I decided I've gotta stop dicking around (no pun intended) and get running again. So I warmed the cockles (no pun intended) on a cold Canberra winter's evening with this drawing. It has two testicles (no pun). Link to run here.
Word Runs
Thursday, 4 June 2015
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Anatomy of a cat run
If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll
know that I like to run words and pictures. But did you know I can also now
fake-run words and pictures?
But wait! Before you leave in disgust - I’m
not saying I didn’t actually run it. I did. It’s just that useless bloody
Strava decided to ‘summarise’ my run for me into a pile of nonsense, so I was
FORCED to fake this. It was like I’d written a paragraph of Charles Dickens
worthy prose, handed it to Strava to publish, but instead of publishing, Strava
put it through three layers of Google translate, and shat it on to my feet with
a confused grin.
Let me take you back to the beginning... T’was
a Sunday evening, and I decided to plan a run by creating a kmz with Google
Earth (as I always do - see the how to). The run would be a combination of ‘connect the dots’
and continuous recording.
In the kmz, I made notes of where to start
recording, where to stop, and where to pause to create the connecting ‘dots’.
Then, as always, emailed it to myself, and opened it in the
Google Earth iPhone application. On the public holiday Monday (no, I don't run words and pictures full-time), I was ready to go, so I headed to the start, and hit record. Switching
between Strava and Google Earth, I followed the path and recorded the run.
When I was near the end, I checked the map in
the Strava app, and the run looked good. It was clearly a male cat; gray,
striped, 1 year old, neutered by a friend who’s a vet, seated, dorsal view.
So I hit finish, saved it, gave my work of art a name and it was magically sent
invisibly through the air to a big computer probably somewhere in Sweden. It wasn’t until I had got home that I
discovered it hadn’t worked:
Needless to say, this was thoroughly disappointing. I mean, faarrrk… What even is that? It’s looks like an unfinished lateral view of a shark’s torso, but not much else. Looking back now, maybe I should have just renamed it “lateral view of a shark’s torso (unfinished)” and been done with it.
Needless to say, this was thoroughly disappointing. I mean, faarrrk… What even is that? It’s looks like an unfinished lateral view of a shark’s torso, but not much else. Looking back now, maybe I should have just renamed it “lateral view of a shark’s torso (unfinished)” and been done with it.
But no. I couldn’t. Look, I hadn’t done a
picture run in a long time, and I was happy with what I’d achieved in drawing my cat. I’d
also invested about 2 hours of my life in it. 40 mins planning, and about 80
mins running. Two hours of my life, stolen by a Swedish computer.
I wrote to Strava to ask if they could
revert to the original data that I had uploaded. I wonder if Leonardo Da Vinci when painting the Sistine Chapel came up against such obstacles. “Hey Leo! That
angel. That one there. Look, I know you’re the genius and all, but that angel
isn’t important, SO WE’RE JUST GOING TO FUCKING RUB THAT OUT, OK?”. Strava still
haven’t responded.
I thought to myself, “Fuck you Strava. I
ran this. It deserves to be up there for my fans to see, so God-fucking-damn-it,
I’ll figure out how to upload it somehow… if it’s the last thing I ever do”. I faked this
for you, fans.
Using a free program called GPSBabel, I
converted the original planning kmz (the one I plotted in Google Earth) to kml,
and then into gpx format. I then had to add in some time data to longitudes and
latitudes using a text editor. The horrifying end result was I could upload a
fake run (a run which I actually did, but which then had the magic sliced out of it surgically with a blunt Strava hammer).
So that’s it. You can post fraudulent runs to
Strava.
I think that the broader implications for
Strava are a little bit shit. If you’re
someone who likes competing against others over ‘segments’, there’s the
potential that someone could run or ride the segment, export a gpx, alter the
time data and re-upload, cheating you out of your KOM or CR.
Or what if you wanted to commit a crime and
needed an alibi? You could fake a run of a cat using Strava to show you were
somewhere else for the weekend during which a person you knew was coincidentally murdered.
There are endless uses for faking runs. The
two above are mere drops in the ocean! I could probably even think of two more.
I guess the conclusion we need to come to
is that you’d have to be a total asshole to fake a run unless you’re Leonardo Da Vinci.
Monday, 5 May 2014
Saturday, 29 March 2014
The female form
I did this over two days, mainly on foot, but there are some bicycle connections.
As usual, the run isn't displaying correctly on the Strava website, so here's a screenshot from my phone:
The right shoulder looks a little strange because when I planned the run I didn't realise that part is near the Governor General's house, and I couldn't get to the right spot because of security. But I'm pretty happy with it otherwise.
The link to Strava is here.
As usual, the run isn't displaying correctly on the Strava website, so here's a screenshot from my phone:
The link to Strava is here.
Friday, 14 March 2014
Wednesday, 19 February 2014
Horrific little chode
I've been a bit lazy with the runs lately. This is my first this year and it was pretty tough after such a long break. But a good result I think. I hope to do plenty more. Stay tuned. Click on the pic below to see it in better detail.
Thursday, 16 January 2014
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