My summer trail running training has been going well, my most recent race was the Holy Cow Trail Stampede 10k where I finished with a PR time of 46:55! My next planned race is on September 5th, 11.5 miles up Bergen Peak in Evergreen which ought to be pretty grueling given there is 1,750 ft. of elevation gain.
The ultimate goal for the summer is the Pony Express 15 mile race in Woodland Park, CO on September 20th. However, I just got an update on another series of runs near Denver for the fall that look pretty interesting:
The Fall Front Range Trails Series: three great trails, Sept – Nov, all in the front range.
- Sept 20, 6th Golden Gate Canyon Trail 1/2-Marathon. 12.7mi with 2,500′ of climbing. As good as any course in the state, this course will challenge your body and stimulate your senses. Held between 8,400′ – 9,500′, run on everything from steep and rocky, to smooth and fast, through alpine meadows, and pine and golden aspen forests (great fall colors), with gorgeous views of the continental divide. Golden Gate Canyon State Park, 15mi W of Golden.
- Oct 18, Buffalo Creek Trail Run. 7.5mi with ~1,300′ of climbing. Come discover why many mtn bikers consider these the best trails in the front range. Starting along the S Platte river, at 6,800′, run on forested dirt trails, on a mix of flat, steep and rolling terrain. With pretty good footing, you can really fly on the downhills (I’ve hit sub-4:00 pace on one section). Pine Valley Open Space Park, Pine, 25mi SW of Morrison.
- Nov 21, Bear Creek 10-Spot. 10mi. Just because it’s almost winter, doesn’t mean that you have to quit racing trails. A two loop course, mostly on single and double track, over a series of short (30 sec – 3 min), and sometimes sometimes steep, climbs and descents. There may be a water crossing or two. Bear Creek Lake Park, Morrison.
Registration and more details at http://www.runuphillracing.com
Sounds like a great way to keep my training up going into the fall!
Posted in Running.
Tagged with races, Running, trail running.
By Brian
– August 26, 2009
During some downtime at the office I decided to take on an iPhone development project to keep my coding skills fresh. So far the application has been coming along nicely and recently I had to write some code that I thought could help others.
What I needed to do seemed simple, take an image captured from the iPhone camera (or photo gallery) and create a square thumbnail from the image (similar to what you see in the photo browser). The trick is I didn’t want the thumbnail to be skewed so cropping was required. All of the examples I found either focused on cropping only or resizing but I couldn’t find any that did both.
A disclaimer before I post the code, I’m still relatively new to Objective-C so I’m hoping as much to help others as to get some feedback on how I could improve this code. Here is the code which takes a UIImage and crops it to a square then re-sizes it to 64×64 pixels:
+ (UIImage *)generatePhotoThumbnail:(UIImage *)image {
// Create a thumbnail version of the image for the event object.
CGSize size = image.size;
CGSize croppedSize;
CGFloat ratio = 64.0;
CGFloat offsetX = 0.0;
CGFloat offsetY = 0.0;
// check the size of the image, we want to make it
// a square with sides the size of the smallest dimension
if (size.width > size.height) {
offsetX = (size.height - size.width) / 2;
croppedSize = CGSizeMake(size.height, size.height);
} else {
offsetY = (size.width - size.height) / 2;
croppedSize = CGSizeMake(size.width, size.width);
}
// Crop the image before resize
CGRect clippedRect = CGRectMake(offsetX * -1, offsetY * -1, croppedSize.width, croppedSize.height);
CGImageRef imageRef = CGImageCreateWithImageInRect([image CGImage], clippedRect);
// Done cropping
// Resize the image
CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, ratio, ratio);
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(rect.size);
[[UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef] drawInRect:rect];
UIImage *thumbnail = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
// Done Resizing
return thumbnail;
}
I’ve also got a gist of the code here. Any comments or suggestions are welcome!
Posted in iPhone.
Tagged with cocoa, iPhone, objective-c, xcode.
By Brian
– August 3, 2009
This weekend I did my second trail race of the summer, the La Sportiva Eldora Trail 10k. The course was at the Eldora Mountain Resort along the Nordic Center trails. It was pretty muddy in parts but overall a fun and technical course. I ran along with a colleague from Local Matters (@nicobrx), who snapped a pic of me crossing the finish. There wasn’t as big of an elevation gain as the Evergreen Mountain Run but much steeper descents than I had run on before (+489ft, -551ft).
My time was 55:43 which is decent but I know if I hadn’t played in my rec. league hockey game the night before I’d have done much better. Next race is the Holy Cow Trail Stampede in Westminster which ought to be a fast one, on the trail (more of a path) where I did most of the training for the Marathon.
Posted in Running.
By Brian
– August 2, 2009
This morning I completed my first trail race of the summer, the Evergreen Mountain Trail Race (I had planned on one earlier but decided to take more time to train). It was a 10 mile run around the Alderfer – Three Sisters Park and to the top of Evergreen Mountain in Evergreen, CO. The course itself was rather tricky as the park has a lot of connecting trails, thankfully I had pre-run the first half of the race a few weeks ago so I didn’t get lost.
The thing that made this race one of the most difficult for me (short of the marathon) was the elevation gain of over 1200 feet. You can see the elevation profile here:
My final time was 1 hour 37 min, not bad considering the terrain. I’ll have to do some more hill training for the next trail race which is August 1st, the LaSportiva Eldora Trail 10k.
Posted in Running.
By Brian
– July 18, 2009
I came across a series of articles today on the Product Strategy Network discussing what it takes to succeed in a Product Management role. They list a number of factors including several that stood out for me over the past few months in a PM role at Local Matters:
Prioritize and adapt to change because you are doing something different every day.- Think big picture instead of listening to whoever screams the loudest or drops by your office the most.
- Articulate Business Outcomes instead of Development Outcomes of your Product.
- Help inform engineering instead of just dropping your requirements document on their desk and coming back at the end of the iteration. “Engineers want to build products that succeed, that sell, that delight customers.”
- Know your customers so that you can represent them to engineering, design, QA, etc.
- Engage the customer in design and development. More than just asking them to communicate problems or needs, PMs should bring customers closer to the product by having them write a spec or alpha / beta test the product.
- Separate tactical and strategic tasks. With our more recent adoption of Scrum methodologies I am finding it is very easy to get wrapped up in the tactical tasks of being a Product Owner and neglect strategic planning work such as creating roadmaps or longer term vision. This is still a subject of much debate in PM circles but for me it starts with having an effective Scrum Master to make sure the team doesn’t get bogged down with process minutia (which is bound to happen especially in an organization implementing Agile for the first time).
Finally, the one I like the most: Stop and Smell the Roses. I’ve noticed that it is easy to get wrapped up in one or many aspects of Product Management and neglect important things like market research, learning your product, customer feedback or even just spending some time thinking.
Posted in Product.
Tagged with agile, product management, strategy.
By Brian
– June 10, 2009
I came across this article on Fast Company today titled ‘Six Ways to Avoid Landing in the Product Failure Bin‘. I particularly liked it since we are testing some new product concepts at the moment and trying to balance those efforts with developing a new product platform while maintaining our ‘cash cow’ product. This quote rang true for me:
Find ways to get around company politics, skewer sacred cows, and re-invent tired protocols, and your solutions will have a better chance of connecting.
He wraps it up with his last tip which is to get your product out there, ie: use Facebook as your focus group:
Find out what the tribe or community of people who are invested and aligned around the issue honestly think and you will have an early understanding if your product is headed for success…or pointed toward the dreaded failure bin.
I’m happy to read this as it validates the direction I’ve been trying to drive our new product development process lately.
Posted in Product.
Tagged with npd, product management, sacred cow.
By Brian
– May 29, 2009
So after doing the Bolder Boulder 10k last weekend I have the running bug again. I had a goal last summer to run a few trail races so I put together this list of all of the trail races I could find near Denver this summer (and I threw in a couple of Triathlons for good measure):
- June 6th – Mount Falcon Trail Race – Evergreen, CO – 9.1 mi
- July 11th – Tri the Creek Sprint Triathlon – Denver, CO – Sprint Tri
- July 18th – Evergreen Mountain Race – Evergreen, CO – 11.5 mi
- August 1st – La Sportiva Eldora Trail 10k – Eldora, CO – 10k
- August 8th – Georgetown to Idaho Springs – Georgetown, CO – Half Marathon
- August 15th – Holy Cow Trail Stampede 10k – Westminster, CO – 10k
- August 16th – Great Colorado Triathlon – Evergreen, CO – Olympic Tri
- September 5th – Bergen Peak Race – Evergreen, CO – 11.5 mi
- September 13th – Rattlesnake Ramble – Boulder, CO – 4.25 mi
- September 20th – Pony Express Trail Run – Woodland Park, CO – 15 mi
I am going to try and do as many of these as I can, since races always give me more motivation to actually train. Drop me a line if you’d like to join me for one or more of these, I could always use a training partner!
Posted in Running.
Tagged with races, Running.
By Brian
– May 28, 2009
So it seems appropriate to start off this new blog with a look back at where I’ve been and a look forward to where I’m headed. I recently graduated (May 2009) from the University of Colorado at Boulder – Leeds School of Business with my MBA and have had several people approach me wondering what led me to the decision and would I do it over again. My undergrad degree was in Computer Science from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and I had been working for about five years doing software development, mostly front end web development with a bit of Java thrown in from time to time before I decided to go back to school. The decision came about after a series of setbacks in work and my life that forced me to think hard about what my next steps would be and where I wanted my career to go. Around this time I started listening one of the Tony Robbins programs, something I wouldn’t normally do but it seemed right at the time and helped me to dig into my motivations and goals. Through this I identified three goals that I wanted to complete over the next year (June 2005):
Finish a Marathon in under 4 hours – I ran the Twin Cities Marathon in the Fall of 2005 and finished with a time of 3 hours, 54 minutes.- Read one Book a Month – I admittedly didn’t complete this goal fully but it did reignite my passion for reading and I still have a large backlog of books I am making my way through.
- Get my Masters of Business Administration – I worked over the subsequent year on taking the GMAT and applying to MBA programs and was accepted to the Leeds school in June 2006.
There were several reasons I chose to pursue an MBA as opposed to a Computer Science Masters degree, it started with an assessment I took on Career Leader (which I still refer to on occasion) and from a realization that I wasn’t truly happy just writing code and felt I had more to offer beyond my career in Software Engineering. Along with that I never could shake the incredible entrepreneurial feeling I got starting an event promotions business (Zoop Productions) with some classmates during college and I wanted to get a better sense for what it takes to run a business full time.
I began the Evening MBA program at Leeds in the Fall of 2006 while I was working at iFactor Consulting as an Applictions Architect (developing products intended for power companies using the Smallworld GIS). My expectations going into it were to broaden my business knowledge particularly around Marketing and Entrepreneurship and get a better understanding for what it takes to lead a software product from inception to launch. I also though that in order to be taken seriously outside of software development, I needed to show that this was a career change I was committed to.
The CU Leeds Evening MBA program I chose is a three year degree which had me taking two three-hour classes a week during the fall, spring and summer semesters (no breaks!). Of the electives I took during the program two of them stood out, specifically New Product Development and Start-up Execution. It happens that these were the last two classes I took but I get the feeling I’ll be referring to them many times in the years to come.
New Product Development was taught by Page Moreau and focused on how a company (or anyone for that matter) can go from concept to product launch by setting measurable toll gates in order to minimize ‘group think’ and systematically test for viable products. I feel like this user-focused process is one too few companies really embrace and instead they wind up developing products either solely based on what they think they can sell to existing customers or based on an internal idea which may or may not be a viable foundation for a product.
Frank Moyes taught my Start-Up Execution course which was a detailed look not at testing a concept or writing a business plan but what tactical steps one needs to take in order to start a business. This ranged from formation of the business to raising capital, hiring employees and many steps in between. Another part of the course I really enjoyed was the segment on selling which is something I didn’t really consider a strength of mine but I came to the realization that whether you are starting a new business or building a product you are constantly selling. Both of these courses wrapped up my prior entrepreneurship and marketing experiences with applicable frameworks and tools I will take with me in the future.
In the end although I can’t predict whether the cost and the time will fully justify themselves, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now as a Web Producer at Local Matters without the skills and confidence I gained through the MBA program. Like one of the speakers said during our commencement, “Getting this degree is only the first step. What will really set you apart in the years ahead is whether or not you use it as a foundation for expanding your knowledge and driving change”.
Posted in Personal.
By Brian
– May 24, 2009
I decided to start over on my blog, same domain but a blank slate. Welcome and keep an eye out for some new posts soon!
Posted in Personal.
By Brian
– May 16, 2009
