Finished my first marathon in 4 hours, 40 minutes, and 37 seconds.
Before the race ready to go!
Me pushing through at mile 26, almost to the finish
Official results
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The training took dedication, but overall the experience was fun. Now I just need to figure out what to do next year.
I have been working on my raspberry pi for a little while now, but finally completed the case for the project. I was originally going to use a pico-itx case I acquired, but with the layout of the raspberry pi board, it just didn’t work out. When I was looking online, I noticed some of the DIY plexiglass projects that I really liked. Due to the layout of my entertainment center and that is when I decided I was going to make my “FlatPi” project. One of the other things that bothered me with some of the cases I have seen is you are almost always required to use a USB Hub, so people create beautiful cases for just the pi, but then have a wiring nightmare when they add their hub. My goal was to make it all in one.
Required Parts
First time mounting the boards to the lexan.
Working on the case
Got the Pi and USB Hub mounted.
The screws I used were from PC builds. I drilled small holes that would allow me to use the screws and make new thread in the plexi glass. Its not shock proof, but it holds the Pi and Hub in place.
I had to make some countersunk holes where I mounted the hub due to the solder leads. I was having problems getting the hub to sit parallel with the plexi glass, once I drilled those holes I was able to get it to sit parallel.
Took a few pictures to show the layout I chose for the boards. Back side the FlatPi.
Bottom side of the FlatPi.
Front side of the FlatPi.
I listed USB cables above, I did buy 1.5ft cables to reduce the cable management. Plus you can’t go wrong with monoprice when cables are less then a dollar.
The top cable is the power core (USB to USB Micro)
The bottom cable is the hub connector, the hub did come with a cable, but it was 6ft long, so the 1.5ft cable worked out well.
The middle cable is the USB Hub power connector
Backside of the Flatpi.
Wanted to show how much light the Pi/Hub produced.
This is the side that sit against the wall, but here is the lights.
Same picture just with the flash on.
Due to limited space, I wanted this to mount vertically, here is where I am going to install it in my entertainment center.
I had the opportunity to attend Black Hat 2013, so while in Vegas, I took a few pictures, thought I would share.
First picture, always the most important, registration area of Caesars Palace.
Harley Davidson Cafe, BBQ wasn’t that good.
Biggest chain link flag I have ever seen!
Pool at Caesars Palace
Customized Room keys, awesome!
I found Alan from the Hangover!
View from hotel room
Bunch of pictures from Caesar’s Forum Shops
Random beerfest sign, of course I had to stop and take a picture.
Eiffel tower, Vegas style
Creep clown sign at Circus Circus
Wedding Chapel from the movie Hangover.
Gold and Silver Pawn aka Pawn stars
A store for just M&Ms, are you kidding me?
Um…. watch out for mountain goats!
Hoover dam photos
360 view from the hoover dam
Protestors at the Cosmopolitan.
Protestors and law enforcement with horses!
My only food picture… Fat Burger!
Stone Art Street Performer
Ballagio Water Show
Hey who is this guy?
A picture of use… before we got dirty!
First hay bale I think.
Soapy suds before we went down the giant slip and slide.
The freeze pit
Kayla got photogenic with herself.
My Hay bale jumping ability!
Still working on my hay bale jumping ability.
Mud pit
Not sure what I am doing here….
Hey a dark tunnel.
Dirty but finished!
Raw material, I did make one trace on the rubber as you can see in the picture.
The bottom piece is the top of the sole, while the top rubber piece is the bottom of the soul.
Tracing out my footprint from paper onto the rubber using a pen.
My first try at tying my new huaraches.
Found a video online that provides a slip on/off method, going to try this out for my first run
Kayla dropped her phone a few weeks back, and decided to take the leap on replacing the glass.
On the left, tools to remove the old glass, in the middle is the patient, and on the right is the glass transplant.
Taking the hair dryer, heated up the glue which allowed you to pry up the glass.
Here I got a really good photo of when the glue is separating between the glass and the digitizer.
I should have taken a picture of the phone naked, I mean without the glass, however I forgot. Anyway, I just slapped the new glass on there with no glue, the previous glue is suppose to be enough to hold on the new glass.
Proof it works, in the middle of a transition.
So recently google announced it was going to shutdown Google Reader. I am sad to see this go as its in the top 5 Google services I use. After much frustration with corporate America (Google in this case), and not have any power as a consumer over this, I decided to skip using the other commercial RSS replacements, and I turned to the open source community. After reading all the tech websites with suggested RSS reader replacements, I found out about tiny tiny RSS. I installed the web application on my linux webhost and used my domain, and imported my google reader subscription.xml file that contained all my feeds. It was fairly easy to setup (about the same work as setting up a wordpress blog from scratch), will work as long as I provide the hosting, and has a large community. One item I did have to do was find a couple of plugins to enhance the user experience. The two plugins I installed were Next-Prev toolbar and videoframes, which allows embedded videos (such as youtube) to be displayed. There is some configruation options that allow you to configure when it should update the RSS feed, the only complaint I had was you need the ability to run server side commands to make it automatic, however if you leave the webpage open in a browser, it will update when open. I might create a script to run from my home computer to open the website every 10 minutes so when I browse from my mobile device, it contains the latest data. One last thing I needed was a mobile app which is available on the google play store for $1.99. The mobile app is worth the price.
If you are looking for a Google Reader replacement, I highly recommend checking out the tiny tiny RSS website and setting up the service for yourself.
So… Warning this is just another running post. Over the last few weeks I have been pretty busy regards to running. Back on May 18th, I finished my third half marathon in 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 50 seconds which is a new personal best. My goal was to finish with a pace under 10 minutes per mile, which I did with a pace of 9:52. I have been building up my miles and averaged a couple 30 miles per week, even hit a new monthly record of 117 during May. While a 117 miles during a month is what some people do a week, its been a huge accomplishment for me.
I wanted to talk about my new shoes, previously I have been using Vibram Five Fingers Bikilas, but I picked up some new balance minimus MR00 shoes before the half marathon, but I didn’t get them broken in before the half, so I couldn’t use them. Since them I have added some miles to them, and even a long run and I have to admit, I really like them. If you are looking for zero drop minimalistic shoe, I would recommend the minimus. I attached a picture below.
Me running!
My Medal
My new shoes.
I just bottled my first 5 gallon beer YEAH. I have done several Mr. Beers in the past, but those were all using plastic bottles.
Thinking it wouldn’t take more then an hour and a half, I started getting all my bottling supplies prepared. I got 54 bottles ready, sanitized them using star-sans, boiled my 5oz of sugar, transferred my Irish red from the carboy to the bottling bucket (sanitized). I started bottling, spilled a little here and there, but I thought overall pretty good.
I ended up with 51 bottles, which I thought was awesome for my first batch.
Took the first 36 bottles down stairs to my unfinished basement (had boxes from previous 12 packs). Then I was going to take the last of the bottles down stairs. I had 12 bottles which were in two 6 packs (in a plastic bag) in one hand, and in the other hand a 6 pack (3 full/3 empty). I made it about 1 step and the bottom of the 6 pack gave away. All six bottles went down the stairs, 2 of the full ones broke, and I think 1 of the empty ones broke. Beer and glass all over, good thing the basement is unfinished, but still made a huge mess and this is at about 10:15 at night, and I was ready to go to bed. Over an hour later, I am finished cleaning up the mess.
I was too frustrated to take any pictures of the mess!
The bad, I lost two bottles of beer.
The good, I still have 49 bottles of beer.
I put them all in totes just in case of bottle bombs, taking no chances with this.
Just wanted to share my first bottling experience.
The end
