Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Our family fitness has taken another leap forward this last week with our joining in a virtual race across Australia. For us its more of an amble than a race and we are not in it to win it, but for the fitness.

Jadeen and Erin and Mercedes also received their first mentions for running on the web – though Jadeen was published in the news paper for her running a few weeks back.

I bought a Garmin 310XT training computer watch gizmo and Jude and I have been using this to track our heart rate, speed and distance, and cadence for running and cycling. Here’s the list of our activities on Garmin Connect – you can see the maps, distances and all the details by opening up any of the specific activities. You can even use the player feature to overlay the different metrics and see them play out over the whole course. See the SheepStation Creek course I did on Sunday with Mick.

Photography stuff

After reading this article about 7 ways to get your photos seen, I created a book of photos at Blurb. It is coming soon. You can preview and purchase the book here if you are interested – it makes a great coffee table book.

I have published more photos in our Dreamcoat Photography family portraits section on Flickr. We are in the process of developing our new website for this and are now taking bookings for clients.

Swearing an Oath

Finally, I have sworn an oath this week after following the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd’s lead. We have both made this oath and encourage other men to do the same.

I swear:
never to commit violence against women,
never to excuse violence against women, and
never to remain silent about violence against women.
This is my oath.

August 30 saw Judith and Jadeen compete with another 47,000 odd runners in the annual Bridge to Brisbane charity fun run. Jude and Jadeen competed in the 5km run finishing in the first 2000 odd runners I think. Official results will come later.

I took a bunch of photos – 942 to be precise – these are posted up on my flickr account with the bridgetobrisbane tag. Here is the public listing of photos with the bridgetobrisbane tag

Here are some of the best / funniest ones I took. Number 32531 was the winning woman. Judith was number 40065 and I didn’t see Jadeen bolt past me in the crowd so I didn’t get a photo of her.

Windows 7 – the news keeps on coming in!

• How low can you go? What is the minimum hardware requirement for Windows 7? SO far the record is a Pentium II with a 266 MHz CPU, 96MB of memory, and a 4MB graphics card.
• Nick Hodge is in charge of getting 58 palettes of HP Netbooks preloaded with Windows 7 for Tech Ed 2009 delegates! – i could go – but I’m going sailing instead!
• Susan Bradley has webcasts on using the XP mode in Win7
• Upgrade and retail pricing was announced for Win7 for USA and Australia this week.
  

I have been doing a lot of photography lately. Something to do with getting my new gear! I’m playing with White Balance, ISO, Aperture and Shutter settings and trying different things. A lot of these things I have of course done before, but now I am doing it with good gear and I am starting to get some good results.

I’ve put some of my good photos into this article. There are lots more in my flickr account, and for those connected to me on facebook a few there as well. A couple of very good shots have made it to my red bubble account where they can be purchased.

We went on a fun run on Sunday morning. I entered int he 5km run, but had to pull out early due to an injuury sustained at squash last Friday. I have pulled / damaged / twisted a nerve in the side of my left calf and it is very sore. The good thing was that as I got back to the finish line before most people I was able to take a large number of photos that have subsequently been made available for the runners to access.