Outline of the 2010 race schedule:
- March 14: Leadbelt XC
- March 28: Lost Valley
- April 18: Bone Bender, 6 hour solo (Smithville, MO)
- April 25: Tour de Tick (Neosho, MO)
- May 1: Syllamo's Revenge, 50 mile race (Mountain View, AR)
- May 8: Greensfelder
- May 16: Rhett's Run (Columbia, MO)
- May 29: 200km or 300km brevet (road)
- June 5: Bonk Hard Berryman Off-Road Duo, 6 hour solo?
- July 1: Dirt Crit #1
- July 8: Dirt Crit #2
- July 11: Sac River (Springfield, MO)
- July 15: Dirt Crit #3
- July 22: Dirt Crit #4
- July 25: Show-Me State Games (Columbia, MO)
- July 29: Dirt Crit #5
- August 1: Dirt Crit Finale
- August 8: Spanish Lake
- August 14: Rapture in Misery, 6 hour solo (Clinton, MO)
- August 22: Cape Girardeau
- September 4: Binder/Tall Oak, 6 hour solo (Jefferson City, MO)
- September 18: Hermann under the Lights CX (Hermann, MO)
- September 19: Hermann under the Sun CX (Hermann, MO)
- September 25: Council Bluff (Potosi, MO)
- October 9: Burnin' at the Bluff, 6 hour solo or 12 hour solo/team (Potosi, MO)
- October 16: Bubba Cross 1 CX
- October 17: Bubba Cross 2 CX
- October 23: BT Epic, 56 mile race (Steelville, MO)
- October 30: Bubba Cross 4 CX
- October 31: Bubba Cross 5 CX
- November 7: Bubba Cross 6 CX
- November 14: Bubba Cross 7 CX
- November 21: Bubba Cross 8 CX
- November 28: Bubba Cross 9 CX
- December 05: MO State CX
- December 19: CXMAS
Rather than try to make another "best of music added in 2009" this year, I felt like trying to tackle the bands that were around in some way through this decade. This was much more difficult to remember what I was listening to back in my first year of college through now. But there are some very clear answers for this list, but also some that I'm sort of undecided on (so the list may change!). Except for the first band listed, these are in no particular order.
- Muse*
- The clear winner of the first ever Rob's band of the decade. Muse was one of the first bands I was really excited about this decade and they haven't really let up on releasing good material.
- Rocky Votolato
- I believe Rocky has released some truly great, heartfelt music. Makers in particular was in heavy rotation through many years.
- José Gonzaléz
- José has put together some of the most interesting alternative music of the decade. The music and lyrics resonate and I find I can listen to his music almost all the time.
- Sigur Rós
- This band has been putting out amazing music for years and it's all brilliant. Obviously I can't really speak to the lyrics for 99% of the songs, but they have such a clear understanding of their music's range and styling.
- Silversun Pickups
- Swoon may be my favorite album of 2009 and both albums from this band get heavy rotation for me.
- Jack Johnson
- I have strong memories of listening to Jack Johnson's music back in college to more recent days, including an amazing show at Mizzou with Ben Harper.
- The White Stripes
- Admittedly, I was slow to latch on to the White Stripes. Something about the first few songs I heard strong me as disjointed. I was won over by the lyrics, blues tendencies, and raw power of some of their music though.
- Bloc Party
- Once I discovered Silent Alarm I think I started soaking up any and all of their music that I could.
- Ben Folds Five
- A band with some commercial success, but one with an amazing collection of music that did not get much attention. This is definitely a band I'd love to see play again.
- Kathleen Edwards
- Heartfelt alt-country from Canada.
- Interpol
- Ryan Adams
- Beck
- Regina Spektor
- John Butler Trio
- Black Keys
- Death Cab for Cutie
- The Flecktones
- Gorillaz
- Radiohead
- Coheed and Cambria
Honorable mentions:
- Ben Harper
- Rodrigo y Gabriela
- Thievery Corporation
- Wynton Marsalis
- Anaïs Mitchell
- Heartless Bastards
- Norah Jones
- Avenged Sevenfold
- The Strokes
- Coldplay
The 2009 season has ended, and partially for my own records, but also to maybe share something useful I wanted to recap the season. This year I took part in 14 mountain bike races (up from having done 2 last year), 7 cyclocross races, 1 run, and 1 off-road duathalon.
Mountain Biking
This year I added some standard cross-country mountain bike races (XC) to my race "schedule". Last year I only had done one short track cross country (STXC) and one 6 hour solo endurance race. So this year, I covered over 200 racing miles with XC races, STXC races, one 6 hour solo, and one epic race.
I think the major race that I haven't covered here before is the BTEpic, a 56 mile "out and back" style race through some of the most epic singletrack in the state. The longest ride I had done to date (on my mountain bike) was about 48 miles, so this was going to be a long day for me. And what started as a beautiful sunny day quickly turned into a rainy, cold battle of will. Creek crossings, flooded trail, roads, mud, and climbing (lots of climbing). This was a truly -- to re-use the word -- epic 7+ hours on the trail. And I'm looking forward to this for next year and hopefully getting my time down to 6 hours!
Gear
Early in the year I ran a Maxis Ignitor on the back and a Kenda Nevegal on the front wheel. This setup was good for the kind of sloppy beginning of the season, but I wasn't completely happy with the Nevegal on the back. It's a great mountain bike tire, but not necessarily a good race wheel. When things dried out (and the short track races were coming up) I switched the Ignitor to the front and put on a Specialized FastTrack SWORKS on the back. This made some fast rolling and good turning confidence. The Ignitor may not be the best on the front in that setup, but I liked that it provided a nice cornering profile and rolls reasonably well. And it cleans mud pretty well, to boot.
Before the BTEpic, I got some Stan's notubes.com wheels and switched the tire setup again to a Specialized Captain up front and a Specialized Fast Track on the back. This setup worked really well, even in the bad conditions during the epic.
Cyclocross
Last season I learned the hard way that mountain biking ends in October. Even then, many racers have turned their attention to cross (CX). This year I had a great opportunity to buy a team bike at discount so I took up the red-line-inducing sport. After a promising start in the beginner race in Hermann (2nd place), I quickly realized it is going to take a year or more to really get the feel for this sport. I've now down seven races and love it. But that's what I wanted: a challenge and this sport delivers.
This year I stared out with Continental Speed Kings, but after some singletrack riding, commuting, and cross practices, the back was becoming bald so I switched to a Maxis Larsen Mimo on the back. I still appreciate having good cornering lugs on the Speed King and both have worked well in sand, mud, and dry grass. The Speed King was pretty packed on in the last race -- a true mud race -- so I definitely recommend something when 1/2 of the course is the soft stuff! I wish I could run either tubulars or a tubeless setup for cross, but am going to wait until next season (or longer).
I recently was crafting some CSS, but I kept running into places where I would have this situation:
#someDiv li a:hover { color: #fff; }
But I would want to also add an a:active and an a:focus. Unfortunately that means I would have to copy #someDiv li and paste it. This is why Textmate commands were created.
So I created a command for copying the last selector on the line and guessing what you want to change. Now I can press ctrl-c and presto, the last selector is inserted as a snippet.
After using some commands in the Python and Ruby bundles in TextMate, I felt it was time to work on a new command for PHP functions. Assign the following to shift + enter and then you can enter a single word on a line and pressed key equivalent to generate a function. It tries to do something things "smartly": if the function starts with "get" or "is" it will behave a bit differently or if you enter a name and parameters, it will document those for you (or stub out the documentation, anyway).
New function command
Twitter (2010-02-07)