Archive: April 12, 2009

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Hell of the North

Sunday,  04/12/09  10:28 PM


Versus camera work was incredible!
(click to enbiggen)
Just finished watching the Paris-Roubaix bike race tonight, aka "the Hell of the North", a 250km marathon that includes 46 stretches of cobblestones, narrow winding roads, steel climbs, and thousands of maniacal cycling fans leaning across the riders' path...  amazing.  The Versus coverage was incredible, with awesome "you are there" camera work by the acrobatic cameramen perched on the backs of motorcycles.  And of course Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin did their usual entertaining job of calling the action.


Tom Boonen repeats!
(click to enbiggen)
Congratulations to Tom Boonen, last years' champion who won the race decisively, consistently staying in the lead pack and out of trouble until the field was whittled away to a six-man break, and then pulling away with 15km to go to seal the victory.  Sentimental favorite George Hincapie was in the mix until about 30km to go when he flatted at the wrong time, had a longish tire change, and then couldn't get back into the peleton in time to participate in the decisive break.

 

Sunday,  04/12/09  10:55 PM

Happy Easter to y'allHope you spent the day hanging out with those you love, and had a great time.  I certainly did; ate and drank and talked and played guitar (!) and hid eggs and tried to find them and then ate and drank some more.

Project Q: zero cycles this weekend.  Really hard to make progress at this rate :(

Gerard Vanderleun says we should take two minutes and watch this, and we won't be sorry.  So I did, and I wasn't.  Please click through and enjoy... 

Well you have to love this: a dress made entirely of zippers.  It can even be configured into various, um, configurations. 

ZDNet considers why Apple doesn't make a netbook.  I really don't see why this is such a mystery.  Apple never enters a market at the bottom, they always enter from the side, with a specific angle that makes their product different, so they can hold a margin.  Really what would they bring to the netbook table? 

So in the innermost echo chambers of the blogosphere the talk has all been of the new DiggBar, which automatically shortens link URLs using a Digg-based shortener...  Ted "uncov" Dziuba says it is a howl of desperation.  It does sort of make one wonder what Digg are thinking - seems to have more value for them than for any user... 

I've been trying so hard to ignore the Pre tease activity, but it is getting hard; Fox has a first look at Palm's new Pre smartphone, and concludes "I'm happy to report that all the hype from the gadget shows is true. Palm's got a winner on its hands and Apple's got a challenger for first place among smartphones."  It sounds great, but I can't wait.  Well I guess I have to, but you know what I mean... 

ZooBorn of the weekend: a Sea Lion pup makes a splash.  A small one :) 

Thinking about the Mulholland Challenge yesterday - it already seems "fun", and the pain is largely forgotten - and watching Paris-Roubaix today, I am working up the courage to enter the Son of Death Ride.  According to many it is the toughest one-day ride of them all.  Stay tuned :)

 

 
 

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