5 minutes is all you need ...

I was researching Ignite presentations and I came across this. It doesn't need a whole lot of writing about, just watch it, it's only 5 minutes ...

When a message is this powerful, 5 minutes is all you need to make a lasting impression.

Religions are about helping people

Watching the dreadful events in Woolwich unfold, I'm saddened what people will do in the name of religion. Religions should be about helping people, not hurting people, but all too often they get twisted by the minds of men. And none are immune. I was going to give a list of religions at this point with links to their holy books where they talk about tolerance and the sanctity of life (they all do you know), and then links to the atrocities that have been committed in their name but it got too depressing :-(

Anyway for me, I think this sums it up - Anyone who kills in the name of a religion, whatever religion, betrays it utterly.

Some savings are not worth it

I'm particularly partial to Vanilla Lattes, there is no finer way to bring coffee in my opinion.

A Starbuck's Vanilla Latte

Of course, Vanilla Lattes are not particular conducive to diets - something which I'm on since my recent health assessment. A Starbucks Grande Vanilla Latte clocks in at 250 calories. So I decided to be good and try a Skinny Vanilla Latte, total 120 calories, from my local Starbucks.

OMG - it was awful :-( It had a sort of metallic after taste to it, and it did not evoke that feeling of deep satisfaction that a proper latte should. It was a struggle to finish it, and I seriously considered just leaving it. I, a man who has been accused of inhaling Lattes. I don't in any way think this was the fault of the barista who made it, there are just somethings you shouldn't do. And making a Latte with non-fat milk and sugar-free syrup is definitely one of them!

So today I went and got a normal Starbuck's Grande Vanilla Latte. It was as nectar. Admittedly nectar that comes with a 250 calorie price tag, more than double that of the Skinny version, but it is soooooo worth it. If I have to sacrifice 130 calories from elsewhere in my daily calorie intake, or simply take to having have coffee every other day, then that is a sacrifice I will gladly make.

Some sacrifices are just not worth it.

Built to last

The Disposable age

It is sad to say that we live in a disposable age. Lots of things we buy are just not built to be repaired. If it breaks you just buy a new one. Even if it doesn't break, the rate of technological change, means for a lot of things your force to replace them just to keep working.

Case in point, we had a Canon LiDE 20 flatbed scanner. When we updated Windows on our PC we discovered there were no drivers available for Windows 7 :-(. Result, we had to throw away a perfectly good, working scanner and buy a replacement simply because there were no drivers. I'm sure Canon were very happy with this, but it is most definitely not environmentally friendly.

Similarly, we a photographic printer, a Mitsubishi CP3020DE. It's a great printer, but the latest drivers you can get for it are for Windows 7 32-bit. You can't get 64-bit drivers for it and Mitsubishi are not going to produce any.  Result we have to keep a PC with Win 7 32-bit just so we can continue to use the printer, but eventually we're going to have to replace the printer.

Built to last

Thankfully some things are still built to last. Dualit toasters for one thing.

It has a wonderful, solid feel to it. Here is something that you feel has been built with some pride and the expectation that it will still be toasting bread in your kitchen in decades hence. Note the use of screws to hold the casing on. This is a) unusual in modern appliances, and b) implies something quite interesting. It implies that this object is built with the expectation that it is going to be taken apart at some point in the future. It can be repaired. It is built to last.

I'm not sure how old our is, it must be 10 or 15 years, but still going strong.

It is very difficult in our modern lifestyle not to be disposable but it is worth trying.

Pimping your (data)self

Health Assessment

Just been for a health assessment. It was an interesting experience for a number of reasons, so I'll probably do a separate entry on it, but I came away with two goals. 

1. Cut done on the amount caffeine I'm consuming.
2. Lose weight.

The first was a surprise as I don't drink much coffee. If I drink any at all it's limited to one cup a day. I do have a weakness for Vanilla Lattes, which is one of the finest drinks ever invented. However more than one cup a day makes me buzz a bit too much. However I do drink quite a lot of tea and a certain amount of coke, both of which have caffeine as well - though generally not as much as coffee. That one's quite easy to fix. Cut out the coke, and change some of the tea to decaf tea. I'm trying to limit it to 2 cups of caffeinated tea a day now and use de-caffeinated tea for the other cups.

Edit: 3 days after I published this the BBC had a piece on their website about "Coffee Addiction: Do people consume too much caffeine" - it seems I'm not alone :-) 

The second, sadly was not a surprise. I've known for a while that the waist size on the trousers was going up. However it was gently but clearly pointed out that the amount of extra weight I'm carrying constitutes a health risk. Normal Body Mass Index (BMI) should be 18.5-25, mine's currently 35. 

Ouch. So time to lose some weight.

Losing weight

Contrary to popular belief, losing weight is not difficult and does not require any fancy diets or gizmo's.

If "Number of calories consumed per day" < "Number of calories expended per day", you will lose weight. Fact! In fact you can't not lose weight if you follow that simple rule.

How you achieve that happy state of affairs is, of course, the interesting part.

Counting calories

I do it by counting calories. You just very carefully monitor everything you eat and drink, and make sure you stay under a daily limit. I've done it before now and it's been very successful - until I put the weight back on of course (but that's another lifestyle issue).

Previously I used an app from Vidaone on my (then) Windows phone. They had ported this to the iPhone, but it's since disappeared from the UK AppStore which makes me think it's not being supported anymore. It is available in the US store apparently so I could be wrong about this. But anyway it's not available for me to use in the UK.

A bit of a digging suggested that www.myfitnesspal.com offered an iPhone/iPad app that did much the same thing with some nice extra's like automatic linking to the weight info from my Withings scales. Nifty things, Withing scales. They weight you, calculate your BMI and Fat percentage and then upload it to the internet automatically but privately using Wi-Fi. You just access the results by browser or iPhone or Android at your connivence.

And MyFitnessPal is free.

The cynic in me immediately says why is it free? The answer is of course DATA. In return for providing you with a place to store you meals/weights etc, hosting a very big database of food calorific values, and making it incredibly easy for you to enter what you eat into your food diary (the barcode scanning works very well), they get incredibly detailed info on your eating habits, exercise habits and how it is affecting your weight. This is a goldmine for the food industry and others, and I mean do mean GOLDMINE.

Once you realise this you just have to ask yourself, am I willing to trade this information for what is actually a very good app. Hence the title, pimping your (data)self. In this case, for me, I think it is. 

This is just one of many examples on what is happening in our modern life with the data in our lives. Companies are now willing to trade, what are actually really good services, not for money but for data.

You just need to make sure that what you are getting back in return is worth it from your perspective.

Final Warning

Do not assume they will be looking at this data in isolation - if these guys have any kind of intelligence they will be taking this data and combining it with all the other data that is out on the net and wringing every drop of info they can out of it.

You have told they where you live - they could start combining this with the locations of all the fast food outlets in the world. Is there a correlation between that and overweight people? What would health  insurance companies or governments pay for that kind of info?

Big Data / Data Science crops up in the damnedest places doesn't it :-)