I have conflicting emotions about this, but I would definitely put it in my “must see” category. I don’t want to say more here in case you haven’t seen it.
The last movie I teared up so much to was Finding Neverland.
This is not a quote, but this is the verse that comes to mind:
Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends, John 15:13.
Here is a quote:
Live life Abundantly!
I have used a 2nd screen off my 24″ imac for quite some time, and I had a 3rd screen, another 20″ monitor, just sitting there idle 90% of the time… I would sometimes use it as a larger screen for a laptop or my netbook… But most of the time it sat dark.
I have looked into a few different solutions to use the 3rd screen via USB, but they were either too expensive (in the $250-300 range), or they would just create one large extended 2nd screen. (Which meant the 24″ screen would be on on side, and the two 20″ screens would need to be right next to each other on one side or the other… I never liked that lack of symmetry. 🙂 )
But when OWC came out with their USB to DVI adapter at just $99, I had to give it a shot. I did exchange a few emails with OWC tech support to try to determine that this was what I was looking for, and while the responses weren’t as clear cut as I would have liked, it seemed like there was a decent chance it would work. So I ordered it knowing I could return it if it did not do what I wanted…
Here is what it looks like — as you can see, it works!
While the manual is not well written, and it is 95% for windows, I was able to figure it out, and it integrates nicely with OSX System Preferences once you install the included software… It works just like any other extended display on osx, where you get an individual display pref scren for each monitor:
And you can set up the “arrangement” however you like:
So far I have been very happy with it. It integrates fine with Spaces, which was one of my concerns. I am still not 100% sure how I will use all this screen space… Having 3 screens and 4 spaces may not be the ideal set up anymore, and I may drop spaces, or use less spaces.
As most of you know, I have a history of knee problems, though I do seem to be getting better and better. I am runing faster than anytime in the past 4 years (but still about a minute per mile slower in a 5k than before my knee got really bad). And I’ve heard good things about the style of running described in Chi Running, so I wanted to read the book. There is a lot of common sense information here, and I really need to take the time to put it into practice, work on the exercises and the form, before I can say whether this form is going to “fix me.” Overall my form is not that bad per se, but I have biomechanical deficiencies… Now which came first, I can not say — i.e. did my bio mechanics change to prevent the pain, or did the bio mechanics cause the pain?
Anyway, reading this makes me want to also get the DVD, but even more so sign up for one of the Chi Running workshops. There are some as close as Raleigh, but since Danny lives in western NC, I may try to get into one he teaches himself in Asheville.
The book is full of philosphy from T’ai Chi that are applied to both running and life. (Many of the philosphies are similar to Yoga…) Anyway, here are some such tidbits of information:
It was weird to find a quote fomr Cecil DeMill regarding his film “The 10 Commandments,” but there it was:
It is impossible to break the law ourselves. We can only break ourselves against the law.
(Here Dreyer was referring to “moving with nature,” not against it. Or using gravity to propel your running (via a forward lean) rather than the power of your own muscles.)
Relaxation is the absence of unnecessary effort.
A tansition is a conscious pause. It is a time to take stock of yourself and thing about the run before you are about to begin. The space before a run is like the pause between breaths. It’s the thoughtful momemnt that precedes movement, when you set up your intentions of what you’d like to do during your run. It’s your opportunity to ponder what you’d like to focus on, whether it is pacing, focuses, weak areas of form,….
Our culture offers us little in terms of training us how to live and appreciate life from the inside out. So much of our focus is on the external that little attention is put on considering what goes on internally…
This has to be one of the most gruesome, gory movies I have seen in a long long time. I don’t really watch horror movies, and I guess you could say No Country for Old Men and The Departed were pretty bloody, but not so much gruesome.
However, I am a big fan of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, and they both deliver. Depp deserved his Oscar nomination for this role (who knew he could sing?), and the film did win an Oscar for Art Direction. So if you can get over the story line and the gore, I think it is worth it. And I was pleasently surprised at the music (it is a musical). In fact, I may buy the sound track. I love musicals and tend to listen to them over and over and over…
One of my favorite songs from one of my all time favorite musicals, and one of my favorite (top 5) all time books… After watching this I had to share it here:
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I\’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
I sat next to a fellow gadget fiend on the flight home the other night, and we hooked up his mini projector (a little bigger than a deck of cards) to my hackintosh dell mini 9, to make a 30″ screen on the airplane wall!
This isn’t a great picture, but I still had to share… (Shot with an iphone in a pretty dark airplane cabin…)
Below is my fitness spreadsheet update for Q1… I still enjoy tracking workouts this way — it keeps me motivated! 🙂
As you can see, it was close, but no cigar. I always make these “stretch” goals so they will be difficult, but I would like to actually complete every goal one day. I ended up a lot higher on “other aerobics” and “strength” as I started doing some P90x workouts such as plyometrics, core synergistic, etc… For hiking I set the goal at 300 before we had planned on an AT trip in March. When that trip fell through, I still got out for an over nighter where I was able to hike for 30+ miles, thus the large number for hiking.
For my specific goals, the ones in green I completed, the others I did not:
I ran 23:36 on a 5k in mid January (on a treadmill), so I was close and thought that would be an easy one, but I tried a couple of times after that, and never quite made it. Still a far cry from when I was consistently running 20:00 – 20:30 in 5ks a few years ago (pre knee issues)! 😦
And I only got out to vista point once, when I ran for an hour.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do in Q2. I know I am going to remove the specific targets on push-ups, pull-ups, and squats — a ton of those are part of P90x and I do plan to incorporate more P90X workouts, both cardio and strength/toning. I am also singed up for The Bear, a 5 mile run up grandfather mountain, in July, so I need to do some running hill work. And finally we moved the AT hike from March to May, so I should get plenty of hiking in.
Last week I was supposed to do around 60 miles on the Appalachian Trail, from Wallace Gap to Fontana Dam. But my friend Mike cut his hand really bad and decided to cancel. Which was the right choice considering where the cut was (between the index finger and thumb on the palm side), and how wet it was going to be — it would have been hard to keep the cut clean in those conditions. We have rescheduled that same section for May.
But I was really itching to get out! At first I was looking at options on the AT, but going solo is a pain for a one way trip, with the need to arrange shuttles or a pickup. Plus the weather was looking really bad all week. Eventually I settled on an overnight solo trek in Uhwarrie National Forrest. I waited until Sunday to leave — the 1st sunny day after 4 days of rain and storms!
While Uhwarrie is not scenic like many mountain trails, it is hilly (not mountainous), rugged, and I can be at the trailhead within 90 minutes of leaving my house. I had been on some northern portions of the trail and within the park a few years ago when training for a Rogaine, but I started this hike at the southern terminus on highway 24/27, which was new to me.
The 1st day I hiked about 8 hours, the 1st 6.5 or so all on the Uhwarrie National Trail. I reached a split for West Morris Mountain Campground, but decided to keep going on the UNT for another 45 minutes or so before turning back and heading to the campground. The campground was not much — just a few car camping sites and no water, so I decided to head back towards the trail to some primitive sites I had seen along the UNT. This is when a stray dog started following me. I tried to scare it away a few times, but she would not leave me alone. She followed me the next couple hours until I set up camp. I finally broke down and gave her some crackers.
I did not sleep great. I never seem to sleep that well the 1st night out, and here I was solo, in the middle of the woods, with a strange dog outside my tent. In some ways the dog was comforting — hopefully she would bark if anything snuck up. 🙂 It also got pretty cold — about 45F in the tent at one point. I had my 20F bag around me, but still got a little chilly until I put on my fleece and socks.
I woke up in the morning, made my coffee and oatmeal, packed up, and headed back towards the car. I opted to take Dutchman’s Creek Trail the last 5.5 miles instead of staying on the UNT the whole way. The dog followed me the whole way, so all told in the 2 days, she hiked with me around 15-18 miles! When I got to the trail head I called the rangers office about the dog, but was told they would call animal control. I then called a local vet, and they were able to scan for a microchip, but no luck. I called a local animal rescue place, but they were full. So I ended up taking “Uhwarrie” home, and for now, we have 3 dogs! 
We hope to find a home for her, though.
Pictures below.
First a map of the park. I parked at the “P”‘ on the bottom, on 24/27 and hiked north a couple miles past West Morris Mtn Camp ground (not quite to 1134). There is an annual trail run of 8, 20, and 40, and the 40 starts at 1306. I would have liked to get all the way to that road so I could have seen the entire course, but that was too far to go in the time I had! I can say that after hiking the majority of the trail, I am impressed with those that run the 40 mile. It is a rugged, hilly course to say the least! I think I will try the 20 miler next year if I can get in — the race always fills up really fast!
As soon as I started, I knew it was going to be mucky… Four days of rain will do that, so many of the low sections of the trail looked like this:
While not scenic in terms of mountain vistas, there were some nice streams:
I also discovered there are very few bridges on the trail. There are many stream crossing that look like this… Many had rocks or logs you could use, but this one did not.
I stopped here on day 1 for a late snack, and thought about coming back to camp. The site sits between two running streams and was pretty nice.. But that didn’t work out and I camped further out.
Another stream shot…
A cool rock formation.
A bridge! There were only 2 or 3 on the whole trail, while there were many many stream crossings!
Here is where I set up camp. When I opened my pack against that tree where the poles are, when I first arrived, somehow my coffee filter “jumped” out! There are not many gear items that I would jump into a cold water stream and run after, but the coffee filter is one of them. I was in crocs running down the stream chasing my filter. I’m sure it would have been comical if anyone had been there to see, but this area was deserted.
Another example of a stream crossing — complete with a “natural” bridge.
Umm, can you make sense of this sign???
And here is “Uhwarrie,” the dog that followed me home:
I ordered the following Dell Mini 9 from Dell on one of their one day only sales ($50 off) (which seem to occur every few weeks, so it pays to be patient — or indecisive!):
I ordered the following upgrades:
First I tried to install OS X on an old 160 GB external USB HD since I could not wait for the SSD, but kept running into issues. Maybe it was the drive… I had enough “components” lying around, so I then tried the install on a 16 GB USB thumb drive instead, and that worked fine, though obviously it was slow. I will post a couple benchmarks below.
Rather than go through all the details, I will just point you to the forums at MyDellMini.com. I must say that I don’t think doing a “hackintosh” is for everyone. I ran into several problems along the way. While there are step by step directions, they are not as simple as plug and play, and it seems like even following the instructions does not work for everyone depending on their exact gear. I was able to work through the issues I had by reading through the forums, asking questions here and there, etc. I want to thank the real hackers over there that have made the process as easy as it is, but again, I still don’t think it is ready for casual computer users…
The main post I followed was:
Once I had it working I installed the following apps:
Again, this was pretty slow from the USB thumb drive… Here are a few benchmarks:
I couldn’t resist the final step in turning the Dell into a Mac — the logo!
When the SSD finally arrived I physically installed it in the dell and then used the built in OSX disk utility rather than superduper or carbon copy cloner to clone (restore) the thumb drive to the SSD. My 1st attempt failed because I restored the USB thumb drive to the SSD without properly formatting it (1 partition, os x journaled, GUID), and that took a few tries to figure out because once you clone the drive, you have to run the DellEFI script again. I kept trying that and getting different errors. When I finally booted from the thumb drive OSX install and checked the SSD, I realized my mistake, formatted it properly, and restored again. BTW, restoring from the thumb drive took a long time — probably longer than if I had just done a clean install!
Once I had it running cleanly on the SSD that I timed bootup and firefox launch:
Much better than the thumb drive, as expected! I decided to cancel the Runcore SSD for now since this is plenty fast enough… When the price on the 64GB drops and you can actually get them without waiting weeks, I may try to order again.
Once all that was done, I installed:
It is a great little machine, and runs OS X great! Lots of fun working through the “upgrade” process and solving the various problems… 🙂
And here is a picture that gives a feel for the size of the Mini… This is it sitting in front of a 24″ iMac (and a 20″ Dell screen).
(*) Note on mobile me: At some point in migrating from the usb thumb drive to the SSD, MobileMe stopped working… You can see all the trials I went through in this post. I don’t know what I did different on that last go round, other than having console logging open so I could watch the errors go by. And of course it worked then.
UPDATE: I upgraded to the DellEFI 1.1 level, from 1.07, as outlined here. I manually deleted the dsdt.aml file from the terminal rather than letting the script do it, since some people were having problems that way. Now the battery life indicator is accurate. I am noticing wireless takes 6-8 seconds to reconnect after sleep, which seems a litlte long..
Netflix: Please add a comment field to when I add a movie to my queue that lets me input “why” or “how” or “from where.” Something! So many times a movie arrives in the mail, and I have no idea why… This is one where I am not sure how or why it arrived in my queue, but I am glad I did.
While the language gets rough, and there is lots of violence, this is well worth the watch! I won’t say more than that here.
2sparrows 