-11). They have built the flexibility of end-user upgrade right from the start. In this era where end-users are getting more accustomed to technologies and software controls so much of hardware, it is unthinkable for any manufacturer to create a product that is completed. This flexibility allows Neato to deliver improvements to products that are already out in the field. Afterall, the robot is expected to be a fairly complex piece of equipment.

Approaching Running...

2011-08-01T22:00:00.001+08:00

Singapore is haven for runners. We have safe, well lit and paved streets that are fantastic to run in the cool of evenings and early mornings. And then, we have park connectors that aims to link up all the parks on our little island. Save a few rainy months, we enjoy fair weather all year round. We have a road race almost weekly and we arrive in droves for most of them.

While the generally warm weather and safe environment does encourage running, most of my peers run to pass their IPPT. Pay a little more attention to the runners around and you will find many soaked in their world of anguish pain.

It begs the question.. why do we run?

A large number of runners just want to pass their IPPT. These runners are easy to pick out as they slog on in their world with whatever relief from their iPods. I know because I was one of them. I too was forced into running with the impossible target of completing 2.4km within 13 minutes and after consecutive years of failing to make the mark, I hated running.

I wrote about Gearheads previously and how I was involved in several activities where gearheads are predominant trait. Blame it on the commercials and the marketing departments of the various brands. Each new version of whatever product revolutionalise the oomph from the previous version. Of course, it costs us some moolah to stay ahead of that revolutionary performance.

Or perhaps it was our own ego to mimic the performance of those who excel in such activities without the commitment of similar investment in training. That latest running shoe or racket or (fill in any latest product) might just be that silver bullet in our quest for better performance. As much as I hated running, my need to pass the torture test drove me towards the best (aka most expensive) running shoes. As expected, the expensive experiment ended in disappointment when any improvement from such material investments, if any, are marginal at best.

To boot, it is about aiming to enjoy the run. A serious runner friend commented that I exhibited decent discipline about my running. But discipline is the least of my attribute. In a skewed way, I am hedonistic. If I enjoy myself when I run, I will do it. In fact, I feel disappointed if I do not get to run for whatever reason and will start craving for it. Discipline will be keeping myself from what I enjoy doing -- running. BMW's new slogan comes to mind. "We make Joy" is certainly more relevant to me than Nike's "Just do it".

Keeping with finding enjoyment is the issue of pain and the masochistic runner. There are runners who find enjoyment in achieving new target distances and time. I am adverse to pain and I detest suffering. So far it was never about endurance for me. However, it is not that I do not like seeing improvements in my distance or timing. So distance and timing improves as a result of better running technique rather than improved endurance. In other words, how far and fast can I run without pain? How much more efficient is my running form now that will allow me to run further and faster?

Obviously then, I do not set any target distance (much less speed) for my runs. I go running with a vague idea of a route but also build in several decision points that allows me to change my mind on distance depending on how I feel. That vies me the option to adjust my running distance according to how I feel. Interestingly, I have extended more runs than I have shortened. Most of the shortened runs were result of going out too hard and the lengthened runs are those I enjoy the most.

I am at a crossroad right now. I am staring right now at a training programme that involves intervals and hard runs. But if I want to improve and ultimately enjoy running more, I am convinced that I need to do it. My running has stagnated for the last half a year without much improvement in either distance nor speed. I am also staring at possible core strengthening exercises -- something I have left behind in preference for longer distance runs on gym day. At the moment, I will probably take it slow instead of hitting it too hard like what I did back in June. I hated June. It literally caused me to stop running and was more disruptive than constructive. Yet, there need to be a balance between my hedonistic running mode with the slightly more performance oriented mode.

Intervals and track... I still hate both but I will give it my shot in the coming monday. Lets see if I actually have any discipline to keep at it.

AdiNation Run & New Adidas Garmin HRM Strap

2011-07-31T00:45:00.001+08:00

Went for the 7km AdiNation run this morning. It was so hard to pull myself out of bed at 6am for the 7am event. Keeping to my promise just the evening earlier that I will go for the run was one of the main motivation to pull myself off bed.. still, it took a good 5 minutes to gather the determination scattered all around the mattress.

The run was nothing to cry about. I could plan a better 7km route with less traffic light. In fact, we stopped for over a minute on our first light just 20m after the start. That was just a hint of things (or lights) to come. Any run along Orchard road will be disrupted by any of the numerous roads you need to cross. Afterall, we are talking about the shopping belt of Singapore.

What made the run worth the whole waking up business is the talk by Coach Fabian Williams. A lot of tips about core exercises and some 10x400 speed works. Quite a bit to soak in but I'm going to need the speed works. The current limit of 6min/km is not going down further on its own and I need to do something about my heart rate bumping up that high.

Adidas had a private sale at 30% off running and training related items after the talk. That's when I started paying attention to the Adidas miCoach HRM... strap. Yes. I'm happy with my Garmin 310XT but had been eyeing the 3rd generation HRM strap that came with Alvin's 610. While the 2nd generation soft strap is finally wearable, the 3rd generation feels comfortable enough to wear for the entire day.

So the miCoach HRM strap looks and feels exactly like the Garmin 3rd Gen strap. In fact, I will not be surprised if they are made by the same manufacturer. It's a steal at S$39 given that Garmin charges almost USD40 (from US) or S$80 in Singapore for the 2nd Gen. The 3rd Gen is only available with some specific watch models. With the 30% off, I just jumped at the deal.

Back home, I tested the strap and it works -- well, that means the 310XT showed a number for Heartrate. I do not expect any problems since the strap is just a passive connector. So if you are running a Garmin HRM, the miCoach HRM strap may be a good replacement strap.

Take home for today:

Kettle bell exercises for strengthening the core
Arrange a day for 10x400 splits and not give up within a week -- yeah, I know its painful.
More checks for running form
- Experiment with neck muscle
- Experiment with hand swing (thumbs up)
Brand new HRM strap
Nice Killiney kopi-o and rather average Nasi Lemak

Not bad for 2 hours less sleep.

Marina 21k

2011-07-25T22:40:00.002+08:00

So I ran the Marina 21k. In fact, I completed in record time. No, not the world record nor national record, far from it -- my personal best. I hoped to come in under 3 hours but smashed it by a comfortable 20min. That is not fast for most runners but the performance was unthinkable for me just a week back.

I had my doubts with Marina 21k. My regular running buddies were not with me so I was running on my own. The route consists of 2 10km loops and I hate loops. The route runs through an area I was not familiar with which adds to the discomfort.

Then, there were a few things going for the run. That I was running alone meant I ran at my own pace. That means I apply whatever strategy at whatever speed I feel comfortable. The route is generally flat and it's a night race. I prefer evening runs since the night just gets cooler along the way.

The plan was to stick to a strict alternation of 2 minutes run/walk. I did a little 14km practice the Wednesday before both to get a feel for it and to confirm that it works. At a 6min/km run, I might have enough legs to do the final 3-4km at 7min/km.

That did not happen.

I started off with too much haste and in fact found myself overtaking a bunch of folks who looked really strong. Before I knew it, I was doing the first 2+km at a crazy pace of 5:50min/km before I dropped back to the run/walk routine.

Even then, my run sections were at a rather hasty 5:50min/km so I managed an average 7:30min/km for the next 12km. The only time I modify the run/walk is when I was approaching a designated drink station or if I would have been walking down a slope. In both cases, it was more economical to run since I will walk after picking up the drink and running down slope just takes so little energy compared to walking down. As a precaution, I consumed a pack of gel at 11+km.

I hit the wall at 15km. From there, I struggled to even start jogging. I suspect this is caused by both the rather fast pace when my comfort zone is 6min/km, and the mindless rush at the start. Step by step, I just wore away the distance. Keeping my mind on the form gave me something to focus on. There wasn't exactly any pain but I could feel the lethargy in general. I stuck to the plan till the finish line but managed to pick up the pace in the final 2 minutes. The right calf threatened to cramp up about 20m from the finish so I had to ease back a little. Still, smiling while walking through the finish at 2:38:33 did not feel too bad at all.

Overall, the run may not be the most sponsored event with the most stuff in the goodie bag but I find it reasonably well organised. There were a number of potential choke points but the smaller size of the run reduces the queue. The route could be more weather proof though -- too many grass patches that may pose a problem should the weather turn south. As usual, I'm not a patron of baggage check-in so I cannot tell if it's well handled. Post run drink station could have been better but hey, Uncle Koh is there cheering for us.

There are a couple of things I need to think about especially with the looming full marathon in 4 months. First, I need to stick to the plan. Next, I really need to be comfortable with 21km. It does not make sense to feel this bad at the half way mark. The 42km will potentially be a 6hr run so I need to stay out for that much longer. I also need to think about the cramp and the wall. I suspect I might be low on salt and did not carbo load enough.

And the Lion roars...

2011-07-23T16:44:00.001+08:00

Since my MBP is bought after the announcement of Lion, I qualified for the up-to-date programme which allows all my Macs to be updated to the new OS.

For an extensive review of the new Mac OS X, beam right over to Ars Technica. Be warned that it is a very very long review. Here's my mini (by comparison) piece of what I like and do not like about the new OS.

Digital purchase and Delivery

Going for digital delivery and allowing purchasing through the App Store is all plus for me. I can happily do without housekeeping all the installation discs and software keys. Digital delivery is not a new concept and has been the preferred method for distributing most Linux since the early 90's. It took the industry 20 years to get here but the end-user experience for huge internet downloads has improved tremendously. 20 years ago, you simply cannot expect to download a 4GB file without interruption.

Housekeeping aside, digital delivery improved the turnaround time. While I tap my fingers in anticipation of the DHL van to deliver my Snow Leopard disc set, the download completed just under 30min. All this time, the progress bar was managing my expectation. This is a cost saving for Apple and a time saving for me.

Physical media is really only needed after the OS install on exactly two occasions. If you need to re-install the operating system, and if you somehow screw up the OS enough that you need to boot to recovery. Both cases are taken care of by a 600MB partition that allows various recovery tasks. This boots faster than a CD and is accessible by holding command-R at startup. The only question is, what happens if the entire harddisk died? This might help.

Trivial install and update Impact

Once the install file is downloaded, installation of the Lion is a simple 5 click process. A simple user like myself absolutely love it but a power user might complain about the lack of control. In fact, the install was so simple I left the MBP to its own device for about 15 minutes and came back to find that it has already booted Lion. The 3+ year old iMac too over 30min for the entire install but that's due to its slower hdd.

The user accounts and settings transited just fine from Snow Leopard to Lion. Most of the settings are preserved with a couple of updates. The common apps like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office suite, and Adobe CS5 all seems to work just fine. A couple of stuff did break but is easy to work around by updating them to newer binaries.

Control Elements in Lion

There are a number of UI changes to the Lion. For me, the UI seems to revolve a lot around touch sensitive devices like the MBP's trackpad. I am slowing getting used to the new features. A couple of notes.

I like the new arrangement of spaces. Doing away with 2D spaces makes more sense for me since I very rarely think of the 2D spaces as a huge canvas. Instead, each space had its own purpose and my preferred way of navigating between them are Ctrl-# instead of direction. In that sense, the new linear arrangement makes more sense to me.

The new Mission Control, in lieu of Exposé, offers better clarity with the inclusion of spaces control. However, unlike Exposé, Mission Control does not reveal minimised windows. Instead, the user is pushed to the new App Exposé. While I expect minimised windows to show up in App Exposé, the feature is hardly useful if you have minimised the entire app. So it's, sadly, back to searching for the app in the dock.. something I thought was a thing of the past.

Launchpad is a welcomed addition. The trackpad gesture makes it so much faster to launch apps compared to launching the Applications folder. This is a good feature reduce clutter in the Dock. I personally still prefer spotlight as my application launcher since my hands are usually on the keyboard.

Natural scroll for me is a mixed bag. Traditionally, computer users have oriented scrolling around the scroll bar. In one fell swipe, Apple both removed the scroll bar (or rather, offered API's to do so) and reversed scrolling direction to what it feels is more natural. It is a mixed bag for me because I got used to the new scrolling direction within a couple of hours. I like it better because it just feels more correct, that instead of moving an imaginary scroll bar, I am now moving the pages. I recall scrolling in the wrong way when I first used the two finger swipe and observed a couple of folks doing the same. Now that I learnt to do it wrong, Apple decided to reverse it. The problem now comes with interactive web pages which uses scrolling.. I'm now magnifying instead of zooming out. What used to be natural is now new again. I'm sticking with Apple's natural for another week but if I find myself totally confused especially when I switch between what's natural for Apple and for Microsoft, I might have to back off.

Still on the trackpad gestures, I miss the three finger swipe for going backward and forward on webpages and other pages in the various applications (like System Preferences). Web browsing is one of those times my hands are on the trackpad but having me to aim and click on the arrows is insidious.

Lion's Bundle & Blunder

The new OS comes with upgraded versions of its bundled apps. The most significant for me is Mail 5. To be honest, I never quite liked Mail 4. I used it to test our IMAP performance previously and stuck with it due to lack of cheaper alternative. I very much prefer Gmail to Mail. In fact when a friend approached me about a better email alternative, I pointed him towards MS Outlook in Mac Office 2011.

I was this close to putting down the dough for Mac Office 2011 myself. Outlook, while not perfect, does a lot of things better than Mail 4. Rich text is one of them (in this case, Mail 4 doesn't do at all). Drag and drop any file into a message and you'll have to wonder what happened to it. Still, I was cheap and avoided rich text.

Exchange support in Mail 4 is rudimentary at best. While I can do away with Exchange in my old job, I now need reliable connection to Exchange. The occasional email that does not show up for a couple of days on Mail that was okay in the past cannot happen now.

Mail5 deferred the decision. For the last 2 days, it behaved well enough. I like the new UI better. It does not seem to be the CPU hog that Mail4 was. I cannot say for sure that it is a worth replacement for Outlook yet but things are looking good and at S$298 (or S$398 for the family pack), I am giving it a bit more play for now. In any case, I am only a week into my Mac Office trial.

Spotlight's improved. With Quicklook built right into the search results, it is now easier to find the specific document.

In spite of having a modern, even Zen, widgets and style, Apple, with all its wisdom, went for a downright outlandish look for iCal (Calendar) and Address Book. After saving approximately 16 pixels round the scroll bar and another perhaps 10 around borders, iCal has cheap leather look for its title bar that is 60 pixels high. It use up another 15 pixels below that for a border and some tear remains from previous calendar pages. Scrolling across different weeks/months are unnatural at best with some annoyingly inconsistent animation. The week view scrolls horizontally between weeks in line with the swiping action but the month view attempts unsuccessfully to simulate tearing of calendar pages. This makes sense if you are tearing into the next month but reversing the scroll reverses the animation without taping the page back in place. Of course, the animation is silly compared to Google Calendar's simplistic but functional approach and cannot be turned off. If not for the Exchange integration, I would have avoided iCal like I used to.

Several applications that came with Lion implemented the new Apps Resume when Launched. It is a great idea and in fact forms a neat team with Auto Termination. It is not so great to see the entire stack of documents re-opened (in say Preview) when you only intend to open one document. The question is, what does the user really mean when he "Command-Q" an App? My understanding is I want to close the entire application and start afresh. Apple's perspective is I wish to stop working on this application to continue later. If it's the latter, why would I have "Command-Q" the application?

Another observation is, unlike previous OS X, an application without an open window quits itself to save resources. Very useful especially for non-IT users who might struggle to terminate invisible resource consumers.

so, will I like it?

Overall, while I generally like Lion, there are some hints that Apple was over zealous in making it work like the iOS. There are a lot of good features but miss a number of useful stuff -- the most significant being the 3 finger swipe for browsing and a convenient way to see all minimised windows. I enjoyed some of the changes immediately, others will take some getting used to and yet others represents changes so fundamental I struggle to understand the design philosophy. I do not see myself falling back to Snow Leopard and perhaps, Lion may become more acceptable over time.

MacBookPro8,2

2011-07-19T23:36:00.000+08:00

After suffering with an underperforming Windows Vista HP Elitebook for almost two weeks, I finally took delivery of my built to order MBP. Getting an MBP was an easy decision after eliminating the MBA. The question of which MBP was the big question.

I have been using the 13" MBP for over a year and am well aware of its shortcoming and strengths. The newer 13" has a faster CPU but a somewhat weaker graphics card. I am attracted to the hardware of the 15" but not entirely enthused about the extra 500g. I already find the 13" a little heavy. 17" is out of the question since I do need some mobility.

The 15" was a fairly easy choice when I literally ran out of screen real estate on the 13" during a coding session when I was hard flipping between eclipse and the reference webpage on chrome. The 15" would have fit both windows nicely so I went around Apple distributors testing if I can accept carrying the 15" around.. the verdict.. I still hated the weight but loved what the 15" had to offer. Since I wanted the 15" for the hardware and forsook mobility, I considered only the higher end 15".

There were 2 more choices.

First, the harddisk. Upgrading to a 128GB SSD costs only S$140 with a potential speed boost towards c. The huge question is if I can live with what is, by today's measure, a puny hard disk. A quick check with my 13" revealed that I kept well within 100GB. That's because my photos and most of my other junk are all on an external hdd. Still, I will be taking a risk should my need for space grow later on. Fortunately, with the falling price of SSD (or at least that's the hope), I can get a faster one a couple of years on.

The other is a less mutable change. I was definitely going for the high-resolution screen since screen real estate was my main reason for getting a 15". This presents a somewhat difficult choice of anti-glare or nice glass screen. Personally, I didn't really enjoy the silver bezel of my previous MBA. The glass screen of the later 13" MBP was quite a blessing in terms of ease of maintenance and, I admit, vanity. The black, one piece surface just looks so much nicer and the colours simply pop off the screen.

OTOH, I have suffered with glare on many many occasions. I expect to carry my MBP around a bit and do some work around less ideal lighting conditions. In the end, usability in less ideal lighting, which with the glass surface means just about everywhere, won over aesthetics. I will have to work a bit harder to maintain the screen cleanliness but as a bonus, the 15" is about 100g lighter.

So far, I am enjoying the speed of the SSD and am very very happy with the AG screen. Colours still pops although I'm certain the glass screen would have looked better. I'm still in the midst of setting up the environment with all the office packages and stuff. So far, I am enjoying my purchase.

And I really need to get stronger.

Google+, reinvent social

2011-07-09T15:20:00.002+08:00

Google's latest forage into social media is finally unveiled.

And unlike its predecessor, Buzz or Orkut, Google did not try to reinvent the wheel this time. Well, they did introduce some really neat concepts that may very well redefine social media.

Roll back to 1 year ago. Following the failure of Orkut and several failed products like Wave and a half crippled Buzz, Google seems doomed to surrender the social web space to Facebook. During this time, the number of facebook users grew from strength to strength. Parents and politicians are all coming online to see what the fuzz is all about, and many of them are hooked.

Just when all hope seems lost, Google strikes back with Google+ (affectionally known, hereafter as G+).

Even though it is a limited trial for now, I see why I will use G+ a lot more than I used facebook. Facebook, for me, is a time waster. My job doesn't depend on it so I just go online occasionally to check out what my friends are doing. When I really need to contact anyone, I resort to email, phonecalls, or even Google Chat. Now, facebook's got chat too although I just naturally reach for my gmail chat instead since that page's almost always on... and my friends are mostly online there anyway.

To endorse my view that facebook is a time waster, I installed the Stay Focused extension to all my Chrome instances and guess which website made it to blacklist first? In fact, I consciously installed Stay focused specifically to limit my time spent on facebook.

If facebook is a time waster, what does that make G+? Well, I regretted joining G+ immediately. Google conveniently inserted G+ notifications into Gmail and the dilemma set in that very instant. Should I blacklist Gmail? That will be difficult since I do use Gmail for serious work.

Turns out G+ is not exactly like facebook although they do look strikingly similar at first glance. G+ organises information into streams which is exactly like facebook. The similarity ends after the first circle.

Circles are central to your G+ experience. They help you organise your contacts into different groups without restricting who or how your choose to organise them.

For a starter, you probably want to differentiate your really close clique, from friends you can put a name to the face, from acquaintances. You may also want to round up immediate family, extended family, then people you usually only meet at a Chinese wedding dinner but did not know exists into different circles. Finally, you may have people you put into different interest circles, e.g. I have one for my running and badminton buddies, and intend to start one as my business contacts start appearing on G+.

To top it all off, but without taking any benefits from this circles, adding users to circles treats you to some really nice animation, as does deleting circles. If anything, this adds some fun to organising your circles.

Now that you have taken the trouble to organise people into circles, its first use is obvious. You can choose specific circles for everything you share in G+. You can also top off the recipient lists with specific people you wish to share that message with.

Starting a conversation in G+ very closely mimic the properties of an email service. The thread starter initiates the list with people he wishes will participate with that specific conversation. So at any one time, any G+ user can participate in different conversations with different groups of people as controlled by the individual who initiated the conversation. Of course, the thread starter can still open his conversation to the general public, just like what most of us ended up doing in facebook.

Other than sharing, circles are also used to organise how your receive conversations. Facebook organises streams either as a public stream or from specific user. G+ circles presents an alternative where you can view streams from specific circles of friends. Depending on how you organise your circles, this feature can be tremendously useful in controlling the message clutter. E.g. with a family outing coming up, I may want to see if any family member has any update or ideas.

Finally, just because someone added you to a circle does not mean you should return favour. It is their decision that they wish to follow your public conversation and to allow you to follow those open to that specific circle. Being in someone's circle is also an abstract concept without telling your friends which circle you put them into. In other words, friendship as defined by circles, just as in real life, are not necessarily reflective.

Google hit a very nice sweetspot with G+. Social does not equal public... at least it is the case outside of college. At least for me, G+ is a closer match to how I manage relationship and conversations outside of social media. I personally see G+ replacing email in most non-confidential conversations I have with my various groups of friends.

I am excited about G+ which very well answered my earlier dilemma. G+ shall, at least for now, be acquitted as a time waster. If I do have time to burn... I can always "hang out" in G+.

Clouding Cloud Computing

2011-07-03T02:38:00.002+08:00

Cloud Computing... the latest buzzword in IT.

Cloud is so big that practically every IT provider is offering some sort of cloud services. Certainly the internet has subsumed so many aspects of business that IT would not be an exception. The offerings of cloud computing are loosely classified into newer buzzwords like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). Different cloud providers seek to differentiate their offering by providing different aspects of each and there are prime examples in each category of cloud offerings.

I was looking at alternatives for hosting a server and thought to look at the offerings from various cloud providers. I remember Sun Microsystem used to tort US$1/CPU/hour for what was their grid offering. That was a fantastic pricing metric. It, in fact, set my expectation that cloud providers should be at least as transparent as hosting providers with their costing.

Amazon's EC2 was great. I could work out how much its service was to cost me. In fact, I could even work out the costs given different usage scenarios. I had to be careful with network transfer costs but at least Amazon was forthcoming with the costs.

Microsoft's Azure pretty much had the same transparency. The cost is quite clear after mapping out the requirements. So is Google's AppEngine or Google App, and Salesforce.com.

Things start to go downhill from there. I could not get any price info online for IBM's smartcloud. It says "Call our sales representative". HP did not even say what their cloud platform really offers. They likely want you to "Call our sales representative". I would have expected Oracle, the company that bought Sun, to get it right. No. Oracle now says "Call our sales representative".

It gets me thinking.. what exactly is so complicated about pricing a cloud computing solution that a sales representative is a nagging requirement? Isn't cloud supposed to be a turnkey solution where the customer just goes online and pay for computing as a utility.

By layering the pricing behind a sales representative, agility, one of the best feature of cloud computing, is lost. I will not expect the sales representative to present a simple sales pricing but the customer will likely be faced with a hotchpotch of legalese. The final solution likely tie the customer into the provider's solution with an expensive exit clause and some minimum required utilisation. How different is this from getting your own server hosted? In fact, "call our sales representative" is less transparent than traditional hosting service providers who usually put their price list online.

Re-discovering Running

2011-07-03T01:42:00.001+08:00

For a while, I reverted to the data-driven runner. Having Endomondo running on my phone wasn't too bad. I do not monitor the stats too carefully and can still concentrate on the run. The Garmin 310XT changed all that. Since I got the Garmin, I set it to beep when I fail to hit a given cadence, vibrate at every km mark, and was constantly checking my pace and other vital signs as if my life depends on it. Well, my life may but the run certainly suffered.

Do not get me wrong. The Garmin is a fantastic tool both for keeping a record of the run, and as a training tool. My problem was I just relied on it too much. I found myself checking the stats every few minutes and that proved detrimental to my runs.

The result was, I stopped enjoying my runs as much. The need to get on the correct pace as determined by the watch robbed me of that explorative spirit that drove me into longer distances.

This past wednesday, I did a 12km run. A new colleague requested to do Hyderabad Rd. I told him the week before it was one of the most scenic routes I've done. I admit I did not quite map out the route for the run so I was making the route up as we go along. Instead of going through the usual Kent Ridge Park, we modified the route ever so slightly to return to Pasir Panjang Road and then up South Bouna Vista Road. In a whimp, I decided that we should turn into good old PGP and just run through the eastern side of NUS before turning back to my new office at Mapletree Business City.

Of course, I was dead tired by the end of the run. It was one of the faster 12km I've done without stopping -- okay, there was one traffic light we had to wait for less than a minute. Otherwise, we basically jogged all the way.

I enjoyed the run a lot. That spirit of adventure was back. After the first 3km, I basically ignored the Garmin and just went on my way. The next time I checked was the 9km mark when it was already too late to turn back. ShenTat suffered a little in this run but we sort of had it coming. We have not increased our distance by too much lately but kept doing the same 9km route.

Best lesson learnt in this run is I should stop all the beeps and vibrates of the Garmin for the long runs. They are very useful for tempo training but otherwise, the watch should just silently record my run.

How to tie your shoes

2011-06-06T11:09:00.000+08:00

Terry Moore: How to tie your shoes | Video on TED.com

Terry spent 50 years tying his shoe laces the wrong way and showed the world a better way to do it. I have tied my shoe laces wrong for almost 40 years.

It illustrates a bigger picture than tying shoe laces. Many of our practices may have been outdated or outright wrong but we surrendered ourselves to the less than ideal results. There can be many reasons why something you have been doing ever since is failing to yield better results. Circumstances change and newer practices may have evolved. What is key is to recognise such opportunities for improvements and take active steps to test and incorporate the new method.

I have just tied my left shoe with the new method and my right with the old. Will you change how you tie your laces?

My New Cleaning Trio

2011-05-16T17:35:00.000+08:00

Moving back after any renovation work always involves a lot of cleaning up. It is particularly difficult to oust the construction dust that sneaks into every nook and crevice. Hence, I introduce my new cleaning trio.

First, the heavy vacuum cleaner to replace my aged Philips TC535. Dun bother looking this model up the internet. It was obsolete before the internet became popular and likely even precedes HTTP. I had it since the mid 90's. It is one of those machines that kept working and Philips continued to support the product until quite recently. I applaud Philips for their commitment to their product.

After a distraction to Dyson's offering, I finally ended up with the Philips FC8734. Dyson does have a lot to offer. It's smaller, just as powerful and very well designed. At the same time, Dyson costs more than twice the Philips and I do not trust the construction of the handle. The FC8734, on the other hand, is very well built. The problem plaguing it was the size. I wanted something that can fit into a 15" high shelf. But when I found the fantastic offer on the FC8734 at Best Denki, that requirement just had to give. At S$229, it's less than a third the price of a Dyson so it would not matter that the FC8734 took up 3x the space. Ultimately, it's still a Philips -- a brand I trust.

Next is a handy handvac to replace the dead Philips 12V. I have had several such handhelds and invariably the batteries die a premature death. I have tried replacing the batteries but the time spent adapting batteries is just not practical after a while. Since we used the handvac most, we decided to invest in the Dyson DC31 motorhead.

The DC31 has some very nice features going for it. It is easily the most powerful handheld with a canister designed to be easy to empty. The battery is likely the defining difference (and why I will pay twice the price of another 12v). The DC31 uses an Lithium Battery making the entire unit lighter than the 12v. It indicates when it only has a minute of battery left so there is no need to dock the DC31 on a charger. In fact, the battery is detachable making recharging (or replacement) easy.

Last but not least, I have my Neato XV-11 Robot. I had always wanted a cleaning robot for the wrong reason -- because its cool. Cleaning the house would have been a bonus. When a colleague bought his iRobot, I went crazy scouring the net for a better robot. My research turned up the Neato which is better in practically every geek way than the iRobot. It comes with a laser distance sensor means I can build a UAV someday.

Being the smartest of the lot, the Neato is charged with the daily cleaning of the house. Every morning it wakes up just before I leave for work and vacuums the hall and bedrooms. The DC31 picks up where the Neato left off, or the occasional spills. The DC31 also helps get rid of insect intruders. Finally, the big guy (FC8734) is mainly used once a week.

So far, this setup has kept the house cleaner than was.

Unreasonable Statistics

2011-04-04T11:53:00.001+08:00

Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car | Video on TED.com

When I saw Sebastian Thrun's TED talk on Google's driverless car, I concurred with his vision that removing human errors from driving can save millions of lives. Like what Sebastian described, I brave through heavy traffic on a daily basis and witness less than wise driving decisions made by drivers. Not such a great driver myself, I am lucky not to have added any fatalities but certainly messed up some driver's day on a daily basis.

Sadly, his idea will be killed together with the first death directly or indirectly caused by it. It does not really matter the real statistics behind the lives saved. How the scenario will play out will be an initial media hype when this technology becomes cheap enough to put into the mass market. The hope will start snow balling until a faulty unit or something causes the death of somebody's child. The focus of the media will now be turned to the apologetic designer and maker of the system, and law makers might play their hands to force this automation out of production.

This is why it is important to recognise is how we are wired to think. As Dan Gilbert demonstrated in this very spirited Ted Talk, we are actually quite bad at estimating both odds and value.

There are quite a few real live incidents we can learn from.

The 11 March 9.0 earthquake that hit Japan triggered massive tsunami that washed away 12,000 lives with another 15,000 still missing. Yet, the focus of recent discussion has shifted to the paralyzed nuclear reactors that has killed a grand total of 2 workers with potential death toll in the heart melting less than 50. Averting the potential nuclear disaster enjoyed disproportionately greater focus and attention than helping the millions currently displaced by the destructive waves but waiting for food, shelter and medicine.

In the local context, we cried out against cyclists who has caused death of grandmothers and injured our children while accepting the numerous of lives stolen by incompetent drivers. We demanded that SMRT install million dollar gantries to prevent senseless loss of about 2 lives annually while most of us will rather stand at the sideline than administer CPR on a heart attack victim. We completely avoided possibly tainted dairy products from China while risking our own health with fatty food and a sedentary lifestyle.

Is it surprising then that flying in a commercial jet seems more dangerous activity than swimming in a pool? Or that we believe that most of us are better drivers than a computer ever can be?

We cannot stop the media from sniffing out interesting stories with high entropy. Afterall, something that is common is usually not worth reporting. We need, however, to continue to be aware that just because something is not highlighted does not mean it is not important. Michael Jordan made news when he missed a dunk but there is no denying he is still more formidable than me on court even though I have never made the news for missing a dunk.

Back to Sebastian's vision, I hope for the day I will arrive safely at my destination unflustered by the fighting for road space or inconsiderate other drivers. I will love to recover the time I spent on travelling. And I hope we will have the mental maturity not to kill this vision on a single mishap.

P.S.: Recognising and addressing a problem while it is small helps us manage it better. We just tend to overdo it even at the expense of larger more imminent problems.

Reducing to Apple...

2011-03-21T00:09:00.000+08:00

I was walking through Challenger today when I suddenly had this thought.

While other makers think about squeezing more features into their products, Apple thinks about taking features out of their products.

What's going on? Consider the ipod. It's a simple product that did less than the competing Creative Zen back in those days. While Zen has a hodge-podge of everything including a kitchen sink thrown into it, the iPod simply does music and functions as additional storage. Even today, you will be hard pressed to find a portable music player with equal lack of features.

On the same tune, the iPhone does less than its competitors, the BlackBerry, Windows CE and now the Androids. Ditto the iPad. Apple's various notebooks and systems may feature the latest CPU and all but are sorely lacking in flexibilities that you find in the cheaper PC.

It is not difficult to relate how such reduction in features result in a neater and friendlier device. Pushing the thought further, perhaps the average consumers is bombarded with too much features that looks useful to their creators. Companies should think of presenting a sensible package that is a subset of all possible capabilities to avoid confusing their users.

Driver ploughs through Critical Mass Cyclists

2011-03-02T18:27:00.000+08:00

While I do not condone obstructing traffic to demonstrate cyclist rights ala Critical Mass, ploughing down 17 cyclists even in an fit of rage is most certainly murderous intent. The driver ought to be brought to justice with the full weight of what he has done.

His reactions to cyclists as obstacles in his path is not isolated. Many drivers are less than patient when faced with any slower vehicles ahead of them and cyclists, unfortunately, travel at the lower spectrum of speeds and are easy prey. In the case of a Critical Mass, they lost the moral high ground that the driver's actions were unprovoked as it is in most case of a cyclist-driver incident.

Perhaps, the best outcome though is better awareness of the vulnerability road users who are not caged in metal, strapped into the seat and then pillowed by luxurious airbags; that a little tolerance and mutual respect on the road can go a long way to save lives of not just cyclists.

The roads can be a much better place if we all learn to share it.

DTracing the Cloud

2011-03-02T11:41:00.000+08:00

Good in-depth presentation and discussion led by Bryan Cantrill and Brendan Gregg.

Android App Inventor

2011-02-26T22:38:00.000+08:00

For fun or laughter, the baseline for Android app development has just been lowered. While you cannot export the projects into the fuller Android Development Platforms like eclipse, there are examples that shows a lot of what can be done from a few simple clicks..

Reinstalling or Migrating Android

2011-02-22T16:44:00.000+08:00

Reinstalling or migrating any computer system is hard.

I recall the days when I frequently needed to reinstall my Windows and the pain of getting all the drivers and applications in the correct place, not to mention, the data. Migration to a new box presents roughly the same challenge with the complexity of figuring out the new drivers and such. With Time Machine for the Mac, Apple has greatly reduced the pain involved with reinstallation (or migration). Even moving between mobile phones was quite a pain to get all the contacts in place -- we can just forget about any other data.

I was thrilled when Google announced that Android 2.2 can reinstall its apps over the air but could not grasp the full convenience it was to mean to me. Already, I enjoyed automatic data restoration with my contacts and calendar out in the cloud (mostly with Google).

Today is the 4th time I hard reset my phone. It will not happen to most Android users but I was using a nightly Cyanogen port from Zit Seng. The cost of wanting the latest feature is these inconveniences that I occasionally need a re-install to stablise things. Here, the Google experience outdid even Apple.

Given that most of my data is out on the cloud anyway, the only data that needs to be restored is my SMS. There is a fairly neat app that does this for free (sms backup), or for a little dough, you can do this over the air with Handcent (or other online SMS backup). Most of the apps I use already sync their settings into the cloud and the only one that mattered (and that did not) is the ADWLauncher itself. ADWLauncher does provide a means to backup/restore the settings locally but that did not work that well.

So the manual part of my reinstall involves, backing up my SMS and ADWLauncher settings, wipe, reinstall, setup my Google and other acounts like office email, twitter and facebook, and restore SMS and ADWLauncher settings. What's neat is seeing how Android works to pull down all the previously installed apps over the air. Of course, I have a few apps that were bought outside of Android Market that I had to restore but that's little work since the heavy lifting's been completed by Google.

So my fresh phone is restored to working order in almost 1+ hour, all without hooking it up to any computer.

For now, I am just imagining how much work it might be when the time comes to migrate to a newer phone. The Nexus 1 has served me very well for the past year and is still going strong but when the time comes for a change, I will certainly be looking for another Android device with the Google experience. Over the air push is just so much convenience.

Phishing Attack

2011-02-16T16:40:00.001+08:00

We got a warning on our corporate email about a phishing attack earlier in the morning and sure enough, I received the attack email.

Curious, I copied the link and found that the attacker uses Google's online service to collate the data... so I did Google a favour.

It puzzles me how such attacks can still be successfully that it is still worth the attacker's effort to even attempt it. That said, social engineering attacks are still the most powerful and difficult to defend against.

Tanabe Pro5 & TEAS Review

2011-02-06T00:03:00.003+08:00

A week after I replaced my stock springs/shocks with the Tanabe Pro5 Coilover, I went back to Jeep Chee to install the TEAS system.

Over the last month, the car also went though several sessions of lowering the back, raising the front by installing an adapter and finally settling at a ride height that is 1.5" lower than stock. The car has cleared the highest hump I will likely encounter (at Pasir Laba Camp) so this ride height will stay. The guys at Jeep Chee were pretty cool with all the adjustments although they were as anxious as me to get the ride height correct.

So earlier today, we drove the car into KL again. The 360km journey and all prior experiences are combined into this post.

The Tanabe Pro5 coilovers are serious business. The range of adjustability ranges from softer than stock to bone shaker harsh. They hold the wheels to the ground much better than stock in any settings and probably related to the lowered ride height, the car felt much more confident around corners. The car rolls significantly less except through extended turns. Generally, in any setting, the car feels much more nimble to any steering inputs.

TEAS is Tanabe's interpretation of allowing the driver control over damping characteristics of the Pro5 without leaving the comfort of the cabin. Adjustments are available across 16 settings (1-16), separately for the front and rear dampers, with 4 memory positions. Further, the TEAS can stiffen the damping according to vehicle and engine speed. The TEAS's speed detection is accurate to within 1km/h.

In automatic mode, the TEAS simply adds a preset to the base damper setting based on one of the 4 memory positions. As a result, I mainly use 1 of the 4 memory positions using the softest setting for lower speeds. The automatic mode on my TEAS is set to increase damping by up to +5 over a fairly large range of speed. When I am feeling up to it, I will use a different memory position that stiffens the ride for a more aggressive drive (and I've only done it once).

The system worked brilliantly on Singapore roads. I am hitting corners harder than I should now. My two reference corners are the PIE Bedok exit that is sort of an S-curve starting with a hard right, and the Bayshore exit on ECP with familiar left turn I use almost daily. The car feels a lot more confident on those exits that I hardly need to hit the brakes leaving the expressway. Further, the car handled much better on LTA's Highway 1 replica along ECP between Sheares Bridge and Keppel Viaduct and South Bouna Vista Road.

Along the North South Highway, I pushed the car to 160km/h just to test its stability. Even with the suspension left at its softest setting, the car felt very planted to the highway. I also observed that the car actually felt like its travelling slower in spite of the speedo reading so I had to readjust my sense of speed. The suspension system aced both in hitting corners hard and driving at higher speeds.

On to comfort. At any setting above 6-3, the car starts to feel harsh. At 16-13, the car is bone jarringly fun for the driver while being plain bone jarringly for the passengers. All the more reason for you to install the TEAS. The setting of 4-1 gives the car a really smooth drive and is good for any fairly straight and long highways (like NSHW). In fact, this setting feels a lot more comfortable than stock.

So to summarise, I love the new setup enough that I highly recommend this as a worthy (expensive) upgrade over the stock suspension. On the softer settings, it is more comfortable while still giving a better handling, on the harder settings, the car is transformed into a fun (bone jarring) car. TEAS is not just added convenience but truly enhances the experience of the coilovers by providing essential adjustability. The automatic mode improves the usability of the system especially along windy country roads where different settings are needed at different speeds -- think South Bouna Vista Road.

Math

2011-02-04T15:59:00.000+08:00

The July of 2011 will have 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and this only happens every 853 years...

or so says another of those internet chain letters I am so efficient at deleting. I got several of these through email messages, facebook and even SMS. The promise of the good fortune to those who propagate this message not withstanding, would it be true that such a miracle date occurs?

It is easy enough to verify that the July of 2011 indeed has 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. That would be reason enough to trust the rest of the message since afterall, this miracle year happens only once a millenium. What luck we have to live in this era? What harm will it do to spread this samaritan message to all our friends so they can reap the good fortune as well?

If I had told you that 1st July of 2011 is a Friday and this happens every 853 years, would it sound quite as credible? No, you will immediately suspect that this happens much more often than suggested. In fact, a quick check reveals that 1st July 2005 and 1st July 2016 are Fridays.

However, it logically follows that if the 1st July is a Friday, that July must have 5 Fridays (1, 8, 15, 22, 29), 5 Saturdays (2, 9, 16, 23, 30) and 5 Sundays (3, 10, 17, 24, 31). This is just like the July of 2011, 2005, and 2016.

What happened is we are assigning arbitrary likelihood to what we hear and we verify the easy things. The first claim sounded plausible (although amazing) -- what the chance of the said days occurs 5x a month, what's the chance of that, and the easy verification checks out, there is reason to accept the claim as true. The 2nd claim, although logically equivalent, did not sound as (in)credible so although the same easy verification checks out we remain suspicions about the claim. That suspicion prompts us to do the less trivial verification of either looking ahead with our calendar, or construct a simple mathematical model how each year advances the day. In the end, we see through the lie of the 2nd claim.

Oh.. and if anybody cares, the July of 2864 starts on a Tuesday. Sorry if I have shattered your hopes for extreme fortune this year.

Cabbies are the worst...

2011-02-02T11:26:00.000+08:00

drivers of course.

That's the unified swear I hear from most casual drivers. I will not be too far wrong that any driver who has been on the roads enough has had a less than pleasant brush with some taxi drivers.

My piss with cab drivers dates all the way back to my cycling days. Just a couple of days ago, I had a close shave with this cab who swerved into my lane to pick up a couple of passengers. It was a good thing I saw the passengers flagging the cab and my cyclist instinct predicted what will happen next.

The list of other road atrocities committed by cabbies includes but are not restricted to filtering without signaling, filtering recklessly, driving recklessly in general, not giving way, speeding up when you signal to change lanes, and last but not least, road hogging. Ok.. I admit that I have never seen any cabbie being distracted by operating his mobile phone although it is common among non-cabbies but that long list surely meant something...

Or not?

All the above road atrocities are committed by most other drivers. Singaporean drivers are a stressed up bunch. We live in jam packed HDB flats, we are used to circling around looking for a parking lot (and fighting for it), our highways are so crowded we need to pay toll. Behind the wheels, we are a very different monster and tend to interprete the slightest inconvenience as intentional sabotage.

As an antithesis, which collection of drivers are the best? Those driving Honda Civics? No. Driving BMW's? Nope. How about truck drivers? Buses? Cherry QQ's? Red cars? MPVs? Maybe a different grouping strategy. Old men behind the wheels? Young executives? Pretty ladies? What about yourself? Do you belong the collection of best drivers?

What is happening is how our brain works. When we are stressed, we escalate our emotions and feed off our own negativity. It is part of our fight or flight response to prepare for the worst. A innocent act of simply not accelerating the moment you signaled to filter is given a negative connotation. That driver simply closed the gap to prevent me from filtering in. So kiasu. Or worse, it may just be a reflection of what we would have done in the same situation?

Then, unless damaged, we are excellent at seeing patterns. Two unrelated inconvenience will be sufficient to trigger a grouping response. Perhaps both of these drivers are driving Korean makes. Perhaps both are ladies. We create those patterns in our mind and start to look out for possible matches and scrutinise for bad driving to reinforce our newfound belief.

Finally, any good gesture is naturally oriented towards an individual. We know how Mr. Lee Kong Chian is a philanthropist at the same time all rich people are greedy and selfish. Consider the worst demographic of drivers. We know that female in their 20's make the worst drivers (luckily not many drives cabs). The one who just gave way to you, or thanked you for giving way was just an exception. Between our negativity and pattern seeking, we make room for individual outlier that does not affect our generalisation.

Cabbies are singled out because they are common and they are always on the road. Our inclination towards negative thoughts and pattern seeking will simply seek them out easily and attach bad driving to all cabbies. We then discard the cabbies who exhibited good driving into the large exceptions bin. So we have one or two good cabbies and the rest of their world are evil and drive like they are out for blood.

Now, it should be obvious what I was driving at. A few bad eggs will turn the entire world against cabbies since they are out on the road all the time. We need to recognise our tendencies towards over generalisation and our inclination towards negative thinking. There is no data to show that cabbies are any better or worse drivers than the rest of the road users but our opinion of them are very skewed towards them being worse. The next time you are on the road, start looking out for good cabbies. You will find that they are aplenty. You can apply the same to any collection of drivers that touches your nerves.

Lastly, because they are out on the roads a lot and they are a syndicate, cabbies can be instrumental in making our roads a better place. They are in the best position to spread courteous and generous driving like giving way, giving proper signals, and thanking each other. To get there, other road users like us should start doing the same.

Note: I'm not so naive to believe that all inconveniences are innocent. There are good and bad drivers on the road. You cannot control what they do but you can control how you let the situation affect your day.

6.3km of Barefoot Fun...

2011-01-27T23:36:00.030+08:00

Was at Annetta's office with an hour to spare. I had a choice of either surfing the web on my measly Nexus One or go out for a run. I had my running shorts and single, and a towel for after the run. Only equipment missing was... shoes.

I just picked a route that I am familiar with. South Bouna Vista Road, check! Kent Ridge Park, check! Possible bailouts at Science Hub (2km) or along Pasir Panjang Road (4+km). The distance had to be under 7km to fit within the time I had so I did not need water or any other support. So off I went.

I passed a couple of runners and drew stares. I am quite used to the attention by now and probably even enjoying it a little since I usually run in my huraches. Even in camp when shoes are socks are a necessity, I cut out the toe area of my socks to fit into the VFF. The common theme remains one of disbelief and wondering if I was nuts. The stares mellowed as I greeted them.

I had to pay more attention to my running form to keep blisters away since my more recent barefoot ventures hovers around only 3km. Then there was this part of South Bouna Vista road that I chose to walk instead due to ongoing construction work. I started having doubts about the sanity of the decision after Kent Ridge Park because I was not properly hydrated the entire day and the road got a lot rougher and sandier. Plus, I suffered bad as the wooden planks along the treetop walk pinched my feet.

In the end, it was the most enjoyable run. For those parts where I need not watch the road too hard, I could pick up some speed and that felt smooth and comfortable. I did the entire 6.3km without any blisters forming by adjusting my form as soon as I feel any hotspots in the feet. That was a validation of good running form throughout the run.

I have done different parts of this route many times so the scenery no longer excites me. There was something else fun about the run.. a sense of accomplishing something primal in covering the distance on my own two feet.

First Run 2011

2011-01-13T01:29:00.000+08:00

In my defense, it has been raining practically every evening when I am open to running. I even brought my gears along over the past weeks in my failed attempts to run. Exactly 2 weeks after my closing run in 2010, I decided to brave the weather with a new running route.

Annetta was attending some workshop in Novena Square so it was a good excuse to start the run there. I have never ran around that region so I plotted a route through the various residential estates connecting up to Lornie Road, through Andrew Road, and then back to Novena Square. The plotted route ran about 12km and I would have 2 hours including a haircut and washing up.

It was a cool evening.. in fact, it was cool evenings for the past 2 weeks. Run took a immediately wrong turn as I venture into the unknown. I practically had Google Maps on my mobile phone for the first 4km until I am comfortable that I should be on the right track. The problem with new routes is always that if you are unfamiliar with the grounds, the routes tend to play tricks on your head. That road names in Singapore tend to sound similar for any vicinity does little to help.

Anyway, I made it to Malcolm Road. I walked the road like once some 2 decades ago when I was a student at Catholic Junior College. The school is still there but I almost ran past it without noticing. The JC is no longer baby blue as I remember it. The terrain was as punishing as I remembered and the wet roads did not help.

Merryn Road is completely new to me. I have checked it out earlier in the afternoon on Google Street View. The attraction was that Merryn Road connects to Kheam Hock Road which runs under the Pan Island Expressway. That is a neatest way to cross the expressway and get to Lornie Road without any interruption.

There are pedestrian walkways on both sides of Lornie Road. I chose to run along the road travelling southwards because I wanted to exit into Andrew Road. The walkway on this side was broken into several sections due to residential estates and road exits. Fortunately, it was still a good run given that the breakages are nicely leveled and does not happen too often.

Admittedly, I was doubtful I was on the correct exit turning into Andrew Road. For a road that runs alongside MediaCorp, it seems .. a little quiet. There was an inconspicuous road sign signaling that I was on the right track. So for the first time in my life, I jogged past the fortress that produces all the shows I do not watch but had to pay for (TV License).

Out of Andrew Road, it was the decision point if I should proceed to Mt Pleasant Road. Mt Pleasant Road would take me to Onraet Road which exits to an overhead bridge across PIE and back to Novena Square. Google Streetview revealed a nice entrance to Onraet road from PIE but the Mt Pleasant Road end was partially hidden by bushes. I was feeling quite okay at 8km so I decided to go for it.

Mt Pleasant Road was a good run if not for the backtracking. It offered endless hills and seem to never stop ascending. In fact, I was climbing for almost 1km and spotted many turnoffs to nowhere. When I finally chance upon Onraet Road, it was marked "Private Road" and obviously featured some off road running. Well, not when it is this dark and wet, and definitely not in my huraches. I was not ready to stake my chance against the high likelihood of snakes in those bushes. In Camp Training will start the coming monday so bush bashing can wait. It was all the way back down Mt Pleasant Road past the many turnoffs to nowhere.

This route was completely new and I have never set foot on most of the roads before -- I've cycled through them a couple of times at least a decade back. The run was hilly the entire way and weaves through all the smaller roads with very light traffic so there is hardly problem with any vehicle fumes. I started the run with bad ankle that magically worked itself out, I left my bottle of Pocari at the start, and it even rained halfway through the run. Still, this route was memorable for that there was practically no traffic lights to wait for. I just kept running and running and running and a bit of getting lost.

I very much enjoyed this run that also marks the start of my 2011 running season.

Zeng'ed Suspension... the Tanabe Sustec Pro 5

2011-01-03T20:49:00.000+08:00

My 5+ year old Civic (ES5) is no longer stock. OK, I've replaced the tires twice but that's all part of maintenance but today I dropped two grands on a brand new coilover.

Over the course of the last 3 weeks, I've been researching coilovers and started sourcing for a Tanabe or Mugen. The rational was that my good old ES5 started rolling a little on corners and noises are starting to creep into the cabin. I could replace the stock suspension for a grand but I really hated the stock rear suspension -- too bouncy. Progressive springs of aftermarket coilovers would be better comfort while improving cornering.

So, enough of the excuses. Here's what happened today.

During my sourcing for the suspension, I narrowed the search to Tanabe and Mugen. Since Mugen does not make any suspension for the ES5 anymore (if ever), it had to be Tanabe. I was prepared to end up waiting over a month for the Tanabe Sustec Pro GF but I was elated when Jeep Chee had the Pro 5 in stock and it will fit my ES5. It will set me back S$300 more than the ProGF but the Pro5 would offer adjustable damping. If I went crazy at any time, I can add the TEAS system for on-the-fly adjustment.

2 hours after "enquiring" about the ProGF, I drove out of Jeep Chee on my spanking new Pro5.

First, the car is much lower at the nose but retained its height at the rear. The sifu at JeepChee refused to raise the front in the expense of stability. So I have my front wheel neatly tucked into the wheel well with maybe an inch clearance but the rear is riding a good 4 inches higher. Not that cool for looks but more importantly, it means that I should totally avoid parking head in. On the other hand, this may just work out better when I reverse into those tree lots with a raised rearend. :P

Moving on to performance.

The damping is set to soft for the rear and medium for the front. The front settings is easily accessible beneath the hood but the rear settings will require a bit of surgery to get to. The suspension takes the sharpness off the road very well. It does not glide thru the road. The passengers definitely feels the road more yet without the harshness of a stiff suspension. The suspension dampens road humps better than stock.

Even with the damping set to soft, the car now hits corners very confidently with minimal roll. I cannot tell if this is due to the lowering of the nose or the overall stiffer spring setup. The car also feels more stable at highway speeds. In fact, it felt slower so I need to re-adjust my senses to avoid speeding.

Built quality of the Pro5 is what you will expect of a quality japanese product. The creaks and noises from the aging setup was removed and the car does feel like new again.

Given a choice between data and phone...

2010-12-27T20:06:00.000+08:00

The mobile phone has come a long way. It is ubiquitous and in Singapore has a penetration rate of some 142% as of Dec 2010. That means every person in Singapore has 1.4 mobile plans. What is more impressive is that mobile broadband would expand by some 30% from Dec 2009 to 6.2million subscriptions, or 122% penetration.

Mobile internet users tend to have the best of both worlds as far as communication is concern. They have voice mobility of a mobile phone and as well as data mobility. They can be contacted any time, any day by the relatively traditional means of a phone, or more recent telecommunication inventions of Email and online messaging.

Sadly, such mobility comes at a great cost just across the causeway. Voice calls would cost a few dollars per minute and data comes at S$20/mb. I could avert the expensive voice by avoiding making/answering any calls until a more convenient time but avoiding data effectively cripples my state-of-the-art mobility device into a dumb phone.

I could also pick up a data-enabled prepaid SIM from Malaysia but the compromise is I will have to switch phone number. The bottomline though, is the mode of communication I am more willing to give up.

Lets break it down. If I choose to roam with my local carrier, I will

still be contactable via the same phone number so voice and SMS will still reach me;
only be able to check email when I roam into a free wifi covered area, which, trust me, is more common around the greater KL area than we can find Wireless@SG;
have to forget about online messaging;
not have access to Google Maps and other live-saving online resources.

Switching to a Malaysian data-enabled prepaid card, I will

have constant access to all the online stuff like email, online messaging, and the above all important online resources;
just have to inform those who might contact me of my new number.

So between voice and data, I chose data.

Marathon Singapore 2010 - 21km

2010-12-08T00:22:00.001+08:00

So we signed up for a half-marathon before we even started training. We gradually build our distance up to 10km and rose up to the 10km event at SBR2010. I am so proud that all of us completed our first ever half-marathon together. And we did it minimalist style with VFF and Huraches. At the same time, congratulations to Jenson and ShenTat for achieving your best times in a half-marathon (although in Tat's case, it's really his only timing).

The Awards

The Best Persistence Award goes to Jenson. Despite a fairly bad start to the day -- car broke down, cannot get cab, cannot find baggage drop, and a series of unfortunate events that extends beyond the run to the 2km hike for his baggage -- Jenson managed to keep running the entire 21km. It's not just this run... it's how he approached every single run we had. Now how he manage to finish a minute behind me despite that shall remain mystery to be unravelled.

ShenTat shall be awarded the Best Reliability Award. He seems to be everywhere taking care of everyone along the way. He was with me when I went a bit fast, and with Jenson to cheer him up along the way. He's the one who prepared all the gel packs and served us drinks along the way. He is solely responsible for cheering up Jenson as Jenson rambled on about his series of misfortunes. I will be even more grateful if we successfully solicit a nice dinner from Jenson for being late.

I personally deserve the Best Instigator Award. No one else managed to convince any of us into doing the biggest 21km race in Singapore without any training. In the same evening, we also sowed the seed to the 10km SBR2010. All that over a dinner of Teo Chew Porridge. I got everyone out running hills before they knew what hit them. In a way, I think I'm cut to be a con man, in a good way, that is, if it's not such a contradiction.

The Run from my perspective

In a sentence, it was fun.. really fun and I will do it all over again.

Since you read past that, you are looking for the grueling details, so here goes.

Getting There

I took the chartered bus at 5:15am at bedok stadium. Unlike the SBR, I actually woke up with adequate time to have a proper breakfast (buns I got the evening before) and got the pick up point with time to spare. The bus ride was otherwise uneventful and got us to vivocity before 6am.

The Start

We were the last few to start (officially 42 mins late) due to some technical delays. Race preparation includes ample Vaseline under the armpits and inner thighs, a pack of gel and a lot of chatting.

0-10km Sentosa - Gelpoint

So the first 9km is within Sentosa. Sentosa is slightly hilly but not overwhelmingly so. Some good hill works to Siloso beach, then a bit more slopes into Universal Studio. We stuck together and took it at a leisurely 8-8.5min/km pace. We even stopped to take a few photos with our favourite cartoon characters.

I picked up a little pace after exiting Resort World Sentosa's car park but took an extended stop at the Gelpoint at 10km.

Elapsed time: 1hr 25min

10-15km Gelpoint - Keppel Viaduct

I was very impressed that the half-marathon ran on the Viaduct instead of under it. While running under the viaduct will provide more shade and actually save us a climb, I enjoy the opportunity to run on the Viaduct. I drive through here every weekday morning and evening so it is a blast to run through the same road.

I picked up my pace to around 6.5-7min/km after the gel point. Being a truck road, the tar surface is incredibly worn out revealing the hard rocks. The very pliant sole only mask the sharpest edges. I ran on the painted surface to avoid overwhelming my soles through the 4mm huraches.

Running on the viaduct provides a very different perspective than driving through it. I may be too focussed on the other cars to notice the uniqueness of every building along the way. The viaduct offers a bird-eye's view to the dock at keppel although there was not that much activity on this sunday morning.

Elapsed time: 2hr 5min

15-17km Sheares Bridge and choke points

A common finishing point for all the distances (10, 21 and 42) meant the routes have to merge at some point. These merges always create chokes.

My "race" quickly deteriorated immediately past the 15km mark where a crowd mysteriously congregated. I had to slow to a walk then pick up pace again several times. Then comes the big merge where participants from all distances meet forming a massive beeline of bodies. The disruption (and probably the distance) hit me enough to slow me down significantly. Before I know it, the next 2km was done at close to 9min/km pace.

The final big climb (Sheares Bridge) is placed at what is mentally the toughest point in every run, 16km for half-marathoners, 37km for full. A lot of runners were walking making it difficult to exert a consistent pace up an already taxing climb. I had to weave my way past many many people.

So I was focused on finding a path through a thick jungle of slower moving people. Near the top of the climb, I attempted to pass a rank 4-5 people wide. There is a hole for 1 on the left and as I accelerated to move through it, another runner stepped in a split second before me. In my desperate attempt to avoid a collision, my sidestep and brake busted my right knee. That.. was the end of the run for me as I limp my way to the next medical point.

Elapsed Time: 2hr 20min.

The rest of the ... walk

Lucky for me, surgical tape is available at the medical point. I improvised a patella band that supported the busted knee for the remaining 4km. That Andrew caught up with me and walked the rest of the way with me definitely helped shorten the distance. It also helped that there was no where else to go except push to the finish.

I made myself useful by chatting with a guy in Bikila before he decided to "tough it all the way" to the finish line.

It was quite a spectacle to have plenty of volunteers encouraging us but every one running past me in the last 50m as I stroll towards the finish line, partly in pain and partly leisurely. Sadly, the marathon-photo folks decided not to shoot me. Hey, I may be in pain but I made it too.

Total time: 3hr 08min 25s (official)

Post race review

I was running a healthy 2hr 20min at 17km. I can only lament that with the rest of Sheares Bridge, then the descend and the flat, I should be looking at a personal best finish at 2:45. I was not feeling that tired at 17k due to the slower first 10km.

I might have done better to recognise the signs for me to walk up Sheares Bridge instead. There are only a handful who were running and there is always the danger of exertion at this point in the run with all the disruptive forces at play.

The disappointment of not completing the entire course running aside, this is certainly the most enjoyable run. I love the opportunity to run through some places that are out of bounds in my usual runs. Universal Studios Singapore and Keppel Viaduct are very nice touches indeed. I like that there are volunteers the entire way giving us the Stim Pack jab when we needed it. Their hi-fives worked their magic, whistles not so much. Water points are well placed although the grounds around and immediately after all the watering holes are unreasonably wet -- the runners needs to be educated about littering.

The routes are very very well marked despite the less than clear map -- largely due to parts of the routes that are usually closed to public. Another fine touch is the distance markers with all the encouragements messages. The markers are so nicely done that runners stopped to take photos with them.

At the finish, runners are immediately given a bottle of water to quench their thirst. They are then ushered into lines to receive their finisher medals and survival packs of snacks and chilled 100plus. This falls exactly inline with the runners needs at the various times.

Only improvement I can think of is the typical mud at the finishing point and that baggage reclaim area should be much closer than 2km from the finish.

Gratias Vobis Ago

Just trying to sound complicated. I looked this up in Google... That is "Thanks to you(s)"in Latin.

A lot of preparation has gone into making this half-marathon even possible. We ran our heart out once every week. On those few weeks we did not run due to weather or being away, we ate our tummy out. Not to mention, the plan to mass sign up was hatched over... a Teochew porridge buffet.

I have the following people to thank for the success of this huge production.

First and foremost, Annetta for her patience to the extent of being patronising, putting up with all my nonsense and supporting my ever lengthening runs. The craziest run I did was the 22km home-office. My family who are always inquisitive about my weird adventures but always there for me.

Then my two buddies, Jenson and Shen Tat. You guys keep me entertained and enthused the entire journey. I will love to torture you with longer and harder runs but its all in the spirit of spending more quality time together.

My office mate, Alvin, for all the encouragements and entertaining my queries and flamboyance. He is a much better runner than me even though he limits himself to 10km. Bernard who took me on my first extended distance -- a 17km jog to prepare me for the half.

Andrew, a good pal who I should always have kept in contact with, caught up with me literally during my walk and walked with me to the finish line. Thanks buddy.

Finally for this final showdown, thanks to all the volunteers, supporters and every participant who wore their encouragement messages, and all who worked to make this marathon happen. To the lady runner who carried exactly the same message as mine albeit less artistically written, "Yes, you overtook me again at the 19km mark.. and I am too slow"

Y'all made possible my run of 2010.

As Season 1 closed on the high note of completing a half-marathon, we shall see what Season 2 has to offer...

Undercover Boss...

2010-12-07T23:24:00.003+08:00

My channel surfing turned up the above episode where the boss of GSI Commerce went undercover to take up a series of Peon positions in his business to uncover working circumstance and (in the show's words) the truth.

This particular episode irked me when it showed a customer service agent, Danielle, showing lack of empathy to her customer over some errors in charging. It showed Danielle failing in several attempt to get her message politely to the customer and the entire conversation went south. The customer refused the credit return she was offered but went on and on about why the return is not acceptable. Eventually, the customer got so pissed she slammed the phone.

All this unfolded right in front of the big boss, so you'd think this rude agent will finally got what she deserved.

Take a step back and think.

No customer service agents are there to piss off customers. Danielle worked in escalation which means all cases she handles were unsuccessfully processed by the frontline agents. In fact, the customer instantly took control of the situation when the boss himself was at a loss amidst the heat.

Next, what Danielle tried to do was to explain GSI's credit return policy to the customer. The customer was not unhappy with Danielle even though it eventually transpired to that. She was unhappy with what Danielle can offer her. She was unhappy with the GSI policy. The conversation was already sour before Danielle picked up the call.

Having been in the customer's shoes on several occasions, I can understand that frustration. However, I fail to comprehend the boss's reaction. Instead of asking questions like, "How can the charging error be prevented?" and "How can I empower Danielle to serve the customer better?", he personalised the blame on a powerless lady stuck between a corporate policy and an unyielding customer. Her job was to explain the very policy that is preventing her from satisfying the customer.

Inflexible company policy is the culprit behind every defensive customer service agent. The show ultimately went on to show the boss reprimanding Danielle for that event. Did she get what she deserved? Or was that just publicity act to defend GSI's image to their customer?

Anyway, Danielle has put up her own youtube defense.

The need for such drastic measures (like going undercover) highlights a weakness in a business's reporting structures. It is understandable that corporate head offices behind many layers of management, especially corporates with many business units, may become disconnected with what is happening in their business frontlines. In the 3 episodes I have watched, I have yet to see any bosses take any long term measures to address that disconnect.

In this GSI episode, I think the boss's week was completely wasted. I do not see any forthcoming corporate changes.

Home Run

2010-11-26T14:27:00.001+08:00

When I said I wanted to run home from Vivocity and run home from work, I was toying with after the StanChart Marathon. As luck may turn out, I ran to office from home instead.

The story must start from Wed. It drizzled enough for the regular gang to not run but the weather cleared during dinner. As if testing our determination, it rained harder on Thursday evening foiling another attempt. Frustrated that this is the final training week and I will not get to run the entire week (that is complete new to me), I decided to pull off a home-office this morning.

The logistics were simple. Annetta will drive all my stuff to office. We are members in a gym nearby so I can take a shower there after the run. I can then suit up for office. I woke up at 5am (impressive) to have a very light breakfast, some final packing and hit the road by 5:40am. I was expecting a 3+hrs run.

The route is a simple reversal of the previously planned route (office -> home) with a few minor tweaks. I'll end at Annetta's workplace instead (logistics reason), and I'll use Sims Ave instead of Changi Road due to better running path.

The first 11km before the planned break at Suntec City was quite a blast at an average 7min/km pace. That the street lights were all in my favour certainly helped a lot (although it also means I have little rest). The 10min break allowed me to refill my bottles and towel down.

The push from Suntec was littered with a fair bit of obstacles. The only way to cross Raffles Ave is an underpass. Then, the entire section from Collyer Quay to Shenton House offered seriously bad road due to construction activities. It was past 7am by then so the roads to busier with people arriving for work. Lastly, Shenton Way is to GPS signal what the Bermuda Triangle is for planes. Endomondo showed me working my spidey magic swinging from building to building -- in reality, I ran a very very straight path. The good thing is, the GPS does not really bother me, and the lights, miraculously, were all still in my favour (although I plead guilty to a couple of jay running). I was also so tempted to stop at a fruit stall at Shenton House for a drink or perhaps some bananas... next time maybe.

The last rest stop was Seah Im Food Centre at 17km although I had to take another towel break at 14+km -- just too soaking wet. This one took longer as I venture thru the food centre looking for a drink. Lots of Teh Tarik on offer but that will be so wrong. I went with a can of Qoo and another can of Sports Water with salt. This rest stop took another 10min.

From here, the run just went south. Endomondo just decided to quit the run (or maybe I pressed something). My right knee started to act up forcing me to walk. In fact, walking seems to make it worse. It felt like some ligament just went out of place. I decided the hell with it and mix walking and trotting along at what must be a snaily 15min/km pace. This went on for about 3km.

A surge came at Jalan Mat Jambol. It could be the rest or perhaps that I love S. Bouna Vista Road... I just picked up the trot and never looked back till Annetta's office.

Now, 6 hours after the run, the knee still feels awkward. No muscle aches (maybe tomorrow). I should do this more often :).

Poverty, Money -- and Love.

2010-11-16T15:47:00.000+08:00

Jessica Jackley's insight about the less fortunate certainly changed the way I look at delivering help. She answered a throbbing question I always had about why the less fortunate are not helping themselves. My basis was wrong all along. They are not less fortunate... they may not start with as much money but they have their skills, livelihood and pride. My visits to rural places in China and India does reveal fairly happy people. What they needed, as Jessica highlighted, is not donation nor gifts.. they are happy with their ways of life. Help them live that life better.

While donations provide instant relief for victims of disasters, microloans is the appropriate mechanism that achieves the best balance of giving the needed support without impacting the way of live of the recipient. The responsibility to repay the loan will help the recipient retain their pride.

The last thing we want is for misplaced generosity to victimise these proud people into beggars...

Minimalist/Barefoot Running.. 1 year later.

2010-11-13T00:00:00.005+08:00

This is an anniversary article that summarises my experience through the 1 year of running.

I'll start by thanking Annetta for being more than supportive at my crazy ventures. As much as she hated me going barefoot, and getting out so often and for a long time, she accompanied me for my first run every week -- Thanks Dear :).

So I started running with my KSO in the gym exactly one November ago. I was proud of my achievement of 3.2km back then. I garnered enough confidence to hit real tarmac for a slightly longer 3.8km run by end of the month. That left my calves burning. By end of 2009, I finished reading Born to Run and was pushing 6km.

As my running transited into the new decade, I already had the longest run of running. My attempts to do regular running has never lasted more than 2 months.

The spring of 2010 brought more spring to my steps as I started running barefoot. At the same time, I got Annetta to join me on Monday on a fairly regular basis. In these 3 months, I pushed 7km, got my first running related injury and extended my barefoot range (on friendly grounds) to 5km.

Running became very much a part of me by summer 2010. I convinced Shen Tat and Jenson to sign up for the Standard Chartered half marathon. We also signed up for the 10km event of Singapore Bay Run to check our progress. Wed is now our weekly run practice.

Autum 2010, half a year after I started minimalist/barefoot running. I am running more now than ever before. I am hitting an average distance of 20km weekly. I did not lay off running even when I visited Taiwan for tour. I finally broke 10km -- a first in my almost 40 years of being. I also collected my first 2 10km completion medals in the Yellow Ribbon and SBR in the huraches I got/made back in July.

Today, halfway through winter 2010 and a year after I got my KSO, Annetta is running 5km in her Bikila and 10km is the norm for me. I actually laid off badminton in November to run, that's a significant change in priority.

What surprised me is how someone who never succeeded sustaining his running interest for longer than 2 months is now looking forward to running and regularly do a distance previously thought as crazy. Yes, there is certainly an innate temptation in running ever longer distances.

I am staring at the 21km at Standard Chartered Marathon, both looking forward to it and pondering how I can do that distance. It's only a year ago that 3km was a struggle. I am starting to hatch crazy plans to run home from Vivocity. I eventually want to run home from work.. a distance I previously will only do on a bicycle. More importantly now, I think a marathon is a possibility.

And all these were chain effects from running in the KSO on Friday, 13 November 2009...

Chris McDougall's Talk at Google...

2010-11-12T15:17:00.001+08:00

Here's the talk given by Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run at Google. Great speaker and must watch for anyone who is running.

Doom V: Rise of the Tablets...

2010-11-10T16:24:00.000+08:00

I had quite a giggle watching this old west shootout. The last 1 minute reminds me a lot about the ancient 1st person shooter game Doom. Except this is shooting at a Tablet instead of monsters. I'd imagine this being a possible game concept. Shooting at evil tablets and as an added challenge, we can make what is displayed on each tablet count.

Hey you are in My Space (.com)...

2010-11-07T16:32:00.001+08:00

Google Maps border becomes part of international dispute

It is hard to imagine how derived online data can be brought up as evidence in international dispute, in particular where borders are concerned. Surely these countries and the United Nations should be fully aware of where their border is. Their respective border patrols should also be aware of their legal boundaries.

Google map is not always accurate. For example, even in tiny Singapore, Google mislabeled my office as Pulau Bukom and misidentified the tiny waterway between Seletar and a parcel of reclaimed land as Johor Straits. I will grant that such errors are a fact of live. Afterall, even countries may be in dispute over territories, borders do shift and data entry do err. What is worrying is how such data are being used.

Do not get me wrong. In spite of a few minor errors, online maps are fantastic tools that improves our way of life. I am happy to identify where I work, stay, or am going on such maps. In particular, I always research any location I have any interest in on Google Maps before going there. It is simply such a great tool to find out about businesses and tonnes of other information. I even scout my running routes before the run using street view.

However, to admit such maps as legal evidence for border dispute is certainly using these tools at an entirely different level than intended. Such tools uses data derived from other sources -- sources that can be wrong. Also these tools are only as accurate as the provider, be it Google, Bing or Yahoo, are willing to make it. For example, seeing that a location close to my office block is under construction in satellite view on Google Maps does not mean that the construction is still going on. As much as Google tries to consolidate the whole world's views into its servers, it is easy to see how this is a behemoth of a task even for Google. Data do expire, bugs do occur and sources can be wrong to start with.

So while I do scout my runs and find out about locations I am interested in with Google maps, I do not expect it to be 100% accurate. I.e., I will not arrive at a location, see that it is different and declare that I am in the wrong place. I certainly will not stake a claim on where I can build the wall around my house based on Google's data. I simply cannot believe countries are doing it.

Even with the proliferation of internet data with various presentation and the various virtual presence, common sense should prevail. The world is full of information and misinformation. The internet only made these more readily available.

Super Athletes of the Sierra Madre

2010-11-02T15:05:00.000+08:00

Excellent video about the Tarahumara and the Copper Canyon Ultramarathon (46miles)

Normal Pronation & Choosing a Running Style

2010-11-02T12:25:00.000+08:00

The above is a very popular illustration used when advising runners on the type of running shoe to choose. It shows how the common runner heel strikes, transits then finally pushes off. My immediate thought on the illustration is Plantar Fasciitis and other running injuries.

Coincidentally, Annetta did her fastest (but still slow) almost 5km in her Bikila last evening. I felt so proud for her, not because of her timing nor distance, but that she told me she enjoyed it "a bit". She even had enough energy to race me to the finish and was at no point short of breath.

I recall when we first decided to pick up running over two years ago, we visited a professional running shop to get her fitted with "proper" shoes. Those guys are highly experienced runners and did exactly the above. Annetta got a pair of Asics GT-2130 -- excellent shoes by any measure. While we both improved over time, we never really enjoyed running.

Fast forward to today, I will shed those Asics at the drop of a pin. We bought the Bikila without even attempting to run in them first. Of course, I now subscribe to the minimalist approach to running (which is paying huge dividends). More importantly, I stop believing in "No pain no gain" mantra. If running is part of our primeval capability and kids love it so much, why should running be anything but fun? Yet most of the runners live in their own world of painful determination.

The key difference between how Annetta ran last evening vs previous runs, and how I run now vs a year go, is really the running form. Running is not just about the stamina to push the body through the paces. There is technique that must be (re)learnt. There is a subtle balance that you strive to achieve between staying stationary and falling on your face. It is a very efficient movement that you can achieve moderate pace by just tapping your feet while maintaining the aforesaid balance. Finally, it is an activity any able bodied human is born to perform well, that we lost at some point in our lives but are fully capable of reclaiming with the appropriate mindset -- it might take a ~~bit~~ lot of patience.

Back to the illustration, it is awful. It does not matter if you under/normal/over pronate. If you need to pronate at all, you are heel striking. For Pete's sake, screw the new shoes and work on your running form!! And finally, remember to wear a smile.

Sunday Run

2010-10-31T21:34:00.002+08:00

Sunday is never a running day and it's not because I'm lazy. I usually have a badminton game from 11am - 1pm so that leaves the afternoon perfect for lazing around the house... ok, maybe I'm lazy.

With the Standard Chartered half-marathon just a month away and my comfortable training distance hovering around only 12km, I really need to step up my running activities. So this Sunday marks the shift where I will prioritise my running activity over badminton. That surprises even myself since running never had any chance.

Knowing that the badminton game tends not to be too taxing, I agreed to join Bernard for a run in the late afternoon. Bernard had to pull out due to another commitment but I decided to follow through anyway. If anything, I will have full control of both the pace and distance.

I picked a route featuring the Bedok Park Connector. It was a shortened version of route I drew up earlier in the week for a 13+km. This has a couple of advantages.. the route is generally very flat being entirely on reclaimed land; I am very familiar with the terrain/surface of the first 2+km having ran it countless times.

I ran barefoot for the first part of the run for as far as it is comfortable. This helps set up my form for the rest of the run. The surface on the park connector turned out smoother than I expected so I ended up doing almost 4km barefoot. I switched to the huraches after crossing to East Coast Park since I want to save myself for another run tomorrow.

The rest of the run is generally uneventful. The park is loaded with picnicker and buzzing with activities. There are wind surfers out in the sea, swimmers, tonnes of cyclists and roller bladers, and of course a lot of runners. While I do expect the park to be busier on a sunday afternoon, I did not expect this section to be that crowded. I can only imagine if my run took me west of the lagoon.

As usual, I caught a good number of runners with the "can you really run in those (huraches)" look. Nobody really stopped to ask although the huraches certainly look more comfort oriented compared to the normal Nike, Asics, Mizuno and more and more, Newtons. I also cannot help noticing how painful the run must be for them that they cannot even return a smile. Most local runners are just so serious about their runs.

I collected a thumbs up from another runner dressed like a triathlete and actually caught up with a runner in VFF. Honestly, I ran an extra 1km just so that I can make a nice comment about his shoes. For now, the VFF is the most minimalist I have seen on any other runner on my runs. Can't help wondering where all the other minimalist runners are... VFF (any model) is always out of stock in Singapore.

After this, Sunday afternoons does look plausible for runs. Thanks to Bernard for suggesting :).

Saturday Morning Bone Shaker Run...

2010-10-23T15:51:00.000+08:00

I taunted Jenson the evening before to go for a run in the morning. No games on Saturday so it was a perfect replacement for Thursday's missed run (due to Haze). Miraculously, I managed to drag myself out of bed and stepped out of the house in my huraches at 6:40am on a Saturday morning.

I had an ambitious plan this morning. I wanted to do at least a 13km with the option to extend to 15km if all goes well. The route will take me through Siglap Park Connector then back via Bedok Park Connector. Between the two connectors, I only have to deal with Siglap hill early in the run.

The run did not kick off to a good start. I had problems getting my HR data from the HxM. After fiddling for about 5 minutes, I gave up and started the run (it somehow decided to start working later). I noticed my stride was feeling funny but I quickly dismissed it to my muscles being cool. I left the stride will work itself instead of paying attention to it -- bad bad mistake.

I was feeling the run by 2km. The body was hinting to me (at that time) to stop. I really wanted to do Siglap hill so I pressed on. The crest of Siglap hill (3.5km) came and went. The urge to stop continued to grow.

The next milestone was East Coast Park at 6.5km. East Coast Park is incredibly flat. I hopped along for the next 2km from the subtle encouragement of fellow runners along the way. The East Coast Food Centre proved too tempting to end the run. I was drained from hunger and thirst.

A 330ml can of 100+, some 150ml of water and all remaining 150ml of my H2O+H2O mix later, I just sat there soaking in the buzz at the food centre. It must have been 10 minutes before I decided to shake my butt off the bench and drag the rather beaten body home. The 3km hike was turned into a really slow recovery jog.

The first 8.4km was not fast at all. In fact, it is slower than my average pace even for the 13+km which I came home feeling better.

After the run, I figure there is something really wrong with my running form. The run definitely shook some nuts and bolts loose in my body. I could feel some strain on my knees and ankle for the first time after starting my minimalist runs. The bad form is probably exacerbated by going for a hungry run. The cause is likely because I am hardly awake in the first few km and not mindful enough about the run.

On hindsight, I should have paid more attention to the running form from the beginning.

VFF Walkabouts...

2010-10-11T11:04:00.001+08:00

So Tat, Annetta and myself got our new Vibram Five Fingers ordered from RnJ Sports.

Ray from RnJ Sports is a great guy. He's very fast to answer queries and helped set up payment using my non-US credit card through email when their website will not accept my card. Overall online shopping experience with RnJ was excellent.

Back to the VFF's...

Tat tried to hide his toes with the Black/Black KSO. I wanted the Bikila and ordered the somewhat subdued Grey/Palm version. Annetta surprised me by going really loud with her bright pink bikila. The whole gang went VFF in Orlando through our visits to Disney and Universal Studio.

These shoes are great ice breakers. They provide such good conversation topic even for complete strangers. I am sure we come across as Vibram salesman. Kids were either loving it or freaking out at the sight. Adults wanted to know if they are comfortable and what you can use them for.

We certainly drew enough attention that Vibram should at least sponsor our shoes. Reactions we got ranged from "loving it" to "it's the creepiest shoes I've seen". We even got our photos taken numerous times. Yeah, we know when you are holding your handphones at that angle!! It's a long shot but if you took any photos of this bunch of 3 folks in weird looking toe shoes in Disney/Universal studio between 4-7 Oct and have those photos online, do leave a message.

I already have prior experience taking the KSO out for trips. I love how they are so compact compared to shoes and take so little luggage space. The fact that we packed 4 pairs of VFF together with our clothes into medium size duffel bag speaks for how compact they can be.

Other than the extra attention, both KSO and bikila are great to walk around in. The VFF allows the toes to spread naturally so does not constrict foot function like most closed toe shoes. This aids in exploring the parks. In fact, Jenson and Jenny noticed how we are still so full of energy at the end of a very long day at the Magic Kingdom.

With a full week under the Bikila's belt, the only worry I have is to keep the VFF from stinking up. At the end of the trip, I avoided wearing the bikila onto the flight in very real fear that it will stink up the entire plane. In a way, wearing the VFF for a full week is not so different from wearing the same sock for the same period.

So, even if you have no intentions to run in the VFF, they are still really neat and comfortable shoes to travel with. Just have to take precaution to keep them from stinking up...

Oh Tablets...

2010-09-27T18:45:00.002+08:00

Nope.. I really meant Tablet PC's like Apple's iPad.

The iPad is spreading like wildfire around me. First a colleague had to get one from the US as soon as it is launched. Then, another colleague pre-ordered it in the UK for him to collect during his holiday. A third got his at the Singapore launch, and the forth colleague got his through an IT initiative in our company.

5 months after it is available availability, I am still figuring out a place for such a device. The iPad fits exactly between a really smart phone (4+" display) and a really light laptop (10" display). In form, it is too large to fit into the pocket and a measly 300g separates it from the lightest netbook available today. In function, it is a lot closer to the mobile phone except it will not make any phone calls.

If the iPad is representation of tablets, the features it chose to sacrifie seems unreasonable.

Yet, the entire segment is thriving as if this is the future of computing. Microsoft reacted almost immediately, hardware makers are announcing Android based tablets. Ignoring the operating environment for a while (be it IOS4, Android, ChromeOS or Windows Mobile), what exactly does this segment entail?

Most of the iPad owners use it as an electronic magazine. I am very impressed by the interactive contents and the brilliant display. Rotate the iPad and the content will rearrange itself around a more pleasant format. So carrying along thousands of magazines and books in a single device sounds like reasonable application, but I rarely do. Even in this arena that appears to favour the iPad, I find my mobile phone more suitable in most cases. It has superior mobility and allows single handed operation.

The owners also use it for browsing the web. This is something I find puzzling. I too do quite a bit of browsing but I prefer a much bigger screen and a physical keyboard. Nevermind that the iPad needs to start supporting flash and java contents. As it stands today, the iPad will only be more suitable than the other devices at home and away from the PC. In this domain, the laptop will be a little less wieldy, and the Nexus one is a little too small. In both counts, they are just tiny annoyances. Personally, I'll pick the laptop anytime (but my iPad owner fan complains about the heat from the laptop...).

Email is the next most important application after the web browser. Users of web-based email services like gmail may disagree but there are folks who still relies conventional email clients. I still do and have it setup on both my Mac and my phone. A friend prefers iPad's soft keyboard to his black berry. I prefer to swype. Either way, the Nexus One is already a very capable email platform and only gets annoying when I need to write very complex email messages. I do not see iPad being excellent at that, perhaps a tiny bit more tolerable.

The problem listed is not unique to the iPad or its software but rather the hardware form factor. The bit of use cases it fills does not justify my carrying around an extra device. It is not going to replace either my mobile phone nor my laptop. In fact, it is not even designed to. I only occasionally carry my laptop home and do not miss any intermediate device along the way. The iPad would only be additional weight for those days. When I do bring along my laptop, the iPad will not serve any purpose.

From its inception, the iPad (and tablets) seems like a solution in search of a problem. Silver bullet for all of IT's woes or placebo tablets, the device is borderline useless to me. Obviously I am not in the target segment for such a device. But between the mobility of a smart phone and the functionality of a netbook, is there really such a huge market?

Singapore Bay Run 2010

2010-09-12T20:50:00.000+08:00

The Singapore Bay Run (SBR) is the first run ShenTat, Jenson and myself sign up together. The 10km run was intended to be a milestone for our Standard Chartered half marathon attempt at the end of the year.

SBR presents its set of challenges, the most obvious being the looming Benjamin Sheares Bridge. In fact, the acronym SBR did come from its earlier name, Sheares Bridge Run.

The day started late. Well, the gun was early at 7am but I was late. In all my wisdom, I set the alarm for 6am but forgot to turn it on. There was also some tiny screw up when booking courts for the coming week so I was delayed a couple of minutes there. Annetta was surprised to find me in bed at 6:40. I was ushered out of the house by 6:45 - itself a record time that includes washing up, changing and running out. Preparing my belongings the night before helped, so did Annetta who held the door for my sprint.

The journey to the run turned out to be quite an adventure. My bus almost knocked over a pedestrian who attempted to dash across the road. Luckily our bus captain was alert even at 7am. The road closures prevented my usually good navigation to reach the start point via the fastest route. I crossed the start line at 7:35.. a good 35minutes after the gun.

The entire Esplanade Drive, Shenton Way and Robinson Road are closed. It is a great experience to run along these usually jam-packed roads. Skyscrapers on both sides provided the much needed shade from the morning sun to keep the air around cool. That was quite a good way to start the run.

After leaving the financial district, it was on to the arts and shopping district along Raffles Avenue. The landscape was defaced by the upcoming F1 race. Fences were erected along the road obscuring the view. Bayfront Avenue presented the much welcomed escape from the caged Raffles Avenue. The view opens up to the trio towers of Marina Bay Sands. There was slight climb heralding the big one that is to come.

Bayfront Avenue past Marina Bay Sands and the entire East Coast Parkway (ECP) leg is devoid of any shade so we are subject to the scorching sun. The easterly direction we were heading along ECP meant the morning sun is shining directly at us. Even at 8am or a little past that, the sun is sufficient annoyance I swore I should have brought along a cap.

My lateness turned out to be a blessing in disguise since I was two minds about my pace. I was very tempted to climb Sheares Bridge at my own pace but also wanted to run with the guys. Since I was late, they took off before me and I had to play catch up. So up comes the key attraction of the run, Sheares Bridge, in all its majesty. Turns out the climb wasn't too bad. Perhaps our regular escapades into Kent Ridge Park prepared us well for the climb. Later research reviewed that Sheares Bridge is not that huge. It's 1.8km across (which we only ran about 1km) and a max height of 20m.

I finally spotted ShenTat first then Jenson just before they turn into Temasek Boulevard towards the drink station. The rest of the run was all coasting towards the finish as there were mainly a lot of construction work.

Overall, the run was very well organised. Drink stations are very well placed, there are a number of "encouragements" on display like the knight in shiny armour, a cougar (huh?) and my favourite, a bunch of belly dancing chicks. To top it off, the sponsor Salonpas set up stations to help runners with their Air Salonpas sprays.

If anything mars the run, it's the ratio of strollers to actual runners. The SAF showed its support to the run with many NSF volunteer runners. Along the way, I passed many people walking. It is understandable that not everyone wants to run the full distance but I had to pass many groups walking abreast and stretching almost the entire width of the way. It's worse when the walking groups do not all keep to either side of the road and the runners need to weave between them. By the time I reached Sheares Bridge, I just about had it and decided to just squeeze between them. Situation worsen at the return leg of Raffles Avenue when both 21km and 10km runners meet. Instead of directing the 21km to the left and 10km to the right, a better split will be to encourage everyone who is walking to keep left.

Still back to the run, I'm so happy Tat and Jenson both made the full 10km. In fact, Jenson should be especially proud he made the entire run without breaking the jog. Fantastic mental push. He did grumble about being tricked into the 21km but we'll see when he finally does that :).

Yellow Prison Run 2010

2010-09-05T21:32:00.000+08:00

Yellow Prison Run 2010 is my first organised run. I do not count this organised.

Despite being very warm the entire yesterday, it started pouring in the morning. The wetness presented a few challenges to the run. Firstly, I was most tempted to just stay in bed. After all, there is good chance the run might be cancelled due to the bad weather. The wet roads is as much culprit as the many road closures that caused massive traffic jams approaching Changi Village at 7am on a Sunday. I reached the starting point late but Alvin and Bernard were later (although technically, they beat me to the starting point since I was waiting at a further bus stop).

The rain totally foiled my attempt to go fully barefoot for this run. My soles are softened so much from standing on wet pavement it hurts running even on asphalt. In fact, it was wet enough I appreciate how seasoned the huraches were. Running when drenched is not exactly my idea of fun. There is the extra weight from the clothing and having avoiding splatter and puddles of water. The huraches aced here since they just kept going. After a while, I just ran through the puddles.

The organisers were kind enough to provide ponchos at the start of the event. Cheer leading teams from various schools braved the rain making simple march music from overturned dustbins as drums nudging the runners on. Drink points are well manned and despite me trailing most runners, I hardly see any litter around the area. Used cup collection was facilitated by a bunch of bins at various distances from the water points and a few volunteers even used their ponchos as catch bins for used cups -- very thoughtful indeed. The organisers even prepared washing points for the runners at the finishing point. The wet weather may have presented some challenges but the run was well organised I am happy to have participated in the run.

The route was well thought out and the slopes presents a good challenge. Sure, they are not the killer slopes like Canterbury Rd but it was a good mix of up and down slopes. Personally, I did not expect Loyang Way to have so much slopes. Sure didn't feel that when I used to bike there.

The run within the prison walls was definitely a great experience. The concept of imprisonment certainly shifted from captivity to reform seeing the open space instead of building blocks.

Finisher's medal comes in the form of a "Get out of Jail Free" metal key. Very nice touch.

I clocked my personal best 10km in 1hr4min. Not sure about the official statement yet but that's from endomondo.

Fast barefoot run...

2010-08-26T00:30:00.002+08:00

I kept wondering how fast can I really run without shoes.. I got to try it out today. Instead of our usual long slow distance, the gang decided to head to the track. A large part because Jenson needed to know that he can pass his 2.4 test due in 2 weeks.

Personally, I hated tracks. Looping around the same spot isn't exactly what got me into running. I need space and whatever view there is. Track is so boring anything after the 4th lap is a challenge.

Jenson sprinted into the first lap and I took off after him. The form did not settle until about 200+m into the lap. After that, I felt I was pushing the form (and what I am really capable of), so I backed off a little after 400m. At that pace, I am not sure if I can even finish lap2 without falling dead.

Interestingly, the form settled in again and I started feeling comfortable. I completed the dreaded 4th lap and was so lucky the fitness club guys decided to take off ahead of me. That's some motivation to keep me going for at least one more lap so I just sat behind them. With 5 laps down, the last lap was precisely that.. the last lap.

Admittedly, I did not give everything. I did turn up the speed a little but also backed off when the form did not hold. Jenson managed a 13:45 -- respectable for a 1st attempt and sufficient to pass his 2.4km test. I was a tad faster but not sure by how much. The good thing is, I'll still pass my 2.4 if I had to take the test.

Running on the track has its challenges. The track is soft enough to replace any shoe so cushioning is the last thing you need to worry about even if you land badly. It is also rough so definitely discourages pushing off. Two flaws about running on the track are repetitions and that you are turning left half the way!

Running fast on the track is fun... The size of the track ensures that you cannot get yourself into trouble but running too fast out of range.

Overall, I got my long overdue speed workout and, as much as I hate to admit, there is really no place better to do it than on the track. It remains to be seen if the form learnt can carry itself out of the track.

Though I'd much rather have done the Southern Ridges Trail...

SSH killed my keyboard...

2010-08-23T09:09:00.001+08:00

Funny story at work. A user was struggling with getting SSH on his newly acquired Mac to connect to our student server. He is convinced that something failed miserably at the password prompt when (in his words), "my keyboard will freeze, unable to type anything".

Done laughing already?

Of course, most folks familiar with the shell will know that the ssh command will not show your password. Still, this case highlights a significant gap in the expectations of our users. This particular user might be expecting to see "*" as evident in the web forms and expecting to click "login" somewhere. During the massive invasion of Windows to the desktop, everything was expected to be a GUI. In this web era, most interfaces are expected to behave like how one will interact with his/her favourite web browser.

While this shift in expectation should not be surprising, the undertone is how much further removed our users (Computing Students) are from the underlying system? How many students really understand how their not so simple desktop works? How many can appreciate the interaction between hardware and the layers of software?

It's one thing to not know anything about the basic command shell. It's totally another to be tricked into believing the keyboard is stuck just because the screen is not responding to input. A simple test to typing in another text input field will sufficiently show if the keyboard is really frozen.

Further, it should not be difficult to imagine that keyboard input is independent of the display subsystem. Just recall how the game you last played showed no effects when you hit an invalid keystroke...

On a separate thought, while I am happy with the increasing number of Mac Users in my community, I am not so sure it finally translates to more folks who knows about the underlying Unix. I sure hope this will change...

Barefooting Siglap Park Connector

2010-08-12T23:40:00.001+08:00

It's been a while since my last run. In fact, for over the last month I was doing only a run every week. That is a huge decline from the target and average 3 runs a week. Several things has conspired to coincide with all my running plans. In any case, I had this new route in mind and wanted to do it barefoot.

This will be my first barefoot night run. The route looks fairly safe from road hazards. Start towards the underpass behind Costa Del Sol, work westwards in East Coast Park past the Goldkist Chalets (formerly UDMC), north Siglap Park Connector and follow the MRT home. A distance just a tad over 10km.

Quite a number of obstacles along the way. Half of East Coast Park was closed due to Youth Olympic Games. A kind hearted man pointed me along an alternate route when I was obviously lost between the maze of barricades. The way to continue my planned run was through some pretty wet sand.

Further up the park, I had to run through some nasty casuarina land mines. Yes, the hard and dry fruits of the casuarina tree resembles tiny cones with spikes all around. They stick and makes their way to the worst part of the palm (between the first 2 toes). A few of these stopped me dead on track.

Lastly, the entire Siglap Park Connector turned out to be a giant obstacle. Of all the road making material known to man, we chose to brick up the road. Worse, the connector is not exactly flat with a lot of undulation in the ground. This causes extensive abrasion during the run, both from the toes falling in the gap between bricks, and from kicking bricks that popped up higher than their peers.

I had to stop the run at 7.6km and take a bus home.

In hindsight, the 10km night barefoot run was too ambitious and especially since this is un-scouted territory. In punishment, I will have to stay off barefoot run for at least a week.

Starcraft 2

2010-07-31T23:14:00.006+08:00

Starcraft 2..

It's finally out after a dozen years. That's just 4 years in the Starcraft world (as far as the story goes), but it felt like eternity for most Starcraft fans. I am a fan of Blizzard games and have every single game from Blizzard except World of Warcraft. Annetta's the Diablo type while I'm 100% Starcraft/original Warcraft.

So, back to Starcraft 2.

Launch day. 31 July 2010. Blizzard organised a huge launch event in Funan Centre with a queue that started as early as 11am the day before.. yes, that's 30 July. Those poor guys were in the queue for over 24hrs. Funan Centre overflowed with anxious gamers by the time of launch... In fact, it "needed more supply depots".

Still, the delay from a promise of delivery as early as 2008, the raving reviews from all beta testers, and the avalanche of beta game play videos on youtube all contributed to the pent up excitement and eagerness to want the sequel to the original game that defined a new gameplay niche. It brings back fond memories of the endless hours of fun we had in the campaign and network gaming with friends. That Blizzard will launch both PC and Mac versions together certainly makes me drool for the game more.

Fast forward to today. I've downloaded and installed the game. As the queue eases at around 4+pm (SGT), I decided to z'ling down to get my own copy. Impressively, the time spent from walking to Funan Center from City Hall MRT to purchasing the pre-order coupon to collecting the pre-order packs to getting on the bus back to office was a quick 10minute excursion.

Just sitting tight for a long night of learning the game...

Apple Hardware Updates...

2010-07-30T14:09:00.000+08:00

Over the week, Apple did a round of updates to its iMac and Mac Pro. There are also a couple of interesting hardware that's become available.

For a start, Apple has switched back to ATI and even the base iMac gets a dedicated graphics card, albeit the rather aged HD4670. A comparison of all the GPU used in the iMac can be found on Anand's Tech.

What's more interesting is the final availability of a multi-touch trackpad as a standalone device. Somebody, not surprising that it's Apple, suddenly had the sense that a large trackpad is actually very useful even for desktops. I'll likely not buy this for my laptop whose the trackpad is already excellent but I might just do it for my next iMac (when the current one breaks down, or I do whichever is earlier).

Apple also sprung a surprise to recommend rechargeable batteries for its devices and to produce a pretty nifty batter charger. While 1000 charge cycles and greatly reduced self-discharge is already available for NiMH batteries, these are generally a little expensive. Even purchased at bulk, these batteries costs S$6 a pop. At S$44, Apple's battery charger comes with 6 batteries making it quite reasonable. That's works out to only S$8 for the charger.

Internal Oriented Customer Webfront

2010-07-22T17:01:00.000+08:00

I just endured the most testing transaction trying to book an airline ticket from All Nippon Airways (ANA).

There is obviously different expectations between what the customer can do and what the airline business backend expects. This difference was previously bridged by the travel agents. Travel agents can be trained to understand the customer's demands and translate that to data that is required by the business backend.

Implementing a business web front that allows customers to purchase tickets directly from the airlines removes the travel agents (and their commissions). The drift must still be bridged somewhere. Most airlines I purchased tickets from took up this slack from their web front. Those web fronts just accepts inputs as the customers thinks is correct and does the manipulations necessary before passing it as data that the business backend demands.

So ANA's case was quite a surprise. ANA's website wouldn't accept 'SPACES' in the given name. Worse, the error message was unclear. It threw up some input error garbage with '_' which misled me to think that ANA wanted me to replaces the spaces with '_'. After quite a while of trial and error, it finally struck me to omit all spaces. A check with the boarding tab from my last flight confirmed it. Why did ANA impose such inconvenience to their customer when the logic to drop spaces in the web front is trivial to implement -- a maximum of 2 more lines of code in practically any programming language.

The final straw came when ANA imposed exactly the same restriction on payment. How clever! The same trick of dropping the spaces failed since the credit card companies wanted my real name. Fortunately, my given name is only 2 words so I can spill over to use the "middle name" field. The reason for imposing this restriction to payment which is not even a business of ANA completely eludes me. Even with tight backend integration, what is needed is just a single string for name as it appears in the credit card. This is passed directly to the clearing house and should not affect ANA at all. I wonder if anyone with more words in their names than me (3 since I'm Chinese) ever successfully purchased an airline ticket from ANA. Or have they to go down to the airline counter to complete the transaction?

Whoever designed the web front ought to be given a lesson about customer perspectives. The customer may be trusted to make some intelligent guesses of what you want but requiring them to learn your internal business practice and, worse not telling them what practices apply, is the most criminal mistake one can make in a customer user interface.

New type of shoes...

2010-07-22T11:54:00.000+08:00

Managed to con my officemate, Alvin, into minimalist running. Just two weeks ago, he ran out to get a VFF Bikila. I don't think he's going back to regular shoes. In around the same time, we ordered the huraches kit from Barefootted. That too arrived earlier this week.

My kit came as a 11"x9" piece of 4mm rubber sole material and two strands of leather laces. Part of the fun is the experience of putting together your own piece of the sandal. That involves tracing both feet, cutting out the rubber sole, making the holes required for the laces and finally lacing the sole.

Even the lesser arts and craft person that I am managed to put together the shoe in under 2 hours. Of course, I got tremendous help from Barefootted's excellent guide. The biggest challenge is punching the 6 holes through the very hard rubber sole.

I tried all lacing methods in the above video from Invisible Shoe. I prefer the convenience of the slip-on slip-off method demonstrated 5 minutes into the video. That is the method I used in my trial walk around the office and eventually the evening run.

The huraches are designed more for running than for walking. At least my heel striking when walking causes the front to flap into the ground. There is also the problem with feeling too much of the toe knot through the thin sole. Walking in the fresh huraches is just too awkward.

The huraches certainly do well in a run. I felt quite comfortable throughout the 9+km run. The 4mm sole is just enough material to take the blunt off the sharp edges on the road and provide the needed protection even running near a construction zone (actually, three during the run). I did not order the leather footbed so my huraches exposes the feet to the raw rubber. It feels rough but works to remind me not to push off. For a walk around pair, I'd definitely recommend the leather.

The slip-on/off style of lacing may look filmsy but worked better than expected. The lacing style kept the soles close to the feet the whole time providing the protection without being intrusive. There is some abrasion on the top of both feet from the big knot sitting on the top of the feet so I definitely need a bit of work there.

Compared to the KSO, the huraches will work better for longer runs. I was already dripping wet at the end of the hour but the huraches kept dry throughout. The KSO would have been soaking wet and given it's felt-like insoles. The 4mm soles feels much thicker despite the KSO's sole being thicker. This may be due to the KSO being shaped to the foot.

The hurache's laces may be adjustable but it might never accomplish the fit of the KSO. The KSO just hugs the feet so much better distributing any pressure from lifting the already light shoe.

I might just get a 2nd huraches for day-2-day wear, this time with the leather and the lighter foam sole. I was completely disappointed with my latest Teva sandals and the huraches looks with the slip-on/off lacing renders the convenience of the Teva obsolete. Add that the Teva's bloody heavy, bulky, stinks and you cannot run in them...

Barefoot running in Singapore...

2010-07-20T16:52:00.000+08:00

Just got a 7km barefoot under my belt. So happy that I survived without any new blisters... Blisters are bad but they are caused by bad form that the runner chose to ignore. I was planting my foot wrong causing heat spots on both sides of ball of the right foot. Eventually these heat spots developed into full blown bloody blisters.

Form aside, here are my thoughts about barefoot running on different man-made surfaces

Asphalt. This is the most common terrain in ultra urban Singapore. While the general composition of asphalt is the same, there are many differences in how they are made, and how much they have worn. Depending on the degree of wear, asphalt is the nicest surface. The slight unevenness of asphalt masks all but the largest sand particles. As a bonus, asphalt is "soft" and kind to your feet. Most park connectors features fresh asphalt surfaces.
Fully worn asphalt is a different story. The glue material receded revealing usually sharp and hard gravel surface. Running through this is almost a foot reflexology session. Worn asphalt surfaces are still runable but it shouts, "slow down or get stabbed". Unfortunately, road sides where runners usually end up in are also the most neglected part of the road, not to mention the concentration of road debris especially around corners.
Cement. Cement is the most common material for pavements all around Singapore. The surface smoothness, however, varies greatly from ultra smooth to totally brushed. Contrary to conventional thinking, rougher concrete are nicer to run barefoot. The natural (or man-made) crevices reduces sand pricking into the sole. Those ultra smooth surfaces pushes any particles straight back at the feet magnifying the pain caused by even the smallest grain of sand. There are, of course, shattered concrete surfaces that I avoid totally. Luckily, most pavements around Singapore is well maintained enough that shattered concrete is a very rare occurrence.
Bricked roads. I found several of these around NUS where I work. It is obviously a surface designed for the shodded. New and broken bricks presents sharp edges. Depending on how light the runner tread, these edges have the potential of producing some nasty cuts. Then again, I have carefully landed on a few without a scratch.
Generally, bricked roads are fairly okay barefooting surfaces. Those little gaps between the bricks may bother you for a while but you will no sooner forget they are there. The trick to running barefoot on brick roads is to tread extra lightly.
Wooden pavements. Wood is a great material to run on. It's softer than asphalt and fairly smooth. Wooden pavements are nice if each plank is a mile long and 5 feet wide. The problem is, they are quite the opposite. Small pieces of wooden planks are lined up either across or along to form the pavement. There are usually small gaps between each plank forming a pinch zone. The situation is aggravated by that the wood moves under your weight so it pinches hard. Tread with extreme caution.
Various drain covers. Drain cover in Singapore comes in many different types. There are small concrete covers that pinches hard to metal grill type covers. None of them are a pleasure to run on (even in shoes) so I usually run around them if I can, or walk if I have to.
Loose gravels. I will not run barefoot on loose gravel. I will not run barefoot on loose gravel. I will not ..
Sandy beaches. Yeah, it's man made where I run. The East Coast Park is reclaimed so the entire beach is a man made surface. In fact, this is the case for most sandy beaches in Singapore (including Sentosa). It's no different from running on any sand though.
Rubber. Seriously... if you are limiting your barefoot to a track or treadmill, go out for some fresh air!! It's so much nicer out there.

My barefoot transition is moving along quite well. 7km is quite an achievement considering that I have never run that distance before this year.

Zephyr Technology's HxM Bluetooth

2010-07-13T00:37:00.003+08:00

Guess the running craze has gotten over my head. I finally bought the Zephyr HxM Bluetooth heart rate monitor (HRM) or HxM in short.

This HRM was suggested in several sites. It turns out that Polar also launched a bluetooth HRM not so long ago. In comparison

While the Polar features a user replaceable battery, the Zephyr has a battery that claims to last 26hrs and 500 recharges. For my usage, that's at least 2 weeks per recharge so approximately 19 years. I'd be happy with half of that;
Zephyr features an accelerometer. With it comes cadence, distance and speed data;
Polar offers 2 years warranty and lots of replacement parts. Zephy trails here with only 1 year warranty and the HxM is sold as a blackbox;
Zephyr claims to work with Endomondo, the software I'm using now. Not sure about Polar yet;
Zephyr costs USD99 + shipping. Polar is not yet available;
Zephyr makes available an SDK for USD20 more. That is kinda attractive for me.

The list could go on but the description available on Polar's website prevents further analysis of the differences. Zephyr seems like a good company to go with since they supply health monitoring systems for a wide range of industries. Choosing the HxM with SDK seems easy enough.

The package arrived early in the morning. I was a little disappointed that Zephyr only shipped one of the two units I ordered. Fortunately that's the one with the SDK. The SDK is a simple 17-page documentation about the data protocol.

Firstly, the HxM will not work with an iPhone. The one that did not arrive was result of a con job to my office buddy (a fabulous runner by the way). We only found out that pairing with an iPhone officially will not work after we tried unsuccessfully to pair mine with his iPhone. On the other hand, I doubt any bluetooth HRM will work with an iPhone due to its very restricted bluetooth profiles. I might try to con him to buy an Android phone like I conned him into the VFF but that's another story.

I am surprised how tiny the HxM turned out to be, especially with the purported 26hr battery. The sensor module is very well built and looks like it can survive a swim. The HxM took 3 hours to get to full charge using the supplied USB charger. Not sure if the USB charger acts as a serial bridge -- might be worth a try. Used with a supported phone like my excellent Nexus One, operation is flawless. Pairing with the phone with easy. There is no buttons on the HxM so it turns on if it detects that it is strapped on. There is some warning about dry skin preventing the device from turning on though...

The supplied strap is very comfortable. While playing with the HxM, I left the strap on for a good 2+hrs. The time was spent between HxM experiment with various software and a lot of office work. The fastener is well positioned and Zephyr cleverly connected the cushioned conductive pads to the buttons that secures the HxM to the strap. I even forgot I was wearing the HxM during my evening trial run.

Endomondo works well with the HxM. It uses the heart rate function and records it over time and generates an impressive looking exertion graph. I'm missing the cadence readout which I am also interested in. I did not find any software that uses any function other than heart rate measurements though.

I only had limited time to read data off the device and run it through the supplied data protocol. After pairing with the device, the Mac creates a device file /dev/tty.HXM003027-BluetoothSeri (the numbers may differ). The bluetooth icon in the menu bar does not show the HxM until it connects but you can simply cat off the device file.

cat /dev/tty.HXM003027-BluetoothSeri > /tmp/HRM.readout

.. wait a few seconds then ^C.

The binary output (/tmp/HRM.readout) can be read using 0xED or any binary editor.

The data protocol is simple and fairly (apps) programmer friendly. It will be trivial to reverse engineer the protocol (probably take 2-3 hrs max). Given the amount of information in the SDK file, Zephyr should have just given it as a free download instead of charging USD20 for it.

I did not get to test out the accuracy of the cadence, speed or distance information except to confirm that they are there. The data provided will be easy to use for downstream consumer apps. Except for the R-R timing, the HxM does not expose any raw data so data consumers will have to trust the device is working its magic accurately. I imagine that some linear calibration should be all it takes to get accurate results from the device. That Zephyr produces similar monitoring devices for areas like health industry should give programmers some comfort about using the readings directly in non-life threatening applications like exercise monitoring.

Overall, Zephyr's HxM Bluetooth HRM is well designed for the intended application. The battery seems to last a long time. The battery is still at 91% after good 2 hours of playing with it and a 30 minutes run. There should be little fuss once you establish your running application is supported. Strap on the HxM, pair it with your non-iPhone, and start running -- couldn't get easier.

I'll try out Zephyr Open when I get around to it.

6km Barefoot... and thoughts

2010-07-07T23:05:00.000+08:00

Finally completed the good old Kent Ridge - Hort Park route without any shoes.

It's been a full month since my last barefoot run. This brought several factors to play. The soles is almost in perfect condition given the amount of healing time and the various layers of blisters are all gone. However, it also means I have no practice for the same time.

I have never completed this route barefoot. The longest was a 4km stretch that ended (literally) with pretty bad blistering. The longest barefoot distance in any run was the East Coast run in early June that ran out of control.. the full 5km without shoes but with so much pain and blistering I could hardly walk after the run.

Yet, this is the best run to attempt barefooting this route. This is ShenTat's virgin run with this route so we will have to take this easy. It provides a natural moderation to the run.

I carried the KSO's anyway. Chances are high that I'll need them halfway through the run. A lot of sanity and cautious steps helped me escape the entire route with just a bit of abrasion in the sole. Even that probably came from the worn asphalt surface at the top of Vigilante Drive.

I had to maintain a strong focus on the entire foot plant and lift off and keep tabs on where the hotspots are. Again, the sensory systems that comes into play were insulated off even by the KSO, not to mention even thicker shoes. The soles took a bit of beating so 6km is probably the maximum range before damage sets in for now.

About the KSO's.. I should find a way to strap them to the belt. Carrying them around is not fun at all.

First 10km run

2010-07-06T00:26:00.001+08:00

The really horrible traffic home and extra $1.30 in ERP turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Annetta and myself decided that we are too hungry to go for our weekly jog and headed home for dinner instead.

I sneaked out for the long run in the late evening and turned in my first 10km run (in my life). To do that, I had to reverse my directive that all my runs should be less than an hour. I sure as hell cannot maintain a 10km/h pace.

The few real complaints are about the route. Firstly, there are too many stops due to traffic lights. Traffic lights tend to be a problem with all urban runs and gets worse with distance. Park connectors provide some relief but getting to them still requires crossing some roads. The red man added a good 3-5minutes to the overall run. On the bright side, they provided the best excuse to rest.

Then, there was some stench of dead carcass that totally destroyed the experience. This happens at two points, one at 8km mark at Chai Chee Road and New Upper Changi Road. Was stopped by the longest light in the run here and I was so tempted to run back up Siglap Hill just to get out of stink bomb zone. The other point was right in front of Temasek JC. I crossed the road to avoid it.

The VFF held up quite well. Turns out it is drenched from the sweat dripping off my shorts. As always, the trusty Nathan Trail Mix held my extra Gatorade Boost.

I focussed on minimising impact and effort throughout the run. I just kept reminding myself to go "Tap Tap", focussed on the position and impact of the foot plant, and just up the cadence by reducing the stride whenever I feel tired (or bored). I also tried to greet every runner I meet along the way. A few of them returned the greeting -- the success rate is certainly less than with cyclists.

I only felt the urge to stop after the stink bomb at TJC. The smell was so bad I suspect I still have it in my breathe or suffer from ammonia poisoning. I might have broken the form a bit there too so the last km was a lot less enjoyable.

2 hours after the run, I start to feel a little tired but nowhere near as shaken as any of my previous shod outing regardless of distance. All the joints are reporting a favourable status as of now.

1st run practice with the gang..

2010-06-30T22:59:00.000+08:00

After weeks of procrastination, we finally had our 1st practise run together. We decided to meet at Jenson's office at University Hall since it is the most central. Tat is in Biopolis and I've moved to COM2.

I decided to run to University Hall instead since I needed to loosen up my right calves that is still sore since last Thursday. Turns out to be quite an enjoyable 3km warm up. The tautness worked itself out by the end of the 1st km. There was a massive jam along PGP so I actually overtook Annetta (driving) there -- and many other cars and buses.

It is cool to start running without a fixed route in mind. I like flexible routes since they allow you to adjust the distance according to how you are feeling at the various decision points. In our case, the decision point came early in the 2nd km of a hilly and potentially 5km route. It's just hard to judge how far you really want to run when you are barely half way. Nevertheless, I'm glad we decided on the 5km as it gave us a lot more confidence and a lot to talk about when we finally finished.

I felt quite good about the run but thought I could hold my form better the 2nd time up PGP. I could feel the push off coming back. Also I should have removed that tiny stone in the VFF that went on to give me a blister in my pinky toe.

I do not see myself brave enough to go barefoot around NUS. There are way too much construction everywhere at the moment. The section between COM1 to PGP might be okay though... see if I garner enough courage to do it next time.

Still, it's a respectable distance for a 1st practice.

Shoes vs Barefoot...

2010-06-28T23:18:00.001+08:00

“I believe if you have an intact neuromuscular system and your feet are sound enough to be able to run in shoes, you should be able to run without them,” says Davis, who gave up running as a young adult after repeatedly developing hip pain. Thirty years later, new research inspired her to take up running again. “I thought I would adopt a more natural running pattern and perhaps avoid the problem I had previously. I am now running barefoot 20 miles a week without any hip or other problems, despite being older."

I do not have any real research to back that up but my personal experience reflects exactly what she said. In fact, the last I recalled, running in shoes is both difficult and painful... even my softest Mizuno Wave Creation did not take away enough pain. The five fingers were great, barefoot is even more fun (but I need to get rid of those pesky blisters).

More of the report here.

Never break all the rules...

2010-05-30T17:18:00.002+08:00

First, break all the rules...

That is a very popular management mantra and a very attractive one indeed. Afterall, who can reject such a tempting wisdom when our daily efficiency suffocates in the reins of rules? As sexy as the management rhetoric sounds, rules should always be followed. At least that is what I kept reminding my colleagues.

One would argue that if rules are not meant to be broken, why are rules subject to change? Also, organisations that follows rules strictly are slow to react to changes, no? I subscribed to that view a while back until about 3 years ago.

If rules are in fact meant to be broken, why bother changing them? Why not just break those rules consistently. In fact, why even bother having rules? Is there really any organisation can indeed function efficiently without any rules? Is there any organisation that can function at all without rules? How does one organise an organisation without rules?

One of my favourite quotes is from Sara Gates, Sun VP Identity Management and contrarian thinker.

Why do cars have brakes? So they can accelerate without fear.

The quote so eloquently puts forth why organisational rules are necessary and the very essence that allows an organisation to function effectively. Without organisational rules, there will be no control over its operations (or processes) and business outcomes. Without a proper inventory structure, how does a company sales know if the company can fulfil the order? How will they price the order even.

What if the rules causes organisations to be laggards? This is probably the source of management guru's ails about rules. Lets take a lesson from Deming and Six Sigma. While both philosophies advocates changes for improvement, they pay good attention to controlling the change. In Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, control comes in the form of audit. This activity wedges the wheel of improvement in place and prevents it from falling backwards. Control is a direct phase in the DMAIC flow in Six Sigma.

Imagine for a moment that you devised a brilliant alternative to a business process. Since nobody abides by any rules in your organisation, your alternative got implemented very rapidly. That is nice and nimble and you give yourself a pat in the back for a good implementation and start seeing results from the change. But how long will that change be sustained? The very reason that gets your change implemented at lightning pace will lose it in due course. There is simply no control in place to sustain your brilliant alternative. This eventually results in an organisation that never learns from its past mistakes.

Looking back in the history of any organisation, we can generalise exactly how all business rules are formed. At some point in time, the organisation found an aspect of its activities that required control. These could be financial activities, order fulfillment processes, or customer support responding to customer feedback. A rule is imposed so that those activities are constrained within permitted bounds. That does not mean all rules are sound but they are meaningful and likely justified at least at the point they are instated.

So I submitted that organisational rules are controls put in place to restrict activities. What when such activities needs to be updated, for example, with the massive computerisation or webifying of some core business activities?

With rules that are adhered to, an organisation can assess the impact and scope of the change. Consistent application of those rules allows the organisation to form a baseline of what is currently happening and measure improvements with the new practices/rules. Further, reviewing existing rules helps the organisation remember the conditions the rules were erected in the first place and serves as considerations or specifications for the upcoming changes. In other words, rules help rather than hinder organisational learning and improvement.

Rules exists to put things in order. They exists also to be reviewed and challenged so that improvements can be made. As we improve, we change the rules and follow the new rules. Breaking rules are as cowardly an action as following rules blindly.

How cushy the KSO's...

2010-05-28T00:44:00.011+08:00

Monday's barefoot East Coast bash turned out to be a full 5km run. After Annetta urged me ahead reassuring me she will proceed at her own pace, I upped the pace and actually ran the full distance.

I did not even bother to stop for a drink at the 2.5km turning point. In fact, the last 2km was probably the fastest I ever did for a long time (around 6:15min/km). I did not feeling any pain or even heat spots in the feet until the last 1km or so.

As retribution for leaving Annetta behind and pushing my speed, the recovering blisters got worse. Despite that, this was the most satisfying of my Monday runs and marked a milestone in my barefoot ventures -- my first continuous 5km.

The need to nurse the new blisters prevented my now standard barefoot Kent Ridge Park bash on Wednesday. Instead, I had to be contented with a nice and easy run in the KSO. It is funny how the KSO used to be such a hip and minimalist shroud is now not minimalist enough. The feet in the KSO felt so protected from the elements that it was almost like having fleece jackets in the coldest winter.

I was feeling so good at the top of Kent Ridge Park I decided to alter my route to turn down Vigilante Drive and up South Bouna Vista Road. Afterall, I was well shielded with the KSO. The decent down Vigilante Drive was cruel. I had to walk at some point because the steepness totally destroyed my form. I ran down South Bouna Vista Road many times but this is my first attempt to run up. I found myself hopping along just fine and not feeling the inclination at all.

Exploring a new route is always fun and critical to inject freshness to a potentially repetitive activity (like running). The extended range certainly helped. Unfortunately, the new route turned out just short of 4km. Yet, it fits well into future routes.

Almost by coincidence, somebody at the gym actually asked me about the KSOs. Was it comfortable? Yes. Do you do anything else in them than gym workout? Yes, I just ran in them outside. Is there enough cushioning? In fact too much cushion.

Bloody Blisters...

2010-05-20T00:13:00.000+08:00

And they say, pain is part of running.

It poured for a short while before my evening run but that did not dampen my desire to go for a run without shoes. I have been looking forward to attacking Kent Ridge - Hort Park for an entire week to see how much further I can go. I managed 2.5km in my previous attempt.

The flat and smooth surface of East Coast Park "Barefoot" monday is barefoot running paradise, Kent Ridge - Hort Park is a different animal altogether. This route presents quite a few challenges... It is mostly slopes. Practically the entire route is either up or down hill and barely any flat terrain. Next, it presents a myriad of different surfaces from nice newly paved tar roads to cement pavements to brick walkways to stairs to rain washed tar roads. Lastly, I run with Annetta on Monday so the pace is quite a bit slower.

It is no surprise at all this route remains elusive to my barefoot ventures -- I only managed half of what I can do with in East Coast. The slopes exposes the weaknesses in my running form and the rougher surfaces merely amplifies it.

Today's run was great. It was fun as expected. The partially wet route from the mid-afternoon storm candied the barefoot run with different senses. Landing on wet surfaces immediately induced a cool sensation on the feet. Those sharp gravels on the rain washed tar roads hurt me less than a week before. Likewise, I am did not stop to pick the tiny gravels that would lodge to the bottom of my feet. A modification I did to my run today is to let the heels down more. This helps distribute the pressure from the forefeet.

The downhill section from Kent Ridge Park to Hort Park was particularly memorable. I let those legs rip through the fairly extravagant descent. Well, at least the straight parts as I needed to rein in my speed for those switch backs. If there is any lesson from descending without the KSO's, it is the need to reduce friction. I suspect the same descent killed me last week as I tried too hard to control the pace.

As a consolation, I managed almost 4km today but not without paying a price with those bloody (literally) blisters. I started feeling the stings from the blisters in my final 500m or so barefoot but decided to push my way to the restroom in Hort Park to clean up before putting on the life saving KSO's. That was when I first noticed those blood-filled blisters in the feet.

Those blisters essentially meant I need to figure out where my running form is breaking down. The positions are on either side of the right feet and the outer side of the left. Both are on the forefeet where I land. I suspect I might be inadvertently twisting my feet either on landing or perhaps I am still pushing off. The latter is a particularly hard habit to kick. It's back to the basics for me...

Back home, as I was draining the blisters (I know I shouldn't), I am quite amazed how thick the skin in the feet has become. Whatever, I am still looking forward to the coming Wednesday...

Running should still not be painful.. if it is, the body is trying to tell you something so listen to it.

Barefooting Kent Ridge Park and Running on Sand

2010-05-18T17:37:00.001+08:00

Since successfully completing my first 5km without shoes in East Coast Park, I never quite ventured any further. In fact, the past 4 weeks has been fairly bad for running in general. There were too many activity clashes or bad weather and I ended up chalking up less mileage than I would prefer. Not surprisingly, the urge to go out with less shoes is ever stronger. A colleague even missed me wearing those odd shoes walking around office.

I went on a limb on my gym night to run Kent Ridge Park - Hort Park without shoes. As insurance, I carried the KSO's along. I dare not push it despite being very familiar with the route. I know there are a few very rough sections that I needed to watch out for and was prepared to put on the KSO's just to complete the run. If it's any consolation, I completed almost half the route before putting on the KSO. Fortunately so since gym was disrupted by a very exciting Denmark vs Malaysia Thomas Cup Quater-finals.

I did the 5km east coast park route again last evening and finally ran in the sand. Having sand in the feet is pretty fun and "new" experience.

As a mental check, I will most likely try Kent Ridge Park barefoot again, and add a couple of sand runs on East Coast Park Mondays.

OpenSolaris.. What's next?

2010-05-14T14:05:00.004+08:00

This entry has been almost 3 months in the making. Since Oracle initiated the purchase of Sun Microsystem, the future of OpenSolaris has been hanging in balance. The big question is whether the great open source effort will be axed by its new owner.

Our May OpenSolaris meet up was reduced to discussing everything else opensource including Android Phones, Licenses and the ancient SCO vs Linux case. OpenSolaris was mentioned but mainly checking if anyone knows what will happen next. This fairly worrying sign prompted me to return to this post.

I like the direct approach that Larry Ellison took with Sun. He obviously wants his distraught subsidiary to return to profit. If anything, Oracle's sales team and strategy are incredible at generating revenue the entire company should become very profitable under his charge. The acquisition completes Oracle's array of IT offering (less network) to everything a corporate customer will ever need to purchase -- an IT product stack so complete it out-rivals even IBM. This alone positions Oracle for success.

What will this mean to the open source projects inherited from Sun? The highest profile ones includes MySQL, OpenOffice and OpenSolaris. I doubt Oracle will kill Solaris but the fate of the open source version remains unknown.

OpenSolaris need not die from Oracle directly pulling the plug. The effort could die from lack of interest. There are many factors contributing to why common folks like me wants to get involved in an open source project owned by a commercial entity. Most importantly, there must be trust for any open source project to flourish.

I am willing to contribute my efforts to Google and Debian. Sun Microsystem fell in the category of companies I trust. Oracle.. not quite yet. I continue see Oracle as a strictly commercial entity. I cannot even name any Oracle's contribution to open source less their venture with unbreakable linux. Oracle simply does not have the same reputation in open source as Sun and that's even before they open source Solaris.

Communities follow their leaders. There is an extension of trust to that leader. E.g. the company that hires Linus Torvalds automatically receives some extension of trust we have with Linus. In this light, Oracle inherited many excellent people from Sun. In a cruel turn of event, James Gosling left Oracle. From the reasons he gave, I expect a handful of engineers to follow suit. This will not sit well with at least the Java folks.

I will not jump into any conclusion of what Oracle eventually plans for OpenSolaris. The silence surrounding the User Group Leaders' List has certainly inflicted some damage that requires repair. To be fair, we did get a hi back in February.

Oracle is not doing well with retaining the trust painstakingly built up by Sun. If Oracle has any plans for OpenSolaris, they will have to follow up quite soon. As much as I like Solaris for its very innovative technologies like ZFS, Zones, DTrace and other observability tools, when its time to move on, I might not even look back.

Form over Substance

2010-05-07T21:47:00.003+08:00

Many moons ago during my years in competitive swimming, I can almost clock endless distance in the water but cannot sustain a jog for half those distances. I used to believe that I was more adapted to the water than land. Perhaps, it is a different stamina for land than water.

My foray into minimalist running would challenge that belief. I am now happily clocking distances of up to 7km but my return to the pool was not quite as encouraging. I had to admit that I am no longer as proficient a swimmer and adjust my expectations accordingly.

As I pulled towards today's target of 30 laps, the thought of focussing on form streaked across my mind. I focussed on reducing drag and maximising stroke efficiency. This is not dissimilar from focussing of acquiring a more efficient gait when running or my other endeavour to play better badminton.

Substance, in this case, is the stamina, core or specific muscle strength. It is common for athletes to push substance when they hit a road block in performance. I did that for my running and my badminton games.
This is certainly common for professional athletes to be seen hitting the gym doing weights for specific muscle workouts or even the running tracks for speed training. It's acceptable for them because their form are already superb.

For the rest of us who are less well trained, such focussed exercises improved the wrong part of the equation.. I never got any good with running nor badminton. My form for both are just terrible and ended up getting hurt quite badly as I tried to push my performance. It's not difficult to imagine since

output = input x efficiency

Naturally, since the substance has not seen any phenomenal decline, any improvement in efficiency (form) improves performance.

I doubt I have better stamina than when I was 10 years younger (and 10kg lighter). That I feel comfortable with much longer distance on foot must be because I am a lot more efficient now. Likewise, I am enjoying my badminton games again with better strokes, reach and speed. More importantly, while I used to frequently sprain my ankle, that injury seemed to have stopped.

In retrospect, (running) form was exactly what stopped me from running far, just as (swimming) form is preventing me from swimming far.

Against all odds...

2010-04-18T00:20:00.000+08:00

We know that Toto, 4D, and sports betting are quite rampant in Singapore... wonder when Singapore pools will open up betting the scale of the next earthquake or volcano eruption as the above. Didn't know it existed until the icelandic volcano erupted.

Higher tensions gives better power...

2010-04-11T00:54:00.001+08:00

The relationship between how tightly a badminton racket is strung against the power it delivers is often misunderstood. The general misnomer is

Higher tension = better control and less power
Lower tension = less control and higher power

This misinformation is rampant even by string manufacturers. Experience from less informed players when they strung to a higher tension than they can handle further confirmed this.

Yet if the above is true, won't I get unlimited powers using a butterfly net (zero tension)?

Without going into specifics of exact string type/thickness, frame/shaft flex and frame shape, here's a quick comparison of "higher" and "lower" tension.

Higher Tension	Lower Tension
More Powerful provided that the player have the stroke to stretch the string	Easier access to power Comparatively, an easier swing will give you good enough power
Better control due to stiffer string bed	Worse control due to stringbed bounce
Shots exits the stringbed faster	Slight delay in shots exiting the stringbed
Smaller Sweetspot	Larger Sweetspot
String snaps easier on mishits	Better string durability overall
String loses elasticity faster
Racket frame under greater stress so its more susceptible to damage in a collision or when a string snaps. There are also cases where strings dig into the frame.
Shock from the higher impact must be absorbed by the player's hands. Chance of injuries like tennis elbow

In other words, choose a tension within your playing/paying capabilities.

Back in the water...

2010-04-07T23:50:00.001+08:00

It's been a while since I did laps in a pool. I even lost count of the number of years since I last swam seriously. That's easily 5 or 6 years. I even misplaced my trunks and my googles so I needed an entire set of new gears just to jump into the water.

I decided to take the plunge after learning that a couple of colleagues have been doing afternoon swims. It's good use of the lunch hour to burn a few calories before heading for lunch. Afterall, I used to swim competitively.

After such a long departure, something has to give. I only tried to do some frontcrawl. Most of my sweeps are still functional but the upsweep leaves a lot to be desired. Basically I am still feeling the catch, down and in sweeps but nothing for the upsweep. I spent quite a long time getting this correct years ago.

The loss of the upsweep, especially on my right stroke, completely throws my breathing off. As hard as i tried, I could not do a 1.5 stroke cycle. 1 stroke cycle is too shallow and the resulting 2 stroke cycle almost drowned me.

Overall, I am still moving through water quite well but got tired too easily. I completed a maximum 2 laps continuously partly because I want to ease into a swim routine. Pushed, I am unlikely to do more than 6 laps without stopping to catch my breathe.

Next time I swim, I will have to focus more on the form. It does get easier after a while.

Cheapie Racket

2010-04-05T00:13:00.003+08:00

Having partnered a number of players who threatened the survival of my rackets, I decided to get the cheapest reasonable carbon graphite racket I can find for such games.

I found the above that is devoid of any insignia less the tiny “省队专用” moulded into the side of the shaft. Hey, it costs me only S$20 and the stringing and other accessories will soon out-cost the racket. To contain the operating cost, I targeted the string used must keep its tension and not break for at least 6 months to boot. I went with BG70pro at the recommendation I got from the Badminton Forum and strung it up at 30lbs, 2lbs higher than my normal tension. I am fairly impressed the racket held at that tension.

I spent my full 2 hours of play trying it out on Sunday leaving my TC700 in the sideline cold turkey.

The mid-stiff shaft is still a tad too flexible for my liking. It's a tad slow in returning fast drives and my shots tend to end up floating too high above the net. Advancing the timing a bit should fix that though.

Otherwise, the racket worked brilliantly. Clears and all other shots are easy enough despite the 30lbs tension. If anything, the racket has a huge sweetspot. BG70pros felt a lot softer than BG80. Smashes has sufficient power although I still miss the TC700's kick. Netplay can use a lot more work but that's never my strong department nowadays anyway -- most of my spinning netshots dropped 2cm short of the net. This may be contributed by BG70's lack of roughness compared to BG80.

The racket also provided good enough directional stability which is another surprise given its softer shaft. Maybe, its just stiff enough to not affect softer shots. Flicks and crosscourt netshots are well controlled enough.

Finally, the racket was given a RM5 towel grip that worked much better than I expected. I have switched to synthetic grips since a long time back and this marks my first attempt back to towel grips. The grip powder was likely the main factor but towel grips do feel really nice.

Overall, the racket played way above my expectation. My prayers that it does not collapse under the tension or break in other ways during play was answered -- it's Easter anyway. Yonex only warrants their rackets up to 24-26lbs depending on the racket and only for 6 months. It played a lot better than I expected of any sub-S$100 racket, much less a S$20 racket.

The Emperor's new HDMI cable

2010-04-01T15:36:00.001+08:00

Getting rid of the CRT-TV in our bedroom to make way for our spanking new LCD TV spells our arrival to the digital age.

That was last year and I still recall how the sales people recommended the investment in expensive HDMI cables that could improve the picture quality of our new TV. They drew reference to the analogue era where audiophiles with golden ear noticed how expensive cables brightened the sound of an originally dull setup. To be honest, I think thick, not necessarily expensive, cables do the same trick.

Fast forward to the digital age, one has to wonder how expensive cables really help? My S$15 HDMI cable has an error rate of 0% so far. So what if the more expensive cable shows "1" and "0" in a nicer font? It's not like the bit-ness can be any more correct with a more expensive cable. Notice I skirt around using the term higher-quality since the term suggests a measureable improvement.

To this day, monster companies selling monstrously expensive cables still exists as there are still suckers for such nonsense. I guess some of us just need to spend the extra cash for placebo.

Here, I leave you with the updated story about the Emperor's new HDMI cable. There was this emperor who's obsession with his audio-visual setup far outweighs conventional logic. One day, a company approached him with this special cable that will boost the performance of all his equipment.. only those with golden ears and eyes can tell the differences...

Well, you know the rest of the story...

When the Trackpad is hijacked...

2010-03-27T10:27:00.000+08:00

My recent engagement trying to buy some stuff from China provided a chance to practise my chinese. Among these communications are email messages and instant messaging both in chinese. Although I am fairly conversant with common spoken chinese, written chinese has never been my forte -- I suspect all my teachers hated me.

Fortunately, my macbook supports a variety of chinese inputs. I survived mainly on the Pinyin method but on rare occasions, use the trackpad handwriting when I cannot spell the chinese pronunciations and happen to know how the character is written.

That is the when the problem starts. There are times when the handwriting window refuses to go away!!

This created a bit of panic since the trackpad is hijacked by the handwriting program and the handwriting window is obstructing at least my view in the space. Attaching a mouse will solve the former problem but that leaves the MBP barely useable and a reboot ensues. That's when I found out that the keyboard is still working.

The beauty of Mac being Unix based is its super powerful terminal (bash) that does practically everything via command line. Fired up the terminal using spotlight (Command-Space) and started hunting for the process that provides the input. The first 'ps -ef' listed quite a few processes (actually, only about 100 which is tiny for any Unix systems). Sifting through them was easy but grep'ing for the correct ones is even easier...

System returned to normal after killing the offending "ChineseHandwriting" process (in this case 1881).

If anything, knowing how to recover from the bug gives me confidence to use that input method again. I imagine that I will finally reboot the Mac if the input window is stuck right in the middle of the screen. I will avoid this feature like a plague if there is a chance I will need to reboot the system.

Boys and their Toys - Gearheads

2010-03-24T01:34:00.000+08:00

The appreciation of a water colour painting never end up with the discussion about what brushes or paint the painter uses. For some reason, practically all my interests garner quite the opposite response. Among my interests that gathers the most gearheads are photography, badminton, bicycling, and, hot out of the stove, running.

Photography is the most obvious. Most heard comments is whether what camera I use. A variation is what lenses do I have or other accessories I own. I am a little interested in the gear myself but it is really for less photographic reasons. I know I have a few very nice lenses and a really nice camera. If I rate myself, I'm probably spend around the 40 percentile of gearhead here.

In Badminton, folks talk most about racket, strings and string tension, grip, shoes, and bags. I am a 50% gearhead here having owned numerous rackets and tried enough string at various tensions to know what I like. I tend to follow a cycle of buying a lot of gear and then stopping. The last 2 stops in rackets were when I got my Cab30 and more recently with my TC700.

I have a total of 2 expensive bikes that are not really that expensive if you look at the really expensive bikes. My first serious bike is a Shimano 105SC equipped steel racer. That followed me for a good 5 years before I gave it away to a budding triathlete friend. The racer was replaced with a Shimano XT donned Voodoo Bokor mountain bike that was refitted for the road. I ran road tires and the bike is a rigid. I still have the bokor but it's collecting dust right now. 20% gearhead here?

When I got into running, I was not expecting gearheads. My past brushes with the sports involved me buying all my shoes heavily discounted. I never went for the top end shoe except the Mizuno Wave Creation 8. Even with that, I stayed behind the fashion so I bought all my shoes at a good discount. The last one was a VFF KSO which will be the most expensive shoe I bought but ran the most with me. If my latest fetish holds, I will be running without shoes. Currently in the 20% gearhead but hope to drop to 0% depending on how dependent I am on the VFF...

Interestingly, all these interests are very very skill centric and the gears does not really help you along that much. One can plunge 2-3k into an excellent lens and still get blurred photos or own a dozen rackets and still not play badminton well.

The most misguided has to be running since nobody ever talks about learning how to run. We are (somehow?) supposed to know how to run naturally, even when we do not believe our bodies are built for it (marshmallow injected shoes).

5km without shoes.. finally!!

2010-03-23T00:04:00.000+08:00

Same route as last Monday but this time I ran with my KSO's in my hand the whole time. Yippee.. I finally managed the full almost 5km without shoes. Pace was a measly 8km/h in part because I was running with Annetta but more so because I wanted to check my form.

These barefoot runs seems to improve my form more significantly than the KSO. I did not expect to rough out the full 5km today. I was really pushing it into the last km but decided to just bear with the needle like sting on the outside of each foot. I rode a little lower in this run and I think that helped.

I guess I can attribute that to watching my steps closely enough, and/or my feet adapting to tough out these runs. I did have to stop a few times to brush tiny stones and one pine cone off my feet. Yeah, ouch! Better watch the road too...

Those pesky blisters from last week are still there but didn't get any worse -- I'll know tomorrow.

Another milestone, Annetta only walked for about 300m and maintained a jog for the rest. Given the number of runs Annetta had under her belt, I think she has made very good progress. She could hardly puff out 1km when we started. Right now, she looks set to do the whole 5km without stopping -- I'd say within the next month if we keep this up.

I reckon I'll still bring my KSO for the run next monday.

More deaths on MRT Track

2010-03-22T23:04:00.000+08:00

So, one more death at the MRT tracks, this time at my station.

It puzzles me the public outcry to hasten the screen doors to prevent further senseless loss of lives. It's not like it's really dangerous around the MRT tracks. Just observe how safe parents feel to allow their kids to run around at the MRT platforms.

Okay, maybe the above is a little extreme but you get the picture. Act sensibly, the MRT platforms are not any more dangerous than our public roads. Lets get the statistics correct. There are more deaths resulting from traffic accidents, murders, cardiac arrest, and other means than falling into the path of an oncoming MRT train. Why is there no stronger cries for efforts to make these obviously more dangerous places safer?

Not withstanding the most recent death, most of those who fell onto the track turned out to be suicide. What the additional safety measure will do is just transfer these deaths to somewhere else. The effect of those safety measures so soundly conceived to prevent loss of lives on the MRT tracks is reduced to preventing loss of use of the MRT. Besides, dying on the train track is not pretty and not the top choice for suicide.

For SMRT, here's a cheaper solution. Retreat the yellow line 3 feet into the platform and draw another red line 2 feet from the edge. Anyone stepping past the red line will be fined a reasonable amount, say S$1,000. Further, the loss of the use of the MRT should be charged to the estate of any suicide attempts. Lastly, donate the investment of the said screen door to a charitable cause.

Barefooting again...

2010-03-16T00:31:00.000+08:00

The above photo seems staple for all my running entries now. It is only half correct for this because I only ran half of the 5km with my KSO.

Today was perfect a slow trot along the coast with Annetta. The dark clouds loomed but that only added to the breathtaking scenery and kept the sun away. The beach is typical East Coast with lotsa ships in the distance and for some reason a lot more babes in the not so distance. No idea how these folks summon enough courage to touch the water though. I think its filthy.

East coast park is probably the only place I dare to barefoot for now. Against even the KSO, barefooting has a few advantages. It is certainly more fun to feel the surface you are running on save those occasional pine cones and prickly stones. The bigger stones are not a problem once you learn to avoid them. Yeah, open your eyes and enjoy the run instead of squint them in pain.

Barefooting teaches you a lot more about your running form. I thought I acquired quite a good form since transiting into the KSO. I still get some blisters on the outside of the feet so something about my landing is still causing needless abrasion there. I believe I am still pushing off when I am in my KSO. On the bright side, I am getting less blister than the first two times I tried that stunt and Annetta is starting to accept it.

My current barefoot range is a measly 2.5km. I long for the day I can go my full distance barefoot. I'll need to wash the KSO's less and they will last a bit longer. To top it up, I can wear flip-flops to a reasonable jog -- just think of that.

For now, I am still a bit faster and further in the KSO since they are so comfy.

Impressively, Annetta also completed the first 2.5km leg without stopping.

I booked this court!

2010-03-15T01:35:00.000+08:00

An example of the occasional lack of grace with Singaporean.

Our court time lapsed in the middle of our game. Since the folks who was taking over our court is already here, we decided to take it to the next court which was empty. We were chased away by a rather grumpy old man. He said

I booked this court!

We know somebody booked these courts. Besides, none of the other players have arrived so I really do not see why he needs to be so defensive about HIS court. That said, he does have all the right not to let us use his court. It is just weird to assert the rights when you do not need to at all.

This is the least friendly experience I had. I tend to allow the previous hour players to overrun the time if it's not by too much -- usually, 5-10 minutes is acceptable. In his case, his players only arrived after a good 10 minutes. We would have finished our game and will be thanking him for it.

Now, all members of his group are wearing normal track shoes which is not allowed in the court (there is a rule about non-marking shoes). I was so tempted to disrupt his game by reporting him.

Firmware Updates

2010-03-13T20:10:00.000+08:00

I was updating my iMac when it asked to update my wireless keyboard. I thought the keyboard was working quite well the whole time and it seems like a simple enough device. I am of course cool with that since Apple will keep the keyboard updated since mine is the older 3 battery version.

It is interesting the amount of devices that allows firmware updates nowadays. What used to be a luxury reserved for high end complex devices, every other electronic device now provides a way for consumers to do their own firmware updates.

All parts of my computers obviously does that. Then, all my mobile phones for the last 5 years. My playstation is another obvious one. My digital cameras provide a way to update their firmware. Nowadays, the lenses gets updated along. I am eyeing on the Jawbone Icon which is capable of updates.

Back to the keyboard which surprised me a bit but hey, its part of my computer. I reckon the day my washing machine or microwave oven gets a firmware update.

Long slow distance...

2010-03-08T23:42:00.000+08:00

I was off the tarmac for two full weeks after I pulled something in my calf two mondays back. I pulled it again (twice) in my two badminton games the following Saturday and Sunday. Not willing to take time off badminton is probably going to kill me at some point.

Anyway, I was dying to get back into running. When Annetta could not do the slow run with me today, I decided to sneak out for a run after dinner.

Fully aware of the condition in my calf, I went with a very controlled pace. At 4km, I decided to extend the jog a little. I felt comfortable enough to include the slight hill along Tanah Merah Kechil road.

It certainly felt good to be back in running after 3 weeks of eating and getting fat. The run was a little slower than I liked but it is a comeback run so I will rather go slow than to risk another period off the roads.

Oh, and a funny incident. When I rushed into the lift before my run, there was this other passenger who obviously saw my KSO. I could feel the confusion but she did not bring up enough courage to ask. So cool.

How to wait for a carpark lot...

2010-03-08T11:21:00.000+08:00

The technique to wait for a carpark lot become more important as shortage of parking lots poses an increasing challenge to drivers. Yet, it is evident that most drivers do not really think through where they should wait when they spot a car that is about to get out of the lot.

I witnessed the stupidest act. I was along a one way street with parking lots on both sides. Two cars were preparing to exit their lot. Car A was the car further ahead along the road and Car B was just 3 lots behind. There was another Car S(illy) waiting to park. In this case, Car S was eyeing on the lot of Car B and positioned himself in the exit path of Car A. Car B had nowhere to go -- it's a one way street and Car A and S blocked up the path.

The solution was obviously for Car S to get out of the way of Car A. He can do this by reversing out of the way so he still strategically position himself to take lot A. After 5 minutes of refusing to budge, Car S reluctantly moved out of the way. Meanwhile, there was already a long buildup of cars behind me.

This is just another everyday example of how silly drivers can be.

The premise is simple. You can only get a lot if there is no car in it. It logically follows that you have to let the car get out of the lot before you can park. Yes, this is so simple you may find it insulting even to read.

The best strategic position then to wait for a lot is always behind the car that is exiting the lot. This lets the car exit the lot easily and puts you in the best position to take the lot. Think about it... if there is another contender who is behind you, you are between him and the lot. If there is a contender in front of you, he will have to wait for the exiting car to clear him (since he is in the way) before vying for the lot with you. By the time the exiting car clears him, you are well on your way into the lot.

Of course, the fear of losing that lot griped our dear driver of Car S so much he failed to realise he need to let Car A out. I was so tempted to squeeze him out of the game for causing the delay but suppressed that temptation. It was a Sunday afterall.

Network Usage in the N1

2010-02-28T18:07:00.001+08:00

After noting the increase in data usage with the N1, I did a bit of poking around.

Its a good thing I rooted the phone so have access to the "Spare Parts" with Cyanogen ROM. Well hidden under "Battery History" is an option to measure network utilisation by applications. My top two apps are News and Email.

To verify if the app is close to accurate, I removed Sync for Email and News and ran the phone for a day. The utilisation indeed dropped from 200MB to roughly 20MB. I just turned on News and the refresh costs around 10+MB.

I synchronise with two email accounts in office. Next step is to find out which one burns the most data.

Oh, and the battery life seems to improve :).

Data Usage with the Nexus One

2010-02-25T23:45:00.002+08:00

The above is extracted from my previous month's bill. Yep, S$14k worth of data consumed. I know the figure is inflated but it is scary if you think about it.

What impressed me was the data utilisation jumped from an average of around 1GB/month to the 4+GB here. That means I'm sucking up 1GB weekly.

Data utilisation has increased so much with the Nexus One (N1). I am reading all my emails, news and doing a lot more online with the N1 compared to my N95. I am almost eternally signed onto instant messaging.

I might start an exercise to find out what is consuming all this data. For now, I am contented to know the cost is covered by the 12GB allowed by the plan.

Fastest, Shortest Run to date! Too fast, too soon.

2010-02-23T00:39:00.009+08:00

I missed my runs enough to go jogging despite a late dinner. I ended up rushing to start the jog by 10pm so I can finish before 11pm. I was feeling okay, or at least I thought I was.

Soon after the jog started, I was pushing down the road at a faster than normal pace. When another runner passed me, I took off after him and paced him for over 400m. When we finally split, I continued at what I thought was a suicidal pace. I ended up pulling my left calf muscles and had to take a bus home. In between, I tried to jog slowly but it did not work at all.

I am not sure how fast I ran but the tracker shows that I covered a total of 2.7km in 16min flat. I know I limped almost 400m to the next bus stop to give the calves a chance to relax. If my calculations are anywhere accurate, I would be averaging at least 11kph for the 2.3km run.

What I am sure though is that I have neither the form nor stamina to maintain this pace at longer distance. I definitely went too fast too soon. Hopefully, this is only a strain and I will be back by Thursday.. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Guided Tour in Malaysia

2010-02-19T15:58:00.002+08:00

We got visitors from China this year so the family decided to bring them on a trip into Malaysia. Hence my first ever guided tour in our friendly neighbour up north. There, I admitted it. I am going on my first ever guided tour into Malaysia. Personally, I avoid guided tours where possible and have been doing trips into Malaysia countless times. I have never in my over 3 decades of existence dreamt I will be on a guided tour into Malaysia.

Guided tours are typically a farce. I stereotype that these tour typically means no control over your own time, a lot of waiting for each other, a tour guide who continuously annoy you with facts that you are too lazy to google, and a lot of stops at unrelated sites to visit "local" factories so the guide can earn extra income. On the other hand, a good tour guide can in fact keep the tour group entertained.

In this specific guided tour, we visited Genting Highlands, the National Mosque, Merdeka Square, Petaling Street (Chinatown), marveled at the KLCC (from afar), and travelled through Malacca all in a day. The ratio of time spent on the tour bus vs. actual visiting any site must be 10:1. We were very much like those pesky mosquitoes that stings, hardly draw blood before flying off to the next location -- hardly penetrate the surface of any sites.

I absolutely hated the trip. It's just too bad that its the only way to show our visitors around in the limited amount of time. My next trip to Malaysia will be leisurely.

Heat + Sun + Gravel = Never again!!

2010-02-14T01:20:00.001+08:00

After skipping my runs on Wednesday and Thursday, I could not stand sitting around much longer and decided that I had to do the run today. It is afterall Lunar New Year tomorrow and the likelihood of heavy eating without sufficient exercise is too real.

Bad decision.

First, it is mid-noon. That's the only time I have before lunch. I am totally booked from lunch til way after re-union dinner and probably next morning. Grabbing the only time slot I have means quite a few firsts.

First time running in the afternoon;
First time doing what is probably an 8km loop;
First attack at Bedok Reservoir;
First long run on gravel instead of tarmac/cement.

So I headed into my worst run. The afternoon heat is the first killer. Once I am exposed to the 32degC heat, I knew this is going to be really tough. The sun is scorching and I am surprised the trees around Bedok Reservoir provided very limited shade. In fact, there must be a full 2km stretch without any shade.

The gravel run turned out worse than I expected. Even as I gingerly skipped along to avoid the feet massacre (I'm using VFF mind you), the occasional stone or up turned gravel will inflict quite an amount of suffering through the VFF to my poor feet. The full 4km of gravel road reminded me how much I miss the smooth tarmac.

The heat finally did me in. I found myself stopping at the isolated shades to hide from the blazing sun. I was not really tied but the gravel, heat and sun was just too much to handle all at once.

After 7km, I decided to call it a day and called Annetta to extract me out of my misery. This 7km was slower (expected) and certainly most torturous. I might do Bedok Reservoir and its gravel tracks again but am unlikely to do another afternoon run.

Getting Chromed

2010-02-13T11:00:00.000+08:00

So I reported a while back about the availability of Chrome (beta) for Mac.

I have been using it for a while and prefer it to the other two browsers I commonly use.

I am very used to Firefox. In fact, I'd love for firefox to be my staple browser but prolonged use of firefox has revealed some of its shortcomings. While it is still a very useable browser, I had to switch flash/html5 heavy websites like Gmail to another browser.

Firefox very quickly become a CPU and memory hog. There seem to be a memory leak that has prevailed across versions. Starting a different browser like Safari use up less memory. Plus, Firefox seems to use quite a lot more CPU than Safari in most pages. While Safari stays at a tame 10% CPU, firefox will use up about 20% CPU for a longer period.

So why not stay with Safari?

After switching to Macs, I tried to like Safari. In fact, I forced myself to live with Safari for about 2 weeks. I did not like how Safari handles its tabs. I like Command-1 to switch to the first tab. I also did not like how Safari always pops up a new window for fresh links. Tab browsing felt so detached from Safari its not exactly useable. I could (and did) force Safari to open all new windows as a tab but that is hardly useable. I did like most parts of Safari but the disagreement with how tabs are handled just broke the deal.

Until Chrome, I spend roughly 60% of my browsing time in Firefox and the rest in Safari. Chromium was totally unuseable since it crashes habitually. When Chrome was released, I was hesitant to try it but decided to anyway. Now, Chrome is my staple browser where I spend 90% of my browsing time. It seems to combine the best of both Firefox and Safari.

Tab browsing in Chrome is just as intuitive as with Firefox. That's a big big bonus for me as I hate having windows all around;
Chrome is pretty snappy and seems to be okay with the idea of prolonged use. I have at occasions left my Chrome instance running for over a few weeks without it showing the same degradation in performance as Firefox. My firefox sessions usually lasts a week with the same use. With Gmail and my other eternal stuff loaded like I did with Chrome now, I need to restart firefox every 2-3 days max;
Maximising the window in Chrome behaves very much like Safari (or other Apple Apps for the matter). They do not fill up the full screen but just take up enough screen real estate to display the page in full;
Find feature works exactly like Firefox but I like the presentation on Chrome more;
Typing in the URL bar autocompletes both URL, name of site (Safari does not do this), or probes google for URL suggestions (unique to Chrome). This speeds up the URL typing a lot;
Unified Search and URL bar for Chrome is massively useful. I still do Shift-Command-F at times but am getting very used to Command-L for everything;
Chrome imposes the least overhead among the 3 in terms of screen real estate for its query bar. See closing picture.

It's not all a bed of roses with Chrome. There are a few sites that does not work so well with Chrome and version 4.X simply does not handle SSL that well. Version 5.0.307.7 is a huge improvement in that department without introducing any lag.

Nathan Trail Mix & first 7km run

2010-02-06T00:32:00.001+08:00

During one of my runs two weeks ago, I had a strong urge to have a drink. Fortunately, that came almost 3/4 way into the 40 minute run so I just finished the run. I wanted to keep all my runs to within an hour while gradually increasing the distance (hence speed/intensity). My experience with cycling tells me that the wanting for a drink halfway will likely recur as I build up the distance.

I never liked the camel backs even when cycling. Those packs appear to get in the way of the body cooling itself and I just never like having to backpack anything. I also did not like those hand carry bottles so I had to settle for a belt system of some sort. So on Sunday, I went to The Running Lab to see if they have anything to offer.

I was quite impress at the range of Nathan Sports products they carry. Comparing through the various ranges, I quickly decided that I just need two 10oz bottles and I wanted the more conventional squirt bottles than those with the auto-cant nozzles. I also wanted a zip pouch large enough to fit my mobile phone. Those criteria helped narrow down the choice to either a Trial Mix or a Speed 2. In the end, I chose the Trial Mix because it just looked steadier.

So far, I have gotten two runs under my belt literally. The first was 5.6km on Monday to see if I am comfortable with the belt system. I had to skip my Wednesday run due to a meeting so my 2nd run was on Thursday. That's the first time I ran 7km (6.94 to be exact). So how did the belt perform?

Having never needed to carry water for any runs, I think I like this belt system. After the initial fiddling to figure out how high the belt should sit on my hips, I forgot that the belt was there in the first place. I carried only 1 full bottle for both runs. The bottle was sufficiently supported and balanced that it did not bounce around at all at various levels.

The belt itself fits snugly. It is thick enough that it supports the contents well without being too intrusive. The Trail Mix is thicker at the back than the front so that helps. It is also very slightly elastic so that absorbs any travel from the running and keeps the belt to my hips well.

Since I perspire quite massively especially in this hot and humid country, the belt system's ability to keep the contents from the sweat is well tested. At least after the 45min torture (7km run), my mobile phone is well protected from my sweat. The moisture wicking material Nathan uses on the back of the pouch worked well to keep my phone dry. Again, the pouch rides close enough to the belt that I did not feel the phone when running.

Overall, the Nathan Trail Mix is a great investment. It helped me enjoy/complete my first 7km workout (ever) in comfort. It helps carry up to 20oz (400ml) of liquid (water for me). Its fairly sizeable pouch kept my stuff dry, secure and from bouncing around. Finally, the Trial Mix is forgettable. Being forgettable is important because you do not want to be constantly reminded about the belt while running.

Yep, so the message of the week is, ditch your shoes but get a belt!

Building a case for barefooting...

2010-02-05T20:52:00.000+08:00

Interesting video by Nature Video.

What puzzles me is the claim of smaller impact from forefoot striking. The displayed force for the heel striker maxes out at about 2.4x body weight (4:13) compared to 2.6x (4:42) for the forefoot striker. Not such a convincing arguement that forefoot striking is better.

The way I look at it, heel striking is bad because the full impact is transmitted up the leg. There is simply no where else for the shock to go. Landing on the forefoot however allows the force to be distributed across the arch of the foot.

My limited minimalist running experience has been relatively pain free. This means that despite the apparent larger impact, shock distribution with forefoot striking is more effective than any cushioned shoes I have tried so far.

Of course before you jump into running barefoot, the usual precautions applies. You do not want to run too far too fast before the right muscles develop. After that, you can be sure you will enjoy your running much more.

For the love of running...

2010-02-02T00:51:00.002+08:00

It's been a while since I blogged about running. I have not stopped. On the contrary, I have stepped up my runs to almost 3 times a week. Blogging about running is less fun than actually running. My mum prompted me to put up this post when she noticed I have gone from someone who hated running to never getting enough of it.

I have made several failed attempt at running. My best previous efforts stopped at once a week and I always hated those runs. The scenery was the attraction but the same routes do get boring as I never appreciated the running process.

I still recall vividly how painful running was, both during and after the run. None of the shoes was ever cushy enough. The Mizuno Wave Creation 8 was my second most expensive venture to get myself running. It was very cushy, fits really well and all but running still hurts -- just not that badly. Afterall, the shoe still encourages a heel-toe stride.

The Vibram Five Fingers (VFF) KSO edged out the Wave Creation by a few dollars as my most expensive running shoe.. sorry, I correct myself, my most expensive shoe for running (its subtly different). It, however, was huge in the transformation of myself to love running. The difference is that running no longer hurts with the KSO. In fact, I now enjoy how the ground just moves below me and that movement never fail to bring a smile to my face. Add a tinge of fresh scenery and I am all pumped up to go for the next run.

The main difference is that running no longer hurts. I might feel tired after the run but there will be no pain in my knees or ankles. There is no more hangovers either so I am fresh to do whatever sports I chose the next day. I attribute that to much better running form that is forced by adopting the KSO.

I struck a conversation with one guy who was also looking for a KSO to help his running just last Sunday. I proudly declared that I was a total convert, doing 15km week and loving it. The gentleman likely runs further and faster than me given any week since he was donning an "Ironman" T-shirt. Yet, the distance and pace is not the main point.. it's all about how running can become enjoyable even for a detractor like myself.

I now have to think of what I should do with the Wave Creation. What I know for sure is I am never going back to running in them.

Google search gets Social

2010-01-30T12:38:00.000+08:00

A good step towards a more connected world. Most of us care more about the opinions of friends we know personally than an anonymous blogger. Social search allows google to present such results.

For me, knowing the person allows me to adjust my interpretation of the writing. For example, my readers must take into account that I am a fan of Google and online presence when reading about my writings about Android. If you know that and do not share the same axioms, you will need to discount most of what I like.

On the other hand, one has to wonder the social impact of such a search.

New journey for the MBA

2010-01-29T23:50:00.003+08:00

I have finally switched over totally to the MBP 13" bought by the School. Meanwhile, the MBA has been sitting there waiting for action but getting not much. After much thought, I have finally decided to sell the MBA.

I cannot believe the amount of emotional attachment to the machine after a solid two years of service. The MBA has been with me through many thick and thin, accompanied me through my ITIL exams, several system works, many many presentations, and is the key performer for many of my coding adventures. For these two years, the MBA has been exceedingly faithful. She's crashed (or hung) a grand total of twice and has rarely lost a beat in performing her duty.

Sure, her performance leaves a little to desire and could do with more RAM. Yet, even compared to the spanking new MBP, I am going to miss the MBA.

She is so much easier to carry around. The MBP may just be a pound heftier but that made quite a difference;
She happily sits in my bag with another book whereas the MBP wants that compartment to itself. This makes me think twice about carrying an extra book around;
Her LCD is a tad warmer than the MBP and more to my liking (or I'm just more used to it);
I still prefer her keyboard despite its age.

Later in tomorrow evening, my MBA will serve a new owner. As I pack her back into the box, I cannot help but recollect the exhilaration when I first got her two years ago while lamenting letting her go. Rather than wasting away such a fine machine by leaving it in the shelf, I am sure she will serve her new owner well. Still, it does feel a little like sending off a good friend.

Easy, Willing Victims...

2010-01-25T16:33:00.066+08:00

Naive folks should just be banned from the internet.

There are so many unsolicited emails from friends and relatives that have fallen victim to chain letters, petition letters, old wives tales, free payout from Microsoft, internet scams, viruses/trojan horses and then some more. A simple google search would have resulted in less effort than thinking who that stupid email should be forwarded to. I did my part by having my email filter is set up to detect repeat offenders (okay, I'm brash but you get the idea).

Even social media is not spared from such scammers and naivety. Why should it? When threatened that facebook will charge for usage, almost half a million facebook activists signed up a petition. That is before looking up whether that threat was even real. It turns out this is not even the first time.

What do you lose by joining such groups? Fortunately, not much. It's not like they can really spam you or something. What is worrisome is how liberal we are at creating such associations without first checking.

Should facebook.com step up to protect such users? IMHO, no. Just as email is largely unfederated, I prefer social media (and the internet) should remain open for free expression of views.

The users, however, should pick up a tip or two about scams and learn to be less trusting. How many times must we be reminded of such scams before we actually learn? The good news for the scammers is that there are just so many easy willing victims born each day.

At the end, you can click on the picture at the top to claim your ~~ignorance~~ innocence, or join me at my side of the fence to snigger at the hundred of thousands of folks who did.

Trapped!

2010-01-25T16:00:00.002+08:00

trapped!
Originally uploaded by prstat

Spotted on the way to lunch.

It sparked quite a conversation about how the car got there and how he's going to get out.

Do not worry for the owner.. the "barricades" are quite removable and are fairly light. I wonder if the driver gave up looking for a lot and decide to park in that slot.

5 Must have Apps on the Nexus One

2010-01-24T00:30:00.001+08:00

Apps are what defines smart phones of the current generation. These tiny computers can do so much more than just phone calls, sms and managing your contacts.

While Google Market is not as comprehensive as Apple's Appstore, there are still many gems that can help improve the overall phone experience...

Handcent SMS. This is a very polished texting application that replaces Android's own Messaging app. They access the same SMS database so switching to Handcent will not result in SMS losses.

Why is it good? I love it for the quick reply/alert popup box that I configured to only pops up if I'm on the home screen. This makes sure that SMS does not distract me when I am doing something else but I can still respond to it quickly when I am not. To top it up, Handcent provides customisation beyond your wildest imagination.
Locale. Allows you to set your phone to various modes (like silent) at almost arbitrary events.

Why is it good? My email comes in 24hr and I love to be notified when I'm not asleep. Locale allows me to set a fixed bedtime that silence the phone (completely). It also knows when I'm attending lectures or meetings and puts the phone to just vibrate. To top it up, I set it to change my wallpaper at these different modes so I know what mode the phone is in. If that ain't cool, I do not know what is.
My Track is an optional google application that records your footprints and has the ability to upload to Google Maps and Google Docs.

Why is it good? In spite of the abundance of jogging route mapping and trackers available on iPhone and Symbian, I like this one the best because it reuses 2 of my favourite Google platform, Maps and Docs. For docs, it creates a spreadsheet with the running data like distance and speed so you can do further analysis. It can run in the background so you can continue to use the phone.
Google Skymap shows the star map of the sky based on your location and orientation.

Why is it good? If anything, it is way cool and the only application that excites my friends enough to run out at night to check out whether the location of the moon (the only object visible in evening city streets) is accurate. Hey, it's a really cool app!!
Abduction! It's a game. You use the accelerometer to guide a silly looking bouncing cow to rescue his friend who was abducted at game start. Depending on level, you get sliding platforms and bombs being dropped at you.

Why is it good? It's silly looking and simple but loads and loads of fun. That's my main battery drain for the past 2 days.

Dare to cross here?

2010-01-21T16:30:00.002+08:00

Dare to cross here?
Originally uploaded by prstat

Saw this sign post perched on a warning light post near my workplace.

It's quite a busy crossing but the fallen sign makes it look kinda dangerous to cross here.

Nexus One Experience...

2010-01-21T12:13:00.003+08:00

To sum up my first week with the Nexus One (N1)..

The Nexus One is quite a device.

I have been playing quite a bit with N1 to become familiar with the UI principles. I say principles because the mode of operation is so different from a device that is designed solely to be a phone.

In this experience sum up, I will draw many comparisons to the iPhone 3GS Annetta just acquired.

First, here's a list of what the N1 cannot do,

If you try to touch the far end of the screen by reaching across it with your thumb, the touch might not register as what you intended if at all. This is especially for users with a fat palm. What is happening is the palm multitouches the screen (especially keyboard) and confuses the N1. IPhone works so I am expecting a software patch for this issue;
N1 does not connect to Starhub or M1 upon booting up. This sucks especially if you expect to be able to login to your Google account immediately. Some setting up is needed;
You cannot forward contacts through SMS easily. There may be apps to do it but I have not found any. Incredibly annoying when friends ask you for contacts and you have to go through the entire cut&paste exercise;
Until you root the phone (which I have not), N1 does not tether out of the box.. Why?!!! My N95 8GB does it very well;
As fascinating as the device is, most iPhone users will just look and comment on the physical characteristics of the phone. They will also point out the many flaws with the device that they have heard from the forums. So keep your excitement to yourself.

And here's a list of what the N1 can do (yes, vs. the iPhone 3GS)

You can watch youtube in High Definition on a 3G network. While the 3GS does HD over wifi, youtube is crippled over 3G;
Notifications just notifies instead of requiring attention. You can defer handling any notifications or choose to check out some of them and leave the rest in the notification box. iPhone users generally do not need that;
Google maps is so useful with the various layers. You can find out about traffic, up to date location of your friends (if they are not using iPhone), public transport information together with arrival times of buses, wikipedia articles about the places, and many many more. The integrated experience is fantastic;
Seems to integrate the contact list a lot better than 3GS. I personally prefer the consolidated view it presents;
Speech to Text for practically every text input. This is, if anything, a nice way to know how bad my pronunciation is but does work quite well for shorter sentences;
Can multitask. While not critical for most phone users, I like to set the phone to download webpages in the background while attending to other matters;
Unlike the iPhone, not everyone uses the same phone. No one else (around me) has a Nexus One.

That's my list from one week of using the Nexus One. Will talk about apps up next.

Setting up the Nexus One

2010-01-14T22:00:00.001+08:00

Received the Nexus one today. In a way, it was quite a blessing that I did not get the N1 earlier than I found out the settings required for it to work with my telco, Starhub.

The first run of setting up the phone was not exactly plain sailing. There was no wifi that I can connect to in the area so I could not set up the google account, neither did it work with my telco out of the box.

In the end I had to set up using the following steps:

Skip the google account set up first. Yep, the phone allows that.. but what's the point of a google phone without a matching account?
Set up the APN settings for the telco. In my case, Starhub requires the following settings
- Name: Starhub Internet
- APN:shwapint
Go to the account settings to add a google account.

Oddly, it only succeeded on my 2nd try and I am not sure what I did wrong the first time. Once the above is done, it is easy enough to just add my facebook and corporate exchange account.I do like how the N1 merges all contact information about the same person into the same contact entry.I will avoid rooting the phone at least for the first 2 weeks. Once the hardware is sorted out,

Je suis venu, j'ai vu, j'ai enracinée

Making Singapore roads safer for cyclists...

2010-01-13T17:30:00.003+08:00

More often than not, cyclists are at fault when it comes to fatal or serious road traffic accidents involving them.
- Channel News Asia, 13 Jan 2010.

That was lifted from an article titled "Cyclists usually have themselves to blame in serious road accidents".

I am not surprised at the aptitude to blame others when the unfortunate happens. I am not certain how the statistics about who's at fault is arrived. Our Senior Parliamentary Secretary of Home Affairs, Mr Masagos Zulkifli, seem to be full of confidence in our Driver's training and found solace that

Learner drivers are also taught to keep 1.5m from cyclists and to check their blind spots for cyclists and motorcyclists.

I am certain that has greatly reduced the number of accidents between motor cars and motor cycles in driver's training school. Cyclists just have themselves to blame since they have not received any proper training about road use. That is in spite of being forced onto the vehicular roads (or East Coast Park) by law.

I am not as confident as Mr Masagos. Everyday, I see drivers who have difficulty keeping within their lanes, switch lanes without checking if a car, much less a motor cycle, is in their not so blind spot, drive in a precarious manner like tailgating, speed, and simply refuse to give way. Many of the above points have been taught to learner drivers with evidence of low retention rate after the driver is licensed.

More directly, how many licensed drivers keep a safe distance from cyclists. When I was actively cycling, very few drivers did and I had to ride defensively giving myself a good 3 feet from the kerb to avoid being squeezed into oblivion. Most cars still comes within inches of me on my bike.

My last bicycle ride was over a year back before I decided to hang up my bike for good. I love cycling but I value my life more.

Regardless, Ms Irene Ng's question was "How to make our roads safer" and Mr Masagos's answers were abysmally off the tangent. He seem to suggest that it is safe enough with the statistics of deaths falling. Afterall,

most of the time, you cyclists are the assholes so I think our roads are fine just the way they are
- prstat's impresssion of what he means.

I am not sure how much Mr Masagos is aware of what cyclists on Singapore roads are facing -- from the news article, I reckon not much. Many cyclists will agree that drivers up north (in Malaysia) are friendlier and behave better around cyclists than here despite what is taught to learner drivers. Perhaps, one of our daring cyclists should just bring our friend out for a ride some day.