Gran Fondo New York brings Italian cycling culture to the world’s greatest city on May 19, 2013. Join thousands of cyclists on a challenging 110-mile Gran Fondo New York course from New York City to Bear Mountain and back in an experience fit for a pro and open to anyone who loves to ride.

The Couse:

Gran Fondo New York starts with a bang on the world’s most travelled bridge, George Washington Bridge, exclusively closed for you. Enjoy magnificent views of Manhattan during this once in a lifetime car free stint. Following Hudson upstream on rural roads and through scenic towns, riders will compete against each other and themselves on a timed climbs which will count towards the King and Queen of Mountain competition. The featured climb of the event and Cima Coppi (highest point of the ride) is the nearly four mile climb up to Bear Mountain in Harriman State Park. After descending, the course will wind its way back, hitting two more timed climbs before finishing in Weehawken with stunning NYC views.

The total ride distance is 110miles/177k and the elevation gain is 8,500ft/2,800m.

A few pics and videos from the ride:

Subway in the morning – packed with bikes.

On the starting line

Rolling north

Top of Bear Mountain!

Finished!

The Anatomy of an Effective Homepage.

Overall I was satisfied with my time – did a PR time of 1:34:42, and it felt great.

My GPS Track:

Fueled Team!

Time on my Garmin Forerunner 310XT

Finished!

Walking out to the beach

Big lunch after the run..

Pics and video clips:

Interesting to see such a lofty, concepty project enter the actual building stage. However, I think the real trick will be to actually correctly cultivate the plants when the building is completed. In my experience working with Friend of the Highline on the NYC Highline project, I noticed that the final element that was the hardest to fully realize was getting the mix of plants just right to fulfill the architects vision, and to actually work in a sustainable manner.

The Worlds First Vertical Forest Is Growing Sky High | The Creators Project.

Jinha Lee, from the Tangible Media Group of the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with Rehmi Post, has been playing with the idea of manipulating real floating objects in 3-D space to create a truly tactile user interface. His prototype is called the ZeroN, and it will drop your jaw when you see it working for the first (and second and third) time.

MIT Creates Amazing UI From Levitating Orbs | Co.Design: business + innovation + design.

Check out the video…

ZeroN – Levitated Interaction Element from Jinha Lee on Vimeo.

Thanks to colleague Diana Kole for the link!

We’re answering those questions with Story of Send, a new site that gives you a behind-the-scenes look into how all that virtual information makes its journey through the real world—from your Internet service provider to our data centers and beyond. Along the way, you’ll discover everything from where we filter for spam and scan for viruses to how we’re minimizing our impact on the environment through energy efficiency and renewable power.

The Story of Send.

Tough Mudder events are hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. With the most innovative courses, half a million inspiring participants, and more than $2 million dollars raised for the Wounded Warrior Project, Tough Mudder is the premier adventure challenge series in the world.

A few pics from the day, expertly shot by Paul Greenwood and Rachel Pennycuick, and edited by me. SLIDESHOW

Pre-mud, we were all squeaky clean and fresh. Gal brought the Fort Kickass underwear from last summer’s PEX Festival for us to wear for “team unity and kicking ass”.

After being sick for the entire previous week, it felt great to get the blood flowing!

Teamwork was essential for many of the obstacles.

That’s a pan of muddy water, with ELECTRIC FENCE WIRES dangling down. Yes they were on, yes they shocked, YES it hurt! A total psych out.

Rings, one of the many water hazards we had to swing ourselves over. Kevin was a pro.

The final obstacle was simply a mass of shocking electric fence wires, which we had to run through while stepping in pools of water. Yeah.

We were pumped and muddy at the end!

FLickr slideshow embed…

Previously, I went to the Tough Mudder in November 2011 and shot pictures of my friends running it: Shooting the 2011 Tri State Tough Mudder

So you’re an analyst. This means three things. One, your family and friends have no idea what you do at work. Two, no matter how “cool” you were/are, you geek out over things like updated program releases. Three, you already do or will be seriously impressed by how much you learn and the people you work with. Now that I’ve made some generalizations, let’s do what an analyst does best and take a more granular approach.

Portrait of the Young Grad as an Analyst..

This rings true for my current work setup. At my current job, I use my own Macbook Air, my own phone and Skype account, and more or less have complete control over my setup. My employer generally picks up any incedental charges – account credit, etc. I love working this way, because I have things setup just the way I want them. On the flip side, the companys overhead is a lot lower, at the slight cost of trusting their employees with having more personal access to more data. And speaking of data – since our file server is currently Dropbox, our mail, calendaring, and document creation handled by Google Apps, and our billing handled online, there’s actually no local data kept at the office – so we don’t need to have any specially configured hardware to access our company “in the cloud” – just an internet connection.

Here’s the infographic:

Three in four companies support BYOD schemes [infographic] | TabTimes.

GPS Track of the ride:

Pics:
Starting out in central park…

Pit stop for coffee in New Jersey, right next to the George Washington Bridge

Absolutely required pie stop in Nyack

Final climb to the top

Top of Bear Mountain!

Our biking group at the top of Bear Mountain

Cool drinks after a great ride

Clips: