I’m a bit behind. Have fun.

(This post is part of a series on a short vacation that I took with my partner Diana Rajchel at the beginning of July 2011)

Fortunately, after a couple of days in Spring Green, Wisconsin, finally it looked like the weather was going to turn into something more like comfortable vacation weather. Unfortunately, half of our vacation was over. After waking up for the second day in a row without an alarm clock and completely rested in the Usonian Inn’s lovely Room 11, we had a day of actual touristy things ahead of us for our last full day.

The first thing we needed to sort was breakfast though. We went into town and stopped by a coffee and pastry shop that we had tried to stop by on yesterday’s walk through the town. It was closed when we had stopped before because we showed up at around 12:30 and the owner was on his siesta. He was in, and so were a couple of locals. We got some coffee and donuts for the breakfast and sat down. The locals wanted to know if we were in town for Taliesin, which we had considered going to but hadn’t yet. I had two donuts, both of which were very nice and obviously made in the bakery. Diana chatted up the locals a bit and some left and others appeared while we tried to get online via the tethering on Diana’s phone. It worked to an extent, more in the coffee shop than it did in the hotel room because there is slightly better reception in the town.

After breakfast, I had at least one thing planned, but there was no real schedule for the day, which is something that I really like to have while on these kinds of relaxing vacations that are not really to a touristy place, but are really a getaway from everyday stresses for a while. I wanted to head to the Cave of the Mounds and do a tour, along with a short drive because it was about half an hour away. While on our way there, there was a scenic overlook which we stopped at because we didn’t have any particular time table - it was looking basically straight at the House on the Rock which was an option for later in the day if we had time. We also stopped to get some more supplies at the Walmart in Dodgeville. Cave of the Mounds was a decent drive from Spring Green, but it was not too long, only about half an hour. That’s about the maximum that I would go while on vacation to see something - I feel like that if it’s an hour away by car, then we should have stayed in a different location. We did spot a couple of hotels that we might try out if/when we came into town again - one being the Don Q Inn which has a plane parked out front and a big Q mowed into the lawn.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Cave of the Mounds, because I hadn’t been there before. I had been to other caves as a child on family vacation trips, but I was thinking that a lot of caves can be very different and this one might not be as impressive as the one that I was at as a child because of either my less-than-fantastic memory of the cave and also the fact that this seemed to be a tourist location in Wisconsin, which isn’t exactly known for it’s caves. I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful it was to be guided on a short tour of a relatively small cave. I got a lot of pictures with my cameraphone, although not all of them came out great. Diana got a bunch of photos with the much better camera which I haven’t seen all of, but what the picture above is taken from. There were some areas where the guide takes you through some narrow patches and you go up and down almost 70 feet in the cave while you are walking around. I correctly remembered before that you shouldn’t touch almost anything in caves because the oil from hands will prevent the further growth of the stalactites and stalagmites. There was a short section where there was natural phosphorous as well, which they activated with a bright lamp and then let us see it give off it’s glow. One thing that I remember from the child trip to a cave which was very different in this trip, and probably will be different for all time now, is that there was a section of the tour where the guide plunges you into complete darkness, the kind where there is no light and your eyes will never adjust to the darkness. I remember being amazed at the time when I couldn’t even see the hand in front of my own face. Alas, that won’t ever happen again probably - when the guide tried it in this tour, a bunch of light sources came out in the group, mostly from cell phones and LCD displays from cameras. The tour was really fun and Diana enjoyed herself too, so I think we might go see some other caves if we visit areas of the US where there are some, or if we are on a road trip and see some as a roadside attraction.

After the cave, we drove back into Dodgeville to check out a place that we had driven by before, but it was closed the last time. It is a small coffee shop and bistro called Cook’s Room. At that point in time we were pretty hungry because the breakfast that we had acquired before wasn’t exactly the strong breakfast that we got used to on vacation (how quickly do we get used to large breakfast), so we decided to get something for lunch. They had a menu which was filled with some great panini and other cafe like things, and they had thankfully a great selection from the coffee shop as well. I had another iced coffee, which I hadn’t had basically ever before this trip, but is growing on me quite strongly as a regular drink. It has the right amount of bitterness and sweet if you add the cream in the correct portion. I had a fairly wonderful chicken panini with some pesto and mozzarella and Diana had a similar panini with some Italian sausages in it.

Before the end of our journey for the day, we had time for one other attraction to see that day. I was very enamoured with the idea of seeing the Taliesin school, so Diana indulged my thoughts even though she was leaning towards seeing the House on the Rock. When we return to Spring Green, I think that we will be going to House on the Rock, but it was not in the cards for this tour. Taliesin is the school that Frank Lloyd Wright started at the end of his career and is an architectural school that’s still in use today as students learn the stylings that he has introduced. The tour of the main house was far too long for our tastes, so we took a tour of the hillside studio where the students stay and they are even working while we were there. The building itself is quite unique - there are, in typical style, a lot of sharp angles, but it does not feel like it is a boxed in space at all. One of the reasons that I like the architecture of Wright is that he has different angles than most traditional buildings. I also learned that he is a major advocate of only using material which you can find locally in the area of the structure being built, which is quite interesting. Inside the building, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. I snapped a few shots outside of the buildings, one of which is viewable above.

While on the tour, I got a bit uncomfortable with some of the other tourists that were with us as well as slightly with the tour guide, because it seemed like there was quite a bit of hero worship going on. I definitely admire the works of a great architect, but I don’t really think anyone deserves the type of undying praise that these people were giving to the person. There were definitely a lot of great rooms and interesting things to see there, but he was not without his faults. Most of his buildings had flat roofs, even in areas like Wisconsin where there is a lot of snow and that was a horrible idea because the melting and freezing would cause them to be quite leaky. Also the studio that we walked through had a strong smell of mold throughout the whole area, almost to the point where we thought the whole “preservation” thing might have been taken a bit too far for a building where people are meant to actually be there continually. All in all, it was a nifty experience though, and I was glad to have been on the tour to see the building.

We went and took a rest at the hotel, and then back to the Taliesin visitor center to have dinner at the restaurant which is situated there. I was happy to get reservations for earlier in the day and we had a nice meal while overlooking the river there as well as a bunch of people who were playing in the river after a hot day across the way. The visitor center was designed by Wright as well, and I can’t imagine having it as a home but it works very well for stunning views of the river. I had some lovely local pork and asparagus, with a dessert of Lemon Meringue pie which was a real treat. Diana had some badgerberry pie, which was a berry that I hadn’t heard of before, but tasted just as lovely and sweet.

It was our final full day in Spring Green, but we were tired from a full day’s worth of visiting places and seeing new things. I always enjoy having a vacation with Diana because she is such a wonderful travelling companion. On Sunday we drove home, and it was mostly uneventful, but I’ll write about it separately soon. Until then.

(This post is part of a series on a short vacation that I took with my lovely spouse Diana Rajchel at the beginning of July 2011)

Waking up at the Usonian Inn was interesting, because there are large bay windows that let in the light very well throughout the day, including the morning. Even though they aren’t oriented toward the sun, I woke up basically naturally, and then decided that I wanted to sleep for a couple more hours. One of the things that I end up getting a lot more of on vacation than I do in “real life” is sleep. I really relish being able to wake up, look at the clock, and decide that I don’t have so many pressing things today that I can’t sleep for another hour or two. I think that I didn’t have a night with less than 6 hours sleep in the entire trip, which is a significant increase over the amount of sleep that I get on a normal night. That’s not to say that I wasn’t waking up at my normal times, I would just get up at 4am, and decide that I wanted to sleep some more, and then sleep for 3 hours or more.

After my sleeping in until almost 9am (crazy!), we got dressed and headed to the Round Barn Restaurant, which is one of the places that Diana has been to before on her trips to this area. We at first didn’t know what to do, because the dining room is right within the door, and there was no hostess at the station, nor a sign stating to either seat ourselves or wait to be seated. Diana decided to take the initiative and we wondered around until we found a table at a secluded area. It had an interestingly placed mirror, so I took the self-portrait that you see above. The menu was fairly standard fare for a restaurant in the US when serving breakfast, and I ended up having a breakfast burrito. The portions of the meal were quite small, but both of the entrées were less than $15 with coffee, so the prices were also similarly small.

After breakfast, we ventured into downtown Spring Green again to see what the shops were like along main street and the main cross street. We visited a lot of places including what must be one of the final remaining small mom-and-pop department stores in America (no big box store here, except 20 minutes away in Dodgeville), a shop that was quite focused on quilting, and an office supply store. Everywhere we went we were trying to check into Foursquare at these places, and more often than not we did not find a location in the service for the store. Diana was kind enough to add the locations basically wherever we went, and I believe she got some kind of badge for it because of her vigilance in making sure we could document our trip digitally. We also found some interesting benches which were painted in some kind of town square thing.

I didn’t catch why these were painted so much, but they were interesting to look at for sure. We also visited The Opal Man, which is situated in a quite small building, but had some magnificent opals that we stared at for a while, including one that was just sheared out of a square of rock, and had some beautiful transparent blue and green flecks in it which reminded me of the types of things that we just wish we could duplicate with the colors on a computer for electronic-y themes.

The heat from the previous day did not dissipate overnight, which meant that walking around downtown wasn’t exactly an easy thing - it mostly involved walking to the next store while we were sweltering and hoping that it contained an air conditioner to relieve the amazing 100 degree heat and high humidity of the outside. It made us use the car when we would normally just walk around, and that made me somewhat sad but I was happy because our air conditioning in the car was just chugging away like there was no problem. It could be considered probably one of the largest tests of the car’s air to turn on for 5 minutes while we drove and then turn off again and have the car subsequently heat up like crazy. One of the ways that we combated the heat was to stop in the Arcadia Book Store which also included a coffee shop, and get some iced coffee and juice. On the trip in general I would say that I had iced coffee more than I’ve had in the past five years. Usually I will still drink the hot stuff even if it’s really hot outside. The Arcadia is a charming book store that I would recommend to anyone who wants to stop and have a coffee and look at books, it’s just the right size that you can easily browse the whole store but had a great selection of books. I already have too many books to read through so I didn’t buy any, but true to form, I took down a couple of titles for me to add to my queue of books to read later, as they looked interesting enough for me to try to find later.

We visited some other stores, but then decided that we wanted to take a little break before the main event of the trip, tickets to American Player’s Theatre performing The Critic. Back to the hotel to have a short nap. After the nap, we visited Arthur’s Supper Club for a meal before we headed off to the play. This restaurant was pretty packed, and had a fried fish and chicken buffet going on. I had some gumbo soup and salad from the salad bar, but decided to just order the fish and chicken from the menu. It was mediocre at best, and I didn’t even finish the meal.

The play itself was staged interestingly and was a play which was split into two acts which were quite distinct. The first act I dare to say was the better of the two from an intellectual standpoint - it was centered around a character who was a patron of the arts in the sixteenth century. His wife finds this insufferable because there are more important matters of the world to think about. The main character has a couple of friends over and there is a quite great scene with an artist who just cannot take criticism (I’ve met a few petty much exactly like him), which was possibly the best performance of the play. There is also a large section on the various types of advertising (or poofery as it was called by the character espousing it’s virtues), many of which we would be keen to see today, including a few “all publicity is good publicity” angles. Also there was a hilarious scene with some lost-in-translation type humor with English-French-Italian things, and a small slapstickish dance number which was funny. In the second act, all of the characters so far travel to a dress rehearsal of a play which one of their friends is the writer/director for. The rehearsal is fraught with difficulties, and the play itself has a number of holes in it’s plot and expositional character lines which don’t make sense. All of these lines are of course lampshaded by the audience’s surrogate and pointed out to great humor. The whole thing has a lot of pratfall comedy in it which was also enough to laugh at but wasn’t as good humor-wise as the first act I believed.

The whole play was still such a fun thing to go see, and it is really in the middle of a forest. The seats I was happy to see were the padded kind, although I really do wonder how they deal with it when it rains, because it’s basically an open-air theater on the top of a hill exposed to the elements. It was still incredibly hot and humid which made the play viewing a bit uncomfortable. Normally I would have hiked up the hill in order to get to the theater itself, but because of the heat we took a shuttle bus up the quite steep hill to the top. The APT were also kind enough to provide a bunch of insect spray, which I am convinced is the reason I wasn’t bit to smithereens as I was in later days.

It was a quite full day of vacation, although not rushed at all which I was happy to have. In the hotel room we indulged in some sweets and some TV which was a nice relaxing thing after the long, hot, day. On Saturday the heat finally broke, and we did a few more tourist things, I’ll post about them in Day 3. Until then.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a vacation, and one of the presents I gave Diana this valentines was a trip to see the American Players Theater which is centered in Spring Green, Wisconsin. There are also a bunch of other tourist-friendly things around that area and Diana enjoys the place, so we decided to take a mini-vacation over an extended Independence Day weekend.

Our first day was a travel day, and our first long trip in the Yaris that we got last year since Christmas. Most of the trips that we take are long enough that we are travelling by plane and leaving the car at home. Since I knew I wasn’t going to be getting my normal exercise while on vacation, I got up early and did a walk around the neighborhood. Lately I’ve been listening to the Critical Hit Podcast while I exercise, because when I have 5 days of exercise a week, I quickly run out of podcasts. Usually I find something to listen to a long backlog so that I don’t run out of entertainment. I had a good walk and then we got ready to go.

The drive to Spring Green was pretty nice. It was very hot outside, which made us very thankful for the air conditioning in the car, which actually works quite well in our tiny car, and didn’t seem to impact the mileage that much. The last part of the trip took us off of the highway and through some of the highways around the country in Wisconsin, going through some of the tiniest towns that I have seen in a while. It made me think about how these tiny towns actually pay for things, because they have some pretty nice streets and like streetlights (well, one streetlight) in some of them. Regardless, there was some nice views on the way to the hotel.

We’re staying at the Usonian Inn, which is unique in the world for being the only motel which is built in the Usonian style of architecture. Looking at it makes you think that it is not really nice on the outside (although that is debatable), but it looks very nice on the inside and is quite interesting with lots of straight lines. Even with the small room that we picked, there are a lot of interesting elements. I took some pictures. The hotel itself is also a very eco-friendly hotel, and is one of the only ones in the areas which is kept on a couple of the green registries. While it’s a little more expensive than a run-of-the-mill hotel, I think I would stay there again.

After we got situated, we wanted to get something to eat, so we drove along the road looking for stuff. We did a little random driving and went through another tiny town – Lone Rock – which was a little depressing because there wasn’t much there. After we got through the town we drove over a couple of nice bridges though which took us over a river (which was quite high) and a drive along a cliff which provided some quite nice views of the Wisconsin countryside.

We ended up in Dodgeville to get some grub and some vacation supplies. We ate at one of the last remaining Country Kitchens which are rare nowadays. We overheard from the hostess that there was quite the scandal with the CEO or someone high up at the company got convicted for embezzlement and all of the company owned stores had to be closed, leaving only the franchise stores left. There are only a few left - less than 40 I think was the number they said. All of the franchise stores are individually up for sale as well I think she said. It was interesting to hear of this story which impacted quite a large chain of restaurants.

I had some ribs and fries which were just what I needed since I had only had some cheese curds since breakfast. It being a vacation, I’m letting myself eat freely instead of trying to be strict to the super low carb ketogenic diet that I am normally eating. To that end, I ended up getting some sweets for dessert and munching on as well. I’m hoping that it doesn’t make a big impact on the scale when I get back on July 4. I’ll be going on an extreme carb cut for the first couple days of next week, trying to go actually zero carbs to see how quickly I can start burning the fat.

After some supplies, we were both very tired, so we went back to the hotel and plugged in everything to recharge and watched a little TV before drifting off to sleep. Friday is the day where we will have a full day to spend in Spring Green and see the play in the evening. We might end up going to some other spots, or put them off until Saturday. It’s set to be another over-90 day pretty much all day long, so maybe not. Until then.

There was a large confusion when I first decided that I wanted to read an actual law. If you try to read the text of an actual law (here’s an example of some text), it’s a bunch of really dense text which is all about what is changing in the US Code. It’s all about “adding paragraph” or “adding an additional subsection”, or “striking out this section”.

I was thinking that things would be different but still the same if programmers ran congress. The entirety of US code could be put into a single git repository. In order to propose changes, you would fork the repository and then make the changes that you need. A law in it’s current form looks a lot like a patch to the “source” of the US code.

Debate and voting could be done very similar to the github system where you would make a pull request - then amendments to the bill would be more commits which are added onto the pull request. Debate on the floor of congress would be similar to comments on that request.

Once debate and amendments are over, you could put in your voting electronically just like they do now for CSPAN and for the full count. Right now there’s someone who’s job is to make sure that the code is amended correctly - there are a lot of actual cases where the laws aren’t written correctly, and they are amending the wrong part of the code or something. It’s the Office of the Law Revision Counsel to fix them. It would be a lot easier with git, because of the automated merging.

Whether this would make the proposal, debate, and enacting of laws is another question. I like to think that it would make things a lot faster of course, because I’m a programmer and I’ve seen the fact that adding these types of “social code review” features make things a lot more clear and speed up the development cycle.

It’s also an idea for an open government project: Keep track of all of the laws which are in congress now in the form of patches to the US code, keeping track via branches in git that are continued based on the amendments to them. You could also see which laws conflict with each other by trying to merge them all together into a single “after all these laws are passed” branch.

I started playing non-traditional board games about the same time that I stated graduate school. That was a long time ago, but it was definitely a good time to start. The non-traditional games that I’m talking about are games like Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan and Robo Rally. They’re not the type of game that you would have played as a child if you are in the same generation as me. Sometimes they have complex rules (one game took about a half hour to just explain the rules to me recently), and the goals aren’t really obvious, and the strategies are complex. Many times there are multiple ways to win, and those ways are in competition with other players. I find these types of “advanced board games” incredibly fun to play and engaging. The strategy is really interesting to figure out and there seems to be almost an endless supply of new games to play.

I used to play these games occassionally with a bunch of guys from the lab, a group which migrated / expanded when the startup spun off and many of us started working there. The go-to game was Settlers of Catan, because it is easy enough to teach people but not so complex that you wouldn’t be able to win on your first try. For various reasons the same host isn’t hosting the events anymore (one of these days soon I will have to host one or a few).

I’ve found a bunch of people who are into the same types of games and have about the same unlimited capacity for them on the twincitiessocial subreddit. We all meet at a great event center which always has basically a bunch of open tables waiting for people to come together to play some games. Usually I end up staying about 5 hours and playing 2-3 games (yes, most of them are this long to play). I’m also finding that meeting new people this way is pretty nice, because I have some type of social construct to interact with them other than the normal random chit-chat and that’s lead to a couple of casual friendships.

It’s really pretty great, but I’ve been noticing a trend with my play style lately which is starting to be prevalent. I’ve turned into a “Do this, it’s better.” player of the games. Someone will be playing their turn, or setting up a strategy, and I’ll jump in and try to play their turn for them. Diana first pointed this out to me a month or so back, but I didn’t really think it was a problem in my playstyle (Diana usually notices these things way before I do). Now I am rethinking that conclusion, and considering that maybe I’m a guy ruining the fun for someone else. Two or three times ago, I kibitzed on a game and tried to “help” some people out. Last week I was thinking through almost everyone’s turns, and in every game I played, I am sure that I made a comment about how to play a turn.

I’m a fairly competitive person when playing (even if I don’t win too often), and these aren’t cooperative games usually, so why am I “helping” my opponent play a better game against me. I’ve come up with two theories why I’m doing this.

The first is a strong sense of playing a “fair game”. I really think that games are really fun within the constructs of the rules. Most if not all of these games have some type of random component to them - otherwise they usually aren’t as fun to replay. Part of me wants to have everyone play the best game that they can, and we just enjoy the experience of playing the game competitively to see who wins. To that end, when I see someone playing suboptimally, I want them to play it absolutely to their advantage.

The second is the idea that somehow by playing it without taking advantage of all the rules, they’re “playing it wrong”. This comes from a history when I was teaching games to other people. The rules for these games are necessarily complex and there are some twisty turny passages that some people just won’t understand the first time they’re playing. It’s certainly possible that they are making a move and they just don’t know that they can do something that is better. If I point it out to them they might be a better player of that particular game in general. This is somewhat tied in with the first season, but has more of a “did you know?” angle. I’m really a minimaxer when it comes to the rules of many of these games, so depending on how twisty-turny the rules are, it could be unnecessarily complex. I have a natural teaching instinct, to you might see this as a dark extension of that in some way.

I don’t believe that either of these reasons are justifications for my behavior at the table. I absolutely should be letting the other players play their own turns - the enjoyment that they will get out of the game is going to come from taking those actions and figuring out the plans and strategies of their turns themselves, without my help. Their enjoyment of the game is just as important as mine, and as long as they are playing within the rules, they aren’t “playing it wrong” by doing something suboptimal.

I have noticed that it happens more in games where almost all of the information is available to all players. With more hidden information, I obviously can’t chime in because I don’t know all of the facts of their situation. Seven Wonders is particularly nice for this, as almost all information is hidden while playing. On the other side of things, in Alien Frontiers I have a lot of chances to “help” other players.

I’m hoping that now that I’ve noticed the behavior, I’ll be able to curb it the next time I am at a games night. To this end I’ll probably do some sort of introspection throughout the night as well as a review when I’m all finished. One of my desires is to be a better player of these games so that I can make more connections and not be an annoying person to play with. Everyone having fun is more important.

In the past week, I’ve programmed for at least an hour in: - Ruby (with and without Rails) - Javascript - Python - C++ - Embedded C - Java - Non-trivial Makefiles - HTML and CSS (if we want to count them)

If we went back a month, we could add C# to that list, as well as the go language, and the ever so strange awk. If I was pressed to write down on a resume all of the languages that I have programmed in, it would probably take up at least a quarter of a page, especially if they wanted me to list the frameworks that I’ve used in each of them.

Lately I’ve been counting about how many languages I use on a regular basis, because it seems like I am a programmer that seems to jump from language to language, using whatever is most convenient at the time. If I want to make something, I just choose the tool out of the toolbox that seems reasonable to get the job done, and start hacking away. I’ll pick up Python, Ruby or Perl randomly when I want to get a more-complex-than-a-shell-script thing done.

I don’t know why I have this outlook on my language selection, and I was blissfully unaware that it was somewhat bizarre until recently, when I’ve been noticing more that people seem to focus their programming attention on one or two languages, and don’t really delve deep into any others. People will stay in a single job coding .NET applications for years at a time, and not look at any other language. That seems quite bizarre for me.

I’ve been wondering what this means for me as a professional developer. The resume question specifically is interesting to me. As someone who can legitimately name a product that I’ve shipped in so many languages, does it make me look better or worse for me to put all of them onto my skills list? Will they assume that I’m just padding the list with languages that I’ve only tinkered in? Of course, this is all just a curiosity because I’m quite happy in the career that I’ve chosen now, but it’s still something I think about.

I’m also thinking about whether I have been going about it all wrong - would I be better off as a developer if I had a single-language focus? Could I finish more projects if I did so? Maybe I should try to pick one or two of the languages and then convert everything to those, and I will actually be more productive. It’s hard to judge these things because I’ve always been the person who is interested not only in being familiar with a language, but building a decent size project in each one. For example, I’ve been thinking of building a side project in node.js, not because I have a pressing need to learn a JavaScript-based event-driven framework, but just because it looks interesting.

It seems like most of the developers that I know that are into as many languages also have an interest in compilers - but I’m not that interested in them myself. Parsers of course are part and parcel of any programmer’s toolbox, if only because sometimes a domain-specific language is what will be the most powerful and useful, but I have never been interested in taking things down to the machine level myself.

I know that there are other people with at least a curiosity into other languages like I have, because there is a Twin Cities Languages User Group that I’ve attended a couple of times. It’s been a while since I’ve been back at that group, and my life is a little too busy to attend again. It was a short look at a bunch of different languages, which was pretty great.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever stop learning the new languages and frameworks of the times. I consider it a good thing on the whole because I am flexible to do things like start programming an Android app, or pick up Objective C in order to hack away at a iOS app. Whatever next new language is coming around the corner, you can probably bet that I’ll be programming something in it eventually.

I’ve been dieting lately, which means that I am weighing myself pretty regularly now. I try to weigh myself every day. Because I’m trying to be so consistent, and I don’t have some kind of fancy scale, just this cheapo scale, I’ve had some troubles over the years getting a consistent read out of my scale. I’ve finally got it working about as best as I can expect out of what I have, so I thought I would write down the tricks that I use to get as consistent as possible.

One thing that I have gleaned from my job working with electronic components and also looking at some hobby robotics and destroying my old scale to see how it worked was how the new scales that are cheap and completely electronic work. The scale itself doesn’t have any springs in it at all, just a circuit board with some wires leading out to four sensors, which are attached directly to the feet of the scale. Many times you can see that the feet aren’t actually touching the bottom plastic piece of the scale - that’s because they need to be attached to the sensor plate. The body of the sensor is attached to the bottom of the scale. From there, the body is attached to the rest of the scale so that when you step on the scale from the top, the entire body of the scale is pushed down and the feet are effectively pushed into their sensors, giving a sensor reading.

The sensors are calibrated to give a reading which you can then use a simple lookup table in a microprocessor to see what it is supposed to represent in pounds. Of course there are four feet, so that means that they’re not exactly on, but the scale manufacturer assumes that there is about one fourth of your weight distributed on each one of the sensors. This brings us to tip number one, the most important:

Stand as close to the center of the scale as possible

This means that your weight will be distributed so as to make the assumptions of the manufacturer as correct as possible. Using this first rule, you will get as an accurate a weight every time you step on the scale. If you have to move the scale to the center of the room in order to stand on the center and not tilt yourself, do so. There’s a tip later if you have to move the scale every time.

Of course, that’s not the whole story, because you want to have a consistent weighing over multiple days. That means that you need to take into account three more things. The first is that more than half of you is water. This means that the amount of water that you drank in the last 24 hours and how hydrated you are right at the moment that you weigh is going to make a big difference. If you’re a heavy person like I am, just two percent of your body weight is easily 5 pounds. The second is more obvious than the first, and that is that you will gain a different amount of weight throughout each day based on what you eat and drink versus your elimination. That means that weighing at the end of the day is completely useless. The third is even more obvious: your clothes weigh different amount every day. These three facts bring us to tip number two:

Weigh yourself at the beginning of the day, naked.

Weighing yourself at the beginning of the day in the buff will give you the most consistent reading day-over-day that you can get. This is because after a night’s sleep, you are about as dehydrated as you’re going to get in the day. That minimizes the impact of the body water that you have around. It also means that you probably have digested most of your food from the previous day, and you don’t have clothes tying you down.

The third tip that I use is one that is mental. Many of the dieters that I have conversed with (hi /r/loseit!) have a problem mentally with getting on the scale every day. Getting on the scale every day is very important to me in order to keep the accurate graphs that accompany my reports. To get all of that data, I keep a logbook right next to my scale, and I put my weight in it.

It’s a simple book with the date, and the weight that I read off of the scale on that day. Even though it just looks like a weight log, it also doubles as a motivational tool! Because this type of logging lets me see all of the numbers very quickly, it’s easy enough to look back a month (it’s just one row over) and see my progress every day. The number that’s important to me is the number of a month ago minus today, and it’s always in the negative. I’ve never been on the right track and had that number come out positive. Over a longer period of time, all the variability of the last few days goes away.

Finally I have one final tip, which might not apply to everyone. I don’t have space in my apartment bathroom to keep the scale on the floor all the time, so I keep it on it’s side under the sink. This means that the zero calibration of the sensors will be off the first time I step on it every morning. The solution is simple, and applies if you have to move the scale every day as well.

Place the scale on the floor in the same position every time.

Ignore the first reading that you get - keep stepping on and off until you get two readings exactly the same

If you can’t get the same reading from two weighings just seconds apart, your scale is broken. Get a new cheap one and use these tips to weigh yourself consistently.

Following these tips, I’ve never had a problem with the 30 dollar scale that I use every day to measure my weight.

So most people who know me pretty well will know that I’m an Android user. I don’t exactly shout it from the rooftops, but I’ll bring out my phone when I have any free moment in order to check on something or make sure that everything is working the way that I want it to. I never considered myself to use a lot of applications on my phone though. I have of course the requisite Twitter client available (which I switch out on occasion) and I use all of the Google applications pretty extensively (mail and calendar mostly). I do have a small core of Android “apps” that I use pretty extensively on a daily basis though.

The one that I’ll put first, because I use it by time more than probably all of the others put together, is the DoggCatcher Podcast Player. It’s one of the first applications that I ever paid for on the Android Market, and I actually paid $10 for it, more than it’s going for now. This podcast downloader (or “podcatcher”) is easily the main reason that I have my phone - I listen to podcasts on the thing all the time. The interface is well-done, although sometimes it can be easy to accidentally hit a podcast on the list and switch to a different podcast, it’s pretty easy to switch back. The author does a good job keeping the application up to date as well, having shipped at least 50 updates since I bought it so long ago. If you’re interested in what podcasts I have on my list, I have another post about that.

After that in terms of time used is a newcomer. TagTime helps me keep track of what exactly I’m spending my days doing. It does this by randomly sampling me by buzzing at me every once in a while, and then I respond with what I’m doing at the moment. The original creators have a web page that explains the concept better. I started using this application because it was close enough to something that I had been meaning to build for a while. I recently started contributing to the source as well, and that has accelerated my personal Android development. I’ll probably be adding more features to the application soon, since there is an itch that I can scratch myself.

Lately, Pomodroido has been getting more use on my phone. This is a simple timer application which helps you implement the Pomodoro Technique, which is supposed to be one of these “productivity hacks”. I honestly use it because it’s an easy way to time out half an hour, which is conveniently half of my minimum thesis working time every day, as well as the smallest period of time I feel comfortable billing out for my consulting work. So it is used in a dual purpose to both keep me honest in both of those goals. I had used it in the past at work in it’s “hack” capacity and it didn’t work that well because I was interrupted too much. Using it at home doesn’t seem to have as much of a problem because I can explain to my lovely wife about the “focus” aspect of it.

As most of you would if you’ve been reading the blog for any period of time, I’ve been on a diet for a while. That’s why MyFitnessPal has a permanent position on my home screen. MyFitnessPal (and the accompanying website is easily the best application I’ve found on Android in order to keep track of calories. It comes very close to what I would consider an ideal eat watch in the Hacker’s Diet sense. It has a nice big number in green of how many calories under your goal you are in the day, which incorporates the amount of exercise you’ve done (if you enter it, it’s not automatic or anything) and the amount of food. If the number is red, you’re done eating for the day because you’re over your limit. The food database is extensive and it makes it easy to enter foods that you’ve been eating recently which is great because my diets tend to have a lot of consistency. It also added a bar code scanner so you can just scan the boxed foods that you eat.

Lastly but not least, I use SpringPad as a note taking application. It was quite important to me to have a note application which had some type of online component, because I was definitely not going to back it up enough on my phone itself, and it is nicer to type things long form or add things from the web as well. There are quite a few options out there, but Springpad, and it’s website are probably the most simple for my purposes. You can do fancy things with the notes, but usually I am just using them as grocery lists, or lists to remember books I want to read, music I want to purchase, and movies to watch. It’s a notebook - I use it for jotting down notes.

I have a bunch of other applications on my phone, but these are the ones that I use the most, and I would say that I use all of them on a daily basis. I’m always looking for more productive uses of my phone though, since I’ve had a smartphone it’s evolved over time. I don’t play that many games on it, so it’s mostly productivity for me. If you have any suggestions I’d be happy to hear them in the comments.