Just another update on the running. I ran 17 miles recently, and it’s really taking its toll on my body. My knees are really beginning to seriously hurt after the run, not to mention my calves and tightness in my hamstrings. I think this is the lesson in stretching that I’ll finally start to listen to.
I found this ’sports spray’ in order to help my healing, and it works great! So, hopefully I’ll be able to do a few more 5km/10kms before the half marathon next month.
The marathon training seems to be on schedule, although it’s starting to get difficult. The 22.4km run took a lot out of me, and I’m going to have to start preparing for these long runs the day before, for example, loading up on carbs. The main problems I experience during the run are hunger, and a feeling that I’m really running on empty. I’m sure I’m not quite eating enough before the run.
I’ve heard a lot about ‘the wall’ and I expect that it will be a very similar feeling. My hope is that it never comes at all- I’m terrified of it! I’ve been lazy on the shorter runs during the week, and I’m going to step up the training on those in order to prepare better for the long runs, which really worry me!
After the run, my knees begin to hurt, and it’s difficult even to walk around. I’ve had this problem for the past three long runs, and I know it’s very common among runners. I’m not quite sure what to do, other than suck it up, and try to keep my running motion as smooth as possible. I won’t do any running over the weekend, and hopefully I’ll be okay for next week.
I wasn’t really a vegetarian. Rather, I was a pescotarian, which meant I still ate fish. That is, until now. Starting from this month, September, I’ll be trying to go without fish, in addition to the meat.
If this shift goes as expected, I’ll be a lacto-ovo vegetarian. It’s the convenience of tuna that makes it a hassle to give up, but I much prefer eating meat to tuna. So I think that should be an much easier change than making the initial shift to pescotarianism. Without tuna however, my beloved subs are going to get a lot more bland. My morning egg and tuna burger costs me only 30NT dollars, but without the tuna, I’m not sure what else I’d eat. I already eat far too many eggs! That breakfast meal is the only place I’ll really miss the tuna though, so I should be okay.
My main reasons for giving up meat have been the undeniable environmental reasons. Reading The Food Revolution by John Robbins has really cemented in my values and reinforced my decision. I was comfortable continuing to eat fish, because as I understand it, fish aren’t nearly as bad as meat products with regards to their environmental impact. I used to believe that we can’t farm the ocean in the same way we do the land, and we can’t use the ocean for growing crops. Still the book has changed my thinking somewhat and opened my eyes to the realities of fish farming, and the inevitable freak feeding of these fish. But I certainly don’t feel as motivated to give up fish as I did meat; having said that, the process will still be easier, as I don’t particularly like fish!
The concern I have over giving up tuna are with regards to my health. I’ve heard that protein isn’t as necessary to development as the bodybuilding/meat industries would have us believe. Still, I think that tuna is a very convenient source of protein, and I do need to consume a lot of protein for my muscle development. I shall see, I suppose.
So far, becoming a pescotarian hasn’t really affected my health one way or another. I can’t honestly say there has been too much difference on a day to day level. I’m kind of disappointed actually, as I’d hoped all this sacrifice would have some benefit. I’ve heard that the health benefits really take off when you make the shift to vegan. This however, is a bigger shift than I can see myself making at this point in time. If I do make this change, it will come after another two month adjusting period, so I won’t think about it too much just yet.
But veganism deprives me of eggs and dairy products, which pretty much cover all of my favourite non-meat foods! Without eggs, breakfast becomes a major problem. I’m back to English/continental breakfasts – toast and more toast, which I love, but isn’t that nutritious, especially coupled with butter alone. Eggs are just the most convenient food there is, so much goodness in a small package. Plus, not eating eggs turns me into that guy, I start to cross the line where veganism just starts to inconvenience everyone, and most of all myself.
Yesterday, I ate three double egg burgers for breakfast, and was still hungry. I can put some of it down to the weight training, but I’ve always been a big eater. Without eggs, I seriously have problems getting enough nutrition.
I adore cereal. But due to the cost, I’ve never consistently eaten it in Taiwan. Cereal goes with milk, and milk alone. But I have gone for months at a time without cereal, and without cereal, I don’t have a huge desire to drink milk. So that should be okay.
But… the huge problem is cheese. Cheese for me is one of the greatest inventions in history. I adore cheese even over meat, and for me, it compliments any Western meal – although I’m not a big fan of cheesecake… No cheese means no more pizzas, lasagna or toasted mozzarella sandwiches from [one of my favourite restaurants in Taipei]. Or even the cheese curry that I enjoy here in Taiwan. Cheese is also a good source of protein, although I do know it’s not altogether good for you.
As I said, I can’t imagine being a vegan just yet. I could probably do it for a month, but the thought of depriving myself to that extent just seems almost masochistic to me, and unnecessary too. In fairness, most people feel the same way about giving up meat 
. I will probably try it though, but I’m almost hoping that the health benefits don’t exist so that I can continue to eat pizza and cheese in blissful ecstasy.
Are you a vegan or vegetarian? If you are, how did you make the initial jump? What was the hardest food to give up? Feel free to share a comment or two!
It’s kind of embarrassing to mention that I failed many of the goals I set for myself in June. Still, I’m going to deal with it as a learning experience and see how I can improve on my goal setting in July.
I’ll start with the positives – ProVoc was not too much of a problem – only that learning the new words in the new semester will be taking up a lot more time. In addition, I’m pleased to have delivered my C8, C9 and C10 speeches this month, which exceeded my goals. Not bad at all!
But it didn’t get much better than that. The rules I set for myself fell apart a little. The sitting down Internet did work for a while, but then I got tired(!) and just abandoned it. I relied on the Internet a lot for my coding this month, so I felt it was uncomfortable to be on my feet all the time. Unfortunately, following that compromise, I found myself using the Internet a lot more in my free time, and started the endless loops of procrastination as a result.
It was predictable that the sleep schedule would fall apart. As my blog post mentioned, the night culture in Taiwan is something very difficult to shake off. Currently, Wimbledon is also an unexpected distraction. (Luckily I managed to avoid Euro 2008.) Without my support group in the Dragon Boat team to support me, it proved to be too difficult to wake up on time. Indeed, I suffered from insomnia and real difficulties with waking up across most of the month.
The programming probably deserves its own post. In short, I didn’t manage to write anywhere near 40 hours, and instead only did 26. Worse than the hours I put in are the distinct lack of any real result, other than the clarification of some Cocoa API ideas in my head. My beginner Calculator application is still not near completion, and I should have set a more modest goal to build up to it. But I did make some breakthroughs – I started to post on a forum, and for me, that’s a good shift – to make an effort to be part of the Mac developer community in the future.
I think that just about covers everything. I don’t want to dwell on this too much, nor beat myself up about. In fact, I’d rather just move onto July as soon as possible. 
My fourth thread at this point in time is Programming. Although I come from a technical background, my practical skills are next to none. I couldn’t program an application to save my life. But if at all possible, I’d like to get into the land of Indie Mac application development, the mystical land where the likes of Wil Shipley, Cabel Sasser and Allen Odgaard reside.
It’s not looking good at the moment! I recently bought a book, Cocoa development for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, which came highly recommended. I’ve been following the tutorials in the book, but Toastmasters, Dragon Boat training and Chinese homework sort of got in the way. It’s hard to find time, especially since I like to work in the morning, and after class, I feel a little too tired to really do the programming thing. But it has to be done.
Anyway, I thought I’d just commit this next thread down. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m going to try to put 50 hours towards programming hours. It will require a lot better time management, especially sleeping, than I’ve currently been doing.
For the past few mornings, I managed to put together one solid hour towards following the book. I know it sounds really easy, but programming is definitely something that’s easy to procrastinate on. It’s going to be hard to keep going, but that’s a good start for me.
I’ll write a lot more in the future. This goal seems like a tough one, probably harder than the other three threads put together now I think about it, and I’ll need to commit a lot of resources if I am to succeed.
There’s a great lesson here, but I’m too scared to think about it – because I’m worried about how it might make me consider the futility of pursuing my goals
***
An American businessman was at a pier in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied only a little while.
The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked the Mexican how he spent the rest of his time.
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.“
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.
“You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.“
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?“
The American replied, “15-20 years.“
“But what then, senor?“ asked the Mexican.
The American laughed, and said, “That’s the best part! When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public. You‚Äôll become very rich, you would make millions!“
“Millions, senor?“ replied the Mexican. “Then what?“
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.“
I got this quotation from the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, which I’m currently reading (my thoughts to come!)
But I think this quotation is beautifully true, undeniably so, and its tongue-in-cheek tone will surely help keep me positive when I feel like my views are going against those of the entire world.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.“ George Bernard Shaw
Well, I have recently, last Monday, come into possession of a brand new Macbook battery. After my gripe last time around, I took my Macbook’s failing power cord to the nearest Apple support centre, who told me it was unrepairable. I had no choice but to buy a new one, as the wires were dangerously exposed. I can only hope that the new one lasts until I get the Macbook’s successor (or is that the Macbook Air?)
But the folks at the store kindly took my Macbook’s failing battery in, and 7-10 working days later, I received a sparkling new Macbook battery, with its underside gleaming white and spotless plastic rubber feet to go with it. What can I say about this experience, other than I really don’t have any reasonable grounds for complaint? I still feel like Apple’s quality control is lacking, but my shining new battery has distracted me from every complaint I’ve held before; in particular that Magsafe cable. My 20 month year old Macbook (it feels like I’ve had it much longer), now has a battery life of a brand new one, and looks almost new too. Check out the pic below:
It’s not only 5200, my battery started with a capacity of 5480! That’s 105% capacity! w00t!
With the new battery however, begins a new obsession. In my quest for perfection, and after a day finding the battery life falling from 5480 to 5460, and now 5380, I become worried about something that is so insignificant as you know, big important life events, that I can’t believe I’m struggling to rise above it. I’m frankly insulting my own intelligence. It is rather a dangerous obsession, one that only geeks and perfectionists can find themselves being drawn into. I’d like to look into the psychology behind all of this, but that’s for a smarter person than me.
I’m not sure when I should calibrate my battery, but I might wait until May. I hope I can somehow keep my battery healthy. I’ve heard that discharging the battery doesn’t really affect its life at all, and some argue it’s recommended, but I can’t help but try to operate only from AC, especially after having to go for a week without the battery at all.
So no other problems, other than the ‘\’ button looks to be coming off yet again (this is the third time.) I can’t understand why it’s always this button or the ‘0′ button; and I can’t think that it’s the way I type, because I don’t use it that much. The only other thing is the flickering display and faulty CD drive, which are perennial Macbook problems. I’ll just grin and bear it, I think.
The folks at the BBC have updated their website. Although changes to the familiar always feel a little strange, I can’t help but feel that this new design doesn’t work as well as the previous one. The main gripe I have with it is the faded mush of a blue colour the main text of the website appears in. This is a characteristic of websites these days (including this very blog) – the sacrifice of readability for aesthetics. The grey blue may be easier on the eyes, but this is a news website, not a wallpaper!
I want headlines to jump out at me, and if I’m reading, I want the most legible font possible. The website is also a little wider than it used to be; personally, I think it’s not a big deal, but at the same time, narrower columns also aid readability. Everything is a lot more spaced out, another design mistake in my view. You used to be able to see most of the page without scrolling, but now you’re having to scroll down quite significantly to reach the bottom of the page. Most dramatically, the main page gives a range of headlines from around the world, but now scrolling is required to get to those.
Opera’s zoom function works pretty much perfectly to scale up font sizes and images, and increasing the font size on other browsers works okay to aid readability. Hence the base font size, in my opinion, should be small, so as to give as much information as possible.
The faded colours throughout don’t really represent a sense of sharp, accurate news reporting in my view. Just my first impressions of course, but in the news ticker, you can see a remnant of the way things used to be – vivid and punchy, just like the news ought to be.
Writing about Apple’s hardware problems made me think a little about the software side of things. But this is the strength of Apple; in OS X, they have produced a beautiful, solid, robust, secure operating system, that is the sole reason why I love my Mac so much. On the hardware side, only the lovely all in one casing and the two finger dragging is really very significant to me as a Macbook user; as I said in my previous post, I’d gladly have taken the chassis and form factor of some Windows systems out there, especially with my current issues.
But the operating system, and hence the software that can be produced for it is really something else. Lots of the software that I’m using are really the reasons why I don’t see myself using a Windows machine anytime soon.
This is a ranting piece though, and the main issue I have with OS X is really one thing, the f**** finder. I’m far from the first person to have remarked on it, but the finder is truly an abomination. It stands out so much against the gloss of the rest of the operating system, it’s ridiculous. NB, I’m still unfortunately using Tiger, so some of this stuff may have been updated. It doesn’t change the fact that upgrading to Leopard isn’t worth it just for the finder.
The worst parts about the finder?
1. Inconsistent view options. I never know for sure which view the finder will open up in. Icon view is next to useless, but column view and list view don’t really suit my needs. Why can’t Apple just make a view like *gulp* Windows Explorer?
2. Directories at the top. I still can’t understand why Apple prefers to have directories and files all mixed together in alphabetical order. When you’re moving through directories, dragging folders around, you need to have the directories at the top so that you can flow through the file system without scrolling! Also, if I’m going through my files, I may not recall exactly which folders I have in this directory when I’m navigating around. That’s why I need them at the top!
3. Column view file names. They get cut off in the middle. When I browse through images, or pdfs, the file information is generally in the middle, not at the …gn.pdf part. It’s just an often impractical view. I know I can double click on the scrollbar thingy, but I have to do that every single time I change location in the library.
4. ‘Anchored’ keyboard selection. Which idiot at Apple made the decision that pushing shift up or down when you have selected items increases the selection both upwards and downwards? If I’m scrolling and selected too many items, I want to deselect items by just going in the opposite direction. Oops, I just selected more items. This illogical behaviour is even more irritating in iTunes.
I’m not sure if these things were updated in Leopard or not, but even if they’re fixed, I know that a two column view isn’t available, despite being the most sensible option. To Apple’s credit, things like breadcrumbs have been implemented, one of the biggest issues I still have with Tiger’s finder.
The only other GUI problem I have is with the stupid zoom button. Particularly in combination with the idiotic finder, the green button generally gives you anything but the window size that I want. Especially for finder windows, I generally want a maximised window! I downloaded Stoplight, a great utility but that messed up some programs too. Apple’s stubbornness to improve some of the most basic gui ‘features’ is one of the things that irritates me sometimes. It seems they would rather appear smug and elitist than actually admit to problems.
It’s interesting to note however, that these are all pretty much GUI issues. The underlying system is as secure as ever, although it doesn’t stop programs from crashing no matter what Apple would have you believe. The system has also frozen on me multiple times, for that matter, although I’ve never really lost data. Any GUI problems are usually made up for by the incredible Quicksilver, which finds everything effortlessly.
In conclusion however, I had a little difficulty coming up with many real problems with Apple’s operating system and it just goes to show my original point – how much of a success OS X is.
I’d prefer to write a more positive and praise filled post in the future, showing how Apple’s operating system sets the standard for the software developed for it, and analysing some of the reasons for this. Stay tuned!
