Happy New Year! ( content note: weight loss )

I am only about a hundred pages into this book, but it had paid for itself after fifty. I wish I'd read it ten years ago. Actually, I wish I'd read it nineteen years ago when I started my first programming job, but it hadn't been written then. Techies, if you haven't read it, I strongly advise you to do so at your earliest convenience. It's about ( Read more... )

Happy New Year! You're all no doubt itching to learn how I got on with my 2016 New Year's Resolutions.

[Content note: weight loss/gain]
( Read more... )

It was often uncomfortable, often painful, particularly for the first month, but other days were pure joy, a revelling in the sensation of movement, of strength and wellbeing. My regular headaches stopped. For the first time ever, I got through winter without even a cold. I felt incredibly well, began to walk and hold myself differently. When ( Read more... )

Previously on posts tagged with 'angst' (mostly friendslocked): our hero became depressed, sought help, and is now (mostly) feeling better. Now read on...

John Walker, in his excellent book The Hacker's Diet, distinguishes two approaches to tackling problems, which he calls the Manager's approach and the Engineer's approach. Management is about ( Read more... )

In a world where Smile, Chinese Democracy, Duke Nukem Forever and Perl 6 have all actually been released, what archetype are we meant to use for an over-ambitious, never-to-be-completed project? And what did people use before those projects started? What do people who don't know about computers or rock music use ( Read more... )

In Clackmannanshire, where wormwood_pearl grew up, the word "minky" means filthy, messy, disgusting; there's a heavy connotation of shame. "Ugh, this kitchen's minky!" An approximate synonym is "clatty".

My friend buffalo_gill, who is from... somewhere in England, uses "minky" to mean great, excellent, cool: "that party was minky".

In the teenage fiction of Joanna NadinSo ( Read more... )

According to the book Invisible on Everest: Innovation and the Gear Makers, the noted fell-walker and guidebook author Alfred Wainwright had four suits: his best suit, which he wore to church; his second-best suit, which he wore to work; his third-best suit, which he wore for hillwalking; and his scruffiest suit, which he wore for gardening. When ( Read more... )

wormwood_pearl's brother, who is a cycle instructor, very kindly gave us a copy of John Franklin's book Cyclecraft. There's an exercise on page 83 for which you have to look at a photo of a town road, identify all the hazards, and plan your response to them. We both had a go - parked cars, children waiting to cross, a driver clearly about to turn out into the ( Read more... )

( Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer )