New iPhones, and particularly, photography

 After listening to the latest ATP episode, I had a few thoughts on the latest iPhones, especially w/r/t photography.

For comparison, since I never mentioned it, I currently have an 11 Pro Max.  I got that, because I've always been a pretty heavy user of my "telephoto" lens.  However, I do wonder, since I've never looked, how much the phone has been changing my "x2" photos to use the "normal" sensor/lens, with cropping.

Anyway, there were a couple things I had some feelings about, on the newer phone.  First, I do like that the "telephoto" changed to 65mm equivalent.  While that's still pretty short - most of my recent photography has been short-field soccer, where 70mm is my shortest, and I'm mostly in the 120-300mm range - it certainly is an improvement.  In fact, more generally, when using my "real cameras" (Nikon D4 and D850, mostly with pro-quality lenses), as ATP terms them, I shoot almost nothing between 35mm and 70mm; it's kind of a dead zone, I guess.  However, losing 1/4 stop or so, going from f/2.0 to f/2.2 is a significant regression.

And the fact that the drop-off in f-stop from the normal to the telephoto is now about a full stop... not sure I'll ever use the telephoto in low light anymore.  I guess, if I get one (I generally upgrade every 1-2 years), I'll need to see what the Night Mode output looks like.  The interpolation it does might compensate for the f-stop, although the bigger sensor on the main camera should improve everything there.

That bigger sensor is actually my biggest excitement on the 12 Pro.  That'll improve light sensitivity, and the stabilization should help with shake.

The ATP crew was speculating about why the HDR video performance was better on the Pro; I wonder if that sensor might be the reason for that.  Perhaps it can shuffle data off the sensor faster (I don't know about here, but I know with bigger camera sensors, that can be an issue).  That would explain some of the price difference, if so.

My main reason for writing this, however, was to talk about ProRAW.  On my big cameras, I always use RAW.  Just the ability to shift white balance losslessly was enough for me to switch over.

But on the phone, I suspect I will rarely use it. I do have a camera app on my current phone that can do RAW, but I've only used it a couple of times.  Unless it's an on-screen switch on the 12, I'll basically never use it.  The iPhone rarely gets white-balance wrong, although I did see a bunch of people complaining about it with the California fires.  And I do worry about the effect of using ProRAW on the normal computational enhancement, like John was discussing.  But mostly it's just too big a hassle to deal with, unless I know I need it.  Even if there aren't computational issues, the workflow involved is way more of a hassle.  Well, if I use Lightroom, as I generally do with my "real" cameras; perhaps, on-phone, it won't be that bad.

Finally, two other notes on the 12s.  We got no information on battery life for them.  My big concern, there, is that the MagSafe will be a sizable drain on the battery.  I mentioned, above, getting the 11 Pro Max; the reason for going to the Max was all about battery life.  I generally get 2-3 days of life out of it, and I'd hate for that to drop.  I guess we'll see.

Returning to life?

Been an eon since I posted here; I wish I could say that there were better reasons for it.  Basically, Marvel Puzzle Quest took over the time I was using for posting here, and then it took over the time I was using for biking, and then it nearly took over my life.  If you'd like a better idea, I maintained an instagram account (@mpq_diaries) for much of that time.  That account more or less replaced this.

I played it way more than was healthy for the better part of two years, and did have fun doing it.  But basically every other part of my life took hits (some a lot, some only a bit); I wasn't sleeping well, keeping up with my family, staying in touch with friends, or doing well at work.  The battery use meter in iOS was an interesting tracker; well over 90% of my phone use went to Puzzle Quest or to Line (a communications app that is basically a requirement for top-level play in MPQ).

Finally, about six months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and decided that I needed to quit (for the sake of my marriage, if nothing else.  Ironically, it has made very little difference there).  And I stayed away completely for a month or two, getting back into biking and reading.  I then spent about two months playing again, finding some balance and generally enjoying it.

But I decided that playing it half-assed wasn't so fun (no sense of progress), and I could see that the short-cuts I had taken to be competitive over those couple months weren't going to keep working, so I gave it up again a couple months ago.  Now, I'm back to biking heavily (and I've found a way to keep up with podcasts while doing that), and reading enough to keep me entertained.  I'm also spending a lot more time with the family and occasionally getting to see a movie.

So, after only getting in 300-ish miles over two+ years, I've gotten in 4k since April (when I first quit Puzzle Quest), and might hit 5k by the end of the year.  In fact, I've been doing my 15-mile (each way) commute every day for the past couple weeks.  If I keep that up, I'll be comfortably over 5k, but there will definitely be some difficulties when it gets colder.  Not sure if I'll be able to deal with all of them (though to give an idea, I'm not too worried about the cold of the ride itself.  I have good cold-weather gear.  It has more to do with starting and ending at work, and with precipitation while cold).

To get back to phone use, there are a couple interesting tidbits there.  At the peak of my MPQ usage, I was charging my phone battery 2-3 times a day (so a case with a battery was a must).  Now I can consistently get two days of use out of a charge.  Occasionally I'll even get three.  And my top two apps are Overcast and Safari (each right around 25%).  It certainly feels way healthier.  And I sleep a lot more, which is definitely healthier.  Plus, I'm way more productive at work.

My weight, in my MPQ days, went up about 20 lbs.  I've lost much of that back, but not as much as I should because I haven't done a great job with my diet.  I've stayed on an Atkins-ish diet for the last three years, but my strictness has fluctuated a lot.  When I first started, I was very strict,  and got down to 150*.  Anyway, during my MPQ time, I was not strict (and didn't exercise, worth mentioning), and went up into the 170-175 range.  I've since improved on the diet as well, but not to nearly the degree as when I first started: I've dropped back down to as low as 154, but am mostly right around 160.  I'd really like to consistently get to 155 again.

Anyway, as much fun as I had while playing MPQ, I really don't recommend it.  At least, don't try to be competitive; don't let it take over your life.  So not worth it.  And if you're playing, and hoping to make the 5-star transition?  You can get to that point with a so-so time commitment with little or no money spent (but, to be clear, it'll take several years).  But that transition will take a ton of time (save all your CP and LTs for a year or more), or a crapload of money (I knew quite a few people who spent $30k or more.  The 550s, or end-game players, have all spent considerably more than that.)  How did I do on that measure?  I had five or six characters in the 490-515 range with a ton of time and ~$10k spent.  Sort of proud of that (everyone I knew that had a better roster spent multiples of that), but I really shouldn't be.  It was a terrible way to spend money and was way too much time.

All of that is to say, I'm back, and happy about that.


* I graduated high school at 155, and went up to the 165-170 range in college.  For many, many years after, I was generally at the low end of that range in the Ultimate Frisbee offseason, and the high end (maybe a couple more, even) during the season (March-November, roughly).  The only time I went higher than 175 was for 6-8 months right after meeting my wife; I briefly went up to about 190 then.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'...

I haven't been updating about my biking, either.  Since I figured out how to schedule it for minimal interference, I've mostly gone back to doing fifteen miles a day.  The difference is that I haven't been doing longer rides (aside from the occasional 18-miler).

And yesterday was worse.  I was concentrating on using my turn signal to signal a car ahead of me, and chose too tight a line around a corner, and wiped out when I tried to slow down and my rear wheel locked.  Ouch.

It wasn't as bad as the last time this happened.  It wasn't wet, so I probably slowed down more.  It was fresh pavement, so it was a bit smoother.  And maybe I wasn't going quite as fast to begin with.  Still, I scraped my right arm and hip pretty good (the latter having just about fully recovered from the last incident, finally), and had to bandage myself a bit last night.

Not fun.

Because of that, I only did around seven miles last night, so I was a bit off my pace (and sleeping was awful, last night).

That's the only big negative of late.  There are a couple of smaller ones.  I had no feedback the last two days, when the battery on my RFLKT+ died.  I replaced it, but put the cover on backwards (they should do something so this isn't possible), and it wasn't able to sync up with my phone.  The thing that pisses me off most about this is that it never stopped trying to find it.  I figured it would time out and stop searching after a few minutes, but I didn't notice until the next night that it never had stopped.  So this battery won't be lasting very long.  At least I know not to do that again, I guess.

The other little negative was that I did a hard ride a couple nights ago (the first one without the display), and I wasn't able to maintain that heart rate over 180bpm.  I could get it up there, but I couldn't maintain it for several minutes, as I've done a couple of times recently.  Because of that, my times weren't that great.  I just looked, and did manage a couple PRs that were top-10 finishes, so maybe it wasn't as terrible as it felt at the time, but it was frustrating not to be able to keep hammering all the way up the Walter Reed Dr hill by Shirlington.

Actually, now that I'm looking, there's some irony there.  I had my third-best (actually, tied for second) time on the steep part of that hill (better than I'd've guessed), but my best time on the long version of the segment (the long version includes some rollers at the top of the hill).  And I finished tied with a friend of mine for 11th overall.  Color me shocked: I guess having to reel it back in early had some benefit.  Anyway, it was a four-second gain on somewhat less than two minutes riding.  Not bad, actually.

That's got me looking at the 'Compare Efforts' page for the segment.  It seems that I outclimbed the KOM and several friends for at least the first two-thirds of the steep part.  Funny, since my time on the steep part was fourteen seconds off my record (hence my frustration; that's a hell of a lot).  But I guess I'm seventh overall on just the steep part, so maybe that makes some sense.

Anyway, outside of those annoyances, the riding has been going pretty well.  Two or three nights ago, the ride was just after some rain, and outside of the spots where there was enough water for the tires to kick it up onto me, it was just a glorious ride.  The temperature was absolutely perfect, and I was just in harmony with the night.  It was amazing; rides like that are why I get on the bike every day.  I believe that was also the day where I kept my heart rate at an average of 126bpm, and a max of 131bpm.  Perfect.

Otherwise, riding has been going well, but quite uneventfully.  Let's hope that continues.

Puzzle update

Yesterday was quite the mixed bag.  I found that Hawkeye (modern) and Magneto make for one hell of a team, using Maggie's purple power to make critical tiles out of blue ones.  They pretty much decimated the opposition, which was awesome.

In fact, I even managed to finish the final mission, facing the Hulk.  I was about to say at level 322, because that's where he was when I first looked.  But when I finally tried it (right before bed), he had increased to 330.  He had somewhere between 18-20k hit points, and it was a ridiculously close battle.  What saved me was that Magneto was doing most of the damage, but had the lowest tile-damage, so he hid in the back until the other two were both downed.

I got, I think, four 5-matches before Hawkeye went down, and those provided the bulk of the damage.  I also got off one of Magneto's red explosions before they went down.  Hulk was still ahead on hp when they were the only two left, but Magneto had a lot of blue AP and a little red.  He triggered his blue power a couple times (three, actually, although the third one was destroyed by the second before it went off), and finally finished it off with one more red blast.  I wasn't watching AP, but I think Hulk was only a couple turns from toasting Magneto when that happened.  Ugh.

It was ridiculous, though.  I pounded all the missions until the points were ridiculously small, even putting some time in to space things out a little, and I still was only able to squeeze into the top-50 (barely; I think 48th or 49th) for the day.  That doesn't bode well, although it's true that the last several events I've had my worst day on the first (so maybe there's some hope).

I'm kind of pissed that they limited available covers on Jean Grey, though.  The last several, top-150 was good enough for a single cover, now it's back down to top-100.  More annoyingly, I think every event I've been in has had top-50 be good enough for two covers, while this one requires top-20.  I suspect, as with Ant-Man, I'll have to be happy if I can get one (although that was actually two, since they had the separate Ant-Man event, from which I got a second.  Both of those were a lot of work, though).

Anyway, getting to Deadpool, a couple things.  One is that I was wrong that the prize cover is also the character leading the second wave in the two-wave mission.  That can be the case, but isn't necessarily true.

Two, yesterday was a bitch.  I was able to get through the first four missions with a minimum of hassle, but the fifth had an absolutely ridiculous first wave.  They had three Teisatsu, one kind of hand ninja that is normally only annoying, who were just pumped up to a ridiculous degree.  Starting on turn three, they were just pumping out an attack every round that did an insane amount of damage.  And when you finally killed them, they dropped two attack tiles that did over 100 damage per turn.

The first time I tried it, I eked out a win in the first round, but Storm and Black Widow were both below 300 hit points (remember, multiple 100+ pt attack tiles in play), Thor was down to half of his, and I had very few AP.  I managed to take out one second-rounder, but even that was a close call.

The second time, I prepared a little differently, waiting until attacks appeared to match red tiles.  Actually, I waited until they were about to explode.  In that way, I was able to defuse the first five or six attacks, but the next one got through and left Widow with less than 200 hit points.  Somehow, despite Storm and Widow both going down, I managed to squeak into the second round (yes, despite the apparently-better start, I still did worse overall) with Thor.  But it was with virtually no AP, and so, it was not at all surprising that he went down without even seriously challenging the second round heroes.

Basically, it was ridiculous.  I think, to win that one, you'd need a super-high level group (think three four-star heroes at level 200+), and you might still have trouble.  I wish today's, with Deadpool as the prize, was like that (since, not having Deadpool, I wouldn't see it).  Very annoying, since it was a cover I wanted and because I could seriously use the 2k Iso-8 prize for doing all five missions.

Today's Hulk missions are quite a mixed bag.  Most of them have been pretty easy, although the last one was absurd.  It had Yelena Belova with two snipers, which doesn't sound bad.  But the snipers do 4550 damage per shot.  That's enough to take down Magneto or Hawkeye with one shot.

And they did take Hawkeye down with one (the first one, actually).  I was unable to destroy it, and on the turn before it went off, I only had one move, which was moving yellow tiles, the only ones for which Hawkeye would have to move them.  I was able to win, eventually, but it was a close fight.  Two more of those shots, and I'd've been gone.

I haven't finished the day's missions, but I'm off to a good start.  I hope I can finish them, and finish the day at least as high as yesterday (although having depleted my health packs getting there, this morning, does not help.  Nor did that near-loss)

Deadpool update

One thing I forgot to mention about the Deadpool Daily challenges, yesterday.  Several of the missions have restrictions on characters.

Specifically, the first one only allows one-star characters.  The two-wave and 'third times the charm' missions only allow one- and two-stars.  You can't use characters who are being used against you in the one-wave misions (including alternate versions.  So if Black Widow (classic) is there, you can't play Black Widow (modern) or Black Widow (grey suit))

In the remaining two missions, though, you can use any characters you want (except, of course, that in the 'dat required character' mission, you do need to play that character).

Also, I didn't mention it, because it hadn't happened yet when I wrote that, I finished all five missions for the second time in two days (and second time ever) yesterday.  That felt good.

Today, I've already beaten the three-mission sequence, but I'm not sure about the other two.  She-Hulk is the required character (and prize), which is great, because I want to play her.  But the defenders in the required character mission include Black Widow (classic) and Thor (Marvel NOW!), my two standbys for playing that mission (Widow actually being the more important of the two).  Bullseye being the third is not a happy-making thing, either.  I'll probably try it, but I'm not optimistic.

Oh, and the latest even finished up this morning (for me, at least).  I finished 49th; was irritated that my last match did not finish before the deadline (especially since it was a tough one, and I killed it).  So I got two (more; I thought I'd sold her, and now am glad I didn't) Psylocke covers to make today's missions way easier.  Got diddly/squat for other covers, though.  I was really hoping for a third Scarlet Witch cover (but at least the purple cover for her, that came as a points-mandated prize, made her much more playable).

The PvE event starting today is somewhat interesting, though.  It's a seven-day one (only the second of those with which I've been involved), with a prize of a new four-star, Jean Grey.  I'm of mixed feelings about this.  Jean Grey was a favorite of mine, growing up, but the events with new characters are the toughest ones (presumably because people who don't play every day come out to play those events).  I got shut out in the event for The Thing, and just squeaked in to getting one cover for Ant-Man.  I'm going to be seriously bummed if I can't get at least one.

I hope they do a side event, similar to the Ant-Man one, so that I can be sure of getting at least one cover for her.  I suspect, though, that they won't, and that they only did the Ant-Man one as a tie-in to the movie that is coming (came?) out.

New threshold

No, not a biking post.

I was playing Puzzle Quest yesterday, and there's this thing called the Daily Deadpool.  It's a set of five missions that run every day.  They aren't identical every day, but they follow a pattern.

The first is taking on a two-star hero with two NPCs (for lack of a better term.  These might be robots, or soldiers, or ninjas, but things which don't get to move the tiles).  The hero is level fifteen, and the two sidekicks are level ten.  Win that one, and get 500 Iso-8.  Pretty easy (though I do remember when it was a challenge).

The second, which requires taking on the first, is two waves of foes.  The first wave is four NPCs of around fortieth level (there's some variation here).  When you defeat that wave, a second appears that is one three-star hero with three more NPC sidekicks.  Again, all around fortieth level.  Win that one, and you get a recruiting token for a two-star or better prize (though their definition of two-star leaves much to be desired.  It includes healing packs, for goodness' sake) plus 200 Iso-8.

This one has been routine for me for a while.

If you beat that one, you can continue on to the 'Third time's the charm' mission.  That one features three seventy-ish level heros (and you can't use those heroes to fight them, which can suck badly).  That one I've shied away from, but I took it on yesterday and beat it (with both of my games, even).  Win, and you get 1000 Iso-8.

Irrespective of the results of those three, there are two more missions.  The first requires you to have a particular three-star hero (it occurs to me now that this is also the hero that leads the second wave of the two-wave fight; never noticed that before), who you then use, along with two others, to fight three sixtieth-level heroes.  Since this is generally one for whom I have one cover (and is therefore only level forty), this one is quite a challenge for me still.  I've been winning it, but it's been nip-and-tuck every time.  If you win, you get another two-star token (again, for some weird definition of two-star).

If you win that mission, you get a final challenge, four waves of a mix of NPCs and heroes, each around level one hundred to one-thirty.  I've tried this a couple times before, and gotten my butt kicked each time.  But if you win, you get another cover for the three-star hero from the 'Dat Required Character' mission.  Only predictable way to get a three-star cover, although it's limited in a couple ways (first, it's a cover that you already have, and second, it can't be a four-star).  Still, it's pretty sweet.

So, yesterday was Spider-Man, and I was feeling optimistic, so I tried it again.  And this time, after a long and painful battle, I won.  It was kind of draining, as I was feeling like I was about to lose both times when the wave of heroes appeared.

And to add to that, I realized yesterday that, if you finish all five missions, you get a 2000 Iso-8 prize (that was part of why I wanted to try the four-wave mission yesterday).  It turns out that I was more excited about the Iso-8 than I was about the Spider-Man cover, yesterday, though I can think of a number of characters for whom that would not be the case.

Still, it felt really good, and makes me look forward to the day when even the four-wave battle is an easy one (that won't happen anytime soon).

Quick update on that last

Trying the current day's set of missions, and I'm just getting my butt kicked.  I was definitely wrong about what drives difficulty, because I'm running into easy missions that are against guys at level 117.  I guess that'd be fine if the heroes I have that are boosted were similarly high level, but the ones I have that are boosted that high have no useful powers (Ant-Man and Scarlet Witch.  Both can be very powerful, but I have a total of three covers between them, and it isn't nearly enough.  If my Scarlet Witch one were purple, that'd help a lot.  As it is, she's basically cannon fodder).

It doesn't help that this event has most characters locked.  Nor does it help that I jettisoned my two-star human torch the other day (I have the three-star with a number of covers, so I couldn't think of a reason to keep the two-star as well (they have identical powers)); that was definitely a mistake.

Meanwhile (and this is what makes it really stand out), my second game just tore through all of the missions without trouble.

I wonder... yesterday's missions went similarly at the end.  That is, I was able to win the third-to-last one a couple times with my secondary game, but got my butt handed to me twice when I tried it with my main game.  The levels faced were certainly different, which helped, but I mostly attributed it to a much stronger Ms Marvel (5 red covers vs three) who could dish out serious pain very quickly.  Now, however, I'm wondering.

Today's, though, I was seeing differences of 10-30 levels in the opposition (the 30s, not surprisingly, were the ones I noticed first).  Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's interesting.

Puzzle Quest recap

As I've mentioned, I've been playing a ridiculous amount of Marvel Puzzle Quest.  Basically, I've been trying to collect high-rarity heroes for playing.

And I've mostly been doing that in the PvE (Player vs Environment) competitive matches.  In those, you can get a couple of two-star hero covers and one three-star for reaching point thresholds over the span of the whole competition.  You can also get up to three covers of a three-star hero for your placement in your group of 1000.

I haven't been tracking it closely, but I play two games, and have generally been getting top-100 finishes with both games.  In one of the games, I've gotten a number of top-50 as well, one or two top-20s, and a top-10.

I'm starting to find it harder, rather than easier, to get those finishes, however, despite leveling my heroes up when I can.  I'm not sure what's driving that; it might be the way the system does divisions into echelons of one thousand.

One thing that has worked well is that the levels haven't (mostly) gotten a lot more difficult.  So I think the difficulty scaling is done by what your highest-level character is.  Mine is, and has been, almost since the start, seventy-four, and I'm deliberately not increasing that.  The last several weeks has seen me pushing up the levels of my characters to get to about 70.  My plan is to get my most-played ten or fifteen all to that level, then save up 150k Iso-8 (or thereabouts) and bump at least four of them up to the two-star max of 94.

I imagine I'll probably stay at that level for a while as well, getting the rest of the good characters up to that range.  After that, who knows?  I'm already projecting further ahead than I should.

I'll get a good comparison of whether that strategy is a good one tomorrow, though.  A friend of mine, who's around the same level as me, got frustrated and bumped his two-star Thor up to 90th level (way ahead of the rest of his heroes).  The difficulty scaling didn't kick in immediately, but he still hasn't finished the most recent competition (he finishes tonight; I finished this morning with placings of 90 and 101).  If it kicks in tonight, with the next competition, I'll know that's how they're doing it.  If not, I'll have to re-evaluate my own strategy.

Quick recap

fI've been falling further behind, it seems, on talking about my biking progress.  The last week has been a very mixed bag, in terms of success and pleasure.

The first several days, I was riding at night and doing eleven miles or so, as I described previously.  That was almost all taking it easy, with a couple exceptions, and I'm just going to talk about the exceptions today.

Two of those days, I did that loop, but decided to attack a hill on Williamsburg Rd near my house (the last hill before I get home; the segment is called Wmsburg Riser).  The first of those times, I planned ahead, but forgot where the segment started, and started pushing a (short) block early.  I still got a PR of 36s, but definitely gave up something.  Two days later, I didn't plan ahead, but as I reached the correct starting point, decided to charge up it and set a new PR of 34s.  Both times I failed to keep pushing after cresting the hill; if I want to challenge for KOM, I need to do that.

Another exception was that I took Friday off, and did a ride of a little over an hour.  I decided to challenge the Arlington trail loop (Custis/W&OD/Mt Vernon trails) that I hadn't done since October 28th.  Call it a benchmark of progress since then (and while I knew it had been a while, I didn't realize it had been quite that long since I did that ride).  How did it go?  Swimmingly.

I did fall off considerably from the penultimate hill to the end, but still did get KOM.  In doing so, I beat my old record by just over two minutes; not bad for a sixteen-mile loop (fifty minutes down to forty-eight, roughly).

Oh, and at the end of my fifteen mile loop on Saturday, I finished with a slight variation on my normal route, coming back via Little Falls Rd/Yorktown Blvd instead of Williamsburg.  There's a stretch along there that I used to try to tackle vigorously, but which I hadn't done hard in quite a while (since March, I think, looking back at my times).

Well, I decided to go all-out along that stretch, and actually caught and passed a couple of cars that were probably doing the speed limit.  Man, did that feel good.  Actually, it felt remarkably good just pounding along there; I'm not sure what it was, but I found the perfect cadence or something, and it just felt like flying instead of riding.  I was working hard (420W avg), but somehow, it didn't feel like it.

The cars started with a lead of 1-200 yards, and I didn't think I'd ever catch them (especially since I stayed seated the whole time), but I did it with room to spare.  I kept hammering the pedals up the hill just after the end of the segment.  I was seriously beat by the time I got to the top, but it was a good feeling.

When I first started out, I was doing that segment in just about a minute, but this time was 36s.  Back then, I knew I'd be able to improve, but would not have guessed that I'd be able to do so by so much.  Now I wonder if there's any more room for improvement, although I doubt I'll try anytime soon.

Actually, I created the segment, and I think I did it after my first round of improvement, where I got 10-15s better, and wanted to see myself beating other people.  It was pretty eye-opening to see how much faster the other people were at the time.  Definitely motivation for me to improve.

Once thing that has come out of the last few days is that I've found that I really enjoy riding at night.  It was more of a scheduling thing that got me to be doing that (my wife needing to go to work early, mostly), but it works pretty well.  I play Puzzle Quest in the morning, finishing competitions (right at the end is a bad time to not be playing).  And in the evening, I play some more of that, but when I get to a point where I need an hour or so of healing, I take a break to ride the bike.  Works out pretty well.

And I'm surprised that I find the roads and trails less crowded at night.  I don't see the joggers running in the road, which is nice (that still bothers me quite a lot, especially the ones playing chicken), and there are actually fewer cars as well.  The latter shocked me, but I certainly enjoy it (other than the jerk who passed me at 75 in a 30mph zone, last night.  And who couldn't even be bothered to get all the way in the other lane.  Was seriously wishing a cop had been there).

So I might just keep riding at night, instead of switching back to the morning.  The one fly in the ointment is that I haven't been sleeping enough, and playing that game is the primarily culprit for that.  I might talk about that part some more, but suffice it to say that it's probably unsustainable for me to keep sleeping so little.  We'll see.