Toshi says...

Week 1, Day 2 - Cross train 30 min

Start: 7:48am
14.1km for  39m46s

This was Saturday morning, and the menu says cross train, so I needed no time before I decided to go on bike.

I like riding bike, but it's more of a vehicle for me to get somewhere, so it was a fun experience to start from home and to end at home on a bike ride.

The rain, which remained until the middle of the night, was gone, and the sun was coming up, I just enjoyed the ride.

Week 1, Day 1 - Jog 40 min

10:29

6.9km for 43m39s.

Jogging in the rain. As it is not yet too cold, running in the rain is more of fun so far. I was wearing glasses, and the glasses get fogged. That was the only thing annoying then.

At this point, I am excited with the ambitious goal that I just set. And so was the training.

This blog is renamed Toshi's running journal

I've just made up my mind to run a marathon under 4 hours in April. And I am going to use this blog to keep track of my training, so the title is renamed "Toshi's running journal" going forward.

Thanks!

Why do you run? - my three reasons

I am back from some running right now, still with sweat.

I was running without iPod this time, which could have been my first time without it. And I just felt good while running that way, and came up with some thoughts on why I run (and some other things that I am not writing about here).

So here are three reasons.

1. It's good for your health.
2. You can just be yourself, and nothing else. It gives you precious time when you can just be yourself, without doing nothing.
3. It just feels good.

I guess that the first and third ones need less explanation and cause less arguments, so I will explain #2, you can just be yourself.

This, myself being myself while running, was exactly what I experienced during the run today. It's quite like meditation, but for many of us, it's a lot easier. Here's why.

If you start meditating, you will have a lot of thoughts during then, and you might wonder if you are really meditating. As a novice meditator, I feel that way many times, and I am also told that having a lot of thoughts is not a bad thing, so you don't have to blame yourself about that.

But still, it will take time before you find yourself in "flow" state, and start feeling comfortable and confident by meditation. On the other hand, you can get to the "flow" state quite easily and instantly by running. It's because you're physically active and that can focus your mind into nothing. Which is just my understanding so far, so I will have to polish my thought, though.

I am feeling that the reason #2 is going to be my primary reason why I run.

Three things I don't like with Kindle

Following my post on Kindle (Three reasons why I chose Kindle) some time ago, let me tell you about what I don't like with it, after using it for some while.

1. Penalties for international users (limited availability and int'l surcharge of $2)
2. Poor UI - visuals and input device
3. Poor text handling within blocked texts

Penalties for international users

From time to time, when I click on a link to a Kindle ebook on Amazon, I will see something like "It is not available for my location which "Asia & Pacific" in my case. I can logically understand that there is a rights issue behind that, but still I am not happy.

Another thing here is international surcharge of US $2. If you are a customer outside of US, you need to pay $2 more for every ebook purchase for international wireless delivery. Probably it's because Amazon's margin for ebook is very thin, which is good for us, but I will love the option for us to eliminate the surcharge.

Whether I would give up wireless delivery for $2 saving, I am not sure, though. Whispernet, or wireless delivery, is so comfortable and I need to admit that's a great advantage of Kindle.

Poor UI - visuals and input device

Because we are using cool gadgets like iPhone daily, Kindle's UI is clearly out of date. Yes we use traditional mobile phones with browsers, which Kindle's UI is somewhat similar to, but that's not that of next generation devices.

Poor text handling within blocked texts

Reading ebooks on Kindle, large portion of the content can appear in blocked texts. So you'd probably want to highlight a word in the block to look up a dictionary, or to make an annotation. But that's not supported so far.

I don't have this problem with Kindle Reader on Windows, so I really hope that this will be fixed soon. I can say the first two is "nice to have," while this is a strong wish. I can even call it a bug.

But anyway, I can say again that I love Kindle, and I look forward to improvements of this cool device over time.

The Sun のパロディー広告

Diggで人気の記事 The Sun (UK) Spoofs Apple Ads With Their 'Handheld' Device watch! は、イギリスの大衆紙 The Sun のパロディー広告のことを取り上げています。 Apple iPhone のテレビコマーシャルを真似て、The Sunという新聞が最高のハンドヘルドデバイスである、として売り込んでいます。 日本語字幕を付けてみましたので、お楽しみください。

日本語字幕付きビデオ

英語学習（リスニング）にもどうぞ。日本語字幕版を見た後に、字幕なしのオリジナルを見ることをおススメめします。