Cool Products

Using one of these towels at work for about a month now.  Although designed for camping it's great at the office to reduce the paper waste.  I hooked it up using the carabiner clip to my backpack and this way always handy.  It dries very fast.  Also, the other side of the bag is made of mesh so it dries up even when packed in.

A small step for a man...

Note: towel and the tiny bag has more vivid orange color than pictured.  Here is the amazon link.

February roundup

 

63 total miles run on treadmill.  Lower than the monthly target for the 1000 miles goal until the year end but planning to catch up when spring shows up.  Optimistically canceled the gym membership by the end of the month.  We'll see how it goes...

Weekly roundup

25 miles this week. Next week will be short and then there is only another week this month.

Books I'm reading...

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's latest book.  I'm reading the original in Turkish though I'm curious how the translation worked out.  Here is a link to amazon page.

20 miles for this week. Got used to the new treadmills and ankle pain disappeared.

Numerical Analysis articles...

Lanczos, C. J. "A Precision Approximation of the Gamma Function"
J. SIAM Numer. Anal. Ser. B, Vol. 1 1964. pp. 86-96 (2)
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2949767

W. J. Cody "Rational Chebyshev Approximations for the Error Function"
Mathematics of Computation, Vol. 23, No. 107 (Jul., 1969), pp. 631-637
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2004390
correction: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2004329

J. M. Blair, C. A. Edwards and J. H. Johnson
Rational Chebyshev Approximations for the Inverse of the Error Function
Mathematics of Computation, Vol. 30, No. 136 (Oct., 1976), pp. 827-830
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2005402

Books I'm reading...

The story of the Abebe Bikila, first person who won Olympic marathon gold medal twice (first was barefoot!)...
Here is the amazon link.

January roundup

New treadmills in the gym required some getting used to. Meanwhile injured left ankle and needed to take a week off. Will catch up next month.

Push-up world record!

In non stop category:
10,507 Minoru Yoshida (JAP) Oct-1980

http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/ulysses.html

Parrondo's Paradox

Given two games, each with a higher probability of losing than winning, it is possible to construct a winning strategy by playing the games alternately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrondo's_paradox

Movie plot idea

Where the major events are happening in the background blurred and the trivial tasks in focus. A person's life from birth to death...

Increased mileage to the desired level. Getting used to the new treadmills. The cushioning seems little hard, not very stable, starts shaking at higher speeds (even coupled with the treadmills left and right). Registered for the NYC Marathon lottery, we'll see in couple weeks. Also looking for a 50m race somewhere close if not somewhere nice so that I can combine with a family vacation.

Books I'm currently reading

John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death.
Here is the amazon link. Here is some info on the author In memory of Steve Heims a research physicist turned science historian.

Week in review

Less than the weekly goal for two reasons. After the 10 days break started slow, new treadmills in the gym (bad cushioning and time limit set to 60 mins).