Tips and tricks for a digital life. Plus photos, travels, and other commentary.

Jen and I are wrapping up a much enjoyed two-week holiday to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Koh Samui, Thailand. More accounts, photos, and videos to follow but here’s a clip from our last full day at Sandalwood Resort and Spa.

Jen and I are doing the Beverly Triathlon in August… it’s our first but should be a lot of fun especially since we’ve convinced a few of our good friends to join in the fun.

The race is a super sprint (400m swim, 20km bike, 5km run) so should be a nice intro to the triathlon experience. I haven’t run much since the marathon last year, and I used to bike a ton in college but the race is a good excuse to get back into it on these fronts. Swimming is completely foreign to me but with the help of the Mrs. I’ve been making progress there as well.

Today I went out for my first training day where I strung all three events together. The weather was beautiful and all in all it was a good first effort. When we come back from vacation the emphasis will shift to bringing down the times.

Today’s effort:
Swim: 800m in 19min
Bike: 36km in 1hr 23min
Run: 9.7km in 1hr 0min

This afternoon, EpicDuel, the online MMORPG where you battle your way to victory, has been upgraded to Beta status.

The release includes a wide range of new features and improvements:

• 40 new weapons / sidearms
• New customizable armors and styles
• Elite Upgrade
• NPC Artificial Intelligence
• And tons more…

EpicDuel is the creation of my brother Jonathan, and his business partner, Bernie. Since launching their alpha version back in February, they’ve been working hard to grow and support the community and incorporate new feature requests.

The game is free to play and runs in your browser with no software to install. If you like the game you can now access some nifty bonus features for a one time elite upgrade fee of as little as $21.95.

Go ahead… get your duel on.

I’m always looking for little changes I can make at AtP that gradually improve the site over time, and after well over 100 posts here, I decided that the categories I was working with just didn’t cut it.

For the last few months it’s rarely been clear to me what belonged where, let alone how anyone stumbling onto the site would feel. A couple categories contained the vast majority of posts while a range of others had practically none. Because they weren’t particularly useful, I never bothered to integrate the categories prominently into the UI.

After a little spring cleaning this week I’m happy to say that has now changed.

First, I’ve re-categorized all 133 posts into 7 new succinct Categories:

• Analysis – More in depth and independent review or interpretation of various trends.
• Commentary – Simple points about interesting things I’ve come across or have observed. The default category.
• How To – Step by step guidance on how to set something up or get something working. Usually related to technology.
• Photography – For sharing a selection of shots while I continue to learn more and challenge myself when the opportunity strikes.
• Politics – Less of an emphasis today but contains many posts from the 2008 elections.
• Training – Covers my Odense marathon training history plus new efforts on the swimming and cycling front.
• Travels – Sharing our travel experiences and other interesting tid-bits about being abroad.

It’s not particularly clear to me what the best practice is for deprecating categories in Wordpress so I’ve just gone through and recategorized all of my previous posts to fit this new taxonomy.

Additionally you’ll now find a post’s categories indicated directly below the title to allow readers to more easily find other similar and relevant content.



Again, these are a couple basic changes but when you add them all up over time, I’m a lot happier with the site today than a year ago. I hope it’s useful!

This Memorial Day (Late May Bank Holiday) weekend we hooked up with some good friends in London for a weekend of fun in the sun. I only have pics from our Saturday trip to Borough Market but we took advantage of the amazing weather with a great picnic in Hyde Park and BBQ at home as well.

Full photo set on Flickr: