mattbk.com – Page 7 – Matt Burton-Kelly's home on the Web

We’re Green

In a good way. I was thinking tonight that in addition to helping people drive less and supporting local races, I could throw some extra money towards carbon credits or similar offsets for this website. Websites use energy, even the good ones, and we can’t just sweep that under the rug. Then I remembered who the host is: GreenGeeks. Green is in the name, and that was one of the reasons I chose them a few years back. From the horse’s mouth:

In order to compensate for the polluting power we pull from the grid we purchase wind energy credits for the energy we consume from the grid. In fact we replace, with wind power, 3 times the amount of energy used by our servers, so if we pull 1X of power from the grid we purchase enough wind energy credits to put back into the grid 3X of power having been produced by wind power. Your website hosted with GreenGeeks will be powered by 300% wind energy, making your website’s carbon footprint negative!

You can read more here.

Well, that was an easy way to make some small difference in the world! If you’d like to contribute to keeping the site alive (and buying that wind energy), drop some coins in the jar weekly at Gratipay.

Matt

Philosophy

I’ve been on quite a burn of updating race information this week, which always makes me consider the philosophy behind this website. What is NPA, and why is it here?

Simply enough, I like to race, but being torn among multiple time obligations makes it harder than it used to be. The real killer is the full-time job, but it definitely pays better than grad school, so I think I’ll keep it for now. The original cause was money: gas prices were high, races were far away, and I was poor. Now it’s time: I can’t take an entire weekend to travel to a race. I imagine 90% of people are in the same boat.

One question I imagine people have is “why is it a map, not a list?” followed by “why can’t I look at dates more easily?” I struggle with the second one more. It’s a map because the goal is to minimize the amount of time and money spent traveling (sorry, local visitor and convention bureaus). Maps are easy to understand, and the system on other sites of filtering a list down by selecting a state/city/zip code is just dreadful when we have better tools available.

The date question? Well, mostly I don’t have a good handle on the best way to show dates on a map. I’ve considered color codes (<1 week, 1-4 weeks, >4 weeks, etc.) but haven’t implemented them. If you have an idea, get in touch and let’s develop it.

The last bit of philosophy is about the volume of information avaiable on NPA. I’ve kept it as simple as possible in order to reduce errors. The least amount you should know about a race is when it is, where it is, and where to get more information. Name and description are secondary; and type/category/discipline? That’s just extravagance.

Comparing two lists with R

No, not list() lists.

a <- data.frame(name=old$NAME)
a$status <- "old"
b <- data.frame(name=allfields[allfields$StateAbbre=="ND",]$name)
b$status <- "new"

both<-merge(a,b,by="name",all=T)

Make two data frames, one for each list, create a column identifying each one (new or old), then join on the common column (name).

Output:

See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17598134/compare-two-lists-in-r/17599048#17599048

Red River of the North Flow

With END-WET next weekend, I’m hoping we get some more flow, which means I’m looking into prediction tools. I’ve posted a few things at the ENDracing message board, including an analysis of flow versus finish times.

Race Feedback

It’s always interesting getting feedback on races. This comic (from Death Bulge) comes to mind every time I get a survey back.

Just Being

I studied abroad in Townsville, QLD, Australia from February to June 2014 (our spring, their fall). I ran a lot while I was there, mostly at night, and managed my highest-mileage week ever (somewhere above 45 miles, a massive amount for someone who still thinks of himself as middle-distance). There were a ton of trails down by the river that ran by the edge of campus and down to the sea, and I would run in the darkness in order to avoid the blistering heat and sun of the day. At the time I was also leaving myself a good three hours after eating before running–something I no longer do (last night I ate dinner and took off 20 minutes later).

The dorm I lived in at James Cook University (West Hall represent) wasn’t air conditioned. I’m not sure if it was heated, but I survived into late fall. There was a screened-in porch, some venetian windows, and that was it–so if it was hot outside, you were pretty hot inside. I’d come back from running seven or eight miles, dripping sweat. I think I sweat more during that semester than any time I have before or since. What the dorm did have was a separate common building (meeting space, pool table, TV), and that did have AC. I’d go in there at 11 o’clock at night, crank the AC, and stretch (I used to stretch back then, too.) Once the heat faded and that sore muscle feeling crept in, I could relax and head back to shower.

The memory of running that semester came back to me last night as I ran along the banks of the Red River of the North in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. Running at night has almost been a rule rather than an exception for me. Beyond that semester in Oz, winter practices in college were generally cold, dark, and windy. The darkness can eliminate distractions, and the effort can calm my mind.

I ran up to my back gate, looked at my watch, and realized progress had been made. I sat on the steps and took off my shoes. It’s warm enough to do that now, and I think I’m okay with that.

Facebook for In-Depth Discussion?

Let me say right off the bat: I think Facebook is a great tool for passively receiving information and potentially for advertising your goods and services.

I do not think it is the best platform for in-depth discussion among several people. When I consider the characteristics of a good platform, I think of:

Ease of use (a GUI that makes sense and shows you everything without multiple clicks/taps)
Threaded conversation (although a limited hierarchy is better than an unlimited one)
Quote system
The ability to moderate (someone with the power to move posts/comments around)
Searchability
Stability
Non-intrusive sharing of content (this is a bonus, I suppose)

Obviously, when you’re having a conversation with a friend about where to eat, you don’t need most of these–it’s a limited scope and doesn’t need to be stored forever, because all you need to see is the most recent message.

Let’s take an example from the real world. Here’s a post I want to share:

I want to share this post because I think more people should see it. On the desktop, I can use the native “Share” button (hey, this is better than I thought!), which includes the original post, not just the link:

Unfortunately, this doesn’t tell my friends that there is a whole conversation in the comments to this post, unless I state it in the text. On mobile, you don’t get this option–Facebook just shares the original link, not the post.

[mobile screenshot needed]

This is a little beside the point, right? Because what I want is conversation, not just content sharing. And by doing this, I’m potentially branching the conversation into multiple places (the original post has a comment thread, and then someone could comment on my post). There’s no way to share to the original post (we’ll call it a thread) without allowing comments on my sharing of it.

If I were sneakier, I could use the permalink to share the content–but only on desktop, not mobile. In case you don’t know, the permalink (permanent link to the piece of content) is stored in the timestamp. Right click and copy the URL to paste somewhere else. This is how you can link to a single comment.

That’s a pain in the butt, isn’t it?

Let’s look at readability. Here’s part of the comment thread. Facebook decides I don’t need to see all of it. Why wouldn’t I? That’s more taps/clicks to get to content that I may or may not have read (how would I know? Maybe I have a bad memory).

You’ll also notice that the screenshot above is of a comment (by the page, Benjamin Olson) to a comment (mine), on a post (by Benjamin Olson). Now, I can live with threading to a certain degree, but I’m much more comfortable with a linear conversation. YMMV. Luckily, Facebook caps this at two levels, so if I click “Reply” to a comment, Facebook jumps me to the bottom and tags the author. This is why so many of the comments in arguments you see on Facebook start with a full name–which would never happen in real life!

As an added barrier to readability, those comments that are replies at the limit of the hierarchy have no expressed relation to the comment to which they are replying. Real discussion board/forum software allows you to (very easily) quote what you are replying to, and includes a link to the original comment. Below, an example (http://talk.campusdakota.com/index.php?topic=6016.msg27540#msg27540):

So what am I trying to say?

Facebook is great to stay in touch, but my opinion is that it is a poor platform for having real, back-and-forth, substantial discussion.

My examples here haven’t been great (and I didn’t give examples of every problem I see), but take some time to examine how your own conversational experience unfolds on Facebook. Are you avoiding replying because you think your replies won’t be seen? Are you confused by what people are saying and need to scroll up and down to understand the conversation? These are all barriers that need to be overcome.

I won’t give an exhaustive list because that would be…exhausting. Several million online “message boards” or “forums” (those are search terms you should use) exist where conversation can be had on any of a million subjects. Another alternative is a LISTSERV-like system like Google Groups–not perfect, but works pretty well if you really enjoy email. If you like to roll your own communities (and who doesn’t?), SMF is a great piece of software that we use at http://talk.campusdakota.com.

Comments and questions welcome; hopefully I can clean up this piece in the future.

Raspberry PI – Email IP Address Script

I can’t take credit for most of this, but modified it slightly to include both network and public IP addresses.

With a Gmail address, you’ll need to allow access for less-secure apps at https://myaccount.google.com. No idea whether you can make it work with 2FA.

Put the script somewhere (home/pi/scripts/?) and call from /etc/rc.local with a sleep 30 or similar command so you’re sure it boots up before trying to send.

See https://gist.github.com/johnantoni/8199088 and citations therein for the original concept.

Wordless Wednesday: Sparkle Time

I’m a Father!

In late December, we welcomed our daughter into the world a month early. She’s doing great now, and I couldn’t be happier, even if I still get super stressed out by not being able to stop her from crying. Protip: that shushing thing really does work, you just need to do it LOUDLY and into her ear.

What does this mean? For my wife, it means getting to run and ride again. For me, it means less racing and more family time. I’m doing what I can to keep everything going between work, home, NPA, and other responsibilities (*cough* ENDracing). The work I do now has more meaning. It’s not just about helping people find local races and build stronger endurance sport communities, it’s about giving my daughter the chance to join those communities at a younger age than I ever got to.

But only if she wants to, of course.