We interrupt the general nerdiness of this blog with a little experience report of my whole30 lifestyle change. A 30 day "diet" designed to improve your health and maybe loose some weight in the process (http://whole9life.com/).
I started at the end of July, weighing a solid 96,5kg, probably 20cm too short for that weight - and I'm 42 so it's getting sooo hard to get rid of.
Whole30 is about eating natural ingredients, preferably organic. No sugar, alcohol, wheat or anything containing any "E"'s. Just 3 daily meals of real, natural food. I've been 100% faithful in the whole period, eating organic and the highest quality I can find here in Oslo. All along these 100 days I've been running 7 km three times a week.
Day for day, this is what happened:
Day 5: Out shopping at IKEA with wife, I realize I feel really energized; damn good! Feeling good at IKEA is a first for me, ever.
Day 8: My sense of smell returned 100%.
Having chronic tonsil & sinus infections, I removed tonsils and surgically opened sinus canals 3 years ago. In those three years, I have had like 25% normal sense of smell (I could wash the toilets with 20% chlorine and not notice it!). All of a sudden I started smelling all kinds of things.
Day 10: My blood pressure goes up.
I've always been borderline high blood pressure, most of the time *at* the treatment limit. Unfortunately I seem to not tolerate /any/ blood pressure medication, my body seems to reject them each time I use them. So, in line with doctor's orders I start with medicine for enough to get my pressure down (5 days, give or take).
Day 14: I am quite angry
My wife complains that I am easily agitated. I know this too, but I also feel it is different from the insane rage I could get if I followed something like the cambridge diet.
Day 16: I stop blood pressure medication, back at my "usual" borderline level. (This is according to doctor's orders; please follow your own doctor on this! If I stay on /any/ blood pressure medication for 14 days I collapse)
Day 18: I feel great.
Day 20: My blood pressure drops by 15 (over/under). I have never had this low blood pressure, ever. (This has no connection to the medication I quit a few days earlier, the medication only brings me immediately below the treatment treshold) My new blood pressure is "normal." I've /never/ had "normal" ever.
Day 25: Wife still complains I'm easily agitated
Day 30: I'm about 5 kg down
Day 40-50: I feel great. My mood is fantastic. Colleagues at work start commenting that I'm in a fantastic mood. They've been informed and curious since day 1, but I think it's becoming clearly obvious to everyone that there is change going on.
Day 60: Wife says I seem to be happy.
Day 70: I feel fucking marvellous, and we're talking mental state. I've never tried cocaine, but this must be what it's like. (Ok, probably not, but this is healthy!)
Day 80: Wife says I seem extremely happy.
Day 100: Officially "done" with the "diet" part. Drinking my first glass of wine & eating sushi. I'm not sure what I'll do next but today I added organic red wine and sushi to my diet; if I can add those two things I'll be satisfied for quite some more time. 10kg down.
There's one thing I'm still unsure about; and that's ketosis. I seem to be going in & out of ketosis all of the time, and I'm probably eating too much or too little carbs. There's a lot of transitional issues involved in going into ketosis (bad breath being perhaps the most notable). It seems like ketosis is good for losing weight, but I assume it won't be necessary now that I'm approaching an acceptable weight.
I know my colleagues will be starting whole30 soon. In thirty days you can find out what impact your current eating has on your health. How can you not take just 30 days ? I took 100 ;)
Friday, November 4, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Your new password
I was fed up with having a zillion passwords. Worst of all, we don't have any insight into what kind of security the websites you access employ, so happy anarchists like LulzSec and Anonymous can run away with your master password if you're not careful.
So instead of a password, I ended up with the following algorithm;
The constant part should probably contain at least one "special" character like % { or whatever, simply because sites may start requiring this. But think about accessibility for this character on phones etc.
A couple of key points about this algorithm: All digits are grouped together, as for capital letters. Some devices (iPhone etc) require additional touches to switch to upper case or numeric keyboards, so group them together.
The "domain name" is the last word before .com/.org.
I keep the constant part about 6 chars, to make 10 digits total. You might consider going for 12 total.
In some places you may be likely to give away your password (this may happen to me at work sometimes). In those cases you can use a different constant-part or simply a totally different password, at least I always know these things up-front.
Think it sounds like a hassle ? I feel the hassle every time I encounter a site where I haven't used this pattern yet, you get used to it.... This password should be strong enough to last the rest of my life. (Lol, I know that's not going to happen).
So instead of a password, I ended up with the following algorithm;
- Second letter in the domain name (Or last letter), in uppercase
Constant part. Starting with one or more captialized letters, ending with a digit. 6 chars or more. You may choose to look at A digit 1 (increase this for sites that require password change) The number of vowels (or consonants, or [A-F] or whatever in the domain name) - First letter in domain name, lowercase
The constant part should probably contain at least one "special" character like % { or whatever, simply because sites may start requiring this. But think about accessibility for this character on phones etc.
A couple of key points about this algorithm: All digits are grouped together, as for capital letters. Some devices (iPhone etc) require additional touches to switch to upper case or numeric keyboards, so group them together.
The "domain name" is the last word before .com/.org.
I keep the constant part about 6 chars, to make 10 digits total. You might consider going for 12 total.
In some places you may be likely to give away your password (this may happen to me at work sometimes). In those cases you can use a different constant-part or simply a totally different password, at least I always know these things up-front.
Think it sounds like a hassle ? I feel the hassle every time I encounter a site where I haven't used this pattern yet, you get used to it.... This password should be strong enough to last the rest of my life. (Lol, I know that's not going to happen).
Monday, April 18, 2011
Watch that @Autowired
Those who follow me on Twitter, will see that I just submitted a patch for SPR-6870. Great patch if you're running something like a web-based application with lots of non-singleton scoped components. You might save a server or more by applying that patch and the spring context starts quite a bit faster too.
So while you're waiting 20 minutes for spring to compile, just look out for one more thing:
Don't autowire into arrays/collections unless the containing component is a singleton. Spring does not do a very good job of caching that stuff (it sucks, actually).
So if your non-singleton scoped classes (or junit tests - like we had ;) contain something like
@Autowired
private MyFud[] myFuds;
Just make a separate singleton object that encapsulates the array/list and wire that into your controller class / junit test instead. Bang you're safe.
So while you're waiting 20 minutes for spring to compile, just look out for one more thing:
Don't autowire into arrays/collections unless the containing component is a singleton. Spring does not do a very good job of caching that stuff (it sucks, actually).
So if your non-singleton scoped classes (or junit tests - like we had ;) contain something like
@Autowired
private MyFud[] myFuds;
Just make a separate singleton object that encapsulates the array/list and wire that into your controller class / junit test instead. Bang you're safe.
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