"Is Fraud Contagious?" Friday, March 13, 2009

Bernie Madoff, this article summarizes research done by my lovely fiancee. She's brilliant, I'm lucky.

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Share/Save/Bookmark posted by Gregory Burd @ 10:27 AM, ,



GitHub is to Git as Patch-Tag is to Darcs Monday, March 09, 2009

Git use is growing by leaps and bounds not simply because Linus started it but because it's the first mainstream rational approach to a distributed version control system (DVCS) to come along. GitHub is a spectacular place to foster a community of developers using Git to manage their projects, I use it myself. Git's methodology for change management is great, and arguably will erode the centralized approach taken by Subversion, CVS, etc. which is (IMHO) a Good Thing (tm).

All that said, I can't stop thinking about Darcs and its elegant (although unfinished) patch theory approach under the development name of Camp. Watch the video of Camp and Git accomplishing the same tasks in different ways. There are numerous debates out there about the value of patch theory in version control, I'm personally sold on the idea but I'm not going to debate it here.

Part of what makes Git great is GitHub. Darcs has a similar hosted service called Patch-Tag. It's not nearly as mature, stable, or feature rich as GitHub but it's shows promise. It's not surprising that, given the relative popularity of the two tools, GitHub is evolving quickly and growing in size and scope at an amazing pace while Patch-Tag is moving at a much slower pace. That said, if you're a Darcs fan (holdout?) you have a home and we should, as a community, foster the development of Patch-Tag (or a viable competitor if one emerges). We should also develop tools that allow for both interoperability with Git as well as Git to Darcs conversion.

Finally, I'd encourage those who are confused by patch theory or believe that it provides no additional value when compared to the Git approach to step back a second and just consider the theory and its applications elsewhere in computer science. There are more than one PhD thesis out there to be written which combine patch theory with other complex problems, one such example might be multi-master database design. What if transaction logs were viewed as patch sets? Could patch theory be used to sort out the distributed concurrent updates happening at the various replicas?

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Share/Save/Bookmark posted by Gregory Burd @ 11:37 AM, ,



The Cave Man Diet: How I went from 275 to 200lbs in Under 12 Months

I lost about 75 lbs over the past year by not following the advise of most popularized diet methods but rather by following a simple, logical and responsible weight loss regime. Anyone can have similar success given diligence, patience, and awareness.

Disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor, I don't have any formal training in physiology nor do I consider myself an expert in any way. What I describe below was my method for weight loss and maintenance. Before you try this method talk to your doctor, get a complete physical, and explain what I propose in detail. Make sure they agree and have them monitor your progress every so often. Use this method at your own risk, everyone is different so make sure you're right for this approach.

First, some pre-requsite education on weight loss and our (an average American's) diet. The first thing to do is start reading the labels on the food products you buy. Read the white label showing portion size and calorie counts and then make sure you read the fine print with the funky scientific names.

I used CalorieKing(.com)'s site to track all the food and exercise I did. You have to honestly track everything, don't lie to yourself. All food, all exercise, all water - everything. If you put it in your mouth, record it. If you think you exercised, record it (again, don't lie to yourself on this, if you did 17 min of walking don't record 20 min of running). This site tracks calories, the breakdown of the various nutritional components in the foods you eat, your weight, and your measurements over time. It also offers ways to set weekly budgets for each nutritional component and target calorie amounts. This is key, we'll come back to it later (budget setting). Try to even out your intake of various nutritional food types. If you're low on fiber, find foods in the food database you like which are high in fiber and get them into your diet (be creative).

Read The Omnivore's Dielmma and its companion In Defense of Food. Read The Portion Teller.

Calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI) using this, and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) using this.

BMI will tell you almost nothing except that you're fat, which you already knew, but you can use it to watch your weight loss and when you cross a threshold (from Obese to Average for instance) you'll feel good about your progress.

BMR is the more useful measure. This tells you how much energy (calories) it takes to keep you alive each day, what you'd burn if you just watched TV all day long (and didn't eat).

The goal is to become informed about foods, their effects on you and your calorie intake. When you read the labels pay close attention to portion size and the list of ingredients in the products you're buying. Go online and look-up each mystery food ingredient listed to see what the heck it is, see if it's something you really want in your body. Chances are you're eating more than a portion's worth each meal while telling yourself that you've eaten the amount prescribed on the label.

The "Cave Man Diet" (my name for what I did) is simple. Eat healthy foods and make sure that you maintain a consistent and rational calorie deficit. Meaning that every day you burn more calories than you ingest. Simple and logical. Burn more than you eat, use the energy in the fat you're carrying around to make up the difference. Done.

As I said before, your BMR will tell you how many calories you burn during any given day doing nothing. Of course you're not just lying in bed all day (I hope), so it's a good target daily net calorie amount as most of us live sedentary lives (I work in front of a computer all day, typing is not exercise). By creating a calorie deficit every day you will start to burn the energy stored in fat cells (you don't lose fat cells, they just shrink as the energy they store is used up). Your body will naturally do this to make up the difference between what you need to survive a day and what you've eaten during that day. You must exercise so as to 1. trigger the body to burn fat, not muscle cells and 2. burn more calories helping you maintain that daily deficit. As you add muscle your BMR goes up as well. Fat doesn't burn energy during the day, muscle does - even when not working out. This effect makes it easy to keep weight off later in the game. When you're fit (around 10% body fat or less) and you are muscular your BMR goes up (you need more calories to feed those muscles every day) and so you can eat a bit more than you did during your reduction phase and still remain at the same weight.

Here is where simple math and logic add up to weight loss. Using CalorieKing (stupid name, great tool - you just need something to do the following, use what tool you like) set your daily calorie target to be 200 calories below your BMR. Doing this means that every week you will be 1400 calories below what you burned - that equates roughly to 2lbs of fat. This sounds easy, but it is shockingly hard at first, so ease into it and then stick to it. You will feel a constant hunger because you're in deficit (this is normal). Find low calorie food to fill the void and stop the rumbling. Drink a lot of water, at least one quart a day (if not two). 2 lbs a week is as fast as you really want to go before your body starts to do bad things rather than simply burn energy in fat cells. Don't push it, be patient and consistent.

This article talks about a woman who's BMR is 1500. She targets a daily calorie intake of 1400 to be 700 calories in deficit every week, about what one pound of fat stores. So she should loses 1 pound a week (if she does a minimum of 20 min of exercise a day). It's that simple.

Now, to pick foods. Use CalorieKing to track your normal diet this week. The start looking at what foods are especially high in fats or sugars or other things that put you over your weekly budget. Search for other foods you like that are lower in these values, substitute them in the following week.

When you want to have a "beer and burger" night go to the site and calculate what that will cost you in calories then exercise or cut back enough to give yourself a "caloric buffer" of sorts, then have the burger and beer, but only the amount you budgeted for (1) and nothing else (record it in your CalorieKing records like you've been doing for everything else).

When you exercise and burn off 300 calories then you can eat 300 calories more that day, remember the goal is to be at a steady net deficit not to starve yourself. You'll quickly find that exercise takes on new meaning - "a mile run around the track and I can have that slice of pizza for lunch!"

Stick to regular exercise and keep your weekly calorie total in deficit by at around 1400 calories and in a few months (yes, this is a life style change not a quick fix) you'll see changes. Make sure to do the measurements of waist size, hip size, calf size, neck size, etc. and track them as well as your weight. You'll be shocked to see them all shrinking away. I've had to donate and re-new my wardrobe three times now. All my belts have extra holes drilled into them (because I'm too cheap to buy new ones).

Good luck, I hope others benefit from this all too obvious approach to dieting.

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Share/Save/Bookmark posted by Gregory Burd @ 8:50 AM, ,