I can't think of a less fun and less rewarding way to exercise than the gym. When the gym first took off in Norway, I think a lot of people found that their needs were being catered to. That they didn't enjoy the traditional forms exercise and found their match. I was never one of those people.

The problem of the gym is that it's out of context. Why am I pretending to ride a bicycle when I could actually be riding one? Why am I pretending to be running when it's just a conveyor belt moving under my feet? I'm staring at a blinking monitor in front of me, which displays increasing numbers, and this is supposed to mean what? That I'm currently biking at 15km/h? I'm not, I'm sitting in this chair moving my legs aimlessly. "If you were actually biking, you would now be nearing 10km." There's nothing moving around me, it's just me sitting here pretending to be moving. What drives me to push myself when I'm exercising is precisely the natural elements - the sense of speed, the cool wind on my face, seeing things move around me. Meanwhile I'm moving my limbs in this big room and it's just make belief. There's bad music playing, there's a row of tvs bolted to the ceiling and there's a lot of sweaty people around me also pretending to be running.

Then there's the weight lifting. I don't know about you, but I've never had the urge to lift weights. When I was a kid it was exciting to lift heavy things, to see who could lift what and try to compete with your dad. But then you turn twelve and suddenly it doesn't excite you anymore. Before I ever tried it, people told me how great it was and I never believed them. And it's not great, it's pointless. Why am I lifting this? Because it's heavy? Give me a real reason. I don't know if you consider the machines as weight lifting, but there too you are just moving weights for no reason.

Going with a group is more fun than going by yourself, but the gym is inherently an individual form of exercise, so even though you can talk to them and make them laugh as they're trying to lift something heavy, if you want to be serious about it, the presence of others doesn't do much for you.

The fundamental problem of the gym concept is that it approaches exercise the wrong way. It's just numbers. Do I feel good after biking 50km? Yes, I do, but not just because of the distance, mostly because I was out there and I enjoyed the whole experience. I could have sat in a room and pedaled the equivalent, but what's the point of that?

I suppose you could say that exercise is about applying this much effort over this length of time to process this much energy. Some may define it that way. But that's not what sport is about. Sport is about pursuing some goal defined in the sport, and the exercise is just a side effect. Getting in shape is a by product of sport, it's not supposed to be the goal itself. The goal is to run faster or hit the ball stronger, and the fact that you have to expend more energy to accomplish this, is a consequence, not an aim. Sport is about expressing yourself physically, using your natural instincts, it's not a science at all. So why make it one? Why have a calorie counter on the display? I don't care how many kilojoules I've used today, it's completely beside the point.

If you look at exercise from the point of view of the gym, then it's really just an obligation to do this amount of work and go home. So you come in the first day, you do your sets, then you leave. You come back a few days later, you do your sets, you leave. Five years later, you're still doing the same thing. You're in better shape now, cause you've been exercising for a long time. But even though you are doing more reps faster, you're not doing them in a different way. You're lifting weights in the same way you did the first day, there's absolutely no development, ie. there's nothing to strive for. And after five years, your physical development has stabilized too, you're no longer improving your physical shape, you're just maintaining it. Thus exercise is no different from, say, washing the car. You wash it once, it gets dirty, you need to wash it again. Rinse and repeat. So where is the passion??

Still, for those who don't feel passionate about any sport, or they haven't yet played a sport they liked, I suppose the gym is a good enough alternative. Although I can't help to feel a little bit sorry for them.

So far I've been mapping my bike trails with Gmaps Pedometer, which is a handy site just for this. You have to plot the points and then the trail is stored and you get a persistent url. It shows the distance traveled and it can show you the elevation as well (which in Holland is, well, pretty redundant :D). But there's no special interface for keeping track of these routes, so I'm switching to Bikely.com, which is the same concept, but specific for bikers. It has a nice interface for browsing and searching for routes. I've transfered my routes to the site, three so far, and I hope to add some more in the near future.

Apparently, I've covered almost 130km in three trips, can you believe it? :dazed: That's easily Trondheim - Oppdal. :D If I keep this up I might even cover enough distance to the equivalent of Den Store Styrkeprøven (the Great Test of Strength), that is Trondheim - Oslo. Well, aside from one little detail - the terrain on that route is hilly as hell (elevation of up to 1000m), whereas Holland... isn't. ;) Apparently, last year's winner took 14h over those 540km, insanity! :eek: That's an average speed of 38km/h, mine last night [you know, when I almost killed myself? :D] was... 18 km/h :/

Anyway, the cool thing about this stuff is that it's actual GPS data being handled. Both of the sites are derived from Google Maps, which really shows how great Google's concept is (and how they are allowing others to use it instead of locking it up like a lot of companies would!). So that means you can download routes in GPX format, which is a standard format for this, and use it with a GPS device, for instance. You could also use GPS to track your actual travel route (instead of plotting it by hand) and then upload that to a website that handles GPS info. It's pretty neat, all this.

The afermath

The walk to my front door never felt longer. I was walking at the slowest pace and panting simultaneously. So much so that I elicited some stares from people on the street, I guess they were wondering if I was okay. My legs were barely functional and the kind of pain I was feeling in my thighs I've never felt in my life. I opened the door, went upstairs, entered my room and basically collapsed on the bed. I wasn't moving a muscle. Eventually I got up and decided this would be a good time to take a bath. We have a tub, but I've never used it before. It's actually pretty useless, cause it's too small, and with the average Dutch person being insanely tall, it's a wonder how any native could fit in it. All the same, it was a nice half an hour to just lie there and let the skin feel the warm water. By the time I got out, my fingers were wrinkled. Struggling to put one foot in front of the other, I headed into the kitchen to remedy my state of famine.

I'd like to extend this tale of drama, but that's all that actually happened. Damn. :D

From the top

This afternoon I was feeling a little restless, so I thought I would take the bike for a ride to Bunnik, since I've never been there before and some people said it was nice. Yes, I'm back on the horse. The road to Bunnik is quite nice, there's a wide bikepad alongside the road and there's a long road of houses by the road. Quite a lot of people were out there cycling or jogging, so the atmosphere of that bikepad was appropriate. Bunnik itself is one of those towns that stretches the longest along the main road through it and doesn't have too many settlements deeper in. I found a little plaza with a church, but that was about it. Not really knowing what to do with myself, I noticed a sign for bicyclists that said "Zeist 3km". Well, why not. Zeist is a lot bigger than Bunnik, it's just about the biggest town of those that surround Utrecht. In Zeist, I first followed the signs to the Castle, which turned out to be a prosperous, old building surrounded by water. Then I just headed for the center, which landed me onto a very nice boulevard. I found Zeist a charming place, the boulevard stretches quite far, it was quite busy and on either side you have stores all lit up and there's also the light from street decorations. By now I noticed darkness was approaching, it would be dark in an hour tops. So what to do, should I go back? Just then I saw another sign - "Amersfort 13km". I was a little wary of going to Amersfort knowing it would be after dark and I wouldn't see that much of it anyway. But hey, here I am in Zeist and it's not that far away, why not.

The road to Amersfort led me through Soesterberg, which apparently has an airport. But the town is so small that it passes by in an instant from the main road. The road I was on is a wide, 4 lane road with bikepads on both sides. Curiously enough, rather than open fields or buildings, most of the stretch goes through a forest area. Erik said there would be hills here, but the road is as hilly as a lake. Well, not entirely, apparently there is some elevation but it's so mild you don't even notice. The road is long, though, so long I was starting to get tired. Incidentally, I wasn't in any kind of good shape today, I actually felt pretty tired after not sleeping well and the coffee was now making it's presence known by repeating on me (not the best thing to drink before you take a trip). I wanted to get to Amersfort and didn't consider turning back now, but thought that maybe I'd take a break once I got there. After much more discomfort, I finally saw the sign Amersfort and I felt like throwing my hands up in the air like they do in the Tour de France. In fact, I may have done that, I don't remember. I don't exactly remember when I left the house, but I think it was around 16:20. It was 17:35 when I got to Amersfort. I was pretty damn satisfied with the time.

Amersfort is again charming. The structure of the center is a bunch of narrow, intertwined streets dominated by stores. There were quite a few people about, although I imagine there were many more before it got dark. If I had my wallet, I may have bought something as a souvenir. Not having been there before, I headed right on through and eventually arrived at the end of the shopping alley. I turned back and was ready to head home. By now I wasn't interested in any detours, so I just picked the shortest way and took off. The sign said 17km to Utrecht, which was going to feel veeeery far. The first few of those kilometers I covered without that much effort, but the accumulated effort was taking its toll. By half time my eyes were darting around looking for the next sign to see that the distance was decreasing. I had been sweating from trying to get to Amersfort as quick as possible and now the slight breeze was making sure I stayed nice and cool, more than I needed to be. The legs were not happy, as I stretched one leg out a little, I could feel how stiff my thigh was and knowing I wasn't far away from a cramp. Of course, bicycling keeps your legs bent at all times, so you won't get a cramp, which is good to know when you're 20km away from home with no money and no tickets for transportation. :D The last 6-7km to Utrecht were indeed very trying. I hadn't eaten for a few hours before embarking on this impromptu trip and I was feeling famished now. I thought "I just have to get to Utrecht, then the last stretch home will be a piece of cake". I finally saw the sign Utrecht and headed home.

After I mapped the trip on Gmaps Pedometer, I discovered I did about 52km in 2:50h. The last comparable trip of that length took 5 hours, so the difference in pace was very visible to me throughout. Here is the full route. One lesson from today is that 50km is just about the limit for how far I can go without any kind of planning. I was so tired and hungry at the end that I couldn't go much further without taking some breaks and eating underway. Today I didn't even have a bottle of water on me.

As it turns out, the availability of books is not going be a problem at all. After week one of Software Architecture, the assigned reading accumulates to 154 pages. That covers three lectures out of a total of nine, all to be completed in the space of four weeks. I'm not a terribly slow reader, but these kinds of volumes humble me. If one were to adopt a naive linear regression for the complete number of pages to peruse in this period, it would make it 3*154 + the rest of the chapters in the textbook not assigned to any lecture + the inclusion of a master thesis of 118 pages in one of the lectures. It seems ridiculous now that I would actually think about acquiring more reading material to complement this stack.

It makes me wonder what is it like to study something that is both voluminous and consists entirely of reading material. Are the guys in psychology in submarines submerged in an apartment full of books?

It's a well known fact that for modern ATI video cards, that is for cards with chips R300 and later, the open source driver that comes with Xorg does not support them. The only driver that does, is ATI's proprietary closed source driver. The driver has new releases about once a month and supports all of the modern ATI cards. However, it does not hold the same quality as most linux drivers.

In the first place, support for new cards lags way behind hardware releases. I have a Radeon Mobility X1300 card, which was released in October 2005. According to ATI's site, the first version of their driver which supported this card was 8.24.8, released in April 2006. How would you feel if you bought a new car, but when it was delivered, it had no seats, no steering wheel, and no pedals? Then the company made you wait 7 months until you could actually drive the car?

Secondly, the driver just isn't very good. The Xorg open source driver for radeon cards, which I used for years in the past, may or may not perform as well as ATI's driver when it comes to 3D acceleration, but it does support the features I use perfectly well. ATI's driver, however, has certain deficiencies. For instance, X-video support for my card was only introduced in version 8.30.3 last month. Even so, it's buggy. When playing movies in mplayer with X-video, I see symptoms that never surfaced when using Xorg's driver with an older card, like the video will start to lag and framedrop, cpu usage will spike, old frames in the movie will reappear less than a second after they have been shown, zooming the video to full screen and then back to windowed will freeze parts of the last frame in full screen mode onto the desktop wallpaper etc. I doubt this is supposed to happen, and over a year has passed since this video card was first sold. Another thing is 3D performance. I was concerned with how low my framerate was in glxgears, for what is supposed to be a fairly modern video card. I was getting about 100fps. After installing version 8.31.5 released a few days ago, this has now jumped to 850fps, so I'm guessing whatever the problem was, it's now fixed.

But in any case, it _should_ be possible to buy a video card and use it from day one. The fact that you can buy an older card, which by now is well supported by Xorg, is positive, but new computers are sold with new cards, so if you want a laptop, you're stuck. I wonder just how long it will be until the X1300 card is fully supported and the driver is as good as bug free..