I never felt comfortable running in "normal runners". I don't get full control in my run, with all the paddings and rigid front side of my foot. So until very recently, i decided to get my first pair of Vibram Five Fingers (aka VFF) and test things out. 

This is the one i got, Komodo Sport VFF. If you are interested, go to a shop that sells official VFF, get measured to get the right fitting. Unless you plan to consistent run marathons with it, you probably do not need to get those special five-toes-socks. VFFs are machine washable as well.

Even with conventional runners, i run mostly on my forefoot instead of my heels, resulting in faster strides for me (its like sprinting) but much more stress on my calf muscles. I have much smaller thigh muscles in comparison to my calf. 

When i got my new pair of VFF, i went for a run along a canal, concrete like surface. i ran for about 3.5km straight on a much faster time than i am used to. It felt great. The next day, i could feel severe pain in my calf muscles, making it almost impossible to sit down and take a dump, and going down stairs. A little more than week now, and i still feel the strain (have since ran about 4-5 times in that week) on my calves. I got curious and went about searching for more explanations on why this is happening. There are lots of good articles and blog posts explaining things from running barefoot and body postures and the evolution of running methods.

These are the two most informative pieces i've found: Barefoot Running, Forefoot Striking and Running Tips and Time Ferris's writeup.

From VFF's official site, these are the things to look out for while trying on your first pair of VFF:

• Run no more than 10% of your typical running distance for the first 2–3 weeks.
• After 2–3 weeks, gradually increase mileage by 10%–20% every couple of weeks
  
• If you ever start to feel pain during a run, stop! You can always try again in a couple of days
  
• Never run 2 days in a row for the first month
  
• Stretch before and after each run, focusing on calves and feet, because Vibram FiveFingers running will stimulate these muscles
  
• If, after several weeks of training, you are consistently very sore, you need to rest and back-off on your mileage
  

Hmmm, contemplating if i should get another pair...

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We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy

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See the full gallery on Posterous

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This section is taken from the book called Four Steps To The Epiphany. A great read:

Premature scaling is the immediate cause of the Death Spiral. Premature scaling causes the burn rate to accelerate. Sales, salaries, facilities, infrastructure costs, recruiting fees, and travel expenses start cutting into the company's cash flow. The pressure for revenue grows exponentially. Meanwhile the marketing department is spending large sums on creating demand for the sales organization. It is also spending “credibility capital” on positioning and explaining the company to the press, analysts, and customers.

By the time of first customer ship, if the company does not understand its market and customers, the consequences unfold in a startup ritual, almost like a Japanese Noh play. What happens when you fully staff sales and marketing and you haven't nailed who your customers are and why they should buy your product? Sales starts missing its numbers. The board gets concerned. The VP of Sales comes to a board meeting, still optimistic, and provides a set of reasonable explanations. The board raises a collective eyebrow. The VP goes back to the field and exhorts the troops to work harder.

Meanwhile, the salespeople start inventing and testing their own alternatives—different departments to call on, different versions of the presentations. Instead of a methodology of learning and discovering, the sales team has turned into a disorganized and disgruntled mob burning lots of cash. Back in the home office, the product presentation slides are changing weekly (sometimes daily) as Marketing tries to “make up a better story” and sends out the latest pitch to a confused sales organization. Morale in the field and in Marketing starts to plummet. Salespeople begin to believe “This product cannot be sold; no one wants to buy it.” Management fires the VP of Sales and a few salespeople leave. Then a new VP of Sales comes in and starts the process all over again.

By the next board meeting, the sales numbers still aren't meeting plan. The VP of Sales looks down at his shoes and shuffles his feet. Now the board raises both eyebrows and looks quizzically at the CEO. The VP of Sales, forehead bathed in sweat, leaves the board meeting and has a few heated motivational sessions with the sales team. By the next board meeting, if the sales numbers are still poor, the writing is on the wall. Not only haven't the sales numbers been made, but now the CEO is sweating the company's continued cash burn rate. Why? Because the company has based its headcount and expenditures on the expectation that Sales will bring in revenue according to plan. The rest of the organization (product development, marketing, support) all started to burn more cash, expecting Sales to make its numbers. Now the company is in crisis mode. Here two things typically happen. First, the VP of Sales is toast. At the final board meeting no one wants to stand next to him. People are moving their chairs to the other side of the room. Having failed to deliver the numbers, he's history. Whether it takes three board meetings or a year is irrelevant; the VP of Sales in a startup who does not make the numbers is called an ex-VP of Sales (unless he was a founder, and then he gets to sit in a penalty box with a nebulous VP title).

Next, the new VP of Sales is hired. She quickly comes to the conclusion that the company just did not understand its customers and how to sell to them. She decides that the company's positioning and marketing strategy were incorrect. Now the VP of Marketing starts sweating. Since the new VP of Sales was brought on board to “fix” sales, the marketing department has to react and interact with someone who believes that whatever was created earlier in the company was wrong. The new VP of Sales reviews the strategy and tactics that did not work and comes up with a new sales plan. She gets a brief honeymoon of a few months from the CEO and the board. In the meantime, the original VP of Marketing is trying to come up with a new positioning strategy to support the new Sales VP. Typically this results in conflict, if not outright internecine warfare. If the sales aren't fixed in a short time, the next executive to be looking for a job is not the new VP of Sales (she hasn't been around long enough to get fired), it's the VP of Marketing—the rationale being “We changed the VP of Sales, so that can't be the problem. It must be Marketing's fault.”

Sometimes all it takes is one or two iterations of finding the right sales road map and marketing positioning to get a startup on the right track of finding exuberant customers. Unfortunately, more often than not, this is just the beginning of an executive death spiral. If changing the sales and marketing execs doesn't put the company on the right sales trajectory, the investors start talking the “we need the right CEO for this phase” talk. This means the CEO is walking around with an unspoken corporate death sentence. Moreover, since the first CEO was likely to have been one of the founders, the trauma of CEO removal begins. Typically, founding CEOs hold on to the doorframe of their offices as the investors try to pry their fingers off the company. It's painful to watch and occurs in more than half of the startups with first-time CEOs.

In flush economic times the company may get two or three iterations around a failed launch and bad sales numbers. In tougher times investors are tighter with their wallets and are making the “tossing good money after bad” calculations with a frugal eye. A startup might simply not get a next round of funding and have to shut down.

In Webvan's case, the death spiral was public and messy, since none of this was occurring in the intimate enclosure of a private company. The consequence of going public was that the sea of red ink was printed quarterly for all to see. Rather than realize that the model was unrealistic and scale back, the company continued to invest heavily in marketing and promotion (to get more customers and keep the ones they had) and distribution facilities (building new ones in new parts of the country to reach more customers). By the end of 2000 Webvan had accumulated a deficit of $612.7 million and was hemorrhaging cash. Seven months later, it was bankrupt.

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This is a blog post from Seth Godin that i love:

is that it might not work out.

The problem with not putting it all on the line is that it will never (ever) change things for the better.

Not much of a choice, I think. No risk, no art. No art, no reward.

Visit the blog for more awesome stuff.

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Nature Time Lapse 2 from mockmoon on Vimeo.

The original music score absolutely matched the video.

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I don't know what i want to do, but i do know what i don't want to do.

That is still considered progress.

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What a beautifully shot video, what a way to start my day..

DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.

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One of my favorite songs from John and an awesome trailer for his winter tour.

John Mayer. Winter Tour from ERIK ESCOBEDO on Vimeo.

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A great article forwarded by a friend. The article is from entrepreneur.com and can read fully here.

On the best advise he ever got:

Three gems come to mind. First, an enduring one from my mother, Eve, who always taught me never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project always amazes me. I have had fun running all of the Virgin businesses, so I never see a setback as a bad experience; it is just a learning curve.

My mother also told me not to openly criticize other people. If she heard me speaking ill of someone, she would make me stand in front of the mirror for five minutes and stare at myself. Her reasoning? All my critical talk was a poor reflection on my own character.

Very good short read.

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Reflection New York- Mood Collection from MOOD COLLECTION on Vimeo.

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I've just finished a good and relative short read called Rework by Jason Fried. It has definitely given me a lot of different perspectives on work, generating ideas and motivation. This particular chapter at the end of the book is my personal favorite. 

We all have ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever.

What doesn't last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date.

If you want to do something, you've got to do it now. You can't put it on a shelf and wait two months to get around to it. You can't just say you'll do it later. Later, you won't be pumped up about it anymore.

If you're inspired on a friday, swear off the weekend and dive into the project. When you're high on inspiration, you can get two weeks of work done in twenty-four hours. Inspiration is a time machine in that way.

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won't wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.

Rework can be purchased from amazon.

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Soldier On by The Temper Trap, from the album Conditions.

06_Soldier_On.m4a Listen on Posterous

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This is a video mash from almost 2.5gigs of raw footage, using my Panasonic Lumix GF1, shot in few places in Japan.

The soundtrack used is from The Temper Trap, album called Conditions, song called Down River.

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Was cleaning my inbox tonight and i came across an email sent by my mum almost 3 years ago, just before i was about to move into my small 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

Hello Kien, 

Time to move in to the unit is between 11am to 3pm on Sunday, your time. Please boil a pot or kettle of water, switch on the lights [even though it's day time] to symbolise that you have moved in.

Good Luck and Good Health. 

Love,

mum

Usually i would regard it as just being overly superstitious. But now that i think of it, its a very casual way of saying "i am thinking of you" from afar. I love my folks.

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