I Started Running

On 14th of February i went for my first structured run. A week ago i was doing my morning exercises and for some reason felt like jogging in place. While doing that i had a look out of the window and thought – why not have a run outside. I put my shoes on and went out. Feeling a bit self conscious, as if everyone was looking at me, i ran a small circle – ~400m before ducking in inside. I was really glad i did it. For the first time in my life i ran because i wanted and actually enjoyed it. A day or so later i searched Internet for some tips on running and found that there were running training programs for complete beginner. One of them is called C25K, which is an abbreviation for “From Couch To 5Km”. And what’s more there are plenty of C25K Android apps. After doing some research i downloaded a couple of them. One of them is called RunDouble, that’s the one i am going to use for the first weeks. Now the shoes. I was shocked by the prices of running shoes. The cheapest yet decent looking running shoes at Perry were Asics Gel-Blackhawk at €59,-.

I am set and so on February 14th i ran my first real run, or rather run/walk. I was suprised at how easy that was and that i was not tired at all. I felt very energetic the rest of the day. A runner is born.

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Facebook name in different alphabets

I am a Russian living in The Netherlands. I have a Facebook account registered under Konstantin Starojitski. Yet, i would really love it if my russian friends and family could see me as Константин Старожицкий whenever they see me on their Cyrillic  Facebook pages.

I believe it would be relatively easy to allow users to fill in their names in different alphabets/scripts, and then display the name according to the language choice of the other user, otherwise use default.

I created a community page My name in many alphabets and hope enough people will sign up so that i can convince Facebook developers to introduce this change. Please go to that page and join it!

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Best way to read PDF e-books using Adobe Reader

It took me a while to get used to reading books on my laptop. I have tried different ways and here is what i do now:

  1. Open PDF document in Adobe Reader
  2. Press Ctrl-L to enter Full Screen View
  3. Press Ctrl-Y to select Zoom value. I prefer 140%
  4. Press Ctrl-Shift-H to enter Reading Mode. The page will start scrolling upwards.
  5. Press Esc to stop scrolling

Reading now is easy. You can scroll down the page by using Up and Down keys. Or you can press Page Up (or Page Down) to show next part of text. The pages are displayed continuously, like a scroll.

Adobe Reader full screen view

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Kodak Zi8 Experience

It took me a while to choose between Flip UltraHD and Kodak Zi8.

Comparison went like this:

  1. Support for external microphone: Zi8 1 – Flip 0
  2. Storage – In Order to user Kodak Zi8 you need to buy an SD card separately. You end up paying pretty much the same price but it is an extra hassle: Zi8 1 – Flip 1
  3. Video Format – Flip saves videos in MP4 format which is easily edited by Sony Vegas Studio, while Zi8 makes QuickTime MOV video’s. These have to be converted before editing in Sony Vegas: Zi8 1 – Flip 2
  4. Packaging of Zi8 is somewhat better with a couple of cables included: Zi8 2 – Flip 2
  5. Features – again Zi8 has some extra features that make it seem a better deal. You can take still pictures and 1080 videos. Zi8 3 – Flip 2

The most important features for me were 1 and 3. I could use Flip with a separate recorder but that would mean having to sync them when editing videos. On the other hand i was pretty much guaranteed to do extra work with Kodak Zi8 before i could edit the videos.

In the end i made up my mind and bought Zi8. Because i am going to use it for taking interviews, this was an important feature on my wishlist. Having ability to shoot still photo’s was another consideration.

My experience after playing with the camera for a week – It’s great!

Two problems though:

  1. Although I could open the created movies in Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 10 Platimun, after i save them i am missing sound. I have no experience with this software so it’s quite possible that it is my fault. I will investigate it further.
  2. Red color in the videos becomes quite orange. Again i will try and see if i can find a way to adjust color when editing. If you know how to do it – please let me know.
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