What do you get when a musical composer sees a picture of birds on phone lines and realized that they form notes and he puts that into music?
Well check it out here, it is really cool!
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Training week 48
Not good this week either. Got hit by Urticaria, a skin rash and are now on cortisone and antihistamines to get rid of it. Cortisone doses of the level I am getting right now drives my resting pulse up quite a lot and I was told by the doctor to not make too strenous exercise during that time. The cortisone will be just a few more days but after that I will keep on the antihistamines for a while which I am ok to take and run so I will give it a go.
I miss the running, my shoes are calling to me when I pass them by on my way out through the door. Tomorrow I am missing my sixth scheduled run in a row but I am not too worried about it.
Celestia
I have found a new software on the net that I really can spend hours and hours toying around with. This is Celestia – a beautiful astronomical and scientifically correct model to the best of our understanding yet of the universe. Celestia works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X as well.
You quickly learn how to use the zoom in and out features, how to track celestial objects through the sky but the one thing that strikes me the most is how incredibly alone I feel after a while. I have been standing on Phobos and Deimos, looking down on the face of Mars and although they are just small rocks they are quite far away from the planet that they orbit. I have been amazed over how far from the planet some of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are and the sheer number of orbiting bodies around Neptune. And then I suddenly stumbled uppon Cassini, the space probe, still going toward the outermost parts of the solar system.
I have traveled to galaxies far beyond a human comprehension and lost myself along clusters too far from the sun that it was impossible to see the Milky Way again. I have discovered the Greater and Lesser Magellan Clouds and amazed that we and Andromeda are so close in a universe on a perverse macro scale.
This my friends are just amazing. And it is freeware. Download, enjoy if you are an Astronomy buff.
All pictures here are taken from the software.
Glömda kulturskatter
Johan Antus [www.antus.org] har en härlig sajt som innehåller allt möjligt roligt för den som är intresserad av nutidshistoria. Mycket bunkrar men även lite övergivna bostäder och en del annat intressant för den som tycker det är spännande att ge sig ut på urban exploration.
Själv fascineras jag av bilderna från en svunnen period när det svenska försvaret byggde anläggningar för landets försvar lite överallt och det fanns verkligen ingen större hejd på ekonomin när det gällde sådant.
Jag gillar också sidan om piratradiosändningarna som verkligen visar bilder, går på djupet och förklarar hur det gick till. Ungdomar byggde portabla FM-sändare som monterades upp tillfälligt på vindar, balkonger och tak i stockholmsområdet och sände mellan 30-90 minuter ungefär en gång i veckan. Televerket var fullkomligt vansinniga i sin jakt efter de ”samhällsomstörtande verksamheterna” som pågick.
Training wk 37
This has not been the best week for me. I have gotten som kind of infection and feel terrible so I skipped the long run on saturday. I did the two shorter runs which went well though but I will probably miss some runs next week also as I am not feeling well at all.
Spotify for Android
Now there is a spotify client both for the Android and for the iPhone. The client can also sync music for offline listening. This is such great news, I can bring my playlists from spotify where me wherever I go and listen anywhere as long as there is space on my memory card everything should be dandy.
The iPhone version apparently stops playing in the background something Apple demanded it should do, but on the Android background playing works GREAT so now I can strem music while I jog and can set up the playlist on my computer at home or pretty much everywhere and then just sync it with my phone.
So now the phone not only tracks my workout times and distance using the GPS, it also plays the music to my mood and this is something I have been waiting for some time now.
Time to become a premium member, the ad-financed version of spotify does not cover the mobile version but I don’t care. 99 SEK for a month is nothing compared to the joy it is bringing…
Back to work
From as of today I am back at work again. Yay, I have started to miss it so I guess my holiday was really good this year. I had five weeks off now and feel well rested.
Compared to last year when I only had two weeks off…
Training week 36
The first week on my new schedule went far over what I expected. It is really crazy but I have not felt so good with my running in a long time. There was no pains what so ever this week, and not really that much hardship out in the track either except that interval running which was tough but worked out really well.
So my first run this week was a shorter and slower run to just recover and this went well. I then did the intervals on Wednesday and that was really tough. Cardio and VO2 max training really. I put the intervals far too long to be effective, I will correct that for the next week. Instead of 10 min intervals with 2 min walks I will run 3/2 or 3/1 but based on my pulse rather than on time. I would then be able to run to 90% of maximum pulse and then walk it down to 80% or even 75% and then run it up to 90% again in intervals around the path I usually goes.
But the highlight this week was my fabulous long distance run. I set out slow, very slow, I got the advice to start ”silly slow” and then just very gradually pick up the speed after the first click or so. Which I did, I then kept the pulse around 155-160 and I really had to hold back the first couple of kilometers.
Then I entered the Zone. Seriously. The feet pounding the ground just disappeared around me and all I was aware of was my regular, but not too strained, breathing and I could go on for ever like this. Uphill was not a problem, I just increased the cadence and lowered the speed and downhill I compensated for the loss of time keeping the tempo around 8:45 per km. That’s really slow, about 25% faster than you walk at a good pace of course. But it does not matter by being able to keep this pace for a full hour and not stopping until the 7 km was up I got a really really good workout.
The best really. I feel it in my legs, my foot soles are a little hurting but not that bad. During the running however no pains at all. Nothing, just pure floating over the ground, the full moon above shining down on the forest path that I regularly work out on. Instead of the normal 2 laps I do I did 3 laps and then down to the water line.
Really great. I feel so great it’s difficult to describe it. Just… WOW!
The difference between a coder and a technical overlord
Att springa med telefon
Jag har telefonen med mig när jag löptränar. Jag har min MP3-spelare i telefonen, jag har min GPS och programvara som loggar löpningen och jag har nödtelefonen händig om jag skulle bryta ett ben eller bryta ihop eller nått mitt ute i skogen.
Men ibland blir det lustigt…
– <flås> ’Allå? <flås>
– Hej vi ringer från Dagens Nyheter, du har ju tidigare haft tidningen men avslutat din prenumeration hos oss. Därför undrar vi om du skulle vara intresserad av ett erbjudande…
– <flås> <flås> Nej tack <flås>
– Okay får man fråga varför… du… jag ringer inte olägligt eller så?
– <flås> lite <flås> kanske <flås> ute och springer <flås flås>
– Oh, haha, det lät som om jag hade kommit mitt i något heeelt annat.
– <flås> kan tro det <flås flås flås> men jag har inte <flås flås> riktigt tid <flås flås> att läsa <flås> morgontidning <flås> den blir <flås> mest liggande <flås flås> på hög <flås> så tack ändå.
– Okay, lugnt, ha det bra med springandet!
– <flås> tack hej <flås> <klick>