Really wanted my Soylent experiment to last a full week ydmq3eq. And while I feel like I’m breaking down and will eat before then, Sunday’s World Cup schedule of South Korea then USA essentially means the outer limit of my first foray into Soylent will be at the max 6.33 days.
I’ve journaled my experience and will write it up. But at this stage seems like Soylent will function for me as a meal replacement rather than food replacement.
So I jumped on the <a href="http://www generic crestor.soylent.me” title=”Soylent”>Soylent thing awhile back. I’m superficially interested in the quantified self stuff and the Tim Ferriss stuff and so on and so forth. So I got in on the pre-orders and forgot all about it unless I got random email updates on the status. Well after all of whatever, I finally got my month of the stuff.
I’ll start by saying it’s a lot. A month of this stuff, for some reason I was thinking would be like some huge tub of powder, powdered protein style. Instead it’s a huge box of four big boxes, each full of seven large pouches of powder and seven vials of oil. And an additional box containing the pitcher.
Second point, this air tight pitcher they send, umm, not exactly air tight. Mixed up the stuff per instructions in the pitcher and shook for the 30 seconds recommended. It didn’t fly out everywhere, but there were leaks from the seal in the pitcher.
Those are my initial impressions. I suppose I’ll track my weight (privately), energy (publicly), mood (partially publicly), and food intake (if I eat on top of the Soylent), even if informally, once I start drinking the stuff tomorrow. And I guess I have decided to start tomorrow. I considered starting immediately (i.e. tomorrow), July 1 (for a regular calendar month, even though I only have four weeks of the stuff), or July 7 (giving the holiday weekend of gluttony it’s due).
For a variety of life things, I have fallen off my weekly weekend short runs, but will try to get back into it with the Soylent fuel going, because nothing like putting together a ton of different new things all at once to know what’s really working.
(I’m strongly leaning toward getting a Vitamix, so am looking forward to making up batches in that instead of the pitcher. Also, should I mix in some kale to make it like fake green juice?)
I don’t think I’ll post daily about it, but at least weekly, and maybe ad hoc on twitter.
I’ve started to rewatch Lost. It’s a very different experience. I rewatched some of the earlier seasons before, but not the later ones. I don’t have the best memory, so there are a lot of things that happen that I totally forgot about until I saw it again. Other bits I remember almost well enough to recite the lines.
It’s interesting to rewatch in this state. To know how things relate. To know what to ignore because it won’t be addressed suitably. To still be slightly surprised because you’re so caught up in the story but then feeling a bit silly because not like you didn’t know.
Also, say what you want about the show, and lord knows people have/do, but it was some great television for a good long while. “We have to go back!” was as big a moment as there is. Or at least was then.
You be something by doing something. Tired and lazy only leads to more tired and lazy. Movement begets momentum. Just need to start. Whatever it is. One thing or five things. Whatever. Something. Anything. Just start.
I received a Luxa2 P1 High Capacity Battery a few weeks back and in those weeks have had a chance to put it through the paces.
I should preface by describing my situation. I am working in Europe for a few months. Prior to going, I purchased an unlocked iPhone 4S (thanks for being all Draconian AT&T) to use while there. I decided once there to go with a prepaid data plan only, as I didn’t see a need for a voice line (could make calls on my work Blackberry or from the office).
3G coverage was decent. I was probably 60:40 3G:Wifi. Once I obtained my prepaid data micro sim, I plugged it into my phone and was happily on my way… except one huge thing.
With the data only sim installed, my battery life was atrocious. From a full charge at 6 AM, I would be under 50% by 11 AM or noon just listening to Spotify or very limited web usage (3G) If I was doing more, then it was worse. There are a few different reasons my battery life took a huge hit, but not really worth going into those.
So, while at the office, not the biggest deal since I could (usually) plug in my iPhone while there (if I remembered to bring my cable in my bag). But there were enough days where I forgot my cable and had to really manage my usage. And of those days, I had my fair share when I didn’t manage it well enough and my iPhone died mid-afternoon.
So I got my hands on a Luxa2 P1. First, the stats. The P1 is an external battery pack with 7000 mAh of power. It has 2 USB ports to charge your devices and a micro USB port for the battery charger cable. The unit has a button on the top and a small line of battery level indicator lights. The battery also comes with a micro USB cable, a 30 pin cable for iDevices (well not the newest ones), and a small bag to carry it all in. The battery itself is a hefty 178 g, but not out of line with external batteries.
I used the battery to charge my iPhone at the office, on several trips of lengths between half-day to full weekends, and occasionally my iPad (3rd generation). Use couldn’t be easier. Plug in your device(s) to the USB port(s) and press the indicator button.
Okay, I’ll start with the bad. The absolute worst thing I could say about the device isn’t about the unit itself. My carrying bag fell apart in a matter of days. The stitching along the pull strings (to close the bag) came apart. The next “bad” is it gets warm as it charges, which isn’t a real bad considering there’s not a single charging option where there is not some heat being emitted.
The good. What is there to say, it’s easy to use, it charges my devices (very quickly and sometimes multiple devices). I really like that it is jacket pocketable. The P1 definitely makes life easier and more worry-free while abroad.
So being in Switzerland and on a data only SIM, my iPhone eats battery life for breakfast. I suppose I could mess with the APN settings or something (and I know it’s easy), but thinking external battery pack (no to battery cases, death to battery cases!).
(Oh and hell yeah back to blogging… old school, who needs twitter and tumblr? [okay, me, that’s right, brackets in my parenthetical]).
This was a pleasant documentary following the legendary Bill Cunningham. It gave a few details about his history and his personal life, but it mostly just showed Bill being Bill. What struck me about this movie was all of the dichotomies.
Bill Cunningham is the godfather of the street fashion photography. But it was clear in this movie that he’s still a man of the people. He’s still on the street every day. He does other things too, but his primary thing is taking pictures of clothes. He’s the ultimate recorder of the people, working for one of the biggest institutions. Meanwhile so many of the people he inspired started on free blogs taking pictures of the street and moved to a little fancy pictures of celebs and models, and writing books and only taking pictures of fancy people. Bill is the people’s street fashion photographer, even with the clout of the New York Times. Which stands in contrast to all of the street fashion photographers on the web, which use the people’s platform (i.e. internet) to be sort of elitist.
[Rambling, I had a point somewhere in there, but it fell apart pretty quickly.]
So earlier this week Merlin Mann published a long, insightful, awesome, self-reflective, [insert more platitudes here] essay titled “Cranking.”
Go read it. Seriously. Go read it now.
I’ll do it a huge injustice and say it was about a lot of things, but a lot about priorities. He talks about his father and his daughter and how these things play into his process right now. I think the piece is yeoman’s work.
At the risk of being on the wrong side of the piece and its message, there was one bit that really struck a chord for me:
In fact, a depressing amount of the time–really up until this week–I would do my job until I hadn’t the slightest idea what time it was or what bullshit I was typing or what my crank was ever meant to be attached to in the first place.
But, even when my shitty little crank was not attached to anything, I did keep cranking. Because, Dads do their job. It’s what they do.
They crank. They crank and crank and crank and crank.
The emphasis is added. That’s me. Not me as in “I emphasized that bit,” but me as in my mindset. See, I can hate a lot of things about whatever I do, but all it has to be is a means of providing for my family. And not even so much my immediate family (although that is the most direct need), but my family in a larger sense. I don’t mean my extended family, rather, I think about it generationally.
I’m a second generation American. And while I’m not a raging success, by almost any account, I made good on my parents’ wishes when they came to this country: a better life. By those measures, I’ve (and my sister) have taken our family to that next step. So what I do in my life is all about providing. Providing my family now a life. But also providing my family generationally another wrung on the ladder to climb up.
So I crank.
And I think that’s the job. I’m not presently a father, but I relate to that bit of writing my Merlin Mann, at least that part about Dads doing their job. I relate to the rest of it and am inspired by it, but more than anything else, I recognize that I just crank. And while it can feel soul-crushing at times, I do it with a purpose that lets me keep at it, almost in the face of logic.
This is a poorly conceived post, but I’m putting it up anyway. I hope I can keep revisiting and revising it to make it something worthwhile, but I just needed something out there because Merlin Mann’s piece really spoke to me on a few levels.
Trying to do the blog thing again crestor price. Not sure what’ll go here. Went from thoughts, to lists, to movie reviews, to twitter stream, to pictures, to nothing, and back around. Here’s to hoping I keep this up.