Digital deep-cleaning.

In my time spent working on home cleaning products, I've learned that there are two types of cleaning: touch-up cleaning and deep cleaning. Touch-ups are the tidy-ups; the Swiffer wipes, the straighten-ups, the quick once-overs with the vacuum. Deep cleaning is the get-your-bucket-and-bleach-out-style cleaning, the kind that goes down on hands and knees. Less frequent, but much more thorough and hardcore. Hold your TWSSs, if you would.

I'm a neat freak, and as such, am constantly performing touch-ups in my various digital spaces. However, in the spirit of spring cleaning, I've implemented some digital deep cleaning over the past few weeks. Apparently, but not surprisingly, I get just as geeked out over digi-cleaning as I do about Swiffering. Curse you, P&G, and your verb-able products!

My digital deep-clean
First and foremost, I finally coughed up the ten bucks and purchased www.lilmissjen.com to host my blog. My first domain! I'm pretty stoked about it. Feel free to insert Pinocchio "I'm a real boy" joke here.

Secondly, I gave my blog a little face-lift to go with its shiny new URL. This stuff is probably old hat to you, but I'm feeling pretty fancy about it all. I made it more:

Navigate-able
I've got some tabs going on, and some secondary pages to explore. Please, click away. By moving about and contact info to their own homes, I have a cleaner homepage. Anyone who's seen my white-on-white apartment knows the kind of joy this brings me.

 

Follow-able
That's right, my pith can now be delivered directly to your hot little reader via RSS. Right now I'm my only subscriber. The button is enormous, which is exactly how buttons should be when you want people to click them. So, I hope you will. Either way, I'm a happy camper.

Searchable
I've added search functionality and a tag cloud to the right-hand navigation. I hope to someday have enough memorable content here to warrant the use of both of these.

Measureable
I am a more than a year behind the eight-ball on tapping into Google Analytics. But, no matter; now that they're set up, I'm elbows-deep in data and optimizing away. Happy happy happy! The map feature allows me to confirm that my mother (Lake in the Hills, IL) is my most loyal reader.

Other digital prunings of note
Cleaning and re-organizing my Reader
Setting up Reader in my HTC Droid Eris
Wiping out and re-building my Tweetdeck groups (went from 10 groups to 2!)
A mass geo-tagging and sorting of Flickr photos
Sorting through and cleaning out my Teux-Deux list

I feel so much better already. And, to keep on top of it, some Lenten Resolutions, of sorts:

My digital to-do list for March
Log interesting nuggets from Analytics data each morning
Remember to favorite things: photos, tweets
Bookmark all tabs to Delicious
Make better use of my Reader; share more

I'm looking forward to seeing how these updates improve my digital experience, and help better express my digital persona. If you have any tips for how you keep your digitae cranking, I would love to hear them! Cheers to spring, all.

Data-love and training optimization.

This week, I bit the bullet and signed my life away on the 2010 Chicago Marathon.

As promised by all my seasoned marathoner buddies, running a half only makes you want to run a full. I wish it was called something other than a half-marathon... it almost feels like half an accomplishment. So ridiculous, considering three years ago, I couldn't run a mile. Anyhow, I'll be running my brains out on October 10, and you all will be subject to my training updates along the way. I apologize in advance. I'm crazy.

I've hated and successfully avoided running my whole life. Until recently! So, why the crazy?

I'm no Feltron, but a good portion of my recent success in running can be linked directly back to the start of my dailymile membership. I know it's supposed to be a networking site, but I could care less about the social aspect (sorry dailymile). For me, it's motivating as a data catalyst.

Something about being able to map out my running stats is a real spark plug for me. And, not just because I can see the holes in my week and feel like a worthless bum when I don't run. Not because I know other people can see when I don't run. Media kids love data, right? We love to optimize? I had a near panic attack when I thought I lost my TI83+ last week. I only have this one little website, but I strive to optimize my posting schedule, tags, titles, etc., based on my Google Analytics data; I get the same rush out of optimizing my training based on dailymile data.

It's motivating to know that in the months where I ran at least 4 days a week, I was more likely to feel good or great about my runs. It's motivating to see that in the weeks where I incorporated strength training into my weekday workouts, I was able to feel great for longer runs on weekends. It's motivating to track miles I've put on my shoes and guesstimate when I'll need new ones. And, it's incredibly motivating to look back over the months and see how far I've come. It's also just plain useful information.Your body is a machine, you know? It's fun to tinker with the inputs.

Training schedules are really helpful for big runs, and I'll certainly be using one as I train for the marathon. But when you get down to it, a training schedule can't help you determine on which days of the week you should swim to get the most out of that week's miles. You can't massage a schedule and try to determine what is linking together the feeling-blah days, figure out what's bothering your knee. A schedule doesn't send you weekly newsletters to remind you to keep kicking ass. Just like every website feels a bit different and needs custom optimization, so do you and your feet. You're special. Like a snowflake. And it's really helpful, at least to me, to treat my training that way.

There are tons of sites out there like dailymile that help you add some optimization into your training. I highly recommend social fitness tracking to any of my nerd friends who could use a good kick in the pants in re: their currently pathetic data.

Plus, look at the pretty charts!

Happy training!