Iron Horse Bicycle Classic 2010

I had hoped to ride the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic last year but didn’t do it. I didn’t train enough and it filled up before I felt I was ready. I’ve been talking for a few weeks now about wanting to ride in the Iron Horse, and decided I’d better get serious and sign up for it. I’m definitely not ready right now, but have a few months to get in shape. I even talked Chris into riding.

Last week I started training for it. The weather had been really nice for a while so I got to ride about 60 miles on the road and then when a storm came in last weekend I rode about 20 miles at the gym. There’s a good 15 mile, mostly flat loop I can do on my lunch break, and an 11 mile out and back ride with some climbing I can fit into my lunch break as well. My plan is to ride about 100 miles a week for a while and then some longer rides on the weekends as we get closer.

The Iron Horse is a 50 mile ride/race from Durango to Silverton with abotu 5700ft of climbing over 2 10,000ft passes. It happens on May 29th, so I have about 95 days to get in shape.

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Weekly Summary, 2/21/10

Well, I’m late posting this weekly summary, but I figured I’d go for it anyways.

Foxconn Workers Don’t Get Mad, They Get Even (By Burning Their Factory Down)

Gun Ban in National Parks Ends on Monday – The little blurb on this blog posts highlights what’s wrong with our legislative process. Congress passed a bill on credit card reform last summer. Someone attached a rider to that bill to allow guns in National Parks. How are those related, why was that allowed to be attached to this bill?

Confirmed: Google Reader is Going Real Time (Updated) – I use Google Reader a lot, and it going real time has been nice. All of my blogs are now using PubSubHubBub so they’re practically real time now.

Radiolab Product Safety Announcement – I thought this was funny. I loved to listen to Radiolab while driving, maybe that isn’t the best thing to do.

Tumblr Screws Hipster Underclass to Appease Hipster Overlords at Pitchfork – Depending upon who you listen to Tumblr took a subdomain/user name from a user to give to a company for their own use.

Verizon and Skype make sweet music together with new mobile app – I was sort of excited for this, until I read that they’re not going to allow for domestic Skype-Out calls and that it won’t work at all over 3G.

I snapped this picture at The Abbey Theater.

I wonder who shoveled this? And if that free Daily paper is that much better than the other two in there.

Weekly Summary

I haven’t been posting on this blog too much. I have a lot of other things going on but I’m hoping to start a little something new here. I spend a lot of time online throughout the week, I read a lot on line, and watch a bit of online video as well. Every week on our radio show, This Small Town Life, Kinsee and I have a little segment called This Week on the Internet. I always tend to scramble at the last minute to remember what happened and come up with things to talk about. My plan is to start posting weekly summaries here, on either Friday or Saturday, both to comment a bit on what’s going on, as well as to help me with the segment for the show.

CollegeHumor Back to the Future Sex Scenes Parody — I’m a big fan of Back to the Future. And I think Collegehumor makes some of the best quality online videos (they can be juvenile at times, but the production quality is always great).

Facebook Denis All Wrongdoing in Beacon Data Breach — I remember when Beacon came out, I consider myself pretty tech and privacy savvy, so I read about Beacon, and how to disable it. I (thought) I disabled Beacon with Facebook’s instructions and then bought something from an online store that was part of the program. Sure enough it showed up on my Facebook wall. I never figured out what I did wrong, but after that I think I took a more technical approach and used a browser extension or script to disable it.

NPR on Richard Brautigan — I only heard of Richard Brautigan a couple of years ago, while at a wedding near Redwoods National Park. Someone told me I looked just like him on the cover of Trout Fishing in America the way I was dressed. I picked up a copy of the book not long after. I can’t remember the last time before this that a book has had such an impact on me. Reading The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, while backpacking in the Sierra Nevada with friends was an amazing experience.

Net at Night Episode 139 — I listen to a handful to TWiT shows each week. I can’t stand Leo Laporte, he glosses over so many details and doesn’t research things before talking about them on the shows, it’s really annoying. But typically the guests and co-hosts are more informed. Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani on TWiG and Amber MacArthur on net@night all impress me. I liked this episode for the guests though, two people involved with streaming music online with differing views in regards to curation vs discovery.

Google Is Being Evil, Music Bloggers Say — Under the DMCA (or other laws), is there any recourse if a company (in this case a record label) files a false DMCA complaint and your hosting provider (in this case Google/Blogger) deletes all your content?

My Own Personal Videographer

My Public Radio/Podcast Dilemma

I used to listen to a lot of public radio — mostly NPR affiliates — over the FM airwaves. For the past year or two though, I’ve been listening to as much if not more public and community radio, except rather than tuning in on my radio and listening to whatever is being broadcast at that time, I’m downloading the shows I want to hear and listening to them whenever and pretty much wherever I want.

At work I’m in front of a computer all day, so that make’s listening to podcasts easy. Around the house I have two radios I can hook my iPod up to and listen to podcasts I’ve already downloaded or stream shows over wifi. I have a cable to hook my iPod or smartphone up to the stereo in my car and can use either when out (at the gym, walking the dog, etc). In fact, it’s often easier and more convenient for me to listen to podcasts than radio broadcasts.

Here in Durango we have two public/community radio stations, KSUT and KDUR. KSUT is an NPR affiliate and plays most of what I consider the “standard” public radio shows, NPR news shows, Fresh Air, This American Life, Prarie Home Companion, etc. On weekdays, after Morning Edition and before All Things Considered, they mostly play music though. KDUR is also very much music based, they have a few talk shows, but most of the time I turn it on music is playing.

With the exception of Cycle Squawk, a local bike related show on KDUR, I never tune into either station to specifically listen to a certain show (but you should be turning into KDUR Sunday’s from 12:30-3pm for This Small Town Life!), but I recognize the benefit and am a member of both. There are times I just want to hear something, to not have to pick what I’m going to listen to, but those are few and far between. I don’t pay anything to download podcasts, but by being a member of other public radio stations that support NPR, APM, PRI, etc I’m indirectly supporting those shows.

One reason I don’t tune in for specific shows too often is that many of my favorites aren’t played here. None of the following shows are played here: Marketplace (or Marketplace Morning report), On the Media, Radiolab, Studio 360 or The Sound of Young America. In addition to those shows there are others that are regional that I have to listen to online also, I still listen to These Days on KPBS sometimes (oh how I miss Tom Fudge) and listen to a show out of Denver that covers stories all over Colorado (but as far as I can tell doesn’t get played on KSUT).

This leads me to wonder what public radio station I should support monetarily and become a member of. I understand the idea of supporting the local station, but the amount of content I listen to that isn’t available on those stations probably outnumbers the amount of content that is, and I definitely listen to more online than from the local stations. I can’t support all of the shows or stations that I listen to content from, so who do I support?

One part of me thinks I should continue supporting the locals, even though I have some problems with the KSUT. One part of me thinks I should support one of the stations that produces the majority of the content I listen to (or value most). That would probably be WNYC. Another part of me thinks I should support KPBS, I think they’re doing great things online, still listen to them every once in a while, and I have a few friends/acquaintances that work at the station.

I’m sure I’ll continue giving up some money to KDUR as long as I’m in Durango, Cycle Squawk alone is worth the $30/year membership fee. But the decision is harder when it comes to KSUT/NPR.

What do you other Pod-People do when it comes time to write your check to your public radio station do?