September 2006 – Page 2 – My Thought Spot

Book Mooch and Library Thing

Book Mooch book trading website. Book Mooch is a site that I heard about while listening to Inside the Net. It is a site that allows you to trade books. No money involved other than you have to pay to ship out a book.

For every 10 books you say you are willing to trade, you get one free book credit. This has to be done because you can’t get books until you start sending out books. If you did not get this one credit free, no one could get started. The site is only about six weeks old. According to the podcast, they had 60,000 books after just three weeks on line! They have just under 80,000 as of this writing. See their stats page for information.

First you put up your books for trade and then when someone wants one, you ship it out to them. You get credit for the ones you ship out. Then you can request a book in return. The difference between this and other services like it is that you are not trading your collection to another specific person that you are getting books from. I may have books you want, but you have nothing that interests me. Book Mooch eliminates that problem by giving you credit for each one you send. Then you request a book from anyone’s list of books. You cannot buy credit. This keeps the money out of it.

Book Mooch is a company designed by John Buckman, the same man who created Magnatune and Lyris. Because his other companies have been huge successes, anything he touches seems to create a buzz. That would explain why 60,000 books were available for trade after just 3 weeks. Also, because Mr. Buckman has made his money, Book Mooch has no real business model. They don’t have to make money on this website. It is a philanthropic venture for him. I am sure it will be bought out at some point by some company who wants to monetize the site, but right now it is pretty benign.

While looking through Book Mooch, I saw there were links to Library Thing . For the purpose of Book Mooch, it is a site that they can link to for further book information (they also link to Amazon book information). People who own the books write reviews and show what other books they own in the same category.

Library Thing’s main niche, however is creating personal library catalogues for its users. You can enter the books you own and, based on your obvious interests, you can get other book recommendations. It is very similar to what Amazon does with your searches and purchases. But you don’t have to buy the book from Amazon to get the use of this feature. You can input any book you own. From their site you can swap books as well using different book swapping services. Of course, Book Mooch is one of them.

I have not signed up for either of these services. Though I think they are both very useful, I personally don’t have a need yet. Most of my books were left back in the US. The books I currently have with me are precious to me. Therefore I am not interested in trading them.

Because I have not signed up with Library Thing, I am not sure if it does one of the great features that I would love to see. When I loan out a book, I would like to be able to put in the date and note the person to whom I loaned the book. Then I would know who has my books and I can hound them appropriately until I get my books back. Or maybe even have a friendly email reminder sent to the person every couple of weeks until the book is returned.

If anyone knows of a book cataloging site that allows me to do that, I would appreciate you leaving a comment.

I weigh less than who?

My brother. No, the other one. The skinny one.

He is 13 months older than me. Mom says that I have probably outweighed him since I was 18 months old. Yesterday the scale read 184. That is down from a high of 274.

I wanted to taunt my brother a bit and see if I could get some good excuses out of him to make some good blog posting material. This is what I sent to him.

Abe, Here is an un-doctored photo (well, I cropped it a bit) of my weight this morning.

Have I undercut you? Is today the first day since I was like 3 weeks old that I weigh less than you?

David

And his reply:

By 1 pound as of Tuesday the 19th…last time I weighed myself. Congratulations. Keep it up.

ME

Kind of a boring response. He actually seems happy for me. Aren’t brothers supposed to be in competition?

This is my brother who got me into running. He was training for his first half marathon and mentioned it to me. I decided to join him in the training plan. Though I was not a runner, I had already been doing quite a bit of aerobic exercises for over a year. I was in pretty good shape. I would not recommend someone going from a non-runner to a half marathon in 5 months.

Now the whole story. I really did weigh 184 yesterday, but that was after my 10 mile run and before I had completely re-hydrated. I weighed 189 before the run and 184 after the run. Today I was back up to 187 before my race. But down to 184 afterwards. So, I don’t really think it is justifiable to say that I weigh 184, but the scale did say that for a few minutes. I will get there soon though. I am currently not even trying to lose weight. It is just a result of my running. After my half marathon in 2 weeks, I will start with my weight loss program again. It really is not good to try and lose weight when training for a long race. You need the extra fuel. Unless you are way overweight at the start of your training.

According to the numbers I need to be around 170 to 175. I used to not believe that I could get that low without looking sick. Now I know that 15 pounds of fat coming off will be just about right.

Congrats to me!

1era Gran Carrera Autotal ’06

This was a “10 Km.” race I ran this morning. The actual distance was 9.1 Km. I knew it seemed short when running since it took forever to get from one Km. sign to the next until we got to 8. Then 9 was just around the corner. Something seemed fishy.

It was fairly well organized. I grabbed a bag of water before starting and then got water at all the water stations that still had water when I came through. There were water stations near kilometers 2, 4 and 5. Then nothing for a long time. I was just thinking how much I would really like some water between 7 and 8. A fellow runner ahead of me turned and offered a half drunk bottle of water to me and the fellow I was running with. The other guy did not take it, so I snatched it up with great joy. I drank a bit of it and then sat it down at the 8 Km. marker. I figured the guy that gave it to me was still close enough behind me to see me put it there. If he wanted more, it was available. Then as we turned the corner just after 8 I could see evidence of where there had been a water station. Apparently the walkers wiped them out of water.

I came into the finish strong. I had tried to push at different times during the race, but have never wanted to be the guy that starts out too strong and can’t finish, so I have learned to pace myself well. I don’t think I could have done much better than what I did today. My time was 1:00:54 which is a pace of 10:46 per mile (based on 9.1 Km.). I should be able to run a bit faster than that, but with my big running week this week, I understood going into this that I could not give it my best effort. Today was not a goal race, rather an opportunity to run with a few friends. Come to find out, I was running with over 600 friends today.

The race was to start at 8:00. We started a few minutes late. I am not sure the actual time but something like 8:07. Mintutes were precious to me since I had to be cleaned up and at church before 10:00. I knew it would take me right at an hour to make the run. Then wait in line for the goodies and hopefully a t-shirt. After finishing the race, I realized I just did not have time to wait for my fruit and t-shirt. Besides, they had already said they would have t-shirts for the first 300 finishers. With over 600 in the race, there was little chance that I was getting one. There were probably 500 or more who finished in front of me. When I hit the turn around spot, there were not that many people behind me and a few passed me on the return trip. This was the innaugural event, therefore I am not sure they had a good idea of how many people would be there.

So, I stretched a bit, walked slowly back to the car, jumped in to come home and then get cleaned up to run out to church.

I did not even take the time to see how I placed in my age group. When I registered, there were only 19 in my group. I am certain there were many more than that when the race started. I will try to get to the Nissan dealership who sponsored the race this week and see what my finishing place was.

“Podcast” or something else?

Apple is flexing its “stupid muscle” this week. Before I go on and explain, let me say that I am quickly becoming an Apple fan. Though I personally use Linux, and probably will for many years to come, I bought an iPod just over a year ago. The iPod convinced me that Apple has some brains and thought processes firing in the right direction. I even bought my wife a Mac mini as soon as the Intel versions hit the web. Very impressed. I would recommend a Mac over Windows to just about anyone. I would even recommend Mac over Linux for most people.

That said, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot. And, I think they deserve to loose that foot to lead poisoning from the bullet they put in there.

They have started cracking down on companies that use the word “pod” in their products. I think this is fair depending on what the product is. Certainly any type of portable media device should not contain the word “pod.” But now they are going after the word “podcast.”

Apple did not come up with the word podcast. To get a full history of where the word comes from you need to read the Wikipedia article about it. Suffice it to say, it was not an Apple invention.

For those of you who don’t know here is an explanation of the technology. RSS is a technology that allows you to subscribe to websites to see when new content is uploaded. In the ancient past (5-10 years ago) you could subscribe to a service that would go look at websites for you and send you an email when the site was updated [if anyone finds a link to one of those old services let me know]. That was back when pages were pretty static. RSS takes that same idea, but instead of a third party looking at the page, you have an RSS reader that goes and gets the new content and lets you read it in the reader, or gives you a link so you can read it at the page. This is great for sites that change a lot, particularly blogs. www.mythoughtspot.com has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to and your reader can let you know when I update the site.

Podcasting is an extension of that really cool technology. Instead of text and pictures, it is audio (or video) files. When a new file is uploaded, your RSS reader can go and download the file for you and it is ready for you to listen to or watch at your convenience. This special RSS reader is called a podcatcher (unless Apple has already banned the use of that word too). iTunes is a good example of a podcatcher. It happens to be the one I use (on the wife’s Mac). I used to be able to list several other podcatching software, but Apple has already sued all of them and they have had to change their names and I have not kept up with the name changes. The whole idea is that they are RSS readers for audio and video files.

That brings us to the current news. This week Apple sent a cease and desist letter to Podcast Ready. I am not entirely sure what all they do. But part of what they do is provide software Ativa USB Drive that allows the mp3 player to act as its own podcatcher. You don’t even need to have software on the computer. You just plug in the Podcast Ready device into a USB port and it goes and downloads the new podcasts on its own. It does not have to be an mp3 player either. For example, I have a USB drive I can run their software on. Then when I get into my truck that plays mp3s from a USB drive, I could just pop in the drive and my podcasts would be there. How cool is that?

Well, they are being hounded by Apple for using the word podcast. Now the question was proposed by Leo over at TWiT if podcasts should change their name. Part of the argument for changing the name is that we would put this garbage by Apple behind us. The argument against it is mostly two fold. One is that if you give in, then Apple wins. What makes that different from the idiocy of Microsoft and their strong arming? Secondly, “podcast” is a pretty entrenched word. It is even officially recognized in Webster’s Dictionary.

Some of the suggestions for a name change include: netcast, webcast, audiocast, videocast (because podcasts include both audio and video some people suggest that we should separate the two terms), tunecast, mediacast, gocast, pushcast, audcast, vidcast, radio shows (that is clever), echocast, TWiT logo eCast (both video eCast and audio eCast). There are more suggestions in the discussion at the TWiT site, but those are the ones I wrote down. Most are self explanatory. The word cast comes from the word broadcast, or more appropriately as it pertains to podcasts, narrowcast. Then there are a few that need explanation. Pushcast because it uses what we used to call “push” technology. You say you want it and when it is available, it gets pushed to your computer. Gocast because it is something you listen to on the go. You don’t have to be connected to the net to listen like netcast or webcast suggest. Echocast because it is something that is recorded and propogates like an echo through servers to get to the listener/viewer. ECast because it is an electronic form of broadcasting. Then there would be audio eCast and video eCast.

The problem to Apple in all of this is that it is assumed by newbies that you have to have an iPod to listen to these. Why, oh why would Apple want to change that perception? I have talked to many people who have heard of podcasts but think they can’t listen to them unless they buy an iPod. I tell them they don’t have to have an iPod and that any mp3 player would work. Why would Apple want people to assume differently. They have their products being pushed each and every time someone uses the word podcast. No one is infringing on their rights because they do not own the word. In fact, Apple is getting free, get this The new iPod shuffle FREE, advertising each time you read the word podcast or hear it. They have nothing to claim cease and desist over. They have never owned the word. I doubt they can own the word. Why not go on letting the world think you have to have an iPod to listen? I would think this drives a few sales.

So, I agree with a name change, though it probably won’t happen. I don’t know if it will affect iPod sales if the name changes. But anything to make Apple look stupid, which they are being, and lose a few sales of iPods, I am all for. Really, changing the name will probably not affect iPod sales enough to hurt Apple. Too bad. And it will give them what they want. Double too bad.

For the record, I like eCast. There needs to be a distinction between an audio and video podcast. When I go to subscribe to podcasts, if I am not careful, I assume they are all audio. I sometimes end up with video ones which I am just not interested in. So having a name for each would be nice. Audio eCast and video eCast seem to fit the bill for me. Though, I doubt we will see a change.

12 miler that lasted 10 miles

When you set out to run 12 miles lots of interesting things can happen in those 2 hours.

No dog stories today. Well, except the cute puppy that followed me for about 1/4 of a block. The exciting stuff came from buses and motorcycles today. Earlier in the week I had two idiot bus drivers try to push me off the road. They were one after the other on a one way road. It was two lanes and no one was in the other lane. I was running on the left side of the road and the first one moved over to see how close he could get to me. The second one followed suit but got quite a bit closer.

Today when I went down that street I put the iPod in my left hand and was ready to beat on the side of the bus if it got to close. The driver today did not even challenge me. Later in the run, I had a bus that sat at a stop sign with plenty of time to go, there were no cars behind me. He waited until I got into the intersection and he started to move out. I put on a scowl at the driver and ran in front of him. I also freed up my hitting hand ready to beat on the front of the bus and maybe even jump on for a little ride and a talk with the driver. I hate stupidity. He backed down.

Of all things, today, I had a motorcycle that was being idiotic. Admittedly, he was not doing what he was doing out of meanness, worse he was doing it because he was so self absorbed to care that there was anyone around him. He pulled over right in front of me like he was going to make a turn at the corner. I had to stop running so that I would not run into the side of him, though I considered it. When he did not make the turn and instead parked just a few feet in front of me, I had to control myself enough to keep from just walking up beside him and pushing him and his bike over on their side.

Other than those incidences, which were fleeting seconds, I had a great run. I was supposed to run 12 today, but stopped by the house between miles 8 and 9 to tell my wife I was still alive. She informed me that I was running behind schedule to be ready for an appointment I had this morning. I decided then that I would have to cut the run short. I really felt good physically and mentally. The purpose of this 12 mile run was to evaluate to see if I was ready for the 13.1 mile race. I really feel that I am and that I could have easily done the last bit of the run if I were not out of time. So I cut the run down to 10 miles.

I also have a 10 Km. (6.2 miles) race tomorrow morning. By cutting the run short today, I am better able to run tomorrow.

I did a bit of an experiment. I have been trying different gels and such during the run. The last few weeks I have tried Coke instead. Today I did a Coke, but did not de-fizz it completely. I wanted to see what the ill effects might be. I ended up with a bit of belching at first, but that quickly faded and I forgot all about it. So de-fizzing is helpful when actually trying to drink it, but I don’t think it negatively affected me in any way.

All in all, a good run. It was 1:59:05 at an 11:54 pace. That is about the speed it should be. I would like for the half marathon to be around a 10:15 pace. Physically I can do it. Sometimes I zone out while running and slow down to a crawl because I am not paying attention.