Via TechCrunch, a precious moment from 1981 showing the future of news:

Time-wise, I’m halfway through the marathon training, and thought I’d take a moment to review and reflect. I fell short just one of those eight weeks, the first one, where I ran 11 of 14 miles. The other seven weeks, I hit or just passed the mark. In total, I’ve run 155.52 of 156 scheduled miles since training began Dec. 1.

Last Friday’s run topped 12 miles, the longest long run so far in the schedule. This week, the long run is 13 miles, which ties my two longest outings since I took up running — last October’s Brooksie half marathon and a training run I did a few weeks before that race. After this week, I cut back for a week, then tackle a week that’ll have me topping my longest distance yet with a long run of 14 miles. The 14-mile week, though, will be bisected by a Caribbean vacation, so that new personal best distance will wait until the third weekend of February.

My pace so far has hovered between about 7 and 9 minutes a mile. Most often, I run in the the 7-8 minute a mile frame; the 9-minute outlier was on a really slushy day. I’ve tried to keep most of the training under 7:30. To qualify for the 2010 Boston Marathon, I’d need to finish the race I finally choose in 3:15:59, a 7:28 pace. While a Boston time would be nice, I’ll call it a success if I pass the finish line. Plus, I’m not even sure I’d run a Boston even if I did qualify.

Weather and a few minor but persistent blisters have complicated training. I’ve had a couple of runs in conditions I can only describe as wicked: single digits, wind and slush. Slush tops the sh*t list. Cold and wind I can deal with, but treacherous footing makes running unfun. I spend as much energy staying on my feet as I do pushing my body forward. It gets tiring. The blisters … well, are blisters ever any fun? But, if that’s the worst, I can handle this.

Eight weeks down, eight to go. Distance-wise, it’s another story. The next eight weeks will see me covering 264 miles for a total of 420 during the 16-week schedule. Feet, don’t fail me now.

Inspired by a brother who insists baking bread by weight beats volume, I freestyled this recipe. It’s about as simple as bread gets (and, often, as complex as it needs to be).

Two baguettes, one with rosemary

Ingredients

600 g flour
450 g water
1 T. yeast
1 T. salt

Mix dry ingredients. Add water and blend until combined. Turn out onto counter and knead roughly to aerate. (Here, I used an abusive no-flour kneading technique from a video sent by the same brother. Hard to describe.) Form into ball, dust with flour and put in bowl to rise. When doubled — about 90 minutes — turn out on to lightly floured counter. Divide in two and lightly knead each. Form into baguettes. (During the forming, I added chopped fresh rosemary to one.) Set on baking sheet dusted with cornmeal. Preheat oven to 425. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Notes

I haven’t baked bread in a while, mostly because the sourdough starter I used beginning last January quit cooperating. As I consistently baked barely edible bricks, I lost mojo. Not a good thing for a baker.

This batch helped restore some of that confidence. The crust was crunchy and golden and the insides were light, airy and fully done. I used about 3 T. of rosemary in one, and could have used a pinch more to give a more pronounced taste. My biggest criticism: The loaves were a tad salty. Overall, though, these turned out pretty damn good for making it up as I went along, and went a long way toward boosting that mojo.

I broke down and bought Spore Origins for the iPhone. Let me introduce Spot, my proto-creature. This is his level 10 self, with four eyes, three spikey things and two newly acquired mouths to feed.

Let me start this brief review by saying I don’t game much. I tried Cro-Mag Rally on the iPhone, and found it difficult, at best, to control. I find Moonlight Mahjong, which doesn’t make any sudden moves, more my speed — though any serious gamer would call that dull. I like Moonlight because what I often want out of a game on the phone is a bridge to carry me over a few minutes of down time.

Spore demands a little more, but makes for a fun way to spend that time. In evolution mode, I bet most gamers would find it easy, but to me it’s just hard enough to challenge. I got stuck on level 8 for a few sessions, but managed to move on. To me, that mean’s I’ll probably get hours of play out of this game and have a real go of it as levels and difficulty progress. That’s not bad for the $7 sale price. I haven’t tried survival mode yet, but that sounds like more of a challenge. If so, it’ll just extend the life of this little game for me.

Between levels, players can tweak their creature by adding things like spikes and eyes that allow safer navigation of the ether or more effective hunting. The creature editor makes evolving fun, since every pinch and squish you put your creature through is punctuated by a noise that evokes the Pilsbury Dough Boy.

In all, I give Spore high marks for being accessible for a lame-gamer like myself (but not too easy), and for being beautiful in both graphics and implementation.

For the last few weeks I’ve shaken my head and lowered it with a pinch of shame every time I checked updates to Apple’s iTunes App Store. I waited with baited breath for it to open, and now I find myself wishing for a little self restraint in the approval process.

I speak of such useless bits of coding as iFart Mobile. I instinctively think, surely no one actually downloads a flatulence simulator. But thousands have paid a dollar for it. Really? Whoopie cushions haven’t been funny for, um … like, ever. Why would a digital version elicit laughs from anyone but a 10-year-old or a person with the intellectual capacity of one? I’m all for having fun, and even own a couple of pointless, just because, apps (see Koi Pond). But c’mon.

Enough screed for now. I don’t want to be a complete hater, so I thought I’d run down a few of the apps I find useful, innovative or both (in no particular order):

Zenbe Lists: This list-sharing app is one of the first I downloaded last summer, and I still use it every day. It holds my to-dos and grocery lists.

SteadyCam: I just downloaded this one. It uses the accelerometer to know when the phone is still so low-light pictures come out better. It’s not perfect, but anyone who knows me knows how steady my hands are, and how much I need this functionality. It also has a timer for taking group photos, but I haven’t tried that yet.

12seconds: This one works with 12seconds.tv, a Web site that’s a Twitter-like video service. Since Apple hasn’t seen fit to allow the iPhone to capture video, this app takes three photos and 12 seconds of recorded audio, and creates a mini-slideshow. The output appears on the 12seconds site, and cross-posts to Twitter (which in turn cross-posts to Facebook). Nifty concept.

FStream: I’m not much for the stock radio streams here, but I love that I can enter URL to any streaming audio source. I use this app to get an NPR fix on the go from the two local affiliates.

Pace: Keeping track of miles in a running log is a great motivator for marathon training. This log has every feature I need without bogging down with GPS functions (which I can’t use, since I have a 1st gen iPhone). It also tweets my runs, so anyone who cares can follow my progress.

Moonlight Mahjong: This is the first app I paid for, and I still find it more than worth it. I didn’t know mahjong from a hole in the ground before, but after hours of gameplay I can’t get enough. Plus, the developer adds new layouts regularly.

Facebook: I prefer the Facebook iPhone app to its browser-based cousin. Simple and elegant.

Air Sharing: Turns my iPhone into a wi-fi hard drive. This useful app would qualify as über-useful if, like Readdle Docs, you could email in and out of it over Edge.

iTalk: Voice recordings limited only by the iPhone’s available space. I recorded hours of lectures with iTalk at a recent seminar I attended, and even used recordings from it as the basis for my final project in Soundslides. It records aiff files in three quality settings and easily syncs over wi-fi. Plus, you can start a recording in two taps, which is great for brainstorms at traffic lights. I found this app so useful that I upgraded to the pro version from the free ad-supported one.

Google: Like most products from the Big G, this one keeps getting better. It was useful when I first got it, then they added voice search. Now, it’s sweet.