Sometime Tuesday or Wednesday I hit 2 million steps since October 23rd.
Unfortunately, a combination of weather and talkative sales people on Wednesday prevented me from getting my 10,000 steps that day. Otherwise I've hit that goal 64 times this year, averaging 11,750 steps per day since January 1st—going up to 13,400 steps per day in the last 30.
I've also lost 3.7 kg this year, stabilizing right around my target weight three weeks ago.
I realize this is old news, but I'm really jazzed how some simple changes in my life have made such a crucial difference. A fitness tracker costs around $100; most come with some kind of social gaming software (Fitbit lets you challenge your friends), which can give you even more incentive to get off the El a stop early or get up from your desk every half-hour.
My to-do list today only has 14 items on it, of which 6 are checked off already. The actual time it will take to accomplish the remaining eight items varies between 20 minutes (laundry, tonight, essentially a fire-and-forget activity) and four hours (Staging release of the Holden Adaptive Platform).
So, once again, I'm going to shove a bunch of articles to my Kindle:
Now to do the next few things on my list...and watch the thunderstorm outside my office window.
In the reading queue:
Did I mention that DUKE WON?!
I didn't post this yesterday for obvious reasons.
I've just executed a lease on a new place about 5 km northwest of where I live now. I'm extra-special-happy that I won't have to move a whole damn server rack, but not especially happy that I'm renting the new place because I can't yet sell my current place. At least, not for an amount that would make me extra-special-happy.
The new apartment is twice the size and has probably double the electricity bill of my current place. It also has lots of east and west light, a huge kitchen, and a separate room to house the IDTWHQ.
Parker also got to see the place and he approved, particularly because it's only one flight up instead of three, and he's pushing nine years old. (Fortunately he didn't mark it as his own; that would have been a problem.)
Possession is slated for June 15th. Updates as conditions warrant. And if anyone is interested in a cute 1-bedroom vintage walkup in Lincoln Park, email.
...sort of. But that's not important right now. I'm just spiking some articles to read later:
OK, time for a vendor phone call...
My catching-up on the Netflix version of Michael Dobbs' House of Cards has taken a brief hiatus as the friend in question has actual work and family obligations. I'm taking advantage of the pause to go back to the original BBC miniseries with Ian Richardson in the role of F.U.
You know what? It'ts better. It has a faster pace, more sharply-drawn characters, it's funnier, and it isn't sanctimonius—it's an actual satire. Francis Urquhart is evil, and doesn't care that we in the audience know it. Francis Underwood wants us to like him. That may be the difference between the UK and the US in a nutshell.
Still, in three hours of the BBC miniseries, I find myself laughing out loud at Urquhart's deviousness and at the lampooning of British political archetypes (that, granted, require some context about British politics post-Thatcher). The Netflix series just seems so...sanctimonious. Melodramatic. Long.
The British understand satire. Americans, not so much. Comparing the two versions of House of Cards side by side has been an education.
One of my Canadian friends has a friend who made a shrimp cannon. No kidding:
Retail genetic-research company 23 And Me analyzed the genetics of the blue dress phenomenon:
For one, there was no clear genetic association with seeing either a blue and black dress versus seeing white and gold one, according to Fah Sathirapongsasuti, PhD, a computational biologist here at 23andMe.
That doesn’t mean there is no association, it just means that we didn’t find one that met our threshold for a strong association. We did see a small effect size for a genetic variant in the gene ANO6. While this may or may not be significant, it’s interesting because ANO6 is in the anoctamins gene family, which includes the gene ANO2. The gene ANO2 is involved in light perception, so this might be something that warrants further study. But as we said, the association we saw did not show a big effect. Others who’ve looked at the possible genetic influence of how people perceive the color of the dress also did not find a strong genetic association, finding, for instance, that identical twins also reported seeing different colors.
According to 23andMe’s data at around 20 years of age, customers were split evenly between those who saw a white and gold dress versus those who saw blue and black. But as customers get older the proportion of those who see white and gold increased up until the age of 60 when more than three quarters of those surveyed said they see a white and gold striped dress instead of blue and black one. This effect is more dramatic in men where the proportion of men seeing white and gold increases by almost 15% around the age of 40.
Their more detailed conclusions—or lack of conclusions—are pretty interesting.
Also, for those keeping score at home, the dress is really blue no matter what you perceive.
In the past week I've gotten almost 100,000 steps (and 73 km ) of walking, including a few relatively long ones today. This also takes into account the 10% hit to my counts from moving my Fitbit to my left hand.
The best part of all this is that I can eat more. Like last night, when I consumed Lao's Sze Chuan in mass quantities.
As this may, in fact, be the most interesting thing I can report this weekend, maybe I need to get out more. Or stay in and read more. But I've got at least another 3,000 steps to walk before I get home.
And I'm really hungry.
The author of 70 books, including the Discworld series, died this morning at his home in the UK:
Pratchett, who had early onset Alzheimer’s disease, leaves his wife, Lyn, and their daughter, Rhianna.
He continued to write and completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014 before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.
He was the UK’s bestselling author of the 1990s and sold more than 85m books worldwide.
After his diagnosis, he urged people to “keep things cheerful”, adding: “We are taking it fairly philosophically down here” and predicting he had time for “at least a few more books yet”.
"God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."—Good Omens