New Blog

As you may have noticed, this blog hasn't been updated in a long time. I'm moving my blog to Vox. Check it out and if you're reading this blog via RSS, update your feed.

Squash

In the past month, I've become a big fan of the game of squash. I got started when my manager, who is also just starting to play, invited me to play. I quickly got into the game. It is in some ways similar to racquetball, but I like it much better than racquetball. Racquetball is a game for vicious thugs and miscreants, and squash is for those with more refined sensibilities.

Last week I took a squash lesson and purchased a squash racquet and shoes. My manager and I are usually evenly matched, but this week I beat him 9-1. It may be time for me to start participating in the CMU squash ladder. :-)

Birthday Weekend

My friend Phil came to Pittsburgh for the weekend of my birthday, July 15-16. Some of the things we did:

• Went to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix and Car Show.
• Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
• Went kayaking on the Allegheny River.
• Ate at D's, Aiello's, and Five Guys.
• Played the improbably excellent battle mode of the Dreamcast version of San Francisco Rush 2049.

I'm looking forward to visiting Phil, Angie, Tim, and the rest of the gang in Cleveland sometime before the end of the summer.

Jiu-Jitsu

I've been thinking for awhile of expanding my training program beyond weightlifting and cardio machines. It's not that there's anything wrong with that kind of training program, but I felt like it was time to do something which would combine a workout with learning new skills. Since I started regularly watching MMA matches, I've become increasingly interested in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so I thought I might like to try it.

I searched online for places around Pittsburgh that offered classes, and found Steel City Martial Arts. I've now been taking classes for 3 weeks, and it's great, both as a workout and a discipline. After the first class I participated in, I was so sore that I could barely move, but my condition has improved with each class, and I've enjoyed learning the strategy behind the matches I've seen on TV. Sensei Achille and all of the students at Steel City have been very helpful and encouraging.

I posted a picture of myself wearing my new KF Fighter gi on Flickr.

Thrifting

The weekend before last, I had the opportunity to go "thrifting" for the first time. This involves going to a number of thrift stores back-to-back in search of new clothes. I wanted to find some new shirts and pants, since I'm always getting ribbed at work about how baggy my clothes are. (My clothes were baggy to begin with, and then I lost 40 pounds.)

My guides to the world of thrifting were Cathy and Peter, who are seasoned vets at the game, and have more fashion sense than I. We started off at Peter's house and headed over to Pamela's for breakfast. I had never been there before, so I was glad to go, since Pamela's is one of those places where you must eat at least once if you want to call yourself a true Pittsburgher.

Filled with delicious strawberry hotcakes, we made our way to the first thrift store on the circuit, the Red, White, and Blue Thrift Store. This place had tons of clothes. Alas, there were no dressing rooms, and I didn't feel comfortable buying pants without trying them on. Peter helped me find a nice Patagonia short-sleeved button down shirt, though.

The next stop was the Salvation Army thrift store on the South Side. I found a couple of button down shirts and a pair of yellow dress pants. Peter warned me that, due to their color, the yellow pants were a "limited use item", but they were only 50 cents, so I bought them anyway.

The final stop on our tour was the Goodwill thrift store on Carson Street. While we were there, Cathy threw a pair of blue jeans over the dressing room door and told me to try them on. I did, and Cathy said she liked the fit, so I decided to buy them. I didn't realize until I was out of the dressing room that they were actually women's jeans. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I would have never tried them on if I had gone to the store alone, so I'm glad Cathy was there to pick them out.

All told, I got 4 short-sleeved button down shirts, a pair of dress pants, a pair of jeans, and 2 pairs of shorts for under $25. Since I'm pretty cheap when it comes to clothing, I remarked to Peter and Cathy that I might start buying all of my clothes at thrift stores, which elicited a horrified response. According to them, that would be taking things a bit too far. I'm afraid they may have unleashed a monster. :-)

Back from Japan

My friend Jason and I recently got back from a two week vacation in Japan. While we were there, we stayed with my friend Andrew, who lives in Osaka. We had a really great time, and I hope to write up a chronicle of the adventures we had. However, that will take some time, so for now you'll have to settle for a slideshow of 120 of the best pictures we took (culled from almost 1600 total photos):

Japan Vacation Slideshow (70 MB, requires Quicktime 7)

Weekend with Mike

My friend Mike visited me this weekend. On Friday night, we went to the Pittsburgh Panthers basketball game at Petersen Events Center in Oakland. Pitt suffered a disappointing loss, but the game was still fun and exciting. Now I know what people are talking about when they mention the Oakland Zoo.

Speaking of zoos, on Saturday we went to the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Many of the animals were not out, due to the cold, but we still got to see leopards, lions, elephants, and monkeys, among other animals. And, of course, the aquarium was fully operational. The zoo was larger and nicer than I expected, and we didn't have to fight crowds, so I enjoyed it. After the zoo, we ate lunch at The Church Brew Works. Later in the day, we went to the Carnegie Science Center and saw Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D at the Omnimax theater.

It was great to see Mike again, and it gave me a reason to get out and see some parts of Pittsburgh I hadn't visited before. Hopefully he'll be able to visit again soon.

How to Lose Weight and Get in Shape

On the Tuesday after the Super Bowl last year, I started exercising regularly and monitoring my diet. Approximately one year later, I weigh 40 pounds less (I went from 197 lbs. to 157 lbs.) and I'm in much better shape (increased cardiovascular endurance and more muscle). I think this qualifies me to give advice on how to lose weight and get in shape. Not all of this will be applicable to or work for everyone, but it worked for me.

1. Burn more calories than you consume. If you want to lose weight, ignore stupid fad diets like Atkins, South Beach, or pretty much any other diet that has been promoted in the last 30 years. It's really simple: you lose weight by burning more calories than you consume. You can accomplish this by either burning more calories or consuming fewer calories. Most people will want to do some of both.

2. Be analytical. When you start out, you need to slow things down and think about everything you eat and how many calories you are consuming. You also need to keep track of how many calories you are burning. This is the only way you're going to know if you're burning more calories than you consume. You should also keep a log of your weight, as a check of your calculations. It doesn't matter how you keep track of this information. Use a piece of paper, or a spreadsheet, or whatever you like. I use a program called Calorie King that runs on my Treo, which makes this simple and lets me enter data no matter where I am.

3. Make it routine. Many people claim that motivation and willpower are a key part of losing weight and getting in shape. These people are wrong. The most important thing is routine. I didn't suddenly become super-motivated to lose weight one year ago. What happened is I moved to a new city and a new job, so I had no established routine. I used this opportunity to make going to the gym part of my daily routine. Now, I go to the gym after work out of habit.

   People like to spend a lot of time talking about the downsides of habit and routine, but they can just as easily be used to accomplish something great. I find it easier to form new routines when I change a bunch of things at once, so if you have been thinking of making changes to your schedule other than working out regularly, just make all of the changes at once, and within a few weeks going to the gym will be a habit and you won't have to think about it.

4. Drink lots of water. If you think you are hungry, drink a glass of water and wait a few minutes. If you are still hungry after that, then eat. It's very easy to confuse being thirsty/dehydrated and being hungry.

5. Live alone. This has dual benefits. First, you aren't obligated to eat on any sort of schedule. When you are hungry, you eat, and when you're not, you don't. Second, it means that you control all of the food coming into your household. You won't be tempted by foods that other people happen to be eating.

I'm probably forgetting a few things, but this is the core of my fitness program. It's pretty simple and mostly common sense. If this post becomes popular, then maybe I will get a fake Ph.D. and write a book that has phrases on the cover like, "Dr. Hunter's revolutionary weight loss program!" Until then, you can email me for free advice.

Carnegie Library RSS Feed Generator

Carnegie Library's email notification system leaves much to be desired. It only notifies you after an item is overdue, giving you no chance to return the item on time. Also, when you request an item, you don't receive an email notification that the item is available until a few days after it is ready. However, your account information web page updates immediately after the item is ready.

To solve these problems, I've been working on a Carnegie Library RSS Feed Generator for the past few months. It works by screen-scraping your account information web page. By doing this, it can add entries to your feed a few days before a checked out item is due and immediately after a requested item is available.

This feed generator was mainly written for my personal use, but since some other people might also useful, I'm pleased to make it publicly available. If you decide to use it, please send me feedback and suggestions, so that I can improve it in the future.

(Sidenote: The feed generator was also an excuse to learn Ruby on Rails. Ruby and Rails are both fun to work with. As a desktop application developer, I used to loathe web apps due to the prevalence of spaghetti code. Rails makes it very easy to create a cleanly factored Model-View-Controller application, so I plan to use it for all of my future web development needs.)

A Farewell to Cable

I decided to drop down to basic cable last month. I decided that I was wasting too much time on frivolous TV watching, and that there was plenty of content available through Netflix for my video entertainment needs. I'll let other people serve as my filter for what is and isn't worth watching, and then I'll rent the DVDs of the shows worth watching. By doing this, I'm saving about $40/month on my cable bill + $10/month on my ReplayTV service. So I'm going to save about $600/year. Not bad.

I also cancelled my membership at the JCC. I don't need it anymore, because I can now use the fitness facilities at Carnegie Mellon (one of the perks of Apple moving into a building on CMU's campus). That's going to save me another $600/year.

Combined, I'll be saving about $1,200/year, or, as Mark Cuban likes to think about it, I'll be earning the equivalent of a 12% return on a $10,000 investment. That's pretty hard to beat.

3rd Birthday

Today's the 3rd birthday of this blog. This is post number 384.

I'd write more, but I'm too busy rocking out to Generic Crunk Rap.

One Year at Apple

Today marks one year since I started working at Apple. In that time, I helped ship iWork '06. It's the first commercial software I've ever shipped. Seeing customers' faces light up as I demoed the product to them at Macworld Expo felt great. The people I work with are awesome and my job just plain rocks. Here's to another great year ahead.