Just a nice picture of the kids. I just discovered the noise filtering in my new installation of ufraw – works nicely for low-light with my somewhat noisy D300.

Really, just testing my changes to use Wordpress for image hosting since my gallery is gone (sniff).

I rode in the snow a couple of times this week. It went pretty well all things considered. On Tuesday I rode in 25 degree weather. The single-track I had been snowshoeing on was just barely rideable – my tires stayed on top of the snow OK, it just took a lot of power to keep moving, and I had to walk the steeper climbs. Today it was warmer, about 36 degrees. The single-track was much easier – I think the snow was sticky enough to get better grip. The fire roads packed by snowmobiles are pretty easy to ride, though a bit bumpy from the holes the horses make. It’s 45 degrees now – I wonder if it will be even better after it freezes up again.

Riding on the ice was really fun – I’m tempted to pick up some studded tires.

I’ve taken my photo gallery offline. It’s seeing constant comment spam attacks, and there appears to be no easy way to stop them. I’ll probably move the content elsewhere, either on a platform that allows disabling comments effectively, or move to the “cloud” via flickr or some such crappy site.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of this attack – the legitimate traffic on my gallery is between 10-20 hits a day – almost nothing. The comment spam bots hit it with 2000 hits a day. What’s worse, is that this loads the mysql server at media temple such that they’re requiring that I pay an additional $20/mo for a mysql “container” – some sort of extra virtual machine. I run a Captcha, and I’ve turned off access to comments. There must be some
hole in Gallery 2, as I’m still getting spam.

This is all because of spammers attempts to get page ranking on their scam sites by inserting links in comments on my gallery. The fact that Google is onto this gaming, and the comment spam has no effect doesn’t matter.

So, I’m annoyed at having to take time out of my day to address this, and ultimately lose the ability for independent participation on the Internet via my photo gallery. The Internet as an open, independent, non-commercial medium is at risk without regulation and enforcement to stop these chilling effects. Without regulation, all the internet will be is Google, flicker, Facebook, and MSN, soon to be mega-merged into a single AOL-like “service” .

Here’s my make-believe stock car, custom paint in Forza 3. It’s more fun than I had thought it would be.

Today, I tried the snowshoes. I wore the Garmin 305 mainly to check my heart rate. I wanted to see if snowshoeing was a reasonable cardio workout. Turns out that it is, as the data below shows (click it for full resolution). When I walked the same route a few days earlier with no snow, my heart rate averaged 102 bpm. It does seem that I could stand to do a few sprints here and there to liven things up.

This was really the last ride. It started out cold and frozen, with the trail dry and fast. About one and a half hours into it, the snow started. It was light at first, but got thick pretty quickly. Soon there was an inch or two, no problem except that it hid ice underneath the low spots, then later it froze up my clipless pedals. I ended the ride on the eastern end of the part that I’m less familiar with, and did a few unintended loops searching for a way out. I finished it after 2:37, and rode about 13.7 miles.

Nope, that last ride wasn’t the last of 2009. I cross-country skied a couple of days before Christmas. Then it rained, got warm, etc. Today the snow was gone, but last night it dropped below freezing again, and the trail had hardened.

I got some bigger tires – WTB Stout 2.3’s, and put them on today. They fit pretty well, although I get a bit of interference on the front derailleur that I hope can be fixed by bringing in the stop for the small chain ring. I ran 22 lbs in the new tires, and the bike is just unstoppable. Even though things were a bit slick as the top layer of mud was thawing, they just didn’t slip ever. They weigh a good bit more than the Maxxis Ignitors that I had been running (2.1’s), so I’ll probably switch back once things dry out in June.

I rode the whole way around Willowdale – probably about 15 miles, in two and a half hours. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be down in the 20’s, so I should be able to do it again then.

I got out again today ahead of the snow storm. Cold, frozen and grey. The prediction is for a foot of snow here tonight, and it looks like snow off and on all week.