Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Lightroom 3 book up for grabs

I found a copy of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby sitting on my shelf that I'm pretty sure I got for being a Worldwide Photowalk leader a couple years ago..

Since my primary OS is Linux and Adobe is unlikely to release a copy of Lightroom that runs on Linux (yeah, I know, WINE, blah blah blah), this book is just sitting on my shelf taking up valuable space.

If anybody is interested in taking it off my hands, you're welcome to it. If you're local to Charleston, all the better since it will save me the trouble of mailing it.

Update: The book has been claimed.

Charleston Eats: Coleman Public House

Southern Burger, topped with pepper jack, fried green tomato and a spicy remoulade

Charleston Eats: Lucky's Southern Grill

Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and a slice of watermelon

Ham radioing

A new hobby is probably the last thing i need to get into right now, with all the PhD work I've been procrastinating on.

That's never stopped me before though.

Decided to make a trip out to the Atlanta Hamfest where I'll meet up with a road-tripping ham radio friend and most likely take the ham licensing tests.

I've had a passing interest in amateur radio for a while now and ever since I pushed it as a Barcamp topic a few years ago, I've had a few people "encouraging" me to get my license.

So now I'm finally going to do it and enter the world of amateur radio. This should be interesting and fun.

Collaboration phishing

I've received a couple of emails claiming to be from people who are interested in working with me on a project based on a blog post.

The first one I received a couple of days ago almost seemed genuine enough to make me think about it a little bit longer than usual before deciding it was just another form of phishing. The second one I received today pretty much confirmed that.

If the random URLs the spammers picked for their email were even remotely related to the claimed project, I almost might have been fooled. Big fat fail, spammers.

Both emails had the same form

I am curious if you are the person responsible for adding content to the following page: <Insert random URL>

If not, feel free to forward me on to the correct person! I came across your page during my research for a project for which I am contributor. It is a resource primarily aimed at health care professionals in a <Insert random health care profession> capacity. Our mission is to be an objective, informative source of information for those in the specialized fast-paced field of <Insert random health care profession>.

I would love to send over more details about this project and partner with you, let me know!

Thanks for your time. I look forward to working with you!

Testing endurance limits

During my run today the thought popped into my head to see how far I could go at my 6:00/km comfort pace.

Kilometer 12 is where I hit the wall.

I was still feeling pretty good at kilometer 10, and thinking I could maybe make it to 15km.

Legs were starting to get a little tired at kilometer 11, but still felt like 15km was within reach.

Halfway into kilometer 12, my legs turned into lead weights.

Fortunately it was on the stretch heading back towards the house, so I was able to finish the 12km run without having to walk too far to get back home.

Pretty good long run today. A little damp from some light sprinkles, but fortunately the rain held off until after I got back home.

Adding a little speed work

I feel like I have a pretty good endurance base now, so it's time to mix up the running a bit with some speed work. My goal isn't necessarily to race faster, but just to add some variety to my running workouts.

There's no track near me and since I hate intervals anyway, my plan is to throw in one, maybe two days of fartleks and tempo runs a week.

Should help with dropping a little more weight too (I probably need to start going back to the gym as well).

5.6%

Had my annual check up at the doctor today. A bit of poking and prodding and another clean bill of health (aside from the diabetes thing).

HbA1c was down to 5.6% today which is down in the normal range. Management success!

Should get results from the bloodwork in a few days. Will be interesting to see how that comes out.

Update:
Total cholesterol - 171
Lower than last year when it was 193.

HDL - 51
Still lower than what the little yellow card says it should be (>60), but higher than last year's 42.

LDL - 108
Up a little bit from 100 last year. Need to work on bringing it down.

Rest of the blood work came out normal.

Free Comic Book Day

My comic book days are long past, but I decided to go to Free Comic Book Day at Soundwave Movies and Music up in Summerville and meet up with fellow Trek and Dragon*Con geek Erika. A bit of a drive but hey, just another excuse to procrastinate, right? And there's Madra Rua just down the block.

Comics have gotten a lot more expensive since I last bought any.

Soundwave is a little store with about half devoted to comics and the other half to DVDs and CDs. Still bigger than the mall kiosk booths that most comic places were when I was collecting. All of the people there seemed like regulars. Friendly place. Might be a place I'd visit more often if I was closer.

Most of the titles were familiar, and seeing Alpha Flight resurrected made it very tempting to get back into comics again.

I may have to see about getting the two boxes of comics I still have stashed at home shipped to me (I think they're still there anyway).

After, we went off to Madra Rua and met up with Heather and had a great time hanging out. I can proudly say there was hardcore nerd table action going on.

Movie marathon epicness

Not since I did the LOTR extended edition DVD marathon a couple years ago has my ass been glued to a seat for so long.

Yesterday's Marvel/Avengers movie marathon at Cinebarre was pretty awesome. The version of The Incredible Hulk (with Ed Norton) they played and Thor I hadn't seen before. I liked this version of the Hulk with the tributes it played to the TV series (including a cameo by Lou Ferrigno, who also voiced the Hulk). Thor was pretty cool, and there was much ooo'ing from the women in the theater during shirtless Thor scenes.

The Avengers (in 3D) was, well, pretty freaking awesome, although I might have to go see it again because by then my brain was pretty much on overload and I think I zoned out on a few scenes.

The 30 and 60 minute breaks between movies, comfy seats plus being able to order food made the whole marathon more comfortable than I expected it would be. It was my first time at Cinebarre, and probably won't be my last now.

Food at Cinebarre was pretty good I thought. Started off with one of their pepperoni pizzas (Italian Job), then snacked on some fried pickles (Big Lebowskies), one of their burgers (Cineburger) and a final snack of potato skins (Body Snatchers). They were all pretty good. Most of the menu items are in the $8-10 range, which makes the appetizers a little on the overpriced side IMO. However, considering you'd spend at least that on just popcorn and a drink in a regular movie theater, dinner and a movie at Cinebarre comes out ahead in that respect.

Food project

I've had this idea for a food-related project for my blog rolling around in my head for a little while. I'm a little bit hesitant to get into it because it could get scary. Well, no, not really. But it could get something.

Still mulling it over and planning out how I might execute it. I also need to come up with a little more material first

Runkeeper fitness goals

A new feature added not too long ago by Runkeeper is setting fitness goals. You can set distance goals, a goal for a race or a weight goal. Your progess gets posted in a graph on your profile.

It's a pretty nice feature. So far I have two goals: drop 5 kg by September 1 (4 kg now) and run a total of 800 km between now and the end of the year (which I just set today). Will be interesting tracking the progress of that goal.

Really enjoying using Runkeeper. Being the number junkie that I am, I think it's another little thing that's made my return to running more interesting.

Running craves

I kind of guilted myself into running this morning.

It's not that I felt like I had to go run. More like I wanted to run, started thinking I didn't have time and then decided "Ah, what the heck".

I think I've reached that point (again).

Easy 5k pace has gone down to around 5:45/km now and comfortable pace is still around 5:30/km.

Nice cool run this morning. Enjoying it while I can. Although the last couple of days have been unseasonably cool for this time of year, the hot is coming and soon my morning runs will be in 25-30°C weather, which I'm not really looking forward to.

According to Runkeeper, I've accumulated 306.1 running kilometers, 41.1 walking kilometers (most of that at the beginning) and burned 29694 calories since I started using it in October last year. My next run will put me over 30k calories burned.

I've gone from being able to just manage a 2.5 km jog before having to stop to 10 km in just over an hour in 7 months with what essentially amounted to a 1 month break in between. Total monthly distance has been increasing pretty steadily and this month I should be able to crack 100 km. Pretty pleased with that.

Terra cotta pig

The voices made me do it.

This terra cotta pig had been sitting out on display at Stono Market for a while, and some of the voices in my head kept telling me I needed to get it. Not sure why. Maybe because it reminded me of the little yellow piggy bank I used to have when I was a kid.

So yesterday when I was back out there picking up my CSA share, I decided to buy it. No idea what I'm going to do with it or where I'm going to keep it. At first I was thinking maybe something along the lines of this on one side. I'll have to find out what kinds of paints are suitable for terra cotta, or if terra cotta is even suitable for painting. One of my friends suggested wiring it up with a motion sensor and speaker so that sound clips would play when someone moved past it. There's a lot of Arduino potential for it along those lines.

The dogs were mightily intrigued by the new pig when I brought it out to take pictures. Simba wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first.

Didn't take long for Nala to give it a few licks and taste it.

Now to think about what I'm going to do with it.

27:33

That's what the clock read when I crossed the i5k finish line. Much better than I felt and faster than I expected. Don't know what the official time is yet. Will look that up later.

Got rained on for the start of the race. Had a hard time controlling my pace for the first kilometer or so with all the people running up behind me. The last kilometer was pretty rough and there wasn't much left for a finishing kick. Rounding the final corner and seeing 27 minutes on the clock spurred me on though.

Pretty pleased with my time. It was a good run, aside from the rain.

Update: Official results are posted and put my official time at 27:33, 240 out of 663 participants.

Pure epicness

This is going to be the most epic bout of movie watching I've done since the back to back showings of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back before the premiere of Return of the Jedi.

I already purchased my ticket. Who's going to join me for this massive gorging?

I may be comatose by the time Avengers plays.

Returning to the i5k

Today I'll be running the i5k again, with a lot more preparation than last time. I'm aiming for something around 28 minutes or faster this time around. Although I won't be running with a team this year, I'll still be carrying the Lowcountry Bloggers spirit with me :)

Diabetes Diagnosis + 11 months

Getting pretty close to a year since my diagnosis and things are going pretty well so far. Fasting blood glucose levels in the morning are usually below 120 and typically in the 100-115 range. Except for a few occasions, I'm managing to keep it below 140 throughout the day. Managing to maintain a mostly low-carb diet, although it's not always easy with the cafeteria offerings. I probably need to start packing my own lunches or something.

My running has picked up quite a bit this year, although I've been lazy about getting back to strength training at the gym lately. This probably represents the longest period of running I've been able to stick with since my University days.

Weight has been pretty steady for the past year, going down maybe a couple kilograms or so. I think there's been a lot of weight redistribution going on. Feeling pretty good about it. Would like to shed a couple more kilograms over the summer.

Sleeve case for Transformer Prime

Rather than get one of those flip cover style cases for my Transformer Prime (it still needs a name), I opted to get a sleeve type case.

I don't remember how I discovered Saddleback Leather Company on the internets, but they sell some really nice leather items, including a wallet I picked up from them a couple years ago. Their Classic Briefcase has been on my IWantINeed list for a while now.

When it came to sleeve cases, Saddleback Leather was the first place I went looking and was delighted to find their Gadget sleeve. I had to wait a bit for the colour I wanted to be in stock though.

Although the sleeve is sized more for an iPad sized tablet (the Prime sticks out some), the Prime still fits in there pretty nicely with some additional room to spare. A Prime with keyboard dock would probably go in there perfectly.

For now, the case holds the Prime in pretty securely so there's not too much danger of it slipping out accidentally. Even with some light shaking the Prime stays in the sleeve. That may change as the sleeve gets broken in over the next year.

The stitching is pretty solid, and if it's anything like their wallet, will take a lot of abuse before it starts showing any sign of wear. The leather is 2 mm thick, and the inside is lined with pigskin (I think). It should provide a good bit of protection against falls, unless it happens to fall on the open end, in which case you'd be pretty much hosed.

This sleeve case is likely to outlive every gadget I'll ever own.

Coffee roasting

On my way back after getting the struts replaced yesterday, I happened to see the doors open at Coastal Coffee Roasters, so I thought I'd stop in and say hi.

They're normally not open Sundays, but Brad was in roasting some beans and having some more work done on the place. Got to see the new additions to the shop too. There's a new art gallery in the space next door and they've added some kitchen space. Office space and restrooms were being worked on when I stopped in.

Brad let me hang out a bit and I got to help out with roasting a few batches of beans (and by "help" I mean I flipped a lever when he told me to). It was pretty cool watching the green coffee beans go in from the bucket and come out dark and roasty and all the stages in between. They don't immediately have that roasted coffee smell when they come out of the roaster, but there's a hint of it. I guess the aroma must develop over time.

Had a good time participating in the roasting process and learned a few more things. Thanks to Brad for letting me hang out and aiding my procrastinating.