I happen to live in a subdivision where the roundtrip distance between my house and one backroad outlet is exactly 5K, and the roundtrip distance between my house and the second backroad outlet is exactly 10K. There are hills, inclines, it's away from the hustle and bustle of the city...makes for a perfect run, right?
Yeah, if I had a death wish. In the day, you have to leave one ear out of the music zone to protect yourself from crazy inattentive drivers who are absolutely positive they are the only ones out on that road. Night? Just add to the aforementioned the need to light yourself up like a Christmas tree, which invites a whole different set of problems stemming from attracting the local fauna to yourself.
It looks like they are using the 3D and Street View power of Google Earth for eye candy, while adjusting the intensity of the treadmill to match your chosen terrain.
Sure, I wouldn't be able to virtually run my route (Google's Street View people zipped right past my neighborhood, apparently), but I think running circles around the Arc de Triomphe is an acceptable second....
I'm looking forward to going hunting for good discourse analysis tools during the semester. I have a list of things to start looking at, and I'd like to hear what experiences any of you have had with these or other tools I fail to mention:
CLAN (supports Jeffersonian notation)...the most general tool available for transcription, coding, and analysis.
Phon ...phonological and phonetic data analysis ...transcribed in CHAT. Fully compatible and interoperable with CLAN.
ELAN ...analysis of gesture (from video) and conversational overlap. Complete interoperability between ELAN and CLAN.
EXMARaLDA ... "Extensible Markup Language for Discourse Annotation"....XML for DA? Think of this linked up with A/V. Very powerful concept...but how's the praxis?
TalkBank and the SIDGRid Project seem like good places to learn how to do/approach all of this.
Also looking at retail options as well...any advice / personal experiences welcome: