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  • Exercise

    Exercise. We’re less than 72 hours from the half-marathon, and my lungs still aren’t up to 100%. Thanks to Dr. Emily, I’m trying out a ventilator that seems to be helping though. I’m certainly coughing a bit less. I went out for a short (4.5km) run Tuesday morning, and I’ve done a couple of Wii Fit workouts this week as well. (I unlocked Super Hula-Hoop, and OH MY GOODNESS that gets the heart pumping! I guarantee you that right now some chubby nerd is working out with this thing in his basement, and six months from now he’s going to be fifty pounds lighter and Nintendo will anoint him as the next Jared.) Anyway, I’ve got my number and timing chip for the race, and Project Hydration begins today. I’m going to do my best.

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  • Joomla 1.5 Title Tags

    Joomla 1.5 Title Tags
    Since it took me the better part of an afternoon to figure this out, I’m going to immortalize it here for future Googlers. You see, there’s no nice way in Joomla 1.5 to customize the head title tags of each page. (According to this site it was meant to be included – they even have a screen shot! – but somehow the Joomla Powers That Be decided to kill it.) There are numerous third-party extensions that can allow you to set custom titles, but you have to specify the title on every single page. All I wanted was to have the name of the actual website appear before the page title without hacking the Joomla core. (Joomla generates the page title on the fly. Yes, you can modify the script that generates it, but on this particular project we’re trying to leave the core untouched so future upgrades don’t break it.) So finally, after several hours, I chanced upon this site which talks about modifying the header to remove unnecessary javascript files. “A-HA!” I thought. “This is the answer!” So here you go:

    <head>
<?php
$headerstuff = $this->getHeadData();
$headerstuff['title'] = "My Site Name - " .
                        $headerstuff['title'];
$this->setHeadData($headerstuff);
?>
<jdoc:include type="head" />
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  • Younger than McCain

    Things Younger Than John McCain. My favorites are Alaska and the polio vaccine. (Link courtesy of PCJM.)

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  • Flight of the Conchords

    Flight of the Conchords finally premiered in Australia, and we very much enjoyed it. Snookums made me pause it at one point just so he could verify that, yes, the New Zealand consulate is located in the same building as “All Asian Massage.”

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  • Queen of Fashion

    Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
    I just finished this fascinating book last night. It makes for an interesting companion-piece to the Antonia Fraser biography I read a few years ago (and that the recent movie was based on). The central thesis is pretty much that Marie Antoinette’s obsession with fashion was a calculated political maneuver to gain the power and influence she wasn’t able to get through the usual means (i.e. her relationship with the King and the production of royal heirs). There’s also quite a lot of discussion about the Queen’s more “shocking” costumes, such as her appropriation of mens’ riding wear and the loose peasant-style dresses she and her friends wore at the Petit Trianon. (Somehow both of those looks fed into the rumours of lesbian debauchery that continually plagued her.) It’s not the usual view of her as a pouf-obsessed idiot. I loved the details about the development of the French fashion industry, and it was fascinating to see how most of the country were falling over themselves to imitate her even as they were calling for her head. And I’d love to read a biography of this Rose Bertin woman! My only complaint about the book is a small one: the glossy colour plates in the middle seem to be misnumbered. Towards the end, a lot of the text references seemed to point to the wrong one. It’s a small quibble about an otherwise interesting read.

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  • Optus has the iPhone

    Optus has the iPhone too. Multiple carriers in Australia!

  • Official Race Time

    “Official” Race Time… Not.
    My phone beeped at 6:30am this morning. It turned out to be my “official” race results from the Mother’s Day Classic. According to the SMS, my time was 56:00. WRONG. Check out the iPod data. I started timing it when I actually crossed the start line (and the electronic mats). I actually forgot to hit stop on it til after I’d removed my timing chip, so my actual race time was probably a minute less than that. There’s no way my chip time was greater than what the iPod recorded. (Even if its distance was miscalibrated, you can’t argue with time.) So I’m a little annoyed with their accuracy. I’m guessing that they SMSed the clock time when I passed the finish line without adjusting for the time it took us to get to the start.

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  • Clear Converse All Stars

    Dude, CLEAR Converse All Stars? WANT. Just the perfect thing to show off your handknitted socks! (Link courtesy of passionknit.)

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  • Wii Fit

    My Mom said she was interested in getting the Wii Fit, so I took some videos today of me playing it. I’ve got them on the site here. (Sorry it’s hard to see the screen sometimes; I think the white balance is set depending on when you hit the “record” button.)

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  • Mother’s Day Classic

    Finishing the 8KThe Snook and I got up at the butt-crack of dawn this morning to head to the Domain for the 2008 Mother’s Day Classic 8K race. (That’s five miles for the non-metric.) We ran it together before in 2006, but the Snook wasn’t running this year; he was my support staff. We met up with Fiona and her running buddy Jan-Maree (and the Sock Victim, who was also there strictly for moral support). The girls strapped on their timing chips and started stretching, while the boys huddled for warmth and talked about computer stuff. I felt cautiously optimistic. My cold is mostly gone from my head, but my lungs are still fighting it off. My goals were to run the whole thing, and to finish at a better than 7:00/km pace (which is what I need for the half-marathon next weekend). The gun fired and we were off. As usual, there was a huge crush at the beginning so I lost the other two girls pretty quickly. (I figure I’m tall, so it’s always the other person’s responsibility to spot me.) I settled into my pace pretty easily, but I could immediately tell this was going to be a slog. Before I caught the cold last week, my shorter distance runs had been starting to feel really easy and effortless. I’d been hoping to feel like that today, but instead I felt like I was really gasping for oxygen. (I’m guessing that was the effect of the cold on my lungs.) I had a stitch threatening from about the 5K mark. I really, really wanted to take a walk break on the 2nd lap, but I told myself how great it was going to feel to run the whole thing. On the last steep hill, I put my head down and channeled Steve Runner, chanting in my head “I eat hills for breakfast. I EAT HILLS FOR BREAKFAST.” It wasn’t fast, but I made it up that sucker. Coming down the path towards the finish line, I spotted the Snook and the Sock Victim waiting at the bottom. I managed to croak to the Snook: “Haven’t stopped yet!” I was so focused on that thought that I didn’t even realize he was filming me. I didn’t have much left in the tank, but I managed a tiny sprint towards the finish line. And then I was done! I’d met my two goals: I ran the whole thing (my longest continuous run to date), and according to the iPod I averaged 6:50/km (which is exactly what I need to do for the first 11K next week). The other two girls finished a couple minutes behind, and we all congratulated each other over apples and some much-needed water.

    Before the race
    Jan-Maree, Me, and Miss Fee (along with Jan-Maree’s two girls) before the race. So much pink!

    Finishing my first lap
    Somehow I missed the Snook on my first lap, but he caught this picture of my back as I zoomed past him.

    Miss Fee and Jan-Maree
    Miss Fee and Jan-Maree, not far behind me, give a wave to the boys as they finish their first lap.

    Checking my time
    Here I am checking my iPod time immediately after crossing the finish line.

    Sweaty but happy
    Sweaty but happy to be done!

    I’d meant for this race to give me confidence going into the half-marathon next week, but honestly, I think I feel more scared than ever. I just wish my lungs would clear up as soon as possible so I can get in one or two more “good-feeling” runs…

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ABOUT

My name is Kris. I’ve been blogging since the 90’s. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I spent most of my career in the tech industry.

No AI used in writing this blog, ever. 100% human-generated.

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