Personal – Page 4

Tracking My Weight

Anyone thats known me for a few years will know that I’ve recently lost quite a bit of weight. From Sept 07 until around Mar 09 I lost just under 6 stones. The weight has been pretty constant since then, if anything starting to creep back on. Crap.

Now when I say creep back on, I really mean a couple of kilo’s over the space of 18 months. When I say a couple, I mean 5-6 kg’s. Crapper.

This wasn’t part of the plan. I wanted to get down to under 90kg’s, which while still heavy would be a great weight for me and something I’d be deliriously happy with. But this year has seen me go from 92kg at Christmas to around 98kg a few weeks ago. I then started feeling sorry for myself, and also fell into the usual trap….these scales are wrong. Even as I write that I feel embarrassed.

However, there was no need – they were wrong! A sneaky weigh in on another couple of scales proved me right. I swapped over the batteries and it made no difference. So there you go – I need a new set of scales which was the perfect excuse to order the Withings scale – the first wifi body scale. I’d been itching to get it since I first heard about Withings at the turn of the year but the main reason had always been the fact I had a perfectly good set os scales already. Also they cost a pretty penny – I paid £107 including shipping. Ouch. I’ve now been using them for over a week and it really is a lovely gadget.

So as scales go, they look good but the really nice feature is that they are wifi enabled, automatically uploading your weight, fatty mass and BMI to the Withings website. The weight tracking works for up to eight people from one set of scales so your whole family should be covered. The website is Flash based and lets you track your weight and add notes when certain events (curry!) have impacted on your weight. So far, so good. There’s also a free iPhone and iPad app that allows you to track your weight from the comfort of your iOS device. These are pretty straightforward but give you everything you need to know.

As it’s all automatic it means I can track my weight daily. Total overkill but it’s part of the new weight strategy – track all inputs and outputs. Track weight, exercise and calorie intake. Withings also make sharing information really easy with a number of options available. I can publish my data on the web via a link or an iFrame. I can also share my data with other users who can access via an e-mail address. I can also link Withings to a number of other accounts – Google Health, Runkeeper, even WeightBot on the iPhone. Finally, I can auto tweet my weight after each weigh in. No where to hide 🙂

It had to be done – a new twitter account has been setup just for my weight. Special. I’ve also hooked Withings into RunKeeper. I track all my hill walks on RunKeeper and also now track my efforts on the bike. Having all that info in one place plus the weight is really nice. Also, I’ve paid for one years access to RunKeeper elite which gives me more detailed graphs, stats etc.

The final piece of the jigsaw is to now track calorie intake. Couple of iPhone app’s are worth considering and I had myfitnesspal.com recommended so I’ll give those a try. The up shot of all that is that I’m a couple of kilo’s heavier than a year ago which isn’t too bad as I’ve not been doing the same amount on the bike. I’ll be stepping that up between now and Christmas so hopefully I’ll lose a little in the next couple of months – not long until Santa’s here now.

As for Withings – great gadget, expensive and a bit over the top but I love it.

Great Britain From Space

If looking out your window doesn’t make you feel cold, maybe this picture from space published by NASA will:

Source – http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?2010007-0107/GreatBritain.A2010007.1150.1km.jpg

Two Years On

It’s been two years since I actively started losing weight. August 26th, 2007 was my first weight reading and since then through exercise mostly, and the cutting out of biscuits, I’ve been trying to get my weight down to a sensible level. Two years on, how am I doing?

Overall not too shabby. BMI has dropped from 38.3 to 28.2. Total weight loss is 32.6kg or 5st 2lb. Current weight is 91.5kg or 14st 6lb. I’m really pleased but the weight loss in year 2 is a lot less than year 1. I’ve lost around 7.5kg in year 2 against 25kg in year 1. Oops.

I’ve only myself to blame as I’ve been exercising less this year as work and other projects eat up some time but at least I’m not gaining. I wanted to lose another stone over this year which would take we well under 14st but I can’t see that happening at current pace and workload. Can’t complain though. Feel fitter and healthier and a lot better about myself. I also make sure the above graph is always updated and available online – nice way to keep a wee bit of pressure on me in case I start to stray. The year ahead – steady and downward progress would be nice with a step up in fitness. Longer bike rides (currently around 20 miles per hour long session) and longer/tougher hill walks. Won’t be easy but I’m enjoying the challenge.

Not Quite To Plan

So my last post was just under two weeks ago from a hotel room in Bath. Talking up the course, plan’s for the weekend, more hill climbing. Blah, blah, blah. All that was thrown out the window though a couple of hours later. I woke up with really bad stomach cramps. A couple of minutes later I was sick. The rest of the night was spent in the toilet with the worst food poisoning I’ve ever had.

I blame the curry I had just a few short hours before. I’ve no proof and the meal at the time was good but such a violent reaction doesn’t scream viral to me. So I’ll be avoiding the Rajpoot in Bath in future – there service left a bit to be desired as well. This meant I couldn’t attend the second day of the course and I headed home earlier than expected. I still had a 5 hour wait at Bristol airport and i do apologize for anyone sitting close by that thought I had swine flu or some other nasty disease – I must have looked a mess. The five hours combined with ‘The Sickness’ did mean I got to see a variety of toilets at Bristol airport. Overall, not too bad and kept fairly clean although I found it odd that only one had an airblade – a trial perhaps?

That weekend went from bad to worse. No appetite, forcing myself to eat toast which didn’t stay down well and also a cough and cold. I felt pretty bad and seeing as I had the symptoms I got in touch with NHS24 to double check on swine flu. After a few hours I was told to self medicate as it wasn’t likely to be swine flu and sure enough, within a couple of days I was better again. Still, missed out on a great hill walk which we’ll need to reschedule but the food poisoning was great for the weight loss.

Roll on a week and I’m now on holiday. I’ve got lot’s to do and the weather hasn’t helped so far but there’s not much you can do about that, no matter what the MET office say. Got off to a good (but expensive) start as I’ve ordered a new pair of glasses. Hate choosing glasses but I needed a new pair – hopefully I don’t have issues with them when I get them next week. Last night though was a bit of a pain – one of the neighbours further down the street clipped my car as he was leaving. A scrape and a damaged wing mirror. Annoyingly he drove off without saying anything after he checked out his car but a neighbour across the road saw it, I heard it and saw him checking his car out and after speaking to his dad he admitted it and they’ll pay for repairs. It’s just the hassle now of getting it repaired. Seemingly he’ll be sent round to apologise later today which will be fun. Hey, maybe he reads the blog – own up to your fucking mistakes next time and it save’s a whole load of hassle.

Anyway, off to the bank and then it’s back to some books – Objective C is getting quite interesting.

New Skills

Long time no blog. Seems to be the way at the moment. Between DigitalOutbox and Twitter I’m kind off all blogged out. The podcast is going OK. It’s been good getting to grips with it and trying something new. We aren’t seeing massive downloads which is nothing we didn’t expect but we are seeing small increases each week which is nice. Where will it go – we still don’t know but hopefully we’ll still enjoy the journey.

I’m also on the first part of a training course at the moment – ASP .Net but more importantly, SharePoint. Interesting to learn and see things from the MS side of the fence. Visual Studio has come on a long way since I last used it (many years ago) so who knows how much we’ll be using it over the next few months – always good to learn something new though.

The course is down in Bath which looks to be very nice but the weather’s been a bit pooh. I’m back down in August so hopefully it’ll be a bit nicer as I’d like to have a stroll around. What isn’t nice is the flights at this time of year. Easyjet can’t keep their services on time which meant a really late night last night. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow night at Bristol as the queue’s at security have been shit all week. What’s really annoying is the queue is massive and at the same time they are announcing that you can pay to skip the queue. Dirty sneaky bastards. Really winds me up every time.

However once the flight is out of the way I’m out hill walking again, this time up in Perth – Schiehallion . Hopefully the weather will be good as by all accounts the views are stunning – looking showery and windy at the moment. Hey ho. I’ll be knackered though – late back Friday, up early for walk on Saturday. After that I’ve a week of work then I’m off for two weeks. Chance to relax a bit and catch up on a few jobs that need doing around the house. Might even unplug for a bit. Although one thing I really want to get my teeth into is some iPhone programming. Tried and failed so far this year. pathetic.

Anyway. That’s enough for now. Just watching some Big Brother (bored in hotel room). It’s unbelievably bad. Thank goodness I’ve not been watching much this year. One more thing – avoid Worms on the iPhone. Terrible controls. Touch doesn’t work for everything.

Keeping Busy

What a glorious weekend. Friday past was another work trip down to Roodlea. All week the forecast was for a warm day but it still came as a really nice surprise when it actually turned out to be true. It was great weather and another thoroughly enjoyable day.

I’m glad I put on some sun cream though – I expect a few red faces at work tomorrow and that’s not form the quality of golf on show. The rest of the weekend has been really busy. Lot’s of gardening – grass cutting, hedge cutting, weeding, planting etc etc. All worth it as it’s looking pretty tidy even if I do say so myself. I’ll never make a gardener but at least it’s looking presentable.

I’ve also had a lot to do in setting up a new project. Can’t say too much more at the moment. Well, can’t is the wrong word. I don’t want to say too much more at the moment but all will hopefully be revealed soon enough. Can’t promise it will be good but it will at least be….interesting. Still a lot to-do to get it off the ground but made a lot of progress over the weekend.

One thing not going so well is my broadband connection and/or router. Warm resetting every day now. Complete pain in the tits – must get on to O2 tomorrow and get it looked at. Doesn’t matter what broadband firm or technology I use – after 6 months to a year I always run into some sort of trouble. Frustrating.

Anyway, that’s for tomorrow. Hope you had a good weekend too. What a difference a bit of sun makes.

Busy Busy Busy

I’ve had quite a bit on over the past few weeks. So much so that I’m taking a week off work starting this Friday. It will be good to take a break from the day to day’s at work and focus elsewhere. Lot’s of bit’s and piece’s around the house to take care off. I also want to put in some quality time on Cocoa and iPhone development. I’ve a simple app that I hope to build over the week I’m off. More on that later.

This weekend has been mostly cleaning up around the house and also on the computers. Freed up around 40GB on the iMac in 10 minutes – just been lazy recently keeping my disks tidy. Also got Delicious Library 2 syncing well between desktop and laptop via Dropbox. I moved the Delicious Library file from /Library/Application Support/Delicious Library 2/ to my Dropbox, creating an alias in the original directory to the file in my Dropbox folder. Works a treat. Just make sure the alias is the same name as the original file. I also updated my library with my latest purchases and also published the library on iand.net rather than on MobileMe. You can see the library here.

Dropbox has been working so well for me. So much so that I won’t be renewing MobileMe this year unless it goes through a serious upgrade which I just can’t see. Dropbox is a far superior file syncing tool – and quicker. I use Busysync to keep calendars in sync. I can sync contacts via Google for free. That leaves…and e-mail address that I don’t really use? I’ve turned off push on the iPhone to save on battery life and my calendar and contacts don’t change enough to justify over the air updating. I just don’t need it. If you are interested in Dropbox this is my referral link which gets me extra disk space if you sign up.

Anyway, back on topic. One of the reasons I’ve been busy is I’ve been helping set-up a website for a friend. So if your in need of a personal trainer in the Glasgow area I highly recommend Tangerine13. I’ve spent a few years working with Caroline but she’s moving on to pursue life as a full time personal trainer so hopefully Tangerine13 will work out for her. Eagle eyed readers (i.e. those that can be arsed to visit the site) will notice a small link at the bottom of Tangerine13 to pixlcode.com. That was the name I was going to use if/when I release iPhone app’s. Long way off but thought it was worthwhile linking to it in case the web site design goes anywhere. Not something I intend to pursue but you never know.

One other thing form the weekend that really pissed me off. Some dirty swine was trying to rip off my credit card. Again. Just over two years since my bank account was emptied, this time Egg were onto it straight away. No money lost, card stopped. Attempt to use my card was in London – trying to buy some Cellnet pre-pay card. I just don’t understand where they get the details from. I do use the card a lot online but make sure it’s always a secure purchase. Then again, there’s nothing to stop a site passing on card details. Or some back room staff doing the dirty I guess. Bloody annoying and it’s put me on edge again about my finances.

Anyway. iPhone app. I’ve a few idea’s for app’s actually. The problem is so do lot’s of other people. Already two of my idea’s, which 4 weeks ago were original and didn’t exist in the app store now do. Time moves fast unlike me at the moment. Too busy. Or busy doing the wrong things. So for my first app, screen’s have been mocked up. Usage has been thought through. Functionality has been locked down to a minimum. Keeping things simple. Just need to start coding. Should be fun. If I find the time.

Victory

I was down in Portsmouth yesterday on work business. It finished earlier than expected so I took the chance to visit HMS Victory. This is the oldest ship currently still in service although it won’t be going anywhere soon.

After working on the newest ship in the fleet just an hour earlier it was quite a shock to see the conditions on board Victory. It was cramp, dark and I’m assuming people were a lot smaller back then as there was no head room at all. It also carried so much firepower. It must have been an impressive and fearsome sight.

It was quite difficult to photograph inside due to the lights as you can see in the full set. What’s also surprising is that as it’s a serving ship it has a full time crew of 12. If your ever got some time to kill in Portsmouth it’s well worth a visit.

Downside of yesterdays trip wasn’t just working on a Saturday. I woke up with a migraine today which I think is a knock on from lack of sleep or altered sleep pattern. Friends were supposed to visit today but that got knocked on the head. A lost weekend.

Balance

I like my work. I really do. It’s been a year now since moving jobs and it’s worked out well. I enjoy the variety in my job and the challenges it brings. However I’ve been doing some pretty dumb things recently and I need to make some changes.

Now it isn’t as drastic as the Dilbert above but recently I’ve felt like I’ve no time to myself. I’m over committing and not allowing myself enough time to complete tasks. I’m not saying no!

That’s really the issue.

I’m not saying no and over committing. To such an extent that I assume my weekends as normal work time. Sure, I can get that done by Monday knowing fine well that the task requires a full 2 days. No problem, I’ve got the weekend coming up. As I said I do like my work so at the time it makes sense. But it’s crazy. My own time for doing what I want to do has fell away in the last month. Game playing has slowed, blog updating non existent, exercise has fell away, I’ve knocked back a hill walk as I felt too tired (really I had work to do) and I’ve fell behind on a few other things I’ve supposed to have done around the house. I’ve not even got near doing any iPhone programming either.

Time to change. Time to take on tasks and set realistic time-scales and claw back some me time. Hopefully that will help the sore heads which have been more frequent in the last three weeks and also help with the weight loss which has stagnated. Not getting worse but not getting better.

This is just common sense and something I’ve been saying for a while but not actually doing so I’m posting here to act as a kick for me. To get things back in proportion. To find a balance.

London Calling

While down in Peterborough over New Year visiting Shakeel instead of the usual spend on gadgets and playing of games we took a trip down to London, booking the London Eye and taking advantage of a cold but sunny winters day. It was also a chance to get some photography done – we were tourists for the day!

First stop was St Pancras station which has been newly redeveloped. It really is quite magnificent. There’s something about glass roofs that I really like. There’s also a nice mix of old and new architecture and the restoration is pretty faultless. I guess we were lucky as when we were there the station was very quiet so we got to take our photo’s without too much hassle. Full set can be viewed on Flickr.

After some pictures around Westminster it was on to the London Eye. After lot’s of queueing we finally got on, although we did manage to ‘jump’ about half of the queue which was nice – it was too cold to feel embarrassed. The hazy winters sun started to clear as we ascended and we got quite a lot of good pictures. The view in the summer must look amazing on a clear day. What was strange was there was no real sense of motion – it moved so slowly that you didn’t feel it at all. The full set of photos can be seen here. One shot I really wanted to get was a panoramic – stitching together lots of photo’s to get a wrap around view of London. It didn’t quite work out due to the low sun and the ever changing perspective but the result isn’t too bad as long as you don’t look to close – it’s also pretty wide at 18702 x 1614 pixels!

After that it was a walk around Horse Guards parade, St James’s park and Buckingham Palace. All very nice but by this time I was getting extremely cold. I really should have wrapped up a bit better than I did. It was a great day though and really enjoyable. It took quite a while to get the photo’s sorted and uploaded. I initially took over 600 photo’s but ended up with 140 published on Flickr. I also used Lightroom for the first time and I’m now hooked. So much more control over the image than in iPhoto. Just a shame that iPhoto 09 is coming with really nice albums and iPhone syncing. If only iPhoto worked like Picasa and managed photo’s in there own locations without having to suck/copy them into iPhoto’s library. I hate duplication.

Couple of things I need to remember when taking a photo. I don’t spend enough time watching where I’m taking a photo from. Lot’s of photo’s were slightly off centre from what I wanted to or were from a bad angle just because I didn’t think the photo through. I also need to work on not shaking as much – even with image stabilisation switched on I had a couple of disappointing photo’s. My favourite photo from the day though is the one below of Shakeel in the London Eye capsule. Just captures him really well. His full set of photo’s from London are also up at Flickr – he took some really great shots, even some of the ones without me in the picture are good. Hopefully this is the start of a lot more photo’s this year as is something I really enjoy doing.