New iPods + iPod update + Podcasting

Dude, check out apple.com. • New 20GB iPods • New iPod software update • New iTunes update with podcast directory Just like Steve announced at WWDC.

34x100's

Swim practice today was extreme. After our running in the rain, we swam 5500 yards. But it wasn't focused on distance - our main set was 34x100's @ 1:30, where you have to hold a 1:10 or faster for each hundred (that was just for my lane though, the fastest interval was 1:25 holding 1:05's). Andrew and I had been in the same lane, but after the 9th 100 Kate moved us into lanes next to each other so we could race. She also said that for every time I beat Andrew, he has to do a 100 fly. I tried to beat him, but after a 50 I decided to save it for later because my respiratory system was starting to give out (I still have gunk in my lungs), and I was afraid that even if I did beat him my I'd miss the 1:10 on the next hundred. At number 27, I finally beat him. By about 12 inches. When Kate told him that he has to do a 100 fly, he got so mad that he sprinted the next 100 and beat me by about five seconds. Then Kate told me that if he beats me by that much again, I'll have to do a 100 fly too. I got so mad about that that I sprinted the next 100, and he still beat me, but not as much as before (he was still sprinting from number 28). At that point, there were four 100's left and I was starting to get 1:12's. Kate said she'd make me do a 100 fly for each one that I don't make the 1:10 on, so I sprinted the last 4 and I think I made them all, but after that I could barely breath for the first 100 of our 200 cooldown. Andrew didn't have to do the 100 fly in the end, because Kate said he worked it off in the last few 100's. Luckily, I didn't have to either. Every muscle in my body is hurting now, so I think I'll go take a nap.

New Graphics

I revised the graphics of my Time Converter widget, which you can download from my Software page (if you have Mac OS X 10.4). I made an Aqualicious reflection on the front panel, and added a back panel. I also made the icon look 3D (you can see it on the Software page). I submitted it to the Apple website today, so it'll probably be up by Wednesday. Not that I think there are very many swimmers using Tiger, but at least I can say I've contributed to the unending stream of Dashboard widgets being developed.

Corvallis morning practice

We had a 5500 meter morning swim practice with Corvallis today, from 7:30 to 10:00, and we did half an hour of dryland. It was hard, because Kate was making us do 3 sets of 10 pullups. The swimming was hard too, even though the intervals were easy. Our main set was 6x50's @ 1:10, 3x100's @ 2:00, 6:50's @ 1:20, 3x100's @ 2:00, two times through. The 50's were sprint, and they all have to be the same stroke, and the 100's were recovery. I did the first set all freestyle, and the second set fly. My arms were dead after the fly. And my lungs are still filled with mucus a little bit from being sick, so I was having trouble breathing. We got out of the locker rooms at 10:20, because we helped Corvallis take out the lane lines (and because Andrew was doing an abominable job of driving the laneline roller upper!).

Running + swimming

We swam 7100 yards (4.45 miles) at swim practice today, and we also ran as part of dryland. We did 8 laps around the Block Of Grass, descend 1-4, 5-8. Then we did dryland inside for a few minutes, and got in the pool 15 minutes early. Our main set was this: 8x50's @ 45 4x100's @ 1:20 2x200's @ 2:25 And we do that 3 times. At the end, my side was hurting so badly it hurt to take a breath. We have morning practice tomorrow in Corvallis, 7:30 to 10:00. It's going to be hard!

More morning practices...

Today was the first day of a summer of morning practices. Kate switched the Senior 1 and Senior 2 schedules around, so now everyone has practice from 6:00 to 8:30am, and the Senior 2's also have practice from 6:00 to 7:30pm. The hardest just got harder. We had an hour of dryland this morning, and then an hour and a half of swimming. The dryland was harder than the swimming! When I got in for the warmup, I felt how I usually feel when I'm doing a cooldown after a hard practice. Also, I just got my ribbons from the last two meets - one 1st place for my 50 free in Albany, two 2nds, one for my 200 fly in Albany and one for our 400 free relay in Mt. Hood, one 6th for my 400 free in Albany, and one 8th for my 800 free in Mt. Hood.

Store Wars

Store Wars - you gotta see this!

Swim meet + Watermelon Ride

Today we went on the Watermelon Ride, a 50, 100, 125, or 200 mile bike ride. I did the 50 mile version. There was a food stop at the 25 mile point, and food at the end. Lots of watermelons. I think it took us about 3 hours. And we got to cross a ferry at one point. -- I had a swim meet yesterday, in Mt. Hood. I swam the 200 free, 100 back, and 800 free. In the 200 free, I got a Sectional time of 2:21.16 and tied down to the hundredth of a second with the guy next to me. We got 11th out of 39 people. In the 100 backstroke, I got 1:18.67, which is a 3 second improvement from last time. We also had a 400 freestyle relay, with me, Adam, Nathanial, and then Andrew, in which we missed our event. But they let us swim in an empty lane in the next event. We got 4:34.19, and our splits were 1:05.15 for me, 1:09.09 for Adam, 1:13.03 for Nathanial, and 1:06.89 for Andrew. Andrew said his goggles opened up and filled with water when he dove in. The 800 free was interesting - Adam, Andrew and I were in the same heat, and several things happened: my suit came untied at about the 300 point and was restricting me from pushing off my walls at full-power so I ended up getting 10:35.53 (which is seven seconds off my best time), Adam thought the other guy was me so he sprinted the whole way, and Andrew swam it fly-free by 50's (Kate originally wanted him to just do a 400 fly and then get out, but then she gave him the choice to do it 200 fly 200 free, it got narrowed down to 100 fly 100 free, and eventually turned into 50 fly 50 free).

Portfolio

I just finished writing a command line program I'm been working on for a few days called Portfolio. It lets you enter in information about an unlimited number of websites that you have administration access to, such as URL, name, date of creation, etc. You can download the source code from my software page.

The Return of the iPod

My iPod hath been repaired. It looks like Apple either sent me a refurbished iPod, or replaced the outer casing with a refurbished one. Either way is fine - the scratches on the metal backing are gone, and (most importantly), my iPod starts up properly. Also, the custom engraving on the back is still there, so that's good. It came just in time, because we have a swim meet this weekend, and I can only imagine what would happen if I dared to face the consequences of showing for a meet without my iPod...

New design

As promised, I made a new design for my website and my blog (if you haven't seen the rest of my website yet, you can see it here). On my blog, the backgroud image is the default Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger desktop, and on the rest of my site I basically changed the background color from blue to grey and made new border graphics. I also added an icon for each section on the index page. The iMac icon, next to the My Interests section, has been through Photoshop to make it look more "Pixar", if you know what I mean. Feedback about the new design will be much appreciated.

Time for a new language

I can officially confirm that after 1 and 3/4 months, I've completed learning the language of C. On to C++. Then Joseph and I can start a software company. Hey, I wonder if I can write a program to think of a company name for us... Sneak peek: I'm redesigning my homepage, and it's going to look a lot cooler, with more graphics, new colors, and hopefully a new design to my blog. Expect to see it in a few days.

Problem solved

Well, we found out the problem is that there's something wrong with the bottom monitor port, which is what I've been using. Also, the bottom port is custom installed, not original. So I talked to Grampa Dan, and he said that he installed the port, and it's old so it doesn't work with the newer systems, i.e. Tiger. So everything works now.

Incompatible RAM chips

A few days ago, I installed an incompatible RAM chip in the G4 tower, not knowing it was incomptatible at the time. So then when I tried to boot it up, the display wouldn't come on. I removed the RAM chip, and the display still wouldn't go on. Then I found out that the display comes on after I log in, and not before, so I have to type in the password blindly (which is weird, because I have it set to automatically log in and not display the login window). I tried to reinstall my OS, thinking it was a software problem, but the display still wouldn't go on when I started it up from the disk. After several restartings, it started up in OS 9.0.4! Yikes! I tried to boot it up from the OS X install CD again, but 9.0.4 is so old that it can't recognize an OS X install CD. So we took it to the Salem Mac Store (they all recognized me when we walked in!), and they connected it to a display and booted it from OS 9.2, which does recognize the OS X install CD. Then we booted it up from the OS X install CD, and the display came on before the login window, but it still didn't show the Apple logo that it's supposed to show when starting up. So that means it's a hardware problem, because it doesn't use any of its own software when it's running from a CD. I'm guessing there might be something wrong with one of the RAM chips or slots. Anyway, they're diagnosing it right now.

Source code

I just posted the C source code of a simple program I wrote that duplicates files on my Software page. It's all ANSI compliant, so it should work no matter which compiler you're using.

WWDC 2005, Apple Retail store

Well, today was the first day of WWDC 2005 (assuming "today" lasts until I go to bed!), and as some of us feared, Steve Jobs announced that Apple will be switching to using Intel microprocessors. Not that Intel is slower than IBM - we might even see a 3GHz G5, or a G5 PowerBook sometime soon. But Intel has been at high competition with Apple in the past, and as the president of Intel said today, "Apple even set fire to Intel's Bunny Man in 1996." Steve said that Apple will start shipping computers with Intel processors by the beginning of 2006. And to address the problem of different binary systems between PowerPC and Intel processors, Apple just released Xcode 2.1, which allows developers to create Universal Binaries. You can watch the QuickTime Keynote here. We got to go to the new Apple Retail store in Tualatin which opened June 4th, and it's really cool. The first 1000 people who show up get a free Apple t-shirt, and 1000 people showed up on Saturday. But the Apple Retail guys said they had three t-shirts left over, so they gave them all to us.

New computers & visiting from Washington

Gramma Nini came from Washington today, and Grampa Dan sent an old Bondi blue iMac G3, the PowerMac G4, and a FireWire scanner with her! The iMac will replace the iMac upstairs, and the G4 will go in my room. The G4 is even faster than my PowerBook, though I haven't tested the processor yet (iPhoto seems to have been deleted, so I'll have to either reinstall it, or find some other power-hungry application). It has a 350MHz processor, 384 MB SDRAM, and two internal hard drives, one 10GB and one 1.5GB. I know, 350MHz isn't very much, but it doesn't really matter because I won't be using it as much for processor-oriented tasks. There are now four computers in my room. I'm starting to notice that my room heats up faster.

Swim meet in Albany

We had a swim meet in Albany today. It's a long course pool. My events were 50 free, 200 fly, and 400 free. In the 50 free, my time was 29.37, which is about a quarter of a second off my best time. I still got first place though. In the 200 fly, I got 2:51, which is also a second off my best time. I got second place, and Andrew got first. In the 400 free, my time was 5:05.29, and I'm not sure what place I got. Adam got 5:07. Not very many people were getting best times today, and Kate said that's how she meant it to be, because we swam 6000 yards last night. She says she wants to get us used to being tired for meets.

Ahh! Intel processors!

Gragh!! Read this entry on Joseph's blog. Channel 8 better be wrong about this.

Damaged hard drive

Yesterday, as I was listening to my iPod, which was sitting on the desk, the cable got caught around the arm of my chair. I didn't notice it, so when I swiveled my chair, my iPod was jerked off my desk. It didn't fall, because I caught it, but it still banged against the side of the desk. I'm guessing the hard drive heads scratched the disk, or maybe something else, but in any case, the hard disk is damaged. It keeps making mechanical noises and freezing up, and when I try to reset it, it either comes up with the folder and exclamation mark icon, or a "sad iPod" icon, which means it can't recover data from the hard disk. Also, when I dock it with my Powerbook, it slows down the whole computer, which means the computer is having trouble reading the iPod's hard disk. Luckily, the warranty is still valid, so I think we can get it repaired for free.

Swim practice

Today we swam 5700 yards (the people in the other lane, like Adam, swam farther because they were on a faster interval so they had more time for cooldown), so 3.23 miles. Our main set was this: 5x200's @ 2:40 5x100's @ 2:00 all out 4x200's @ 2:35 4x100's @ 2:00 all out 3x200's @ 2:30 3x100's @ 2:00 all out 2x200's @ 2:35 2x100's @ 2:00 all out 1x200 @ 2:40 1x100 @ 2:00 all out