@mroutley I have found it's better to use a coach to adjust your running form, since judging your own form is very subjective. Heck, even recording yourself in slomo is better. The coach is needed for specific exercises (drills) to improve posture, stride, etc. Alas, good coaches are rare, and usually expensive.

@manton Amazon wouldn't agree with that dot-com boom statement. They weathered it and came out on top, I guess through stubbornness and dumb luck. The current AI bubble​ seems to be driven by the spaghetti-against-the-wall principle, which is often the only way to innovate when people don't know what they're doing nor care about the consequences (read: big tech companies and start-ups). A shake-out seems inevitable.

Yesterday I entered as a participant to the Marathon Rotterdam on April 13, 2025. I had to be quick, because all 17,000 starting tickets sold out in 2½ hours.

All I have to do now is get into shape and train the heck out of this old body that will have turned 65 on race day.

Another long(ish) run to improve my marathon shape. Most of it (16 km) was on sand paths and rough terrain. The pace was eight percent slower than my currently expected marathon pace. The marathon will be on November 24, 2024.

@manton Always consider the alternative. Then it's not that bad. Apple is slipping, but compared to their competitors, they're far ahead.

@jabel As for longevity, I believe it's often the (cheap) circuitry that breaks, not the light emitting diode itself.

@manton More like 2 minutes in my case.

@manton I have a filter to avoid us election topics. It should work on text in images too, imo.

@manton Wasn’t robots.txt meant to optimize search results, and nothing more? My guess is that Reddit doesn’t want Google to eat Reddit’s lunch, since Reddit content has been prevailing in search results for a long time now.

@mroutley To be sure, streaming services are companies, and their shows products. Meaning the long-term ROI is more important than popularity, which typically is short-term. The current top-10 doesn't enter at all in boardroom meetings, nor does audience appreciation. This is why book publishers prefer book series over singular books. The question for a streamer is, can this series sustain us for the next several years? The answer often is: "No."

@ChrisJWilson At least you didn't use utilization in that phrase.

If you’re going to lie, do so fast and loud, and most will believe you. Ask any teenager or demagogue.

Yesterday I noticed pain in my achilles tendon, so I decided to replace some running by cycling. I recorded using a triathlon app on my watch. Two things went wrong. I accidentally wiped the activity, but, worse, I underestimated the bike ride and the heat. It was too long and too fast. 🏃‍♂️🚴‍♂️

@hutaffe @manton I always ask myself, would I write this if my mother was reading this? I wished more people did that.

@KimberlyHirsh iOS has a translate option for selected text in any web view, and I suppose Android has one too. I use that often to translate auto-generated alt text into Dutch on micro∙blog, but also for foreign language posts.

@deerbard This is why I prefer to pay for my social media account. It makes crooks less likely to steal it, since then they'll have to pay for it themselves. Other than that, I dislike Discord, too gamer orientated. I have an account, never used it in earnest. If things are free, that's what they should be valued at, without any worth, nor use. I bet if you'd had Nitro, they would be more bothered with your case.

@camiel Alas, Athlytic seems Apple Watch centric. I don't own (nor desire) an Apple Watch, nor use my iPhone to record my runs. I use both Garmin and Strava to keep track of my runs and motivate myself by how seeing well others train and get good results in races.

Since I'm a competitive runner, I need a coach to keep me on track, limit my ambitions on the short term. Alas, I'm still without one, since my T&F club isn't willing to appoint one for marathon training specifically. So I'm looking for a coach, and in the meanwhile make do with books and websites, and hope for the best.

Do you ever find yourself writing a blog article, only to realize it exposes 😳 your lack of knowledge and experience? Maybe I’m being cynical at my age, but most of my blog posts nowadays die in the trash 🗑️ before they are released to the world. How about you? Is your trash full of “bad” posts?
✍️🤯

I’m looking for inspiration by following marathon runners on Strava. Got discouraged by a member of my T&F club, who claimed she could run a marathon on 27 km per week as a base, because she wasn’t able to put in the time. Alas, she’s not the only member who lost respect for the marathon.
🏃

@camiel I use the website. Works perfectly fine for me.

@KimberlyHirsh Me: What if I skip all meals today? Future Me: You'll be hungry. Current-Me: 'Kay 😔

@camiel I know what you mean. I used to have problems with 7 min/km and slower too. I use Runalyze, and it mentions that the recommended easy pace according to Daniels is between 6:54 en 8:39 min/km. 10 meter walk breaks and breathing exclusively through the nose is what helped me to control my pace.

I drafted a blog post about interval training, let someone read it, and came to the conclusion I don’t know enough to write a coherent piece. Also, formulas seem to induce eyerolling in most readers. It’s better to create a narrative, since more people are able to follow along than with math(s).

@ChrisJWilson I'm amazed so many are still active on twitter, thinking it is relevant to keep up with. I think social media had its time and is no longer relevant as a source of news and information, but I could be wrong.

@manton If "theft" is used inappropriately, do you know a better word, or does one has to be invented? Years ago we had a similar case of copyright infringement when old-style news outlets "stole" videos by reuploading videos from original creators, and slapping their branding on it, without credit. The word "freebooting" was introduced by CPG Grey and Brady Haran, who this happened to.

@manton This doesn't bode well. It disqualified the Supreme Court as the arbiter of right and wrong.

@jgamet Goes to show that humans aren't as smart as they think they are. Also, you need a T.A.R.D.I.S. to fix this oversight of not buying cake, so it never happened.

People who install a renewable energy based home powerplant to deal with power outages are missing an essential point. If a lot of home owners did that, grid stability will decrease and more outages will occur, since avoiding power outages requires regional control, not just local home control.

@manton What form will Apple Intelligence fail whale take?

@jgamet For some reason the app name reminds me of The Raiders of the Lost Ark… Ah, yes, Sturmbannführer Arnold Ernst Toht! I hope it isn't a case of Nomen est omen.

Last Saturday I did a 30 km training run as a (300 m run, 100 m walk) run-walk-run in 3h38m, about 50% slower than my fastest ever 30 km race in 2016. Corrected for heart rate it’s only 25% slower, and for weight 10% slower. That difference could be largely explained by the walking. 🏃‍♂️

@grubz It's perfectly fine to be somewhat wrong on the Internet. Microblog aren't supposed to be perfect, otherwise it defeats its purpose, low barrier to entry. Podcasts are like that too, provisional ideas, imperfect thoughts, listeners can identify with.

@peterw As a child you make excuses to get your way, as an adult you take responsibility of your own actions, and accept the consequences, whatever they are.

@mroutley If you really want to get an idea how the universe started, watch this video: Where do particles come from? - Sixty Symbols. Spoiler: not with the Big Bang, but earlier. Also, the Big Bang wasn't a "bang", but more like a gradual expansion.

Currently uploading my training data from a Garmin Connect archive to my Runalyze training data. There was 7 years of training data missing since I started using Runalyze (it only imports the previous three months from the moment you subscribe). That’s a lot of files to process!

On social networks I always worry to possibly overstep any boundaries of etiquette, what the other person can put up with, or, more importantly, providing bystanders who are into stirring up controversy and putting words out of context, with the words to do just that.

My blog post became so macro, I had to create a draft and edit the source text while reading the draft on micro∙blog. My idea to publish monthly instead of weekly has made my posts grow to extremes.

It has been an eventful week for me, running-wise. It was the first time in a while I trained 6 days out of 7. I also ran a 10K race more than 2 minutes faster than a month ago. I didn’t prep for the race; it was a bit of a fun diversion from regular training. My weekly mileage’ll be 47 mi (76 km).

I just published my 999th post in exactly 16 years on my Dutch language personal running blog. It supposedly consists of 683,057 words, with an average of 683 words per (certainly not micro-) post.

Pixel art portrait
👾

Seven years and counting 🐱🎂

Yet another pixel portrait.
👾

Pixel portrait.
👾

I’ve moved an old Wordpress blog to micro∙blog years ago, and I’m still converting blog posts. It’s not only bad HTML formatting, but also links to other articles on my old blog, PNG files on my old blog, and more. Since it’s ungrateful work to edit old blog posts, progress is slow (read: years) 🐌

After a brief hiatus I started pixeling again.
👾

I find it interesting to predict one’s time in an important running race based on a test run, as to know what a good pace is to keep up during that race. I always used a self-conceived rule, which is quite different from the generally accepted rule according to research engineer Peter Riegel, although it t... renevanbelzen.micro.blog

The fuzzy scribbles are from ibisPaint X, and are supposed to confuse LLM’s like Stable Diffusion. It did not confuse OpenAI with this pixel art drawing, since the description was spot on. However, it might mess up the rendering when it’s incorporated into a new piece of AI artwork. OTOH I think it’s going to be a cat-and-mouse game twarthing immoral image acquisition for AI learning.

🤖 A pixel art depiction of a blue creature resembling a kangaroo against a yellow background with green dots is presented in the image.

We clearly need an amendmend of copyright laws.

While Apple is having their iPad event, I’m more interested in analog circuits with OpAmps, as the old becomes new again. Really, once invented nothing really goes away, and can be useful under special circumstances, or combined with new inventions. Other than that, the late Bob Pease seems a great educat... renevanbelzen.micro.blog

Wall crawler 🐌

Super Duper Uber Retina Display name for the new iPad screen? 👀🏓 🖥️

(probably not)