To anyone who’s wondering, I am still sadly not back in the studio yet. I’m continuing to take the spring off so far and catch up on this “life” thing that I hear is out there for people who aren’t quite so workaholic as I am. But, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been up to anything, so, for those curious, here’s the score right now:

Biking

I’ve now got about 342 miles in on the new bike, according to my tracking app. Commuted 14 of the past 16 commutes (the two I missed were because of rain and waiting on my rain gear to arrive, which it now has.) In general, I think the roads seem to be a bit bike-friendlier so far this year than last year. Fewer instances of getting yelled at to get off the road. I think it’s probably the increased presence of bike lanes. While most of them are still horribly ill-conceived, disappearing at regular intervals and dumping bikes back into the lane just in time for most intersections, they do at least provide a mental space where drivers recognize bikes as “belonging,” while simultaneously getting them used to bikes being in the lane at random intervals. So, it could be worse. Same-lane passing, however, is still a problem here in the Circle City. But, I suspect it always will be.

Entertainment

Currently, I’m (finally) reading Neil Gaiman’s legendary American Gods. The Kindle says I’m only 39% done, so, I’ll reserve any serious comments on it until I’m done, but so far it has a lot in it that’s reminiscent of–though not copying–Vonnegut and Murakami. Not exactly hurting my feelings. Also, I suspect I’m going to have a lot of reading on mythology to do afterwards to fully wrap my head around it, but I’ve resolved to not do any until afterwards, so I can experience the book with the same general lack of knowledge of these characters as the text seems to expect.

Meanwhile, I’ve finished rewatching the anime Black Lagoon, based on the manga of the same title, and am now watching the more recent OVA continuation of it. Despite its heavy reliance on the “chicks with guns” genre and the scantily-clad and profane Revy for marketing, I continue to be really pleased with how down-to-earth a lot of the plots end up being, despite the expected anime flourishes. I’m still especially fascinated with the weird not-quite-noir not-quite-existential philosophical musings it dips into while executing it’s rather Tarantino/pulp-inspired stories. If you’ve not watched it yourself, I’d recommend it pretty highly. I’ve seen the original run in both subbed and dubbed version, and honestly, the dubbed is pretty stellar, if the language-barrier is usually a negative for you.

I will likely add the manga to my reading after I finish the OVA.

Consulting

What? You think maybe I’d just take the summer off of my infamous thousand projects completely? Pish. I can’t say much about my miscellaneous projects right now until they get a bit more complete, but I’m helping my good friends at EclecticPond with a website redesign, helping an educator of teachers for young children set-up a site aimed at giving that same information to curious parents, and I’m going to continue work soon enough on the InQode project which seeks to change forever how you think about and use QR scan codes (you can try the functioning beta now here).

So there you go, a quick check-up until I get back to more exciting things. Which, you didn’t hear from me, might resume as soon as next week… Stay tuned.

And I looked up onto the hill and saw three crosses, and in the center hung Yeshua, the prophet of Nazareth, and to either side of him, laid bare for the carrion birds, hung Good Taste and Design Sensibility. May God have mercy on their souls.

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So, as I mentioned recently, I’m trying to switch to using my bike as a primary vehicle. And one of the reasons people will tell you for doing so is to save money, which always seemed to me to be a bit bunk, since most of the cost of a car is owning it at all and keeping it insured. So, I made a quick little calculator to compare the two on a maintenance and upkeep basis. The calculator asks for your commute schedule as you’ve been doing it by car, and then asks how many of those days you’d like to bike instead. Just punch everything in and it’ll spit out estimates of your cost per mile, per commute, per week, and per year, your savings for the same, and as a bonus can tell you how long it’ll take you to pay yourself back for the bike.

If you want to play with it, you can do so here: http://zedmartinez.com/calculate-your-commute/

I’ve heard that being adopted can be a hard, harrowing, scarring experience for some… but I was not prepared for this level of cruelty to medians.

Thanks Greg.

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