Blog Archives: August, 2009
Brisbane Half Marathon race report
Brisbane Marathon Festival logo On Sunday I ran in the 2009 Brisbane Half Marathon. As regular readers will know, I’ve been training for the half marathon since I arrived in Brisbane in March. (Actually, I started back in Waterloo before I left, but had not adopted a solid training plan until I arrived here.)
Brisbane Half Marathon starting line In Australia, people like to run early. I guess they are scared of the heat. The race started at 6am Sunday morning. That seemed a bit on the early side for me, but then I was only running the half marathon, and some of the marathoners would be out there for 4+ hours. The weather has been temperate the last few months, but we’ve got a bit of a heat wave going on at the moment, so it ended up being fortunate for the marathoners that we started so early: by 10am, it was 25°C.
Brisbane Half Marathon along the river I awoke at 4:45am, which was not as painful as I expected as I had been shifting my sleeping schedule over the course of the past week. Even so, I don’t like getting up while it’s still dark. I had laid everything out nicely for the next morning in case of brain failure, but the brain was working fine. As I walked through the city, some people will still enjoying their Saturday evening; it was still hopping around the Casino. As I crossed the bridge to the South Bank, the sky started to lighten, and by the time I reached the other side morning was about to begin.
Brisbane Half Marathon and the Brisbane skyline The race started without incident and wasn’t too crowded. My chip time (i.e., when I crossed the start line) was only 11.7 seconds off the gun time (i.e., when the race actually started).
I hadn’t planned the race out very much in advance. I did have some goals: #1: finish; #2: beat last year’s race time (1:57:20); #3: beat this year’s best training run (1:51:37). To accomplish goal #3 I needed a pace of about 11.5km/hr, so my plan mostly consisted of going at least that fast the whole race. Beyond that, I was just going to run.
Running in the Brisbane Half Marathon And run I did. I started out a bit faster than I had planned; I guess that’s pretty common. Around the three or four kilometre mark, I realized that my watch distance was about 4% off of the course distance. To explain: my watch uses GPS signals to track distance. It’s fairly accurate, but in city areas where there are tall buildings, the signal reflects off the buildings, making the watch think it’s moving around more than it actually is. As a result, the watch thought I had gone 4.16km when I’d only gone 4.0km. This meant as well that my pcae was about 4% under as well, which worried me a bit. I decided to pick up the pace a bit, and turned in some really strong kilometres from 6km through to 14km (I ran kilometre 6 at 13.2km/hr!), then started to feel it a bit at 15km. I think kilometre 15 also involved running over a bridge, and by that time even the slightest uphill was annoying. I’d love to be able to say that the last kilometre was a sprint to the finish, but my legs just wouldn’t go any faster than they were gonna go, but they did the job and got me across the finish line.
Sprint to the finish of the Brisbane Half Marathon And to what a time! I’m happy to report that, according to the official results, my chip time was 1:43:38.0, a full 13 minutes and 39 seconds faster than last year’s time of 1:57:17. I’m very happy with this time and how the run went, I felt good through the whole run but was still pushing myself pretty hard.
Brisbane Half Marathon race number My running companion for the race was my trusty iPod shuffle. Some friends on Facebook provided some great suggestions and I filled the rest of the playlist with some inspirational classics (We are the Champions, by Queen) and some of the Canadian indie music I trained to from CBC Radio 3. The song that was playing as I crossed the finish line was my favourite song of 2008, Tessellate, by Tokyo Police Club. (It wasn’t entirely coincidental that that song was playing then, sometimes fate needs a little fast forwarding.)
My friend Dan and I had been talking about running a full marathon later this year, but I was putting off deciding until after the half to see how it went. With such a great race under my belt, the plan is now to keep training for the Toronto Marathon on Sunday, October 18, 2009. Scary, and exciting!
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Environmental security
My friend Pat has written a great article about his long-standing research interest, the role of environmental management in international conflicts, for Vanguard Magazine, which is a major magazine for Canada’s defense and security community. I highly recommend reading his article.
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Chocolate chip cookies
Chocolate chip cookies are one of my favourite treats. We in the Stebila family pride ourselves on enjoying cookies and chocolate, so believe me when I say that the recipe below is worth the effort.
Last year the New York Times had an article about chocolate chip cookies entitled Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret, in which they sought out the recipe for perfect chocolate chip cookies. Their poor reporters tried dozens of chocolate chip recipes until settling on what they believe is the perfect chocolate chip recipe. Perhaps I’ve had a better chocolate chip recipe from somewhere, but these are pretty darn good homemade cookies.
Chocolate chunk cookies They’re not your everyday chocolate chip cookies, however. They’re not cookies that you sit down and eat half a dozen of. These are gourmet chocolate chip cookies that are 5″ in diameter and taste best straight out of the oven. These are cookies that you make for company (which, incidentally, I’m planning on doing tomorrow night).
The three secrets to the recipe are simple: use chunks of really good chocolate, make the cookies big, and refrigerate the dough for 24 hours before baking.
This last trick, refrigerating the dough for at least 24 hours before baking, seems to be the most important. I’ve made these cookies a number of times. On the occasions when I’ve been so eager to eat them that I bake them right away instead of waiting, the cookies have not come out as good. And for experimental control, I have done an experiment where I bake half of the dough it immediately and save the other half to bake a day or two later. The day or two later cookies always taste much better.
Here’s the recipe from the New York Times. Enjoy!
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cups cake flour
- 1 cups bread flour
- 2/3 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
- 2/3 cup unsalted butter
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 pound bittersweet chocolate disks*
- sea salt
* Use high quality chocolates disks, or chocolate fèves, or chunks of couverture chocolate, with at least 60% cocoa. I use Nestlé Plaistowe 63% Cocoa Couverture chocolate, but that doesn’t appear to be available in Canada.
Directions
- Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
- Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add egg, mixing well. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
- When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
- Scoop 9 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 17 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Eat warm, with a big napkin.
Makes 9 cookies.
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Running – Week 19 – Graphs
Last week’s running can be best explained by two graphs.
Thursday’s run was speedwork. Normally I’m not a fan of speedwork, especially at 7:30 in the morning, but this one actually went fairly well. I managed to keep a good pace on the speedwork sections and ran hard the whole time. The graph below is my heart rate from the run — can you tell when I was running fast and when I was doing my recovery jogs?
20090806 - Speedwork - Heartrate
Sunday’s run was the long run. I’m supposed to be tapering now, bringing down the distance in preparation for the half marathon next Sunday. I decided to try something different for Sunday’s run: I took a bus out to Mt Coot-tha, where I previously went cycling, and started my run there. I ran along the road around the top of Mt Coot-tha, then started downhill to the river for the run home. It ended up being a little bit longer than I planned. It was pretty tough too: there was a 2.5km climb along the way, as you can see from the elevation graph below.
This week also marks my passing — blowing away! — the 500km mark for the year.
| Aug 3 Mon | Rest day | |
| Aug 4 Tue | 3.7km | Easy run |
| Aug 5 Wed | Rest day | |
| Aug 6 Thu | 13.3km | Speedwork 5×1600 with 800 jogs |
| Aug 7 Fri | 3.6km | Easy run |
| Aug 8 Sat | Rest day | |
| Aug 9 Sun | 18.8km | Long run |
| Total | 39.4km | Year to date: 530.0km |
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Copyright Consultations
The text below is a copy of the letter I submitted to the Copyright Consultations currently being conducted by the Government of Canada. My response focuses on the effect of copyright legislation on cryptography research. Previous bills for copyright reform have also negatively impacted consumer rights, but many of the other responses in the consultation describe the problems in that area, so I’ve tried to stay focused on one particular issue.
August 4, 2009
Copyright Consultations
Government of Canada
Email: info@copyrightconsultation.gc.ca
To Whom It May Concern:
This letter contains my formal response to the Copyright Consultations currently underway by the Government of Canada.
My name is Douglas Stebila. I am a researcher in cryptography, which studies the mathematics of securing information and communications using encryption. I received my PhD in mathematics from the University of Waterloo and am currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
I am concerned about the impact of digital locks (also known as digital rights management (DRM) or technological measures) on cryptography research. The United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the previously proposed Canadian legislation, Bill C-61, contained provisions making it a violation to circumvent a technological measure protecting a copyrighted work. Such “anti-circumvention” clauses will negatively impact the quality of research and innovation in Canada and must be avoided in future copyright legislation.
An important part of designing secure encryption systems is analyzing the security of existing systems; this is a subfield of cryptography called cryptanalysis. It is essential that cryptographic research not be artificially constrained due to anti-circumvention clauses. Bill C-61 contained some exemptions regarding circumvention of technological measures for the purposes of encryption research and security testing. However, the exemptions would still have severely hindered encryption research. The exemptions in Bill C-61 required a researcher to inform the owner of a protected copyrighted work that the protection was being circumvented for encryption research purposes. This requirement of notice would impose a large burden on encryption researchers, may be difficult or impossible to satisfy, and would have a chilling effect on research in this area. Additionally, the exemption in Bill C-61 did not allow for peer review of encryption research related technological measures.
Rather than trying to craft more detailed, and consequently more onerous, exemptions for encryption research, I believe that any forthcoming copyright bill should not prohibit the circumvention of digital locks in any way. Copyright legislation should prohibit the unauthorized distribution or acquisition of a copyright work, not the use of a legitimately obtained copy, regardless of any technological measures. This should apply for all citizens in all media.
This approach of prohibiting unauthorized distribution, not the act of digital lock circumvention, will alleviate the concerns I raised above regarding encryption research. Researchers will be able to analyze the security of encryption schemes without risking violating copyright legislation.
Furthermore, there should be no restriction on the distribution of circumvention research, instructions, or software. Cryptanalysts need to be able to communicate their results with other researchers in order to advance the state of the art. Researchers in the United States have faced legal pressure to avoid publishing or discussing encryption research as a result of the DMCA, and this must be avoided to maintain Canada’s position as a global leader in the field of cryptography.
To summarize: any restrictions on digital lock circumvention will negatively impact encryption research and innovation in Canada, even with exemptions that try to allow for encryption research. Digital lock circumvention should not be considered a violation of copyright.
Sincerely,
Douglas Stebila, PhD
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Running – Weeks 17 and 18
I hope my loyal blog readers will forgive the lack of updates over the past two weeks. Nothing too exciting has been happening, other than running. And lots of running it has been. The week before last was a bit of a break, with just three easy 8km runs over the week. Last week was a major week: it and the current week are the last big weeks before the half marathon, which is now less than three weeks away.
Last week’s distance totalled 40.6km, which is my longest one-week total either this year or last year. And on Sunday I did a 21.1km long run, the same distance as the upcoming half marathon. That was only the third time that I have run that far, and was by far my best run at that distance yet. I ran the 21.1km in 1:51:37, nearly 6 minutes faster than last year’s half marathon race time of 1:57:20, although last week’s distance was GPS watch distance, not measured distance, so it could be out by plus or minus 1% or 2%. Still, a solid run, leaving me optimistic about the upcoming race. I felt pretty good after the run, but then was wiped out for most of the rest of the day, and not even a tasty brunch led to a quick recovery. That’s alright, though, I feel fine today.
This week is the final hard week of training, and then two weeks of tapering and going to bed early.
| Jul 20 Mon | Rest day | |
| Jul 21 Tue | 8.5km | Easy run |
| Jul 22 Wed | Rest day | |
| Jul 23 Thu | Slept in! | |
| Jul 24 Fri | 8.5km | Easy run |
| Jul 25 Sat | Rest day | |
| Jul 26 Sun | 8.1km | Easy run |
| Total | 25.1km | Year to date: 450.1km |
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| Jul 27 Mon | Rest day | |
| Jul 28 Tue | 3.6km | Easy run |
| Jul 29 Wed | Rest day | |
| Jul 30 Thu | 12.3km | Tempo run |
| Jul 31 Fri | 3.6km | Easy run |
| Aug 1 Sat | Rest day | |
| Aug 2 Sun | 21.1km | Long run (1:51:37) |
| Total | 40.6km | Year to date: 490.7km |
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