April 2025: 69.2 miles. April 2026: 20.6 miles. The rebuilding phase fights you every day. Poor routines hold their grip. The memory of half marathon races taunts. 3-mile base runs hurt more than they should. One mile at a time is the only way out. It is time to dig.
We often think of “help” as someone standing next to us while the work is happening. But the most generous help is often performed in an empty room, days before the curtain rises. It’s the work that ensures the person following behind doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you have to “figure it out” on the fly, you are spending your creative energy on survival. When a friend pre-programs the logic, they aren’t just doing technical work. They are giving you the gift of bandwidth. ...
Garmin recommended long run today, 1hr 10min. Temps in the high 20s, felt comfortable. Enjoyed the frost cover and the thin coating of ice on the Blackstone Canal.
Ran a snow covered Blackstone Bike Path this morning. I love the muffled sound after a snowfall. Just cold air, quiet surroundings, and the crunch of the snow.
I’ve been taking the time to learn ffmpeg and some of the really useful stuff you can do with this command line tool (CLI). Here’s one example of a situation I find myself in frequently and have not had a great solution until now. The ability to trim a video file without re-encoding! “Re-encoding” means loss of video quality in my mind. Not quite as bad as copying a VHS tape, known in the analog world as a “generation loss” Having the ability to trim a video file WITHOUT suffering any quality loss, that was a WOW ffmpeg moment for me. ...
On June 29, 2020 Ann & Hope announced they would close all remaining outlet stores following a series of previously announced store closings. This includes their historic headquarters location in Cumberland at 1 Ann & Hope Way. I stopped by to take some photos of the building yesterday, just to capture some images before the signs are removed and the building becomes mostly vacant. Ann & Hope is known as the first discount department store in America, pioneering practices now common in modern big box stores. ...
UPDATE: My setup for Zoom has evolved and somewhat less dependent on StreamDeck now. You may want to check out my new Blog Post with our updated Zoom setup for TV interviews. This week I purchased a Stream Deck XL ($235) to help streamline our video productions with Zoom remote guests. Since the COVID-19 crisis hit mid-March our community television station scrambled to adapt and help disseminate important information. Zoom quickly became the go-to platform for setting up meetings and remote show guests. ...
What a day today, just an incredible temperature jump this weekend. Two days of 60-degree temps in January is rare, so I made an extra effort to get a run today. The Blackstone Bike Path was really busy today, again highly unusual in January. The parking lot had 20ish cars and the traffic along the bike path reminded me of early spring when everyone is excited to be outside. ...
Some thoughts on running and a few training updates as the summer comes to an end. I never thought running would become my “thing”. When I first started going to the gym I’d always avoid the treadmill, it just seemed boring and frankly I could not understand why anyone would want to run in-place for any length of time. Running is now a passion, which I’ve come to embraced over the past few years. Something clicked for me a about three years ago and I’m so thankful that I was open to the idea. Thankful that I was willing to give it a serious try. ...