Went all the way out to the office and back yesterday, probably about 21mi total.  Definitely tired; lots of coasting on the way back.  Also, somewhat disconcerting hand tingling / mild finger numbness afterward…a sign of bad cycling posture or technique, resulting in higher-than-healthy stress on the nerves running through the middle of the palm, between the two pads.  Seat angle could actually be a factor; I may be putting extra stress on my bands and wrists to push my body back onto the wider part of the seat.  Cycling posture is also helped by stronger back muscles (gained by guess what, more cycling) and by providing more force from the legs (ditto).

So, not surprisingly, I’ve got a ways to go before clicking off 10 (healthy) miles every morning and evening (especially with work gear aboard), but it seems pretty doable.

rode somewhere between 10 and 11 miles yesterday, round trip, covering a surprisingly small area. stopped at the Cambridge Farmer’s Market (dwarfed by the one in Union Sq, somehow) and snacked on strawberries (sugar, water) and banana bread muffin (sugar). thinking of trying to write a bicycle GPS application for the new iPhone. whatever else it does, it should play the Super Mario “1up” sound when you click off a mile.

frame, fork, drivetrain: Surly Cross Check complete
saddle: Brooks B17 (black)
bars: Nitto moustache, grip tape TBD
fenders: TBD
pedals: TBD
hotness: pretty much guaranteed

rider’s ability to pedal 12mi each way: unknown

(parts pix after the break) (more…)

My piece of OS X shareware is rendered totally inoperative by the OS X 10.5.3 upgrade. I also still haven’t implemented user-settable key bindings, which is perhaps more related than not. I wanted to do them in a sufficiently-general yet UI-elegant way.

When I asked some Apple engineers at WWDC if they had any advice, they sort of didn’t, so it’s time to hack and slash my way back to basic functionality. Good times.

I was about to post about how messy my desk is right now, and how I’ve noticed that a lot of developers keep messy desks, but every other executive that I can think of in the company has a clean desk…even the ones who do a lot of engineering. I was going to continue on to say how I wish my desk messiness was indicative of some kind of “getting so much accomplished, so close to the bone that I would be wasting energy to keep my shit neat” phenomenon, but how that would be bullshit. And that it would be equally bullshit to claim that a clear desk is a sign of a clear mind, navigating the seas of business calmly and efficiently, effortlessly making correct decisions along the way.

So instead of writing that post, I cleaned the most egregious 25% of my desk.