We have all had it happen. You get a text file from another user using Windows or even Mac. You open it up and the file looks trashed. This usually occurs when the file format of the file is unix but the content still includes the DOS Carriage Return / Line feed that show up as ^M in vim.

The simplest way to remove these annoying meta characters is using the col program.

cat file | col -b > newfile

However, today I ran into a file that was truncating on cat for no apparent reason. So, I had to do the edits in vim. This is mainly to remind myself because I wind up looking this up every time I need it.

In vim to replace DOS CR/LF with a unix newline type:

:%s/CTRL-V+M/CTRL-V+ENTER/g

Looks like:

:%s/^M/^M/g

I survived the Marathon. Barely. I ran a fantastic 22 mile race, unfortunately, the race was actually 26.2 miles. In classic rookie fashion I ran too fast for the beginning of the race and didn't quite have it for the end of the race.

I did run close to my plan B time with a 3:21:02. I placed 410 out of 6314. So not too bad for my first marathon.

I started with the 3:15 pace group for the first several miles. Then on 4th ave a surged ahead to get at the an aid station and found myself well ahead of this group. The rookie mistake was not slowing back down and sticking with the group. Instead I bridged up to the 3:10 pace group over the next few miles.

I ran with the 3:10 pace group till we got over the St. Johns bridge, mile 18, then I let them go knowing I could not maintain that pace. This was not a problem.

However, I kept slowing down. My legs got heavy and by mile 22 I had to take walk breaks. The full blown proverbial wall. That was the longest 4 miles of my life. It felt like I limped in.

At least I could make a show of it for the last mile when my family got to see me at the finish.

I learned a lot about the distance. Hopefully, I will be wise enough to apply it next time out. I am thankful I can run. I am thankful I completed the race. I am thankful I left nothing out on the course.

In the finishers area I was gobbling up food like I was a man on the brink of starvation. By the time I got to my family at the reunion area I had both hands full of food and gifts.

Over at discovermagazine.com they have a fascinating article,
Born to Run, about humans ability to run long distances.

A few interesting points:

• We can out run all other animals over long distances
• Our Achilles tendon, knee and arch of the foot act as springs
• We have larger butts than other bipeds that may be a substitute for a tail that balances during running
• We have the ability to sweat and dissipate heat greater than other animals

Runners already knew a lot of this but these guys are proving it scientifically. Born to Run

Another article at U.S. News and World Report, shows a study that older runners live longer and have fewer disabilities than other healthy individuals.

I am just saying, running is good.

This is my peak week of workouts. This is my peak long run. Today I ran 23+ miles on the Portland Marathon course. I forgot to bring a map so I was running from the memory of looking at a map. I took a couple of wrong turns. First, I stayed on Thurman too long and then missed the change to NW St Helens rd when I was on the right road for a block. Second, coming off the Saint Johns bridge I needed to go south a block to catch Willamette Blvd earlier. I purposefully cut out the Front St industrial area to shorten the run to 23 miles.

Regardless, I was tired by the end of it. It was warm. I started at 7:00 AM but the sun was up and it was a perfectly clear day. I was dragging the last few miles until I caught sight of the fountain on Naito Parkway and Salmon which means I have about a half a mile to go. I had a rush of energy. I can only hope this happens on marathon day.

Here is the course I ran today:

View Larger Map

I ran in Forest Park on Leif Erickson Dr. Forest Park is the largest park in a metropolitan area in the United States. It is beautiful.

It is also challenging. I was trying to do a Marathon Goal Pace (MPG), 7:24 per mile, run for 13 out of 16 miles. But I only could hold that pace for 8 miles due to the hills and terrain. It was still a great workout.

View Larger Map

For our anniversary we went to the beach for a couple of days. We had good weather and a great time with the girls. Lots of sand and surf.

I got a 20 plus miler in while were were at Long Beach. It was a relatively quick (for a 20 miler) 8:40 per mile average.

I am amazed at the difference temperature has made in my long runs of late. In the middle of August I was running my round trip around the Columbia river from I5 to I205 in 80+ degree weather and I hit the wall and had to walk.

This Long Beach run was in 55-60 degree weather and it felt great. I am really glad the Portland marathon will be in October early in the morning. It should be great running weather.

View Larger Map

I have registered for the Portland Marathon. I am bib number 3611. This is a big step psychologically. I have a couple of months to put in a few more 20 mile runs and some serious tempo runs.

I have added the countdown timer on the right hand bar to psych myself up.

David

I ran the Lacamas Lake Half Marathon today. I am very happy with the results. I ran a 1:32:00 at around 7:01 pace. I came in 16th 17th place out of 372 and 3rd in my age group. Not too bad. Mostly I am happy because this projects well for a BQ at the Portland Marathon.

The Lacamas Lake run was very hilly. The splits are crazy from 7:30 to 6:35. It had long slogging uphills then break neck down hills. I am just glad I could hang on to a steady 7 minute pace. The final hill at the 12 mile mark was daunting. I felt like I was just getting the lactic acid washed out when I crossed the finish line.

Several thoughts:

• What a difference a month makes (since the Pacific Crest Half Marathon where I hit the wall)
• They should have called it the Camas Hills Half Marathon
• I can run down hill fast! :)
• Running in the NW rocks! It rained or drizzled through much of the race keeping us all cool.

Here is the GPS tour of the race:

I often receive audio files in the full WAV format and need to convert them to OGG and MP3.

Here are the tools I use to do this:

Convert to OGG:

oggenc -b 128 -q 7 foo.wav


Convert to MP3:

lame -h --abr 128 foo.wav foo.mp3


Your friendly neighborhood Linux systems admin here with a post about the Linux Foundation web infrastructure. The web site has grown organically one piece at a time. The existing main application for www.linuxfoundation.org is Mediawiki. This was put together as a temporary web site when the Free Standards Group and Open Source Development Labs were in the process of merging into the Linux Foundation. That was in December of 2006.

Since this time many other needs have come up. We added Wordpress MU for our blogs. We added a Phorum installation for OpenPrinting discussions, forums.openprinting.org. Our events site is run on Drupal and CiviCRM.

The issue has always been how to meet all the technological needs with a bare minimum of staff. Many of you out there could code solutions in place to glue the applications together. Since, I am not a strong developer I have focused on staying with the stock applications for ease of upgrades.

How do you put together a cohesive infrastructure completely based on open source applications that work together seamlessly without coding highly customized solutions?

We are trying to answer that question.