The Engineered Boulderer

I regularly visit Reddit and broaden my horizon considerably through that avenue. The other day I clicked through to the site one hundred push ups. The site has the premise that anyone can train themselves up to do one hundred consecutive push ups with just six weeks of training.

I would tend to agree with them, and since I’m not at 100 yet I decided to take the challenge.

Reading my comics today sluggy freelance had a filler comic by Erica Henderson. Browsing around on her blog I noticed she had taken several nerd tests. Of course I couldn’t help taking them also.

As some of you may have noticed my blog has been decidedly offline for a week or so. Today I was sitting with the server and finally found the culprit. The problem is the with the Textile 2 (improved) plugin that I use (and usually love) on both my own site, as well as Susan’s and my mom’s.

I am still missing the plugin upgrade on my mom’s site (I can’t remember the admin password), but once I do it they should all work again.

Sorry for the downtime, but I have a few articles in the pipeline that should tidy you over within the weekend. I will also run with the default theme for wordpress until I make a new theme (which could take a while). I discovered how many plugins I was using in my theme and thought it was time to clean out.

I know it’s a little late to post a link to an article after it’s been on Digg, however, I think this article is the closest I’ve seen to revealing the secret of why Pixar is so successful.

“All these other animation groups want to be like Pixar, but they steal the wrong things from them. They don’t steal the actual process, which is take your time, hold out for the good stuff, which is kind of what `Ratatouille’ is all about.’ Don’t just stuff yourself with bland garbage. Wait for the good stuff.”

Pixar perfectionists cook ‘Ratatouille’

Apple, Inc. has made an art of not talking about its products. Fans, journalists, and rumormongers who love it or love to hate it have long had to practice a sort of Kremlinology to gather the merest hints as to what is coming next out of Cupertino.

Different @ Technology Review

Very interesting article about the way Apple designs their products. An interesting read for anyone who care about design, Apple, or both.

There’s a new movie in town, like the stylized rendition of Sin City it is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. The movie is called 300 and loosely based on the battle in which 300 Spartans stood against the might of the Persian empire. I did not know this until today, but apparently a great deal of controversy surrounds the movie:

In just 12 days the article received over 110 comments, something of a small wonder considering this is my personal blog, a site that attracts less than 1,000 visitors per day. It became apparent then, and even more so when I read an article in Newsweek by Evan Thomas, that this was a broad and heated political issue.

Movie critic Neil Miller tries to make heads and tails in the controversy in The 300 Controversy: Fact vs. Fiction. Like Neil Miller I don’t really see the point, but his piece is well written.

Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.

This, he says, is responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing.

(source)

Nike has just added Map It functionality to the the Nike+ website.

This functionality allows you to draw routes and assign them to your runs.

I have drawn my first route: Rundt om Jægersborg which is one of my “regular” routes. I must admit I get very bored running the same route too often (more than twice in a month), so talking about regular for me is a bit of a stretch. However, I feel this makes me qualified to rate the ease of the mapping tool since I’ll be using it a lot, and I’ve tried many tools already.

After reading Cabel from panic software recounting his experiences with the Nike+iPod sports kit I thought to myself, “I have to get me one of those.” I think Cabel would be a great salesman. After discovering the Nike + iPod group on Flickr, I couldn’t wait to get the kit, and told myself that if I didn’t get it for Christmas I would have to buy it myself. As luck would have it, I did get it for Christmas, and I’ve been “playing” with it since.

I am working on reviews of Nike+iPod sports kit, Guitar Hero II, and Chi Running. However, Susan is in the process of buying a horse which involves several full-day trips to Jutland. In the meantime read Michael bemoan the low level of social networking (á la Flickr) in Nike+.