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January 21, 2012

Organising RSS feeds by purpose

Every so often I cull RSS feeds from Google Reader. Sometimes, led by a single good article, I’ll subscribe to a whole feed only to be disappointed by what comes later. Other times, I’ll let the queue build up for weeks until the only sensible way out is to mark all items as read. The problem is that everything, good and bad, gets “deleted”.

Up until now, I’ve managed feeds by category: “Programming”, “Money”, “Movies”, “Food” and so on, but it occurred to me that it might be better to organise them by purpose: the reason I subscribed in the first place.

I’m working through several hundred feeds, deleting any which don’t have any purpose at all (they’re a waste of time at screen, which I want to reduce) and adding tags to those which are useful. Some examples of the categories I’ve created are:

  • News about APIs and tools (when Facebook change their API, it’s good for a Facebook developer to know; it’s the same for upcoming releases of some of the software and web services that I use every day).
  • Techniques for web development: strictly technical articles. Proper sit-down-and-learn-something content. This is where the real value lies but, because of the effort, these articles are usually the least read.
  • Soft skills and career skills: they matter almost as much as the technical info but to get on the list, they have to be practical and go beyond the obvious. Unlike the technical blogs, the barrier to entry to create this type of content is low (I’m doing it right now), and the average quality of sites pushing it out usually is too (cough).
  • Healthier ways of eating and living: like the other folders/tags, the purpose is clear. For me, this is more about inspiration than knowledge. I do what I know I shouldn’t, going to bed too late, eating too much of the wrong things, and spending too much time in front of screens and not enough doing other things.
  • Inspiration from other people: there are dozens of blogs that I follow purely for inspiration, usually person blogs which span all kinds of subjects and interests. Categorising them as such means I can prioritise accordingly. Better to live ones own life than read about other people’s – most of the time, at least.
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January 5, 2012

Primal

About a year ago, I first discovered Mark’s Daily Apple, a website (and accompanying series of books) about eating better and living a healthier life, topics about which there is no shortage of content online.

Mark Sisson, its author, is one of the web’s prominent sources on the subject of low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets. When I’ve talked about the subject with family, I’ve described it as “Atkins, with vegetables,” which I think is accurate enough for my purposes.

Sissons’ simple idea, and he’s not alone, is that for most of human evolution, there are certain things we simply did not eat. As a result, our bodies don’t deal with them very well. The problem is that these are some of the most widely-consumed foods in the world. Our doctors and governments tell us they’re good for us, and every food pyramid known to man includes them as the low cost energy sources at the bottom of the heap. Things like bread, rice, beans – the “staples”.

Everyone knows that sugar is bad. It’s too energy-dense and releases that energy too rapidly for most of our daily activities. It causes obesity (something I know) and it’s one of those things our parents and dentists always told us that we should avoid. Sissons’ Primal Blueprint doesn’t stop there, however. Whole grains, oats, potatoes and a host of other common “man-made” foods are out.

In their place is the kind of food humans ate before we learned how to do agriculture (c. 10,000 years ago apparently). Primal eaters recommend animals (as unprocessed as possible, preferably grass- not grain-fed), vegetables (fruit has too much fructose to be a free-for-all) and dairy (although the Palaeolithic, or “Paleo”, Diet, another branch of the same idea, excludes this.) To stray even further from the conventional wisdom, the primary energy source for humans is supposed to be saturated animal fat. Who among us doesn’t love a good pork chop?

My academic knowledge of biology stopped expanding at any rate when I was sixteen years old (you can tell), but the results are what matter (read some success stories). Blood test results don’t lie, and a common criticism of the Atkins diet – its strict limit on vegetables – isn’t an issue in this case.

I’m self-conscious when discussing the whole subject because my own immediate reaction is, “Surely all those people can’t be wrong.” I wonder whether advice from the medical establishment could be as far out of whack as the Paleo community would have us believe. My natural cynicism (well above average!) triggers a sort of anti-conspiracy-theory response, particularly when they start talking about corporate and government interests getting in the way of the best food for the people (admittedly, it wouldn’t be the first time). And of course, Mark Sissons has a book to sell! But every Friday the Success Stories hit my RSS reader, and I resolve to do this for longer than a couple of weeks.

For more info, read the Primal Blueprint 101 blog post for an overview of the major points about blood sugar and insulin response (everything centres on this), systemic inflammation, natural exercise and how it all relates to modern Western diseases and what ultimately “gets” us.

I also know from brief flirtations with this idea that sugar withdrawal is a little dose of hell for a week or so. I want my next attempt at cutting it to be the final time, for everybody’s sake.

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December 10, 2011

Leverage

It occurred to me that software or web development is a capital creation: write once, use many. In even the smallest site, a good or bad choice by designer or developer will affect every user, every time they use it. Leverage for better, or for worse.

A decision to cut a corner because of budget – or laziness – says that X minutes of my time is more valuable than (USERS * X) minutes of everyone else’s time.

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November 27, 2011

Most of us work for “The Company”. We do what’s assigned, and we go home. We come to expect that The Company should pay us a fixed amount each year, and that this should be secure. This is what most of our parents taught us to do. It worked quite well for them, after all.

We watch TV news, and listen to politicians who talk about dividing all the stuff between all the people. We sometimes think a “good system” is one which divides it equally so that nobody goes without. We hate the idea that 1% of the people have 99% of the stuff – at least unless we find ourselves in the 1%.

But The Company, just like our politics and our media, is an averaging machine. It take a group of people, some of whom are really good and some of whom do very little, and gives them all a secure income. (The bigger the company, the less significant the individual, the more secure the income.) The Company ensures that everyone is taken care of and that, on the whole, there’s something left over. This leftover money, a beautiful concept, goes to the shareholders / evil bastards / people who made smarter choices. They become wealthier.

Getting our money at the end of the month, rain or shine, is great. I love it. But what if you want more than your equal share? What if you realise that the amount of wealth in the world isn’t a finite quantity and that The Company is creating new wealth (i.e. profit)? What if you wanted to create your own little bit of wealth that didn’t exist before?

Paul Graham’s essay, How to Make Wealth, isn’t new (2004), but one of the best things I’ve read for a while. It’s one of those pieces which deconstructs how the world works, and puts it together again with a different perspective. It helps us unlearn those beliefs which, I think, lead to entitlement and to see that, whether we’re The Company or the employee, both money and wealth only come from selling good stuff to people who want to buy it.

 

How to Make Wealth
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November 26, 2011

Jason Fried, writing in 2009, said business is about profit. Who knew?

It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything. Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if you have more users than everyone else, you’re successful. No, you’re not.

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November 25, 2011

Easy CakePHP permalinks and URL slugs with SluggableBehavior

I put together a CakePHP behaviour for generation of permalinks as a record is saved to the database.
This has been shown to help with search engine optimisation, getting important keywords and phrases into your site URLs.

Go from this: http://example.com/posts/view/23

To this: http://example.com/posts/view/great-new-widget-product-released

  • Specify a source field from which the slug should be generated (e.g. column “headline” : ‘The Great & the Good’)
  • Specify a database field into which the slug should be stored (e.g. column “slug” : ‘the_great_the_good’)
  • Automatically handle potential duplicates, adding numerical suffixes accordingly
  • Keep slugs constant even when source field changes (for true permalinks)
  • Slug may be manually overridden without problems by putting it into the data array being saved in Cake
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November 20, 2011

A little foray into self-defence knowledge

Earlier this week I read a post by Sam Harris about self defence basics. These are things which we may not instinctively do, but which may just save our lives some day, particularly with a bit of thought well in advance of the event.

  1. Avoid dangerous people and places. (It should go without saying, but we ignore the basics because “it won’t happen to me”.)
  2. Do not defend your property. (Your person is more valuable.)
  3. Respond immediately and escape. (Yes, male pride. Escape, fast. If you can’t manage that then go for immediate, no-holds-barred destruction. Your life depends on it.)

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