I tried Ecto a few years ago on a PC and was disappointed. They’ve since been bought, and I’ve since switched to a Mac. Using this last day of Christmas Vacation to do some digital housecleaning, and am giving Ecto another shot.

Most summer weekends there’s a couple motorcycle classes running in the parking lot at Bunker Hill Community College. Though I can’t say I’ve ever really wanted a motorcycle, I have always wanted to at least know how to ride one. This weekend I finally took the plunge. Here’s a picture of the bike I’m riding for the course (they supply helmets too).

The class I signed up for runs Friday evening 6-9, Saturday 8-4, and Sunday 7-12. It’s a mix of classroom and on-bike instruction, and at the end of it (assuming I pass the evaluation) I’ll receive my motorcycle license in the mail in a few weeks.

I just completed day two, and all that remains is a bit more riding in the morning followed by the evaluation. It’s been a lot of fun, and both easier and harder than I expected. Getting the bike moving was easier than I thought it would be; coordinating both hands and both feet for stops on the other hand is definitely one of my weak spots. Knowing how to drive a stick-shift car has helped, but not as much as I’d hoped. And one thing I should have expected but didn’t was how brutally sore my legs would be, even after just a few hours on the bike. It reminds me of the first time I went horseback riding as a kid at summer camp.

It’s easy to see why people fall in love with riding. The experience was powerful and exhilarating, even at barely more than 15 mph on a diminutive bike. I don’t know that I’d actually buy a motorcycle, but if nothing else this has been a really cool way to spend the holiday weekend.

Switched personal blog to WordPress. Digging the iPhone support.

I heard yesterday that we haven’t had 3 days in a row without rain in Boston since April(!!). That is certainly abnormal. One side effect has been eerily healthy flowers in neighborhood window boxes and planters.

Here’s a sunflower plant just down the street that in the past few days has now grown taller than me (note the traffic signs for reference). This is not something you usually see in a city sidewalk planter:

Telling someone to “show some initiative” sounds patronizing. I suppose another way to put it is: “be your own best cheerleader — to yourself, and to those around you”. Still sounds hokey, but it’s true. Here’s two recent posts on the subject.

First, Seth Godin, on the difference between getting and taking:

Many employees do the same thing at work. They wait for a boss (hopefully a great one) to give them responsibility or authority or experiences that add up to a career. A few people, not many, but a few, take.

And Scott Berkun, who took the plunge of self-employment after realizing he’d really been waiting for his own permission to act:

No one will tell you what you’re capable of. No one told me to quit. No one told me to write books. None of the interesting things I’ve done started by someone telling me “you should do X.” or even “you are capable of doing X”. I’d been thinking about this for years but was waiting for some message from above to show up like the billboard in L.A. Story, saying “Scott. Now is the time. The universe has your back. Go do it”. But I’m still waiting for that. I’ve learned that not having support from others is not a reason not to do try something. I have to do the work, so my belief is enough.

200+ people simultaneously freeze in Grand Central Station.

As someone who spends entirely too much time hunched over in front of my laptop, the occasional reminder to get off my ass more often is A Good Thing.

In a story amusingly titled “Our office chairs are slowing killing us“, the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the dangers of spending so much time sitting down:

New Australian research shows that half-an-hour in the gym will not make up for the waist-expanding damage caused by spending the rest of the day sitting.

I should probably know better by now.

Readers from the Chicago area will remember Eagle Man from a series of TV commercials in the 90s (he even has a Wikipedia entry).

It seems I spotted a relative at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York today, looking rather dapper:

It’s not uncommon for me to have trouble falling asleep at night, and something I’ve done since I was very young to help drift off is listen to news radio.

As a child growing up just outside Chicago, that meant WBBM (”Newsradio 78“; I can’t help but hear that in jingle form in my head). But when I got to college, there was — surprise! — no 24-hour news station in Champaign, Illinois.

The local NPR affiliate did, however, carry the BBC during the overnight hours. Because I was both involved with student media, and a student of media, I was particularly attuned to the contrast in interview style between the reporters on the BBC and their US counterparts. Stateside, reporters are just not very good at asking tough questions, but more importantly, I find them almost universally terrible at calling bullshit. Our media is just too obsessed with maintaining the precious illusion that there are “two sides to every story.”

I was reminded of this while reading The Economist today when I came across the following (sorry, behind a paywall), which you’ll never see in a US newspaper or newsmagazine (the emphasis is mine):

Florida’s popular governor, Charlie Crist, tried to persuade the candidates to back a federal subsidy for home insurance for people who live in hurricane-prone places like Florida. This is a terrible idea. By making it cheaper to build in risky areas, it would ensure that more houses are destroyed in future hurricanes.

Isn’t that refreshing?