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Archive for May, 2010

On a hot and humid day in the South an ice cold hockey rink is a darn fine place to be!

My buddy Theo had his All Star Game last night so I headed out to the Extreme Ice Center to watch all the action. I can’t say I understand the rules of hockey, if there are any, but it’s still pretty fun to watch. Plus, with this kind of crazy heat, its mighty fine air conditioning.

Actually, the game was very fun to watch. The ice center has plenty of places where you can take pictures, as well as a bar, complete with balcony. I ended up taking some pictures from up top then worked my way around the rink to get some more action photos. Strangely, the lighting is pretty dim, at least the camera things so, so I had to bump the ISO through the roof to get any decent action shots. The color is a little off, but overall not too bad. Plus, the protective glass is scratched all to hell so the camera had fun trying to figure that out.

There were plenty of spills and thrills, and in the end we got to see Theo get called for a roughing penalty. Hey, the other guy deserved it. Well, that’s what Theo said anyway.

But hey, they won the game.

Steve has decided to start doing a group ride in Waxhaw for another bike shop. He said it was really scenic and a good ride and for me to come check it out. Since Donna broke her toe at a Krav class I haven’t been doing as much riding out on the streets. I want to make sure the dogs or a renegade book don’t pounce on her toe and cause some massive damage. But she is on the mend so I need to get back out there.

So yesterday I went out to Waxhaw to see what the ride was like. I was first taken aback by the massive yard sale that was taking place as soon as I got there. There were booths and junk in every direction and each way I turned the road was closed. I couldn’t even find the bike shop amidst all the tents and awnings. And everywhere I turned some power thirsty goof in a Volunteer shirt was yelling at me that I couldn’t ride my bike there. I didn’t think walking a bike constituted riding it, but hey, what do I know.

It was mere moments before 8am and I couldn’t find anyone. Then out of the corner of my eye I spied a group of cyclists taking off down the road. I would never be able to bob and weave through everyone to catch them and thought that the ride had just taken off without me. And boy is that a crappy feeling.

Since I’d come all this way I figured I would at least look around and peek inside the shop. Much to my excitement, Steve and group who were off to the side of the shop because of all the junk and awnings were just about to take off. Steve grabbed my attention and I jumped on the tail end of the line and set off. I didn’t even have my gloves on yet, but we were riding! I figured I better keep up since I had no idea where we were going. My group rides have a tendency to start that way a lot.

And this group took off like a bat out of hell! No warmup, no easing into the morning, they shot off at 25mph and kept it going. I have to admit, I was struggling. These guys were riding it like they stole it! It wasn’t so bad while we were on the flat part going out of town (I’m good on flat roads), but once we hit those hills (you slow down when you go up hills, right guys?), I just couldn’t keep up that pace. I have a cool bike but apparently not the skills to match.

It should come as no surprise that I was still at the very end of the line and losing ground. Thank God Steve was there or I would have been in serious trouble. I would have been lost in the middle of farm country. And cows, despite their sweet looks are terrible at giving directions. Luckily there was another rider who shared a similar pace with me. After talking amongst ourselves we formed our own little B Group and decided to set our own pace for the rest of the ride.

As fate would have it, he blew out a tire not too long after that, and after Steve stopped to swap out tubes from his repair kit, the three of us tackled the rest of the journey. The rest of the group was probably in Alaska by now, but that’s fine, we felt guilty for holding them up. They’re better riders so there was no sense in slowing them down. Plus it just looks bad to be that far behind the main group.

But it was a damn fine ride none-the-less. Grueling, but fun. Waxhaw is lots of rolling hills. When I did the Go for Blood ride last year it was a lot of crappy, rocky roads and mile after mile of hills. But it’s very scenic too. You wander through farmland and the roads aren’t very busy. Our trip was basically the same thing. Plenty of farms to pedal past, people giving us plenty of room as they passed and since it was just the three of us, we talked and got tons of advice from Steve. Seriously, the things you have to learn just to ride a bike. You can’t just pedal, you have to pedal the right way.

I thought I was actually a lot better at riding than my performance showed that morning. I made it up the hills, but I struggled. I felt pretty winded most of the time and was concentrating on keeping my speed up so this little group didn’t leave me behind and relegate me to Group C status. But they were good sports about it.

I have to admit I’ve never been so happy to head back towards town. Thankfully its several miles of flat, well paved road that after all the previous riding was a breeze to go through. We actually hit some pretty impressive speeds there at the end.

It was a really good ride. Lots of challenges on some really quiet roads. Steve will be out next weekend and then we’re all off for Memorial Day so I won’t be tackling it again right away, but I figure if I’m going to get better I need to ride it again. I just hope more of a B Group forms so we don’t keep getting left behind. Either that or I need to ride more and stop being a baby.

As I’ve been working on blogs and websites I’ve been looking for a simple way to get color combinations so I can blend some nice colors together. A lot of the time the graphics used on a page or the "theme" of the page dictates the colors. However, there is also the time where I want to use a base color and I’m not sure what should go around it. I’ve found a couple tools to help with that which I think are pretty neat.

Going the free and online route is the The Color Wizard – Ver. 3.0. It’s a free site that lets you pick a base color then it gives suggestions of what goes with it. You can pick compliments as well as opposites or have it generate a random color scheme. It’s quite nice and for free you can hardly beat it.

Another neat option is CoffeeCup Website Color Schemer. It works on the same principle; you pick a color and it makes suggestions on what should compliment it. It also allows you to import a picture and builds colors from the image. And there’s the eye dropper tool so you can pick colors directly from the screen. It’s quite nice but the $29 price tag is a little steep.

Colorschemer is also very neat. It has a lot of the same options as Website ColorSchemer but offers a few more features. You can import and export color schemes (people build them and post them on their website). You can also pick a start and end color and it will "step" you between the two. Once again, very neat and useful, but the $50 price tag is really steep. I really like this app, but at this price it’s more expensive than PSPX3! And unless you use it all day, every day, I can’t justify it.

Out of these three apps I think ColorSchemer is the best because of the multiple palettes it offers and ability to transition between different colors in steps.

I’m still in the trial period with these, but considering the price, I think I might stick to the free alternative. At $14.95 these would be great apps, but they’re more expensive than my main graphics app and that seems a little skewed to me. I suppose if you’ve invested $600+ in Photoshop, what’s a couple bucks more right?