Running Time

This past weekend, I did something that I've been getting ready for over the past year. I ran a half marathon. That's right - 13 miles! It was the Canyon to Canyon Half Marathon.

When I started running just over a year ago, I had no plan to run in any races. In fact, the reason I have really been running is to keep in shape. The first time I decided to run, about a year ago, I couldn't even run for 10 minutes without stopping. Slowly, I've been working up my distance, and for the past few months I have been running a consistent 8 miles, 3 times a week. Ultimately, th reason I was running was to keep in shape. I never had any intention of running a half marathon.

Then my work made an offer to enter us into a race if we were willing to run. Since I was already running, I decided to go for it. The options were for a 10K or a half marathon. Since I typically run further than a 10K regularly, I decided that the half was the way to go. Unfortunately, I didn't prepare as well as I probably could have for the race. The furthest that I'd ever run before Saturday was 9 miles.

Saturday morning, we headed up to the site of the race (East Canyon resort). Here are some of the shots of all of those who decided to run:




Here are a few things I learned about running a half marathon:
- Learn to pace yourself. I tried to pace myself off of a couple of other people and while it worked pretty well, I could have probably done a little bit better if I could do it myself.

- Running up and down hills is a lot different than running on the treadmill. I already knew this, but the course was a lot of up and down.

- Be prepared. The last couple of miles were death. I was seriously thinking that I was going to die. I probably walked at least 3 minutes during the last mile as it was death. My legs still hurt today, 2.5 days after the race (they're almost better).

- Run hard no matter what. In the end it all paid off.

I finished with a time of 1 hour and 43 minutes. I was absolutely shocked at how fast I completed the race and very happy too. I thought that I was going to die afterwards, but I am still here. In fact, that time was good enough for fastest for my age group (25-29). For those wondering, that is just under 8 minute miles.



All in all, it was a good experience, and while I don't have any plans to run a full marathon, I plan to keep up running and will probably run a few more half marathons as well.

Goodreads Chrome Plugin

I don't know the best way to explain this plugin, so watch the video that I created that shows the plugin in action. The link that I use in the screencast is below.



Goodreads Giveaways Chrome plugin

Let me know what you think.

Google Voice

Google seems to be everywhere. Google practically monopolizes my time on the internet. My blog here (blogger.com) is obviously on a Google service, I look at my Google Reader about every 5 minutes to keep up to date, and I only search on Google, unless for some reason Google is down and then I resort to some other service. A year or so ago, Google came out with a new service called Google Voice that I have been using.


Check out the above video to see what Google Voice is all about. A simple way to manage all of your phones and manage your contacts and a lot of other stuff. I wanted to do a quick review of the service, the things I like and the things I think could be better.

After signing up for the service (you will pick a phone number for yourself and a couple of other things), you get the main Google Voice page. If you use any other Google services, then the layout will feel familiar and intuitive. Like most of the Google services (Gmail, Reader, etc.) you can archive your old messages, star the important ones and delete the useless ones. Nothing too spectacular other than the fact that you can hold onto the messages for as long as you like. At some point during the setup process, you have to enter a current telephone number that you already have.

You can see from the above screenshot that the setup is pretty straightforward and you determine when calls come through on the phone you setup. There are a ton of different options from here and I will just cover a few of my favorite. First up, I love that I can use my Google Voice number for texting instead of my regular cell phone. When people write me, I can have the SMS forwarded onto my cell phone, sent to me in an e-mail, or just sit in my Voice inbox. Since I am not very good at writing text messages using my phone, I much prefer to type answers on my keyboard.

Another feature that I love is that I can access my messages from anywhere when I miss a phone call. On top of that, people have to say their name when they call me from an unknown number so when I pick the phone up, it tells me who is calling (as they state it). If I don't answer or reject the call, they leave a message (you can customize what message people here based off of what group you put them in - for example, I have a custom message for my wife that she hears when she calls that is different from what others hear) and that message is available to me by calling my Google Voice number from my phone, but also available to me online to listen to. There is also the option to transcribe the message to text but it could definitely use some work. Anyways, since I am online most of the time, I will typically find out that I missed a call through my e-mail rather than seeing it on my phone.

That is just a quick overview of the things I like. There are a couple of things on my wishlist. Currently, you have to have a phone to actually use Google Voice (in other words you need a cell phone or home phone to actually place calls). Ok, so that isn't completely true. However, you could have an account with Gizmo5 but Google recently acquired the company and it is no longer open for registration (you can enter your e-mail to be notified when it opens again). So I really wish that Gizmo5 was opened up again.

Also, I wish there was an easier way to call people using my Google Voice number from my cell phone. In order to call people I have to either call my Google Voice number and then enter the person's phone number that I want to call (or retrieve a saved GV number), or else I have to enter the person's phone number into the GV interface online. I'm not sure what the better solution is, but it would be awesome if there was some easier way.

The final feature that would be really nice is if you could add a phone number that had an extension involved. I would prefer to forward calls to my work phone during work hours, however this isn't possible because my phone number is behind an extension.

Overall, I have been quite pleased with Google Voice and would definitely recommend using it. Let me know what you like or dislike about the service.

A couple things:
Whenever I give out my phone number, I give my Google Voice number. I have updated all of my credit cards, services, and such things to use my Google Voice number as well. The only people who have my cell phone number is my family really, and that is because I just haven't informed them of the new number. I prefer people to call the Google Voice number though since I like to have a searchable record of my calls.

Ubuntu Any Day

WARNING: Hardcore geekiness ahead!

Several months back, I built a new computer because the one we had was extremely slow, especially for the photo-processing and drawing programs that Anya was trying to run. The computer that I was replacing was a cheap $300 computer which I had purchased just after my mission. To say the least, it was time for something new. Well, being a computer geek, I wasn't about to get rid of that old computer.

What did I do with it?

First off, I installed a fresh blank copy of Windows XP. I put a few programs on there, and that was that. I also put a couple of games on there (Diablo and Starcraft). For a few weeks I was playing a lot of games but I got tired of that after a while.

Next I put on a copy of Ubuntu as a dual-boot. What does that mean? Basically, I could start my computer into Ubuntu or Windows. If you don't know what Ubuntu is, then you are like a lot of people out there. Ubuntu is a free Operating System that is based off of Linux. Linux is that ugly command line:


Fast forward several months to today and you'll find that I have booted Windows on that machine for at least 6 months and I've been thinking as of late that I really want to just get rid of Windows on it completely. Here are just a few of the things that I love about Ubuntu:

• It's fast. I mean it is really fast compared to any of my windows machines.


• It's lightweight. You can run Ubuntu on practically nothing. You can actually boot Ubuntu up from a thumb/usb drive and not install anything. Obviously you lose any changes or customizations that you make, but it is a fun way to try it out.


• It's got cool graphics. That's right. Check out this video of some of the fun things that Ubuntu does:



• Recognizes everything and gets everywhere. I can plug anything into it and it always recognizes it. I don't have to install any drivers and watch any annoying balloons. It just works. Not too mention the fact that I can get anywhere on my network. With Windows I can't find anything (a printer on my network for example doesn't show up half the time in Windows, but is always found by my Ubuntu machine).


• It just feels more natural to use it. I can't really explain this one. You just have to use it.


• FREE! And FREE programs for everything.

If you have never used Ubuntu, you definitely need to check it out. There are two ways to do so.

1. As I mentioned above, download a copy of the latest version and put it on a CD or USB drive. You can then restart your computer and work from that without even installing anything on your computer. Obviously this is kind of a pain because you can't save anything.

2. Install it as a Virtual Machine. This is actually really easy and something that I recently did on my work laptop as I needed a linux environment to test some different commands out on. Here is the quick run down:
- Download VirtualBox.
- Install VirtualBox.
- Download Ubuntu.
- Run VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine.
I know it sounds scary, but it's really not and really easy. Here are the instructions I followed.


Running Ubuntu 10.04 as a virtual machine on Windows.

The next computer I have for myself will have Ubuntu as it's base operating system with Windows as a virtual machine. I would much rather work in the Linux environment than in the Windows envrionment. Definitely check it out.

Oh yeah, the biggest downside of Ubuntu is that there are some things that don't support it. The biggest thing is my Nokia phone. Nokia is a Windows shop. I blame them.

Drupalcon SF2010

This past week I attended my first ever Drupal conference in San Francisco. The conference was the official Drupal conference, Drupalcon, that is held bianually. The conferences are typically held once in the US and once in Europe each year. The conference was the biggest conference to date for the Drupal community with over 3000 attendees. The conference itself kept us pretty busy basically all day. We were in sessions from 8:30 to 6:30 with a lunch break in there.



A few of the things that I took away:

- Drupal 7 is going to be awesome. There are tons of new changes and improvements that should greatly improve the speed of a typical Drupal site. I guess that is what we get though with over 2 years of development on the platform. Awesome improvements in the FAPI, Token (now in core), and database layer.

- Drupal is becoming a very impressive platform and highly used. Over 1% of the sites on powered by Drupal now according to Dries Buytaert (Drupal founder). On top of that, there are a lot of high profile sites being powered by Drupal (i.e. whitehouse.gov).

- Drupal developers are some of the most sought after in the market. There are a lot of Drupal jobs out there even in the bad economy. There was a graph in the keynote by Dries Buytaert that showed how many more jobs there are for Drupal developers than for Wordpress or Joomla developers.

- I really enjoyed hearing the keynote from Tim O'Reilly (yes, that O'Reilly) on Tuesday. The internet and the cloud is a place that must be made by the strides of new innovations and developers. Very interesting presentation.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the conference and we are excited to start using D7.

On another note, San Francisco was a lot of fun. I got out a couple of times and ran along the bay. It was really pretty good weather the entire time that we were there and the area was pretty nice. Also, we ate out at several different restaurants, but probably my favorite overall was the Russian Cinderella Cafe (I mean obviously I love Russian food). There is obviously a pretty large Russian population in the area as there are several small such cafes in the area.

A big thanks out to all of those who helped out around here while I was away. I look forward to attending another Drupalcon again in the future.

Movie Time

I know you might think that all I do is read (which I do a lot of), but it isn't all that I do. I tend to watch 2 or more movies a week as well. I don't usually just sit down and watch a movie, rather I will turn on a movie while I am cleaning or preparing a meal. Since I've stopped updating my movie blog (not enough time or interest), I wanted to share a few of the best films I've watched over the past several weeks in no particular order.

Forever Strong

Released: 2008
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840322/
Short Synposis: A rugby player is put up in a juvenile detention center. There he plays for the Highland Rugby team and ultimately plays against his father in the National Championships.

My Thoughts: I heard about this film when it first came out but never got to see it. I typically enjoy sports films and this was no exception. I think that it helped that this film covered the Highland rugby team, which I knew a lot about since they were a region rival when I was in high school. Nonetheless, an inspirational film and a film that you should definitely watch.

An Education

Released: 2009
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1174732/
Short Synposis: A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in 1960s suburban London, and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age.

My Thoughts: This is one of those films that didn't get a lot of hype even though it was up for picture of the year at the Oscars. I didn't know a lot about this film when I watched it, but it was one of the better films that I've seen in awhile. The film isn't too long and keeps a good pace and is very well acted. Big fan of Carey Mulligan in this film (I can see why she was nominated for best actress).

The Island

Released: 2005
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/
Short Synposis: A man goes on the run after he discovers that he is actually a "harvested being", and is being kept along with others in a utopian facility.

My Thoughts: This film was probably pretty popular/hyped up when it came out, but since it was right in the middle of the time when I was on my mission, I'd never heard of it. The film is directed by the same director that did Transformers (Michael Bay). The film focuses on a Utopian society and the way to get to "the island." The film picks up in action during the second half of the film, but overall an excellent film.

If you are looking for a date movie, I would recommend any of these movies. While all of them would be suitable for children, I don't think that they would find them too interesting. If you have a question about another movie, it is highly possible that I've seen it. Also, if you have any movie recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Review of Drupalcon is coming soon.


**********UPDATE***********
If you are looking for entertaining films about history, then I have two recommendations: The Young Victoria and The Other Boylen Girl. The Other Boylen Girl is pretty depressing whereas The Young Victoria is pretty inspirational. Both films are good in their own respects.

Just found this...

Just found this cool widet that Goodreads offers. Here are all the books from my 2009 list, arranged by the date I read them:

JC's favorite books »