The Case for Running

Depending on where you live, you might have many options available for getting to work. Trains, buses, cars, ferries, motorcycles, bicycles, trams... Commuting takes many and varied forms. There exists one form of commuting that is perhaps less often used: Running.

In many places, a one hour each-way commute is short. On the busiest freeway in the United States, the I-405, two hours each way is not impossible. Such commutes inevitably mean that one will spend a significant portion of one's life sitting in a relatively uncomfortable chair, right foot chained to two small plastic pedals.

Imagine my feeling of luck and good fortune when I discovered my San Francisco apartment-to-work journey was only two miles (3.2km for my fellow metric users). At first, I could not quite believe it. It was a shocking realisation: I could walk to work? Every day? So that is what I did. Forty-five minutes or so, downhill in the morning and uphill at night.

Spending one and a half hours commuting each day is not bad by I-405 standards. You can do a alot of thinking in that time. Emailing as well, if like me you are a Crackberry addict. (Yes that's right, some people still use Blackberries, and we still love them!). Occasionally though, it is nice to have a shorter trip.

Options? In San Francisco, bicycles are popular. Buses are plentiful. There is BART. Whatever, have you checked out those two pins below your hip bones recently? They are free, require no activation, and are extremely reliable.

What is more, they can be surprisingly fast. The average speed of a car in a moderately congested urban area is between 30 and 40km/h (19-25mph). Due to stops, buses are significantly slower. On a decent day, I am averaging 15km/h (9.5mph) from SOMA to Haight in San Francisco. So half the speed for, no cost?

Alright, you are thinking it. This guy is some sort of wierdo fitness freak. Wrong! When I arrived in the US I had absolutely zero fitness. Running 100m had me puffing and wheezing like a pack-a-day smoker. It has taken four months of walking/running a total of 6.4km (4mi) per day every day to get to the 15km/h average.

Injuries? Only one. Ignoring what your body tells you can cost you dearly. Pushing up a hill one night, I asked slightly too much of a calf. One fantastic feature of legs is that they have a built in fail safe mode: If you damage one, you can usually walk. What's more, they actually repair themselves! Imagine having a bicycle that can change its own chain, or replace a tyre without any human help.

Changing the way you run can also significantly reduce the likelihood of injury. Most often when running for long distances, people will land on their heels, especially if wearing some crazy hyper-padded 'running shoe.'

If you instead wear minimalist footwear, and land on the for-mid part of your foot with every stride, the shock on your knee is significantly reduced. Your calves and feet contribute to the impact absorption, and suddenly you might feel faster too.

Combine the above with shorter strides, and feet landing below you instead of in front of you: It is possible to feel like you are dancing, or flying. It is truly surprising how fast and how far we humans can run. Modern life has made us softer in so many ways, and this is one of them.

Sure, people give me funny looks as I run past in my jeans and connies. But who cares? It is fast commuting and it costs nothing at all. The more you do it, the less you sweat. The really cool part is that regular exercise is supposedly good for you. Not only do your wallet and watch thank you, your heart might as well.

Mobile video editing and the MBP 13 2012

Alright road warrior. You spend weeks every year in the air. You carry a decent DSLR and maybe a dedicated large-sensor video camera as well. You chew through 32Gb SD cards and need to make presentations and movies happen in short timeframes. You need a machine.

Apple deploys a new product, and everyone loses their minds. This is the way of the universe. Yesterday, the company released its new line of Macbook Pros. The world seems to accept Apple products as somehow being 'better for content creation' - does the new MBP line back this up?

Having been pondering my new laptop purchase for some time, I was eagerly awaiting the new MBPs, hoping they would live up to the hype. Specifically, the 13 inch model. For working on planes, trains, and carrying about, 13 inches is a great sweet spot for size and weight. Given Intel's Ivy Bridge processor 'Tick' brought quad core Thermal Design Power into the 35 watt range, surely Apple would finally bring power to their 13 inch offering. No joy - we are still stuck with dual cores.

Display was another area where the MBP 13 had been lacking. Decent colour reproduction sure, but a measly 1280 x 800 and glossy? What century are we living in? Alas, the 'huge leap forward' for the 2012 MBP yields no upgrade to the screen. Video editing within such a tiny resolution space, on a shiny screen, is not an enjoyable experience.

The list of disappointment with this machine goes on. But wait, there are no competitiors for Apple Macbook Pros, right? They are the default choice for a content creator because nothing else comes close? A little bit of research revealed this to be far from the truth. Here is a comparison of specifications relevant to a mobile video editor:

Specification	Apple MBP 13	Sony Vaio Z
CPU	i7-3520M	i7-3612QM
GPU	Integrated	Integrated
RAM	8Gb	8Gb
HDD	256Gb SSD	256Gb SSD
Resolution	1280 x 800	1920 x 1080
Screen Finish	Glossy	Matte
Backlight	CFL	LED
RGB Colour Gamut	77.1%	95%
Dimensions	0.95 x 12.78 x 8.94	0.66 x 13 x 8.27
Weight	2.06kg	1.17kg
Construction	Aluminium	Carbon Fibre
Price-as-Configured	$1,899	$1,949

Perhaps the comparison is missing something... But it looks fairly clear. The 'huge leap forward' Apple presented at WDCC 2012 is thicker, almost twice as heavy, less powerful (For content creation applications), and includes a far inferior screen to the competition revealed several weeks ago.

More expensive? I thought the point of Apple machines was to deliver a no-compromise computing experience. $50 is hardly a killing blow. No disk drive? Well, many of us don't even install operating systems off discs anymore. This is before we even consider the Sony external GPU/Blu Ray docks available via Thunderbolt.

Now, there may be an obvious point missed. If there is, please tell me in the comments. This is a 13 inch comparison, the 15 inch MBP with the 'retina' display is no doubt a different fight, but 13 inch is a segment many are interested in. In the 13 inch space, Apple looks to be seriously lagging the competition.

Venus Transit

Very bright and very dark scenes present great challenges for amateur videographers. Where professionals will have all the right tools for the job, most of us must improvise with what we have, and often we can only just scrape by.


The 2012 transit of Venus across the Sun could not have come at a worse time for me. Smack bang in the middle of E3 2012, I was in Las Angeles with approximately negative 5 hours of free time the whole week. What is worse, I only realise it was happening two days beforehand. In amongst all the preparation for E3, there was no time for buying a crucial piece of sun-filming equipment: A neutral density filter.


Nor had I brought a tripod. Or even thought about a place in LA that the sun would be visible from during the sunset. Or left enough time after our final Tuesday E3 appointment. From pretty much all angles, this piece of amateur film-making was not looking good at all.

The angle was tight, but possible.

Realising that my hotel was a fairly tall building on the western side of downtown LA, I ran for a cab as the light began to fade. There was no guarantee that the sun would be visible past neighbouring buildings, but it was worth a shot. In the foyer, I aimed for the western-most lift and rode up to the 24th floor.

Got a bin, got a tripod.

A hallway bin combined with my satchel to create an improvise tripod. The next question was, could the camera stop the aperture up far enough to see past the glare to Venus? With no neutral density filter, it was close. The only thing standing between the aperture blades and the burning sunset were a UV filter, a polariser, and a grubby hotel window.

There she be.

With the lens all the way out to 200mm, an aperture of f/22, and shutter speed of 8000/sec, Venus popped up in the viewfinder. Success! For about five minutes, I watched another world.

Videos of the transit are available everywhere, but I was proud that this was my own little piece of astronomy. Studying the planets intently with grandad are some of my earliest memories, and I'll be damned if I was going to miss an event that won't happen again for 117 years.