Saturday, October 6, 2007
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted to this blog. Sometime in the intervening months, the CGI scripts that run the Movable Type version of my blog stopped working. I did a bit of investigation and decided I’d just give WordPress a try, since it’s officially supported by my hosting company.
Unfortunately, with the Movable Type administration pages not working, I can’t easily import my old posts into this new system. The good news is that all of my old posts are still around in the old system, so they’re not going anywhere. If I get some ambition someday, I may try to fix the old blog and combine everything into one. I’m not planning on it any time soon, though, since I have few readers and even fewer who are interested in the handful of old posts I’ve done over the past three years.
Maybe I’ll post more with WordPress. The administration pages seem much easier to use, at the very least. We’ll see what happens.
My wife is the chief resident of her radiology department, and as such, she asked me to put together a web site listing out all of the recommended books for the residents in her department. The incoming first year residents are starting soon, so she gave me a list of ISBNs and I set up:
Recommended Books for Radiology Residents
Enjoy.
Also, if anyone knows of residency departments wanting to create such a list, let me know and I’ll be happy to add them to the web site.
Technorati tags: radiology medicine books residency
Here we are after running the Sound to Narrows 5K, wet and victorious. Well, we were victorious in that we successfully completed our first organized running event–in the rain, no less.
Official time: 30:34:00
Official pace: 9:51 per mile
If you go to the pet store and can’t decide between a cat or a bird, and you get the cat, you don’t take it home and train it to fly. It’s not going to work, and all you’re going to end up with is a short temper and a lot of broken little kitty legs. No, you take that cat home and train it to be the best damn cat on the block. It might not do laps around the ceiling or sing you pretty songs, but I’d like to see a parakeet keep snakes off the lawn.
That’s from a writeup of last night’s Mariners game at Lookout Landing.
I’m subscribed to Flickr’s RSS feed for photos tagged tacoma, so I can see if there’s any neat photos of places around town. Today there were a few of views from new, under construction Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Turns out WSDOT has a Flickr account and has posted some interesting photos up there.
Having just bought the Nike+ Sport Kit and 4GB Silver Nano, I didn’t really want to drop another $100 or so on new shoes. Thus, I got out a Swiss Army knife and did some reconstructive surgery on my old Adidas running shoes.
How I did it:
- Remove the insole from the left shoe.
- Use a sharp object to dig a hole of the right size in the approximate middle of the shoe.
- Don’t cut yourself.
- Periodically try to fit the sensor into the hole, so you can get it to just the right size.
- Replace insole.
- Go running.
Easy as cake.
I’ve recently started running again. By again, I mean I used to run occasionally when I’d decide every once in a while that I should start running again. Of course, that would only last a week or two, so we’ll see how long this phase lasts.
This time I started up after hearing my wife talk about a guy at work who just ran a half-marathon here in Tacoma not too long after having part of his lung removed for medical reasons. That inspired me for some reason, so now I have a goal to run the Tacoma half-marathon next spring. My wife has agreed to do it, too, so I’ve done a bit of research and set us up a reasonable training schedule.
In the shorter term, we’re planning to run the Bank to Bay 10K in Tacoma in September. In the even shorter term we’re thinking about running the 5K course of the Sound to Narrows run in June.
A co-worker recently bought a Nike+ Kit that lets you keep track of your running data with an iPod Nano, and with me being easily influenced by friends when it comes to gadgetry, I bought one, too (and a 4GB Silver Nano).
To break it in, I decided to run 5K along Tacoma’s beautiful Ruston Way waterfront. I finished in 26:17. I was pleased with that, though I had to push myself at the end to keep going. The nice woman in my Nike+ kit was helpful when she counted down the last few 100 meters. Hearing “Only 300 meters to go” really helps in some way.
(Or see my run on Runner+)
I’m hoping with the combination of having goals (running events), a training schedule (Monday, Wednesday, Saturday), some fancy gadgetry and data (Nike+), and a running partner (my wonderful wife), I’ll be able to keep this up for the long term.
You can add a Google gadget to any webpage, so I’m testing out how the Foodry Dining Suggestions gadget looks. It should show up below here, with restaurants from Tacoma, WA (maybe not in the RSS feed, though). You should be able to try this out yourself at the Google gadgets site.
I was able to spend a bit of time playing around with Google gadgets this weekend. I put one together for Foodry that, when given a city and state, will list 3 restaurants to give you ideas on where to eat. Read about it on the Foodry blog:
Google Gadget for Local Dining Suggestions
Or give it a try by clicking on the button below:
If you use a Google homepage, load it up on there and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
We were talking at work today about how we always miss when Amazon has a Nintendo Wii in stock. To make it a bit easier on ourselves, I borrowed a bit from my Goldbox Feed and created a Wii Status Feed. It checks fairly regularly and updates the RSS feed if it sees that a Wii is in stock.
I hope it works. 
There hasn’t been a Wii in stock while I was testing. I guess we’ll see what happens. I realize by publicizing this feed it may reduce the Wii buying chances a bit, but, hey, I’m a nice guy.
So, if you want to try it out, here it is:
Wii Status Feed
Technorati tags: wii nintendo
