Category Archives: General

General blog stuff.

no importa

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Last weekend, I put this post up, without content, however. Fortunately, today, I came across an old quote that goes well with the title. Awesome.

To give some context, I am a sucker for science fiction and space. I haven’t read too much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get sucked up into the movie, television, or video game lore of this genre. I think the greatest draw of this topic is summed up pretty much in this quote:

We were born to soon to explore the cosmos, and too late to explore the earth. Our frontier is the human mind; religion is the ocean we must cross.

Can’t say that religion is the ocean we must cross, per se, but the first line and a half really nails my sentiments.

Thinking about this puts a lot of things in perspective, for example, how petty our struggles really are. In the grand scheme of things, most of our daily issues, personal problems, or insecurities are so puny. I mean some big things, such as financial crises, morality, and/or duties as a human being remain relevant, but most things seem to fizzle out once you broaden your field of view.

I recently took a ferry ride from Civitavecchia to Barcelona. Even though we were just hanging out in the Mediterranean Sea, the vastness of it all was kind of unsettling. Imagine how ridiculous it must have been for explorers back in the day to decide to just cross into the Atlantic. Took some balls to do that.

Taking things to a more contemporary time, think about the last time you were in a vast middle of nowhere. For me it was when I stared across into the distance at Independence Rock. I sort of just stood there taking the vastness in. Let’s take it a step further. Imagine what a feeling it must have been to be Yuri Gagarin, to be the first to leave our planet. How epic it must have felt to be him, radioing in and saying,

Let’s go!

before blasting off. How awesome it would be to reach beyond the atmosphere and see the world as no human before him had ever seen it.

This is why I play Mass Effect.

Nike+ Sportwatch GPS Review

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Introduction:

Once you make something a statistic, it becomes so much more fun! I’ll just list a few examples:

  • Leveling up your Pokémon.
  • Watching your stock portfolio grow.
  • you get the point.

Nike+ is a service that lets you turn your workout quantifiable and verifiable! By tallying your running statistics (mileage, time, calories burnt) Nike+ effectively turns your exercise into a numbers game. Being able to see your progress makes running so much more enjoyable. Originally, this service was available on iPhone and its cousins as a GPS assisted application that paired with a Nike+ shoe sensor. But that was a long time ago. Lots of advancements have been made since I smashed my iPhone last year and lost access to Nike+. In between now and then, Nike has released a series of independent watch products that fulfill the same function as the original iPhone application. Sometime last year though they released something truly worth mentioning, the Nike+ Sportwatch GPS.

The box!

Package Contents:

The package contents includes the watch, a Nike+ shoe sensor, and a USB extension cable.

Package contents

Usage:

The watch and its services require a computer to be of any real use at all. The watch connects via USB to your computer, which then uploads your running statistics to your Nike+ account. The interface is very nifty, and is physically protected by a plastic latch that also keeps the watch band secured.

Hidden USB

Once the watch is connected to a computer, the Nike+ Connect application will automatically launch, provided it is installed. From the software program, all the watch settings can be accessed and firmware updates can be installed. This is the interface that allows your workout data to be transferred online.

Nike+ Connect

That basically concludes the computer-related portion of the sport watch. Once the settings are tweaked, the watch is ready to be used. The watch comes with a Nike+ shoe sensor. If you have a Nike+ shoe, you can conveniently tuck the oval shaped sensor into a compartment under the innersole. Otherwise, you can buy a case for the sensor that attaches to the shoelaces of your running shoe. The watch communicates with the shoe sensor through some RF wizardry to calculate your pace as you run. Though the sensor itself is only required if GPS is unavailable. Detailed running information like mapping is comes from the GPS functionality of the watch. If the GPS function is available, the shoe sensor becomes completely redundant as all of the statistics can be derived via the satellite information.

Other than these features, the watch includes a nifty lap-counting function. Once enabled, a tap of the watch’s touch-sensitive face will count laps. If this functionality is disabled, a tap on the watch face turns on a backlight that illuminates the device.

Performance

I had a chance to test out the watch’s functionality both indoors and outdoors over the past two days. In the outdoor case, I disabled the shoe sensor and relied only on the GPS. It was a cloudy day so it took a few seconds to lock onto a GPS signal and determine my location. From then everything was smooth sailing. After my run I was very satisfied to see how accurate the run data was. The screenshot below shows how smoothly the watch was able to track my movements. Even small movements such as the curve of the sidewalk I was running on was recorded.

Nike+ statistics

The statistics include distance, elevation, pace, among many others. These numbers are certainly useful in evaluating your performance.

On the second day, I ran on the indoor track at the gym. In this particular case, I only paired the watch with my shoe sensor. Everything went without a hitch, although I had some issues with the distance statistic. However, this may be because the gym only roughly estimates how far each lap around the track is.

As for battery life, seeing as the meter hasn’t gone down in two days of use, I’d say it’s more than adequate.

Overall I was very satisfied with how the watch functioned on my runs. Unfortunately, I did have a problem with the touch-sensitive watch face. The sensitivity of the touch interface is very inconsistent. Sometimes a light tap would activate the backlight and sometimes furiously tapping with multiple fingers would yield no results. I’m not the only one having sensitivity issues here, as the Nike+ support page on Facebook seems to have a couple other posts with regards to this particular issue.

Conclusion

I’d say I’m generally very happy with this purchase. At about $170 dollars, this watch is cheaper than its competitor, the Motoactiv watch, though it doesn’t come with the mp3 player functionality. My only gripe is that the touch screen on the Nike+ watch is ridiculously inconsistent, though I can live with this flaw.

Dance investigation is a civic duty

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It’s been a while since my last time being a patron of the arts. By arts, I’m talking fine arts, a.k.a. something I usually don’t understand a.k.a. modern dance. So this past weekend, I attended February Dance at the Krannert Center. It was a great show and it was probably my first time genuinely enjoying modern dance. Part of the reason definitely has to do with the music accompanying the performances. In fact, I feel that music is the defining factor for the average joe to enjoy modern dance.

To be very blunt and honest, I don’t understand modern dance at all. Modern dance is strange. I don’t know even know how to start to appreciate the performances. Modern dance to my friends and me, is analogous to a child and medicine forced down his throat. It’s unpleasant because we don’t understand it and it certainly isn’t a sweet experience. I really feel like it’s not an instantly accessible art.

Though music isn’t the focus of dance, it’s certainly a mood setter. As a layman at modern dance, it’s important for me to find something to relate to. Unfortunately, I can’t easily relate to the dancers, so I turn to their movements. But when the movements get boring I listen to the music. However, it’s rare to hear nice music at these shows. Usually the audience just gets blasted with industrial sounds or random chatter. That’s describing a good case, things can get much worse. For example, last year I listened to a girl scream for 15 minutes as she walked around in spilled milk. Obviously, the dancers and choreographers should be commended for their extreme skill and effort, but what’s the point if the general experience is so unpleasant for the untrained viewer? Even if there’s a message to the piece, it’s lost if I can’t engage myself.

In any case, February Dance was an eye opener. The show opened with exactly what I expected. I saw people move around and jumping for 15 minutes while I got drowned by industrial noise. But from the second piece on, everything just took off and soared away. The greatest contributor to my sudden surge in interest and approval was the music. The rest of the performance was accompanied with exciting or lively music. The dancers were moving to the guitar melodies, to the French singing, to the folk songs. Through the discord there was also a pleasant accord. So really, to the average joe, music is really what can make or completely break a modern dance piece.

But folks, I didn’t write today to tell you about how I’ve finally enjoyed a dance piece. That would be silly. I have written today to bring the subject of Coughing Audience Syndrome to the public. Through all of this dance, I was reminded of one extremely annoying thing. Why is it that people cough so much at artistic performances? I’ve noticed this only happens in old-school performances like classical music and other performing arts. At every intermission, the whole theatre starts to cough. It’s ridiculous. This never happens at the movie theatre either. This phenomena is isolated to the performing arts.

I don’t fully understand this Coughing Audience Syndrome, but I promise as a responsible citizen of the United States, that I will investigate this thoroughly. I will update soon.

Elections!

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So a few days ago, we received this in the mail.

The candidates

My ballot thing

Since I have equal resentment for both of the favored parties, the clear choice is to vote for the underdog, 宋楚瑜. See this is how I’ve come to this conclusion.

I can’t vote for 馬英九 because of his pussy stance towards China. Taking down the Taiwanese flag whenever Chinese people are present is about as cowardly as you can get. This man has no self respect. If he is re-elected, he would basically ask all of us to bend over backwards and beg them to take us up in the ass. This would be followed by other obscenities. Most of all, he refused my invitation to go jogging. In conclusion, 馬英九 does not have my support.

Why I can't vote for 馬英九

I can’t vote for 蔡英文 in fear that her party will push her to declare formal independence from China and then we all die. Declaring independence from China is like telling a stranger with the same last name that you two do not, in fact, have any relation to one another.

This leaves 宋楚瑜. He’s going to lose by a huge margin for sure, but everyone loves an underdog.

I guess one of the problems with democracy is that it doesn’t really work unless people are well informed of the candidates. I honestly don’t know who I should vote for. My previously stated ‘conclusion’ is based completely upon gossip. I’m sure the uninformed masses, which definitely represents a significant percentage of the voters, has made up their minds based upon the same ignorant analyses. The supplement supplied details each candidate’s proposals. I’m sure reading it will help me make a responsible choice as to whom I should cast my vote for. Though with my parents already voting for opposing parties, the overall impact on our divided votes is negligible.

宋楚瑜 for the win. :D

 

Updates!

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So this is the 2nd year of maoshouse.com, my reader base has gone from 5 people to 0. But the reason for the lack of readers is kind of obvious. I’ve never really put anything too worthwhile in the blog. And I don’t really shoot high volumes of jaw-dropping photos.

Well despite the lack of human interest here, there are still plenty of bots. But they’re a thing of the past now that I’ve started up akismet! No more spam messages. Cool!

The next couple of days I’m going reorganize then start over.

I’ve started by archiving all the previous material.

Next step getting a cleaner theme for the gallery.

See ya.

 

*** UPDATE ***

The gallery is up! I opted for a nice Apple-esque theme.