Follow up to good writing

Last week I mentioned that good writing is important in just about anything you do. I linked to a site which has good writing tips. Today I came across a post on another blog which was talking about the same thing. I think it would be worth your time to check it out at ProBlogger.

Blogging should be about creativity and self expression. But if your own personal style is so far off the normal way of speaking or writing, then you will turn away your readers before they even have a chance to check out your content. Learn to  be a better writer.

The Peach Preaching Team

Last night we went to a church that we had visited once before. This is the church where the landlord of our house attends. Our church services end earlier than most on Sundays afternoons, therefore we can visit other churches.

When we visited before, the church had asked if I would preach last night. I was glad to do so. The service went well.

After we got all packed up and ready to head home, I asked our 9 year old son how his class went. He said that he could not be an honest judge of that since he was the one who taught the class. They had someone in charge of the kids, but the teacher asked James if he would teach the class for the evening. So he did. He taught on the 10 plagues in Egypt. A story he had read earlier that day while reading his Bible.

He said that was the first time that has ever happened. He was a bit nervous.

I guess we are a preaching team now.

Beach cruiser bikes

Yellow beach cruiser bike Remember the old single speed bikes? I remember when a 10 speed was something special. Now I have an 18 speed bike that is rusted and not functioning properly, though I still ride it. But only 4 gears work. The derailers have de railed I guess.

Where we live, we see many single speed bikes, very much like the one pictured to the right. They are great for transportation or for when you want to enjoy the experience of the ride. Though, they are not so great for getting anywhere fast.

XYZ Bikes is making beach bikes. They are relatively inexpensive too. Between $95 and $115 (plus FedEx shipping). They are single speed bikes that are designed for enjoying the experience of a leisurely Sunday afternoon ride.

XYZ Bikes is located in California, but sell exclusively over the Internet. Therefore, when you buy your bike, you are not paying overhead for the retail space. That should help them be able to keep their costs down in the future. They look like they are just getting started. There are only a handful of models, but it looks as if they have others ready for production.

Give them a look and see if you might be interested in a beach cruiser bike. I would suspect that no one would fault you for not living near the beach if you bought one of these.

[This is a sponsored post]

Ubuntu messed up my wireless

I was using Ubuntu 6.10 on my notebook happily for the last few months. I only use this computer when I go on a trip and am getting it ready to go for some trips over the next month and a half. There is a newer version of Ubuntu out, 7.04. When I fired up my computer the other day, it asked if I wanted to upgrade to the newer version. Newer is better, right?

I am not sure what good things should have been loaded with the upgrade, but it at least broke my wireless. My computer did not even see my Linksys WPC11 card at all after the upgrade. Well, that is not entirely true. It knew that I stuck something in the PCMCIA slot, but not what it was or anything.

Trolling through the Ubuntu forums, I found a thread that currently is 34 pages long with people trying to get and give help on getting wireless to work in the new Ubuntu. Actually, it is not so new. It has been out for over 2 months.

By reading through this thread, the best I have found so far is to comment out the two lines in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist that read:

blacklist r818x
blacklist r8187

In my blacklist file, they were the last 2 lines. Now the machine can see my card, but I am still not able to connect automatically like before. I have been able to connect however. Someone said that you need to put an “x” at the end of the wireless SSID name for it to work. It worked for me without this.

It seems to me that something that has drawn this much attention should be addressed by the Ubuntu team. It was working before, what caused them to have to break it?

I am sticking to Slackware on my main box. I did try Slack on my notebook, but sadly, could not get wireless working at all. Ubuntu 6.10 worked out of the box. I might downgrade back to 6.10 if I cannot get this working right.

Keeping track of time and distance

If you are a stats nut like I am, how do you keep track of your time and distance if you only know one while running? Here is what I do, but I would like to hear suggestions of how others deal with this situation.

Obviously, if you have a GPS watch, then this is not a problem. Maybe if my blogging for dough works out well, I can put one of those on my wish list.

This morning I went running and just wandered around a neighborhood I kind of know. I did not pay a lot of attention to where I was running, I just ran. Then I got to one point in the run and saw a little path into the bushes. I decided to follow that. Afterwards, I wandered through some streets and found a whole new road that has been built since last Saturday morning. This road cuts through a field that had not even previously had a path on it.

I came home and fired up Google Earth. This is how I normally figure out my running distances. But since I don’t really know where I ran during the first part of the run and the second half contained paths and roads that don’t show up in the images, I have to take a guess on my exact distance.

I do know what my time was however. The way I figure my distance from here is that I can guess with Google Earth and get me close to a number. To check it out to see if I am close I go to my running log and grab my average running pace for this year. Though I ran slower this morning than I would on a 3 mile route, I know I was about the same pace as I keep for a normal long run.

This will serve me well when I am in California in 2 weeks. I will be able to run and just keep track of my time. Google Earth does not work on my notebook. I may have access to the web and could figure out the distances by mapping it out on one of the many mapping sites. But since I won’t really know the roads, that may be more difficult. I will be doing well to go out for an hour run and be able to find my way back.

On short runs in California, I will plug in my average pace. On long runs I will put in my average pace. Though the shorter runs will be faster than the average and the longer runs will be slower, it should all average out. (Hmm, maybe that is why it is called an average.) I will use the average from this year since it is a bit faster than my average pace from last year.

If, for some reason, I know the distance and not the time, I could work in the opposite direction.

What do you do? Do you even keep records on every run? I keep track of distance, time, temp, weight and shoes. I also jot down any significant notes from the run.