Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Sep 07
Running A Half-Marathon – One Year After Starting Running!
I did it!
On September 4, 2011, I ran the 13.1 miles of the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon!
I came in at about 2 hours, 27 minutes for an average of 11:16 per mile.
More on that in a moment, but I thought I'd mention that one driver for me to do this particular race was because the first time I recorded a run on my iPhone was September 7th, 2010. Here it was...
1.6 miles! And a year later here I am at 13.1. I'm admittedly pleased with how that has worked out!
In truth, though, I had been doing some running earlier in August 2010 using my Garmin GPS "watch", which I actually still use as a double-check with the iPhone. I was amused to see courtesy of Facebook's new "On This Day in 2010" feature this juxtaposition:
It's been quite a journey... and amazing to see what happens when you just keep on doing something day after day after day.
Now, as to this past weekend's half-marathon, it turned out to be quite a humid morning. We've had spectacular weather in recent weeks, with beautiful sunny days, temperatures in the mid-70s Fahrenheit and with almost no humidity.
Sunday was not one of those days.
I made the classic mistake of starting out WAY too fast! Caught up in the pack of people, I was running up about 8 minutes/mile, which is faster than even the fastest 5K I'd run! Not sustainable... and I dropped it back a bit... but not far enough... and the pace graphic below shows how that hit me in the last few miles:
Indeed, that red part in the upper right of the image is where I walked from the 12 mile aid station until about 12.25 miles or so when I willed myself to get back underway to finish the final mile.
The race itself was quite beautiful to run. It started off going through a covered bridge and then onto about 2 miles of trail running along an old railroad bed that's now a trail. When the course returned to the road it took us through parts of Swanzey I'd never known about and through three more covered bridges. It was admittedly fun to run through those purely because I'd never done so before.
After laughing at someone pulling out their phone and taking a picture of the first bridge, I did have to do the same for the next three:
The race had a good bit of roads through wooded areas and all in all was quite beautiful to run. There were "aid stations" set up every 2 miles or so with water and/or Gatorade and while I ran with a belt with water bottles, I also drank from all of the aid stations. They were much appreciated and some of the folks staffing the stations had fun costumes, music, etc., which was enjoyable to see.
When the race was over, I was definitely tired... and I didn't do a whole lot of walking the remainder of the day. But the next day I was back out walking a 5K with the family and have felt pretty decent since that time.
Would I do it again? Definitely. Do I have any interest in going further and running a full marathon? Not right now... although I won't rule that out. That just seems like a huge time commitment... and hard to practice for with small kids in one's life.
But I'll do another half... ;-)
P.S. Thanks go to my wife for taking these photos of me coming in to the finish area.
UPDATE: The race results are up on CoolRunning.com and it turns out that I was 171st out of the the 203 runners - and 24th of the 26 runners in my age range (male 40s).
Sep 07
Video: What’s New in Voxeo Prophecy 11 and VoiceObjects 11?
Want to know the newest ways to build communications apps using Voxeo products? Want to know about IPv6, wideband audio, fax support and large-scale management of servers?
In a recent Voxeo Developer Jam Session, I explained what is new in Voxeo's Prophecy 11 and VoiceObjects 11 and how you can use them to build even larger-scale communications apps than before.
The session is available for download, as are the slides. It is also available for viewing on YouTube. If you don't know anything about Voxeo, this is also a great way to learn more about its core products.
Oh, and when you're down watching, you can download Prophecy 11 or VoiceObjects 11 for free for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. :-)
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Sep 06
John Battelle On The Importance of Aggregating The Digital Content We Post In Walled Gardens
That is at the heart of John Battelle's great piece yesterday, "We Need An Identity Re-Aggregator (That We Control). I've written at some length over the years about the re-emergence of online "walled gardens" and the need for us to maintain our own identity on the web. I've also spoken about this on any number of FIR reports I've submitted... and to me John really nails it with this paragraph:
The downsides of not owning your own words, on your own platform, are not limited simply to money. Over time, the words and opinions one leaves all over the web form a web of identity - your identity - and controlling that identity feels, to me, a human right. But unless you are a sophisticated netizen, you're never going to spend the time and effort required to gather all your utterances in one place, in a fashion that best reflects who you are in the world.
As he notes further on in the piece, even if you link to your contributions on one of those services, should that service disappear all your content is lost.
Over the past few months, I've been trying to change my behavior a bit and revert my own writing to how it used to be. I'm trying to post messages on my own blogs FIRST and then linking to it from the other services.
Even this post... I could have left it as a comment on John's blog, or as a reply inside of Facebook or Google+... but instead I am posting it here it is on a platform that I control.
It's hard... the various services make it seductively convenient just to have all your interaction within the walls of that service. And I certainly do have some level of conversation within those walls. But for longer content - or commentary that I want to preserve, even in the form of links to other sites with some comment, I'm trying to do more of that from my own sites. Kind of like how "blogging" was back about 5+ years ago before we got all caught up in these new shiny services that we all enjoy so much.
Meanwhile, I, too, would love to have a "meta service" along the lines of what John suggests...
Image credit: jeremybrooks on Flickr
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Sep 06
Skype Now Using "@SkypeSupport" on Twitter
Given that last week I received two more phone calls from people looking to speak with Skype, I was very pleased to learn that Skype has recently started providing a support channel via Twitter - @SkypeSupport. Sure, it's not a phone line - which probably means I'll still be Skype's unofficial receptionist, but at least now I have another channel to send people to in addition to Skype's community forums.
Great to see Skype providing this channel to support customers.
P.S. Jim Courtney noted last month on his site that Skype also now has a Facebook page for customer support as well
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Sep 06
Want To Help Guide Git’s Development? Take the 2011 Git Users’s Survey!
Do you use the git version control system? If so, do you wish it worked a bit differently? Or did you find it hard to use in some way? If you don’t, did you try to start using it and found it difficult to understand?
If you are a git user in any way (or are trying to be), the Git community is LOOKING FOR YOUR INPUT in the Git User’s Survey 2011 at the address:
As the main page of the Git community wiki asks:
Please devote a few minutes of your time to fill out the simple questionnaire; it’ll help the Git community understand your needs, what you like about Git (and what you don’t), and overall help us improve it.
The survey runs from now through October 3rd and the results will be posted on the Git wiki.
Being a git fan and user I did complete the survey which, true to the notice, did only take a few minutes to complete. As more of a “casual” user of git in that I use it for a variety of projects but don’t live in it as a full-time developer might, I actually found the survey quite educational in that I found names of a whole number of projects I want to explore.
If you do use git and have a few minutes, the folks behind Git would love your input!
Sep 02
Running The Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon On Sunday…
I went and did it... continuing my running adventure, I went ahead and signed up for the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon, a.k.a. "Elijah's Race", this Sunday, September 4th, 2011. (UPDATE: The website hosting provider experienced a server crash and is still trying to get the site back up - meanwhile a cached version of the site is available.)
I've never run 13.1 miles.
In fact, if I'm honest about it, I'd never even thought about running 13.1 miles until recently.
But here I go! Farthest I've run is 11.28 miles and when I was done I still had "gas in the tank" and could have run farther... so I'm going to assume that the adrenaline of the race will pull me through those last two miles.
I thought I'd try this race because it's local... and hey, what can be more "New England" than running a race through not one, but four covered bridges!
If you want to participate, you CAN register on race-day. The race starts at 9:00am on Sunday morning at the Monadnock Regional High School on Old Homestead Highway / Route 32 (see the Google map) and registration opens up an hour or so before.
For those curious, you can see the course mapped out on Google Maps (although people who have run it tell me that it starts and ends at the same place - the high school):
We'll see how I do!
Aug 30
Why The "Nym Wars" Matter – Preserving Pseudonymity On An Open Internet
There's an identity war going on out on the Internet right now... there are multiple aspects to it... but the key is that:
it is a battle for control of YOUR identity!
Think of any website you've visited lately that has offered you the ability to "Login with Facebook" or "Sign in with Twitter".
It's simple. Easy. Convenient.
And dangerous.
Because in embracing the convenience of such services (and I am certainly guilty of this myself), we surrender control of our identity to the identity provider.
But that is a broader topic for a much longer piece I want to write...
Right now I want to touch on the point:
What if the "identity provider" won't let you use what you consider your "real" identity?
What if the identity provider requires you to use your "birth name" (or "real name") instead of the name that everyone knows you as?
- What if you are an entertainer and can't use your "stage name" such as "Ice-T", "Elton John" or "Lady Gaga"?
- What if you are an author and can't use your "pen name" such as "Mark Twain" or "Lewis Carroll"?
- What if you are a developer or hacker and can't use the "handle" or "nick" that you've been using for 15 or 20 years?
Welcome to the world of pseudonyms... persistent identities used by people instead of the names they were given at birth.
Pseudonyms have been with us for eons... as noted above, authors and entertainers have long used them. In fact, a pseudonym was involved with the founding of the United States.
And this pseudonymity is exactly what is at stake in what is being tagged as the "#nymwars" on Twitter.
This latest battle in the much larger war really began back on July 22nd, when Kirrily Robert, a developer (and former co-worker of mine) who has gone by the pseudonym "Skud" for many years, was suspended from Google+ for not using her real name and took to her blog to publicize this fact. There have been literally hundreds (and maybe thousands) of articles on the topic posted between then and now... with the most recent wave being about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comments that Google wants you to use your real name because they want to be an identity provider... and do things with that "real identity" of yours.
This battle isn't just about Google+, though. Facebook would also like you to only use your "real name" and to have you assert only your "real" identity.
I could go on at great length about why this is a bad idea, but would instead point you to this excellent but lengthy piece:
Read it... and then go back and read it again. A powerful piece laying out so many of the reasons why pseudonymity is important.
And a key point is:
Pseudonymity is NOT anonymity.
There is an entirely separate discussion to be had around true anonymity... and the value therein - or not.
But that is entirely different from the idea of a persistent identity that one uses as a replacement for one's "real name".
Should we not have the right to use the name that people know us by on these services?
The response, of course, is that using these services is optional and you can, of course, choose NOT to participate in Google+... or Facebook... or whatever other service requires you to use your "real name".
And obviously that is an option.
But what if many of the conversations I want to participate in have moved to one of those services? What if all my friends are sharing photos using some new service... and I can't because I'm forced to use a different identity than what I want to use?
What if I am an author or entertainer and want to engage on that service with my fans through the persona I use?
What if that service is the only way to communicate out of my country or region and using my real name may get me killed?
Pseudonymity matters.
Control over our identity matters.
The ability to control the identity we choose to use on services on the Internet matters.
The war for our identity will continue to rage... will the victor be the organizations who control the services we want to use? or will we retain the right to control our identity?
Your choice...
Other good articles worth reading:
- Mathew Ingram, at GigaOm:
- Jillian York (no relation to me) at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): A Case for Pseudonyms
- Derek Powazek: "Nobody Uses Their Real Name" and Other Outdated Notions
- danah boyd: "Real Names" Policies Are an Abuse of Power
- Jay Freeman in a Google+ post
Image credit: koisny on Flickr
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Aug 29
Happy Birthday, Skype! Celebrating 8 Years of Disruption
It was 8 years ago today that the first public beta version of Skype was released... and so began the amazing journey of a product/service that has truly disrupted the telecommunications industry. The Wikipedia page on Skype has a good record of the history, which is interesting to look back upon now.
I started using Skype sometime in early 2005 or so... working in Mitel's Office of the CTO charged with evaluating new technology - and seeking to understand what Skype was all about. I started writing about Skype then... and still continue writing a good bit about Skype as it is certainly one of the more disruptive players in the industry. Skype today is a HUGE part of my daily life and truly is one service that is integral to my daily workflow and life online.
Skype's blog post today, of course, focuses on their current fixation on video calls... even including the strange text (my emphasis added):
What started off as a little idea to connect the world over video calls has turned into something so much more, and we believe this is making a huge difference in making the world feel smaller and a lot more connected.
I don't actually know the ideas of the original founders of Skype, but I do know that in the actual early days of Skype it was all about audio versus video. Perhaps they had the grand dream then of video and had to focus on the reality of audio... or perhaps this is just the current Skype marketing trying to focus on their current messaging around video.
From my perspective, the 8 years of Skype thus far have:
- completely destroyed the expensive costs of international telephony;
- provided people a real viable option to use video telephony;
- introduced people to the idea that you could have audio calls that sounded FAR better than the PSTN via wideband audio codecs;
- gave people a true multi-modal "unified communications" experience with the ability to easily migrate between chat, audio, video, file sharing and screen sharing;
- provided the industry with a solid example of secure communications using SRTP (while the carriers were whining about how they couldn't use SRTP because it would be too demanding on their infrastructure);
- provided an incredible example of the power of persistent group chats;
- provided an example of what a simple and easy user experience could be in a world of cluttered interfaces; (although some may argue that ended with Skype 5.x)
- gave we who are fascinated by networks and amazing example of a peer-to-peer communications system; and
- provided an example of a product that can "just work" from behind pretty much any network configuration including layers of NAT, firewalls, etc., etc.
... and so much more. It's been a fascinating service and company to watch, write about and use their products.
Oh, it hasn't all be great, of course... the business side of Skype has been all over the place. The partner/developer programs are on their 7th or 8th iteration. Various other programs have come and gone (SkypeCasts? Extras?). Skype has pursued it's incredibly fractured product management strategy across the multiple different operating systems.
But all in all it has certainly been fun to have Skype around ... and it sure has disrupted the industry!
What lies ahead now that Skype is slated to become part of Microsoft? Much remains to be seen... but odds that when their 9th birthday rolls around they won't be quite the same disruptive troublemakers that they are today. We'll see.
Meanwhile... Happy Birthday, Skype!
And two other friends have shared their thoughts today:
- Jim Courtney, Voice on the Web: Happy 8th Birthday Skype
- Phil Wolff, Skype Journal: Happy 8th Birthday, Skype! Many happy returns.
And here is Skype's birthday video... slickly produced with a message that does indeed celebrate the communications power that Skype has brought to our world:
I'm looking forward to seeing where the next 8 years of Skype takes us...
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Aug 29
The Hellacious Purgatory of Waiting
Waiting sucks.
There is no other way to say it. More polite phrasings simply do not convey the correct emphasis. Waiting sucks.
And now... we wait.
Two weeks ago we visited my wife's oncologist to learn what would be the treatment options for her breast cancer now that the mastectomy was done. Naively, we thought based on what we had heard after the operation that all we would really be talking about was whether or not it made sense for her to start taking a hormone drug, Tamoxifen, for the next five years. There are some various medical history issues that raised some questions about that... so we thought our discussion would be about that.
The oncologist at our local hospital sat down with us for what turned out to be most of 2 hours. She walked us through my wife's pathology report and started out talking about all the positive aspects of the report... but with an unspoken "BUT..." hanging out there... until the "but" was spoken... and a word we thought we'd never hear was voiced:
"Chemo"
We figured with the tumor rather drastically removed (since the entire breast is gone) and the sentinel lymph node coming back clear, we were done with any thoughts of chemotherapy.
And we may be... or chemo may be back on the table.
Unfortunately, my wife's tumor turned out to be invasive breast cancer and as such there is a danger that it could spread into other parts of the body and morph into other forms of cancer. The "sentinel" lymph node was clear, meaning that there was no sign that cancer was regularly spreading into the rest of her body... BUT... there is always the chance that a small amount of the cancerous cells could have already spread into her body and not left any sign in the lymph nodes.
The oncologist had an interesting viewpoint:
My wife will never have as little cancer in her body as she does right now.
It took me a moment to wrap my brain around that one. The reality is that with the tumor gone and with the sentinel lymph node clear, odds are that IF any cancer made it out into the rest of the body it is only out there in a tiny amount - and has not yet started to attack other cells.
So now is the time to do everything possible to kill it.
Hence considering chemo as an option.
Of course, the insanely frustrating aspect of all of this is:
There may be ZERO cancer cells in my wife's body!
They may in fact have been completely removed with the tumor. But there is no way to know... and it comes down to what level of risk you want to assume and how comfortable you are playing the odds that the cancer is gone.
Hence the waiting.
They are doing another round of blood tests and actual tests on my wife's tumor, specifically an Oncotype DX test, to help provide more data to determine whether chemo would really help fight the specific cancer my wife had/has. It turns out that for a certain % of women, chemotherapy really isn't that effective, for a certain % it is very helpful, and another % is in the middle of those two sides.
Into which category does my wife fall?
For that we wait... "7-10 business days" is how long the test takes once they get her tumor... and while you are waiting that seems like an agonizingly long time.
And so we wait.
And wait.
Stuck in an unwelcome purgatory... unable to make concrete plans for the next few months... unable to understand what our future holds... paused in a limbo where life seems to be on hold - even while the everyday life around us must continue.
Just waiting for a call that says the test results are in and we can sit down and start to understand what comes next.
Waiting sucks.
And so we wait...
Image credits: mag3737 and 25182350@N03 on Flickr.
Aug 26
Can You Help With Data Collection For Hurricane Irene Crisis Response?
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HELP?
The CrisisCommons group now has a page up at:
http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene
with information about how you can get more involved - see the "Open Data" block on the right side for current volunteer projects.
One such effort is a map of shelters and incidents that will evolve as shelters are set up - volunteers are needed to help put existing maps of shelters onto the map.
Another effort is media monitoring being done by Humanity Road.
The CrisisWiki is also gathering resources about Hurricane Irene.
If you aren't in one of the affected areas (where you may have much more direct things to worry about), all of these are great ways that you can help out from afar!
If you have some time to spare today or over the weekend, please check out the CrisisCommons page to learn how you can help!
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