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Buzz by Joe LaPenna from Buzz

I would like to ride to Mountain View on Friday. I am not very good at
riding and I would like to keep together with a group, so I am
expecting a not so quick pace.

Route: http://sf2g.com/bayway.html (approximately)
Departure time: 7AM
Arrival time: 11AM

This is my guess, the discussion about this is going on in email, ask if you'd like to be added to the thread.

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Buzz by Joe LaPenna from Google chat status

Nosferatu, coming at you!

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Buzz by Joe LaPenna from Buzz

http://www.specialized.com/us/en/bc/SBCBkModel.jsp?spid=45685&menuItemId=0

With some prodding from jgib, advice from Drew and some predictions (grrrr....) from Paul, this is what I got... I also bought SPD shoes and 1/2 and 1/2 pedals as well. Got me some locking skewers too. Its black and white which is as we all know a super cool color combination and the color of your bike really determines how good you are at riding.

Its got a 105 component set which I know I don't exactly need but when I saw that I would have spent $850 for the 2-steps-down sura/tiagra combo I felt more comfortable going with the bikes in the $1100 price range (I paid $1150). The fact that there was only one $700-1000 aluminum bike in that range also made me a little anxious.

The shoes are going to take some getting used to for sure. I already spent 20 minutes on a trainer thing trying to use them consistently. Click in. Click out. Click in. Click out.

Kait suggested I visit American Cyclery and I did. I am glad I went there. The dude who helped me, Jimbo; turns out he is a bit new to the sizing-a-bike-game but after trying several 56cm bikes one of his coworkers, Mark suggested, nee demanded, that I try a 54. I realized after trying the 54 that Mark was right.

They both told me that I'd a 55cm would be perfect but damned if I was going to go through any more hassle for a bike. The only pending issue on the fitting right now is that there is a little criss cross going on with my elbows and knees in the drops but they suggested that I ride for a few days and get a 110mm stem (up from 100mm) if it hangs me up.

They gave me 10% off my pedals, shoes and skewers and threw in a couple of spare tires too and said that if I wanted to get silly clothing I could come in sometime this week and nab a 15% discount as well.

Shoes: BG Sport MTB Shoes
http://www.specialized.com/us/en/bc/SBCEqProduct.jsp?spid=47114&menuItemId=0&eid=0

Pedals: 1/2 spd 1/2 pedal
http://bike.shimano.com/publish/content/global_cycle/en/us/index/products/pedals/mountain/product.-code-PD-M324.-type-.html


@Drew Muldowney @Paul Komarek @Jeff Gibson @Kevin Reedy @*** @Michael Huber @August Huber @Chris Lambert @Joey Freeland @Sean O'Brien @Kaitlyn Hanrahan

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Buzz by Joe LaPenna from jlapenna updates - Google Code

Project chromium: issue 30640 (buganizer nearly unusable on Linux Chrome) commented on

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This Addiction

Alkaline Trio released Agony and Irony two years ago to much disappointment and sadness amongst my group of friends. The music was too polished, to blatent and well... you can read what I had to say here: http://www.joelapenna.com/blog/2008/07/alkaline-trio-breaks-my-heart

Tts just been a year and a half later but I'm pretty happy with what they've put out. One thing that bothered me most at that time was the divergence between their music and my life; I think I'm OK with that divergence now and I feel like the music this time around is less redicuolus and can more generically apply to listener's lives.

Given the general theme people speak of when describing this album is its throwback to old material much of what I've written here is along those lines.

This Addiction -- The first single off the album feels like it would fit between From Here to Infirmary and Good Mourning. Simple lyrics and riffs but more melodic than their previous efforts.

Dine, Dine My Darling -- Hopeful sounding song typical of Dan's newer songs (like Blue Carolina). "But these drugs are lame..." what? Its really catchy and quick and I do like the word play.

Lead Posioning -- "We're bitter now but better friends." Another catch rhythm guitar and I would love to hear this one on Rock Band. WHAT THE FUCK THERE IS A HORN. I was trying to trace the sound in this song but can't place it. Then I heard the horns. Then I heard the opening riff from "Goodbye Forever." Pretty interesting!

Dead on the Floor -- I'm immediately thinking "Radio," here. "Like two ships in the night we're colliding and sinking into the black seas of our love." -- No vampires, zombies or blood references. See? A bit more subtle.  "I got off the plane with my heart soaring now its falling like snow."

The American Scream -- The last time Alk3 wrote a politically charged song, Warbrain I felt the song made little sense. This is a nice attempt but I don't associate politically motivated songs with alk3 but I still give this song a pass.

Off the Map -- "I'll lock it down and we'll make due." A song by Dan misunderstanding a situation and going so far off course everything looks peachy but he still can't tell if things are going to be OK. I'm cool with it.

Draculina -- I didn't like the opening verse but the chorus is pleasant enough but I especially dislike "I'm leaving for draculina, whoa oh oh oh." This is probably the worst track on the album. For poor language and over-harmonizing and whoa-oh-oh-ohs I'll delete it off my computer when I buy the album.

Eating me Alive -- Hi synth. You don't belong here. No thats not true; I like the psychadelic furs and that is who I'm going to have to say the music in this song comes from. I think I might actually like this song a lot. If John hughes were around we could have a cool movie with Alk3 on the soundtrack.

Piss and Vinegar -- "Feels like its raining all the time." I've heard that lyric before and I feel like I've heard this song before... uninteresting.

Dorothy -- Awesome opening riffs that immediately cut to a song that SHOULD have been on From here to Infirmary. So good.

Fine -- A really calm song to close out the albumn and while a song I'll listen to, I'll likely never put it on intentionally.

Overall, I'd say this album is not fast enough to say they've really gone back to their roots but has some really fun songs and they're doing some new things that don't suck which is quite a change from the last album. Then again, maybe I'm just wishing the album is better than it is.

Android Location APIs and why they anger me

The problem lies in the fact that as a end-developer I have to care about the various location inputs on a phone. I have to think about GPS vs Wifi vs Cell Tower LocationProviders in order to really take advantage of the phone's location capabilities. What basically happened was that my algorithm for picking a users location based on incoming location updates caused more accurate but out of date location updates to be preferred over slightly less accurate but much more recent updates.

This is the code that defines my "best location" strategy.  http://code.google.com/p/foursquared/source/browse/main/src/com/joelapenna/foursquared/location/BestLocationListener.java

I basically have to deal with the fact that I might get location-from-gps after I get location-from-wifi-tower OR i might  get location-from-wifi-tower after I get location-from-gps so that the Last Known location may in some cases return a more or less accurate location than what the phone is really capable of reporting just because I wanted to be able to get a quick-kind-of-accurate-lock while I was trying to accquire a accurate-as-possible sort of lock.

How would I make this better?

I could see an API where instead of registering with individual location providers, you would query the system for a set of location updates. You would define that you want FINE location, but will accept COARSE updates first. You would have a getBestKnownLocation instead of a getLastKnownLocation that would return a location based on heuristics you might define when registering your location provider.  Visually, the updates you'd receive would look something like the growing/shrinking circles you get in the gmaps app when honing in on a location. Maybe the developer would request a "HyperLocalWhileWalkingAround" strategy that could be swapped with "PassiveUpdatesWhenLocationIsSignificentlyChanged." both of which could have knobs for controlling specifics of the strategy.

In short, I want to abstract away the code I have shown as an example above. As a end-developer, I don't care where the location comes from, just that I get a location but I do care, what the data looks like.