I find this worrisome since, otherwise, I’ve loved the shoes and wear them for casual wear, not just running. I can tell they’ve strengthened my feet and made other differences. And as I’ve mentioned before, due to the barefoot running techniques I’ve adopted, I’ve all but eliminated the severe tendonitis I had in my shins. (It was so bad that I would ice my shins for a half hour after running just a few miles).

Let me state it’s not the shoes themselves that fixed the tendonitis. The Vibrams are like training wheels for learning the barefoot running technique. You don’t need the Vibrams to learn the technique, but to have them makes it more natural to adopt them, especially for those of us who don’t have large swaths of natural running surface nearby to run on. (There are some that advise against using the Vibrams to learn barefoot running.)

My podiatrist, unlike many others I’ve read about, has kept an open mind and hasn’t told me to stop using them. However, he has, as I have, made the connection that it must be something the shoes encourage, or at least don’t discourage, that is causing these breaks. He has heard about other cases from other doctors, so I’ve been doing more research on the problems with barefoot running and using Vibrams in particular.

As I’ve been doing more research, I went to a running clinic while I was on vacation. Runner’s Corner is a great little store. My wife was actually the one who found out about the clinic and signed us up. (She been a little skeptical of barefoot running, but recent changes to her stride from heel to forefoot have helped eliminate knee pain she’s had for the last several years.)

Honestly, I didn’t know this would be a barefoot running clinic. I did know they sold Vibram and thought they might have some advice on how to use them. Well, it was a real barefoot running clinic. They had us out on the lawn of a nearby park running barefoot and using a high-speed camera film us. They taught about posture, arm motion (or lack thereof), foot strike, and cadence (180+ steps per minute). Using the film, they gave each runner personal recommendations about how to adopt and/or improve their running technique. However, as someone who has researched this, I didn’t find anything new in the presentation. Still, I would heartily recommend the clinic if you want to learn the general barefoot technique and get some personal advice.

I did however stick around after the class. The two instructors, Brian and Golden, were willing to sit down with me and talk me through the problems. It turns out they had heard my story from a few other people and read about it several times in the forums of various barefoot running sites. They called it “Top of Foot Pain” or “TOFP”. What a difference having a simple phrase can make!

Armed with the new phrase, I was able to locate some interesting advice. I haven’t been able to try it yet since I’m still waiting for my foot to heal completely, but it looks promising:
1) I think the fit of my KSO’s is too tight. It seemed to me that the shoe should fit tightly since it was a ‘barefoot’ shoe. However, the shoe should have 1/4-1/2″ toe space and otherwise give room for your foot to swell since that naturally happens when you run.
2) The strap might be too tight. I do cinch the strap fairly tightly. Some have just cut the strap off.
3) I might be using my toes. As mentioned above, some prominent barefoot runners have advised against using Vibrams until the proper technique is used because using toes can cause overstressing of the foot.

So, there it is. I once again have hope for my barefoot running, especially in the Vibrams. Until then, I’m waiting for my foot to heal and my doctor to give me the all clear. He has said as soon as I’m healed that he will give me full measurements to see if there is a mechanical deficiency to explain why my left foot apparently has more stress on it than my right. Between these two things, I hope to be able to complete my first marathon early next year.

The team was radically different this year. Only 5 people from the 12 last year were the same. However the new additions certainly were fun.

This year I was racer 12 instead of 11. I only had 17 miles, about the same as last year, so I felt I knew what to expect. I trained for a couple of months and really felt ready. This time in particular I ran hills since that was what killed me last year.

Our start time was a couple of hours later than last year, so I wasn’t running the same times. It was kind of sad because I really liked the middle of the night run last year. Instead I got to run the morning and see the sun rise. Less dramatic than the lightning storm I ran in last time, but nice nonetheless.

I think the biggest difference was the stamina of the team, or at least those in our van this year. Last year the van I was in was mostly “avid” runners, while this year felt more casual. Actually, that was a nice thing, since I myself am far from an elite runner. The pacing was good. Also, having a dedicated driver was awesome. I would heartily recommend it for any team, if they can find one.

The sad part was that I was kind of stupid. I ran almost all of my legs on a broken foot. Inside of mile one on my first leg I somehow broke my left foot (specifically the 2nd metatarsal). I was wearing the Vibram KSOs, and I’m sure that contributed to it (more on that in another post). I adapted and started running on the outside of my foot, which meant my right leg compensated and I got cramps in my quad and calf. I didn’t want to quit though because other runners had difficulties. I felt that we were already asking a lot of everyone else so I just grinned and bore it. Oh well, c’est la vie.

The foot aside, this year was better in many ways. First, I took some dramamine, which helped in the van and made me tired enough so I actually slept. Second, I kept my diet more regulated, so I didn’t get sick. I’m not sure if it was the *Ade drinks I had (instead of just water like last year) or if I just kept a more consistent stream of fuel in my body, but it was pleasant not feeling like I had to yack just before my last run.

The spaghetti dinner was gone this year, replaced by a rather tepid breakfast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen bacon sliced so thin, nor eggs so bland (might have been powdered for all I know). Still, fuel is fuel, and it did start the day off right.

The last run was a lot more pleasant too. I knew right where the finish line was and I paced myself accordingly for the two major hills on the leg. It was fun running with the team past the finish line and I could actually enjoy it rather than being frustrated from being so exhausted.

Perhaps the best part was that my wife was able to make it up and see my finish. It was a very pleasant sight seeing her at the finish line. It made it that much more memorable.

Last year I said that I was going to participate again, and I did. Unlike last year, I’m not going to do it next year. I won’t go so far as to say that I won’t ever do it again, but 2 years in a row is enough for now. Next year my goal is to run a marathon, and I don’t want to feel obligated to run the Ragnar in addition. Who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind, but I doubt it.

Other memorable moments:

• Meeting Mike from D.C. (He’s not from Washington, he’s from D.C.)
• The ever growing list of pet peeves between said Mike and Jennifer
• play-by-play of Kim putting on her shoes at 2am
• The dorky flags to cross the road

So, like last year, many thanks to Cara, Kim, Runner Mike, Driver Mike, Marcy, and Jennifer for the fun. It was good seeing Rob, Francys, and Brent again, even if they weren’t in the same van. Unfortunately I didn’t get to know the others as well.

It seems that ATS is basically as fast as C/C++. l’ve been using different functional languages off and on for the last decade, and performance of some functional languages (or at least their implementations) has prohibited me from using them more broadly. Being able to add ATS to my arsenal (Clean being my preferred functional language for performance) is something I look forward to. I enjoy learning new languages.

Theory proven incorrect aside, I will say my goals are a trifle different. I’m not looking to port existing languages, at least not identically. I don’t think I would have had such hubris. Instead, I’m trying to create a language development environment. I think Scheme provides a great base, or more precisely, any VM that can support a Scheme has the necessary primitives to support just about any dynamic language. So there is my hubris .

I believe that a Scheme is the ideal environment for trying dynamic language ideas for a couple of reasons:
1) The syntax of Scheme is similar to an abstract syntax tree. Parsers simply have to create a scheme equivalent and run (print (eval (read))).
2) Add primitives in Scheme. When a dynamic language needs a new primitive, it can easily do so by creating a scheme function or macro.

After getting this project up and running to a 1.0 state, I plan on writing a BASIC interpreter for it to provide a prototype.

This version contains a PDO driver. The PDO SqlSrv driver provides a full implementation of the PDO specification, though there are some things that we did different than other drivers. Which is not surprising, because not every driver does things the same way. However, we are actively soliciting feedback, so if you use PHP and PDO, please try our driver out and let us know what you think, and what you would like to see.

One of the key areas we’re interested in are SQL Server specific features. PDO has extensibility through driver specific methods. If there is some cool SQL Server feature that you want to use through PDO, let us know.

An important milestone for myself is that this is the first version I was the technical lead for. While I’ve written most of the code within previous versions, I was not actually responsible for the ‘code quality’. That always was the technical lead, who until now was mostly responsible for reviewing the code I wrote. With this release, I not only wrote alot the code, but was responsible ultimately for its quality. (Don’t worry, it was still reviewed by qualified people. )

The other important facet is that until this release, I wrote all the code. We now have an additional developer, so we can split the responsibilities and deliver more goodness for PHP! Just one more thing to show that Microsoft takes PHP seriously.

Many thanks to those who contributed to this release.

When I first got it though I mostly ran Windows on it via Parallels. OSX mostly was used to run Safari and iTunes. The development software, word processing, etc. were all Windows, because those were the programs I already owned and know.

As I’ve had the Mac though, I find more and more excuses to use OSX rather than Windows. More and more of the software I’m using is now Mac based, mostly because running under the VM, while acceptable performance, isn’t as good as running natively under OSX. Also, I’ve started some Mac development in earnest, so I find myself in OSX for that too. (My scheme compiler now builds and runs under Mac OSX and Windows).

To carry my workflow over to OSX, I’ve purchased Microsoft Office for Mac. Word and Excel for OSX are wonderful. Also, I run Aquamacs for programming and general text editing. One program that I miss sorely though is OneNote 2007. I spent the better part of this weekend searching for a good alternative.

First, a little more about how I work with OneNote. I use it to make notes for projects, usually a section per project. The notes are highly unstructured, but usually work to one subject per note. Once a particular note has grown large enough, or I have more than a few notes about a subject, I start another page with that subject and collect the notes on that page. Sometimes I’ll coalesce the notes into an outline to better organize a page if it gets enough text on it. I don’t import movies, but images are not uncommon. I put in a lot of links within text notes to other web pages. I love the ability to write notes anywhere on the page. The note manipulation is great; it’s easy to move notes around and they just expand naturally. Outlines just work when you type them in. Tables can be embedded within a note, and I take chunks from web pages that I read and paste them directly as their own notes, or inside existing notes.

As a sample, here’s a note page about my D&D campaign. (The heroes have already played this scenario, so this is not new to them.)

You can see the kind of random placement of notes. I like this ability, a lot.

So I want to use something similar native to OSX. A simple search on Google and Bing revealed lots of contenders:
Evernote
SOHO Notes
Circus Ponies Notebook
Word 2008 Notebook View
TiddlyWiki
Emacs Org Mode
Scrivener
Curio

There were others I’m sure, but these are what I’ve looked at over the last month, and most of them just this weekend. (Yeah, I didn’t have to work this weekend!)

Evernote – A great note taking product. It’s greatest strength is that it is available everywhere, including the web, Windows, Mac and iPhone. Search notes with keywords. Unfortunately it’s greatest strength is probably it’s greatest weakness too. Because it’s so cross platform, I suppose they really skimped on the formatting. It’s not very easy to do things within their editor. The included sample note looks cool, but I never could find out how they did it. I really like the free form note taking on a page in OneNote, and the base item to work with in Evernote is the note itself, not notes on a page. In short, it’s not for me.

SOHO Notes – After playing with it for a few minutes, it came across to me as a better version of Evernote, without that platform versatility (though there is an iPhone version of sorts) but better formatting options. It has the note centricity though, that for others is probably just fine, but OneNote seems to be ‘page centric’, meaning that individual notes can be placed arbitrarily on the page. Again, not really what I want.

Circus Ponies Notebook – Upon loading this, I thought I had found the true OneNote for Mac. Great piece of software, looks good, and I love the notebook metaphor. It has the free floating text, which I love, but their implementation leaves me wanting, especially wanting to move text around (OneNote has the thicker top borders that make it a snap, and a single click to edit makes it really easy, whereas Notebook requires a double click – what can I say, I’m picky). Their sticky notes are almost good too, but not quite there. I love the contents page and how it automatically updates. Unfortunately the outline mode isn’t free form. In other words, I can’t place an outline anywhere on a page, there can only be one per page. Last, the price is a little higher than other packages. At $49, it’s probably worth it, but Evernote is free, Emacs is free, and the other packages are $39. Not a deal breaker, but worth noting.

Word 2008 Notebook View – Built into Microsoft Word 2008 is a little mode known as Notebook View. It’s similar to Circus Ponies Notebook, though not as fully customizable. No free floating text, but it has outlines where I want them. I can include text boxes for the free floating text, but I have to manually resize them, they don’t just grow as you type. It has tables, and tables can be made to do some text separation, but aren’t quite right either, compared to OneNote. Still, lots of features, such as tables of contents, all the Word formatting is available, and the organization ease that Notebook and Scrivener have by just moving notebook tabs around. And Word is generally compatible with just about everything. (Or is it that everything is compatible with Word?) Price is high compared to the others, but I already have it, well, because it’s Word.

TiddlyWiki – I tried this a while ago, and liked it for general Wiki stuff, but it’s not nearly as user-friendly as any other package in here, including the Emacs Org Mode. It’s a great idea, and it certainly has its adherents, but it’s not for me.

Emacs Org Mode – It’s amazing what can be done in Emacs. Org mode ups the ante for any text based editting, but the formatting within Emacs is not what I’d like. The outlining is superb, and, believe it or not, the table engine is probably second only to Word’s or OneNote’s. I actually keep my general ToDo lists in Emacs Org Mode since it’s a text file that can be passed around alot. But for general note taking, it’s lacking compared to just about any other offering. Only text can be manipulated, which is a good thing in many ways, but I want a little more.

Scrivener – Awesome writing tool for writers. I am using it for writing the book that goes with my Scheme compiler. Don’t ask how that’s coming. And even when I’m doing a document for something, like a technical spec for work or a teaching lesson, I use Scrivener to organize thoughts. You might say that Scrivener is the second phase of my personal writing process. I use OneNote for research and just a dumping ground for URLs and notes. When I’m ready to actually put text in, I write it in Scrivener, which then I use to organize the final layout and then print. I take the resulting Word document and add formatting in Word of course. But for general note dumping, Scrivener isn’t my tool of choice, though I feel maybe it could be.

Curio – I went back through my web searches and found several references to it. It seems pretty cool. I like the idea of the mind maps (though I didn’t try them out), and I like the general utility. The biggest difference seems to be that in OneNote, each entry is like a mini-Word document. You can embed outlines, text, graphics, and hyperlinks, among other things, in each little note, then move those notes around freely. In Curio, each item is one type (a list is a list, a picture is only a picture), so you can’t (at least as far as I can tell) write a note and embed graphics in it. Instead, the best I could find was that I could write a note and put a graphic near it and then group them. Not a bad idea, though I would miss writing lists inside a text note. The last thing is again the price. For $99, it’d probably be worth it if I used the mind map or if the note formatting engine were a little more like OneNote’s.

I also tried a couple of other products that seemed to be clones of others on this list already. If you know of something not listed here that I could try, I’m at least open to downloading it and trying it out for a few minutes.

From the research I’ve done this weekend, I think Circus Ponies Notebook is the closest I can come to. However, the few limitations it has makes me believe that I’ll just use Word 2008 Notebook View or Emacs Org Mode until such time I can find something else. Also, I smell a great opportunity here for Mac software. Something like OneNote (with even OneNote compatibility) would probably sell like hotcakes. Too bad I’m so busy with other things.

About not posting. Well, mea culpa. Been really busy at work. The next big project is well under way, and I’ve been heads down for a few weeks. I still want to a recap of the birthday celebration. It was very cool.

The big present for me was the MacBook Pro. That was a combination birthday/Christmas present, so I’ve actually had it open for a few days, doing some work on it (to try and catch up on my behind schedule project).

The kids were well treated by their grandmothers and uncles. Lots of books. That’s the norm for our house though, so the kids were very excited. Also, my daughter got an EZ bake oven, which has a surprising amount of recipes for it on the internet.

Well, here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.