Fitness and sports-related podcasts include interviews with athletes, sources of motivation, tips and techniques. Here are a few I enjoy:

• Active.com: The sports you do show
• www.enduranceradio.com
• Zen and the art of the Triathlon
• www.runcastweekly.com
• www.irunningradio.com
• www.strengthradio.com

I’m also just starting to use Bones in Motion as a running log.

I like the way BIM stores my favorite routes using GoogleMaps and calculates distance. Time, distance and what it knows about my age and body are used to calculate calories burned.

More on this as I get more miles entered into the system.

How do you copy a BSD boot disk to another form of media? Some suggestions appear on the OpenBSD site. I found this page, though I haven’t tried the tools. Backup and image software can be found here.

According to Chris, for their purposes, the answer was “mount -p”.

I like the ISO version of gparted on sourceforge and used it to fix my old XP infested Gateway 5150 laptop. Fix might be the wrong word, I removed an old LINUX boot partition and expanded the existing FAT32 partition. From the supporting web-page:

GParted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging).

GParted uses GNU libparted to detect and manipulate devices and partitiontables.

I highly recommend the tool, very capable and works as advertised.

I am investigating Open Source ISP, CRM, and Monitoring tools for possible application and use in the CCGB. Most CRM apps, such as SugarCRM seem to be well-tuned for an XP laptop based mobile sales force. Many interesting feature for sales campaigns and order tracking. This may become important, but we are most interested in usage metrics and billing.

I’ve been reading about RRD tools.

My Macintosh G5 desk-side system did not come equipped with Bluetooth. So when I wanted to use a Bluetooth headset, specifically the Plantronics 510, to take advantage of free Skype calling in North America, I began looking for a USB Bluetooth adapter.

I chose the Belkin Bluetooth 2.0+EDR dongle (F8T012v) with the Broadcom chipset. The box declares “Mac OS driver and software supplied by Apple”. I fully expected this device to work when I plugged it in. When it didn’t, I called Belkin. They told me “Mac OS driver and software supplied by Apple”. We opened a ticket and they agreed to escalate, all very pleasant but not very productive.

On a whim, I Googled my problem (‘Belkin F8T012v on a Macintosh headset profile‘). This should have been the tool of first resort because I found a link to a Belkin support site in the UK that provided a Macintosh driver, specifically.

After installing the Belkin driver for the Broadcom chipset on my OS X 10.4.6 PPC and rebooting, I was able to pair the 510 with the Belkin and make a clear and decent phone call via Skype.

I called Belkin, cancelled the open case and sent them the URL. Sigh.

I taught an introduction to programming workshop with an emphasis on Perl and extensions interesting to Biologists as part of the Summer Bioinformatics Institute at the Digital Technology Center, here at the University of Minnesota. Sixteen students, three half-days, labs, homework, etc. It was a blast. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I think the students learned some useful bits. Kudos and thanks to my TA, Allison Langham.

Slides may contain images protected under copyright laws. If you have an interest in obtaining any portion of these presentations, please contact me directly. I am also willing to travel and train at your location.

(Handouts: Introduction to Programming Handouts, 28MB)