Bike Riding, Statistically Speaking.

11:23 am, March 12th, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, roundups, whinging by Jarod

The summary of this post is that I’ve been riding a hell of a lot more in 2010 than I was in 2009.

The long version includes some quickfire stats…

• In the first 70 days of this year, I’ve ridden half of what I did in 365 days last year. (1230kms for 70 days of this year, 2389kms for the whole of last year)
• Last year I did 101 rides in the 365 days of the year for an average of 23kms per ride. This year I’ve done 37 rides in the 70 days already gone for an average of 34kms per ride.
• If I continue at my current pace (which I won’t, winter for one will slow me down) I’ll be heading towards 6000kms for the year. Truth is that I’ll be cutting back in a big way after Dirtworks in May.
• The Salsa is still my favourite bike by far. More than 60% of my kilometres this year have been on it. Need to start to get on Greeny more.
• As the following graph shows, I’ve made a distinct effort to ride further in the one sitting than I did in 2009. In 2010, 40-50km rides are the order of the day, whereas 20-30km rides were more common in 2009.
  

I’m still going okay with that fine balance of not riding enough (and being horribly unfit) & riding too much (and over training). As Paul Petch says, training is the easy part, it’s forcing yourself to rest that’s difficult.

2009 in bikes.

6:15 pm, December 28th, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, roundups by Jarod

Seeing as Liz has gone and gotten all statistical on the year’s ass, I figured I’d do some number crunching of my own…

For the last year and a bit I’ve been keeping a diary of where/when/how long I’ve been riding places… and it turns out I’ve ridden for 145(ish) hours. In that time I rode for just short of 2800kms. Not too shabby for a year where I got lazy for large slabs of time.

– 879kms on Whitey the mountain bike of fury.  During the year and it’s been both a single speed and a full geared bike.  I also rode Whitey in both the Highland Fling and Dirtworks… and in both races he performed flawlessly, giving me zero mechanical issues.
– 1515kms of awesome Salsa Casseroll‘ness (161kms of that using fixed gear).  Can’t get over how much I’m still enjoying the Salsa.  It’s simply a joy to jump on, and cruise for a few hours at a time. Indeed of late I’ve just been ‘cruising’ laps of Centennial Park.
– 85kms on Greeny the Tonka Truck of my stable.   My venture back into single speeding and the world of 29′er wheels. The 85kms might not seem like heaps, but it’s not too shabby seeing as I’ve only owned him for the last month or so.
– 309kms on the ill fated & now sold Gary Fisher.  It was a good bike (made better by single speeding it), but sadly just a size too big for me.

Also of note was the 571kms (of the total 2800kms) were commuting to and from work (that’s about the equivalent of riding to work for three weeks straight). That’s one number I want to get a whole heap higher in 2010.

Speaking of 2010, I’ve already registered for the 50km Dirtworks, and I’m also in a 4 man team for the Mont. Should make for an interesting first half of the year. Well, if I can get my backside into gear and get a bit more training in…

Movie Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Balls

11:24 am, December 22nd, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Posted in boythings, idiotbox, mooovies by Jarod

A few weeks ago Liz and I watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Balls.

We like the occasional kids movie, having also watched (and liked) Up and a few others (which I can’t remember just now). I can safely say that Sony’s attempt at a Pixar’ish feature film was up there with the best.

Now, as I suck at analysing things and developing those thoughts into prose, this movie review will be written in ever popular bullet points. Firstly, the parts Liz and I enjoyed:

1. The animation and special effects. After diving into Modo in the last few weeks, I was flabbergasted.
2. The adult in jokes. The comedy works great on both adult and kid level.
3. The main character’s monkey… Steeeeeeeeeeeeeevee.
4. The mayor and his ever increasing waist line.
5. The cartoonic look and feel.
6. The town’s cop, voiced by Mr T. Brilliant I say. Brilliant.
7. The Gummy Beaaaaaars.

Now the parts that weren’t that great:

1. The predictable love story that took too much of the front seat.
2. The way the ending made us tear up slightly (though Liz will never admit it).
3. The (fairly) predictable story line. Aside from the small details, you always knew what was going to happen.
4. The way the weather reporter chick was a geek, but pretending she wasn’t. We got it the first time guys.

As there are 7 yays to only 4 nays, Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Balls can be considered a good, almost great movie. Jarod and Liz recommended.

Two Shiny New Nokia E71s

6:19 pm, December 2nd, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Posted in boythings, geekery, internets by Jarod

Over the weekend Liz and I hyped ourselves up over the Nokia E71. So much so that on Sunday we ended up visiting a Virgin Mobile Phone Store in the city and picking ourselves up matching phones and plans.

I know, it doesn’t seem like me. I’m usually a tenth this impulsive… but in reality, the feature set on the E71 was just that good. Wireless LAN. 3G Internet’ing. Big screen. Qwerty keyboard. MP3 Player… and stacks more.

Initial impressions of the E71 are good. There are a few things that it doesn’t do as well as my hard as all hell 5140i. But as I use it more and more I’m finding workarounds and new features that seriously impress me.

I’ll attempt at writing a more complete review of the phone when I’ve been using it a bit longer. For now though I’ll leave you with the fact that i banged out this post over the course of about 10 minutes while my work PC was crashing and rebooting. Yep, I like having a second super small keyboard on my desk.

World of Goo Review

7:53 am, November 30th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, gaming, geekery by Jarod

As Liz mentioned yesterday, I was (am?) thoroughly addicted to a game by the name of World of Goo. To know what it’s all about, hit play on the youtube’ish video below.

Yes! I know!! And it’s only twenty bucks. Twenty bucks is nothing when compared to how much fun you’ll have channelling the old days playing lemmings, the incredible machine and bridge builder.

Ok I’ll confess. I was going to try and sit down and write a proper review instead of my normal three paragraphs ones. But just looking at different levels in screenshots on the net, I’m seeing new and better ways to arrange Goo blobs for better structural integrity. Suffice to say I’ll be loading World of Goo in a few minutes.

But first. If you’re still interested check out any of these reviews. I still haven’t seen a bad one yet. Rock Paper Shotgun. The Dead Pixel Post. Evo Gamer. Eurogamer.

The Dark Knight

5:10 pm, September 5th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, geekery, mooovies by Jarod

Over the weekend Liz and I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight. Not only did we see it but we saw it in Imax style. Well, when I say style I actually mean the cinema was tired, old and run down, but by golly it had a big screen. Only getting there 20 minutes before the screening time meant we ended up sitting too close to the front. This wasn’t so much of a problem that you were too close to the screen, but more so that you had to crane your neck up at some ungodly angle to see the top half of the screen. Yep, it’s that big.

The IMAX film is nice. The extra whiff of crisp in the scenes shot on IMAX film was very noticeable. That and the additional vision top and bottom makes the IMAX stuff a trend I’d like to see continue in Hollywood… even if it means I have to pay $25 for the privilege. Expensive, but IMAX film is nice.

Oh yes, The Dark Knight. In the first few weeks of it screening in cinemas I was tricking my brain into not believing all the hype. Telling myself that my friends that saw it 4 and 5 times in the first few days only did so due to some sort of mental deficiency. But I’m very pleased to say that it lived up to all the hype and more. The storyline and acting: brilliant and mesmerising. Cinematography and lighting: emotive and captivating.

I won’t attempt to analyse the film, there are a stack of people out there that have done a far better job than I ever could. This was just my way of saying its good to see that several hundred million dollars in the right hands can still create a two and a half hour long masterpiece. Oh, and the definition and size of IMAX screens rocks my socks.

For the record, The Dark Knight gets 5 out of 5 bats.

Hancock Movie Review

6:28 pm, August 6th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, idiotbox, mooovies by Jarod

Over the weekend Liz and I watched the movie Hancock. You know, the one where Wil Smith plays a drunken superhero guy? Yeah that one.

Apart from a bit in the middle section where Liz and I both turned to one another and did a bit of Rove’s ‘What the?’, it turned out to be quite a good blend of action and storyline. Once you could look past the obvious flaws in the ‘What the?’ moment, the fast paced action and well edited ending really sucked you in.

Also worth a special mention is the empathy the viewer feels for Hancock. Can’t say I often get sucked into this sort of kind of thing, but at times I wanted to jump into the screen and help poor Wil work stuff out.

In an arbitary and no doubt be a short lived feature on this blog…. Jarod gives Hancock seven hundred and twelve stars.