Tri Training Revelations

Back into the swing of tri-training. Finally got my bike shoes and clips the other day. Very much a transformation of the bike experience. Ability to deliver 100% power to the wheels, with near perfect efficiency. Can now focus completely on optimal form / minimization of lateral sway / cadence.

Trek 1000 on Fit Sport. Mobile Base One.

Today was the very first day of transition training. My original intent was simply to see how fast I could get into running shoes from the bike. That exercise proved trivial; 8 seconds flat. Then I realised the real point of transitioning: not how fast you could prepare for the next phase, but actually how fast you could enter it. So it was that 12 minutes later, I began a brisk run.

That's where it hit me: this is going to be a challenge. The run felt hard. My legs, spoiled by the even and perfect circular flow of the bicycle, were now being forced into a concussive hammering, left right left right left right. I realised the real art wasn't the micro transitions between legs, but rather, the actual physical phase transitions of the muscles from one hyper-regular activity to the next.

Metaphors run deep.

T minus 91 days and counting to Boulder.

Lessons of the Tri

Today I am repairing my bicycle. This is a task that, traditionally, I have taken to the bike shop to accomplish. Truly, they can do in 10 minutes what takes me 2 hours. But in making the commitment to race in a triathlon, I feel that I've also forged an inner agreement to learn about transportation technology. To ramble a bit, I started this journey on the highest of the high end, building a database of the world's fastest driving machines, exploring their pedigree, performance specifications, evolutions and design patterns.

Like marathon runners, the top handful of exotic cars are both light and powerful. They make do with smaller engines, amped up to outrageous power via the use of supercharging technology (where the air power of the exhaust fumes is re-inserted into the main torque generator), and shave off every last ounce to achieve essentially ultralight mass. Add to that superior aerodynamics, and smart gearboxes, and you get ultimate performance.

So coming back to present-day reality... My model of the triathlon goes something like this: the tri is a model of our own human evolution, our human race as it were. We began as aquatic beings (mythology: Atlantis, creationism: the fifth day, evolution: prokaryotes), and that is the swimming. We then crawled onto land, and that is the running. Finally, we created technology, and that is the bike. Yes, yes, I know that the formal order of the tri is swim / bike / run, however, when I make my own race, it will be swim / run / bike : sea / land / tech.

I've also, in the past few years, learned to do some primitive maintenance on my motor vehicles. And again, it takes me three to 10 times longer than the professional mechanics, yet I get the satisfaction of knowing how this magical machine which transports me works.

A year or so ago, I found myself carless. So I caught rides with friends, and more often than not, biked everywhere. I even once biked 35 miles to a yoga class in the suburbs. As I got more used to it, I found the bike completely fascinating. Whereas running was a jarring sport, making my bones and body numb by the incessant and infinitely repetitive impact of feet on hard pavement, the bike had this feeling of... of ultimate FLOW. Like, it really felt, especially once I transitioned from my mountain bike to a racing bike, like this was the Ultimate transformation of power, from human energy to linear velocity. With every stroke of the pedals, I felt the direct transfer of power to the gears, and the direct translation of that into raw distance traveled. Soooo efficient! So graceful! So able, even more so than a sprint, to suck the oxygen right out of your lungs!

Now to get to the point of my post:

The marathon taught me two key life lessons: 1) disciplined training for an event guarantees that the actual event goes well, and 2) I can indeed accomplish anything that I a) set my mind to, and b) train for, and c) plan for.

Now the tri- is teaching me how to be responsible for my own technology. How to fix tires, brakes, gears, pedals. How human energy and mechanical leverage can fuse together in a beautiful and flowing expression of grace and power. How things work. That I am an empowered being that can fix his own ride whenever necessary.

That's all for now.
'Til next time, enjoy the ride!
G

quiet in the storm: ultraphysics is born

Well,
the start-up work has finally settled down a little, so it's time to invest a little in the Dream. In this case, the dream is next generation educational tools and toys for children.

One of my favorite teachers in high school was always Mr. Whipple, a brilliant and inspired teacher of AP Physics. In that single year, or intimate class of 8 genii explored everything from simple rigid body mechanics all the way up to electromagnetism and thermodynamics.

It is my goal to encapsulate the entire body of that learning into an interactive lab on multi-touch tablets and table surfaces. So, without further ado, I present to you:


UltraPhysics
by Greg Roberts
an interactive lab modelling our physical universe.



Enjoy :)

suicide options

This morning I had a really really strange dream where I was extremely depressed and utterly convinced I would commit suicide. I felt that my life had just completely went awry, and that it was time to end it and restartthe whole thing, if that was at all possible. It then occurred to me that when I committed this final act, I wanted to do it right. So I went to my laptop and began to google "how to commit suicide".

Before I finished writing the letters, I realised that if I googled that, I would probably be hammered with hundreds of ads for help lines, and that I would have to call one of them... because, seriously, those people are angels, they aren't charging anything, and wouldn't anyone want to speak to at least one other human and check in before leaving this world?

With that realisation, I started to think other things. Such as, first: maybe there isn't a restart button for life. Maybe if we choose to end this life, that's it, and our soul is send to the great landfill in the sky. Maybe this one life is the only one we get, and it is a gift to be cherished.

Second, I thought, if I am desperate enough to consider ending this alltogether, then really, what do I have to lose? What could be worse than death? If I'm thinking of ending it, then literally, I can do ANYTHING. Am I depressed about a delinquent credit card bill? Past due taxes? I can throw those bills right out the window! I won't be the first person on this earth to die with a negative net worth. And really, is that what I will be judged by, upon my exit?

So somehow, with this odd dream, I awoke with both subtle terror and grand hope.

I awoke, in fact, in a very strange and utterly luxurious hotel room, the bright sun reflecting up onto the ceiling, thinking,

THIS IS THE FIRST DAY OF MY NEW LIFE!

A Manifesto For LIFE

I am aware that Life is an Adventure that I, as God, have crafted for myself, for my own personal enjoyment and growth.

I am aware that life is a jigsaw puzzle, and that Ideas are the Keys to Connection.

I am aware that personal relationships are the physical embodiment of these Keys.

I am aware that it is ALWAYS better to say too much than too little.

I am aware that Dance is one of the best experiences available to Humans on this Planet Earth.

I live my Life by Opening... the experiences, thoughts, and actions that bring schpings* to my spine, those tingling electrical signals that run from the base of your spine to your cerebral cortex and back again... THOSE are the signals of the Universe, of Growth and Love and Life.

I love every single person on this planet. I commit myself to seeing the best in every person, place, and thing, and both honoring and demanding that those qualities surface in that individual, location, or item.

I realise that, by personal choice, life has a VERY WIDE dynamic range, from agony to ecstasy, from joy to sorrow, from death to Life. I was placed on this planet, into this Universe, to surf those waves, and I am uniquely capable of riding this experience to its joyful and wonderful and AWESOME conclusion.

I appreciate the deep fractal metaphors of Life, and also am highly aware that while metaphors are to be appreciated, being alive HERE and NOW is truly the greatest gift ever.

I will accumulate wealth simply as part of the Game I choose to play. I will honor the material wealth when it comes my way, give generously to others as I can, and be content with what I have at all times.

I will honor Play and Fun as two of my highest values. I respect that this universe is formed as the direct manifestation of the play between Shiva and Shakti, and that our highest forms are realized when we directly embody those archetypes, when we laugh, dance, sing, make love, incite laughter, create smiles in ourselves and others.

I love life.

I love YOU.

Together, let's consciously initiate the Millennium of Divine Play.



* THANK YOU ROSIE for gifting me with this Word. <3

The Social Net... work.

Watched this tonight for the second time after an odd dream about driving around the Valley with Zuck... and cleaning up the debris from a hurricane.

Thoughts:

[IN THE MOVIE] Zuck repeatedly says: "we don't know what this is yet... we've got to feed it and fuel it and build it to find out..." That, indeed, is the essence of a start-up. The longer you can fuel it with pure passion, the longer you can do it with all nighters and near-deaths and reckless abandon, the better vision you will have. Yes, commercial realities set in. Founders have to pay their rent. And then they have a choice. Sell, hire a sales team, or close some investment rounds.

I do enjoy the paralegal's advice to Zuck on doing a settlement with Severin: "In the scheme of things, this is nothing but a speeding ticket."

Because, really... who is winning now?

[GOOD QUESTION :]

and now for something completely...

Skyrails visualization engine

professional.

As the twists and turns of life would have it, my current free agent work centers around the area of corporate espionage... using completely public data in novel and surprising ways.

Basically, I'm focusing on running deep semantic and social graph analysis on key decision makers and their influencers for multi-billion dollar contracts. I achieved a relative degree of fame in the mid 90s when I declared on my blog that 'privacy is dead'. Truly, I never quite foresaw the social media revolution.

The best current embodiment of my work is Klout, which I encourage you to peruse. Using a members twitter handle as a key, it enables users to connect *all* their social profiles, and then derive conclusions from how many connections they have, and with whom, and how frequently those connections connect, across all the various sites, from LinkedIn to FaceBook to Flickr to FourSquare.

It then boils all that data into a single number, a person's social Klout score.

Clever.

PS - the fun part of what I'm doing is the data visualization of the social graph. LinkedIn has made a decent first attempt, check it out: