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Ted.com, My Inspirational and Educational Addiction

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This past weekend, I happened upon Ted.com, the site for the Technology, Entertainment and Design community. With a moniker of Ideas Worth Sharing, and people like Al Gore, Bill Gates, Isabel Allende, Brian Greene, David Kelley, among many others, I knew I was on to something good. A day later, it has become an addiction I will have to moderate myself so as not to spend all my time on it, and it will be something I will keep in my life as long as it and I exist.

Among the things TED.com contains are 378 videos (at time of posting) of talks and interviews with people who are inspiring, knowledgeable and/or interesting. Each is about 20 minutes, some with content markers along the bottom to help the viewer find the segment desired. The site has all the videos, but you can see some of my favourite in the bar at right in my Vodpod list.

The speakers in the videos are there to share, wow and open your mind, heart and soul. Listening to just a few, I realized this was the very state of existence I would maintain if I could 24/7. I love to learn and think, especially think about things and/or in ways that expand the limits of my thinking and imagination, in enlightenment of being inspired. I speak of enlightenment here in the purest sense of the word as in realizing something new that has value, not necessarily the religious enlightenment. My enlightenment could be about some very dark matters, though with insight it will be useful to shed a solution for positive change. To see the light in darkness is far more enlightening than to see it in light already existing because you see far more new things in the former situation.

Furthermore, TED.com has a vibrant free membership community where people can rate the talks on a variety of criteria, like inspiring, informative, jaw-dropping, etc. You can join forums, discuss, get notice of new videos, and so on as well. The synergy and inspiration I feel from watching the video and being part of the community is amazing. But be forewarned, the membership profile is probably the most thought provoking one you’ll ever have to fill out! They ask you some pretty neat things!

I also realized I could learn more than just what the TED speakers share from how I learned about TED. I heard of TED via a story of Bill Gates talking about his foundation’s fight against malaria, proceeding to release mosquitoes into a large lecture hall (Feb 4). Bill stated “not only poor people should have to experience this”, although his mosquitoes were malaria free. Funny, bugs follows the Microsoft Windows founder everywhere.

Bill has done similar talks before. Maybe not exactly the same talk, but it was not the first time he has talked about malaria to a large group, that’s for sure. Then, in a conference full of brilliant speakers, he ups the ante and becomes the story that gets out the farthest among all the ones at the conference. And he did it with a jar of mosquitoes. That was just brilliance. He didn’t get to where he is and isn’t who he is for nothing, you know!

Better yet, the video was mostly about Bill talking about what makes a great teacher. Most of us will definitely learn something from that! Now if only the many school systems around the country could and act upon it.

Now, how am I going to ingest Ted.com’s 378 videos, with more coming? That’s a lot of time! And even more brain and soul power! Inspiration and knowledge are like drugs for me. I can only handle so much of it at once, even though I love it. I then need time to absorb it and recover from it.

[ I should warn you that drug analogy is lie-kely a lie because I have never taken a drug in my life, and I barely drink an average of a glass of wine every 10 years. I don’t really know what I’m talking about but I feel I can imagine it accurately. ]

Moderation is going to be the key to ingest those videos. That solves the absorption problem, but what about time and my conscience? I can’t bear to ingest media without multitasking. Well, nobody said you had to really watch the videos. Sure, watching helps a little bit, but all you really need to do is listen. That’s all you need to be inspired, which means I could multi-task to do things like, say, cook? Yes, I need to cook more in my life. What a partnership this is going to be!

I can also download the talk in MP3s, which means I can also listen to them while I run. I already listen to audio books while I run, but for the most part, they won’t compare to this! As if running generally weren’t enlightening enough for me considering how many bright ideas I get during my runs, this will be unbelievable!

Of all the sites I have discovered over the years, I can honestly say few have gotten me as excited as Ted.com, includes porn sites if you’ll pardon me for an inappropriate and inaccurate joke. 🙂

Enjoy! I mean Ted.com, not the porn sites!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 7.7

Facebook Friends Diversity Tagging Challenge

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How diverse are your friends in terms of geographical origin, and culture with a lot of that? How does that compare to your friends’ friend diversity.

Find out by tagging your friends on these Facebook friends diversity tagging challenges.

  • The first one is of Asian countries.
  • The second is of European countries by flags.
  • The third is of European countries by coat of arms, for the smarty pants.
  • The fourth is for Canadians counting friends from various provinces and territories.
  • The fifth is for Canadians counting friends living in various provinces and territories.

Ideally, I know I’d have memes with more than just “regional” representation for diversity, but it’s hard to tag and make out over 150 countries on a meme, you know. It’s also hard to make one for the 50 US states. Other regions, meanwhile, just don’t have enough. But you can probably count on the fact that you probably have lots of friends either like you and/or like each other so in a way, these memes are not bad for design. Most Europeans, for example, probably have lots of European friends to really give the meme an honest effort. I have lots of Canadian friends like my fellow Canadian friends to give the meme a good go at filling it all out. Anyway, that’s what I have. I apologize if there isn’t one that suits you.

Here’s how to get these graphics for your tagging fun:

  • Click on a picture below to get it at full size.
  • Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
  • Upload it to your profile.
  • Tag your friends!

Please click here for a complete list of over 100 Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.

Enjoy!

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Free Excel Running Log

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There is an advanced and updated version of this log now (please click here to go to it).

If your friend had told you about this log, please tell them of the update in case they had not downloaded the 2011 update.

I keep this post up for those who had used this and found it sufficient for their needs and don’t want to deal with changes. Thank you.

This is an Excel spreadsheet running log I created, used and have improved for 10 years, which I would like to share with you.

Blank Run Log, by Minh Tan (1.5MB Excel file, updated Sep 16 2009)

I think it is fairly easy to learn and use, after 10 years of finessing out anything that still really annoys me. Instructions are included and cells you should not touch are locked to help avoid unintentional formula deletions and make it more user-friendly. It handles two runs per day and four extra types of workouts, plus up to 10 interval spaces for any workout so unless you train more than that (and I do know people that do!), this should suffice.

This spreadsheet does not have interfaces with new GPS and Heart Rate Monitors. I’m still training old skool on a 1998 Polar HRM.

I only regret to say I will not be providing technical support for this, unless you know me and can talk to me about it directly. I am sharing it out of good will and would like to minimize efforts beyond that. However, I welcome all feedback and suggestions. If I can do anything about it, I will to upgrade the file. That is why the date is beside the download. Otherwise, you can customize it further for yourself by adding your own worksheets and features within the file to suit your needs.

If you like it or want to show this post to your friends, you can either email the link or click on one of the social bookmarking tools in the bar below (for my less Net savvy friends). Thank you.

More about the Excel Running Log

The spreadsheet log requests a fair bit of data, of which you can decide how much or how little you want to enter. That, will in turn influence how much the log will be able to feed back to you about your training. It’s only as good as you are at keeping your own data, basically.

Detailed instructions are supplied on the worksheet you open the downloaded file to, but in the future, it should open to whatever page you closed and saved the file on. Instructions are probably only needed for your set-up and first few time you use it. It should become routine fairly quickly once you get the gist of it.

Among the data the log requests are time, distance (miles or km and you can change it for each entry), shoes worn to monitor your shoe mileage, etc. With some of this data, it does calculations, like pace given time and distance. With other data, it just gives you space to keep like comments, temperature (useful if you keep track of what you wore in your comments, for example), non-running workouts, your intervals that are not automatically comparable from time to time since intervals and workouts may change, and so on. An example of a filled out week is below (Pic #1).

Please use “k” for kilometre or “m” for miles under column E of “Distance”, to tell the spreadsheet what unit your number entered was in for the distance ran”.

Beyond the workout data and calculations, it also provides a summary chart with totals and averages of all sorts (Pic #2).

There are also graphic displays of this information for the visual types, as well as a more integrated look at your training (Pics #3 – #7).

Is that enough information for you? 🙂

I hope you enjoy it. All feedback are welcomed as if I can do anything about it, I will and update the file here accordingly. I hope you will find this of value. Thank you!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 6.8