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Annual grumble: The Grammys refuse to nominate anything that's not already widely popular. Why? Why?!!
OK, now that that's out of my system, I still have plenty of favorites and artists I root against, aside from the built-in interest of the show's many performances (the reason most people tune in to begin with). Here are 10 things I'd like to see this Sunday, none of them involving Chris Brown.
1. Frank Ocean wins Best New Artist
What a stunning spectrum of quality in this category: Ocean's brilliant "Channel Orange" should make him a slam dunk when compared to the live-dynamos-who-are-just-OK-on-record Alabama Shakes, the hit-and-miss Fun and the excruciatingly cute The Lumineers. (Really, "Ho Hey" is one of the worst songs of the year.) I would be lying if I said I knew much about country singer Hunter Hayes, so he gets a pass.
2. A big revelation from Taylor Swift
Her latest album "Red" isn't as bad as you think, and perhaps the Grammy performer will use her time on stage to announce which 12 people she actually is dating (contrary to the 45 others she's only rumored to be seeing). I'm betting on, I don't know, John Stamos.
3. Fun's "We Are Young" loses Song of the Year
Obviously, "Song of the Year" is a songwriting award (as opposed to Record of the Year), and "We Are Young" is simply an atrocious song. Choppy and shamelessly vapid, it's a track that blatantly was written to be a sing-along hit, and we all know how that turned out. (For the record, I like "Some Nights" and much of Fun's first album.)
4. Justin Timberlake's highly anticipated performance sets every TV on fire (figuratively)
With that much excitement and plenty of viewers breathing heavily, televisions just might not be able to contain all that heat. Though anyone else think new track "Suit and Tie" is just OK?
5. Rihanna shocks the world with a quiet, restrained performance while wearing an extremely conservative dress. At this point, the over-the-top stuff is exactly what we expect.
6. Many people discover R&B; singer/multiple nominee Miguel
His "Kaleidoscope Dream" is one of the best 2012 albums you probably don't have.
7. The concept of a "special performance" by Alicia Keys and Maroon 5 proves to be quite the exaggeration. Adam Levine's voice will mesh with Keys like mustard on cake.
8. Leading up to his performance, Jack White spends days at a tanning salon to ensure that his name and paleness no longer serve as a bitter irony.
9. LL Cool J, who is hosting for the second consecutive year, will make sure to identify himself as a formerly relevant musical artist, not just the star of "NCIS: Los Angeles" and "Deep Blue Sea." Though he should definitely mention that last one too.
10. In her acceptance speech for Best Alternative Music Album, Fiona Apple (whom I love, don't get me wrong) admits that she's finally happy and excited to make her next album of sunny songs about love and bunnies. Fans worldwide plot ways to depress her again.
Watch Matt on "You & Me This Morning," Friday at 6:55 a.m. on WCIU, the U
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Matlock, town, Derbyshire Dales district, administrative and historic county of Derbyshire, central England. It consists of a group of settlements extending along the River Derwent.
Matlock is noted for its beautiful valleys and rugged hills. Between Cromford (site of Sir Richard Arkwright's first water-powered mill, 1771) and Matlock Bridge (16th century), the River Derwent runs through a narrow gorge. Matlock was once famous for its hydropathic treatment, but the largest establishment (1852) in the town now houses the county offices. Pop. (2001) 9,496; (2011) 9,543.

subset: commoncrawl


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Although it seems counter-intuitive, the better PPC campaigns are managed, the more they actually reveal about the company's inside information. Those individuals who effectively manage these campaigns, at first glance, seem like they are doing great things for their companies. In all actuality, they are unknowingly releasing a world of practical, usable data to their direct competitors, but only if competitors know how to find it.
Let's pose a hypothetical to illustrate exactly how a singular piece of datum from one company can yield multiple pieces of usable, practical information for its direct competitors. Take large credit card company like Capital One, who has numerous competitors that exist in the same market and have roughly comparable numbers in terms of responses to direct mailers. The more comparable the businesses, the more accurate the estimates will be.
All of these companies use the same type of direct mail, which includes three separate options to apply for the credit card: online, phone, or snail mail. So, Capital One includes the URL of "application.capitalone.com," on the mailer which customers can reach by either typing the given URL into the address bar at the top of the screen, or typing the URL into a Google search.
Let's imagine we are Chase, a competitor of Capital One. We know that our data is comparable to Capital One's data. Thus, at Chase, we can apply our own data to each method of response for a direct mailer: online yields 70 percent of the referrals, phone bank calls yield 20 percent, and the remaining 10 percent of the referrals are snail mail. These numbers would be ubiquitous throughout comparable companies in the credit card industry.
Given that Chase has about the same information in terms of responses, we can utilize Google Keyword Tool to find out exactly how many potential Capital One customers used a Google search to locate the URL in the direct mailer.
By performing a search for the keyword "application.capitalone.com" it reveals that approximately 18,100 people in a given month reached Capital One's page by typing the URL into Google's search bar. Being that we have comparable companies, we can apply the 18,100 customers to Chase's internal company data that approximately 40 percent of our customers reached our application URL by using a Google search and that roughly 70 percent of respondents to Chase's direct mail use the online option to apply.
Let's do some math: 18,100 divided by 40 percent divided again by 70 percent = an estimated 64,642 applicants responded to Capital One's Direct Mailer in all three methods (online, phone, and traditional mail). With this example, we see one piece of seemingly innocuous datum has given a competitor a window into Capital One's closely guarded information. Despite Capital One's best efforts, their well managed direct mail campaign allows for their competitors who analyzing the available PPC data to make more prudent decisions about their own direct mail strategies.
This type of research driven decision making is not just applicable to multimillion dollar corporations. For example, let's suppose you own a small online business that sells body piercing jewelry and you have a competitor who has a business comparable to yours, but they have recently ventured into selling piercing tools in addition to body jewelry. You have considered moving into selling the tools like your competitor, but you are unsure if this is a sound business decision.
It's definitely time to roll out the heavy artillery and use a site like SEMrush, SpyFu, or KeywordSpy (disclosure: I am COO of SEMRush). Using one of these tools, we extract the relevant data and make an informed decision: Should I or shouldn't I start selling piercing tools?
If you knew how much of their advertising budget your competitor was allocating for their new advertising campaign over a series of months, couldn't you then make the decision to enter the market or just stick to selling just the jewelry? With one of these services, you can look at the proportional increase or decrease of the advertising budget that your competitor is allocating for their new line of piercing tools.
Suppose that in one month your competitor allotted 7 percent of their advertising budget to selling the tools, next month they move to 15 percent, and 20 percent the following month. Keep in mind; the money being put towards the piercing tools campaign is also money that is not being put into advertising the jewelry side of their business.
Moving away from one product line and investing more in another is a huge decision on their part and should be a clear indicator to you as a business owner. An indicator of what though?
Excluding the possibility that they're an eccentric millionaire and enjoy throwing their money away on unsuccessful advertising, it's much more likely that your competitor is expending more of their budget on the piercing tools side of the business and less on the jewelry because it's yielding positive results for them. By looking at the data for their advertising of piercing tools, we can see that this campaign is clearly making them very happy because they are steadily increasing the amount of money allocated to it every month. Also, according to the data, they are only getting happier with each passing month that you aren't in the market, but they won't tell you that.
So, these companies who desperately try to guard inside information, unintentionally reveal their inside information and are really only left with two choices: begrudgingly accept that your competitors will eventually know your secrets, or drop their online component. Companies, both small and large, can choose to jump headfirst into the unknown, or make an informed, data driven decision for less than a $100/month that gives them access to immediate, usable information with openly available tools.
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Revival planned for Fountain Head
A Great Revival is planned for 7 p.m. daily, April 3 to 5, at Fountain Head A.M.E. Church, the Rev. Charles F. Flowers, pastor, 232 J&J Drive, Mt. Pleasant. Revival preacher is the Rev. Matthew Bryant, pastor, St. John A.M.E. Church. Everyone is invited. For information, call 850-766-2883.
Chorus to
perform April 6
The Open Door Church Of The Lord Jesus Christ, 3325 Providence Road, Sawdust Community (next to the Sawdust Park), is celebrating Open Door Male Chorus' third anniversary. Come join the gifted and talented chorus in an evening of song and music. Times are 6 p.m. April 6 and 5 p.m. April 7. Jeanella Hall, pastor; Bishop Marvin Alls, chief and founder. For information call Sis. Marva Alls, Male Chorus president, 850-627-5389.
Women's conference ahead in Sawdust
The Open Door Church of the Lord Jesus Christ (in the Sawdust Community located next to Sawdust Park), Pastor Jeanella Hall, pastor, chief and founder; Bishop Marvin Alls/Senior Mother Dollie Alls presents Women of Royal Destiny Annual Conference
"I Know Who I Am! Discovering My Spiritual and Self Worth," (1 Peter 2:9 & Ephesians 3:20), Wednesday, April 10, through Sunday, April 14. 7:30 p.m. April 10: Apostle Rosilyn Copeland and Destiny Praise and Worship Center Inc.; 7:30 p.m. April 11, "Woman Thou Art Loose" Program; 6:30 p.m. April 12, "Ladies outing together" (The outing of place will be printed on program). 10 a.m. Saturday, April 13, Vanguard Village Common Building, Workshop for Ladies, Men, Boys, and Girls, (Home Buyers, Educational Affairs, Entrepreneurship, Credit Repairs, Saving and Prosperous, and Uncovering the Hidden Gift); 4 p.m. April 14, "100 Women in Purple and Men in Black," with many choirs, praise dancers and praise leaders and the Divine Word will be part of this conference. For information, call Miss Toshia Williams, 850-363-3536.
Church celebrates
the real deal
First Restored Church of Jesus Christ, Inc., 867 Joe Adams Road, Quincy, will host an appreciation program for Sis. Mary Williams. She is real at heart. The public is invited to come out and enjoy this great event, which starts at 4 p.m. April 21. Minister Hattie Harper is the pastor and Min. Marcus Reed, co-pastor, and the guest speaker is the Rev. Johnny Gordon. The event is sponsored by The Hope for Women Organization.
Church plans day
for men, women
The St. Thomas M.B. Church at 198 Edwards Road, Fowlstown, Ga., invites the public to its annual Men & Women Day at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 28. The Rev. Charles McDonald and Mt. Early M.B. Church of Albany, Ga., will be in charge of the services. Dinner will be served.
Find a hat, have
tea with Baptists
Union Baptist Association Women Intermediate Auxiliary Presents "Pretty Hats & Tea" program at 4 p.m. April 6 at Second Elizabeth M.B. Church. Event colors are purple, pink and green (spring colors). The speaker is First Lady Lillian Wells of New Hope Primitive Baptist Church, Greenville.
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Strava reports the VAM, or rate of vertical altitude gain, for riders on different climbs. VAM allows comparison of climb efforts on climbs gaining different altitudes. It's correlated relatively strongly with power-to-mass ratio, and is considered a decent gauge of fitness. For example, I may climb Old La Honda while someone in France may climb Col de la Madone. We obviously can't simply compare times, or even average speeds, but the rider with the better VAM is probably the better climber.
However, one issue with VAM is that it is easier to produce a higher VAM on shorter climbs. It is well understood riders can produce a higher average power for shorter durations than for longer ones. So you certainly do not want to provide an unfair advantage to those riding shorter climbs.
Well, whenever one brings up the subject of the time-dependence of power, the CP model is the first thing to pop into mind. The CP model says:
maximum power = critical power + anaerobic work capacity / duration
Pmax = CP + AWC / t
A "typical" number for AWC is 90 seconds × CP, so assuming this, I get:
Pmax = CP ( 1 + 90 seconds / t )
The critical power model is very simplistic. It's based on the assumption there is a fixed reservoir of energy which can be fully converted into work over the duration of the effort. Additionally it assumes the "critical power" can be maintained indefinitely. Neither of these assumptions is particularly good: for times shorter than maybe 5 minutes, it becomes difficult to do all of AWC more work than CP times the duration. And for times much over a half hour it becomes difficult to sustain CP. But for climbing durations from 5 minutes to 30 minutes it works fairly well.
If instead of "critical power" (CP) I'm interested in "critical VAM" (cVAM), and I assume VAM is proportional to power (for fixed mass) I can then write:
VAM = cVAM ( 1 + 90 seconds / t )
or since I measure VAM and t :
cVAM = VAM / ( 1 + 90 seconds / t )
This is what I propose you use to rank climb efforts. Instead of "critical VAM" I'll call it "adjusted VAM":
adjusted VAM = VAM / ( 1 + 90 seconds / t )
For example, supposed someone does a climb lasting 6 minutes and climbs at 1800 meters/hour. Then I get
adjusted VAM = VAM / ( 1 + 1/4 ) = 80% VAM = 1440 meters/hour.
Someone else climbed for an hour with a VAM of 1500 meters/hour... his adjusted VAM would be (40 / 41) (1500) meters / hr = 1463 meters / hr.
So the 1500 meters in one hour beats the 1800 meters/hr for 6 minutes.
Considering the limitations of the CP model, getting an especially high adjusted VAM from a very short (less than 5 minutes) or very long (more than 30 minute) climb will be challenging. But it's better to undervalue short efforts than to overvalue them, as you want to encourage riders to make their efforts on substantive climbs, not little bumps which might not even qualify cat 4 in the Tour. And while the challenge may be tougher on very long climbs, with raw, naked VAM it's harder still.
added: It is true that steeper hills produce higher VAMs than more gradual hills due to the increased rolling resistance and wind resistance. However, I explicitly ignore that here. The point isn't to estimate power, the point is to give credit for climbing, and climbing is about increasing altitude quickly. After all, some people can produce enormous power on a dead-flat road, yet that is not an example of "climbing". So no extra points for pushing the wind aside or deforming rubber. If this means riders of steeper hills get more credit, that's not such a bad thing.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
adjusted VAM for hillclimb performance comparison
2 comments:
- Jim said...
Not so fair on those of us who only have short steep hills to ride! Ignoring my one trip to Lanzarote where I managed a 30minute climb, none of my Strava climbs are over 10minutes! And those are extremely flat, the steeper ones are all at 5 minutes!
- February 24, 2011 at 3:27 AM
- djconnel said...
Well, think of the poor wretches who have no hills at all, confined by cruel fate to spend their days in Florida, or Manhattan.
Make the most of those trips to Lanzarote, is my advise!
- February 24, 2011 at 4:54 AM
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1. Set of cork-backed coasters ($1)
2. Permanent glue stick ($1)
3. Transparent shelf liner (like contact paper) ($1)
4. Scraps of scrapbook paper - I used a heavyweight paper that I had on hand
5. Scissors, kitchen cutting board and a razor blade or exacto knife for cutting
Lay the coaster out on your paper to decide how you want the design to be placed on the final piece. Outline the coaster leaving about 1/8" around it for gluing and cutting.
Spread the glue on the face of the coaster and then lay it down to stick it to the back of the paper. Turn it over and smooth the paper out using a cloth to avoid scratching the surface. Then turn it face down again on your cutting board surface and cut the extra edge of the paper off as close as you can to the coaster using your razor blade.
Step 3:
Now it's time to put the transparent shelf liner on the top of your coaster to make the surface wipeable. Cut the liner a bit larger than the coaster and peel back one corner. Stick the open corner down over a corner of the coaster and slowly peel back the backing. Smooth the surface again using a cloth. Then turn it over and cut the extra liner off just as you cut the paper in step 2.
Voila! Cute, functional and totally easy to customize! Make a set for yourself and one for a friend...


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It was second week on my new job when the proprietary selfcare system became unresonpsive. The web part was php, there was a lot of integration with sms centre and IVR but the reason for trouble were sudden connection timeouts from Microsof SQL Server 2000. Support and maintenance people told me that it happens from time to time and they think the reason is Microsoft SQL Server driver for IVR that is causing trouble. They recommended to migrate database layer to Oracle, known as as much more reliable rdbms. I asked how they were solving timeout problems before and the answer was: "Nothing, whatever we do (restarting different components, servers or doing nothing) after 10 minutes or so, the system starts working as if nothing happened."
The answer made me asking for sa password, I was feeling a smell of my old enemy. The application programmer, who played role of DBA, switched on auto-shrink of self-care database.
So, why is auto-shrink bad? Actually, any shrink is bad. When you shrink database, you release the space database needed at one point in time. If it needed once, it will need again, since databases grow over the time. Even if they do not grow (in case there is archiving procedure in place that keeps the size of database with just "current" data constant), there are tasks requiring extra (free) space, like rebuilding indexes, large data imports, monthly billing compilations, ETL jobs etc. When you shrink database you reduce the database size, so next time that space is needed, database has to expand, and it usually does at the time of heavy activity causing timeouts we experienced in Vodafone.
I prepared with our "DBA" the following plan:
1. We expanded the size of self-care database, so it can handle maintenance tasks, re-indexing and big data imports without expansion.
2. We scheduled frequent enough transaction log backup in addition to regular database backups. When recovery model is full, database server can reuse transaction log space where committed transactions are stored, only after they are backed up and marked free.
3. We set up alert that informs DBA when space used is close to the database size.
4. When the free space becomes low, dba will schedule short downtime in off-peak hours when database will be enlarged.


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7 July in Website Management
The Future of Elated
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13 January in jQuery
jQuery Mobile 1.4: Cleaner, Faster and More Powerful
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In this article you'll get an overview of the changes and improvements in 1.4, and learn how to apply some of these techniques to your own websites and web apps.
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7 Exciting Up-and-Coming Web Technologies
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In this article you'll get a rundown of 7 exciting new developments in the web design and development arena. These technologies promise to make it easier than ever to create beautiful, functional websites and web apps. Enjoy!
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Ruby Tutorial for Absolute Beginners
The Ruby programming language is becoming increasingly popular, thanks to its clean syntax, its object-oriented features, and its range of high-quality libraries and frameworks.
In this tutorial, you get a gentle introduction to programming in Ruby. You learn how to install Ruby, how to write simple Ruby scripts, and how to create Ruby classes and objects. Includes example code to get you up and running.
13 May in Web Graphics and Multimedia
The Continuum: The Connected Web of Art, Business and Love
The scene: The mid-nineties, somewhere in rural Bedfordshire, UK.
The twentysomething me is sitting on the floor of a house having a quiet epiphany. It's the house of the manager of my band and I'm reading art books from her collection, while someone strums a guitar nearby. The manager's cooking something intriguing for tea while on the phone she's organising an installation for the artist sat on the sofa to my right. Someone's just brought round a very early PowerBook and we're thinking how cool this gadget is and how we might use this thing called PageMaker to do better flyers and posters for the band.
This was the first period in my life where I consciously understood a thing I now call the continuum. This flash of intuition has guided almost everything I've done since then, and revolves around the idea that everything is connected, and all art, business and relationships are essentially components of a single entity.
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HTML5 Template Giveaway: Win a Copy of Type and Grids Pro
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jQuery Mobile 1.3: What's New?
jQuery Mobile is a handy JavaScript framework that makes it easy for you to build mobile web apps and mobile-friendly websites. jQuery Mobile 1.3 came out last week, and it has all sorts of lovely new features and improvements over 1.2.
In this article you'll get an overview of these changes, and see how to use jQuery Mobile 1.3 to enhance your websites and web apps even further.
11 February in Website Management
Looking After a Website? 9 Words of Wisdom
So you've been given the job of looking after the company website. Where do you begin?
In this article, Simon Meek lays down the law as to what you should be able to do if you've been put in charge of your organisation's website. You'll learn 9 useful skills that you'll need to have, including using your browser effectively, good copywriting technique, image manipulation skills, and more!
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PHP Anonymous Functions: What Are They, and Why Use Them?
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You'll learn how to create and call anonymous functions; how to assign them to variables; how to use them to create callbacks and closures, and lots more!


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Teairra Mari & Pleasure P- Hunt For You Performance With Live Band [WSHH EXCLUSIVE]
Teairra Mari & Pleasure P gives an exclusive performance for WSHH. Pt. 1 . From the album "At The Point". In stores now
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