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Here's a chart I made by extracting data from the overall results of the 2009 Capitol 10k. It shows the number of timed participants for each overall pace.

They sold 7,000 timed registrations (according to the initial registration form), of which 6,644 runners completed the event (according to the official results page). There were ~18,000 participants in total (according to news reports), so ~11,000 completed the event un-timed.

Anyway, for the timed runners, you can see pretty clearly how people did.

How can you do bulk file rename using shell tools?

The wrong answer is: mv *.OLD *.NEW

The easy answer is a shell loop, should be pretty straightforward. Or maybe even a simple Perl/Ruby/etc. script.

But it's also do-able using find with some other tools. Turns out that's rather awful. This is what I came up with to make it actually work using find, and as far as I can tell, it adds zero practical value over a basic shell loop. I spent a few minutes trying to use -exec, but that got hairy when using {} twice, and also when the output contained full paths from subdirectory traversals.

find . -name "*.OLD" | sed 's/^\(.*\).\(OLD\)/cp \1.\2 \1.NEW/' | awk '{system $0}'

Another option would be using xargs. If you wanted to rename all ".txt" as ".txt.OLD" (variation from above), that would be:

find . -name "*.txt" | xargs -I % cp % %.OLD

The example I initially gave is a little harder -- .OLD to .NEW -- you could use sed, too, in order to remove the file extension, like this:

find . -name "*.OLD" | sed 's/^\(.*\).OLD/\1/' | xargs -I % cp %.OLD %.NEW

Or you could use basename instead of sed, and call xargs twice, like this:

find . -name "*.OLD" | xargs basename -s .OLD | xargs -I % cp %.OLD %.NEW

This is a nice interview question for someone with Unix chops, because it can (should?) lead to a short discussion of shell tools.

The new MacBook Pro is a step backward from the previous version.

I used a brand new 15" MacBook Pro (backlit LED display, glossy screen, black border, extruded keyboard, etc.) for more than 3 weeks while my previous MacBook Pro was being fixed (it was hit by NVidia graphics failure). My old MacBook Pro finally came back, I've migrated my work back to it, and I'm happy to switch back.

Overall, I'm suprised at some of the changes Apple has made, a few of them are particularly bad.

Glossy Screen

This one just makes no sense to me. I don't know what MacBook (non-Pro) users thought of the "glossy-only" option, but everyone I know who uses a MacBook Pro for work complains about this. And they're right - the power of a laptop is that you can take it with you, and 3 weeks has told me I had no idea how much variance there is in lighting during the day.

But thanks to the new glossy screen, I was painfully aware of windows, lamps, overhead lights, anything flashing, anything moving within 50 feet.... This may be my single biggest beef with the 15".

Why did they do it? Apple knows the glossy screen blows, which is why they offer a $50 upgrade on the 17" model. But no upgrade on the 15"!

New Trackpad

This one is pretty bad, a close 2nd behind the glossy screen. I'm not the only person who noticed that the trackpad button makes my fingers tired. I found myself trying to avoid using the mouse altogether. Note that I use an external mouse/keyboard most of the time, so for me to rate this as a big complaint is significant.

When they increased the trackpad size (to accomodate frivolous mouse gestures... seriously, they're just fluff) they also increased the trackpad so much that you'll find other parts of your hand accidentally touching the trackpad surface, which creates screwy mouse input.

The mouse software ain't all there... maybe they've fixed it in recent updates, but I couldn't get double-click-and-hold to work, nor could I reliably double-click-and-drag to select text. Just forget it. I asked another saavy Mac user to try on the new MacBook Pro, and he couldn't do it either. I ended up disabling all of the fancy mouse features (including basic double-click stuff that the old MBP - and every other Mac laptop for the last 8 years - did just fine). Lame.

New Keyboard

This may just be personal preference, but I like the old / traditional style keyboard better. I heard the justification is that keycaps pop off more easily on the previous scissor-style keys, so these new rectangle button things don't come back for repairs as much. I don't know. I type a lot, and I type fast on the old keyboard, but on the new one I type slow. Why should I get used to it? It was a good keyboard before.

New DVI Port

You cannot use a DVI display without spending $20-30 on a special mini-DVI-to-DVI connector. Grr. And if you want to use a projector, you have to buy a 2nd connector, this time mini-DVI-to-VGA. And no, you cannot use a DVI-to-VGA adapter with the first connector you already bought, because the interlace pins don't line up. And if you chop them out, it won't work (I know a guy who tried).

There's ~$50 in crap just so you can use your brand new computer the way you used to. My previous MacBook Pro (and PowerBooks before that) included these connectors for free.

Firewire 800 Only - No Firewire 400

This is just a plain nuisance. We have lots of Macs around the office, and I have Macs at the house. Everyone and their dog uses FW 400 cables, but when it came time to migrate my data from old to new MBP, I had to... go to the freaking Apple Store and spend $40 on a Firewire 800 cable.

This cable + mini-DVI connectors + tax is ~$100 in crap.

No Front Row Remote

Admittedly, I haven't used this much, but it used to come free with your computer, and now you have to pay extra. They've already got you buying display adapters and Firewire 800 cables, why not add to the fun and pay extra for a remote, too?

Screen Hinge Moves Too Easily

This must have been a complaint point from weak, lazy users, I can't think of anything else that would justify the insanely friction-less ease with which you can now close the laptop screen. It's a laptop people, so when you move the computer it would be really nice if the lid didn't glide shut in the process. And no, I'm not exaggerating. Several times I had my work interrupted, connections closed, etc. because the lid slid shut on its own.

Removed "Enter" key, now "Option" key

I don't understand this. "Enter" and "Return" behave differently, and for years Apple laptops have included both. Now, for some reason, they decided they needed a 2nd "Option" key. Why?

Speed Feels The Same

This is just subjective, but most of the time, a laptop upgrade includes a snappier, faster feeling. But this didn't. I went from the non-glossy 2.4 ghz MacBook Pro to glossy 2.53 ghz MacBook Pro (4gb ram in each), and it felt... just about the same. I did some benchmarks, and the numbers were a little higher on the 2.53 in a few areas, actually lower in others. Why doesn't the new "faster" MacBook Pro actually feel faster?

Silly Shortcut Keys

They re-did the shortcut keys from previous laptops, so in addition to default keys for Dashboard and Exposé (I'm ok with these, OS-wide features that are practical for all users), they added keys for iTunes which just reeks of dumb Microsoft "multimedia keyboard". Come on Apple, this is a $2,500 computer.

Can we please avoid keyboard buttons that appeal to 8-year-olds? Or maybe just go with it and add "Post New Tweet" and "Update Facebook Status" buttons? I bet the kids would like those, too.

I just read an interesting question & answer at www.cyclingnews.com - "Eating on the bike". I don't know that I've seen anything definitive about caloric absorption rates (during exercise or otherwise) so the response from Scott Saifer is pretty interesting:

"... typical [caloric] absorption rates quoted are in the vicinity of 150 calories per hour for small, un-fit people, up to 325 or so for large, fit, genetically endowed people on good days ..."

The original question was posed because energy food manufacturers have suggested/recommended serving information that would have you consume 900+ calories per hour, which makes no sense whatsoever, except for the company that stands to make more cash by selling you more energy food.

I've been digging into some odd behavior that ultimately traced back to periodic changes to Windows system clock. After doing some research, I've found that:

• Sun's JVM (through 1.6) has a bug that pushes the system clock into the future faster than real-time.
• I've observed clock drift by as much as 3 minutes in 1 hour
• there's no single trigger that your code can do (or avoid), it seems many people have observed the clock drift in different scenarios
• the bug is still open in Sun's bug database: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6435126
• as of June 2006, they're targetting Java 7 for a fix, and as of March 2009 the bug is still open
• this affects Windows only, and the underlying cause is ultimately something screwy with clocks and timers on Windows

The Sun-recommended workaround -- as documented here http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6435126 -- is to create a zombie thread at JVM startup. This has the effect of fixing the clock drift issue on Windows, not sure if this needs to be excluded/ignored if you have a multi-platform product, but it should be pretty straightforward to do an OS check and ignore if OS != Windows.

new Thread() {
	{ this.setDaemon(true); this.start(); }
	public void run() {
		while (true) {
			try {
				Thread.sleep(Integer.MAX_VALUE);
			} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
			}
		}
	}
};