blog.houseofmoran.com

min(weight) = 90.0kg! (gotta work on avg(weight))

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 12:41:00 +0000

I’ve been doing the 5:2 diet now for around three months now, and just this week my min weight hit 90.0kg! As you can see from above there is a lot of volatility in my measurements; I measure myself every weekday at around the same time, but there is still easily a range of 2kg in the measurements. My fast days are Monday and Thursday, and my weight, unsurprisingly, is lowest after those days.

If you look at the data since my records began, you see the effect on the weekly average:

It’ll still be a while before I average below 90kg, but it’s encouraging to see it going down.

Overall, the fasting days are a lot easier to do than I’d thought. You have 600 calories to spend, and I usually split these between 300 calories for coffee/lattes in the morning and during the day, followed by 300 calories for a meal in the evening. I don’t have much variety in meals; typically it’s some pitta bread with sliced meat. When I do vary, I stick to what I can easily scan into http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

I chose Mondays and Thursdays as fast days because I don’t do much in the evenings on those days, which makes it easier to stick to. I’ve found I can do exercise on these days too; I’m up to 6 mile runs with no obvious ill-effect.

On off-days I’ve been taking advantage of “eat what you like” a little too much. The freedom is nice, but to be honest, I do sometimes binge. I don’t think this will ultimately effect whether I will reach my goal, just when. I’ve done around 3kg in 3months, and being down to 87kg by June would be nice, but 85kg would be even nicer!

BrowserStack: thumbs up on first minimal try-out.

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:49:00 +0000

I just tried out http://www.browserstack.com/ for testing my minimal IE8/IE9 changes for Nice to have. It’s actually really quite handy. Take my review below with a pinch of salt though, as I only used it for 30 mins. I did a free registration around xmas and forgot about it, so that’s all I had left today! Silly mike.

All the standard debugging tools are set up (e.g. firebug lite), and you get a single window to play in. You set up a tunnel through a signed app so that it sees your server, choose your OS/browse combo, and your off. You do your edits locally, as normal, using whatever libraries and editor you fancy. It is a bit laggy, but usable, and that could have been my connection to blame.

It’s around £12 ($19) dollars a month. Given I can set up a VM locally for IE testing if I really need to, that’s not in the range where I’d immediately upgrade to paid, but I’ll definitely consider it next time I’m doing a bunch of IE testing.

Brickman Experiment 1

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:48:05 +0000

I had some fun making snow bricks at the weekend. Technically, Nils was present but it would be unfair to say I was playing with him; “directing”, perhaps.

So, anyway, obviously you should try to use snow bricks to make a Lego man. Obviously.

It turns out that moo milk cartons are quite good brick molds if you cut off one side and leave the flap on.

This one got to the point where I was just about to make a head, but then thought I should defer until later to give me a chance to get Nils interested. Unfortunately, headlessness was the least of its problems: it fell over a minute after I came in. Oh well. Looks like balance is gonna be a bigger problem than structural strength.

Here’s hoping it snows again next weekend!

Reading the Tea Leaves

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 17:39:00 +0000

When I was at Amazon I looked at a lot of graphs. Graphs of hits, graphs of cpu, graphs of all sorts of shit. Graphs are great, I loves them. However, the problem is that if you aren’t in a habit of looking at the relevant graphs every day, and then something happens, you’re faced with the problem of deciding what’s normal. It is so easy to find patterns, especially if you have a good reason to think something important is happening (either for a good or bad reason).

I’m reminded of all this when I happen on a GeoCities-tastic page like this: http://www.trading-naked.com/headandshouldersREVERSE.htm I am no stock expert but I’m willing to bet the patterns he is using are tenuous at best. Then again, maybe the market wouldn’t work without people like him?

Resources for a designer transitioning from print to the web?

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 12:43:00 +0000

A friend of mine who has a background in print design (copy, layout, some photography) is wanting to move his skills over into web design. I am most definitely on the other-side of this divide, so I asked another web designer friend what resources (website/book/whatever) they’d recommend:

Most things by Jakob Nielsen

About face 3

Steve Krugs Don’t Make Me Think!

Seductive Interaction Design

The UX Book

Sketching User Experiences

Any book by Bill Buxton

I think that’s a good start I’ve purposely left out any core design as he should have a solid foundation in that already

Any more recommendations?

"Nice to have" v0.0000001

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 01:03:00 +0000

Ugh. Enough holiday hacking for now. I had an idea for an app a few weeks ago, and finally had some time between xmas celebrations to hack up a first version. Here it is: http://nicetohave.houseofmoran.com/ (source: https://github.com/mikemoraned/nicetohave-app)

I’m not gonna talk much more about it until I’ve dog-fooded it a bit myself for my own personal backlog. Feel free to use it though, I always appreciate feedback.

For now, I’ll just leave some links which helped me to write it.

Trello:

https://trello.com/docs/gettingstarted/clientjs.html http://jsfiddle.net/E4rLn/ https://trello.com/docs/gettingstarted/index.html https://trello.com/docs/api/card/index.html#put-1-cards-card-id-or-shortlink-pos

D3:

Scales: http://www.jeromecukier.net/blog/2011/08/11/d3-scales-and-color/

Ordinals aren’t great to work with: https://github.com/mbostock/d3/pull/598

Brushes/selections: http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmerritt/d3/examples/brush/brush.html http://bl.ocks.org/1667367#index.html

Knockout custom bindings:

http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/custom-bindings.html

Knockout Event bindings:

http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/event-binding.html

Twitter bootstrap form examples:

http://www.w3resource.com/twitter-bootstrap/forms-tutorial.php

Ejs/express:

http://robdodson.me/blog/2012/05/31/how-to-use-ejs-in-express/

Sammy + Knockout example:

http://learn.knockoutjs.com/WebmailExampleStandalone.html

“Less” middleware:

http://www.andyjarrett.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2012/4/11/Express-Less-and-lessmiddleware

Annoyances:

“top” and “left” css attributes don’t work in FF unless you specify a unit i.e. “px”. Why do I always forget this?

I got Nils (and myself, mostly) a Lego Mindstorms Kit for xmas....

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:11:28 +0000

I got Nils (and myself, mostly) a Lego Mindstorms Kit for xmas. So far, assembly has been fun but programming is tiresome. When following the instructions, it’s very easy to make a little mistake in a number (e.g degrees to turn), and then have to go through it all again to find the mistake. Obviously, I’m not the intended audience, so we’ll see how Nils finds it when he’s old enough.

Heed!

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 01:17:00 +0100

And so, the saga continues, baldie once again.

Interestingly, this time, I was very conscious of when it started happening. It may just be my imagination, but soon after I got a few midgy (or Mücken) bites in Germany, I noticed my head was a bit itchy. In the following days, the hair loss seemed to accelerate rapidly.

My hypothesis is that given that aa is an auto-immune disease a reaction to a bite could somehow start my immune system off, but I obviously can’t prove it. However, it’s about as good as any hypothesis I ever heard from my doctor since she basically had no idea. To be fair, she was very apologetic about it.

Anyway, c’est la vie. Now I can go back to disturbing people by absent-mindedly rubbing my head in meetings ;-)

Truth is more depressing than fiction?

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:12:00 +0100

This holiday, I finally finished “The City & The City” by China Miéville.

My paper version of the Miéville book was a gift. Its hugeness makes it hard to carry, so I never got round to reading it. I bought it again for my Kindle (I wonder how often that happens?). Alongside his newly coined words there are many that lie just outside my vocabulary, so the built-in Kindle dictionary was very handy. Some of his invented words, e.g. “grosstopically” and “toppelganger”, make so much sense. I almost wish I lived in his cleaved world of seeing and unseeing, just so I could use them.

I’m reading another book of his, Embassytown, right now. It is more outright Science Fiction, and is spattered with new words. A main subject of the book is language, so this richness makes sense in this context, but I imagine I would grow sick of it if the usage wasn’t so relevant.

I seem to be into a ‘divided city’ shtick this holiday, as I also read Jerusalem by Guy Delisle. A lot of it is just day-to-day errands and looking after his kids; not surprising, given it’s basically a diary. However, it is leavened by the many WTF moments when he encounters another bizarre behaviour of the locals. The strange but rigid rules of movement in The City & The City seem pedestrian in comparison to the complex enforcements in place in Israel and Palestine.

Delisle isn’t primarily there for journalistic purposes; he mostly just happens to be there with his wife, who works for MSF. This make Delisle a lot softer than other authors, like Sacco. I find it hard to read more than one of Sacco’s books in quick succession. They are lively, in-depth, but simply too depressing.

However, I haven’t read one of Sacco’s in a while, so it may be time to spend more holiday money on Amazon … recommendations?

Boomeranging returns

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:56:00 +0100

Yesterday, I went out with Nils and threw my boomerangs for the first time in 10 years. It was really cool, not least because Nils decided to go get them for me, unbidden! On a windy day like that it makes a big difference having someone fetching them.

None of my boomerangs are suitable for Nils, so I’ve ordered some online. Apart from boomerangs.com most of the sites seem to have been last updated when I stopped throwing!

I’d be interested to hear of anyone else throwing boomerangs in Edinburgh, not least because I want to try out their ‘rangs (see what I did there?).

LEDs in the rain

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:48:00 +0100

The NVA Speed of Light practice session was the best time I’ve spent in the rain for a while! However, I am sooooo glad I bought myself a proper thermal top and rain jacket. Not cheap, but worth it.

I really enjoyed myself tonight. I would love to have seen the faces of any passers-by stumbling upon the lines of led-encrusted runners, all trotting along like some sort of Alien Congo dance.

It’s a pity the weather meant we aborted practicing more of the moves on the crags for real, but hopefully there will be some free spaces in future training slots. Regardless, I can’t think of a better reason to stand around wearing LEDs in the rain.

The hair, eet ees back ...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:32:00 +0100

… sort-of. As I had expected might happen, my Alopecia has receded and the patches that were bald before are now white. I’m gonna give it a go, as I’m happy having a bald head but to be honest I’d be happier not having to shave it every other day. However, I’m not gonna change my Gravatar just yet.

I took the photo above during our visit to the Newcastle Centre for Life. Carmen did the (excellent, if I may say so) illustrations for the “Naughty Monsters Explore the Planets” planetarium show that just started recently.

La Grand Weekend, Gromit

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:57:00 +0100

On Friday, I had the opportunity to see La Grand Illusion at the Filmhouse,

I can totally see why this film was so hated by the Nazis, because it portrays war as ultimately pointless. There is no great ‘enemy’ within these prison camps, on either side. There are only world-weary men waiting, and hoping, for the end to come.

My only criticism is that the characters seem almost too humane; but perhaps this is my cynicism speaking. Regardless, it’s a wonderful film that well lives up to expectation.

If you like this film, then you may be interested in others from ‘Breaking Out and Breaking In: A Distributed Film Fest of Prison Breaks and Bank Heists’; don’t worry too much about the timetable, I’m already three months behind.

All change on Saturday for “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!”. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Aardman film, but thanks to cheap tickets via Hugh (thanks Hugh!) and a resounding answer of “YES” when I asked Nils, we went along.

I’m beginning to think I’m very conservative when it comes to violence in kids films. Pirates isn’t a particularly scary film, compared to some others, but it still has plenty of knives, killing (off-screen) and impending doom. Nils survived, and there were no nightmares, but he was keen to point out that he had to hide next to me three times during the film (perhaps this number should be a new indicator of scaryness?).

I think I lolled three times and at one point Nils made a noise I’ve never heard before which was 20% anguish and 80% joy, so overall, a hit.

I’m going to see Aliens on Tuesday, so this month is turning into a proper film-fest after months of nothing. Don’t worry, I won’t be taking Nils along to that one ;-)

Finally, the weekend was rounded off on Sunday by searching for Easter eggs in the garden. The chocolate was very nice, but the “Easter Bread” made by Carmen was even better (it’s like Mr Kiplings Exceedlingly Good cakes, but with the marsipan top spread liberally throughout the bread). Carmen claims she made it a bit too sweet, by accident. I can live with these mistakes.

You've never had it so good

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:19:00 +0000

What’s the opposite of Nostalgia? Nowadays, I can think of an idea, code it up and have it on heroku in minutes. Working at a start-up in 2001—2004 was somewhat different.

Back then, the first task was to decide which of the many (over-priced) Cisco routers you should stick in your closet. The people at our service provider were all friendly and helpful, but the idea of personally visiting your boxes now seems mildly archaic.

Going with a cloud-based provider is still not a trivial choice. Little sysadmin-level expertise within-company means you are more beholden to AWS/Azure/Who-ever to keep your service running. Security and trust are issues to be settled, but it’s a welcome choice to be able to spend on your unique selling points.

In summary: you’ve never had it so good.

p.s. We also had to sweep the lake.

My my, that took a while ('about this site' updated)

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 01:39:00 +0000

My my, that took a while ('about this site' updated)

Harsh, but accurate

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 08:46:37 +0000

Harsh, but accurate

Beach Facts

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 14:04:00 +0000

Some things established today on the beach:

The statutory countdown sequence for throwing stones is “3, 2, 1, <throw>”, and not “10, 9, … 1, 0” which is reserved for Rockets.
It is surprisingly hard to guide water pools to the sea.
Nils didn’t do anything interesting, and wanted just to pretend he was pushing a car (rock) through snow (sand), but he enjoyed himself anyway.

Normal service will resume ...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:17:02 +0000

You may have noticed some blog posts are missing. This is because I am migrating them across gradually from my old blogging system to Tumblr.

Also, the RSS feed for tumblr (which I use on the main site) takes a super-long time to update; may have to work round that.

S’all

Note to self: do not invent time machine

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:54:00 +0000

If I did have a time machine, I’d be spending a lot of my life getting slapped in the face by my future self.

Last week I spent far too long debugging why Heroku was refusing to accept my rails app when I did a “git push heroku master”. I had all sorts of theories and learned about the various reasons Heroku has for saying “Heroku push rejected, no Cedar-supported app detected”. The actual reason? I was on a local git branch and Heroku was being pushed to from my master branch, which was not a rails app.

SLAP!

Incidentally, future Mike, if you do want to push from a non-master branch (e.g. “stuff”), then do this:

git push heroku stuff:master

Glasgow Science Centre Visit

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:47:00 +0000

Once again, simple physics wins against ambitious simulations on computer displays.

For example, we briefly played with an illustration of a red/cyan Anaglyph. It allowed some very simple computer models (e.g. a box, a molecule) to be rotated on-screen and viewed through glasses. However the refresh rate was abysmal and overall the interface was not responsive. Nils’ attention was lost in seconds.

In this high-distraction environment, you need to immediately show or do something, even if it’s not the main feature.

My favourite display of the whole day was a rotating disk on which you could place plastic wheels. If you let them spin up in the right way, and then let go, they’ll stay in the same place for a surprisingly long time. Even when they start drifting off, they can orbit a few times in interesting ways, before eventually flying off. And when they fly off, you just have to have another go.

In these physics-only displays, if you do come up with a cunning workaround or variation, reality is ready to simulate it perfectly, and reward your ingenuity.