links for 2006-01-18

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Useless Ride Stats for 1/17

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No riding the last few days because I was in "San Diego":http://www.flickr.com/photos/feralboy/tags/sandiego/ with my mom. My occasional riding partner Darcey had texted me to find out if I wanted to ride Sunday a.m., and I was pretty bummed that I wasn't able to. Today the weather cooperated and I took a break from work to go out on the same loop as last time. 16.38 miles 30.7 mph max speed 14.9 mph avg speed (less than last time! boo hiss!) 1:06 ride time

Useless Ride Stats for 1/11

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_(With a nod to "fixedgear":http://fixedgearcycling.blogspot.com/ for the formatting)_ Finally ordered a cyclocomputer for the fixie to start keeping track of my riding so I could measure progress. Went out just as the sun was getting low, went down Old Spanish Trail past my usual turn-around point of Saguaro East, and made it almost all the way to Colossal Cave. The ride gets much more interesting further east, with lots of rolling hills(!), including one nasty one that nearly equalled some of the steeper ones on my Pittsburgh commute. I turned around after that one (it's uphill on the way back), and made it back just as it was falling dark.

15.68 miles 27.9 mph max speed 15.1 mph avg speed 1:02 ride time

links for 2006-01-06

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A Smashing Hypothesis (or, how to make A Good Idea longer)

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I had a thought last night. I should write a plug-in for Microsoft Word that kids can use for paper-writing when they have to have some sort of arbitrary length for their submission; like 5 pages or what have you. This plugin would automatically shrink the margins, double-space and increase the font size, but only up to the upper limits of acceptability; no logic in making it 50 point. That would just give it away. It would have a thesaurus attached, so you could find the longest and most "cromulent":http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cromulent words to substitute in. Word already has built-in grammar checking, so you can probably make sure that everything still makes sense after you're done. Of course, if I could bring in a bunch of 18th century slang, I could just have it be a Mr. Burns filter for all the little ragamuffins out there. The only problem as I see it would be marketing. Any sort of email with subject lines like "Increase your size by 50%" and "Rip your teacher's emotions apart with your massive paper" are likely to get picked up by spam filters.

links for 2005-12-24

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The holidays are coming?!?!?

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Matt -n- Ryan, originally uploaded by feralboy.

Ryan was in town last weekend at a fancy-ass spa up in Phoenix. I went up for the day and we hung out by the hot tub, eating salsa and drinking $8 beers on someone else's tab.

Facial hair midlife crisis

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I'm at a crossroads with my facial hair. I had enough of the "huge chops":http://flickr.com/photos/feralboy/7041883/ a few weeks ago, so cut them down to my last facial hair style, which was more of a straight sideburns to the jawline, ala "PartyBoy":http://home.zonnet.nl/r.schreuders/pontius/pix/jmca18.jpg. It's just a temporary fix for now, as I try and figure out what to do next. Kim is pushing really hard for a "Jason Lee/My Name is Earl":http://www.nbc.com/My_Name_Is_Earl/ moustache kind of thing, but I can't see myself going that route. Perhaps the more devilish moustache and goatee? Just the goatee? Help!

*Update:* Pat sent along some good ideas.

*Update 2:* Through the magic of photoshop, we can see what I would look like with all of these looks. Many thanks to Pat for yet more "stellar image mashups":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/feralmarketing/.