The goal of this blog post is to document the steps needed to install and run Rakudo Perl, which is a "useful and usable distribution" of Perl 6

The #perl6 IRC channel on freenode has been very active the few times I popped in with questions and I was able to get them answered very quickly. Larry Wall announced that he wants to release Perl 6 by Christmas 2015 ( http://http://blogs.perl.org/users/shadowcat_mdk/2015/02/fosdem-2015-its-christmas.html ) and at this point it seems like the Perl 6 community is moving along on its merry way towards that goal.  The Perl 6 design documents are interesting ( http://design.perl6.org/ ), especially the Apocolypse docs which talk about the various aspects compared to Perl 5 and nice tidbits such as "Larry's First Law of Language Redesign."

Perl 6 even has its own logo:

Ubuntu and Debian already contain Perl 6 in their repositories. The 'rakudo' package description on Ubuntu 14.04 is "Perl 6 implementation on top of Parrot virtual machine".  I did not test this but it should be easily installable via:

I usually do at least 1 or 2 runs per week in the morning before the sun comes up. This winter has been on the cold side so I bought a set of SKINS A200 compression tights and shorts (combo pack) from The Clymb at steep discount. As I was taking a picture of the garments, my wife commented "nobody wants to read about your underwear." I generally agree with this statement. However, people *might* wish to read about my experiences with the A200 compression tights.



David Laney advises "wear pants" if the temps are under 50 degrees (http://davidlaneyrunning.com/tag/elite-marathon/) and I tend to follow this advice unless I am racing.

And some days are just meant for purple shorts and a sock monkey hat:



The photo above shows the "shorts over tights" mode of attire, which is either completely appropriate or a fashion faux pas, depending on whom you ask. When making this decision for yourself you should be aware that compression tights are definitely more revealing than standard running tights. Running tights (the kind that tend to come with a pocket in the back for gels and zippers at the bottom by the feet openings) tend to be a little thicker and not quite as revealing in the crotch area. The first time my wife noticed me in my compression tights she laughed and then asked "Did you wear those in public?"

Yes. Yes, I did. But I did try to research the "proper" way to wear them first. Apparently men in tights are offensive to some people. So basically, just dress however you feel comfortable.



Now, to cover the specifics of the A200 Compression tights I will quote from my own training log (a 9 mile run):

I found two useful websites the other day while cleaning up some code that deals with various HTTP responses and status codes.

The first web site is HTTP Status Codes, which as you might be able to guess provides documentation about the various HTTP status codes:

http://httpstatus.es/

Screenshots:






The second site is the HTTP Client Testing Service, or httpbin. The httpbin site provides endpoints that return all of the various HTTP status codes as well as particular content type responses.

http://httpbin.org/

Screenshots:





Both websites have an accompanying github repository (you can find links on the sites themselves) if you would like to contribute or see the source code.

I have been using dailymile as my fitness training log since 2010. I have now logged over 1500 entries and 6600 miles total. I don't want to lose that information. I would like to be able to do more advanced anlalytics on my personal fitness data than the dailymile web app provides.

The built-in dailymile.com export feature is abysmal. The file generated includes only a small number of fields (date, activity_type, distance, time, felt, elevation_gain).  Seriously, they include elevation gain but do not include the name of the workout or the description?

Because of these limitations, I contacted dailymile support. The response was something along the lines of "you could always write your own tool using the API." So I did.

Announcing v1.1 of my dailymile export tool. The current version is written in Python.  The software archive can be downloaded from:

https://github.com/danstoner/dailymile_export/releases

The github repo for the project is located:

https://github.com/danstoner/dailymile_export

Here is the basic usage info:

$ python dailymile_export_to_tsv.py -h
usage: dailymile_export_to_tsv.py [-h] [-d] [-g] username

Script to download entries from the dailymile API for a particular user into a
tab-delimited file.

positional arguments:
  username     The dailymile.com username of the account to export.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help   show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug  Enable debug level logging.
  -g, --gear   Retrieve gear data also.

 

Here is some sample output of the running script and the generated output file:

 

Olympic silver medalist Leo Manzano is sponsored by maximalist cushion shoe maker Hoka One One. Leo wore some pretty slick looking racing flats or spikes for the 2015 Wanamaker Mile at the Millrose Games:



I wonder if Hoka will be releasing these for sale anytime soon and how they rationalize these kinds of racing shoes against their core philosophy.

Leo finished the mile in 3:56.05 which unfortunately didn't put him into contention for the win. Holy smokes it was a good race, though, with a stacked field including Centrowitz, Willis, Casey, Lagat, Jager, Lalang, Cheserek, ...

Full video:

http://www.usatf.tv/gprofile.php?mgro..._id=133688


edit: There are better photos of the spikes on the Hoka One One Facebook page...
https://www.facebook.com/HOKAONEONE/p...310264493/

Ever since New Balance discontinued the Minimus Trail MT00, and even though I stocked up on a couple of extra pairs, I have been on the lookout for a new ultra lightweight trail shoe that is currently in production.

A few weeks ago I bought a pair of inov-8 Trailroc 235 shoes to fill the role of "robust trail shoe" which I might use in my next Ultramarathon. The 235 is such a great shoe that I thought I would take a look at the other shoes in the Trailroc line. I was psyched when I discovered an even lighter-weight shoe, the Trailroc 150. I am a big fan of the inov-8 Bare-X Lite 150 which I use for my 5k road racing shoe, so I had hopes that the Trailroc 150 would be great, too.

The black shoe pictured below is the Trailroc 235. The florescent yellow shoe is the Trailroc 150 (I really like the bright flashy color scheme!). Both shoes are from the "Zero" category of inov-8 shoes which means there is no difference between the height of the forefoot and the height of the heel. Both shoes are made on the inov-8 "standard" last which is supposed to provide more room in the toebox than inov-8's performance last. I only wear zero drop shoes with a wide toebox, so the Trailroc 150 should have been a good option for me.



There are a number of reviews and videos on the web that are mostly positive (and helped me decide to order the Trailroc 150 in the first place). Unfortunately, the Trailroc 150 has a number of issues so I didn't take a chance running in them before returning them.

The outsoles of the 235 and 150 are pretty much identical in lug pattern (they seem to be made from the same mold). The lugs are not huge but fairly aggressive. You can see a slight difference in the outsole as it wraps up around the outer edge. The 235 has a 6mm footbed and the plane of the footbed surface is pretty much even with the top of the outsole edge. The 150 has no footbed and the plane of the footbed surface sits down inside the "valley" created by the outsole wrapping up around the edge. This minor difference is huge for the fit of the shoe. In the 235, my pinky toes have a lot more room since they can push out into the flexible upper material. In the 150, my toes were trapped in the narrow canyon and could not splay properly.



When I compared the 235 and 150 side-by-side (both the same size), the 150 seems to be just a bit narrower as you can see here: