New weekend is coming, and it there is a new snow in Moscow.

But unfortunately I'm unlikely to move to the 'mountains' this weekend - I damaged my leg next week so that even walked three days with a crutche. It was a bit warm day, although it was lower than -10C early morning when I moved to the ski resort.
But on the slope weather was noticebly hotter - about 0 degrees Centigrade or so and quite moist. So that my new skis felt quite uncotrollable in the high and middle stand. But when sit rather low I was able to control skis at quite high speeds, although this requre substantial muscle efforts.

I managed to film a small porn video on how I ski over the red trace in Stepanovo. Phone in left hand is not the best way to fight for Oscar, but it was fun. There is completely no feel of speed, although it was substantial for me at least - more than 40 km/h (about 11 meters per second). Calculated by dividing trace length by moving time, so effectively it does not take into accout arc length, which I prefer to make small to medium.

On such speeds I manage to outrun many of the skiers and almost all snowboarders. But since I have essentially no technique (I moved to outdoor traces three times, each time I spent about 3-5 hours on the slope), it is likely that I move quite wrong. And this can explain problems I sometimes get during the movement on the slope.

Add here weather and wet snow and result is quite simple: I fall. I do not care about that until I feel the pain longer than a day or so. And this week was my first time when pain was that strong and long.
I managed to outrun some other boarder and was not able to control skis, so fell and flew several meters away from the trace breaking the boarding :)

well, it was quite simple to break that bearding net, but there was a noticebly gap out of the trace, where I moved several meters crawling over the snow. leg did not hurt that much on the trace, but when I moved home pain started to show up.

Currently I feel mostly ok, although play table tennis quite slowly and can not move without slight lameness. Well, recently I moved with a crutch only :)
So, things are getting better.

In a meantime I added fair number of tasty things into elliptics network project, namely broke addressing storage model - now each node stores IDs which are greater than node's ID. This breaks compatibility but allows simple human understanding of how objects are spread over the storage.
Also implemented random transformation function selection for read IO requests in fastcgi frontend, now we can balance erading among multiple data copies. Dropped BerkeleyDB support - Tokyo Cabinet performs way faster, so I do not see any reason to support both. Made a big step towards completed merge support, I expect it to be finished very soon, which will be the first 2.7.x release - there is a fair number of changes accumulated already.

And as a tasty project to warm up the brain I decided to implement a rhyme generator based on Levenstein-Damerau distance and sound-syllable similarity algorithm. It was not formalized even in my head yet, but it is interesting thing to think about.

Also managed to win a judgement against development company which built my house (without judge and defendant though). I'm quite close to finally get property rights on my appartments and to sold it for good. I believe its time to make living place wider.

So far so good. Stay tuned!

I used to hate skiing - I wasted 3 years in running ski section in univercity, while I could play football or, let's say, chess. Well, there was no chess section, but whatever else it could be more interesting than ski.

And this year I opened myself alpine ski. I did it about 15-20 years ago previously when was in school, and it was simple small plastic skis. Technology made a significan progress since then and I got ability to test real skis.

That's what I did this and previous weekends - two days in Stepanovo ski resort. It was essentially the first time I tried big slope (not that big compared to real resorts in Europe of course, just about a kilometer or less and 100 meters drop) and real snow. And it was fucking incredible - it is fast, it is long enough to feel the speed and ground, it is quite different - there are multiple traces and a lot of small roads from main trace, where one can ride over hummocks and small ski jumps.

I bought myself all equipment except skis itself - want to touch different things first, but I believe I will get my own next time. With the proper equipment it is not cold, warm or wet, it is just ubercool. Getting that I basically have no technique, I open lots of cases for myself all the time. And I believe that I have some progress, maybe not that good, but very pleasant for myself.

I tried long blue trace previously, but today I started a red one. And it was fucking beautiful - so fast and so strong. No boring places and long waits, just pure pleasure of speed and control. On this trace I found myself moving noticebly more technically than on a simpler trace.

I started to sit lower, put legs closer and change ski edges using mass center and not ass or legs, pipe changing arcs became shorter and with longer radius, which increased speed compared to plain skiing.

Of course it was not always perfect, and frankly I believe it looked like crap and was a real crap from good technique point of view, but it was very pleasant for me, and that's what matters. I want to get another hour or so with good teacher, who will tell me where main problems are, since I can not see how I made a slope. Sometimes I flew over the trace couple of meters and than landed in 'different positions' usually already without skis moving on my body another dozen of meters. But I like it too - it shows complex cases and sharps instincts.

Currently I believe there are no somewhat big parts of my body, which do not try to scream and ache. Especially shine bones (hard to move or stay long enough) and various leg muscles, but it is not a problem - I will be fresh again in a day, and hundred or so of "The Glenrothes" and couple of hours playing piano and trumpet will quickly help me. So plan is to make another turn next weekend or preferably move to ski resort couple times.

Fucking incredible. Just love it!

Of course its downhill skiing, I used to hate runnng skiing wasted 3 years in the section when was in the university.

And actually I not only opened a season, but tried it first time. Some years ago I made a downhill run on the board, but I weared 'grinders' shoes instead of special shoes :)

Anyway, I do not know how to downhill, so I took an hour ski lesson, found myself can not being able to perform even the simplest things like V-deceleration (I do not know how it is called in english, but it is supposed that feet form kind of V figure).
Apparently I found a way to learn this quickly - when you flight into the wall on the bone-breaking speed it is better to find out a way to decelerate and stop. One of them is to fall, but it has own and rather serious problem - pain, haematomas and ego drop.

First trainig was rather painful and without interesting results except that I found myself very liking this stuff. So I went there in a day and enjoyed the hell skiing from the top. Even multiple times down to the bottom without falls. And EVEN once (or at least half-once) I moved the way and speed I wanted.
I'm sure, my carving and V-turns are likely ugly as hell, I like how things go.

A good news is that whole-year hill center (well, I was lazy to move to the real hills :) is very conveniently located between my home and office, so I can spent 1-2 morning hours there. I always wanted to be able to ski and its quite possible now with car.

Not me :)

I suppose I will start new format for the small events unrelated to hacking. I will accumulate them into once-per-week post with some descriptions.

First, sport. I climb two times per week and see that there is a fair progress in the power endurance. But since I still try to wear out my new shoes (well, not that new, I bought them about a month or even more ago, but they are still very tight), so results are biased, namely I can not control my left feet since it suffers quite a lot after some time in the shoe. But still I got a noticeble jump in the training level. For example yesterday I managed to climb three 6a+ traces on the negative slope without the rest in between. And while this is not some complex trace I could be proud of, it is complex enough for 3 times in a row.
I check power endurance level my measuring how tire I am after the training or exercise or trace. In the above case it was hard to breath, but not hard to secure the holds, so looks like I had some endurance left after this run, but muscle breathing was close to its limit.
If training course will continue to increase for another couple of weeks, I will reach a very good level, and my shape will allow to start working with the really complex traces. Namely I want to do 6c and higher on the negative slope, and local 6c is actually at least 7a in the common sence (yes, there is a special table printed to match local and usual trace grades :)
So, no matter what, I like how things go right now.

Second, music. I did not play with the teacher previous weekend, but wait for the sunday for one. It is rather hard to see any difference in playing in this small time interval, but I can confirm that my previously reachd level is still there.
Today I played in the office for some time, maybe an hour or so, when most of the people went home. And while there were no some incredible things played, I found that I can play and improvise some interesting things from the virtually nothing. It happens quite rarely, actually I could remember only couple of intersting and very small, maybe for 2-3 measures, things, but they were real. So, I slowly move forward. For example I can rather easily start playing from the sheet, although quite slowly, but there will be a clean attack and shap sound upto natural 2F or so. It requires some warming first though. Also learned fair number of various scales, and while they are mostly major ones, I know how to build one (tone, tone, half-tone and so on) from any note as well as magic shift to get minor scale (one tone lower from the major tonic becomes a tonic for the minor scale, while all notes are actually left the same). Also played some bits in pentatonics, it is easier to improvise, and some blues scales, although I do not actually remember it, I played from the sheet.
Sometimes I play some very simple bits on piano. Nothing really intersting, but I still have in plans to start doing it more seriously, namely find a teacher locally.

And while my musical earing as well as playing techique are quite far from what I want to have as the nearest goal, I see that there is a way to reach that level. Although not simple and quick one.

Third, car and appartments. Actually nothing major happened here. I do enjoy to drive my car, but there is a major lifestyle change, which does not allow me to drink when I want anymore. And that kind of dissapoints me, since I actually like this.

   
Bottles of Ballantine's and Jameson

I can not start this one, for example... But things are not that bad - I will leave my car on the office parking and enjoy the taste :)

There were some other good and not that good things happend, but it is unlikely to be anyhow interesting, so let's draw the line: I expect things to be just fucking cool, and that's what I like.

Stay tuned, there will be some interesting notes from the technical part of the brain: elliptics network pre-production testing, POHMELFS status and its details and maybe also something new.

That's how I can describe my climbing training today. Well, I can write that I'm not yet in the good shape, that my shoes are very small and do not yet fit the feet comfortably, or anything else. But it will not change the fact, that it was a miserable training.

I did finish several traces, but only simple ones were completed without falls or wrong holds. Some of them were ran without the rest and on the negative slope, but those were rather simple ones. More or less complex traces forced me to fall.

So while I'm getting shape I do not really care about why this or that trace was not completed, although it looks rather clear - my power endurance sucks. I have a lot of power, for example I can easily pull myself up even on small holds, but I can not do that multiple times even on the big ones. That's what I did at the end of the training - about 30-40 minutes I pulled myself up on the campus-board (a set of small holds to pull up on), and found that I have to have at least some rest between pulls in exercise, for example I could made 3-4 pullups, but rarely 5 or more. But just after dropping to the ground and relaxing hands I was able to do another couple.

I believe I will get better shape soon, so that I could make local 6a cathegory (it is 6b in the other places) traces on-sight like before, and that will be a good progress.

But until then I will only enjoy the pain after the training. Just like right now.

No computers and filesystems, only so called lytdybr. I hide it under the cut since there are photos and a lot of text there.

That was fucking incredible training. No, there were no some extremely cool results, but overall, it was just bloody excellent.

Started with the already usual gym exercises: hour and a half of forearms, abdominal, shoulders, back and legs killing. Having at most 1 minute of the rest between any two starts makes exercise so active and effective, that even pain becomes enjoyable.

Well, that pain as well as 'after-party' one, which I'm getting right now, is always enjoyable for me, so I had a really good time masochistically working there.

And then another hour and a half on the walls - I managed to complete two 6a traces without the rest, and I only tried that trace quite for a while ago. Then finished 6b+ (although with several falls on the single hold), which is the first trace on the climbing zone. It is quite hard for its named level, especially its start, so actually no one tries it. I was able to finish it when I was in my good shape previously, now I did it after long and exhaustive gym exercises - progress is definitely real. Then some other simpler traces and finally sauna, which speeded up all blood in the body, and going home.

In a meantime I got a good knowledge of how to get ownership of my loft, that A3 is more comfortable, while Impreza is definitely a choice for the driving itself and that having additional level of freedom is always a good idea. Was also suggested not to marry :)

Extemely fucking cool training! I hope you have a good time either.
Be cool, stay tuned.

I did not blog about my sport for a while, but it is there. I believe I need this to be able to switch from becoming bored with the IT stuff , and thus return fresh and cool.

Recent climbing training as well as current and several next ones are being built around the same process: hour and a half in the gym doing 5-6 different exercises with 5 runs (of 10 turns in each) in every exercise with at most 1 minute of the rest between any two runs. It sucks power so much that I become feeiling like a dry martini with aching arms and legs, back and abdominal.
And then hour or more on the walls - today I tried several old 6a+/6b traces in pairs without rest in between.
It kills the body to the end of the training.

And that is so fucking cool feeling.

Such regime is scheduled at least until september, so it will be about 3 more trainings, although I would like to continue it for another several weeks, but we will see whether results will jump up. I would like to be able to climb 6c/6c+ on the negative slope and 7a on the vertical wall. I already tried such traces previously, but it was really hard for me, although doable after some serious and long work. So I expect things to change.

But even if there will be no that huge progress, I still like doing this.
Sports and loads refresh the body and the brain, so it becomes really interesting to go create and solve new problems.

And that's what I like.

That's what I believe is the only way forward fighting for the progress.
And the more pain you got, the more gain this will end up with. If you will be able to finish the road.

I'm starting to slowly understand why I do this all the time. Why spent hours in the gym falling weights from the weakened arms when body does not change similar to how it could be done doing usual body-building. Why move to the walls afterwards and climb using non-bending arms and legs? There is almost no difference on how do you fall - from 7c or 5b, failed one looks always the same. Why cycle kilometers over the crossed region or run on the field? Why, when there is no visible result?

In my opinion the answer is in the movement. Where there is a movement, there are changes. Where there are changes, there is an interest. Where there is an interest, there is a progress. And with the progress there is a real life.

So we fight against pain, against falls, but continue to move forward. To start new trace. New road. New problem. Just to solve it and make the next step.

And we move forward. And that's great. I feel great.

It is rather good idea to play football every monday. And I do enjoy this, although I'm not that really good player.

Today stars were in the strange location - t-shirts colors happend to lay down the way that our team did not have ubercool players, so we started to lose. And lose, and lose. Something around 8:3 or so for one hour game.
Nothing particulary cool, but still it was a good time. Lots of runs and positive moments created by 'hands' (or legs in this particular context). We started to make some real dangerous situations after a while after the start, likely because all players got tired and our skills became not that worse compared to others.
Actually number of non-realized rapid moments is very big, and especially from our side.

I managed to make couple of nice saves jumping into the legs of the forward when stood as a goalkeeper. But also lose more balls.
Damaged an arm a bit after unsuccessful ball accepting on the rather high speed being a forward - I fell, turned over several times and scratched an arm over the dry surface. But its okay - nothing really hurts. I suppose such micro-traumas are small price for the enjoyment of the game.

Found an interesting moment - usually losing command starts 'cracking' and people tend to blame others in own failures. It is quite fun to look at them insulting others instead of fixing the problem. But that's a small issue actually.

And It was just good. I like it.

I did not climb for ummm..., let's say quite for a while. Instead I slacked and my head, which does not work in office, did not work in climbing area either. At least there it took liquids through and controls extremities in the unusual body positions on the walls.

So it was not a big surprise when today I really sucked at climbing. Well, I did number of very old 6a/6b traces and quite recent 6a+, but fell quite miserably on the another trace on-sight. It was more complex though, I expect 6b/6c. But still I fell all the time except maybe several places there.

Helped new girls to climb on 6a+- they were not excited about the trace though. But they did not really know that all traces in skala-city are lowered by at least one letter or more, so in other places it could be 6b/6b+. It is not really an easy excercise to climb such traces on-sight, although I was able to complete 6b in skala-city from the first start once. Usually I can do that for 6a/6a+ only in its local meaning.

Decided that I need to make more regular trainings with the strong physical part. Football match and 20-30 kilometers on the bicycle once per week is not enough - it is not even a warm up. Real sport must be painful, it forces body and brain to 'reload' and start to really work compared to being stuck in the usual slackiness.

Starting from the next one I will make physical exercises a major part of the training for at least one month. Couple of hours in gym and I will unlikely be able to climb something more or less complex, but will try.
Things promise to be very interesting because of restarted physical trainings. And it can not be uncool!

We opened a season - a little bit late, but still.

There were three commands of 5 men: blue, red and naked. We were not politically correct split based on the colour of the t-shirts.

My blue team was a clear leader - we won 3 times and lose only once. Naked guys applied some woodoo magic to make us tired as hell after 3 games without the rest, so we slowly stayed and allowed to roll up the ball.

By the objective appraisal a 13'th number pass through half of the team two fullbacks and far corner goal was called the best one.

That 13'th number

But I have some problems with the ball holding - I just suddenly stop understanding what to do with it, although I'm not that bad taking it from the enemy forwards. So usually decide to make passes through the field. Usually quite precise but still it is not that interesting.

Nevertheless it was bloody cool, and even cold shower did not break the feeling, although cooled it down noticebly. Will play again in a week.

It was a rather slacking training - nothing really interesting. Although started quite actively - gym exercices, warming, running and so on, then couple of traverses.

Then couple of complex traverses without rest in between - something like 6a (trace over relief holds), and this turned on the tireness switch. I really hate how I process the load - when it is smaller than some limit body can quickly refresh and continue on the effectively same level, but when I do something hard and for some time, it just breaks.
I become tired very quickly, body can not recover, it cools down and although I feel no tireness, I can not do more than couple of holds.
But then I can make several starts of the pull-ups on the holds on the wall. Apparently they work with the different muscles, and likely my power endurance traning did not touch those which break the things.

Then I finished another three of 6a/6a+ traces on the vertical wall, although the last one I fell all the time since climbed it on-sight and very tired. Next time will finish it without problems though - there were no really complex parts except start on the negative balcony with the monkey-style feet holds.
And then pull-ups. With the above results - i.e. without serious problems.

Let's consider this as a warming - I did not climb the last week and had some rest, so I'm starting to recover. Need to work and work, more and more...

And partially 6b. That's what I climbed today, although without much success - it was rather hot and stifling, which does not favour high activity.

But nevertheless I tried couple of 6a traces (one of them on-sight, another one I tried on previous training), and both failed, but they were simple falls, so I even do not count them as real ones - I did not find a hold on the on-sight trace, so fell to check out around, and second traces with a fall was at the very end, so I was already tired.
But still they were not clean traces. Also climbed on the interesting 6a+ on-sight, and again fell to check how the trace went at the very end. Tried 6b, and it was not completed cleanly also - I was not able to complete the key, which I consider a major fall.

So, it was not something special, but not bad either, so I like how it goes.

Climbing training was rather uncool - I did not finish any trace without falls.
Started with the quite complex beginning on the negative horizontal balcony - did not complete.
Moved to really complex 6c+ with the negative horizontal balcony and full of very passive holds - fell.
Then tried 6c over crack-in-the-rock holds - fell.
Tried new 6a (with the same balcony though) - again (although I think I will complete it next time without falls if started at the beginning of the training).

Started to make pull-up exercises on the holds (I selected rather deep ones and used big finger to help 2/3 of the time though) - succeeded. Although something tells me that when I started to pull up without full arm straightening (they are quite close to 180 degress in the elbow, but a bit less), it is not very fair. It looks like blood does not circulate well when arms are not yet fully unbend and it prevents them from quickly become clugeed up, so I'm able to make several pulls really quickly and without much efforts.

But anyway, even though the training was lazy and without excellent success stories, it was a good one.

It is friday and climbing training again. This time it was rather simple one, I even managed to make a chin-up exercises at the end on the hold on the negative slope (as on campus-board).
But initially I climbed over couple of new traces and repeated 3 runs of one-after-anoter 6c trace (well, without its complex start on the negative horizontal slope, so its is a cheat). One of the new traces was something about 6a (maybe even 5c) on the vertical wall - and was finished on-sight.
Another trace is something really complex, like 7a, but again I skipped complex negative horizontal balcony and fell in the middle (but continued) and at the very end (where I still do not know how to move). I will try different negative horizontal starts as warming/beginning of the trainig - when I'm quite fresh and if exercise does not take a long time, I will quickly recover.

Expect a good progress since believe that I'm in a really good shape now.

Climbing is a freaking cool sport - everything strains, aches, relaxes and it just fires the roof!

I impressed myself today, which is a quite rare event these days. Today was a day of complex traces without physically hard places, i.e. effectively technique on the vertical wall.
And I'm good at it - I managed to complete vertical part of the 6c trace on-sight, and then make it (with couple of falls though) two runs of 3 traces without the rest in the set. While it sucked the power I managed to recover and move over the holds without that much of efforts. But have to admit that start of the trace (on the negative horizontal slope and then physically complex move over the balcony) I did not try and will not easily complete for sure.

Another set of one-by-one traces was 7a, but I used holds from the different traces for the feet though. Two such traces without the rest at the end of the training was enough to complete the day.

Well, also some shiny new 5b trace and couple of traverses, but these do not count.

Every training, learning or exercise should end up with the positive event, albeit complex enough to match the whole process, to make it cool. And that was just bloody cool.

A good training - I tried 6c trace on the vertical wall over holds which are made as a crack in the rock first half of the trace. I finished it without problems, but second half is separated by the hard place which I was only able to move over (and finish the trace without falls) only when the first part was missed and I climbed there over simple holds.

I have enough technique for all holds and movements themself, but it is not in a very good shape yet, since I can not combine both parts together. Power endurance suffers also, but I suppose it is related.
Given that it is on the vertical wall with slight negative slope, since crack-holds themself are placed with a slope, so feet are always located left to the center of the mass, thus body heavily relies on the arms to hold it, I think I will complete it without falls rather quickly.
On the previous training for example I was not able to complete the first part cleanly.

At the end I started to pull oneself up on the board with passive holds. So far I use rather big ones, but getting I'm usually very tired when starting the ending exercises, it should not be a problem. I will move to the smaller holds eventually as well as run more starts.

So far I'm rather miserable there, but I'm just warming yet :)

It was not somehow special training, I would even say a lazy one. I managed to complete the start of the mentioned 6b on the negative slope balcony, and even almost finished the whole trace after that. Also tried number of other 6a+/6b traces on the vertical wall and some gym exercises for the back.

Old problem still persists - I become tired very quickly so subsequent movements or new traces, if require at least some force, will be usually completed with falls. I will work on it with the exercises, but I do not expect power endurance to appear quickly.

So, to date, I have a quite strong technique level, I would say that I could complete 7a traces (I even did that on the vertical wall for couple of traces 2 years ago), but my power endurance is miserable, so I can not climb even 6a easily on the negative slope (I can usually do 6a on-sight on the vertical wall though, couple of times I managed to complete 6b traces on-sight, but that is rather an exception). But after some work on the trace I usually can move on 6a-6b on the negative slope, but it requires really lot of work to memorize the holds and body moves.

So, next milestone is scheduled to be a power endurance and static load improvement. I expect it to be achieved by special gym and climbing exercises, and would like if its rates are similar to what I got for muscle power improvements.

But we will see... I feel summer will be busy.

You know, sometimes even a tiny event can change everything. You hear an interesting sound, and mood goes well, you see someone or throw couple of phrases and day comes good. IIRC it is serotonin hormone's action.

Today I met a very interesting person on climbing zone I did not see for couple of years. We talked a bit about how things changed with time, and that was the final drop of the excellence - the day succeeded!

Although I did not make any serious progress on the climbing side - I tried technically complex 6c, but was only possible to complete it with lots of falls, then switched to the 6b with the start on the negative slope balcony, and miserably failed to complete its beginning part, but eventually managed to finish the rest part of the trace (on the vertical wall) 3 times without rest between runs. Not 100% clean though, but it is 3 times of 6b one-by-one after all, so I accept it as a good end of the training.

I actually can not understand what happens - I can run 3 times vertical-wall part of the 6b trace without the rest, but can not complete its start on the negative slope balcony even once. I'm pretty sure I could be able to complete 5 sets of forearm exercises with big and small weights (I started different ones though for my back and arms) after that, but was not able to run 5 holds on the balcony. Weird.
Will start campus-board and negative slope power endurance exercises from the next training - I want and will climb negative slope (event horizontal one) the same way I do the vertical walls.

Anyway, no matter what, it was an excellent day!

It was a miserable and full of falls training. My first several starts on the negative slope ended up with extremely quickly tired forearms (I believe they started aching even during warming traverses), so effectively I did not finish any trace there clear. Tried several traces on the vertical wall and only couple of the very simplest ones were completed without falls. I did not succceed even rather old 6a on the plain vertical wall...

But then I moved to the gym, where, hell knows how, I managed to perform lots of forearms, shoulders and back exercises without too much of efforts. Apparently something is very different between climbing and my exercises, although the same muscles work on both cases.
I think wall climbing has a mostly static load, while exercises are much shorter and thus do not enter that stage, even after a lot of repeats. So while training the power endurance and force, it is noticebly more light than climbing, especially on the negative slope.

Nevertheless I enjoyed it, even without any noticeble result.

It was not a climbing training, but rather physical exercises loading day in a gym. I virtually lifted more than 50 tonns of various weights by 4 hours. Well, of course it was spread over a lot exercises with smaller weights, like several hundreds of 10 kg lifts for each forearm and so on. I expect power endurance worm to grow up on this 'drugs'.
Found that I got 5 kg for the last several months. Do not know if it is muscles or not, but there was indeed a progress on the physical side of my climbing and exercises.

Climbing part was made of multiple runs on the negative slope, when I was able to use any hold, but had to climb to the end as fast as possible. Sometimes I do was fast, and actually I enjoyed this exercise. The best result I believe I got on 5-6'th run, although I think I'm quite far from the more advanced power endurance people. I still do not like my level on this side.

This freaks my brain out, so it works the artistic way I like. There are couple of very interesting ideas I want to implement, which I was enlightened about quite in the unusual 'thinking' condition.
And that's a great endorphine powered feeling.

I started climbing again - number of times I missed the trainings crossed the line after me and my body do not like the condition. Without phyical exercises I fade away.

So, climbing again. It was a rather easy training - no serious traces, no exhausting exercises, I kind of warmed up for the next round. We ran 3 sets of 5 traces one after another on the vertical wall with the maximum speed. This kind of exercises should improve trace visibility and technique, so climber wouldn't waste a lot of time thinking how to put own body in given condition. When I quickly move upstairs there is no that much of a time to think about which hold to get and how, body should react immediately and continue with the next holds.

My timing was rather large compared to others, but I definitely did not try to squeeze the last possible piece of body today.
I'm just warming, and hell sees, expect excellent results soon.

This is my second back tyre for the season - broken as previous one on the essentially straight place.
Well, it is filled with some building development garbage like bricks, plates and hard dirt, but I did not expect new tyre to break so quickly, and essentially at the same street place as before.

Crime scene investigation lead to the idea of the breakage reason: overpumped tyres, which explode under the overhead of the (really small) jumps.

Two holes in the tyre

I checked tyre casing and did not find obvious holes, so I suppose my idea of the overpumped tyres is correct.

Installed the last one, pumped (rather slightly - at least less than front one), go.

EDITED TO DAMN FUCKING ADD: Shit happend again - the same place, 600 meters from home.

It was a miserable 20 sm kerb and maybe 10-15 km/h small speed. Well the kerb I jumped over (the front wheel 'flew' over, the back one, whose tyre exploded 3 times already, kicked the obstacle) has a bit sharp edge, which likely broke the tyre. And likely the same which broke previous two.

My Sport

Two tyres, 1.2 km road. And the only problem is a non-understanding of what happend. Why it exploded under that rather small strike? And looks like anonymous friend found an answer in comments: under-inflated tyres.

At least my experiment with under-inflated tyres lead to the same breakage. And if I squeeze tyre the way it could be deformated during the strike, two holes likely match.

Crap, bicycle shop is rather far from my home to walk there, but I wanted to get a shoe fixing pedal 'addition', can not describe this device even in russian, but its main purpose is to fix the feet on the pedals, but not special shoes which can be attached to the special pedals, but some fixing strap or something like that...

I used to think that heroin affects central nervous system, which ends up producing endorphins, so people feel good and happy. I did not get it, but used to measure after-training feelings in some abstract heroin doses.

This first climbing training after the ill equals to at least double dose. Maybe because I was weak, or maybe because I made just three somewhat not very complex traces on the vertical wall (just about 6a-6b) and 3 Cooper sets of exercises (4 starts in the exercise, each one contains 10 push-ups, 10 leg throws from the push-up position to the chest, 10 squattings and 10 abdominal muscles exercises with as small delays as possible), not counting couple of warming traverses and starts.

This mix of traces and big set of exercises squeezed me to the third-dead (or quarter) condition: hard to breath, a little bit dizzy, hard to stay, even to sit and do anything requiring muscles strain. But eventually I recovered to the state where endorphine gets produced.

And now I feel good. Just bloody uber-mega-killing good.
Love this potato-like condition.

Decided to take a short ride over the neighbour area and found that I'm a real wreck for now. But let's get it in order.

That was fun for the first 10 minues of jumping to and from the kerbs and other small blocks and holes, but then I punctured the back wheel, so moved by legs. Just straight: to find a pump (my small bicycle one was not able to inflate the tire) and a bicycle shop. I found tire fitting workshop, but they said they can not help me - a little bit different systems are cars and my GT Avalanche. But they pointed to the closest shop and I moved there.
Eventually I got couple (for the reserve) of tires and replaced one of them just on the street, inflated and volia, let's start the ride!

First, I decided to move to the old part of the city I live in. I never was there before except when moved in the bus which sometimes cut the traffic jam on those streets. Those half century half-broken wood houses depressed me alot, I wonder how they are still managed to stay.
Then I digged into the forest and highly crossed trace, there were several 60+ degrees slopes covered with the thick layer of very slick dirt, a small river (or likely an offspring) and, crap, the same degree slopes on the opposite side (hopefully there was a small 'bridge' with 30 santimeters width), but I had to move upstairs, and did that by legs.

When I moved out of the forest I found myself in the strange place where I never was before. I did not even know there is a small weir in the city I live in (it is quite small town near Moscow). Maybe it can not even be called a weir, but still. Small neighbour lake (maybe 50x100 meters) is still covered with the mix of ice and water.

Eventually I found where I was and moved close to the known part of the city, where I found myself on the same street I started from, then couple of circles around houses and moving home.

The whole ride took about 4 hours (including staying in line for the food, searching for the bicycle shop, changing the tire and so on), and I moved just miserable 15.5 kilometers (most of the time over highly crossed and dirty forest though). This sucked all the power I ever had after the ill. In some places I was not able to move more than 300-500 meters without the rest, although there was a quite small slope, but dirty slick road. The main problem is in breathing - it becomes hard to take even a slight breath quite soon after the start of the power-hungry length of the road. Wrecking crap.
And my ass. My ass is freaking broken. It was aching like hell on the bicycle seat.
Also damaged a leg, but it's not a problem, but maybe I should buy special shoes which can be fastened to the pedals. And hand protection. And maybe a helmet.
Although I fell only couple of times, so it is not a strong demand.

Made several photos of the trip, will publish them tomorrow. The only thing I want to do right now is to take a shower, have some rest and ... hack and play piano. What a strange wish.

A strange thing I found about my climbing trainings today. Looks both bad and good. And definitely weird.
But let's get it in series.

It started with usual warming runs on the running gym machine, where I managed to get quite strong pain in the right side somewhere around a liver. Likely because I had a rather substantial meal just one hour ago. So I moved directly into the gym and made couple of sets with the small weight to warm up the forearms. I do not know if it helped or not, but previously I just could not run more than once over the complex trace on the negative slope, but after some delay and subsequent warmup I could try again.
So I warmed at the beginning.

Then moved to the negative slope. And this time I started to climb over really complex 6c+ trace. It happend that it is quite doable, although I obviously fell lots of times (really lot of times). Eventually I reached the finish, and believed I was not too tired, which was quite surprising.

But it was just a stupid feeling, I decided to try quite simple from the first view new 6a+/6b trace on the verticall wall, and it was so crappy - I fell all the time essentially on the every place which required to attach at least some power. I was completely sucked out.

So continued to rest and tried something really simple like 5b or so. Eventually training reached its end and after about 2.5 hours in the climbing zone I decided to try again something more or less interesting and moved to the new 6b on the vertical wall, which I once tried prevously. Did not succeed without falls, but things changed - I could climb again. So I warmed up there and moved to another 6b on the vertical wall but with the huge balcony to climb over. That was really non-trivial trace especially for the on-sight attempt, but I could, I was able to climb. Again I fell and the balcony itself was really complex place where everyone else fell too. But I felt that muscles revived and while not returned to the starting shape, but to something I could work with on the walls.

This part was a weird surprise for me. Was it just a long warmup? Or I just had a coule of hours rest and finally returned to some level far from the bottom I was in after trying 6c+ on the negative slope. Will it always be that way, when I become squzied to crap after single comlex trace?
Lots of questions, but answer seems to be not that pessimistic: as instructor said, I reached the next level (where I try 6c+ on the negative slope), where every next step requires to get more and more succeessful attempts during the training of the same complexity but starting just from miserable single trace. Maybe will also start power endurance exercises again.

Today I was able to do only one start (with zillions fells), tomorrow I will run it clean. Next day I will run it twice and so on. This actually will take a while to move further.

But we will see.

How can even small things change the feelings? Easily - just enjoy how it goes even around little steps.

That's effectively how my training could be described. I started with the 6a+ trace on the negative slope, which I errorneously thought to be a 6c one. I found the way to solve the problematic place I had previously with a dynamic straightening, but those attempts sucked lots of power, so I did not suceed to finish the trace without any fall.

After several starts I decided to help the partner to solve a problem on the neighbour 6c trace and moved upstairs (over 5c trace though - I did not want to flush the rest of the power on the other parts of the trace) - apparently I can climb parts of the traces of such complexity, even really non-trivial places, but I definitely can not run them with small amount of falls. Likely it is related not only to the power endurance but also technique level - negative slope is not my best case.

Found an interesting observation - although I either run or bicycle 10-15 minutes in the gym as a warmup exercise, my forearms become very quickly tired and behave like I'm getting colder. If I first try to climb something simple to warm them up again, things become noticebly better, and I can proceed with complex traces. Usually this happens already on the complex traces though, so it sucks power even more quickly.
I will try to warmup the forearms with some weights at the beginning of the trainig and check the results next time - I suppose there should be a difference.

At the end I tried 6b on-sight on the vertical wall - I could succeed if I had a little bit more power, but apparently it was not a day of big traces - I finished it with falls, but will do it next time (if started early) without serious problems.

As of developments - I spent the day trying to resolve the mysterious test application freezing. At the very end I shrunk test code to the following block (not even linked to the elliptics network library):

int alarm_signal()
{
  gettimeofday();
  speed = bytes / time;
  printf();
}
 
int main()
{
  setitimer();
 
  while (1) {
    malloc();
    free();
  }
}

which did not crash under valgrind and just froze (not always, but frequently) in the usual run. gdb said that stack was corrupted and refused to show any details.

Eventually I found the problem and we talked with collegues about it, which resulted in some code audit and recovery of the same issues there :)

No matter what, but I enjoyed the day.

Upstairs climbing training was solely devoted to the various traces on the walls. No boulderings, power endurance sadistic exercises, no restless runs - just classical climbing.

I supposed I should climb rather known traces to slack after the power endurance boulderings, and I started with some old traces on the vertical walls - couple of 6b and another 6a, but getting that they were not really complex, this quickly became somewhat uninteresting despite of jumps and technical level of the trace.

I wanted something new and moved to the negative slope to try 6c trace. Apparently I can not run traces of such complexity on-sight (and local 6c is actually not a well-known 6c on other climbing zones :) But after couple of starts with multiple falls I felt that I can climb it. Really there were no places I could not complete after couple of tries, and although I was not able to combine them all in a single run without a fall, I'm sure I will be able to complete it soon. Maybe not next time, but I expect much smaller number of falls, maybe just one or two. And effectively clean trace after several trainigs.

I think this is a progress. And effectively progress is the only thing which matters.

In my current state I'm way to tired to write several blog entries, so I will combine those although slightly unrelated to each other topics, but actually they form an interesting reason-conclusion queue.

Let's start from the beginning. Yesterday I was about to go climbing, since having two days of the rest before the friday training is definitely better than only one. But I was so 'pushed' by the development workflow, that decided to move the training. I worked on the huge refactoring of the elliptics network, which would allow really simple usage of the low-level API for those who do not want to work with file as a single entity and would like to spread the same object over multiple nodes.

This ended up with some POHMELFS testing people around made. And result was quite interesting, let me cite translated version here:

I loaded POHMELFS module, mounted the remote server and keyboard stopped to work. Does it mean that with the network filesystem I should only use a network, so login via ssh and stop using local keyboard?

Yes, that's a feature POHMELFS got recently. I'm not kidding.
But most of the time this feature fires up as a kernel crash, but sometimes...
Do you know how ships in the bottle are made? Lots of wood, sawdust, threads and glue is placed into the bottle and it is shaked. Most of the time it ends up with some crap, but sometimes we get a ship in the bottle. The same with POHMELFS bug I work on.

Nevertheless I did not complete elliptics network API refactoring yesterday, so early morning I moved into the office. Early enough so that I decided not to play my morning trumpet (several days in a line already, will play tomorrow for sure). Today I worked on the elliptics test utility and finished the library changes.

And I have the results. One result actually and it does not tell us much about how storage scales, but it probably shows a trend. First, I installed a simple setup with only three nodes connected over GigE link. Each machine has 8 Gb of RAM and test XFS partition, I setup two of them as servers and one client, and loaded about 25 Gb of data into the single object spread over the both server nodes. Each transaction had 4k to 400k data size.

Then I started to read from the network using different chunk sizes. Anything more than 4k quickly loaded the whole link, so I ended up with 1k reads.

Here are the results:

reading from the single node which forwarded requests to the second one when needed:       39 MB/s
reading from the single node only (skip transactions which ID matched second node range):  34 MB/s
reading from the both nodes in parallel:                                                   59 MB/s

This is the first test with two server nodes only. Tomorrow I will start learning bits of 'expect' language to write a simple application to automatically login into the machines in the test 150-nodes cluster I have access to. Let's see how things will behave there. So far you can checkout the latest update from the git tree, but note that it has a bug :) I will fix things up and make a new release soon.

I moved climbing while test application continued to read the data at the speeds above. So far more than 1.5 terabytes were transferred from the both nodes.

Climbing training was somewhat new today - bouldering power endurance. I.e. you get a complex enough small trace (about 5-7 holds/movements) on the negative slope, which, when ready, should be repeated one-after another without the rest for 5 minutes or so. Then 1 minute to slack and the next start. Total of 3 starts for one trace. I was able to complete 8 runs without falls in the 5 minutes start in the best case and usually only about 5-6. But this sucked the power really greedy. Because of the trace's complexity and length, it did not contain big convenient holds to have a rest on, usually something very hard to fix with the tired hands. So I ended up scratching lots of the skin on the hands and eventually protected fingers with a plaster which I never did before. That's how it looks on on the left hand now.

Scratched hands

Nevertheless I spent a good time on the training. Let's see how things will be moved further.