This section lists all blog posts, regardless of topic.
Sportstats.ca
May 21, 2008
As I'm getting all anxious for the big Ottawa Race Weekend, I'm clicking around and finding some pretty cool sites. Take, for example, Sportstats.ca.
The just-mentioned link takes you to the profile of a specific athlete, and lets you see their progression. In this case, the lady starts in '97 with a blazing fast half marathon in a time of 1:35, and over the course of a couple years, builds to a marathon, finishing in a fantastic 3:32. But it doesn't stop there: She gets into triathlons and continues to improve her marathon times all the way down to 3:18. A few years later, she does a half ironman, and then, a full ironman in 12 hours. Very cool! What amazes me is how many events many of these people do. This lady has done about 55 events over the last decade. Wow!
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Ottawa Marathon DetailsMay 21, 2008
This week I got an email from the race organization informing that my bib number is
2204. Woo hoo!
I also learned that they're offering a service for $4 whereby you can have your progress sent by SMS to your friends and family's cell phones. (10k, 21k, 30k, 42k) Very cool. There also appears to be a website,
Sportstats.ca, that allows people to follow your progress.
As I was just confirming my bib number online, I searched for
Bigham and noticed that my uncle and aunt are doing the 5k! It's fun to bump into family!
As it turns out, race kit pick up is
here, and the course map is
here. I've also plotted the map in
Google maps which comes out at 42.6km for some reason!
Battlestar GalacticaMay 21, 2008
I've always been a Star Trek fan, but I've never tried watching Stargate or Battlestar Galactica. During this past year, I started hearing more people talking about Battlestar Galactica (BG), especially a couple of guys at work, and I could tell they were hooked. This past weekend, I finally rented the first DVD, which was originally a miniseries on TV. So how was it? I'm impressed!
The mood of the show is darker than Star Trek, which is a welcomed variation. It definitely has a more realistic feel to it, which engages me.
Another interesting facit is the religious undertones of the show: First, that the AI is religious, and secondly the irony of the AI being monotheistic while the humans polytheistic.
Tricia Helfer is undoubtedly a significant part of BG's success. She combines an obvious visual interest with a fascinating character. How do you act like a biological robot? I don't know, but she does it well. In this day and age, some actors choose to reach back out to their fans through
blogs, such sa Tricia's. It's sort of creepy to be seeing "behind the scenes" pictures of these people as they live their real lives. Why creepy? I'm not sure, but there's a strange comfort in the celebrity barrier -- seeing into their lives is somehow jarring! It was nice, however, to learn that Tricia grew up in Alberta. Go Canada!
Katee Sackhoff is another great character, and she acts it well. She's the tough girl who's great at what she does and doesn't let authority get in her way.
Oh boy, four more seasons of addictive television!
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