ThinkGeek is pretty awesome. However, I had a defective geeky toy that I bought for Christmas, and I used the live chat functionality to talk with a service rep named Evin.

—————

Me: [Describes problem with item]

ThinkGeek Customer Rep: Alright I can get this set up for you, would you like us to send a replacement when we receive the defective one?

Me: that works for me

Me: I’d also like ten of your finest tauntuan sleeping bags as compensation for the inconvenience

Me: but only if they’re made of real tauntaun

ThinkGeek Customer Rep: Alright, it’s all set, I just sent you an e-mail with return instructions. Unfortunately all the real tauntaun ones are currently out of stock, it’s be difficult to get real tauntaun lately, something to do with a rebelion and the trade federation… I don’t have all the details but it’s gonna be awhile until the real tauntaun ones are back in stock.

Me: *sigh*

Me: alright then

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Long time, no post.

In our current apartment, we live on the 9th floor.  We also have a patio, which is awesome.

Kristine and I decided that we should have a patio garden, and so after a handful of trips to Lowes and to Oaks Gardens, we have flowers, herbs, tomatoes, and peppers growing in our patio “garden”.

Here are some pictures:

More after the jump! [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, I finally finished uploading the final few months of my picture-a-day project for 2009.

Then, I spent some time analyzing the metadata of the pictures, and adding additional tags to the photos.

Finally, I used Photoshop to crop squares out of the pictures, and posted them all in a grid.

Enjoy!

Long time, no post.

Back in November of 2009, I decided that I needed some kind of fitness goal. I was involved in intramurals and used to walk a lot around campus back in college, but since that point my daily exercise now normally consists of video games.

I decided that the Broad Street Run was the way to go. It’s a 10-mile race in Philadelphia that’s been held for more than 30 years, and the course is a simple straight line down Broad Street, starting up near Onely Street, a slight curve around City Hall, and all the way down until you hit the Naval Yard.

I started training post-Thanksgiving, giving myself about five months to go from my couch to a ten mile mark. So, how do you get from zero miles to ten miles? I asked Google.

I found a site with two good pages. One talked about how to go from nothing to a 5K (3.1m) in about 2 months, and then the second page talked about going from a 5K to 10 miles. Perfect! I mapped out my weekly plan for when and how much I needed to run each week, and set out to work.

Unfortunately, I didn’t stick with the plan. As a busy man who is always parasailing with movie stars, I would sometimes push out or completely skip workouts. Here’s a chart comparing the max mileage I should have been doing against an approximation of what I actually did.

I haven’t been keeping on track with the pace I wanted, but what I have noticed is that I can go much longer distances at a higher pace without stopping or slowing down. When I started, I could hardly go a 1/2 mile without slowing down to a walk. Now, I can get through 2 miles at a high pace when I run outside, and can easily get through a 5K on a treadmill without slowing down.

In the meantime, I also found a running group that I joined, called KOP Runners.  It’s a small group of relatively new people to running, and it was a great fit for my beginner status.

Skip ahead to April. I’ve been happily chugging along with training, but haven’t done any races yet. I set out a schedule to quickly ramp up distances in the final month leading up to the Broad Street Run.

04-11-10: Penn Colleges Against Cancer 5K – 38:03 (12:15 min/mi)
04-18-10: Valley Forge Revolutionary Run 5-Mile – 54:14 (10:51 min/mi)
04-26-10: Miami Beach Boardwalk Run 8-Mile (Self-Timed) – 1:35 (11:57 min/mi)
05-02-10: Broad Street Run 10-Mile – ???

I’ve also found a great iPhone Application called RunKeeper, which uses the GPS in your phone to ping your location, and give you real-time feedback on speed and mileage.  It also has LiveTracking of events, so the goal is to use it during the Broad Street Run to let people know where I am at the race (and where to find me if I collapse during the race).

Bookmark this link and follow my progress on race day! http://runkeeper.com/user/coreyhulse/activities

I’m hoping to finish the race in 2:10, giving me a 13:00 min/mi pace.  Is it fast? No, of course not. But it will be an accomplishment for someone who’s idea of exercise is watching sports on TV.

Update: I’ve completed the Broad Street Run!  2:01:52 (12:11 mi/min), beating my anticipated time by about eight minutes.  When I got to the final mile, I gave it a push to finish in under two hours, but I new I had to pace myself properly.  However, this gives me motivation to come back next year and try to get it under two hours.

So what’s next?  I’m debating doing a half-marathon, and there’s the Rock n’ Roll Half-Marathon in September.  Hmmmm… Stay tuned, sports fans.

Holy cow, has it really been two months since I updated?

Yes.  Yes it has.

Things have been crazy busy as of late.  There’s been a lot of travel the past two months, especially in August, where I logged over 8,500 miles by airplane.  September, while not as crazy, still had three trips by plane and included a very crazy weekend of moving out of Center City Philadelphia to a new home in King of Prussia, PA.

And even though I haven’t updated the Project 365 site in a while, I’m still taking pictures, and look to hopefully have some spare time in the future to get them all processed and uploaded.

In the meantime, I wrote a feature on my other site, Awesomeopolis, about the new facial recognition features in Picasa 3.5, so you should check that out.

This post was originally published on Awesomeopolis.com on September 26, 2009.

Picasa, for the unacquainted, is a photo organization and basic editing software put out by the good folks over at Google.

Personally, I’ve used it for a few years now because it’s good at organizing mass quantities of pictures, and back around version 2.0 it helped me parse through pictures and organize web galleries for some websites I was in charge of.

But now, Google has just come out with version 3.5, and it includes a tool that I’ve been wanting to have on my PC for a long while. Face Recognition. The news broke on Tuesday, and I must give due credit to Lifehacker and TechCrunch for the articles letting people know about the release.

I decided to give it a whirl and I’ve been playing with it in my spare time. For the most part, I’m happy with it because it does get very good very quickly at picking up faces, but there are of course quirks that I wished worked better.

Read more after the jump!

[Read more →]

I went to my first ever Mets game at Citifield last night, and it was a good time, especially since the Mets broke a tie in the 8th and beat the Diamondbacks, 6-9.

A lot of offense by both teams, including a beauty of a grand slam by Angel Pagan.

And, as luck would have it, I was able to snap a picture as soon as it left Pagan’s bat.

All in all, a good time.  Let’s Go Mets!

In the spirit of the recent 4th of July holiday, I have decided to put together a post which captures pictures of fireworks that I’ve taken over the past five years.

After combing the desert to decide on the pictures, I’ve come up with 36 of them.  Enjoy!

2005 – 4th of July – Philadelphia

2005 – 4th of July – Philadelphia

See more pictures after the jump!

[Read more →]

This post was originally published on Awesomeopolis.com on July 7, 2009.

At the start of this year, a friend of mine sent me a link to something called Project 365. The basic idea is that for an entire year you make sure to take a picture every day, and at the end of a year you’ll have a photo-chronicle of the past 365 days.

So now that it’s half way through the year, I’ve been working steadfastly on my own picture-a-day project.

However, a story recently came to my attention about Jamie Livington, a gentleman who took a picture a day using his Polaroid camera every day from 1979 until the day he died of cancer in 1997. 18 years! It totals to nearly 7,000 photos.

In 2007, his friends scanned the photos and put up a website.

Mental Floss has a great write-up about the site and is definitely worth the read.

Here’s Jamie on his wedding day in 1997:

I’ve included a few of his photos that I like after the jump, however you definately have to check out the website to see all of the great photos.

[Read more →]

This post was originally published on Awesomeopolis.com on July 7, 2009.

This site we found combines two things that are awesome: sports and graphs.

It’s called Flip Flop Fly Ball and the man behind it, Craig Robinson, hasput together visual representation of various sports statistics. Two of my favorites are below, but be sure to visit the site to check them all out!

Assembling and Disassembling the 1986 New York Mets

Ballpark Home Plate Orientations

Be sure to check out his site for a bunch more!