Decomposing Train

I’m typing this while riding on my recumbent exercise bike. I’ve modified an old art table so that the main chassis and pedals of the bike fit underneath, and added slats across the top of the table to hold my laptop and external keyboard and mouse steady.

It was inspired by the treadputer featured on Lifehacker awhile back, and I see that they also featured something called the Geek-a-cycle ™. It’s a little tricky remembering to keep the legs working while concentrating on typing, but hopefully this will help me achieve my daily exercise goals a bitter easier. I’d post some pics, but really, it’s just a table high enough for me to sit underneath and pedal without knocking my knees on the underside.

One thing I’ve noticed is that my spelling ability really takes a hit when using this. The keyboard is a little too high and off-center to hit the keys properly at the speed I normally type. Ah well, at least the WASD keys are comfortable for gaming. Now, to try and burn a few hundred calories in Oblivion…

UPDATE:  Well, I didn’t get around to playing Elder Scrolls IV, but I did manage to trawl through my daily reading list.  End result: 54 mminutes, 10.24 miles, 542 calories.

From Wired.com’s Threat Level:

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush’s five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government’s authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration.

The Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama (D-Illinois) voted for the final bill, despite intense lobbying by supporters who used Obama’s own online organizing technology to try to hold him to his promise to fight any bill that included amnesty. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted against the bill.

Richard Koman at ZDnet sums it up:

Obama issued a statement saying the bill was the best resolution that lawmakers were able to reach. But with the vote so lopsided, Obama could have easily voted against the bill, confident that it would pass anyway. It comes down to a matter of politics. The political tea-readers decided that there was no political upside to being against enhanced government spying, and so a vote was cast. Pity.

So much for Change.