A different 5K route today, and it’s slightly longer than 5K, but more flat, so I was able to hit a faster-than-normal pace, and keep it going for a while. So well, in fact, that I touched the top of Green during the run, on more than one occasion. And, I’ve shaved off 90 seconds off my last run’s pace (~8min/km), and around 30 seconds off my average (~7min/km).
According to Endomondo, my current bests are:
Cooper (12 min): 2.46 km
One hour: 9.6 km
1 km: 4m:44s
1 mile: 7m:42s
3 miles: 25m:38s
5 km: 26m:33s
10 km: 1h:02m:40s
I’ve been using Tor for a while now, and have been tinkering with settings to try to get it work right. One of the many frustrating things is DNS leaking whereby an application resolves DNS using the host DNS and not via Tor. Consequently, since the DNS server of your PoP (Point of Presence) is usually your ISP’s DNS server, or a DNS server maintained by your ISP, they can easily eavesdrop on your surfing behaviour, by simply connecting a DNS query with a traffic stream to that same IP soon afterwards.
Using DNS via Tor is a bit of a pain, but there are various ways I’ve found that seem to work. Some better than others.
Solution 1: Local DNS Host
It is possible to setup Tor to act as a local DNS host by using the “DNSPort 53” directive within the torrc. However, you will need to run tor (or Vidalia) as root in order to be able to open this port.
Once this is done, you can add 127.0.0.1 to your DNS hosts list in /etc/resolv.conf. To account for when Tor isn’t running, I add my true DNS afterwards so my resolv.conf would be:
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 192.168.0.1
Which means it should resolve through Tor first, then my ISP DNS if that fails. Tor DNS only responds to A-records, MX and NS queries return an error.
If you turn on DEBUG level logging in Vidalia, you can test if DNS is working by trying to ping a host and seeing if Tor receives a DNS request.
Solution 2: Wrapper
Probably an easier method than above, is to use a wrapper tool, such as torsocks or proxychains. My preference is proxychains and you’ll see why.
Torsocks, as its name suggests is built by the same group who created tor and wraps the application you pass to it, tunnelling all traffic through tor. However, it seems rather quirky to me, and when used with some apps, it drops out several pages of LD_PRELOAD errors and the application either doesn’t start or starts without access to the net.
Proxychains, similarly wraps an application and tunnels traffic through a proxy (including its DNS queries, by default.) Not specifically Tor, but it does come with its config already setup for Tor and works fine. When you start it up with an application, by default, it shows all the DNS queries it makes (configurable). It also allows you to chain proxies (hence the name) so proxy A to proxy B to proxy C, etc. to make it even harder to follow your traffic. It even allows you to randomise your proxy chains so one request might go A-B-C and the next might go A-C-B.
At the moment I use the DNS method to hide my DNS traffic on most of my linux applications, then use proxychains on anything I specifically want to tunnel through Tor, such as browser sessions or the occasional BitTorrent download.
Just found out about this. Semi-disappointed that Matt is leaving so soon but this will give me another reason to watch the 50th Anniversary episode. If only to see David TEN-nant again. :P
Couple of important tips when doing lighting in Blender, taken from the current book I’m reading:
The wrong lighting will ruin a shot, regardless of how fantastic your modelling and surfacing.
If you can light a scene effectively without any custom surfacing, you know you have done it right. If you can convey the mood and setting of the scene properly through the lightning alone, then your job is almost done.
I watched the Fairy Tail movie the other day, and like most of the story arcs in the Fairy Tail series it plays at your heartstrings. I do like the way the story was structured. There was a separate 12-minute short which tells how the central girl (Eclair) and her stuffed animal friend (Momon) came to meet - by the time you meet them in the main movie, they’re already together.
At the beginning of the movie, for the first 10 or so minutes, there is no audio, just visuals and music. No audio means no subtitles and this forces you to pay attention to what’s going on in the screen. As the course of the film progresses, you learn more and more about the events portrayed in the first 10 minutes. You also learn more and more about the Phoenix mentioned in the title and the background behind Eclair, who is suffering from partial amnesia. Bombshells abound are revealed in the movie about Eclair and the finale is really heartbreaking…
Today was certainly a change. The run was meant to be 1 hour 20 minutes, so I decided a while ago to aim for a 10K run and my target was 1 hour. However, considering my current timing for 5K is 35 minutes, meant I should hit 10K at 1 hour and 10 minutes. Considering this run was 10.25K in 1 hour 9 minutes and 15 seconds, I’m pretty pleased. And it didn’t feel too bad. Yes, I stopped a couple of times as my 10K route had to cross busy roads and I’m not dumb enough to run straight across without looking. And my overall pace at 6:45 was quite good –although I terminated the run early. This run had two 10-minute blue zones, and I terminated my run at 1:09 – 1:10 to 1:20 would be the final cool down.
Blue zones are a pain because you can’t run them adequately, as they’re warm ups, but since you’re running slow, your overall pace value suffers as miCoach takes these speeds into account when calculating the overall pace.
My usual miCoach pace is around 7:00 to 7:30 per KM because of the blue zones. Take out a 10-minute blue zone, and you can see a 45-second improvement in the pace value.
One of my favourite parts of running is route planning - deciding where to go on my next route.
I was experimenting with different routes via Endomondo and found a route that was just slightly over the Half Marathon. A HM is 21.0975 (Wikipedia), but the route I found was 21.13 KM – 0.0325 KM over. I guess I can live with that. :)
