Author Archive
Tuesday, August 16th, 2005
Reducing friction
I sometimes find that very small obstacles to task completion still stop me from task completion. I call the process of getting rid of these obstacles “friction reduction.” Remember – overthinking is the enemy of blogging. Don’t think. Blog. Oh dear.
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Ryan Cousineau
Monday, August 15th, 2005
Fathers and Hobbies: a Flollow-up
Gord says the secret ingredient missing from this post was flow. He’s right. Flow is your friend. I’ll be reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book shortly (the library where I work has it).
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Ryan Cousineau
Monday, August 15th, 2005
All about my Father
About a week ago, I had a neat phone conversation with my father. There was the usual detail-oriented banter (advice on replacing a car battery, mostly), and we drifted into a conversation about his teenage passion, control-line model airplanes. What followed (with diversions into some amusing stories of a recent old-timers flying meet) was one […]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Ryan Cousineau
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005
Shadetree mechanical musings
This post is not about bikes, as keith pointed out that my recent posts were running about 50% bike content. I’ll try to work out my obsessions elsewhere for a while. Today’s lesson is this: the Good Thing is not very user-serviceable! Battery started to die on the car, so I replaced it. $100 including […]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Ryan Cousineau
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005
I Am a Machine!
Did I have a good Tuesday night race tonight? Suck Level 1, baby! We are talking absolute minimum Suck. How non-suck are we talking? Well, the race noodled around for the first half, until the prime sprint, which I won, again, like I do every week. This week I did it by being second wheel […]
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Sunday, July 31st, 2005
Numbers game: Ten Thousand Hours
How long does it take to get good? To maximize your potential in an endeavour? ten thousand hours. If you’re going to be world-class, you’ll be world-class after that much practice. And if not? Well, you’ll be as good as you can be.
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Ryan Cousineau
Thursday, July 28th, 2005
Self-Transformation and You
I suspect I’ve made it clear at one point or another on Wired Cola, but I’m a reasonably fit, pretty serious competitive cyclist. That was not true as recently as 2002, when I was no more than a guy who rode a bike to work sometimes. More notably, until the Fall of 2001 I was […]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Ryan Cousineau
Wednesday, July 27th, 2005
Fun with Primes
Holy moly. I won the prime sprint in last night’s Tuesday Night training crit, which means I have won prime sprints in each of the last three crits I have entered. And adding glory to glory, I managed to pick up third place in the finish, too, and teammate John, after doing colossal amounts of […]
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Friday, July 22nd, 2005
Danica McKellar, Paul Erdös, and a twist ending
Viva Forteanism! Danica McKellar, most famous as Winnie from The Wonder Years, is more than just a pretty face. It turns out she studied mathematics in university, and even published a pretty serious mathematical paper. I won’t examine the details (because I can’t), but here’s the best question from her Stuff Magazine interview: After the […]
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Wednesday, July 20th, 2005
Cycling: Lance and I are on fire
Well, let’s be clear: he is cruising to victory in the greatest bike race in the world, I’m showing remarkable power and ability in local low-category racing. But qualifiers aside, let’s talk about Lance Armstrong first: He’s a machine. Having simply done enough to devastate his rivals by having only good days in the mountains […]