A little over a month ago I graduated from Parsons.  My senior thesis project, as it stood in the thesis show, was kind of a failure.  I built the staging for it, and thought I had everything covered, but I left too many things up in the air for it to work properly at the show.  However, in terms of learning and progressing and pushing myself—it was a complete success.  I’m viewing it as version 1.0, and have plans to make it better… maybe I’ll post about it sometime?

Now I’m interning full time at HUGE in Dumbo—I love it.

So remember at the end of last year when I mentioned I was getting into roller derby?  Well, since then I was inducted into the league, chose my new derby moniker (Bimbo Slice, if you were wondering), passed my WFTDA rules test, passed my scrimmage eval, and was drafted onto the B team, the Yankee Brutals.  I’ve already played two games, and game three, against Central Mass Roller Derby is fast-approaching on June 5th.  I’m psyched!

Trying to break through a group of blockers from Dutchland Blitz

Holding back a jammer from Garden State Roller Girls

Bonnie Voyage (she has the best derby name ever!) and I tag-teaming a Dutchland jammer.

I never thought I would stand a chance against some of the other girls who play derby, but what I’ve come to love about the sport is that there is that a girl of any shape or size can find her niche in the game.   Nothing is more rewarding than putting all I’ve got into a hard practice, and seeing the results of my hard work pay off in a game or a scrimmage.

I recently finished FRESH MEAT, an assignment for Jamie Kosoy’s dynamic interfaces class. We were required to create a data mashup using two separate services, I chose an XML feed, Twitter, and YouTube to make a “roller derby aggregator” of sorts.  Jamie taught me how to scrape DNN’s score feed to make a bootleg XML file that I could use in PHP, and it was my first time attempting to understand how API’s work.   I’ve found that it’s most awesome when games are in-progress as you usually get a pretty great real-time commentary.

Why, you tempt them with technology and the promise to see their progress visualized, of course!  Having a little motivation (ie: roller derby) doesn’t hurt either.  You see, I haven’t even thought about running since a season-long track and field career in high school.  And even then I was more of a sprinter than long distance.

The Key Tools

iPhone 3GS

Every iPhone 3GS (and iPod touch!) ships with the Nike+ app already built in—it will record your workouts including distance, time, and pace.  When you plug your iPhone into your computer, it will automatically send your workout history to your nike.com account.

Nike+ Sensor

The Nike+ sensor is a small accelerometer that you’re supposed to put into a Nike+ shoe.  As you walk, jog, or run,  it broadcasts a signal to your Nike+ app on the iphone or ipod.  Apparently some girlfriends are nervous that their significant others might start using it as a surveillance device.  I dont know about you, but I never wear running shoes so I’m not going to start to worry about that.  So as I said before, you’re supposed to buy fancy $100 Nike shoes to put this little guy into well… I’m not keen on dropping $100 on shoes unless they’re cute, and that brings us to our next tool:

A Box Cutter

I used this to cut a slit in the tongue of one of my sneakers and planted the sensor deep down in there.  No $100 shoes for me, hell, I didn’t even have to buy a $3 sensor pouch.  Just some purely Macgyver type stuff.

The Couch to 5k App

When I used to actually have a gym membership (purely for the classes and treadmills) I gave the Couch to 5k running plan a shot.  However, it was super annoying to keep an eye on the time and remember how long to walk and jog.  I always thought about making a playlist in GarageBand where I could put in verbal cues of when to walk and jog.  This was before the days that I actually owned an iPhone, and after minimal research I found the Couch to 5K iphone app.  For $2.99 I could have all the verbal cues to tell me to run and walk and cooldown I ever wanted.

What’s great about the Nike+ app is that it will play your selected playlist and continuously run in the background until you stop or pause your workout.  This allows you to run the Couch to 5K app which will play the verbal cues loud enough to hear over your music, and you can always unlock the screen to see the countdown to the next cue (and to the end of the workout if you’re lazy!)

But what surprised me most about my first time running outdoors in about 4 years is that I ran 2.4 miles!  In about 30 minutes!  I know that’s not amazing by most peoples standards, but I don’t think I ever even came close to a 13-minute mile in high school.  I hated gym class.  I especially hated the presidential fitness test.  I attribute my pace to endurance practices at roller derby.  Not only did I crush my expectations in my first workout, but I got home and immediately posted the results to my nike.com account for everyone to see… and that’s what’s going to keep me running in the future.

So, if you don’t follow me on twitter, or you’re not my friend in real life, you might not know that I recently started getting into roller derby!  It all started when Chino’s old roommate (who is a referee) invited us to our first bout this past summer.  It was a double header so we saw the Yankee Brutals and The CT Death Quads jam it out against the opposing teams.  I was in love the whole time.  Then I saw Whip It! and I was reminded how much I wanted to give derby a shot.  About four weeks ago I was in the car with Chino and I finally admitted it out loud—”I think I really want to try out for roller derby.”  I found out that try outs were in a week so I borrowed skates from my friend Jay, practiced in the local high school parking lot after work a couple of times, and 3 weeks ago I tried out.  And guess what?!  I made the cut to stick around for rookie practices!  Today I got my first pair of skates and I can’t wait until practice tomorrow to start breaking them in.  Ahh!  So exciting.

PS: My favorite roller derby name is Em Dash, a jammer from Gotham Girls Roller Derby.  Hopefully I’ll make the team and get to pick a name of my own!