October 2008 Archives

I hate DRM!  So, one of the first things I do when my darling wife purchases her music from iTunes is to convert it to mp3 to remove the limitations from the music.  Is it illegal, probably, but I don't distribute the music.  I don't pass it around to everyone, I don't spread it around with bit torrents, I simply want to have a copy of it without DRM.  That way in a year or two, or maybe three when I have gone through a couple of different computers I dont have to hassle with authorizing and de-authorizing players.  The mp3 format also gives me more flexibility as to how and where I play the music.
In iTunes, on a Mac, the only way to convert the files from Apple proprietary mp4 format is to insert a blank compact disc and burn a playlist as an audio cd, then import the CD as an mp3.  This task is time consuming and gets expensive when you consider a blank CD costs .29.  Not to mention the CD is wasted because like I said above I dont distribute that copyrighted DRM'd material.  On a windows machine there are numerous options for creating a virtual CD drive on the computer to trick iTunes in to thinking that it's burning to a real CD.  I used to use daemon tools and it did the trick.  On a Mac I could not find any options for creating this virtual drive until I came across NoteBurner Audio Converter.
Despite the $39.99 price tag it's a must have application!  Once installed in the super simple OS X way it required a restart to make the virtual drive available.  Now for the cool part, Noteburner not only fools itunes in to thinking that it has a blank CD, but it also automatically converts the audio files in to mp3 for you! 
All I had to do was create the playlist of files that I wanted to buin to a CD, click the Burn CD button, then select the Noteburner Virtual Drive from the drive selections.  It was that easy! 
I dont feel so bad about buying some music from iTunes now that I have a easy way to convert my purchased audio to a format I prefer.

What a glorious weekend it is when you can get rides in on both days! 
I decided to sleep in and ride later in the day on Sunday.  That way the roads would have time to dry out and my gear would have a little extra time to dry out from the ride on Saturday morning.  As it turns out waiting to ride was a great decision, the two slices of pizza that I ate about 35 minutes before leaving for the ride wasn't.
The weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold, not too much wind, and dry roads.  After finishing my first 20 mile loop I decided to take advantage of the weather and go around a second time.  It was a great ride!  I got home, got off the bike, and as I "cooled down
my stomach started to cramp.   
My stomach continued to cramp and gurgle the rest of the day..... it sounded like something was trying to come up from the deep.  The only thing that I can figure is that the pizza was not a wise choice for a pre-ride meal.  Oh well, we all learn from our mistakes!

It's amazing how much 3 weeks off of the bike will take out of you!  I woke up at O dark thirty this morning, looked out the window, and saw breaks in the cloud.  Wet roads or not I was going to get in a ride!  The temperatures were perfect!  I put my spare wheels on because I have yet to put the new tire on my good wheels and rode out.  I rode the four miles to Fat Frogs Bikes and Fitness to meet up with the group and made it with time to spare.  We rolled out and took a nice easy pace of about 20.  We hit New Bridge Rd and I took the front and we were cruising nice and easy at about 23-24 miles per hour.  That's when Bud came up beside me and told me my saddle bag was open.  I started to panic, sure that my credit card, license, and brand new Verizon cell phone had fallen out.  I rode with the group for another half mile to the corner of New Bridge and Indian River Road and pulled over.  Amazingly nothing was lost!!!! Bouncing along nothing fell out of the bag and it was wide open!  I was only stopped for thirty seconds or so but with the head wind and three weeks off of the bike I just did not have it to catch back on. 
So on I rode by myself in to the head wind the whole time cussing and swearing at myself for taking so much time off of the bike!
Next week I am not going I need to "get back on the bus" and start getting back in to shape!
Monday night at 6 will be the first trainer party!

Looks like it's going to a trainer ride for me... we're going to get some rain.....

This is an interesting election race this year!  Sarah Palin the vice-president candidate for the Republican party is supporting the Democratic party!  Check out the scarf in the picture below....


Found on: Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Another non-cycling blog post!  What's up with me lately?  I have not been on the bike in a couple of weeks.  Maybe I just need a few weeks off, a mini-vacation, before getting back on the bike again.  Knowing in the back of my head that I need to start the training to prepare me for next year and racing as a Cat 4 makes me feel even worse about not riding.  But I need the time off I think I was getting a bit burnt out.  I have November 3rd marked on the calendar as the official first day of training.  A Spinnervals DVD and the torture device (trainer) are setup and waiting in the garage to start rolling at 5:45.  Anyone that wants to "ride along" is more than welcome to join in!
While off the bike in the evenings I have been working  on a "project" at home that involves weaning us off of our dependency on cable TV.  No more Cox Communications and the $83 a month cable bill!  We started with re-purposing my wife's "old" Macbook as the hub for our media center.  I say "old" but it's not really old we have only had it for about 2 years.  It has been attached to the 42" Samsung Plasma TV by way of a mini-DVI to VGA adapter and the receiver by a mini to RCA wire.  I also added a USB 2.0 hub to simplify the connection of the various receivers for the wireless keyboard, mouse, and other stuff.  This was the easy part of the process.  As for the software side of things we are starting off with only the basics.  A web browser, VLC Player, and Apple's Front Row.  Without a cable coming in there was no real need for me to install and configure any elablorate HTPC applications to record programs for us.
One of the reasons we have felt so tied to cable is the DVR functionality and online guide.  Long ago we became hooked on recording shows and watching them at our convenience without having to sit through commericals.  Streamlined TV!  That functionality is available from TIVO, but we would still be required to have cable and the monthly savings would only be around $20 a month.  We wanted to cut as much of the bill as possible.  So, the first step was to find ways to view our favorite shows when we wanted to with only a minimal amount of effort.  For this we found that there are numerous options. 
The first places we turned to find our shows were the network websites.  The four major networks ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox have made it very easy to watch their popular shows through their websites using special viewer plug-ins that allow full screen viewing.  The quality of video is great, better than the standard definition broadcasts available on cable, and they only have minimal commericals.  Most of the times the commericals are only 15 seconds long.  This is most likely how most of our viewing will be done.  As the economy continues it would be no surprise to see more broadcasters follow the lead of the major networks to combat the use of bit-torrent downloads.
Bit Torrents are another way we have found to watch our TV. Through the use of only two sites, piratebay.org and mininova.com we have been able to find most anything that we want to watch in a quality that is on par with Cox's HD service.  The downside to the bit-torrents is the time required to download the video.  Unlike the network sites with instant availability we have to wait for our programs to fully download.  Another difficulty with the bit torrent option was my wife and son.  They aren't going to search for the torrent file for their favorite program, download it,  copy it to the network attached storage, then try to navigate to the "TV" directory on the NAS to watch it.  This left me with the challenge of automating the process. 
That is where a neat application called "TED" (Torrent Episode Downloader) and Apple's Front Row come in to play.    TED is a cross platform application that automates the search and downloading of television episode torrent.  You set up all of your favorite episodes in the TED application then it goes out to several torrent files and downloads torrent files for what episodes based on search criteria you setup.  It will also automatically download new episodes as they become available.  Once the torrent file is downloaded the Macbook is setup to open Transmission to download the file.  Once the download is complete it is moved to a directory on the Buffalo Linkstation NAS.  At first this is where I ran in to a problem with using Front Row for viewing our downloaded videos.  By default Front Row will only "find" files that are stored locally.  To work around this I created an alias, the Mac version of a Windows short cut, in the Movie directory stored locally on the Macbook.  Now when Front Row is opened anything that is saved on the NAS is displayed in the Front Row application for viewing.  TED, Bittorrents, and the network sites too care of the popular programs we watch, but what about the lazy sunday afternoon viewing?  That was another hurdle to over come.
In doing my research I found a bunch of places to catch up on old episodes, educational programs, "vintage" TV, and lots of other stuff.  Hulu.com and Joost.com were two of the best that I found and they both have a wide variety of programs that are available to stream instantly.  I even found some of my old favorite cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkly and Speed Racer!  The other night my son was introduced to one of the original episodes of The Addams Family in black and white!  He loved it! 
I see the process of moving from cable coming along and think in the end we will probably end up watching less TV which will mean more time spent as a family.  That alone would make the process worth while!

With me being the nerd that I am I could not resist.  I just had to see what the new Macbook/Macbook Pros were all about.  We made the pilgrimage to MacArthur Center Mall to visit the Apple Store last night and look at them.  They are cool, the all aluminum cases are super cool.  Gone are the hard plastic edges of the old Macbooks, all that's left is a very sturdy feeling sweet looking machine. 
The new keyboard and trackpad are great and the biggest reason we decided to make the buy.  Well that and the fact that we wanted to relegate the old Macbook to Home Theater PC duties.  The multi-touch gestures are nice, especially the ones for controlling Expose.  A four fingered swipe straight up and all of your windows magically dissappear and you have a clear desk top.  Four fingers down your are presented with small versions of all of your open windows.  Very Cool!  One big thing that I did miss is the capability of "mouse clicking" on the track pad with a light single or double tap.  With the new track pads you have to actually press it as if were an actual mouse click.  That aside the new track pad is a big improvement.
As for performance it's really hard to judge so far, but by looking at the specs I would say that we should see some pretty significant improvements over our old MacBook. I saw that the front side bus is spec'd at 1067 mhz vs the 667 in our old Mac.  The RAM is now DDR3 instead of DDR2.  Those specs along with the much improved video should mean a HUGE improvement when we are working with our video and photos.  I cant wait to try it out!
While I was messing around with MacBooks and the mini-DVI to VGA adapter something jumped out to me.  OSX is cool, it just works.  The way it handles multiple monitors is a perfect example.  I hooked up the HDTV and it automatically recognized it.  I selected the option to mirror the displays and OSX took care of setting the resolution of the Macbook to match that of the TV.  When I disconnected the mini-DVI from the MacBook it automatically went back to the proper resolution.  This is an example as to why I am sold on the Apple/Mac line.... things just work.
 

Gilbert (aka Keirin Racer) has made a post Flight from HELL!!!!!.  For those that dont know he has been shipped out to sea for the next few months. So, we wont see much of him this off season.  Hopefully the poor guy will get some trainer time while he's out floating around.  That way when comes back in the Spring he will be ready to race and carry me around in the Cat 4 races!  In the mean time stay up to speed with his "adventures" by hitting his blog.

Amber got me, and got me good!  She invited all of our friends over and threw a surprise party for me! I was clueless that she had all this going on!  She even went so far as to take me out and drop me off for a 1.5 hour massage to get me out of the house.  When I got home there was a house full!  So not only did Amber make this the coolest birthday, our friends got me some awesome gifts.  Lots of great beer, iTunes gift certificates, and lots of other great stuff!  If only I could have done better planning for Amber’s birthday.  I kind of slacked this year especially in comparison to what she did for me!

I came across an article this morning at Pilotonline.com that is not good news for the bike racing community.  The city is researching the lease of the Sportsplex to private developers and allowing development of shopping and other facilities to help boost the usability of the Sportsplex.  Although this would be great for the city it looks like it will mean the end of the criterium/multi-use trail that was opened up there last year.  On the other hand if the developers are a "cycling friendly" there could be the possibility of improving the course.

Upon further research I found an earlier article from July that somehow slipped under the radar.  The article mentioned the interest from Princess Anne Atheletic Development LLC to lease, manage, and develop the facility.  There are three people mentioned in both articles:
Chuck Thornton, Owns Hometown Heroes restaurant.
John Wack, Manages the Fredericksburg Field House.
Marcie Laumann, president of the Piranhas Soccer team.
Something positive that I have picked up from the two articles is that Princess Anne Athletic Development LLC seems to recognize the need for creating sources of revenue other than just the Sportsplex itself.

Let's hope that if the City of Virginia Beach and PA Athletic do in fact go through with this plan to develop the Sportsplex that they will listen to the voices of our cycling community.  Incorporating some sort of cycling facility in to the plans will add yet another way for them to increase revenue for minimal investment.  Think about it...... several hundred racers, their family, and spectators coming out to spend money to race at the complex as well as money in the surrounding stores.  Even better if the course was planned out properly, unlike the one now that actually crosses the entrance to the facility, it could be used in conjuction with other events at the complex.

Read more about it here:
Developer group seeks to manage Beach's Sportsplex | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

It seems the wonderful folks at Microsoft have introduced a program to encourage the use of their internet search services or portals such as MSN.com or Live.com. In theory it's pretty cool. Use one of their search services and earn up to 25 points per day. Then after accumulating enough points you can get "cool" prizes. The lowest level prizes which are ring tones and music downloads start at about 100 points. The catch, not only do you have to use the Microsoft sites which in and of itself is not too bad, you have to use Internet Exploder. No thanks, they can keep their "perks" and I will stick with Firefox and Google!

Crash aka Lucas Harville has his own blog now!
Check it out: Chronicals of Luke: Sore much?

It's been a few days since I have posted, but there hasn't been much to post about.  The season is over and I have been on a bit of a hiatus from cycling.  I have gotten in some long rides on the weekends and a few nights during the week.  What I haven't had is the desire to really push myself.  I have had the urge to just get out and ride without torturing myself.  Nice, easy, and steady pace is what I have been enjoying and that is probably the key.  Enjoying, getting myself back in to loving my time on the bike rather than torturing myself every time I am in the saddle. 
While on the topic of enjoying... I have decided that with all the stresses of work, the economy, working up a budget, the horrible presidential candidates, and just about everything else in the world it's VERY important that I get some "disconnect" time.  A time that I can spend disconnected from the real world.  When I can put aside all of the pressures of daily life and just have some fun.  Some of the things I would like to do more of during the "off season":  Photography:  I have a nice set of lenses and camera bodies and used to LOVE to do photography.  People, places, things, it didnt matter.  So, I am offering up some free photographer time for anyone that wants some pictures taken.  Family, personal, event... whatever.  Drop me a line if you are interested in getting some pictures done.  I am also setting a goal to get out at least once a month with a friend or two for some "shooting time".  Typically early in the morning or at sunset when the light is best to get a few pictures.  Then hitting a coffee shop or bar for some comparing of notes and shots.
Mountain Biking: No mountains around here, but I would like to get some time riding off road.  I have heard it's great for the on road handling skills.  Not to mention getting dirty can be a lot of fun.
Home Projects:  The last couple of seasons have kept me away from working on stuff around the house and I really need to get back on that stuff.  Redoing trim, painting, replacing molding, and some basic plumbing repairs.... it's amazing how fast things pile up.

Another thing that I need to do this off season is break out the TV and DVD's for Trainer Parties!!!!  Wooo hooo!!! Trainer parties!! Yeah, I am being sarcastic, but the day light is short and I gotta keep some kind of training going.  I will be hosting trainer parties Tuesdays and Thursdays starting in the next couple of weeks and going through until we can get some evening rides in again.  Usually we start about 6PM and ride for 45 minutes to an hour.  Usually to one of the Spinervals DVDs.  Coach Troy really makes a good torturer.  I have a wide open garage that can handle about 8 to 10 people and possibly even one or two more.  If anyone is interested in joining some fellow cyclists for training let me know so I can clear out a bit of room!
It seems a bit easier to get the incentive to ride a trainer when there are a few people that are going to be suffering with you.  The best part about these parties is that they are FREE.  That's right FREE!  The economy is tanked so what better way to save money but to come out with some other cyclist and push each other for FREE. 

Well thats enough rambling for one night.... those are some of the things I would like to do between seasons.

To contact me either call me at my Grand Central number 847-9483 or email me at stormyva AT gmail DOT com