Super fast custom Biryani

Not all the "required" biryani spices are included, but this was very tasty. This is a highly customised dish and I'll probably get a lot of backlash by calling it biryani - but hay, the end result was very biryani-like and very tasty.

You need:

• Beef cubes (or mutton if you prefer)
• Tomatoes
• Garlic
• Cloves
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Mr Dash mixed spices (I think the All Spices mix would work as well)
• Coconut oil
• A cup of rice.

Chop up the tomatoes into cubes and heat in a pot with low heat.

Add the salt and black pepper as well as the garlic.

Chop up the meat into relatively nice chunks, not too small, not too big.

Add the seasoning (Mr Dash) as well as the cloves to the tomato base as the last step before adding the meat. Not too many cloves, about half a teaspoon will be enough.

At this point, it's OK to cook the rice. I cooked the rice separately to get it "mostly cooked before adding it to the meat.

Under low heat, add the meat to the seasoned tomato base. Increase the heat to allow the meat to slightly sear. This should only be for about 5 to 10 minutes.

Then reduce the heat and allow it to cook very, very, very slowly.

It took me 1 hour to cook the dish. At about 50 minutes, I added the rice.

Of course, the dish can be made a little bit more complex by adding vegetables, or even cooking the rice with the meat and using a broth.

Another year older

Everything must change

Nothing stays the same

Everyone must change

No one stays the same

The young become the old

And mysteries do unfold

Cause that's the way of time

Nothing and no one goes unchanged

There are not many things in life

You can be sure of

Except rain comes from the clouds

Sun lights up the sky

And hummingbirds do fly

Winter turns to spring

A wounded heart will heal

But never much too soon

Yes everything must change

_________________________George Benson

I turned 51 on December 2nd, 2015. And it looked like it was just yesterday that I turned 50. Where did the year go? Absolutely frightening because for the first time, I'm looking back at the year and it seems like the accomplishments are few. The year disappeared while I was busy doing what?

Even my running seems to have suffered. No races this year. Not a single one, just wasn't motivated to get out and do the hard work. But I was working, on maintaining my technology career.

I've noticed that my patience with tasks has waned over time. I used to spend time drawing - and that takes both time and a lot of patience. I don't have the patience to work on a single drawing for hours and hours, taking pleasure in seeing the form grow, straining to blend colour and form, light and shadow. I'm slowly melding into the fast food of everything world. The "just get it done" world. A world that was very unfamiliar since stuff got done, but the urgency was never there. Or at least, it was never imposed.

And I don't just want to get things done. I want also to enjoy doing them. Making what I do a craft.

And so suddenly, in this 51st year. And only because it happened so quickly. I've started thinking about how much time I have left. Turning 50 was a breeze. That was nothing. I ran a 15k at a 5:30 min/k pace just to prove that the body was still intact. I'm now struggling to keep close to the 6 min/k pace. That's a 4 hour 14 minute marathon finish. And I'm still looking to finish a race close to 3 hours 10 minutes. At least under 3 hours 15 minutes. The dedication required to do that insists that I clock 100 k a week, and get that pace down to 5:30 - comfortably.

So I need a couple of things. Dedication and motivation and a complete change of lifestyle. Wealth must be accounted in terms of health, not money. My wealth should be how healthy I am. What I'm eating and how my body feels. The 3:15 finish can come in as early as next year, Fall races. But the dedication must start now.

Slow down. Pace it. Work on quality. Don't rush. Take time. Be really good!

Storage wars.

Storage must be very cheap. Google offers you 15 GB of free storage shared between emails, Google Drive and Google Photos.

However, documents, spreadsheets and drawings that you create using Google Drive do not count towards the storage limit. I don't know if there's a limit there, but if you create documents in Google Docs, looks like the sky's the limit.

Google Storage on November 18, 2015

But Yahoo! has more. Yahoo! gives you 1 TB of free storage. Storage indeed must be cheap. Here's the storage I had on November 18, 2015.

Yahoo! Storage on November 18, 2015

My question is, who's going to trust Yahoo! to keep their 1 TB of data safe and secure. There's obviously no obligation from Yahoo!'s perspective to do this. In fact, the day that Yahoo! folds, you'll have to scramble to export your precious data off their servers, or lose it forever.

1 TB is a lot of data. It's huge! Unless you're working with media files, video and high resolution art. In which case, you need a different service.

The thing that worries me the most about most of these technology companies that offer this free stuff, is that we've all seen them come and go. AltaVista, one of the pioneers in search technology folded unceremoniously. They're gone and they're not coming back. Fortunately, they didn't have any data to store.

Google's a different story. They have all your email (if you use their service like I do). And now they have your documents, spreadsheets and drawings. And with the ease in which it takes to simply open up Google Docs and write, and write and write, you'll soon have a ton of documents, that you don't want to delete, just in case.

I'm a lazy blogger. I used to take too long to write and post since I was taught to be very disciplined in what I said. But that's because I come from the age when writing was considered an art.

Now everyone with a keyboard is writing. And thanks to Google, Yahoo!, WordPress and all the other free sites, we can get free storage to publish ourselves.

Ten years from now, we will look back and wonder how we will contain all these documents! We'll get to the point where all the information we've written about, thought about, contemplated, articulated, debated and argued will be a maze of unstructured noise. Not only will we not be able to find anything. But the stuff that's there will be much like that crackling, static noise you hear on a bad telephone connection.

Still, I will continue to blog, this time a bit more unstructured. Ten years from now, I'll read this and wonder what drug I was on that day.

Michael Jackson, the genius

There's a place in your heart

And I know that it is love

And this place

could be much brighter than tomorrow

And if you really try

You'll find there's no need to cry

In this place

You'll feel there's no hurt or sorrow

There are, ways to get there

If you care enough for the living

Make a little space

Make a better place

.

Heal the world

Make it a better place

For you and for me

And the entire human race

There are, people dying

If you care enough for the living

Make it a better place

For you and for me

Heal the world by Michael Jackson.

The smooth sound of Michael Jackson's voice as he sung this song reminds me of his other song, Will you be there.

For all the noise that was made about his private life, Michael was a genius. And that genius came from hard work. For it's true, nobody is born with all advantages, and everyone can aspire to become more than they are.

As the Spanish violinist, Pablo Sarasate, said "A genius! For 37 years I've practised fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!". Or in Michaelangelo's, words, "If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.

But I wonder if the genius would have come out if his father, Joe Jackson, hadn't pushed them so hard. A part of me wants to think that the discipline that Joe enforced on his boys would have emerged all by itself. But I doubt it. What about Janet Jackson? She didn't go through that same hardship? But she had established role models inside her home to look up to and to learn from. Just like Whitney.

It's truly incredible what Michael Jackson accomplished in his life, which ended when he was 50 years old. Same age as I am as I write this today. And I'm amazed at how influential and full a life he lived. Though he had his challenges, which I don't see as challenges. Still they were challenges.

Like Amy Winehouse, or Whitney Houston, or Macaulay Culkin, or Brigitte Nielsen. Being a celebrity definitely has it's challenges. Life in general has it's challenges.

When Michael Jackson first walked onto the world stage, on the Ed Sullivan Show, the world fell in love. If you watch footage of that show, you can see that Michael was having a lot of fun. The road to stardom was amazing. The journey was good.

And then he achieved greatness, and it seems that the journey had come to an end. Apparently no challenge. Nothing to aspire to. Music wasn't hard. Whatever he thought, he could do.

And that's what happens when the challenge stops being a challenge. And the question therefore is how do you keep the challenge in life, even when you no longer need the money. When money isn't an issue.

Michael didn't find the answer. Neither did Todd Bridges. Actually, all of the kids of Different Strokes had issues related to success.

It's up to us to keep ourselves alive. It's up to us to ensure that success isn't measured by reaching a pinnacle. That success is measured by the journey, and the walk. It isn't about getting there. But it's all about the moving forward and always looking.

To Michael Jackson, and the Jackson Five, I say; well done, congratulations, but I hoped that you would have stayed a little longer.

It's not about getting from here to there, it's about being there

We talked about running today. How running, for some is not just an activity to do, to get healthy, to reach somewhere, but a lifestyle choice. A way of living. And I thought about that while I was running this morning. A snow storm was brewing and getting out was so nice and easy. I've developed this very enjoyable gait, it's slow and comfortable and I can think and not feel tired.

And I felt the snow crunching under my feet and all I could think about was how good this felt. How wonderful this was. Yet the storm was starting to blow and there was water on my face as the huge snowflakes melted on my warm face. I was wearing my spikes and so wasn't too concerned about slipping. My steps felt just as good as if I had been running on the dry pavement.

And as I turned around into another corner, down a street still fast asleep, quiet, dark and lit only by the street lights, I finally came to the conclusion, it hit me like a brick, that this is what I wanted to do. I got up well, I was feeling good, and for the first time in a really long time, I felt as though I never wanted this run to ever end.

About an hour later I changed my mind, but the point is that I know, finally, that I will never struggle to get outside and run, ever again. It's what I do.

It's not about getting from here to there, it's about being there.

The Omelette

The spinach, red pepper, cheese omelette. A very tasty dish.

You need:

• A couple of leafs of spinach (to taste)
• A quarter of a bell red pepper
• Two eggs
• Grated aged 2-year Balderson cheese (OK, just kidding any salty old cheese will do)
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil (or coconut oil, or even sunflower oil - just don't use motor oil)

Pour a tablespoon of olive oil (or whatever oil you got) into the pan. At medium heat. Not too hot to sizzle the oil.

Chop up the spinach and the red pepper and put this into the pan.

Look at the colour. Isn't it beautiful?

Grate your cheese.

While your spinach and red pepper are cooking, break a couple of eggs and add about a tablespoon of milk. If you run, you can substitute that for cream. You can even use soya milk.

Whip the eggs and then put them in the frying pan.

Now that's starting to look good. Your sautéed spinach and peppers should be looking like this by now.

You can flip the eggs over for about 30 seconds, then flip them back before adding the sautéed veggies.

Fold it over.

Let it cook on medium heat for about another two minutes. Don't forget, the sautéed veggies are done, and it's just to let the flavours seep through.

When you're done, you can toast a bagel, slice a couple of strawberries for garnishing, and you should have something like this.

Enjoy!

Michael Crichton

I read a book written by Michael Crichton when he was still a medical student, writing under the handle Jeffery Hudson called "A Case of Need" exceptionally well written, fast paced with no fillers at all.

An early book showing how good he was going to get. I don't know if he got better at narrative, but his storytelling was already formed at that early stage.

"A Case of Need" is a story about abortion. Weaving through the thriller, Michael Crichton talks honesty about the medical industry (because an industry it is), about the moral, ethical, political and health issues regarding abortion as well as educating the reader on medical terminology and the hierarchy and politics that exist within hospitals.

He knows his stuff and it shows from the story and how it's told.

I'm envious of the ability to tell a story so clearly, lucidly and engagingly. I'm envious of how much he knows about the subject and how easily he can tell it. It's a gift no doubt, that he has and not too many doctors do. In fact, not too many professional storytellers have that gift, the ability to hone in on the absolute minimum number of words to say what you have to say. Not only that, the ability to decide what's important and interesting and only give those details.

It's storytelling not just for the sake of having something to write about, but storytelling because you're dying to say something. You have something that you're passionate about, interested in and you really want others to hear it.

And Michael Crichton's interest in medicine shows. He cares about what he's talking about. He's interested in getting to the end of the story and he makes sure that his characters are believable.

I don't think that's something that you can be taught in school. In fact, the older I get, the more I'm disappointed with the formal systems we have of educating our youth. I think it breaks down somewhere near the teenage years.

In "A Case of Need" Michael Crichton has about three or four themes running through. There's the story of his friend, a doctor, who's been convicted of killing the daughter of a wealthy family (also a medical family) by performing an abortion. The friend never really features in the story, but through the story the depth of the friendship is explored, superficially. Then there's the issue around abortion. How they're done, why they're done, how risky they are, what a baby is, the moral issue of life and when it begins and so forth. There's the investigation, the relationship of police and doctors and finally the different disciplines in the medical field. Surgeons, pathologists, anestheologists, gynocologists plus the cast of different professions all running the hospital. We are interested in open heart surgery, and the operation of this complex machine we call our body.

I'm definitely going to read the rest of his Jeffery Hudson books as well as books he wrote as John Lange and one with his brother Douglas Crichton under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.

Through the fire

Running through the fire. 

Or running through pain. 

Is when you get stronger. 

Is when you become and realise who you are. 

Running means forcing. 

It means not taking your time. 

It means being a little stressed.

It means following your heart, your heartbeat.

Through that moment of pain.

Perhaps more than a moment.

And you're inside yourself.

You think.

It's hard.

And it's agonising.

And it hurts.

Your lungs bursting.

Through the fire.

You pass.

The Power of the Story

The Story.

Before writing there was sound. Pictures painted in the mind. With voices. With actions. The story was acted out by the actor. The actor acted. And the story was transferred from the actor to the listener.

But the story was more than just a means of information. The story was entertainment. Listening to the story and watching the story, we became engaged. We became a part of the story and so lived in the world of the storyteller.

The story has never left us. We live for the story. Without the story our humanity would not exist. We live for the story. We are only about the story. Because the story inspires. The story allows us to reach higher goals. To walk on the moon. To build hovercrafts. To create medicines that heal and medicines that strengthen. The story encourages us to wake up each morning and drive through the day inspired that we matter. The story creates and then recreates us. And so we need to be reminded of the story every day. So that we can rewrite it. Every day. Every moment. We sculpt our story every single moment. And review it and change it.

I'm listening to my mind telling me that tomorrow will bring the same things that today brought. That tomorrow will be a repeat of today. But that's not what I want. I don't want familiarity. I don't want the same story. I want a new one. But if I'm the author of my own story, then I cannot write it until its done. I cannot write that story until it unfolds. Only then can I see what the story was. A contradiction. Not so.

Back to posting

Been a long time
Since you touched me
And made me feel that wonderful glow
The way you do
Been a long time
Since you held me and squeezed me
So I wonder what's come over you

                                             --- Ashford & Simpson

The last time I posted on this blog was a while back. That's because the holidays were here and I threw myself into spending time with family. I'm borderline workaholic and the change of pace was good.

So far, August 2015, there have been only 6 posts for the year. You cannot call yourself a blogger with an average of a single post a year. And most of them in May.

But we're back with a commitment to make up for the lost time. There have been a lot of lessons learned, stuff read, experiences had and much to say. I'm 50 now (since December 2014) and perhaps the fright of the big five-o somewhat got to me.

I've been watching a lot of documentaries while working. I watched Lance Armstrong's fall from grace. And I understand. I watched Mike Tyson's fall from grace. And this one's a little harder to understand. I watched a couple of documentaries on vegetable juice diets. Interesting, but I see health risks with those. And I've continued to run. If there's anywhere I find complete solace, it's at 4k mark.

This post wasn't supposed to be inspiring, but just a way to get back onto the keyboard and write.

I won't always be this age

When I turned 30, I thought nothing of age. I thought nothing of death. I thought nothing of incapacity. I could do anything. Possibly even better than in my 20's. I was getting stronger and running harder.

I turned 40. I gave age a fleeting thought. It was more philosophical. Not yet quite real. We were a young family still. I was oblivious of life's challenges, which I knew people were going through. I didn't have to struggle much. I worked hard and everything was looked at philosophically. I was an idealist. Not a realist. And every action was wrapped around a metaphysical context.

I'm now 50. The kids are not kids anymore. I have whatever's left of my life back. And I can slip back into my philosophical shell. The practical life of earning money to live is still here, but the end of that life is closer.

At 50, I've spent time looking at pictures. And boy, I've aged. I'm so much older. I can see it now. The incremental changes that were happening over the years were barely noticeable. It's like I stepped into a black hole and came out on the other side in a different civilization. I'm no longer the kid. I'm no longer the dad. I'm almost the granddad.

I came across a picture of myself at 11 years of age. I could see some resemblance. I looked small, timid and subdued. And I have so many pictures of me during my university days. Life was a full time job. It wasn't what you did in the evenings or on weekends. We lived twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, twelve months a year. Interrupted by periods of education. When I look at pictures of myself during my university days, I looked so happy. I didn't have much money. But money wasn't a source of pleasure. It wasn't what drove happiness. Money was an enabler. But even if you didn't have it. You still were able to find happiness. We read a lot. We read so much and spent a lot of time talking and discussing ideas. We built models of balsa wood. Of cardboard. Models even using cut up beer cans. We were creative. And life was good.

But as I sit here, I'm thinking different thoughts. Hopefully I get to sixty, then seventy and beyond. I'll probably look back at 50 and think, "boy, that doesn't look so bad!" So that's how I should behave now. That 50 doesn't look that bad. And live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 12 month a year. All the way to 60.

And when I get to 60, take a moment to look in the rear-view mirror, only for a second before charging forward again.

There was a time in my mid-40's where I was trying to search for my life back. Get that "joie de vivre" back. If I was to draw a "smart curve," it would look like the following:

Smartness on the y-axis and age on the x-axis. I think that I was smartest between 20 and 30. Those were the university days. Running marathons in 3:12 to 3:20 easily. I recall passing the half at 1:10 during the Ottawa marathon. Reading Kant, Descartes, Socrates, C. S. Lewis, Bertrand Russell, John Stewart Mill, Michel Foucoult among others. And learning about China's history of art and architecture. Drawing. Living like a true Leonardo da Vinci. A master of all trades.

But still some John Grisham, Umberto Eco, Michael Crichton and the stuff that takes you away from this life into the fantastical.

The philosophical quest died when I started working. Art, drawing and architecture followed soon. And all that was left was the shell of the engineering mind and the books of fantasy. And feeding your brain with that stuff does not get you very far. Garbage in. Garbage out.

But now I'm fifty. I will never be this age again. I look at myself ten, twenty years ago and wonder where the time went? I was busy mowing the lawn. Running to the grocery store. Working extended hours. Not talking to my family. Disconnected from mum and dad. That's what I was busy doing. I look at pictures of dad in his youth. And pictures of dad today. You can see the youthful man, inside the older man's body.

And that's what I want to do and be. I want to look back at 80. And still see this fifty year old inside.

Time and death

I recently watched a YouTube speech by Sam Harris - Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment. Sam says, death, the fear of death, is one of the major components of religion. We are, apparently, incapable imagining a world where we're not a part of it. We cannot imagine life before we were here. And we cannot imaging a world going on once we're gone. Hence the promise by religion that we are not going away for good. That there is a life after this one.


It's an interesting speech. A different perspective from the regular atheist perspective which tends to ask for proof. Clearly religion cannot prove what they claim. It's all inductive reasoning. The type of reasoning that says, "there must be something after death" because "there's no better explanation."

Another dead end.

Another dead end argument.

Sam is an interesting character. A neuroscientist who's very interested in philosophical questions about spirituality. I sometimes tend to think that Sam thinks that it's quantifiable.

He presents death in a very understandable language. He says:

Most of us do our best not to think about death. But there’s always part of our minds that knows this can’t go on forever. Part of us always knows that we’re just a doctor’s visit away, or a phone call away, from being starkly reminded with the fact of our own mortality, or of those closest to us.

And...

But the one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time, when life was normal. And it’s not just what they did with their time – it’s not just that they spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It’s that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns, year after year, when life was normal. This is a paradox of course, because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don’t you know this is coming? Don’t you know that there’s going to come a day when you’ll be sick, or someone close to you will die, and you will look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention, and you’ll think ‘What was I doing?’. You know this, and yet if you’re like most people, you’ll spend most of your time in life tacitly presuming you’ll live forever. Like, watching a bad movie for the fourth time, or bickering with your spouse. These things only make sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we’re going to waste our time like this. 

Finally...

As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the human mind. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it. Fleeing it. Overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives.

The speech is very engaging in its two parts. First, the obsession with death, a future event that is definite. An event that we cannot, in this moment, do anything about. A future event. And secondly, what are we doing in this present moment, the only moment that we live in.

Ultimately, it isn't wrong to contemplate death, or a life after death. It is our human condition to want to understand our environment. Questions like "where did we come from?" and "where are we going?" are philosophical questions that we will continue to ask. The problem comes from drawing conclusions, just because we cannot think of a better answer.

Science proceeds by formulating theories, and then testing them. There's a hope in the scientist, that someone will come along and prove them wrong. Because their theories explain some part of the physical world. Religion is not testable. At least in the scientific sense. However, there are many things not testable that we can rely on and make decisions on. Dinesh D'Souza, who has since proven that he's an intellectual fraud, once gave this example of something we know exists, however cannot prove. For example, love. You may love someone, but cannot scientifically prove that you do. And you make marriage decisions and commitments based on an intuition that you have.

Science cannot prove that the claims made by religion are false.

Science cannot prove that there is no life after death.

However, the burden of proof is on religion to prove that the claims it makes are true.

Bertrand Russell's teapot is a good example of how the burden of proof remains with one who makes the claim.

What did I understand from the speech?

We need to know that we are not the focus of the universe. That we will ultimately go away. That life doesn't care whether we're here or not. Knowing that, we should use the time we have, this present moment, wisely. Caring about things that matter. Not worrying about things that have passed. Or spending it on too much planning about things to come. As Ram Dass says, "Be Here Now."

The Lazy Person's Guide to Running Marathons

This was a toastmaster's speech that I gave, probably around 2011. Speech #8 in the Toastmaster's Competent Communicator (CC) program. This speech is about using visual material. I sometimes use examples and analogies about runners, or running, when speaking. I know how hard it is to run, especially as an adult. I've been there. And because I've been there, I'm a great ambassador for the sport. Perhaps the greatest ambassador since without a doubt, I was the poorest runner in my high school. Kids much younger than me could outrun me even on my best days.

So in this speech, rather than give examples, I dive directly into the art, or science, of running. I began by saying that running is one of the sports that isn't actually taught in school. Unlike football, or basketball, or swimming or tennis, running isn't taught. There seems to be no technique. The running coach stands on the side of the track and yells "RUN!!!"

But there is a technique.

And it can be taught.

And it can be learned.

(ps: that foot you see in the photos is mine ;), I had my drawings on the floor taking pictures and couldn't be bothered to re-take them after I saw my foot in them).

Drawing 1. I ask. Why Marathons? There are three sections in that slide where I split running into three categories. Fast 100m to 400m dash. Middle distance running. 1500m to 10,000m. And finally, long distance running. The point of that slide is to illustrate how calm the long distance runner looks, in comparison to the short and middle distance runners. That the effort in running marathons is acceptable to the "lazy" runner.

Drawing 2. In most sports, you need money and equipment. Hockey is expensive since you also need to find a rink. Same goes for skiing. But with running, a good pair of running shoes (also optional) and cheap clothes will do it. No need to go looking for a track, you can step out of your house and start running. When I put up this slide, I had completely shaved my head, so the "HAIR (optional)" got a few laughs.

Drawing 3. Here's where we get serious about running technique. And I present the three techniques, philosophies, that are getting traction in the running world. Chi running emphasises posture, a mid-foot strike and a slight lean forward to take advantage of gravity. Pose running emphasises posture as well, but they also focus on an "S" position where knees are slightly bent. A slight lean forward to take advantage of gravity. And they encourage landing on the balls of the feet. Evolution running also emphasises running economy by focusing on minimising vertical displacement. Don't bounce up and down. Land on the most elastic part of your foot (the front). Land close to your centre of gravity. They're all fairly similar in that they address three key items. Posture. Foot strike. Cadence.

Drawing 4. Posture. Maintain an upright posture with a slight lean forward. Leonardo Da Vinci's quote: Motion is created from the destruction of BALANCE. What this means is that the forward motion will be created automatically by leaning forward. Not by forcefully pushing forward with your legs. Your legs serve to spring off the ground - and we'll see that in a later drawing. By keeping your centre of balance close to where your foot will land, you move naturally.

Drawing 5. Foot Strike. Minimise heel striking. Land on the front of your foot, or the middle. Sprinters run on their toes. Most adults tend to run on their heels. Most of this due to the type of shoes. Try to run without shoes, barefoot. And you'll find it impossible to heel strike. The shoes you run will either aid in avoiding heel striking or encourage it. Heel striking as illustrated has a braking effect. While landing near the front of the foot encourages elastic motion which returns energy from the Achilles. You also land closer to your centre of gravity if you land near the front of your foot, or the middle.

Drawing 6. Cadence. The number of steps you take per minute. Most elite, professional, distance runners have a cadence of about 180 spm. Some as high as 190 spm. Proper cadence allows the Achilles to stretch, therefore storing energy, and then return it while pushing off. Try running with a cadence of about 180 spm. At least close to 170 to 180. With a slow cadence, the energy stored by the Achilles is lost and you don't get the benefit of the energy return. With each footfall, you loose most of the energy from your spring to the ground. Elite athletes will get 40% to 50% of that energy returned to them.

Blogging

Everyone has a journalistic impulse. The impulse to tell a story. To speak at least. Families sit around the dinner table, and tell each other how the day went. Co-workers go out for lunch and chat. Lovers cuddle up tell each other how they feel.

We all like to talk.

Rarely do we like to write.

I've blogged before about the pen and the keyboard. The effects of email versus the handwritten note.

I grew up during a time when there were no computers. Everything was manual. Which means that we laboured for the simplest tasks. Writing was indeed a chore. It took a long time and we didn't have backspace, cut-and-paste, or the Internet.

Everything had to be carefully pre-planned. Everything was very carefully done. Words were not wasted. And each and every thing written was crafted. Designed.

In this age of technology, of the Internet. We ramble on, like I'm doing. Knowing that words are cheap. Knowing that we can cobble up a story from a variety of sources in very little time.

It's the fast-food mentality. Things are being done very quickly, almost without thought. If I need to write something on the devastation of the white rhino in Africa, I can have an acceptable story in a hour. It may not be passionate, but I can cobble it up. Because of the Internet.

But a pen in the hand is slow. Words don't rush out the way they do on a keyboard. And your brain is ahead of your hand. And you are, in my impression, a little bit more thoughtful.

Expression, and self- expression in print was limited to a chosen few. Some had talent. Some only had money. We read a handful of writers in newspapers. Some good authors, but they were the same ones. You had to go to school. Earn a degree in journalism, or writing. Get a job. And then you could tell your story.

The new media is the Internet. And on the Internet, everyone is a journalist. Everyone is an artist. Blogging is the new media. The traditional newspapers are struggling. Print subscriptions are limited to those who grew up with print media. The new generation is focussed on getting their information from digital media. The Internet. And not only from professionals. From anyone who cares to write. Even me.

That said, I encourage everyone to blog. Since camping and face-to-face socialising is on the decline. This is an acceptable substitute. Blogging will allow you as a professional, or expert, in your field, to share your knowledge in ways that you were not able to before. How was the engineer who discovered an amazing way to design a helpful product able to share it in the past? It was so difficult, and cumbersome, as to make sharing not worth it. However, that same engineer can now go online, write, draw and publish their work. For the world to see and learn from.

Blog often. Blog every day if you can. Sometimes, you'll hit on a good idea. A good theme. Often you may not. But the media is here. And the opportunity to inform is greater than it ever was before. But the more you blog, the better you'll get.

A last thing about blogging and sharing. Wikipedia.

I heard somewhere, that there are doctors who consult Wikipedia for medical information. This is extreme. We all know by now that the Internet is a great platform for sharing information, but the trustworthiness of the information depends greatly on the source. Wikipedia isn't a trustworthy source. There's a lot of good information there. But there's also a lot of garbage. Anyone can edit pages in Wikipedia making it an excellent target for misinformation. As a layman, getting superficial medical information from Wikipedia is acceptable. If we take it for what it is. Information from an unknown, potentially incorrect, source. But medical professionals must have better references. Like the PDR (Physicians Desktop Reference). Shame on them.

I have a Wikipedia account, and from time-to-time, go online and edit some of the pages. I've never created a page from scratch, but I've logged into my account on an editing binge. To correct misinformation. It's a difficult task. To its credit, Wikipedia is an amazing platform and shows how collaboration can work. I don't know what the percentage would be, but wouldn't be surprised if I heard that more than 30% of the information on Wikipedia was garbage.

That said, its a better world with Wikipedia than without it. Just as it's a better world with blogs than without it. At the end of the day, with over seven billion people on this planet, your words, pictures, thoughts are bound to inspire someone out there. And that's worth the effort.

Body, Spirit and Mind

The Body:

We live in a cultural wasteland. A virtual blend of everything that is antisocial, yet we still crave contact, so we design environments, artificial environments, to make this contact happen.

Our neighbors are the world. Unlike centuries ago when we didn't know a lot about anything a few miles away, we now know everything about everyone. We know what the Prime Minister in Australia is doing even before many of his citizens do.

And what's the value of that.

We no longer need to exercise. In fact, I see the day when exercise will be futile. Because it won't be necessary to keep in shape.

Remember that movie with Bruce Willis? Surrogates. Where humans lived via remotely controlled androids, or clones. They stayed in their homes and operated the clones using amazing technology. And apparently experienced "real life" using those clones.

If you haven't seen the movie, then you should because it mirrors what's happening today.

We live online. We experience everything via our computers, phones or tablet devices. We would stay all day, and all night, in the comfort of our beds, except that we need to make money and eat. If clones were around today, society would disappear.

And so the short of it is that we've neglected our bodies. But have no fear. Medicine will solve that. The makers of The Matrix were not too far off.

But I've been thinking. Is a life without a body a complete life? After all, our mental faculties are really just chemistry. At the end of the day, it's ALL physical, isn't it. Not having good physique must impact your mental and spiritual state, at some level.

That's why beer and wine are so popular. They alter your mental state.

Do.

That's the keyword.

Do.

Leonardo Da Vinci said: I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

In this information age, we are creating information, some of us. But a majority are consumers.

The body is inextricably linked to the mind. Which is linked to the spirit. Your desires and feelings. It goes like this. Your mind is restless. So you infuse your body with a drug. Your mind then goes into a Zen mode. And you become spiritual. You calm down.

Even though you can be good, great or at least OK even if you ignore your body. You are better off if  you don't. Unplug from the grid and look up into the sky. George Carlin said that everyone should spend an hour looking up into the sky and dreaming. It's difficult to unplug from the matrix. Because our minds need to keep busy. But unplugging to do something is so vitally important for mental health.

The Spirit:
I've never really understood the trinity, but there is something to be said about the fact that we have a spirit. I used to think that the spirit and the mind were the same thing, until someone gave me this distinction. The spirit feels. The mind decides and acts. But just as the mind is affected by the body, so is the spirit. When I go on a really long run. And the endorphins kick in. I have a sense of the sublime. The numinous. I feel spiritually connected to everything on the planet. I'm happy. Even if things are not going well at work, or at home. At that moment, when I've exhausted my body. I feel wonderful. And my mind feels the same way too. Clarity of thought.

This connection has nothing to do with religion. Has nothing to do with meditation. Has nothing to do with spiritual consciousness, of the type preached by Deepak Chopra. This is a euphoria that springs from physical activity. Not consciously forced by meditation or a spiritual belief. Something that simply wells up when the body works.

The spirit guides by intuition. The mind by logic.

The Mind:
In computer terminology, this would be called the central processing unit. It's primary purpose is to receive data from the outside world, and determine the options available. See Lion. What to do? See girlfriend. What to do? See boss walking towards you. And you haven't handed in that assignment. What to do? It doesn't always answer the question. Sometimes "See Lion" is answered by, "push friend forward." Or, "scream!" Or "push friend forward, scream and then run."

The mind is housed inside this shell. The body. The mind is a physical thing. Even though it seems to be doing intangible, non-physical things. We think of the mind as separate from the body, but in reality, it isn't. It's a piece of flesh, with chemistry just like muscles, kidneys and lungs. When damaged, it affects the entire body. However, it can be righted by physical stimuli. Dangerous criminals, whose minds tell them to do terrible things, can be quietened by lobotomy. Or by injecting them with chemicals to alter the brain chemistry.

Like the body, the mind becomes better with use. You get stronger if you stress your body. Similarly, your mind grows when it's challenged. Make it do complex things. Stuff that it doesn't want to do. Just like lifting heavy weights makes you stronger. Or running long distances makes you stronger. Making the brain really work will only make it better.

You make the brain work by giving it tasks. Work to do. Not just input. But mainly output. Not watching television or listening to music or reading all the time. But also engaging it by making it write, solve puzzles, paint, do math and also make music. The mind grows when it does.

Do.

The trinity is connected.

The Fountain Pen versus the Keyboard

Clearly outmatched, the fountain pen struggles back to its feet. "This can't be the end," she cries.
Most of her friends are long gone. Only she's left. She's feeling frail and alone in a world that has abandoned her.

Quietly she slips into her corner, where nobody can see her. To reminisce.

It's keyboard city. They're loud and brash. Care nothing about delicacy. About art. It's about banging stuff out. Repetitively hitting key after key. As though there was meaning.

There is no meaning.

Only production. Is this what we were meant for? Even they're envious of one another. Looking at each other, but not seeing. They're only interested in themselves. "How much do you know about me?" "Let me tell you another story, yes, about me." Pompous braggarts they are. The noise they make is completely unintelligible. It's unintelligent. It's pure nonsense. They're not thinking. They're too hurried to look where they're going. Like clones. This work looks exactly like that work. The cacophony masks the underlying mediocrity.

There is no meaning.

Meanwhile, in her little corner, the fountain pen remembers how it used to be. It wasn't like this. Mont Blanc's Sheaffer's Lamy's, Cross' and sometimes they'd even let Parker's hang out with them at the cafe. There was no competition. Just mutual admiration. They'd argue into the night about serifs and the beauty of the bowed upstrokes of lowercase letters. The majesty of uppercase, how sprinkling a few here and there brought order to the parchment. And soon Caran d'Ache, Faber-Castell and Waterman arrived. And they looked at each other. And all they saw was good.

And there was meaning.

But the writing was on the wall when the Biro arrived. That was the beginning of the end. The end of beauty. Those ball point pens were the first attack. No fineness. Scratching along uncontrollably on the page. Discarded after a short life. Expendable. Having nothing to live for, they drank themselves to exhaustion. But they've managed to survive. Somehow, they've managed to slip behind the masses of keyboards. Like their serfs. Their servants. Their lackeys. They believe it's a partnership. But the keyboard doesn't even notice that they're there.

And still there is no meaning.

The majestic fountain pen refuses to be anyone's slave. She will bow down to nobody. She's come to the realisation that everything ends. In the circle of life. It's good to have lived. It will be good to be remembered. This is a world she does not care for. Everything ends.

Everything.

One day she will be relegated to the annals of an art to be forgotten. Displayed in a glass case, in a museum. Where children will ask what she is. And with the impatience of youth, wonder why anyone would painstakingly use such an object. Like a scribe in ancient times, laboriously mixing pigment and using a reed to record a single stroke.

But she is also well aware, that the keyboard will also die out. They do not know it. Laughing and polluting the world with their noise. Meaningless noise. It is not that the knowledge in the world doubles every year. It's the noise.

She turns around, seeking the only person who cares.

And I am there.