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Another Stint of the Paleo Diet

Tadhg — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:23:10 +0000

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to go on the paleo diet again, in preparation for Tough Mudder. This time I’m going to cut down on dairy, although I’m not sure I’ll cut it entirely. I’m hoping to stick to the diet just as strictly as I did last time, although there’s no threat of 100 burpee pullups hanging over me.

I’m actually looking forward to being back on it. I’ve been looking forward to being back on it for a while, but that hasn’t made me start it earlier—or eat much better in the interim. But I’m hoping that it helps with my energy levels and with the endurance that the Tough Mudder will require. I’m also hoping it helps with recovery from injury, and I suspect that minimizing sugar will go some distance towards doing that.

There will be some awkward periods, I’m sure. It’s always harder when travelling, and I’m going to Portland for a weekend soon, a weekend that will probably be fairly tough to find paleo-friendly food on. I’ll have to plan well for that.

I have to get back into eating almonds. I like almonds, but previous paleo periods have made me somewhat sick of them as a snack food.

Tags: diet, food, health, personal

Perfectionism is Hard

Tadhg — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:50:46 +0000

I haven’t been that happy with my blog posts recently. It’s not that I think all of them are terrible, or that the quality suddenly dropped off a cliff, but I feel as if there’s been a decline. It’s tough to measure this, of course, with no clear criteria. But that I feel this way is indicative of some problem.

At the same time, I feel as if I haven’t been writing what I want to write, mainly because I’ve shied away from a lot of topics that I’ve wanted to write about.

The general pattern is that I think of something I want to write about, something I usually either feel strongly about, or want to work out my thoughts on, or both. Then I think it over for a little while and come up with some ideas on how I’ll approach it as a post. Then it comes time to write the post, and I resist writing about that topic. Usually because I feel that it will require too much time, or too much effort, or both, to do it justice. So then I try to write about something else instead, something less demanding.

The subsequent search for the less demanding thing often takes more time than writing the original post would have. Occasionally I end up writing about something else equally demanding, which is fine, but usually I find something brief and light instead.

There’s nothing wrong with brief and/or light posts. But there is something wrong with writing them because I’m avoiding writing about something else. Even more so when that something else is actually a topic I want to write about.

I want to write about it, but somehow this desire moves into the realm of theory, and instead of being a motivating force becomes a heavy weight, having undergone the deadening transformation from “want to write” to “should write” to “should already have written”.

That description skips a step, the critical one where the desire to write dissipates but the loyalty to the topic remains. I suspect that this step has much to do with placing high expectations on the finished product.

Originally I was going to title this post “Writing is Hard”, but while that may certainly be true, the current title is more germane. It’s not writing per se that I’m having trouble with, it’s writing in the shadow of my expectations. It’s grappling with the fact that some part of my mind has already calculated (using unknowable metrics) how “good” the post “should” be, and some other part of my mind then blanches at having to meet this standard.

This is perfectionism, hiding in plain sight, masquerading, as it often does, as a heartfelt and genuine concern for quality—not just quality in terms of what the output is like, but of course also the quality of my writing experience, for it feels that it would be terrible if I inadvertently got into the habit of not giving my all to topics I write about. That, it says, would be tragic. That would be a terrible waste, as I would then have not just shitty output but a shitty process as well, the worst of all worlds.

By some remarkable coincidence, the presence of this perfectionism has helped me to my current point, where I’m concerned about… shitty output and a shitty process.

Even after more than four years of regular public writing, a practice I took up in large part to try to get past the perfectionism that I felt was holding back my writing, I still appear to have a lot of difficulty trusting myself enough to just let go and write about whatever interests me. Perhaps the most insidious thing is that this perfectionism creeps in partly by way of my pride in the pieces that I regard highly. After all, if I’ve written them, it’s clear I can achieve a high standard, so less would be a failure.

One of the reasons I write this blog is for practice. Practice so that I can be a better writer. It’s definitely helped, but practice, mere activity, isn’t enough—to really improve, one needs “directed practice”, which I haven’t seen clearly defined anywhere but which I think I understand. It takes a certain focus, a focus that is not always easy to summon. In the time I’ve been blogging, I think I’ve done that for concentrated periods, but I (clearly) haven’t managed to make it properly habitual.

In terms that will sound awfully self-helpy, I think that almost any conscious concern with the quality of the product of the endeavor is counterproductive. At the same time, concern with the quality of the process is quite important. On top of that, though, this concern with the quality of the process cannot be allowed to silence the writing voice. The writing voice must be heard, and respected, but with a recognition that when it drifts away, or goes silent, the conscious mind will do its best to take over and will respect the intent of what that voice was trying to achieve.

If this sounds like vague and unverifiable crap to you, well, it sounds that way to me too, but with an additional maddening conviction that it’s extremely important. There is a balance that must be struck here, and describing it may be even harder than striking it. For me, I tilt so far to the side of inner editorial control that some of that will always be present even when I try to just “write free”, and so my worries about somehow disengaging too much are unrealistic to say the least. Furthermore, I need to keep in mind that even if ninety, or ninety-five, or even ninety-nine, percent of what I write here is crap, that will still result in a few good posts per year, which is infinitely better than none. This is not a new thought, but it is one that I need to remind myself of, and to explicitly write out.

It’s not as simple as just writing what I want to write about. But writing about the things that I’ve recently wanted to write about would be fine, far better than my current approach of letting the ideas die, their dead weight immediately landing on top of new ideas, gradually making creativity in general much more laborious. This is how perfectionism makes things hard—not just in an exacting and demanding and up-front way, associated with much editing and rewriting until things are just so, but also in subtly making creativity and self-expression far less appealing, far less fun.

Tags: Blog, personal, writing

SF Heat

Tadhg — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:09:11 +0000

The temperature in San Francisco hit 101° Fahrenheit today, the hottest it’s been since May 2001. I’m not comfortable at such high temperatures, and was pretty sluggish all day.

I prefer it in the 70s and 80s. I do love it when it’s warm at night, and should really be taking advantage this evening by being out somewhere, but I’m just too tired—worn out by the heat, and perhaps by doing CrossFit and Conditioning today. Doing both might have been excessive, and some people did warn me… but I didn’t heed them. The room we did Conditioning in was incredibly stuffy, and I couldn’t get enough oxygen; I kept having to leave between sets because I had to get fresh air, something that doesn’t normally happen to me.

Cycling in this weather wasn’t as bad as I feared, primarily because I managed to keep mostly in the shade, and also because there was some wind. Walking in it, though, was tough. Going outside felt like entering an oven.

It didn’t help that I wasn’t thinking too clearly this morning and wore long pants instead of shorts.

It’s not supposed to last, and in fact the temperature is forecast to drop to 61° by Friday—a 40° difference over four days.

One of the reasons San Francisco suits me is because days like this are rare. Generally it’s temperate here, and apparently I require that. On the other hand, I didn’t mind the cold in Berlin that much—at least not the cold outside—so maybe it’s heat I have struggle with most. Heat, and the cold damp of Ireland.

At Sectionals in March I also wilted in the heat, and that’s one of the reasons I thought I should do Conditioning on top of CrossFit today—I should take my opportunities to work out in those conditions because it’s the only way to improve. Maybe I need to find a training camp somewhere really hot and go there for a while, something that Agassi and Federer have both touted.

Right now, however, that thought is not appealing at all.

Tags: CrossFit, exercise, personal, san-francisco, weather

Ending a Long Span of No Soccer

Tadhg — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:43:26 +0000

Last Friday I played soccer for the first time in almost two decades. I managed not to disgrace myself, and enjoyed it a great deal. It was a variant of five-a-side, although we played first with six players per side and later with four. I was with a group of regular players at SportsCo in Ringsend, and the quality of the pitch there was pretty good. Not that I’m an expert, but it’s the best surface I’ve played on.

I’ve always been bad at soccer. Hand-eye coordination has generally been a strength of mine, but foot-eye coordination is apparently another thing entirely. I played soccer growing up, although just casually—I wasn’t in any sports leagues as a kid, either in the US or Ireland. As a kid and in my teens, I enjoyed the game but didn’t have much skill or creativity (or dedication), and was useful only as a defender because I was persistent. In secondary school I went through a “season” of playing five-a-side in P.E. where I was the only person in the class not to ever score a goal. It was a mixed group of players, so that’s quite a way to stand out. I can still remember some of the missed shots, which include missing open goals, hitting the posts, hitting the crossbar, hitting the goalie when doing so was actually quite difficult, and so on.

Therefore I was quite relieved when I managed to get a goal early on Friday night. That’s the only one I scored, but that’s fine. Breaking the pattern from eighteen years ago quickly was a good thing.

I doubt that my skills have improved any since then. They’ve probably waned with increasing distance from frequent soccer play as a kid. On the other hand, there’s CrossFit, which has made me stronger, more balanced, and more coordinated generally, improved my proprioception, and increased my endurance. That’s why I wasn’t appalling on Friday. I might not be able to control the ball too well, but I can certainly run after it just fine.

I played all-out as much as I could, which wasn’t as much as I would have liked, so I need to add to my exercise routine. It wasn’t a serious set of games, and I had fun with it, and had a good time playing with people I know.

As much as I enjoyed it, and as much as I’m eager to play again when I’m next in Ireland, I won’t be playing it regularly without some other impetus. I still prefer tennis, and I’m leery of the high risk of injury. But it was great to get out there and to occasionally get something right.

Tags: CrossFit, exercise, personal, soccer, sports

Dublin Foxes

Tadhg — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:17:38 +0000

I first saw a fox in a city setting somewhere around eighteen years ago, cycling home very late one night along Woodbine Road. It was about eighty meters away, running across the road. It saw me and was quite skittish, running into a garden for cover as fast as it could.

A few years later, in the same area, I saw two foxes together, again late at night. These two were still intent on keeping their distance, but moved away less speedily.

Since then, I’ve seen foxes intermittently, every few years. Each time they seem to have grown more comfortable around people, and more comfortable in the city. I’ve seen them much closer to the city center than suburban Booterstown. Always at night, until recently, when I saw a fox wandering in early morning daylight outside CrossFit Ireland, in the Sandyford Industrial Estate. It was foraging, unperturbed by my presence, not really reacting when I got out of my car. It wasn’t about to let me get close, but its attitude was that I could be tolerated in its vicinity as long as I didn’t try anything funny.

When I first saw them, the foxes acted as if they were moving through alien territory, a weird and dangerous environment. Now they move as if they’re city-dwellers—and they probably are. I might have seen early immigrants back in the 90s, and now the ones I see are their descendants, generations later, whose parents and grandparents were already accustomed to city life.

Tags: dublin, personal

Swimming: Adriatic and Irish Seas

Tadhg — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:03:35 +0000

I’m not that fond of the water. I can swim, just about, but I don’t generally like to. Before doing boogie boarding for a couple of years, I hadn’t been in the water in a long time. I haven’t even done that since 2006, and as I did boogie boarding while wearing a wetsuit, it’s been a long time indeed since I did much more than just touch the water.

I wanted to change this, and I had an excellent easy way to do that when I was in Francavilla recently. The weather was good, and the water there was fairly warm. I wasn’t in the water for long at all, unfortunately, but I enjoyed it quite a lot, and would have been happy to have spent a lot more time in it.

I can’t say the same about my time in the Irish Sea this week. I went to Hawk Cliff with friends, and got into the water despite my body’s insistence that I was doing something really stupid. Hawk Cliff isn’t a beach, but a swimming spot with steps going down into the water, and as I went down the steps I intended to simply immerse myself without hesitation—as I’d done in the Adriatic—but with the water up to my knees I began to slow down, and when it reached my waist I just stopped. I stayed there for a few moments, as alleged free will fought with the instinctual desire to avoid things that don’t seem warm or safe.

Then I went back up the stairs and jumped up and down for a while in an attempt to warm up. This worked, and I again hesitated on the steps but managed to get fully into the water. I’d been advised to get in briefly and then get out twice before getting in for a longer period, so that’s what I did. I didn’t notice much difference between the three times. Each of them felt extraordinarily cold. I more or less immediately felt like I had trouble breathing, which was both familiar and disturbing—familiar because I often feel that way during CrossFit workouts, disturbing because I hadn’t exerted myself at all.

I swam around a little, and probably stayed in for about five minutes. I never really felt better, and the experience was dominated by cold and fear: the awareness of those things took up about sixty percent of my consciousness, even while I talked to the others, had photos taken, and told myself that things were fine. It was only after I got out of the water that I was able to convince myself that in truth I was pretty safe: poor swimmer or not, absent bad conditions I can probably stay afloat for significant periods of time, and at the least should be able to backstroke with some effectiveness. While I was in the water, though, none of that seemed plausible, and I was very focused on the combination of being in the water and not breathing as easily as I would have liked.

My companions all seemed much more invigorated by the experience than I was. I found it refreshing, but not as much as they did. I found it very physiologically and psychologically interesting, but “pleasant” doesn’t really come into it.

Despite all that, though, I want to do it again. I’m drawn to the moment on the steps, when I had every intention of continuing into the water, and really thought I was going to, but couldn’t. I want to be in the water, feeling that cold, but be able to swim around without being paralyzed by the conviction that drowning is imminent. I want to overcome the aversion to the cold, and to act despite the fear.

Unfortunately, the Pacific around San Francisco is likely to be my next opportunity to swim, and I’m informed that it’s even colder.

Tags: personal

poco dolce Chocolate

Tadhg — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:41:59 +0000

My friend Jennifer Greenwood recently recommended poco dolce chocolate, so I picked some up as gifts. Having sampled it, I can confirm that their “Bittersweet Tiles” are fantastic. They’re from San Francisco, which may or may not influence you. So far, everyone I know who’s tried them has loved them.

Tags: food, personal

Three Routines

Tadhg — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:22:10 +0000

I don’t tend to think of myself as a particularly disciplined or organized person, a view often at odds with how others perceive me, but I will admit to liking to organize and order things in specific ways. This may be related to my left-handedness, and/or to my attraction to precision (which attraction falls short of achieving precision, although I hope that in language I occasionally come close).

I still struggle, as do most people, with trying to focus on the right things, to not become wrapped up in getting perfectly right things that just don’t matter. Without getting into what matters and what doesn’t, it seems to me that the last twelve years of my life have involved a significant amount of progress in this struggle, and that I’ve learned to route some of what might loosely be termed “OCD” (or OCPD, although in truth I don’t have either of those disorders) into fairly productive channels.

Before the age of twenty-four, I was never able to stick to a routine that wasn’t forced upon me. I’d tried and failed many times to follow daily routines, especially with exercise. Doing something regularly every day, or even a few times a week, seemed impossible.

That’s changed. I continue to struggle with being productive—two novels in various stages of incompletion, and a considerable pile of other unfinished projects, make this abundantly clear. But aside from working (which, no matter how much I enjoy it, is a routine pushed upon me by outside forces), I now have three things I do almost daily that are quite important to me:

Morning pages. It’s more than twelve years, now, that I’ve been doing these every day. They’re simply part of daily life, and will continue to be so.
This blog. I’ve been blogging either daily or five times per week for just over four years. It’s not part of daily life in the same way my pages are. Writing my blog posts still feels like an imposition some of the time, and it’s often a struggle. I sometimes feel it as a real strain, the requirement of coming up with five things to write about every week, and experience my two days off as almost like vacations due to the relief of not having to deal with that. I occasionally have to remind myself that I have opportunity to express myself in any way I choose, on any topic, in a public way unavailable to anyone who lived in the pre-Internet age, and that this makes me incredibly lucky. Of the three near-daily things, this is the one that feels most fragile, most susceptible to my (likely mistakenly) deciding at some point that I don’t need to keep it up.
CrossFit. I’ve been doing it for more than a year, and it hit a critical level quite some time ago, so I’m quite sure I’ll keep going with it. This is pretty clear from the fact that last week I did a ton of travelling, lost a lot of sleep, and was generally all over the place, but still managed to do CrossFit workouts five days out of the seven (five is my target every week).

While I don’t think I ever really exhibited a lot of compulsive behaviors, those I did have largely been refocused into this triumvirate. I still perceive the setup I’ve created for the latter two: I’m consciously pushing the idea that sticking to those routines is an achievement, and that there’s a kind of invisible checkbox for each of them in my mind, with a psychological payoff every time the tick mark is entered. The latter two have a public aspect, also, in that posts are public and that I log (and broadcast) my workouts, and this public aspect is a further motivator.

It’s a powerful trio of habits. My morning pages are (obviously) introspective outlets, a kind of dialogue with myself that has a dedicated place in my life every day. My blog posts are public self-expression, writing that has some degree of polish and with which I (hopefully) hone my ability to make myself understood. I’m very used to the rhythm of it, Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/break/Thursday/Friday/break, and while I sometimes worry about complacency and conservatism in my posts, I’m nevertheless convinced that it’s incomparably better than not doing it. CrossFit is the first regular exercise I’ve managed to stick to in my life, and has done me tremendous good. Its rhythm isn’t as set, as my target is to fit in five workout days per week any way I can, and by its nature it’s more susceptible to disruption (by wisdom tooth extraction, for example); I’m more willing to accede to lapses in the routine.

Introspection, self-expression, and intense exercise. Not a bad three things to have running smoothly. That’s not self-satisfaction speaking—in many ways those three things barely constitute a viable starting point for what my adult life should be—but rather recognition that I’ve managed to work out some of the things that seemed insurmountable in my early twenties.

Tags: Blog, CrossFit, exercise, personal, psychology, writing

Travel, Ebooks, and Real Books

Tadhg — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:27:18 +0000

Despite my techie nature, I’ve never been enamored of books in electronic format. I love the feel of books, and while I have no trouble reading large amounts on screens of various kinds, I don’t like the idea of doing so for books.

I like reading to be a focused activity, and the fact that books are monofunction devices absolutely makes this focus easier to achieve. Simply having the option of switching activities on a computer (or whatever computer-like device I might read ebooks on) makes focusing that much harder. That’s certainly true when I watch movies on my computer. I don’t want the same thing to happen with reading. Even though it’s clearly a choice, the very presence of that choice is disruptive.

Dedicated ereading devices such as the Kindle might be an answer to this, but I haven’t come across any I find compelling, and I have no intention of supporting any that use a closed and authoritarian model. On top of that, there’s my love of physical books.

Despite all of the above reservations, I find myself considering some other approach, because physical books take up a lot of space. I’ve always been willing to deal with this in the past, but have recently found myself running closer and closer to the practical limits of what I can carry while travelling. This is despite packing reasonably well (perhaps not up to Monika standards, but not bad) and exploiting quite ruthlessly the ability of my Jacket of Holding to carry almost as much as my bag.

I generally err on the side of carrying too many books, but on my recent trip to Italy miscalculated and only brought three, two of which I read on the way out. The way back required at least two as well, so I was a book short. Physical space considerations are what caused me to bring only three books, and so I’m forced to admit that if I had some ereading device (which could be my phone, not necessarily another piece of hardware) this is simply not a problem I would run into.

So I’m going to have to experiment, start investigating getting books onto my Nexus One and my iPad, and seeing whether acceptable software can be found. This is a step I’m still feeling wary about taking, a testament to how emotionally attached I am to the physical book form.

Tags: books, personal, reading, tech, travel

Consumer Scoring

Tadhg — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:04 +0000

I’m not a big fan of shopping, and more or less loathe the idea of it as an entertainment activity. That didn’t stop me from coming up with a scoring system for it, one which could conceivably be useful in restraining spending.

This came to me in Portland, at Powell’s, and was originally meant for books, but can really be used for anything.

It’s very simple, and is a game you play against the store you’re shopping in. The scores start at zero each. For every item that you buy that you had intended to buy prior to entering, you get a point. For every item you buy that you had not intended to buy prior to entering, the store gets a point. Higher score at the point when you leave wins.

I drew with Powell’s, two–two, when I first came up with this. I have read (and would recommend) the two books I had intended to buy (The Inner Game of Tennis and Influence), while the two impulse purchases languish, thus far untouched.

Tags: consumerism, games, personal

Consumer Serendipity

Tadhg — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:41 +0000

Two weeks ago I wrote about having difficulties finding a wallet to match my somewhat specific requirements. Today, while looking for something else, I found one that matched almost perfectly—it’s like a cheap clone of my earlier wallet.

This is the wallet, but I rather doubt that any of you will be particularly impressed, unless you share my criteria for good wallets. Perhaps more surprising is that I found another one in the same section that was almost as good. Leather, and more attractive, but with a fastened coin pouch instead of zippered. Almost good enough, so I grabbed that one as well.

I would never have guessed that Thomas Nash and John Rocha, at Debenhams, were where I should look. A number of you gave good advice in my previous post (and some of you concluded the problem was not with wallets, manufacturers, or the market, but rather with crazy Tadhg), but none of you suggested just getting them from Debenham’s… which I don’t really fault you for. This does strongly suggest that the problem is one of discoverability, and that the answer to issues like this is indeed to push manufacturers and retailers to use common schemas.

Tags: consumerism, economics, personal

Jet Lag and Exercise

Tadhg — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:45:19 +0000

Usually going east is tough for me in terms of jet lag. This is related to my being a night owl—going east means it’s harder to get up in the morning and easier to stay up late, and I have enough issues with both those things already. This time it’s been a little easier, I think physical activity has a lot to do with that.

About six hours after I arrived, I started a hike around Glendalough, in Wicklow, that was something over two hours long. It wasn’t a particularly tough hike, but it had a fair amount of uphill, as well as being beautiful in a classic Irish landscape way—lots of barren rocky greenery. I got up at 10:00 yesterday morning, way earlier than I usually can when suffering from jet lag, and this morning I got up at 06:00 and did a CrossFit workout (“Helen”) at 07:00. I feel as if the exercise has really helped, and while I’ve still felt tired, the tiredness hasn’t had the same weight that jet lag normally brings for me.

(An alternative explanation is that being deprived of internet access has made me go to bed earlier…)

Tags: CrossFit, exercise, personal, travel

The Internet, We Wants It

Tadhg — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:09:08 +0000

Having had no internet here for two days, and with my phone lacking a data plan here, I’ve found myself more disturbed by the absence of internet access than perhaps I would have guessed.

It’s made me irritable in a low-level way, and it’s been blackly amusing to watch my own repeated stabs of annoyance as I formulate the intent to do yet another action that, I realize a split-second later, requires me to have internet access. Posting to my blog is a big one (one that I overcame with the help of friends last night), and checking email is obvious, as is generalized websurfing, but things like checking maps, checking times, checking things into version control—they do also, but are somehow in separate categories. Separate enough, anyway, that I would think of one and only realize a moment later that it was unavailable.

It’s not necessarily the constant contact with other people, or the easy access to mental stimulation, that seems most important when I can’t use the internet; it’s more broadly the ridiculously easy access to information that internet access affords. This is obvious, but the ways in which this access to information is taken for granted is becoming increasingly profound.

That, and I’m addicted to it. Easy access to social information, personal information, sports information, encyclopedic information, news information, entertainment information, shopping information, geographic information, dietary information, health information—I want it and am used to floating in a mist of it, data all around me.

Tags: internet, personal

5 Weeks of the Paleo Diet

Tadhg — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:39:39 +0000

I stayed on the diet for five weeks, a little longer than the challenge required. When I last was on the diet, in the run up to Sectionals, I cheated once per week, getting a burger with buns. This time I didn’t cheat, at least not knowingly. I derived more benefit from it this time around, although I didn’t start really feeling that until the last two weeks.

It hasn’t been a dramatic shift, but I’ve felt slightly better overall. My CrossFit performance has been fairly steady, so it’s hard to get accurate measurements from that. I feel lighter even though I put on a couple of pounds on the diet.

I can’t make radical claims for it, merely that it’s made me feel better. I’m off the diet now, although I’m planning to make 70%–80% of my meals paleo-compliant anyway. Then I’ll go back on it again, from 1 September to Tough Mudder, as it seems like an important component of event preparation.

Tags: diet, food, health, personal

Lifehacker Meditation Guide

Tadhg — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:16:44 +0000

I haven’t tried it out, but this Lifehacker guide to meditation looks good. I’m interested in trying it, but have some resistance because I’ve never gotten anywhere with meditation in the past.

Entirely by coincidence (or at least that’s how it appears to me) the Deutsche Nepal track “The Hierophants of Light”, which I’ve never heard before, starting playing as I wrote this post (I bought the album it’s on, Deflagration of Hell, last night)—and it begins with this looped many times: “You shall hear nothing, you shall see nothing, you shall think nothing, you shall be nothing”.

Tags: consciousness, music, personal, psychology

Tough Mudding

Tadhg — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:38:11 +0000

I just signed up for the Northern California “Tough Mudder” event, a seven-mile, high-altitude, obstacle-ridden, sadistically-conceived, mud-covered race/challenge at Bear Valley Mountain on 09 October 2010.

Why? A good question, particularly since I’m paying to suffer through it.

Many of my (clearly insane) gym mates at CrossFit KMSF are think it will be “fun”. Most of them signed up some time ago, but I’d been holding off. My main reasons for deciding to do it are: because I’ve never done anything like it before; because it’s motivating to have something to train for; and because it’ll be good to go through it with the rest of Squad Ciso. Fun, however, is not an apt description.

I’m intimidated by the altitude. It starts at 6600 feet and I think goes over 8000 feet. The last time I was close to that kind of altitude, in Tahoe years ago, it had a significant effect on me. It’s uncomfortable and a little frightening to feel like you can’t get enough oxygen, and combining that with a very difficult run seems a scary prospect.

I don’t like the cold. Cold water is something to be avoided, not something you pay money in order to endure. Worse, in order to have a reasonable chance of dealing with the cold at the event, I will probably need to train in ways that will require exposure to cold (and cold water) beforehand. By signing up today I’ve basically guaranteed myself a bunch of deeply unpleasant low-temperature experiences culminating in being cold during a horrible physical ordeal.

I’m worried about injury. I’ll do my best to be careful while going hard, but balancing the concentration and common sense required to reduce injury risk with the intensity and exhaustion this thing will bring is going to be difficult.

I’m leery of getting too close to fire—historically a very good attitude to have—but it ends with a run through flaming kerosene-soaked straw.

I’m not particularly fond of mud.

But I’ve committed to do it, and so will just have to deal with all of the above qualms.

Tags: CrossFit, exercise, personal

Metaweb Acquired by Google

Tadhg — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:57:46 +0000

The official announcements are out, and my former employer Metaweb no longer exists. I’m happy that the ideas, and most of the people, have found a home, but it feels strange that the company is no longer a distinct entity. In many ways it makes a lot of sense for Google to end up owning them, and I hope the former-Metaweb-now-Google employees prosper.

Many of them are good friends of mine, and that in itself is significant. I was there for under two years; the proportion of people that I get on well with or admire (or both) there was very high. For the most part they did an excellent job of hiring, and of keeping the company culture coherent and inspiring.

My time there was important professionally as well as rewarding personally. It’s where I first really dug into Python, and through learning Python and working there I feel as if I embarked on a process that has seen me gain quite a few levels in the Software Engineer class. The exposure there to extremely skilled and accomplished people certainly helped me a great deal.

Those aren’t the only reasons I wish them all well. I still have the classic geek’s desire for a more rationally structured world, and the classic geek’s optimism that thinking about and organizing things in better ways can help bring that rational structure closer. Those combine to make me want to see realized the three major possibilities (in my view) that the Metaweb project presents:

A canonical namespace/“topic DNS” for, well, everything, so that words can easily be annotated (and analyzed, and manipulated) with pointers that make their actual meaning clear.
A public repository of schemas for more or less everything, so that individual groups or organizations could simply use and build upon those, rather than separately creating their own—standardization in that arena would vastly improve the user experience for innumerable things online (especially if you’re as picky as I am) and, not inconsequentially from my perspective, also eliminate all the work that programmers do reinventing the wheel with independently-developed schemas for common things.
A public repository of all the data for all the things covered by the first two points. This is what most people probably think the key point of Metaweb/Freebase is, and while it’s certainly an amazing and lofty goal, it’s not more important than the first two, both of which could be truly revolutionary if done on a large enough scale (and adopted by sufficient numbers).

So, too all those moving to Google: best of luck, and I hope you succeed at those three goals!

To all those who have contributed, in ways large or small, to the project formerly known as Metaweb: well done, you’ve helped make something of potentially great importance, and I have no doubt that at some point the ideas you’ve helped develop will be extremely influential, and possibly ubiquitous. To even get this far towards such an outcome is no small achievement.

Tags: coding, database, organization, personal, python, semantic-web, work

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