It's been a long while since I posted anything of interest other than fitness and running, so here's something I found that isn't fitness related.
Tom Scott (Twitter: @tomscott) posted this video about the Two Generals problem. Basically it centres around two generals and asks how they can synchronise communication to ensure they two something at the same time.
In multithreading computing, including back when I was learning Java, we had a synchronized keyword which ensure only one thread went through a block of text. But here, you want two threads to proceed at the same time. How do you ensure that? Turns out there's no guaranteed way.
Of course you could just use the UDP method of "fire-and-forget" and say "Hey, General B, we're going to attack at 8pm, catch up if you have to", and have dropped packets (or casualties in the two generals problem)
This is an interesting thought experiment and one I hadn't considered during my time learning parallel and threaded programming.
Oh well, you learn something new every day, I guess.
Went running today, made one lap around my local park pretty comfortably, but my left ankle started to hurt. The same ankle I had a fractured metatarsal on a few years back. Here's hoping it isn't serious.
A few hours later it's eased up, since I'm not putting pressure on it.
I wonder if maybe the cushioning on my shoes aren't up to par now. Maybe I need to gait test again.
Today's run, since I'm no longer using Endomondo's training runs, I did the lap using a constant run, average pace was around 6:07 min/km.
After a stupidly long time without running, I'm back at it. Did a lap of the park and I utilised a new app on my FitBit watch, which lets you set a target time and distance and gives you a running "partner" running at that pace to run against. So in this picture, I'm 22 seconds ahead of my running partner. We are both standing still as I stopped to take this picture.
What is neat about it is that once you finish, you can set save your finish time for next time to try to beat it.
Also, while running, I spotted a rusty old BlackBerry that was lying around
After an excessive amount of heat over these past few days, it’s actually cooled down today. Even so far as to have some rain appear. Still rather muggy and humid and temperatures are low 20s even at 10pm.
Saturday and Sunday are set to have showers with low-20s as highs. Finally, I can potentially get back to comfortably running.
It was forecast to hit nearly 40 degrees C (104 F) yesterday. And it got pretty close where I live…
But pity the people who have to use the rail. In the heat, NONE of the rail providers could provide a decent service. They had plenty of excuses: speed restrictions, power line problems, signal failures. My journey home made me wait at Kings Cross for about 30 minutes for a train, and then the gate staff only opened ONE barrier. And it was no better on the underground.:
48.3C is 118.94F. In short, people were travelling in near 50C/120F heat.
And while it was 36-40C here in London in the open, it was only mid-20s in Malaysia
So, 21 intervals today. Most intervals I’ve done in one session, though they were all 60sec/30sec run/walk intervals so they were more or less manageable
10-interval run today, with 2-minute run/2-minute walk intervals. Target distance was 5.34 km, ran 7.24km according to Endomondo, 6.87 according to Strava and FitBit
Google had an outage the other week, and it knocked out several websites GitLab, Shopify and impacted others. Gsuite, Gmail, YouTube were affected, but not down.
There are some interesting lines in this article:
for an entire afternoon and into the night, the Internet was stuck in a crippling ouroboros: Google couldn’t fix its cloud, because Google’s cloud was broken.
Google says its engineers were aware of the problem within two minutes. And yet! “Debugging the problem was significantly hampered by failure of tools competing over use of the now-congested network,”
In short, Google Cloud broke due to congestion, Google couldn’t fix the problem because their tools required using the network that was now congested
No schedule C25K run today, so I went for a lap around the park with the intention of checking my 12-minute test run distance (aka Cooper Test)
Cooper Test: 2.13km, average pace 5:42 min/km. Endomondo shows a blip towards the end, but Strava doesn’t. And they’re both fed from my FitBit and while that does indeed show a blip, it’s not as extreme as the one in the Endomondo feed.
Regarding the test results. According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop… my results (2130m sits in the “good” range, but just about (2100-2500)) my record is 3.78km – though that was assisted by a downhill ^_^
Lovely hot day today so a run in the park for my C25K plan with 4x 2 minute run intervals. Although the plan wanted a specific speed, there was no way I could jog that slow. Let’s hope the plan adapts…
