Sports, Tours Bike-Club

Biking season 2018 finished

My biking season starts on October 1st and lasts until September 30th, hence last weekend was the end of the season. Time to summarize it.

Last Winter I went regularly to the cycle track in Öschelbronn. Although it was quite cold at times, I really love it, its a lot of fun. The cycling is quite intensive and a good power and endurance training.

Mallorca was great again , well over 1550 km was good ground-work and building up endurance.

We continued with our regular bike tours, that I usually organize, and as this went fine, I wanted to start again at “Alb-Extrem” …  did that and finished 🙂 !

After that came a short vacation in the Allgäu with a couple of quite nice tours, but after that I did only shorter tracks alone, left my buddies to do their own training this year. Certainly I would like to change that for next year and start more regularly.

Statistics:

  • Road-bike:
    • 7.692 km total, 91 tours, average 84,5km per tour
    • Total of 291 hours training time; 27,57km/h average overall
    • 91.746 meters of altitude
    • 65 tours < 100km (Ø 65,1 km; with 638HM, 28,6 km/h)
    • 26 tours > 100km (Ø 133,1 km; with 1933HM, 24,99 km/h)
  • Mountainbike / Crosser:
    • 6 tours, mostly on the Allroad/Cross
    • 305 km total
    • 4.256 altitude
    • ca. 14 h cycling time
    • 21,4 km/h average speed over all
  • Tacx Trainer
    • 18 Trainings
    • 672 km
    • 26,5 hours cycling time
  • All in all again a good biking year
    • 7.692 km on the road-bike
    • 7.997 km outside including road-bike and Cross
    • 8.668 km in total

This year there will again be a non-biking vacation… lets see how the winter goes and what will come next year.

Link to my biking page

Business, Computer, Science

AI-Winter, Plateau, Pareto-Principle?

Another article on AI, and again I found it on the platform piqd.de : Machine Learning Confronts the Elephant in the Room.

Maybe this just appears to me, or maybe it’s wishful thinking. But it looks more and more to me like the advances in AI are kind of stalling and less and less impressive lately. There are more products and services that pitch “AI driven”, but its mostly about the same few topics. Doesn’t appear too new to me.

But maybe the next breakthrough is just days or weeks away?

Or the reality is significantly more complex than scientists would like to think. Mabe the algorithms (and AI in the end is just the implementation of clever algos), just can’t keep up with our brains.

Well, just read the article linked above, I found it very interesting.

Computer, Culture, Internet+Web, Politics

AI and the Future: Why Technology Favors Tyranny

On piqd.de I found once again an interesting Article: Why Technology Favors Tyranny. The Abstract on piqd is in German, while the original article is in English.

The internet started out to bring us all more democracy and all people the ability to participate. In the last years it looks like the big companies have taken over the power, but also the states (who complain about the big companies, and vice versa).

The technologies that emerged around the internet can only be developed and maintained with massive investment / money and evolved further. Individuals can’t really do that much themselves, and are going back to being consumers and are dependent on what is provided to them. Who has the power, has the say, and that also allows tyrants to gain more power and control over people than ever before.

Is the right? It is at least an interesting viewpoint to think about and consider.

Business, Culture

Teamwork in the digital age

Once again on piqd I found this article: What Sets Effective Teams Apart?

I think this is a really good article. Sometimes there are jobs for the single achiever, but the majority of work can only be achieved in teamwork. To put together such teams requires a good insight into how teams work and how to foster collaboration with different personalities that make up teams.

A important part is “safety”. The safety to be able to criticize when applicable, the safety to bring up new and radical ideas and the feeling of safety when at times there is a failure… that this is not a drama.

 

Art, Nature, Special People

Hear the Otherworldly Sounds of Skating on Thin Ice

Found this video just recently. Not just is this sport fascinating, but more so the specific sounds that the skating makes. I guess this must be not just fascinating but almost transcendental for those who perform this type of sports..

… about all and nothing …