Check it out

Me and my bike

I bike – alot. Training for triathlon and now also a 2x16km commute every day. Most of that time I listen to podcasts. For the toughest workouts I might switch to music, but most often I really enjoy the podcasts.

I have been listening for podcasts for 4+ years and when I find something I like I get more or less zealous and dread the day when they stop (Im looking at you LugRadio!). I will often change individual ranking, but I am very loyal towards my current list.

With regards to podcast software I used to use my IPod Touch and itunes, but now I’m using my Samsung Galaxy S II and Google Listen

Without further ado (sorted by current internal ranking – best at the top)

• TechZing -  Jason Roberts and Justin Vincent about being or turning bootstrapped entrepreneur, and their current projects – Pluggio, AppIgnite and AnyFu. I really enjoy both their discussion shows and their excellent interviews. A couple of favorites:
  • TZ-122 Interview: Ruben Gamez from Bidsketch interview
  • TZ-69 Discussion: Justin.biz – Justin and Jason going at it
  • TZ-76 Interview: Thomas Thurston on Modeling Disruption

  The best part about TechZing? – They are very productive (twice a week?) and the content level is always high as well as probably the best sound quality of all my podcasts (When using it on the bike, great level mastering is key as well as no-phone-level-quality)

• This Developer’s Life - By Rob Connery and Scott Hanselman about being a developer – apparently in the format of the highly popular “This American Life”. The sound quality is excellent, the content inspiring, the editing fenomenal and the guests high profile and the angle is quirky and good! Worst thing about it: They dont release very often.
  My favorite past shows:
  • 1.0.3 Problems - about solving problems as a developer – This is the inagural episode that brought Hanselman on board – and illustrated with XKCD, what’s not to like?
  • 1.0.5 Homerun – about those developers that hit a home run. Inspiring
  • 1.1.2 Drive – About drive as a developer, about entrepreneurs. Very inspiring as well
• Stackoverflow / Stackexchange podcast - By Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky (and guests) about the process of building stackoverflow.com and the rest of the stackexchange network. This is a testament to my loyalty. They took a break for almost a year and I never considered unsubscribing from the feed – they might come back
  This show is a bit all over the place with regards to topics, so I’m having a hard time selecting specific  favorites

In my next post I will detail the runner ups – or those that gets bumped when one of the above shows up in my queue.

Come april I bought a road bike: Giant Defy 1. Luckily I at the same time got a coworker bitten by the cycling bug so I had a friend to punish the roads with.

At the same time my wife and I got the news that she is pregnant and we will get a little girl this december. I hear that this entails a complete shift of focus and a change of priorities. This led me to the conclusion: If I want to do a “real” triathlon, this summer is the time in any foreseeable future. I went to the danish triathlon overview page and looked for half ironman races as late in the season as possible: I was seriously considering Silkeborg August 28, but the travel and the clash with Christiansborg Rundt 2k swim race made Hillerød triathlon the obvious choice. 1k swim, 75k bike and 20k run. I had hoped for an openwater swim (and a bit longer) but 50m lanes was a decent compromise. I had hoped for a longer bike as well, but 75k is very decent! 20k run was going to be the hardest part; since last fall my running was lacking due to yet another knee problem.

I signed up, and tried to structurize my training the best as I could after the basic premise: 3 workouts in each diciplin each week.

Today (2011-08-21) was the day of Hillerød tri. Since april 2. I have accumulated 2222km’s on the bike, 430km running, 86km swimming (were the last two months have been open water swimming).

The day started early, 5.10(Am) the alarm went off and I went straight for breakfeast. My usual breakfeast with a banana added and two cups of coffee as well as 750ml of sis energy-drink. I had packed my bags the night before and planned my energy intake: Basic premise: gel every 20minutes from bike start to run end. During the bike I would also take in two energybars (a 30minutes and 1h30minutes – Powerbar Cookies and cream and a Sqeezy Cola Caffeein bar) as well as two times 750ml energy drink.
In the weeks leading up to the race I had been swaying between using the wetsuit or not. (Allthough legal – I feel somewhat cramped around the shoulders and very hot in the pool – but the buoyancy and speed effect is hard to neglect). In the end I packed the wetsuit. I also brought two CO2 cannisters, 3 extra-tubes (only took two on the bike), my new fusion compression top and bottom, cep compresison tubes and extra unattached sleeves for a cold bike ride.

I boarded the  s-train at 6:45 and arrived at the bike-checkin at 7:45ish. Got my number and tried to remember all things I was told at the KVIK tri training seminars about T1/T2 setup and what i’ve learned at 4:18:4.

After that I had to hurry with a shower and change into the wetsuit. Everybody was started with 30seconds intervals in between and my start time was 8:12:00.

At 8:12:01 I jumped into the water and the swimming started. I was number 24 to start so not that many in the pool at that time, and lots of room to overtake and be overtaken in. The layout was to zig-zag the pool for 500meters (in 50m lanes) and then do it once more. Pretty uneventful apart from a single guy that kept tickling me until I stopped at one of the turns to explicitly let him pass. Annoying.

18minutes and 30seconds later(1m51s/100m) I left the pool and ran for T1. In my dreams I had hoped for a 20minute swim but feared a 22 minute swim. Very nice to surpass my own expectations!

The bikecourse was a 2×37,5km loop. As there at most was 20-30people in front of me after the swim not many people to see out on the first loop. Due to road-work they had to direct us through 100m patch of gravel-road. Not fun. And many of the road-side biking-paths were in pretty bad shape. But apart from that it was a beautiful ride (with some wind!). The second loop contained far more people. Both people doing two loops but also the 400persons that was competing in race of half the distance. In the weeks leading into the race I have been struggeling with some pain in my left gluteus maximus(butt cheek) and I was quite annoing today as well. Not debilitating just annoying and taking away my power at that side.

My goal for the bike was to steady my heartrate around 150-155(70-75% HRR) and be

Me in t1 (bit of ISO trouble at the camera)

smart about the nutrition – in best case that would result in a bike-split around 2h20minutes. I had hoped for an aid station with actual bottles instead of just a place to refill my own bottle but what the heck – that minute didn’t hurt me.

When I parked my bike I was happy to see that bike-ride ended at 2h 15m! (33,74 km/t)
Entering T2 I saw my wife with the camera and it always lightens my mood seeing her

In T2 I filled my pockets with gels and wielded my running shoes (with elastic shoelaces – fantastic invention). Feeling excellent (I knew that the butt cheek didnt affect my running) I headed for the 2x10km run loops. The route was quite scenic through the woods and along tiny lakes. Lots of people in the woods to run along side. 10k and 5k runners from other racedistances and other 20k runners as well.

The strategy was to settle the heartrate under 160(80%) for the first 10k to ensure that I would survive the last 10k – and no HR caps for the final 10k. Due to my running injuries I havent had a run longer that 10-14k since 2007 – but today was the day! In my last weeks of training 12k was my base run distance so I knew that distance was possible for me to run. So after 8k I told my self: Now you just need to run the 12k you have done so many times during training.

Entering the last part of the run

This summer I entered a 10k race and finished in about 46minutes – based on that I dreamt about a 1h40minute 20k at Hillerød. The first 10k took just about 54 minutes and it felt OK tough my right knee was starting to act up. The second loop was quite tolling and the knee got worse and worse. But somehow I managed to almost keep the pace even finishing with a the last two k a bit faster that the rest. At the finish line I was completely spent. I sat down on the grass an my wife brought me some water. 1h47minutes, and the bike+t2+run was done within 4hours. Inside the exhausted exterior I was ecstatic!

My dream-race was 20minute swim, 2h20m bike, 1h40m run + t1+t2 == 4h26minutes. I finished in all in all 4h21minutes. Way better than I had dared to dream about. Phenomenal!

Now Im sitting in the couch. I ordered both pizza and burger and coke for dinner and my knee is very very sore and I can seem to fight the hunger that keeps on popping up eventhough I eat and eat  - and I feel exhausted, spent, hungover and ecstatic all at once. What a day and worth every hour of training!

After the race - Spent

• 29/5 Sjælsø rundt – 125km bike (result: 4h 22m 35s)
• 13/6 KVIK Tri Team pinse stævne – 300m swim, 19.5km bike, 4km run
• 1/7 Aarhus 4:18:4 – 400m swim, 18km bike, 4km run
• 6/7 Adecco Strandpark løbet – 10k run
• 12/8 Copenhagen 4:18:4 – 400m swim, 18km bike, 4km run
• 21/8 Hillerød Triathlon – 1000m swim, 76km bike, 20km run – Season goal
• 28/8 Christiansborg Rundt – 2k open water swim in the canal
• 31/12 Änglamark Nytårsløb – ½marathon perhaps.

I found a couple of links:

• http://tihlde.org/~eivindw/latex-listings-for-scala/
• http://scala-programming-language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/scaladoc-sty-td1945564.html / http://www.scala-lang.org/node/546

The last (two) link(s) includes a downloadable .sty to include in your LaTeX environment. I had some trouble actually downloading the file so I mirrored it here: http://s3.blog.vrist.dk.s3.amazonaws.com/lstlang0.sty

• They really like to drink milk! I denmark we drink milk, but here it is offered for all meals, both at CWI and my hostel
• For some reason it is easier to get powder milk in your coffee than fresh milk. The mind boggles
• They like their “fietsen” here. Bicycles almost as many as I see in copenhagen. I’ve seen a fair amount of normal city-bikes with aero-gear. Most of the bikes are “granma-bikes”
• It is true: Coffee-shops exist and you can walk in and buy hash
• They are really really really looking forward to the football World Cup in South Africa.
• They are very proud of their orange colors. Football celebrations and elsewhere
• Some of the houseboats looks really nice
• June 9 was electionday for parliment. Very quiet. No posters, no marches, no demonstrations. Very quiet.

Biomolecular computers and computation

Biomolecular computers or “biocomputers” is an area that have been research the last 20 years. At first much hype and hope was attached that this would provide some kind of break through to overcome the limitations of normal silica-based chip computers as we know and use today – your average PC and every microchip controlled device around. This is the same hope that surrounds quantum computers – a new approach for doing currently very long computations, for example integer factorization of large prime products within feasible time. The jury is still out on the possibility of biomolecular computing to deliver on that hope/potential. Other research have also shown “niche” interest in the area of “DNA Doctor” usage of biocomputers where a “biocomputer” is implemented to interact directly with the cells in for example humans.

A biomolecular computer can be seen as a computer that  ”.…use systems of biologically derived molecules, such as DNA and proteins, to perform computational calculations involving storing, retrieving, and processing data.“(From wikipedia). Why is this interesting?

First of all: Why not? Tinkering, and playing around with things is interesting IMHO: By drawing the parallel between a biocomputer and a (human) brain you can say that it is a way to learn about ways nature works.

Second of all, a biocomputer will have different properties compared to conventional computers. Some of the first explored ideas was to use DNA interactions to solve very computational hard problems (NP-complete, traveling salesman like problems, Adleman 1994). This is interesting because it is possible to have millions and millions of molecules in lab-tube and thereby allowing for massively parallel computations – compared to a conventional computer which might have 4 (or at least not millions of) cores for parallel computations.

The Blob programming model

When I contacted my supervisor about writing a project this winter I was introduced to “the blob programming model”. At that time it was mostly an article in progress. Just now it has been accepted for the CS2Bio workshop as “Programming in Biomolecular computation” in Amsterdam, June 10, 2010.

The authors, Neil Jones in particular, read lots of the articles around biomolecular computation, turing universality of the models, and formal algebras for describing molecular interactions (Like Kappa calculus and Biochemical Ground Form) but his background as a computer scientist found something missing: Where are the programs?

Lots of interesting computational properties was proven but as a programmer there is no way to write a program as we know it.

Based on that “hole” a machine language was developed and described in the article which might theoretically could be used on a biocomputer. The models was dubbed “The blob programming model” and the article can be found at http://blobvis.appspot.com/blob

My Project – Visualizations of Blob programs

Based on this article I defined a project for doing a literature review of biocomputing literature as well as visualization theory applicable to visualization of blob programs. Normal progrogramming visualizations exists and have been used for many years, but in this case there was a special angle attached to the visualizations. The blob model has a potential physical analog as it might be possible to create a “biomolecular computer” that can execute the instructions and as the instructions is formed to be somewhat like an abstract molecule or similar a visualization of the blob instruction set could/should reveal interesting properties of blob programs with regards to their physical presence.

A program in the BlobVis tool

At http://blobvis.appspot.com my report is available for download as well as the BlobVis visualization tool I developed. From there you can play around with a few simple “Blob Programs”, for example a “list append’” program and see a video of a program executing in BlobVis. As I focused on physical properties the tool uses a physical based algorithm for layouting the blob programs(Via prefuse) which allows you to drag around programs and data in a way that looks like it is immersed in water or similar. That gives an interesting effect and is fun to watch.

It looks like I’ve gotten all the way around the currently published articles with this list:

Jeff Atwood was is not very happy with the default “incredibly pessimistic out of the box” setup of databases in his “Deadlocked!” post.  Along the same lines, the H-store people published an article[1]:

The End of an Architectural Era (It’s Time for a Complete Rewrite).

They claim that the time is up for “legacy systems” like the model used by current RDMBS’ like MySQL and SQL Server. The assumption of the H-base people that reasonates with Jeff Atwood – I believe – is:

Every effort should be made to eliminate the cost of traditional dynamic locking for concurrency control, which will also be a bottleneck.

I don’t know if it is something Jeff Atwood is aware of, and I don’t know if that is a sign that a traditional RDBMS is maybe not what he wants, but it is worth think about – IMHO.

Dette er hvordan sagerne ser ud fra min del af internettet

Først dukkede sagen om eof.dk op[1] som skabte lidt røre. Et domæne registeret for flere år siden, men uden website blev dømt som “ikke i brug” og givet til et firma som valgte at skifte til et navn som kan forkortes til eof.dk. Min personlige store kæphest med den sag er at for det første foregår det bagvendt. Firmaet skifter navn og passer pludsligt til forkortelsen EOF.dk, selvom domænet var taget og i brug. For det andet synes jeg at den tekniske baggrund der ligger til grund bliver fuldstændig forfladiget og hele den sammensatte netværksstack som ip og dns dækker over bliver lavet om til: “Det vi kan se i vores internet explorer 6.0″. Hvis domænet kun bliver brugt til mail, så bruger man det jo ikke! Argumenterne for sådan en prioritering fremføres bl.a. i ddu.dk sagen:

I diskussionen om den retlige regulering af internet-domænenavne sætter man undertiden lighedstegn mellem internet-domænenavne og hjemmesider. Det ligger da også klart, at nogle af de mest værdifulde anvendelsesformer for internet-domænenavne netop er som kommunikation via hjemmesider. Internetdomænenavne kan dog også anvendes til andre formål, f.eks. e-post og FTP-service. En sådan anvendelse kan også have en betydelig nytteværdi, men da e-post ofte sendes mellem parter, der kender hinanden, medens kommunikation til og fra hjemmesider ofte sker mellem parter, der ikke kender hinanden (og som derfor har behov for at kunne huske det relevante kontaktpunkt), har en sådan anvendelse ofte en mindre økonomisk værdi.

Tjaeh tjoeh.  Jeg synes man glemmer dimension omkring at folk kunne hurtigt blive afhængige af at beholde deres emailadresser for eksempel.

Derfra gik der et par måneder indtil Peter Makholm tørt bemærkede: “…IMHO orango.dk, roklub.dk, and ddu.dk looks interesting.” baseret på hans gennemkig af de nyeste sager fra Domæne Klagenævnet. Og så gik det pludseligt vildt for sig.

Det hele drejer sig om at at firma – orango.nu, stiftet i foråret 2009 – ønsker sig domænet orango.dk. En privat person har ejet domænet i 9år og har altid brugt “orango” som sit nick online. Domænet bruges til email og som startside af ham personligt.

Peter Larsen er meget lidt tilfreds med sagen og poster harmdirrende på sin blog og turen starter. Herfra går det via twitter og comon:

Virksomheder har forret til danske domæner. Det lader til at være essensen af endnu en dansk domæneklage-sag.(common)

og der dukker en lang række blogposts op i kølvandet:

• Danish Dispute Policies Allow Reverse Hijacks?
• Orango “kaprer” domæne fra privat dansker
• Domæneindehaver mister domæne efter 9 år
• Ejeren af domænet orango.dk skal overdrage det til orango.nu
• .dk domæner kan tages fra dig
• Hvor meget er et domæne værd?
• Orango stjæler privat domænenavn (og  på kommunikationsforum)
• Orango
• Orango.nu / Orango.dk sagen
• Må man beholde sit eget domænenavn?

Derudover er der flere nyhedssites som tager sagen op:

• 180grader: Orango skifter hænder med statens hjælp
• CRN: Domæneejer mister navnet efter 9 år
• Leder fra 180grader: Venstrefløjsekstremisme er gjort til lov om webdomæner
• Newz: Mister domæne efter 9 år til nystiftet firma

Dette afføder en del reaktioner i debatfora og som kommentarer til ovenstående blogposts og nyhedsposts. For mig virker det som om de fleste kanaliserer deres vrede direkte mod orango.nu firmaet selvom flere påpeger at firmaet som sådan kun er et symptom på en syg lov/klagebehandling:

Gammelmand @orango enig de er nogle svin. Men husk nu det var difo og domæneklagenævnet og domæneloven der gjorde det muligt. Ændre domænelov nu!!!!

Gammelmand #orango #orangogate hvorfor sidder forbrugerrådet som tavse medlemmer i difo. Ny domæne lov nu! Nyt domæneklagenævn nu!!!

(Fra twitter: http://twitter.com/#search?q=orango)

Denne vrede udmønter sig mange steder. Trustpilot anmeldelser med bundkarakterer, facebook kommentarer osv. Orango.nu forsøger at forsvare sig ved at fjerne/slette alle disse ting, men når det først er derude er det svært at slippe af med:

Conduct Reputation Management 101. Slet ikke kritiske indlæg – svar på dem i stedet (via facebook)

jonasjuhler Mit råd til @orango: Find et nyt navn – og undskyld! Man kan ikke tie en sag ihjel på nettet! #orangogate (via twitter)

jpenti Kan #orangogate mon overbevise @orango om at man ikke kan gemme sig på internettet? Slet bare løs på Facebook men samtalen fortsætter. (Via twitter)

runehven @conduct_dk Orango har måske slået væggen fra – men folk kan stadig uploade “fan”-billeder – http://bit.ly/6qGW7a#Orango #orangogate (via twitter)

Samtidigt skydes der gang i flere tiltag:

• §20 spørgsmå fra SFl til Videnskabsministeren.
  • “pbinderup Mail sendt til IT ordfører for SF omkring #orango#orangogate” (via twitter)
  • http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20091/almdel/UVT/spm/39/index.htm
  • og i nyhederne: newz, crn,180grader
• Online underskriftsindsamling.
• Facebook grupper
  • orango.dk skal forsat ejes af Peter Veileborg
  • Orango – Firmaet der stjæler dit domæne.

Modvinden er så strid at DR Update tager imod tippet om sagen og laver et indslag: http://www.dr.dk/NETTV/Update/?video={cc7e58df-fbcb-41ee-85ed-ea674dd41e4f}

Sidste nyt er artikel med råd fra kommunikationsekspert om at orango.nu bør skifte navn og sige undskyld(via  Comon) sammen med forsøg på at få kommentarer fra Orango.nu på sagen.

Samtidigt har Peter Veileborg  - nuværende ejer af Orango.dk – afsløret at der bliver en retsag: http://www.orangotilbage.dk/ hviket diverse nyhedssites også rapporterer:

• Comon: “Orango skal for retten”
• 180grader: Orango.dk ejer kræver sit domæne tilbage
• Version2: Mistede orango.dk-domæne – nu går han rettens vej
• CRN: Orango.dk skal for retten
• Newz: Orango.dk afgørelse bliver anket

Stay tuned!

http://new.czar.dk/?p=510 – Peter Larsen (Larsen data, gratisdns og formand for DKRegistrar brancheforening)
http://new.czar.dk/?p=521 – || -
http://www.piratpartiet.dk/node/277
http://www.version2.dk/artikel/12516-god-skik-skal-diskuteres – Peter Makholm, version2 blogger
http://www.version2.dk/artikel/12124-klagenaevn-konfiskerer-html-fri-domaener – Artikel fra version2 der sætter sagen i spotlight.
http://www.business.dk/tech-mobil/principiel-domaenesag-kan-ende-i-retten – Skal EOF sagen i retten?