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One of the effects of global warming is a full-scale redistribution of heat&cold and dry&wet. Blacksburg is absolutely getting the worst of the global warming-induced cold, notably since we never had an autumn. Several weeks ago, I had a terrible experience riding in the cold - blue toes, blue fingers - so, without much reluctance, I purchased some rollers after having been recommended to get those other the standard, stationary resistance trainers.

They arrived this Wednesday. My first moments on them made me wonder why I would consider such a purchase. I felt as if I had wanted a relaxing weekend holiday but somehow got suckered into a bungee jump for that afternoon. Though rollers would provide a way for me to get some good not-nearly-as-cold exercise, in those first minutes I discovered that I could potentially injure myself by launching right off of them. That night, I only got as far as riding with one hand on the handlebars and one on the wall.

Thursday, I sent out an email to our VT cycling listserv asking for advice on how to adjust to rollers. Within 5 hours, I had received over two dozen emails from other team riders as well as alumni. Thursday night, I tried again. In 20 minutes, I was totally comfortable with them.

The best advice I received:
· begin by rolling in a door-stoop or wherever you can quickly catch yourself in case of a fall on either side,
· start in the small chainring with a medium rear cog, using a moderate cadence,
· look forward and think about riding on the road, and
· let go of the wall and just ride.

Really, that advice doesn’t sound too helpful on its own. But the biggest leap in learning to use rollers - the leap that you have to make in the 10-15 minutes of adjustment - is to absolutely lose your fear of them. I was honestly frightened of them after my first experience, thinking I made a terrible choice. Once you disconnect from the fear of being hurt on them, rollers really are just as natural as riding on the road. They teach you balance, patience, and well-rounded cycling. That description actually sounds like zen. Ok. Rollers are cycling’s zen.

One day, I’ll be this good. Or this good. Instead of this terrible.

Moments ago, just moments ago, folks, I walked in the door after having viewed the Helvetica documentary, thanks to our local AIGA chapter. For those who even slightly care about good design, I will immediately recommend this film. Not only does it show off the most successful - and beautiful - font of all times but the story itself is told from the perspectives of all sorts of people either directly or tangentially related to typography.

It’s a documentary that works just as well as did The Aristocrats because these multiple perspectives intertwine, contradict, replicate and ultimately tell a story that a single, leading-role character cannot pull off. Plus, who knew a film about a typeface could end on a hopeful note? Brilliant.

Thanks, Helvetica.

Year after year, I have been very impressed with the stealth and efficient performance of the big3 shippers: the USPS, UPS, and FedEx. Each has its place in our lives (for instance, UPS takes forever in/out of Blacksburg, but first-class mail is overnight for me within a 700ish mile radius using a basic USPS stamp) but, during our rigorous holiday routines, we demand perfection and speed. Both USPS and UPS estimate that December 19th will be their highest volume day, while FedEx projects the 17th will push them to their limit. However, they have other problems to deal with that will continue far beyond the scope of the brief holiday fevers.

eBay is the virus that the big3 must contend with. Once there was a time when two people sent each other care packages, possibly even in the holiday spirit; an unfortunate event would cause one of those packages to disappear in the intermediate handling of the mail carrier; the one friend who never received the package eventually become so bold as to question the other, who would affirm having sent it; consolations would be granted from the one friend to the other and the friendship would reach reconciliation. The entire ordeal would be handled between the two, save occasions when valuable objects were passed around in the mail. The USPS could conceal itself and hold its tongue during the unpleasantness, hoping to go unnoticed, and would resurface with its regular service as if nothing ever happened.

Now, two people who make a transaction on eBay rely on the mailing service completely, putting all liability at the throat of the FedEx deliverer. What’s worse is that most eBay sales take place in an auction setting, a competitive environment where someone emerges having conquered a slew of other bidders. Losing the winnings while in transport is just as much of a personal loss for an eBayer as would a pirate’s booty having been ransacked on the voyage home, after a wild battle to win that treasure in the first place caused so much distress. If UPS messes up, they’ll walk the plank, arrr.

Fortunately, to cover their own backs, each of the big3 has a user-friendly and easily accessible claims portion to their website (just search “claims” at any of the sites and it’s the first or second hit). Even still, providing the legal barrier, with the pages of terms & conditions throughout, doesn’t alleviate the bitterness and wrath that otherwise simmers in the stomachs of anyone who has lost a package from an eBay victory.

In August, UPS lost a package of mine, just a small, inexpensive box from Amazon. Two weeks later, I received a deposit (from Amazon) to the account from which I had paid for the item. No email, no contact, just reimbursement. But, if this was an eBay item, the seller wouldn’t have dared reimburse me for a lost item. And I, now charged with the task of filing a claim, would be at the mercy of the seller who hopefully had insured the item and had kept all of that paper documentation. The ideal situation would never happen when dealing with most eBay members; what actually would occur would be akin to an Oreo-binge-induced nightmare.

The transportation and organization methods of these 3 shippers have improved by leaps & bounds in the last decade as internet commerce took off, increasing their throughput exponentially. Residential deliveries have never been this common or frequent and they aren’t likely to slow their asymptotic acceleration. What’s more, eBay will only grow and inexperienced users (maybe even the impatient kind) will create accounts, creating more and more terrible people for the big3 to handle on a one-on-one basis.

Godspeed, you 3. Just don’t mess with me.

Just eight hours after finally installing Leopard, there are a few things that are obviously beneficial or bloody terrible for my tastes.

Safari - I can no longer read the tabs. The bar is so dark that my eyes have a difficult time quickly assessing what is written in each of my tabs. It’s a similar issue as was addressed here with the replacement of the highway fonts for something that was easier to read at night. This is going to bug me.

Translucent Menu Bar - Puke. Puke. Puke. I hate messing around with important system settings, even though I have tangoed with Terminal in the past, but I hope Apple eventually makes this aesthetic atrocity an option.

Dictionary Widget - I use this thing all the time and they changed the font. For the worse. I simply detest font changes (with the exception of the aforementioned highway sign example) with something I am incredibly accustomed to.

Spell Check - It’s everywhere. In your documents. In your username textbox. Even in your WordPress textbox. At first, I really disliked it, particularly with the username situation (of course “ryanharne” is correctly spelled). But, when I tried to write “accostomed”, it gave me a red-dotted warning and I realized that I will never again have to check my spelling by revision. Imagine that. Even less editing on my part.

Mail - Thank you, Apple. It no longer takes 5 seconds to open any given mail folder. Now it takes about 0.5 seconds. I’m a patient person, but not patient with myself, or my mail.

iCal - Reading about it made me leery of the click-to-edit feature. But I am a big fan of large windows, with lots of white space so I can distinguish one item from the next. Killing the sidebar makes iCal so much better and I can cram my days with more events than ever. For better or worse.

Dock - Speaking of how I love large windows, now I have less room to maximize programs to! Since I always want to see my Dock and the open applications, the minimization feature is not an option for me. However, now the dock extends about 50 pixels higher from the bottom than it did before. Boooo. Programs don’t maximize to the extent that they once did. iCal gets wider hacking off the sidebar, but it also gets shorter. Blast. Just when you thought you were getting lucky.

Stacks - I need to see if I can set up a Stack for any/all screenshots that I take. I typically have 5 to 20 screenshots on my desktop at any given moment - a quick stack to show just what the screenshot looks like would save me a ton of time grabbing the one I want.

There are hundreds more features of Leopard that I haven’t touched yet. But eight hours is barely enough time to sleep, let alone dive into a new operating system. I’m sure some of the new pieces will become manifest as I use my MacBook this week. Plenty of time.

You know you put on some holiday pounds when your typically 41 mph descent turns into a 46 mph descent. Ooouuccch. It’s just my luck that my holiday love is now on the prowl.

With a semester only days away from completion, I now have the time to work on long-term projects that I have otherwise discarded. Unfortunately, procrastination doesn’t pay off as well. Fortunately, I have only one class of substance with any semester requirements still outstanding.

And I have also been spending greater time in my latest read, Foucault’s Pendulum. This is the third Umberto Eco book I’ve adventured to completing. Following my love of The Name of the Rose, I hoped Foucault’s Pendulum would produce similar ardor. However, as I was just pages into Foucault’s, my sister warned me that it was pretty much a slow read. Oh, and it’s the truth. If you want to enjoy the book, just read the first one hundred pages and the last two hundred pages. The entire middle is a quagmire of rambling that some people could assumably follow, though it’s plausible that most readers aren’t as well-versed in medieval conspiracies. Luckily, I have just pages left before I move onto a new book that will not be about the Grail.

This concludes the general post-holiday update. Hope yours went well.

Yesterday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos decided to launch the biggest consumer product flop of recent time. Palm almost made the same mistake earlier this year, but quietly pulled their product launch off of newstands with a simple apology. In addition, Microsoft is holding out for their latest holiday line-up of Zunes, potentially waiting for some revenue and refusing to admit defeat. Amazon is making a bold, bold move by announcing a product that can replace an ancient experience.

The Amazon Kindle, a device that brings books to a digital format with super high-quality resolution and possibly unparalleled ease-of-use, is looking for a market that may not exist for another hundred years, at a time when we can no longer spare the trees on this planet to the paper industry. Ignoring their approach to DRM with these eBooks, I believe there are a few aesthetic factors that play into the wide and long-standing success of writing and reading on paper.

The tactile feedback of turning pages, whirring through pages with a snap of your thumb, and even getting insignificant paper cuts is entirely absent from eBook solutions. Kindle’s video, on the Amazon product page, points out that you can curl up on your couch to read just like before. I beg to differ. Who wants to rely on an LED-like display - aka, the type that reverse contrast in certain lights - that requires a bit of adjusting so that the room or natural light does not reflect into your eyes? And who doesn’t love falling asleep while reading a book, only to discover upon waking that you had magically kept your page bookmarked with your fingers?

I read entirely too frequently on computers, both textbooks and all sorts of papers. And then there’s the internet: blogs, newspapers, blogs, blogs, blogs. It should be clear: books have their place. With millennia of years of experience behind them, books are just as old and as accepted as the major religions. And I would propose that reading from books is just as natural an experience as is the various forms of religious worship. Even more, tangible books have just as much of a history and foundation as do the great architectural monuments of the human ages. A manuscript from an old Chinese dynasty shows just as much maturity as does the Great Wall; a King James Bible recalls the grand cathedrals that speak of both majesty and of fear. Books aren’t going anywhere.

It’s just shocking that Amazon, the proliferator of online book sales, would try to reverse millennia of a product’s success. What brazen directors put their vote down on this? Sometimes, releasing a new modern product before the holiday season is what brash CEOs need to show them how deluded their dreams of grandeur really are.