Assorted photos from Sydney and Darwin

Slideshow:

Album link: here!

2/9/2012 — A walk from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach

View Coogee to Bondi walk in a larger map

2/11/2012 — A Kayaking adventure in Sydney Harbor, where we got caught in the middle of significant thunderstorm and just barely survived

View Kayaking Sydney Harbour in a larger map

2/14/2012 — A tour of World War II-related sites around Darwin, scene of the February 19, 1942 surprise air attack by the Japanese.

View A WWII Tour of Darwin in a larger map

Valentine treasures are people who have often crossed your mind, family, friends and others, too, who in your life have shined the warmth of love or a spark of light that makes you remember them; no matter how long since you’ve actually met, each one is a luminous gem, who gleams and glows in your memory, bringing special pleasures, and that’s why this Valentine comes to you: You’re one of those sparkling treasures!

By Joanna Fuchs

Better Off Ted — cancelled after two seasons, it’s a show about a soulless company, a few nerds, an enjoyable boss, Lindsay from Arrested Development, and a good amount of ST. Episode 0104, Racial Sensitivity, can’t be missed, it’s one of the funniest episodes of of anything ever.

Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret — with G.O.B. and Tobias from Arrested Development, the show follows a hopeless Portlandian as he tries to sell Londoners a toxic-ish energy drink. I can describe the show in these words: painfully funny, with lots of peeing (on the show).

As preparation for the Drumstick Dash 10k (which I haven’t registered for yet, and registration is closed, hmm) in Minneapolis, I ran a new personal record for distance tonight, 6.01 miles, but an anti-record for speed (7.x mph). Where a fortnight (yes, I love that term) ago I was freaking out about running anything more than 3.1 miles, I now feel pretty good about my chances (read: of finishing, not of coming in the top-90%, heh). So all that’s left is convincing the race organizers to let me register late as the token Californian. To my favorite email client!

GPS track for tonight’s run

In addition to the running, the day was a lot of fun: The race announcer was pretty funny (sometimes/always unintentionally), the post-race food very good (my first peanut butter in like 4 months), the day almost perfect (they had forecast rain, which didn’t happen at all), and a bunch of us getting hot dogs and beer after the race.

All thanks to BigDaveWave and the great race/experience today, I’ve already signed up for a 5k on the 15th, and might consider doing a 10K (Drumstick Dash?) once I’m back in the Twin Cities for Thanksgiving. Yay running!

Overall results: http://www.svetiming.com/BigWaveDave/events/2011/Run-with-the-Jets-Bay-Area-Half-Marathon-10k5k/results
GPS Track: http://www.worksmartlabs.com/cardiotrainer/tracks.php?trackId=695976022&sig=ad48215cc610513859e46f657286bbbea2abb77b

Previous results:
20:44 White Bear Winter Frolic 5K (2005)
21:53 Winter Waddle (2004)

Step 1: Get MyTracks from Android Market (Step 0: purchase Android phone if you don’t already have one).
Step 2: From MyTracks, ‘Record track.’ This does the actual GPS logging for you, and embeds stats (e.g. max speed, elevation gain, etc) into the track.
Step 3: Do something fun, outside. Make sure to take lots of (geo-tagged) photos/videos (your Android telephone can do this for you).
Step 4: When done with step 3, stop recording track from inside MyTracks. When this is done, long press on newly-created track, select ‘Send to Google’ and choose Maps as the home for your track data. Be sure to choose an easy-to-remember name name for this new map (mine: ‘Kayaking the Otter Tail River’).
Step 5: Upload media from step 3 to Picasa (or if you have G+ mobile, instant upload should already have done this for you).
Step 6: From step 5, create a Picasa album for your trip and populate with the media capturing during your trek. Once done, right click and copy url from ‘View in Google Earth’ link. This is a kml file which makes it easy to view your photos in a geo browser (e.g. Google Maps, Google Earth).
Step 7: Navigate to Google Maps, select ‘My Places’ and choose edit on the named map from step 4 (trust me, it should be there). Click import and paste the url of the Picasa album kml from step 6.
Step 8: Click save and done on the map, click on the link icon on the top right of the map to get url for sharing. Viola! 10 minutes!

View Kayaking the Otter Tail River in a larger map

Download KML

#Haha the 1930′s.