Since the beginning of November, I have mapped and saved my longer runs:

• November 2nd – 9 miles in 1:07:22
• November 5th – 6.35 miles in 48:00
• November 10th – 12 miles in 1:34:23
• November 16th – 13.5 miles in 1:42:14

I have twelve days until the Seattle Half Marathon and many fewer training runs remaining. I will be running Tuesday through Thursday this week, both days this weekend, and then Tuesday through Thursday again next week.

I still do not have a specific goal for my half marathon finish. I would certainly like to run faster than my 7:34 per mile pace from my last long run.

I use Gmap Pedometer to plan and measure my running routes. The site recently added a fantastic feature: automatic route tracing. Rather than using impossibly straight segments between two user-specified points, the application traces the road between the two points to calculate the true distance. Of course, this feature is no good if one does not follow the actual road but is a huge time-saver otherwise.

For now, I need to plow through a bit more work and then do my training. I will be running between 3 and 4 miles and then doing some sort of strength workout. Zoom!

This is why I love Web 2.0:

Hi, Carlos d'Avis.

Hammer (MCHammer) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Hammer's profile here:
http://twitter.com/MCHammer

Best,
Twitter

Sometimes, mostly while eating triple cream Brie, I have a difficult time with the dilemma presented at Paganello two years ago, "Would you rather spend the rest of your life without cheese or without oral sex?"

Devastating.

And now it's time to mow the lawn. After that, Zucker and I are getting ice cream.

The Cleverest compares a Canon Powershot G9 and a Canon 5D for image quality. The G9 fares well, especially at less than a quarter of the prices of the 5D SLR kit.

An older, professional photographer shares his advice to young, aspiring photographers. Most of the lessons here fall better into the categories of business sense and career wisdom than photographic technique or intuition. The lessons are interesting, regardless, and certainly applicable to my line of work.

Mike Davidson offers a rookie's guide to digital SLR cameras, attempting the answer the questions, "Should I buy one?" and "What should I expect?" And a must-read for any consumer or photographer is, of course, Ken Rockwell's The Megapixel Myth.

Now, an interlude: this video shows the camera lens creation process:

And, finally, B&H Photo is selling a used Canon 1200mm superduperidiculotelephoto lens, one of less than 20 in existence, for $99,000. Just read the article; this piece of equipment is astounding.

In other news, Joaquin and I are having a reading race in 2008. I need to setup a special page to chronicle this epic battle.

And, finally, Steve Jobs said that the Amazon Kindle would fail as a product because "people don't read anymore." Hilarious, sad, and likely true.

I will see if the Flickr tools (combined with Lightroom) increase my upload throughput and if the social hooks increase my investment.

I will, however, spend the rest of the evening installing Leopard on my laptop. I have had the new Mac OS X for weeks, having pre-ordered it from Amazon like every good fanboy did. Lacking substantial free time in recent months, I could not find a spare moment to upgrade, especially considering my paranoid need to backup my system and purge it of ApplicationEnhancer, which apparently causes BSOD upon Leopard upgrade.

Time to sign off my lappy and catch it up to the future... I mean, the present. No, the past? I don't know. Leopard Ho!

Whit passed me an invitation code for the pre-alpha and I have been happily experimenting and sharing my submissions. Here are two of my videos:

Also, Whit featured a few flashes of me at the end of Day 10 of the YouTube videoblog chronicling the Seesmic startup.

I will write a full review of the Seesmic service after I test it for a week or so. My initial assessment: très cool.

Specifically, and in summary, the creators of the Compare People application are offering a $10 per year service that reveals to the user how he or she has been ranked by other users, seemingly in clear violation of the agreement put forth by the application's terms of service. Please read these articles by Rae Hoffman discussing the blatant misuse of personal information:

Compare People Facebook App Pulls a Bait and Switch?
More on the Compare People Premium Service

The Register also picked up the controversy. If you are a Facebook user, such articles should be required reading. This type of abuse is the representative of the direction in which the website is currently heading, a destination that can only be avoided through stricter regulation by the Facebook company. Let's be honest here: your average Facebook user is likely not sufficiently intelligent and/or well-informed to understand the ramifications of the "fun" and "cool" apps they install, especially with the increasingly young audience the site is attracting. That being said, Facebook has responded constructively to criticism and outcry from the masses. Speak up!

I am interested to measure the buzz and backlash on Facebook itself but I began a week of withdrawal last Friday at 5 PM. I am moving past the jitter stage to a bit of calm and have no wish to return before schedule. To the union of Facebookers and drewd readers, did you even know about this? What are your thoughts?

For further reading, check out Danah Boyd's blog post on the Facebook Privacy Trainwreck (as well as the linked essay) from last year. Her research on the American class divisions across social networking sites is quite interesting as well.

Does this comment have anything to do with the parent post? No. Was it actually written by a human? Dubious, but not entirely unlikely. Why would you set a bot to post YouTube video links? Do I have some Deutsch viewers of whom I was previously unaware? Anyway, I see no harm in approving the comment.

Incidentally, if one were to watch a YouTube video regarding wide open spaces, I would more strongly recommend this classic from Sesame Street.