Paul Hammond's Blog

Using Fitropolis To Find Seattle-Area Gyms.

phammond — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:50:00 GMT

My friend Troy recently put his new venture live – Fitropolis. Troy and I share an interest in fitness, and I am really excited to see the site serving the Seattle fitness and yoga community. The site brings together current news from the area about happenings in local fitness establishments and the community as a whole, and adds to that a comprehensive gym and yoga searching feature that allows the user to find a venue based on location and available facilities.

For example, you can start at the top level and search for Gyms in Seattle or Yoga in Seattle. Or, you can be much more specific and say that you want a Women-Only Gym in Ballard that has a Basketball Court and Hair Dryers. The site then lists the search results and maps all of the locations. Clicking through a search results gives really detailed information about the specific gym, including an overview and address, facilities, child care, parking, opening times etc. In some cases there are also special offers or vouchers for the venue. If you have specific needs, or are just looking for different options to get your fitness fix, this site makes it super easy.

The site currently covers Seattle, and they are in the process of adding data for the Eastside. I really hope this takes off, because I think that other major cities need a service like this. London next, please Troy!

The 30-Day Primal Challenge: Days 16 to 47

phammond — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:39:00 GMT

My last two blog entries covered the first 15 days of a 30-Day Primal Challenge. I had fully intended for there to be a third entry that summed everything up on the 30th day, as if reaching that point would be some magical revelation. I assumed I'd have a nice tidy conclusion to the challenge; the results from my 30 day experiment, if you will.

However, as you'll see from the title, my 30 days is now 47. And counting.

During the 30 days, I did see improvements in line with my goals for taking on the challenge. I lost some weight, and most of that appeared to be body fat. I've definitely had more consistent energy levels, and I am rarely very hungry. Of course, I know when I want to eat, but I never have that real feeling of hunger where I need to find food "right now"!

I had a secondary goal that wasn't necessarily part of the 30 days - to get my body fat to below 20% - and I think that is part of the reason that I am at day 47 and still going. I'm now at 21% body fat, and 12st (168lbs or 76kgs). Doing the maths, that means that I've lost a total of 18lbs in 47 days, of which 10.3lbs was body fat and 7.7lbs was lean body weight loss.

I attribute the lean body weight loss to a continued lack of the strength and sprint exercise sessions - something that I still haven't really done a great job of, despite saying I would in my last update.

Anyway, I'll continue for a while longer. The eating approach isn't difficult at all to maintain once you've started to figure it out, and I am still short of my body fat goal. If I could just nail the exercise part of it…

The 30-Day Primal Challenge: Days 6 to 15

phammond — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:16:00 GMT

As of last night, I have reached the half-way point of my 30-Day Primal Challenge. Here is a brief update on progress.

Dealing with “Life”

Day 6 for me was a travelling day – long haul from London Heathrow to Seattle. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to eat primally at all, due to the restricted choices on an airplane. That turned out not to be the case however. I used the British Airways lounge prior to my flight, and was able to eat a large salad, with a small amount of cheddar and stilton cheeses, with some pastrami. Luckily, the upgrade Gods were smiling on me, and I was able to choose a steak and vegetables main meal from my Club class seat, and thoroughly enjoyed the accompanying side-salad and fruit. The late afternoon in-flight snack was more difficult – sandwiches – and I just had to eat the bread (due to the small amount of food and the large amount of hunger!). But, on the whole, I made it through the travelling part of the day without too much of an issue.

The problem, ironically, started that evening in Seattle once I was back on terra firma. My friends Tee and Troy had invited me for dinner. They’ve recently moved into their place in Capitol Hill, and had just installed a new oven – which of course, they wanted to christen. Dinner consisted of bread and dipping oils, lasagne and chocolate cake. Bread, large amounts of pasta and cheese, and cake with thick chocolate frosting – all in one meal. Epic fail #1. Albeit a very tasty fail.

I also gave in to a small piece of Key Lime Cheesecake two days later at the Cheesecake Factory. It was shared with another person. Minor fail #2.

The rest of the week, though, I was able to make the most of the excellent Microsoft cafeteria food – eggs and bacon or fruit for breakfast and a Big Ass Salad for lunch. Despite eating out in restaurants for dinner, I was able to pick wisely, and substitute where necessary.

Other than while travelling, there haven’t been too many other situations that have caused me any issue.

Daily Routines Change

I’ve found that my daily routines have changed. Breakfast time for me used to be 2 minutes to prepare a bowl of cereal, followed by eating in front of my computer, catching up with overnight news and email. That has now changed to a longer time in the kitchen, cooking breakfast (usually some sort of egg based meal), and preparing a salad to take to work for lunch. Once that is done, I am tending to just sit quietly for a while. I haven’t missed the early morning technology session yet… Besides, I have my smartphone if I am really desperate.

Additionally, since I am eating in a slightly different way to the rest of the family, I have found myself cooking more often – something I hadn’t previously done much, since my wife would cook for the whole family. It’s actually pretty fun. I even made my first Meatza the other day! My wife was kind of horrified at that, but still…

Hunger?

I am definitely eating less. I still feel hungry sometimes through the day, usually towards when a main meal would be due. But my meal choices definitely fill me up, I can snack on healthy items in-between times (I am opting for nuts or blueberries as a go-to choice), and generally I seem less hungry overall. I will certainly also be trying intermittent fasting in the near future.

Exercise and Sun

This is the one area I am not doing so well in.

I am nailing the “move frequently at a slow pace” challenge. I am still walking to work, spent some time on a treadmill in Seattle, walked our puppy (and her sister) a few times with my daughter, and played a round of golf with my son last weekend. This has also given me plenty of sunshine exposure.

I have done a couple of strength sessions at the gym, but by now I should have done 4 or 5. Those sessions haven’t been the intense full-body sessions that I would have liked either. I’ll need to do better in the next two weeks.

And unless you count chasing the dogs on one of my dog walks as a conscious “sprinting” exercise, I also haven’t done that. Again, improvement needed in days 16-30.

Stuff I Miss

There’s no question - I am missing some food a lot. I love breakfast cereals, with lots of sugar. I really like pasta dishes and a pepperoni pizza with jalapenos. I like to drink diet Coke. When I am in Seattle, I love to drink Mountain Dew, and eat Top Pot doughnuts. I like a Vanilla Latte. I like sweets and chocolate bars. Many of the things I miss are related to my sweet tooth – which I have always had. Whilst some primal snacks give me a hint of this (particularly some of the sweeter fruits), it is taking a long time to get over the craving for that really sugary taste.

The 30-Day Primal Challenge: The First 5 Days

phammond — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:24:00 GMT

As I have mentioned in a couple of older posts, in the past couple of years I have become very active and lost quite a lot of weight. Initially, a lot of running and cycling helped me lose about 30lbs, and then a switch about a year ago to more of a gym and cardio mix helped me build some strength. However, with neither approach have I managed to lose the excess body fat I am carrying. Despite being lighter overall, I still have about 25% body fat. I'd really like that to be lower, perhaps closer to the 15-18% range.

A few friends of mine had mentioned that they'd had some great success by adopting a more "primal" lifestyle, so I started to research the subject. I picked up the book "The Primal Blueprint" by Mark Sisson, which was a good read. It is quite a hard read as it contains a lot science, but it certainly helped me understand how the body functions, and how this should be considered when choosing and buying food, eating, and exercising.

So, last Tuesday (26 July), I embarked on a 30-day Primal Challenge, which is actually 10 challenges, covering food, exercise, sleep and sun. For full details of the challenge, see the 30-day Primal Challenge page at Mark's Daily Apple (the site that accompanies the book).

I started the challenge at 25% body fat, 13st 4lbs (that's 186lbs or 84.5kg for those who use other measurement scales). I don't have a goal, other than to see what difference the 30 days might make to my weight, my body fat percentage, and my general feeling of health. After 5 days, I thought I’d summarize the challenge and note down how it is working for me so far against each part of the challenge. There are 10 parts, and I’ve borrowed or paraphrased these from the Mark’s Daily Apple website.

Challenge #1: Eat Lots Of Plants And Animals
This one has sub-parts: eat vegetables, fruits, nuts/seeds, meat and health fats, cook at home, eat clean (organic, grass fed), limit your carbohydrate intake.

I've found this difficult to adjust to, for a couple of reasons:

Lack of food variety: since I started this without much warning (I'm that kind of guy sometimes!) I hadn't shopped to support this kind of change. We had a good amount of appropriate food in the house, the variety wasn't great so I've tended to repeat a lot of meals already.
Balancing Calories and Grams: I'm supposed to limit intake of protein and carbs, I found myself reaching the grams allowed of each before I'd eaten enough calories. I was quite hungry the first two days. It seems to be getting better, but I need to look at some examples from others to see how they are balancing the two.

That said, the food I have been eating has been delicious, and the Big Ass Salads for lunch are great! I cannot complain at bacon and eggs for breakfast either...

Challenge #2: Avoid Poisonous Things
This means avoiding the obviously poisonous things, such as fast food, chips and crisps, cookies, soda and fizzy drinks, candy and sweets etc. In Primal parlance though, this also includes grains, pasta, rice, beans, bread and vegetable oils.

I think I have managed this very well, although I've certainly considered having a massive pizza and a diet coke a couple of times. And I am not sure how I'll live without bread... If this approach works for me, and it is definitely a long-term lifestyle choice not a short-term diet, there are definitely foods I will miss.

Challenge #3: Move Frequently At A Slow Pace
This involves 3-5 hours a week or walking, hiking, light cycling, swimming etc., all at once or in batches.

I walk to the train station and back every day, which gives me 30 minutes a day before I start adding other activities. In the first five days, I achieved 1.5 hours of walking, and about 30 minutes of running. Now, for the Primal Blueprint, "Chronic Cardio" is frowned upon (hence this item being at a "Slow Pace"), but I am not quite ready to give up distance running and hard cycling just yet...

Challenge #4: Lift Heavy Things
The main focus here is to literally “lift your body” - do two bodyweight workouts per week. There are plenty of ideas at MarksDailyApple.com as part of their Workout of the Week, but the key is shorter and more intense full body workouts.

This is a slight shift for me from my usual gym workout routine. I would do more focused sessions, targeting specific muscle groups. This approach targets the whole body in an intense 30 minute session. I did 1 of these sessions so far in the first 5 days.

Challenge #5: Sprint Once In A While
Just move... very fast! One sprint workout per week, which can be done in as little as 10 minutes. I am yet to do a sprint in the 30-day challenge.

Challenge #6: Get Adequate Sleep
Here, the challenge is simply asking you to get enough sleep, the amount of sleep you know you need to feel refreshed and energized. For me, that is about 8 hours, but of course that will vary by person. I've slept well for the first 5 days.

Challenge #7: Play
"Play" for stress-reducing effects and to get you moving without realising it. The Primal Challenge asks participants to take part in the 4 Workouts Of The Week during the month.

Challenge #8: Get Adequate Sunlight
Sunlight == Vitamin D. Vitamin D is good. Get 15 minutes of sun exposure each day. I have definitely done this so far, just by walking to work.

Challenge #9: Avoid Stupid Mistakes
This simply equates to listening to your body during the challenges. Pain during exercise? Red skin in the sun? Signs you should stop; pay attention to what your body is telling you.

Challenge #10: Use Your Brain
Your brain needs exercise too. During the month, identify an intellectually challenging thing in your life and take the first steps to actually doing it!

So there it is. The 30-Day Primal Challenge summarized, along with my comments about my own experiences from the first 5 days. I'll write further updates as I go through the challenge.

Tech Tip: Preview in Apple's Mail Client

phammond — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:50:00 GMT

[Disclaimer: this post refers to Apple Mail in Snow Leopard. I haven't installed Lion and taken a look at the updated Mail.app yet.]

I've been switching back and forth between Windows and OS X for a while now (as I learn to code for the iPhone/iPad). I generally like the Mac experience, but one thing had been bothering me - the apparent lack of a Message Preview in the Mail software. I'd searched under all of the menus a number of times to find a switch to turn on Preview. Having not found one, I presumed it was missing. For some reason, I didn't even search the internet for an answer! Whoops.

Anyway, a chance conversation with a friend gave me cause to look again, and I found the feature cleverly hidden! At the very bottom of the window was a tiny grey bar with a small circle on it - something I immediately recognized as the OS X "drag handle" user experience, and something that I had simply not noticed before in the Mail app. One quick click-and-drag and I had a lovely Message Preview. I feel a little embarrassed I hadn't noticed the drag handle before...

Unfortunately, though, I then discovered that with the Preview window showing, simply clicking a mail item marked it as read, and there was no switch to alter this behaviour. I use the read/unread status of emails in a specific way that doesn't match this behaviour, so this was annoying to me. A very quick internet search this time found many others also annoyed at this feature.

My search also found a product call TruePreview by Jim Riggs. Jim (in his words) "took the time to dig into Mail's innards to find an underhanded solution" to the preview issue. And it's perfect. It adds an additional tab in the Preferences dialog for the Mail application, that allows very granular control over the circumstances that result in mail items being marked as read. You can set to mark previewed email as read immediately, after some period of time, or never (my selection). You can also independently select whether to mark a mail as read when replying, forwarding, opening in a separate window and scrolling or selecting the preview pane. Lastly, you can select differect behaviours for each mail account (if you have multiple accounts set up). Basically, you can pretty much customize to whatever your personal preferences are!

Tech Tip: Photoshop Very Slow To Open Or Create Images?

phammond — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:09:00 GMT

I was travelling last week in the US, and noticed that Photoshop was taking a very very long time to open or create files - 2 or 3 minutes in most cases. After some trouble-shooting, I eventually realised that it was because my default printer was a network printer. After I switched my default printer to a local printer, normal service was restored.

[Side note: I usually use FinePrint as my default printer – this is a software printer that allows you to manipulate the output of your printing sessions prior to sending to a physical printer. Highly recommended.]

Object Of Desire: GoPro HD Hero Camera

phammond — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:28:00 GMT

I already own a number of different video and still photography devices, including two DSLRs, multiple “point-and-shoots” and an HD video camcorder. Recently, I have been thinking about getting a waterproof camera, and I had been looking at some of the popular consumer point-and-shoot options. That is, until I stumbled across the GoPro HD Hero series of digital cameras.

The HD Hero is a wearable sports camera that will shoot 1080p video at 30fps, and will take stills at 5MP. You can also set it to also take still pictures automatically every 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds. It has a fixed focus lens with an f2.8 aperture for low light shooting. Designed to be highly durable (shockproof even) due to its polycarbonate housing, it is waterproof to 60m. The unit itself is small and lightweight, and attaches to your body, helmet, car, bike or surfboard via one of the plethora of accessories you can buy. The mounting possibilities are endless!

The unit itself is extremely basic – it doesn’t even have an LCD screen or a viewfinder. It just has a small, simple display to help you pick the right settings, and a shutter release button. You can expand the camera with “BacPac” options, which includes an optional LCD screen should you need one.

I think the possibilities for great pictures and video are enormous with this camera. Everything from mountain biking, to snorkelling, water slides, whatever. You can do full HD video, or be creative with stop-motion video from the automatic still pictures. Just take a browse through the picture and videos at the “Be A Hero – GoPro” Flickr group for some great ideas.

The “Future Of Film And Television” Is Lost On Me

phammond — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:58:00 GMT

I have monocular vision, I have had for my entire life. This means that I generally only ever use one of my eyes at a time (unlike most people who use both of their eyes together, all the time). I have been short-sighted in my left eye and long-sighted in my right eye for my entire life. As a result, I have learned to view the world slightly differently that most people. I use my left eye to read, and look at a computer screen and most likely to look at you when I am talking to you – that is, providing we are close enough. I use my right eye when I drive, look out to sea, take in the views from the top of the Sear’s tower, and when I am watching films or television either on the big screen or a television.

Over time, I have learned to adjust to this. I judge distances more from experience than from the depth of field that binocular vision gives you. I’ve never been able to see Magic Eye pictures. Everything else, I just use one eye or the other and don’t really notice the difference. Attempts to fix the issue by correcting my vision with glasses results in one of two things happening – either my brain ignores the correction and continues to be selective, or I get weird double vision where the image of what I am seeing occurs twice and slightly out of line…

Recently I have had the opportunity to see more examples of 3D TV. Most 3D TV and film effects work by having two images slightly displaced and a pair of glasses that work to ensure that each eye only sees one of those images. I have realised that, as such, the future of TV and film is completely lost on me. Since I only use one eye or the other at any given time, when I put on the glasses I simply see one of the 3D channels through one of my eyes.

How frustrating!

Massive Price Increase For Mozy Power Users

phammond — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 01:14:00 GMT

Back in April of 2008, I wrote a post entitled “What Is Your Backup Strategy?” Much of my approach is still the same as it was back then – a Mozy account for offsite backups, Windows Live Mesh (as an evolved version of FolderShare) to keep my data in sync across machines, and an external drive (now 2Tb) attached to my main machine at home that makes nightly copies of all of my data.

I received an email from Mozy today that means I need to go back and rethink my offsite data strategy. Until now, I had been paying a flat fee for an unlimited account with Mozy – with a year paid in advance, the cost was $54.45, or about $4.45 per month. Mozy has now announced two options to replace their current offerings. $5.99 a month for 50Gb or $9.99 for 125Gb, with additional storage space available at $2.00 per month for every 20Gb extra.

I currently have 493Gb backed up and that is growing quite quickly. With the new pricing strategy, 500Gb of storage will cost me $9.99 a month for the first 125Gb, and then an additional $38 for the 19 additional 20Gb increments I would need. That amounts to $47.99 PER MONTH, a whopping $576 per year. That is a 1057% increase in cost. It would only get worse as I add more and more data in my life.

I would still highly recommend the Mozy service for people who have small to moderate data storage needs, but this kind of pricing structure means that I will need to be looking for an alternative, and more cost effective solution.

Photo Shoot At Nooksack River

phammond — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:18:00 GMT

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of spending a fun few hours on a photography field trip with my friend Daniel and his son Liam. We set out from Daniel’s house at 6am and drove (via a coffee house!) two hours North of Seattle to the Nooksack River, near Deming. Daniel regularly takes trips to this area, mostly to photograph the eagles.

First stop when we arrived in the area was at Il Caffe Rifugio (5415 Mt Baker Hwy, Deming, WA 98244). Lacey served us a fantastic breakfast to get us started. There is nothing quite like a french press coffee and egg, bacon and pancakes with extra syrup to set you up properly for an early photo shoot in the rain.

Sadly, it was actually the rain that limited us in the end. The eagles had the right idea, and pretty much stayed home. We did spot a few, but it wasn’t as many as we’d hoped. However, I did get to try out Daniel’s Canon 300mm f2.8 prime lens. We added a 2x multiplier on there to give me 600mm of fun! Needless to say, his gimbal head tripod was a must in order just to hold the thing steady…

Daniel has created a Bing Maps collection describing the best places along the Nooksack River to photograph.

I’ve uploaded a few of my shots which you can see here: Nooksack River Photoset on Flickr.