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Watching time, the only true currency // A journal from John B. Roberts

Year: 2006

  • Track on Tuesdays

    I’m noting this on Wednesday, but I occasionally get to the Kezar Stadium track on Tuesday mornings, if my friend Billy provides external motivation. Yesterday, 3x1200m and then 3x1000m. Felt good as I ran the first five at a very controlled pace with the group, so I went after the last one with the intention…

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  • Book: Marker

    I wanted summer reading, and I found it in Robin Cook’s Marker. Beyond focusing a broadside at managed care, Cook mostly skips right along with a semi-thriller. Not having read any of the multiple bestsellers Cook has written before, I don’t know if all of them are medical. I suspect so, since he touts his…

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  • Movie: Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

    When I saw the title Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control in my coming Netflix queue, I thought it was a Vin Diesel type movie. I couldn’t remember why I had put it in the queue, but I was ready for a light film. Oops…wrong movie. The movie was on my list because of The…

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  • Book: The Quiet American

    My one-week vacation gave me a chance to finish off some books, mostly during the travel to and fro. I picked up The Quiet American by Graham Greene in a used book store on Polk Street in San Francisco, while killing time a couple of weeks ago. I knew very little about it, beyond the…

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  • Movie: An Inconvenient Truth

    I caught An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday. It met my expectations, which were high. Metacritic score of 74. It’s a well-crafted documentary, and you get a feel for how to tell a story. Al Gore says in the film that he’s given this presentation well over 1,000 times. The key? He remembers that every time…

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  • Not even 200 valid domains in Cameroon

    At work we spent a lot of time today providing OpenDNS users with a way to avoid the wildcarding of the .cm TLD (CNET News.com article). You can read all about the choices available at “Cameroon takes the ‘o’ out of .com.” The most interesting part to me? There are fewer than 200 valid domains…

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  • On Point : Testosterone

    I didn’t listen to the whole 48 minutes, but the radio show exploration “On Point : Testosterone” covers interesting ground. (Thanks, Ken.) In the wake of Floyd Landis’s fall, I was curious about two things. First, why did Floyd pass the other tests given during the Tour? Second, why testoterone, which I had understood to…

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  • Time Machine…a popular version of Lifestreams?

    Yesterday’s sneak peek at Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, included Time Machine. This archive/journaling/backup application has a nifty UI, at least in demo mode. We’ll have to wait to see if it’s actually useful or not, but it sells well. But what I was struck by was that Time Machine appears to…

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  • Cleaning out the inbox

    I’ve been using del.icio.us for most of my quick links these days, but the various items marinating in my inbox at home seem to deserve a bit more attention, if not full individual posts. ### Magnets keep misbehaving collars in line – I’m still a button collar guy, most of the time, but I’m intrigued.…

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  • Fulfilling promises takes time

    In Design Observer, Michael Bierut shares The Mysterious Power of Context, which muses on logo design and fonts, with a larger eye on brand identity. He cites Paul Rand (new to me) in a few sentences which reminds me that some decisions are just not that important in the long run. In the world of…

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