$nwin = 250;    # I think the lottery picked about 250-something winners last year, the rest were golden tickets and such
$nlot = 100000; # someone could quantify the margin of error based on this, with statistics you would oh look a bird

for ($pid = 0; <>; ) {
  ($nt, $np) = split(/\s+/, s/,//r);
  ($nt > 0 and $np > 0 and not exists $wcnt{$nt}) or die "invalid input: $_\n";
  $wbin{$pid} = $nt;
  $wcnt{$nt} = 0;
  push(@tk, ($pid++) x $nt) while ($np-- > 0);
}

printf("%d tickets for %d entrants, running %d lotteries for %d winners:\n", $tkcnt = @tk, $pid, $nlot, $nwin);

for ($x = 0; $x < $nlot; $x++) {
  %in = { };
  $in{$id = $tk[rand($tkcnt)]}++ == 0 and exists $wbin{$id} and $wcnt{$wbin{$id}}++ while (%in < $nwin);
}

printf("%d tickets: %.2f%% win\n", $_, $wcnt{$_} * 100.0 / $nlot) foreach (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %wcnt);

512	 	1	 	512
256	 	15	 	3,840
128	 	55	 	7,040
64	 	139	 	8,896
32	 	215	 	6,880
16	 	296	 	4,736
8	 	594	 	4,752
4	 	963	 	3,852
2	 	1,538	 	3,076
1	 	2,077	 	2,077

45661 tickets for 5893 entrants, running 100000 lotteries for 250 winners:
1 tickets: 0.66% win
2 tickets: 1.29% win
4 tickets: 2.56% win
8 tickets: 5.08% win
16 tickets: 9.99% win
32 tickets: 18.98% win
64 tickets: 34.12% win
128 tickets: 56.51% win
256 tickets: 80.91% win
512 tickets: 96.24% win

  cout << "hello, world" << endl;

This made the C programmer in me squirm. Why would you make the meaning of operators change wildly based on the context? Also you might lose track of what code is actually being generated. It could have side effects that you don't know about, or be orders of magnitude slower! I still fill this way, and avoid operator overloading, other than operator=, for most things.

...but having said that, I find operator overloading to be incredibly valuable when it comes to maintaining and refactoring a large code base. A pattern that has become routine for us is a basic type is initially used for some state and needs to be extended.

For example: in track groups, we originally had 32 groups (1-32), and a track could have different types of membership in any number of groups. For 32 groups, we used unsigned ints as bitmasks. Some years later, to support 64 groups we changed it to WDL_UINT64 (aka uint64_t). Straightforward (but actually quite tedious and in hindsight we should've skipped the type change and gone right to the next step). To increase beyond 64 bits, there's no longer a basic type that can be used. So instead:

  struct group_membership {
    enum { SZ = 2 };
    WDL_UINT64 m_data[SZ];

    const group_membership operator & (const group_membership &o) const
    {
      group_membership r;
      for (int i = 0; i < SZ; i ++) r.m_data[i] = m_data[i] & o.m_data[i];
      return r;
    }
    // and a bunch of other operators, a couple of functions to clear/set common masks, etc

  private:
     // prevent direct cast to int/int64/etc. necessary because we allow casting to bool below which would otherwise be quietly promoted to int
    operator int() const { return 0; }
  public:
    operator bool() const { for (int i = 0; i < SZ; i ++) if (m_data[i]) return true; return false; }
  };

Then we replace things like:

  WDL_UINT64 group;

  group_membership group;

and after that, (assuming you get all of the necessary operators mentioned in the comment above) most code just works without modification, e.g.:

  if (group & group_mask) { /* ... */ }

To be fair, we could easy tweak all of the code that the operator overloading implements to use functions, and not do this, but for me knowing that I'm not screwing up the logic in some subtle way is a big win. And if you have multiple branches and you're worried about merge conflicts, this avoids a lot of them.

Also, it's fun to look at the output of gcc or clang on these things. They end up producing pretty much optimal code, even when returning and copying structs. Though you should be sure to keep the struct in question as plain-old-data (ideally no constructor, or a trivial constructor, and no destructor).

Thus concludes my "a thing I appreciate about C++" talk. Next week, templates.

Recordings:

super8_novideo - 1 -- [9:36]
super8_novideo - 2 -- [4:16]
super8_novideo - 3 -- [4:34]
super8_novideo - 4 -- [8:20]

12 Comments

This was a picture I took soon after I got my 400mm lens in 2001, with my first DSLR, a Canon D30. I’m actually surprised how much better the 6Dmk1 looks (even not considering the much higher resolution), at the time I thought the D30 was amazing…

1 Comment

Red-tailed Hawk, Hunting:

Eastern Phoebe:

Northern Mockingbird:

3 Comments

We drove to LA.


(this dog barked at me until I acknowledged him at the red light)

The (almost)-annual pilgrimage to Tacos Delta. Saw Paranorm. ChatGPT told us (and Wikipedia eventually confirmed) that Tarzana was named after the creation of its resident Edgar Rice Burroughs. Steve walked 15 miles the day before the race (!).


drop bags

Gear for the race:

• I wore the most comfortable shoes I had, which were Hoka Clifton 9s, with probably 1500 miles on them (nearly falling apart, by the end they were definitely falling apart). I've been using the https://www.activeimprintsco.com Active Imprints insoles which are great for some mild form corrections.

• At Edward's strong recommendation, I hiked with trekking poles. This turned out to be a huge help. Game changer. Kept me from tripping on my face countless times and the course has some steep climbs which you really can power up with. They were very common in use, and a few other runners I talked to regretted not bringing them (side note, what's the deal with the TSA requiring them to be in checked luggage? You're going to hijack a plane using trekking poles?! wtf).

• Since the start was before dawn and the finish would almost certainly be after sunset, I needed a headlamp. I modded my Fenix HM50R to be waist-mounted (old SPIbelt, heh). And I had a cheapo 5 GBP LED headlamp as a backup. Seeing other people with waist-mounted lamps, though, makes me want one of those (much wider illumination area etc).

• Backpack (Salomon Agile 6) with water bladder and stuff. I also carried my usual 24oz steel water bottle, which I usually keep and toss with my hands, which is enjoyable, but with trekking poles it was a pain in the ass, and while I could put it one of the front pockets of my backpack, it was a pain to take it in and out, especially as the day wore on. Noted.

• I started trying tailwind a few months ago so I brought some packets of that, stroopwaffels, trader joe's peanut butter pretzels, and some almonds.

The race -- forecast was a low of 55 and a high of 72. Turns out the start was considerably colder, though, due to microclimates of the valley. But it was still quite pleasant having so recently been in the 20-degree highs of NY.


Psyched sideways

The first half of the race was more of a run than a race, as these things go.


The race begins on a road. Hey wait.

The water crossing at mile 2 was quite a bit higher and unavoidable this year. In 2020 I managed to keep my feet dry. The wool socks I was wearing quickly dried out and didn't give me any problems.

I changed my shirt and hat and dropped off my headlamp at the drop bag at mile 13, around that time I noticed some bits of chafing in spots, put some bodyglide on there and it stopped being a problem.

Peanut butter pretzels were good, stroopwaffels too. I think I might have accidentally dropped a wrapper though, ugh, sorry, hopefully someone picked it up. I put it in my pocket and closed the zipper but when I went to open the pocket at the aid station to dump the trash it was gone. Or maybe I misplaced it. Your brain sometimes loses track of all of these things.


why didn't someone tell me that water bottle looks ridiculous in the pocket?

group of mountain bikers having lunch, I assume. nice spot for it.

this time, on the descent to Bonsall, I could see the trail across the valley that we would later be on. makes me giddy!

settling in to the race and getting ready to fall apart at mile 22, Bonsall

At mile 22 I stopped, saw a guy (hi, Peter) whom I had previously mistaken for Steve, put some squirrel nut butter and a bandaid on a hotspot on my big toe (worked well, never used that stuff before). Filled up to the brim with water.



(crows getting a free ride on the ridge)

I paid more attention to birds this year, and not just the crows. I'd like to go back to these trails with a camera and big lens and time to spare.

The massive climb out of Bonsall was nice since I knew what to expect (in 2020 it was demoralizing, lol), but it was really hot. There was a stream crossing where dipping your hat in the water was an amazing feeling (though within minutes it was back to heat). If I had more time I would've sat in it.

The second half of the race was more difficult. I no longer had the energy to take pictures. The aid station around the halfway point had a lot of bacon. I really wanted some but I couldn't bring myself to eat any. This seems to happen to me at this point, nausea and stuff. I need to figure this out (brain thinks I have food poisoning or something?). Maybe I should've tried a gel. Doesn't require chewing and pure sugar, might have been worth the try. Hindsight.

At mile 37-ish, drop bag again, grabbed lights, long sleeved shirt, other hat. Didn't want to mess with my socks so kept my original pair.

I kept moving, snacking a little bit here and there, trying to down some tailwind along with the water, hanging on. By mile 43 (nearly 11 hours after the 5:30am start) I was 5 minutes ahead of my 2020 time, and only 10 minutes behind Steve, but I really couldn't eat anything. I overhead a couple of people drop to the 50 miler. My legs felt OK, and it turned out if I continued on with the 100k route, I could always drop at 50 miles (since it was a 6-mile each way out-and-back that turned around near the finish). So I continued on. Up a hill, then down a really massive hill. Going up the hill was fine. Going down the hill was difficult. I haven't done enough quad strength training. Tsk tsk. I ran a little bit of it but it was mostly walking. Ate maybe 3 almonds, drank a few swigs of tailwind. It was starting to get dark. At the bottom of the hill it was along a riverbed for a while. Lots of frog sounds. I saw Steve when I was about 15 minutes away from the 50 mile aid station (so his lead was up to about 30-45 minutes at that point, I guess?).

The aid station people gave me a quarter of a banana, which I ate. It was not easy. They were nice (they are all). Someone I talked to earlier in the race asked if I had a pacer for this part, then looked at me like I was crazy for not. I remembered this, and asked if there were any freelance pacers available. No such luck.

Did the riverbed commute back to the climb, now with my head(waist)lamp on. Coming down the hill was a race marshall, sweeping the course. Nobody else would be coming down the hill. I could see headlamps far ahead, and occasionally see them far behind me, but for a long time I saw nobody, and heard only the sounds of frogs and wind. The moon rose, it had a lot of clouds in front of it and looked very red on the horizon.

I running a huge calorie deficit and was having to regulate my climbing of the hill in order to prevent bonking. I'd go too hard and have to back off because I could feel it wouldn't be sustainable. This was the toughest part of the experience, I think, this climb. When I was eventually caught by another runner, it was nice.

Going over the hill and back down to the mile 43 aid station (again, though now at 55-ish), with 7 miles to go. This aid station is a bit remote and you can't drop out of the race there, and I guess it was getting late, so the aid station captain was really big on getting me moving. Tried to get me to eat, but when I did my best picky eater impression he said (very nicely -- everybody volunteering at the aid stations were amazing) something to the effect of "well water is what you need most right now, now get moving." So I did. I ended up not having any real calories to speak of for the last 20 miles of the race, heh. Though almost all of those 20 miles were walked, not run.

After that final aid station, the last 7 miles were challenging but also pretty straightforward, the finish was within reach, and I had plenty of time to not hit the cutoff at a walking pace. My underwear had bunched up and I had some pretty significant butt chafing but it was too late to do anything about it, just had to suffer with it. Should've checked in for it hours ago, doh. Once I got to the flat ground of the last mile, walking at about 13 minutes/mile to the finish felt pretty good (flat!). I was sort of hoping to be DFL, but not enough to slow down when I saw some headlamps behind me.

After more than 16 hours of running and hiking, Steve was waiting for me at the finish (having waiting 90 minutes! <3). There was food, but it would be hours until I could eat anything meaningful. We headed back to Tarzana, and watched some TV (was it Boys or 30 Rock? I can't remember) before crashing.

I got the shivers again. Seemed to be associated with movement, too. Didn't last too long, and not so bad. Way better than covid. Apparently it's about inflammation.


The next day Edward made us steak. Amazing.

There was ice cream, and a cold swim in a 55F pool. Total win.

Am I ready to do this race (including its 13,000ft of climbing and descent) again? No. But it won't be long.

5 Comments

• Code: git commits from 2022's 6.73+dev1231 to 2023's 7.07+dev1229 for which I am the claimed author (excluding merges): 2,158 (down from 2,264 in 2021)
• Code: cumulative changes in repository (not just me, everything including Schwa and anything third-party): 1888 files changed, 108639 insertions(+), 80371 deletions(-) (also slightly less significant than 2021)
  
  
• Foot-based-transport (from Strava): here, with my acquisition of a herniated disc in May, I started walking a lot and paying attention to the total foot-based miles and not just running: 2,519 miles in 712 hours and 58 minutes, with 154,329 feet of climbing (and similar descent, I imagine). Running was 572 miles of it (100 hours or so). I enjoyed the walking. I walked a number of NYRR races in order to 9+1 qualify for the NY Marathon next year, and walked the NY Marathon in about 5:19. It's not quite the same experience as running it, but still really enjoyable and a challenge.
  
  
• Bicycling: I only strava'd 892 miles on a bike (since I ended up walking everywhere I could), though I missed some miles as I would often do Citibike shuffling on my walks, and wouldn't bother putting those in Strava (instead counting the walking portion of the shuffle). Still love my Casseroll Single. Got new wheels for it (the rims had suffered through enough braking with winter grit), and a front rack.
• Bicycling: I rejoined Citibike in order to earn Bike Angels points, I think it ended up being a couple thousand but they don't really make it easy to see it over time. My lifetime total is now 3,125. I suspect I started this year with closer to 1,200.
  
  
• Music played with others: 56 sessions (down from 62 in 2021), producing about 83 hours of music.
• Music recorded: 21 doodles. also 16 super8 sessions (which produce about 9 hours of youtube content). Both quite a bit lower than 2021. Hmph.

Comment...

extern int gv, bar();

template<class T> class saver {
  public:
  T save, *ptr;
  saver(T *p) : ptr(p) { save = *p; }
  ~saver() { *ptr = save; }
};

void foo_c() {
  int save = gv;
  gv = 1;
  bar();
  gv = save;
}

void foo_cxx() {
  saver<int> s(&gv);
  gv = 1;
  bar();
}

foo_c():
        push    rbx
        mov     ebx, DWORD PTR gv[rip]
        mov     DWORD PTR gv[rip], 1
        call    bar()
        mov     DWORD PTR gv[rip], ebx
        pop     rbx
        ret
foo_cxx():
        push    rbx
        mov     ebx, DWORD PTR gv[rip]
        mov     DWORD PTR gv[rip], 1
        call    bar()
        mov     DWORD PTR gv[rip], ebx
        pop     rbx
        ret

So yeah, the optimizer does perfectly.

Recordings:

Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 1 -- [8:53]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 2 - Private Life -- [7:20]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 3 - Watch Your Step -- [2:46]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 4 - Watch Your Step (II) -- [2:05]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 5 - Self Imposed -- [4:39]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 6 - Dogs Will Rule the World -- [3:04]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 7 - Virgins Again -- [2:53]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 8 - Virgins Again (Again) -- [3:14]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 9 - The River -- [4:31]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 10 - Cosmic Background -- [3:32]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 11 -- [5:20]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 12 - Hindenburg -- [6:42]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 13 - Chosen by the Few -- [3:48]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 14 - Las Vegas -- [4:04]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 15 - No Big Benefactor -- [4:06]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 16 - Now We Understand -- [4:14]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 17 - Cast Iron Candy Bandit -- [3:10]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 18 - Dogs Will Rule the World (reprise) -- [3:37]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 19 - Find Me -- [5:01]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 20 - Old as Coal -- [4:33]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 21 -- [11:36]
Yes, Exactly, Yes! - 22 - Charlie (feat Cory Choy) -- [4:35]

Comment...

In one of our REAPER development branches (and thus the latest +dev builds), there's now support for generating EEL2 code on the fly (for EEL reascripts, JSFX, video processors), using EEL2. I find this immensely pleasing.

To use this functionality, you can create an embedded script, using <? script code ?>, and that script has a separate variable/memory space, and can generate code using printf().

EEL2 often requires a lot of repetitive code to produce fast DSP code.

So for example, our loudness meter has a sinc filter that gets coefficients generated. Here's a before and after:

 function sinc_gen_slice(cs, o*) instance(sinc_gen_val slice_pos) global() (
   slice_pos = cs;
-  o.v00 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v01 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v02 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v03 = sinc_gen_val();
-  o.v04 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v05 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v06 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v07 = sinc_gen_val();
-  o.v08 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v09 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v10 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v11 = sinc_gen_val();
-  o.v12 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v13 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v14 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v15 = sinc_gen_val();
+  <? loop(x=0;sinc_sz, printf("o.v%02d = sinc_gen_val();%s",x,(x&3)==3?"\n": " "); x += 1) ?>
 );

There's some extra logic in there to produce identical output (including newlines) which isn't necessary, but added so I could test the output to make sure it didn't differ. The nice thing is, not only is this more readable and smaller, if you want to increase the filter size, you can without a ton of tedious and error-prone copy/paste.

Update, other tricks. If you want to make this code optional, you can do:

/* <? printf("%s/","*"); 
  printf("code which will only be executed on new jsfx/etc");
  printf("/%s","*");
?> */

/* <? printf("%s/","*");
  _suppress=1; 
  printf("code which will only be executed on new jsfx");
  printf("/%s","*");
?> */
legacy code which will only be executed on old jsfx
/* <? _suppress=0; ?> */

I flew into LAX on the Thursday. Decided to walk from the terminal to the rental car place. It's about a mile and a half, which if you've packed light is infinitely preferable to walk, especially in 55 degree weather, than to pile onto a rental car bus. Especially these days. I rented a car (brand new Kia sedan ftw), wandered my way around, got some lunch using a gift card I purchased in early 2020, mmm french toast, went for an easy run in Griffith Park to waste some time, it was really tough to not go more than a few miles. Checked into the guest house airbnb, went to bed at 7pm or so.

Friday involved going to Tacos Delta for chilaquiles. I'll leave this here. Kept to myself, worked a bit, went to bed around 7pm again.

Got up at 2:30am, left the airbnb at a little before 4am. Drove the long way to Malibu. Got to see places I occasionally went as a kid. Met Steve and Edward (and their friend Alex) at the start around 5:15am. There are other pictures with less fantastic lighting but really why when you have this one?

Something like 80 people, I guess? We start at 6am.

I should point out that the organizers mention that the course is well marked, but there is one turn that it's very important that the 50-mile runners make (there's also a 50k starting an hour later), and if you don't make the turn you'll end up running a bit over 50k. Why did I mention this?

The first few miles are a singletrack climb, which means the start position is very important. We held back, letting the faster people go ahead. Maybe we let too many. A little running, but a lot of fast hiking. Which was good, the last thing I wanted to do is go out too fast. I never know how these things will go, I mean usually it's fine but things will hurt and there will be suffering so better try to minimize it. And I'm on a low-mileage year. Anyway.

It starts getting light on the climb, 6:19am. Steve wants to go faster, runs a little bit of the climb, I somewhat keep up (catching up on the level bits or when he stops to take pictures).

It levels out a bit, there's some running, 6:40am. The aid station will come in another 20 minutes or so.

After the aid station (which was about 5 miles), some oranges, watermelon, water fillup, maybe some other snacks I forget now, we start a 6 mile loop with a little mud. Steve's in front of me here, at about 7:20am.

Ah the views, 7:28am.

The view ahead from the last shot, I love those shots of the trail ahead (or behind -- and more accurately the experience of seeing them in real life -- at home there's nothing more satisfying than seeing the Brooklyn Bridge ahead of you a mile away, and 1 WTC in the distance behind it, then finding yourself there by your feet). I'll try to point the trail shots out, if we can see with these low quality images I uploaded.

This one I could've left out, but hey 5 minutes passed and I can still see the ocean.

We head inland and it gets really muddy, I'm told this is due to rain. Tons of mud stick to your shoes, you end up tweaking your gait in order to try to shake it off as you go. Activating strange muscles. It gets a bit warm. Only a little bit. 7:49am. Another 10-15 minutes and you're back at the same aid station as before.

I left the aid station before Steve. As a result I was in front of him. There was a climb. I was not faster.

Oxnard, in the background, I assume! Our friend Fritz was always obsessed with that name. I meant to text him about that but didn't have much cell service. 8:26am.

After that climb, there was a pretty amazing descent, which I had a lot of fun on. Steve seemed to be on a phone call while he was running so I thought I'd give him his space. Near the bottom of the descent was the Valley of the Spiders[tm][cc](Andy). The spiders were considerate in marking their territory and I didn't feel threatened. 8:50am.

Just down the road a 100' from the spider web, it got really cold, this valley trapped that cold air, and the with the humidity there were these clouds forming. It was cool but didn't photograph well, just looks like dust here.

A short 10 minutes later, you pay the price of that descent, with a pretty steep fire road climb. I walked this (I walked all of the climbing really). As I was hiking up this, the leader for the 50k race ran past me. RAN. That did not look easy to do for a 10k let alone a 50k. At the top of that hill was the same aid station again (16 miles, 9:05am or so). Where I filled my water, ate some more, and left as soon as possible. Then about 100' down the road I stopped to clean out the mud from my sock which was messing with my big toe. Oh such stupid timing...

After that there was some nice downhill, then I ended up in a valley which was very warm and humid. This was probably as hot as I was all day, and it was at 9:30am.

On the climb out of the riverbed valley, it got cooler, but my hip was doing something funny, popping with each step that I walked (didn't have the issue running). I stopped to stretch a little, which didn't help, then found that I could adjust my gait slightly in order to avoid the popping. The popping didn't hurt but it also didn't seem like a good thing. The climb was nice, here's the view after crossing a gravel path that people were bicycling on (you can see them barely). It looked like a really nice place to ride. I do get jealous of California this time of year. 10:00am or so, 20 miles in.

I had a 10 minute stop at a NEW aid station, at 10:35-10:45 or so. At this point in addition to the eating and getting water (and watered down coke), I took my socks off, put some ointment and bandaids on my toes, which had been giving me problems (somewhat due to my mismanagement of them 4 weeks before at the NY marathon, another story which will not get documented). I also snugged my shoes slightly to try to keep some of the pressure off my toes (this ended up being an oops that I'm still paying for). Anyway 10-15 minutes after that aid station is this picture, mountains pretty. I like them. I start to climb them.

I go up what I thought was a really big hill (Strava tells me it was about 750'. OK not that big). At the top is this left turn. The one they mentioned at the start. It's a little tempting to just miss the turn and do a 50k. 11:15am, about 26 miles. I take the turn.

Side note: the course was very well marked, especially compared to the races in NJ I've done, but this is sort of the exception. They really should have a sign that says "50 mile runners: if you're not at mile 40 or so, turn around and make the turn!" Maybe missing turns and getting lost is a rite of passage for trail runners...

The climb continues! You can see the trail below... wait, shit, you can't. OK how about I "ENHANCE":

That's a person, I'm 79.3% sure. It could be Steve! I could easily check that in the days of Strava and GPS data but it's better not to know.

More climbing. 45 minutes and 2.5 miles later, nearing the top. This will be fun to go back down (we go out 7 miles or so and back another 7 miles to an aid station).

After that climb, there's still hills, some up, some down. I liked it better when the aid stations were closer together. You occasionally pass groups of tourists, which always feels odd, such differences in current experiences.

Still headed to the aid station, there's a view to the Northeast of some lake. I ponder whether it is artificial. 12:40pm, 31 miles, about to descend to the aid station.





Crow (or as I'm told, Raven), seen from the descent to the aid station.

Soon after, I arrive at the 33-ish mile aid station, and put on the best thing ever -- fresh socks. Long overdue. I try to eat some but it's getting more difficult. Sitting is nice. I arrive at around 12:50pm, leave around 1:05pm.

Out and back not so interesting, same thing in reverse. I see Edward before the big descent. Take a video of him running the other way. Share some ginger candy. He says Steve should be not too far behind him. We go our separate ways.





Take this video of running at the start of the big descent -- "Coming down the mountain" (around mile 38, 2:05pm)

I didn't mention it until now, but this whole race I've had songs from The Verve's "A Storm in Heaven" in my head. Butterfly, "The Sun, The Sun", Star Sail. I wondered if "The Sun, The Sea" is a reference to l'etranger. I'm not listening to anything but damn those songs just burn a hole in my ears. Maybe I get sick of them, or just my general starting-to-feel-awfulness projects to them (I still love that album and have happily listened to it since!).

I don't see Steve on the descent. I start to guess he missed the turn. D'oh.

The section of the climb that took 50 minutes to go up takes about 30 minutes to go down. Fun. My weak left calf starts feeling not great with every left step. Still fun though.

After that descent, some new territory. 2:30pm, around 39 miles. Eating ginger candies. So far between aid stations.

Nice trails though.

Ah another canyon, 3:15pm.

I think this was soon after the last one. The photographer was like "you're almost to the last aid station!" But those 3 or so miles took FOREVER. Boring flat jeep trail.

Get to the aid station, eat some stale Chipotle chips (they had water and gels and offered to make some soup but eh). Did some more toe management. This is the part of the race where I usually end up complaining and then after the fact regret the complaining. But anyway only like 4 miles to go, just one small climb and descent then it's done.

That climb went on way too long. The small climb is still 1000'. I talked to another person who was also complaining, though his excuse was that since September he had only run two 7 mile runs. pfft! and then he proceeded to go ahead and beat me by a solid 5-10 minutes. Ah, youth.

The climb kept going. More complaining.

Looking back.

My goal was to finish. Bonus to not finish in the dark. 4:30pm.

Damn, magic hour, 4:38pm. After taking this I enjoyed the descent, passed various hikers taking sunset pictures, we all agreed it was beautiful. Finished at something like 4:52pm. Took a few minutes before I could eat anything, had some quesadillas, chili, couldn't really stomach much. It was getting cold, so I took off. Saw in my text messages that Steve did in fact miss the turn (bummer).

Drove back to LA. Got back to the airbnb, ate some snacks, realized I didn't have enough of them, oops, took a shower, got chills, got in bed, felt really good under the covers. Whenever I'd get up to pee, massive shiver shiver chills.

7am Sunday, return to Tacos Delta. Glorious breakfast burrito made me whole. A few hours later, beer with salt and kebabs at Edward's. That was also amazing.

Thus concludes my story.

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I wrote and recorded (though not always in that order) a couple dozen tracks over the last year, and decided it was time to put many of them into an album.

It's now available on my archive, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, etc.

I look forward to continuing this journey, though I'm running out of old artwork to reuse for album covers.

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WATCH - "We Are The Cloud Hosts"

• the ability to publish content to the public
• the ability to publish content to trusted people
• the ability to subscribe to content creators

• the ability to publish content to the public
  
  Typically these require a web server to server the content. WATCH envisions a system where you could run software on multiple systems (your desktop, laptop when it's connected, cloud provider, etc), and it would automatically reproduce and sychronize your content. The protocol would allow connecting to a WATCH domain index in order to connect to the WATCH servers that contain data.
  
  
• the ability to publish content to trusted people
  
  When making WATCH content requests, the requesting user could be identified by digital signature to ensure access rights.
  
  
• the ability to subscribe to content creators
  
  AKA RSS. RSS feed generation and feed display would need to be integrated into this software.

• An instance of the WATCH server running as e.g. watch-index.mydomain.com. If you have your own domain you could run it on a cloud VM, presumably email providers would be able to provide this service for your accounts if it ever caught on, etc. If a user wants data from user@mydomain.com, it would connect there, and (assuming it had permission), would receive a list of WATCH content servers for that account (which could possibly include watch-index.mydomain.com).
• A few instances of WATCH servers running wherever. If you want your web presence to be very reliable you'd put them on VMs in a few AWS zones. If you don't care much you'd leave it running on your laptop or your desktop computer or whatever.

• Part of your WATCH account state would be a feed of content
• To access WATCH feeds (yours, others, a mix of both, whatever), you'd point a browser at any of your own WATCH servers or indexes
• For purely-public web pages, there could be a lot of opt-in shortcuts to this, having the index servers redirect links to content, things like that.
• The WATCH server could provide browser-based and/or filesystem-based interfaces for posting content.

• Code: git commits from 2020's REAPER v6.19+dev1231 to v6.43+dev1231 for which I am the claimed author (excluding merges): 2,264
• Code: cumulative changes (I'm not sure how to limit this to just my commits so it's global, including third-party SDKs and schwa): 1711 files changed, 132415 insertions(+), 121934 deletions(-)
  
  
• Running (from Strava): 1,366 miles, 44,850ft of climbing, 219 hours. Mileage about the same as 2019, though far less climbing (2019 was 66kft) and a half dozen fewer hours. I've had something or other bothering me nonstop all year but only rarely keeping me from running (at the moment my left glute/hamstring is a bit tight). My high water year for miles was 2017, which was 1,444 (with similar elevation of 44kft, covered in 216 hours). Ah youth.
  
  
• Bicycling: 3,148 miles, 92,560ft of climbing, 346 hours (I'm sure I forgot to record some rides but then there's also probably some GPS errors giving me bonus miles).
  
  These were mostly as transportation or leisure rides, I only rode the road bike 67 of those miles (sorry, buddy. I'll take you out soon). The brompton got about 200 miles (mostly in San Francisco), and the cargo bike even got 100 miles.
  
  The Casseroll single speed is my favorite (thanks, Alex!). This year I replaced its handlebars (Surly Open Bar + stem extender, and a cupholder), seat, front tire, bottom bracket, freewheel (after the old one failed in February, though it was fixed gear 3:1 for a good 6 months before going back to 12:5 freewheel), and twice (March and December) its chain. The brompton also got a new chain.
  
  
• Music played with others: 62 sessions, producing about 87 hours of (very-loosely) edited music. The pandemic made this difficult. Singing with a mask on has its own challenges.
• Music recorded alone: I did about 20 super8 sessions, producing about 9.5 hours of music/youtube videos. Also I recorded 37 doodles, about 2 hours of music.
  
  
• It is probably for the best that I don't have many consumption numbers, such as paper products, disposable masks worn, etc.

• Ignore the thread QoS APIs, for realtime audio they're apparently not applicable (and do not address these issues). This was the biggest timesink for me -- I spend a ton of time going "why doesn't this QoS setting do anything?" Also Xcode has a CPU meter and for each thread it says "QoS unavailable"... so confusing.
  
  
• If a normal thread yields via usleep() or pthread_cond_timedwait() for more than a few hundred microseconds, it'll likely end up running on an efficiency core when it resumes (and it takes an eternity in terms of audio blocks to get bumped back to a performance core, by which there's been an underrun and the thread probably will go back to sleep anyway). Reducing all sleeps/waits to at most a few hundred microseconds is a way to avoid that fate (though Apple recommends against spinning, likely for good reason). It's not ideal, but you can effectively pin normal threads to performance cores using this method.
  
  
• Porting Your Audio Code to Apple Silicon was the most helpful guide (I wish I had seen the link at the bottom of one of the other less-helpful guides sooner! so much time wasted...), though it assumes some knowledge which doesn't seem to be linked in the document:
  
  You want to get your realtime threads in the same thread workgroup as the CoreAudio device's (via kAudioDevicePropertyIOThreadOSWorkgroup), and to do that you first have to make your threads realtime threads using thread_policy_set(THREAD_TIME_CONSTRAINT_POLICY) (side note: we probably should have been doing this already, doh), ideally with the similar parameters that the coreaudio thread uses, which seems to be a period and constraint of ((1000000000.0 * blocksize * mach_timebase_info().denom) / (mach_timebase_info().numer * srate), and a computation of half that. If you don't set this policy, it will fail adding your thread to the workgroup (EINVAL in that case means "thread is not realtime" and not "workgroup is canceled" per the docs). Once you do that, you do effectively get your threads locked to performance cores, and can start breathing again.

The sensation of paddling across the river on a warm October night,
lit by the lights of the city reflected back from the clouds, Jupiter
(or was it Saturn?) poking through, hypnotized by the smooth but
significant swells of the rising tide that (counterintuitively) tries
to send us to the harbor and out to the sea, the rhythms of the
neighboring boats paddling, rising and falling, things that probably
could be captured with technology but instead will be stored in wet
memory, dreamed about on the cold days to follow.

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* 1 (beyond our SVN commits and all the way back to our VSS commits, all of which have thankfully been imported into git)
* 2 (and it will be fixed in REAPER 6.26, we're calling the non-fixed mode "Broken Capacitor" because that felt about right)
* 3 (or if you're clever and care about speed, log2(x)*ln(2) because ln(X) = logX(X)/logX(e) and logX(X)=1, but now my head hurts from talking about logarithms)
* 4 I haven't fully tested but I think it was working correctly on Jesusonic/linux, and when porting the EEL2 code to MSVC I didn't correctly convert it.

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