Head on over to Geek | Manager for some very exciting news: http://blog.geekmanager.co.uk/2012/04/16/joining-the-revolution/
What Is It?
The Eatery, from Massive Health, is a social food tracking app. Rather than focusing specifically on calorie counting, you take a photo of what you’re eating, (optionally) provide a description and then rate how fit or fat you think it is.
Other users also rate your meal (and like/comment) giving you an average score out of 100. It also has some nice features, like a weekly review feature telling you how you compared to the rest of the user population and key stats including where you eat most (and least) healthily and the healthiness of your meals by time of day. The latter is especially helpful to pinpoint the mid-afternoon vending machine visits that are derailing you…
The Eatery Dashboard
My Experience of the App
I’ve been using the app since last October and recently hit 1000 items recorded (milestone prompting me to write up some reflections). For those of who have instantly done the maths and your reaction is “Stop eating 6 meals a day and you’ll lose some weight!”, bear in mind that drinks are also recorded 
Overall it’s easy to use, intuitive & nicely designed, though could be a little speedier. Sometimes there’s a bit of a delay between snapping a photo and getting to describe/rate, but it is getting slicker with every update. Adding the ability to retrospectively add meals if you forgot to take a photo has been a most excellent addition for 2012.
Key Thoughts
- It helps to combat “all or nothing” thinking: a bad choice is a blip rather than the beginning of a binge. A great improvement on just “good day” vs “bad day” approach many of us default to.
- Since it is SO much less laborious (just snap & rate) than detailed calorie counting, it is easier to keep tracking.
- The community rating aspect is great – gives you a reality check on what you’re eating – and although some folks have some funny ideas about what is (un)healthy, the average tends to be pretty good.
- Whilst you might argue the opinion of a crowd of strangers is not exactly reliable, I find I object to calorie counting apps for the same reason – since I mainly eat non-prepackaged food, I find it hard to trust the calorie estimates since diff apps vary so much.
- Some of the little gamification elements help you stay consistent – the quirky “streak” messages from Andrew Carman are particularly awesome.
All in all, one of the most helpful health apps I’ve found – and certainly the one I’ve used most consistently for the longest!
2011 was not my favourite year. Frankly, it sucked. My immune system recovered after 6 years of severe sleep apnoea had beaten it into the ground. Sounds like a good thing, right? I thought so too, but it meant scar tissue started forming from injuries during those years & nasty stuff started happening. And that the allergies I thought I had grown out of came back like a bad sequel. Prawns 2: This Time There’s Anaphylaxis!
So 2011 will sadly always be the year in which I suffered 28 shoulder subluxations, 2 full dislocations and the permanent removal of shellfish from the menu. Add to that deaths in the family and I’m sure you understand why I’m glad to see the back of it.
I don’t usually do new year resolutions and certainly not public ones. I’m a big believer that it’s our habits that make us – and habits are best changed one at a time, rather than in the traditional big bang, guilt-inducing approach that is enshrined in crappy magazines across the land. For more on the sustainable habits approach, check out non resolutions advice from Dan Pink via Buster Benson.
That said, I’m going to change some major things in 2012. This is going to be a rocking year.
I am going to:
- Get back to doing what I love and loving what I do
- Write more, both code & prose
- Participate more in my community. Geekfolk, I have missed all y’all. Let’s do lunch/coffee/Barcamps/SXSWs/werewolf/geeks-with-guns/stuff yeah? I’ll be looking for you all on Lanyrd and turning up more. Come say hi!
- Figure out this hypermobility/EDS thing and *kick its arse*
So 2012? Watch out, I’m coming to get ya!
The year began in Thailand where we were at the tail end of our 100 day sabbatical. I moved roles on our return, so had much more Western Europe-focused work travel than in previous years.
INTERNATIONAL
- Bangkok, Thailand (right at the end of our sabbatical)
- Brussels, Belgium
- Geneva, Switzerland
- Rome, Italy
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Aarschot, Belgium
- Madrid, Spain
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Port de Pollenca, Mallorca (Spain)
- Cork, Ireland (incl Ballymaloe, Castlemartyr)
- Bucharest, Romania
UK
- London
- Richmond
- Weybridge
- Manchester
- Windsor
- Matfen
- Bath
- Bristol
- Tiverton
So you might have noticed I was hacked prettily nastily on this site and a couple of others. I’d taken my eye off the ball and not done a really close inspection of my WordPress installs in a while, as well as being a bit lax in updating the moment a new version was out.
So What Actually Happened?
A couple of files have been snuck into theme and plug-in directories that allowed upload and editing of other files. If you find the files r.php or temp.php anywhere in your WordPress install you might want to check on them.
Through these, a file called function.php was added, full of evals and base_64 encrypted code. The regular WordPress functions.php and load.php had been modified to include the function.php file. This then replaced the normal blog content with all manner of spam.
The Cleanup
With the help of the fine folks at Sucuri, all the corrupted files were put back to normal and the backdoors plugged. I also deleted all unused themes & plugins (unfortunately the otherwise very useful Dreamhost One Click Installs do litter the place with “extras” you might neither want nor need).
For anyone investigating similar hacks, the Linux command to find recently edited files is find . -mtime -1. This will show you anything edited in the last day (replace the 1 with a different number to give different number of days). Though there are ways around the Linux file times, a cron job checking for recently modified files is helpful to keep an eye on things.
Useful Links
- Sucuri’s Advice for After the Cleanup
- Dreamhost’s advice on troubleshooting hacked sites
- Sucuri’s explanation of the recent pharma hacks and how to clean it
- Tips for searching for backdoors in a hacked WordPress install
We’re in Cork this week, celebrating our anniversary and looking forward to both the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals and a close friend’s wedding at the weekend. We’ve never visited here before so it’s been nice to explore the city … and to eat our way round it!
Food so far has not disappointed, with an excellent pancakes with bacon & banana breakfast at Liberty Grill and a gorgeous ribeye steak at Strasbourg Goose particular highlights. Intending to keep up the gastronomic exploration over the coming days…
2010 was a massive travel year, not least because Elly & I took a three month sabbatical from Oct-Dec. We had an absolutely amazing time travelling and since I bought a proper digital SLR just before going, we are still sorting through the 33,000 (yes, really!) photos I took in those 100 days! Many are already on Flickr with more to follow, and highlights are on our travel blog.
ABROAD
- Austin, USA
- Cincinnati, USA
- Faro, Portugal
- Lagos, Portugal
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Durban, South Africa
- Port Elizabeth, South Africa
- Mossel Bay, South Africa
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Melbourne, Australia
- Cairns, Australia
- Townsville, Australia
- Airlie Beach, Australia
- Brisbane, Australia
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Paihia, New Zealand
- Rotorua, New Zealand
- Napier, New Zealand
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Picton, New Zealand
- Kaikoura, New Zealand
- Queenstown, New Zealand
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Sydney, Australia
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Hanoi, Vietnam
- Hue, Vietnam
- Hoi An, Vietnam
- Saigon, Vietnam
- Phuket, Thailand
- Ko Phi Phi Don, Thailand
UK
- Bristol
- Bath
- Tiverton
- Exeter
- Weybridge
- London
- Southampton
- Marchwood
- Brighton
- Cambridge
- Market Bosworth
- Reading
- Richmond / St Margarets
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I feel for this guy — poor vandalised bike!
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This is my word of the day. Pretty much most of my friendship circles at school, university and now work have consisted of people who experience this (suffer seems a strong word for something with such a positive background but I suppose potentially a truly negative impact)
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Interesting how our formal education processes in many countries have really reduced the capacity for polymaths to develop. I suppose those most so included are likely to develop any way though! Last couple of years I've sponsored a scholarship at my old highschool for a student displaying polymath tendencies.
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Insightful article about how to spot good programmers.
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This is a really interesting site: pairing up problem solvers with complex problems and the people who want them solved (and can pay for solutions). Sort of like an innovation / solutions marketplace.
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Wow. Hell of an innovative way to pay for college! Not sure how I feel about this, on the one hand sad that anyone has to do this to get an education, on the other hand good on her for getting that much…
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Very entertaining game demo where shouting at the screen kills things! Looks hilarious
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Gorgeous blog with beautiful graphs — true meaning of information visualisation
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This is really really funny, especially if you're constantly exposed to Farmville by friends & family on Facebook as I am!
Some of you know that I’ve been having trouble sleeping over the past couple of years. Actually, more accurately, having trouble *staying* asleep. Only being able to sleep for an hour or two before waking got annoying enough that last November I checked into hospital overnight for a sleep study for an uncomfortable night covered in electrodes.
What they found astonished me. I wasn’t just waking up every hour or two. I was stopping breathing over 75 times an hour — waking each time so that my breathing restarted, without being aware of it. They have diagnosed severe sleep apnoea. The condition wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise (anyone unfortunate enough to have had to share a room or even house with me knows my snoring is pretty epic – my dad is just the same) but the level of severity was.
They immediately gave me a CPAP machine which forces me to breathe during the night by blowing a gale through a mask at me. The effect has been pretty much immediate — the first morning I felt infinitely more awake and I have a huge amount more energy than I have had in years.
The weird thing? You’d assume that having had no REM in over 18 months, I’d *know* just how tired I was. But I really didn’t. I’d occasionally fall asleep in front of the telly, but otherwise I experienced hardly any daytime sleepiness (one of the key symptoms of the condition). But having had some decent sleep over the last week since I was given the machine, I can suddenly feel the difference. I have more energy, I feel smarter, more awake and much more balanced.
Net, my one and only resolution for 2010: To sleep more and get more done.
Any of this sound familiar, either for you or someone you know? The Sleep Apnoea Trust has a decent FAQ section, more info available at NHS Choices.
ABROAD
- Faro, Portugal
- Praia da Rocha, Portugal
- Fuerteventura, Canaries (Spain)
- Cape Town, South Africa (incl Blouberg & Durbanville)
- Buffelsfontein, South Africa
- Stellenbosch, South Africa
UK
- Bath
- Bristol
- Tiverton
- Exeter
- London
- Manchester
- Weybridge
- Market Bosworth
- Cambridge
- Loughborough
- Slough
[This was a post I realised had been stuck as a draft and not published at the time written -- now rectified]
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Another Funtheory video, this time a bottomless bin. Clever!
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Innovative way to make more folks take the stairs!
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Really funny video of an extremely drunk guy in a market, edited silent movie style.
My best friend from back home, Louis van der Merwe and his brother Willem van der Merwe are through to the final 21 in the first series of South Africa’s Got Talent. They sing opera (although they are both techies in their day jobs) and have absolutely amazing voices.
Please consider helping to support them by checking out www.louisandwillem.com (notably, watch their initial audition), joining their Facebook fan group or if you are in South Africa even voting for them this week when they perform live in the semi-finals. If you’re on Twitter you can follow the craziest week in their lives by following @louisandwillem.
They were featured in YOU and Huisgenoot this week so hopefully there’s a good swell of support for them already building back home 
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Absolutely gorgeous set of surf (as in sea as well as sport) photos on Flickr. One of the most beautiful groups I've seen in a while!
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Interesting list of good DRM-free eBook sites. Since we'll be heading off on a three month sabbatical next year and I read voraciously when on holiday (on average 2 books per day!) I'm thinking I'll need to invest in some sort of reader closer to the time.
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All about hunch.com and how it works. Be warned, it's strangely addictive!
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This is fantastic!
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Article about how the changing "internet generation values" will change the workplace. Certainly some of these dynamics are at play — the extent to which the general population really lives open source-esque values, however, I'm not sure is as great as posited.
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This should win an award for "most misleading title"
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Amazing ROI for Dell from their Twitter account — little bit old-school, but still a valuable data point
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Looks like Firefox penetration might just go up from 31% in Europe…
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This is a fantastic gadget — I wondered when programmable RFID would start to infiltrate the home market. Interestingly I imagine the "kid checking in when he gets home" use case and the "wave your keys at it and it tells you the weather & traffic" will be v popular.
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A guide to Spymaster, the game currently taking Twitter by storm.
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Lovely study in good navigation on websites. Inspiring!
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Design patterns are a really powerful concept, but often pattern libraries are a little too abstract to be useful. This UI pattern library prefers to be eminently useful and pragmatic rather than pure — and is infinitely better for it!
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I know that this is as bad as blogging about my cat (for the record, I don't have one!) but watch this video and if you still think it didn't improve your day, come back and complain in the comments
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Wonderful demo of what looks like a brilliant little synthesizer — amazing what different uses the iPhone touchscreen tech has opened up!
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This photo essay is absolutely beautiful and deeply moving.
Our poor old Polo died over Xmas and so we found ourselves looking for a newish second-hand car in what is definitely a buyer’s market.
Here were some of the useful sites we found:
- The Which? Car Buying Guide is useful, particularly if you haven’t yet fully absorbed every Top Gear episode in existence. Worth signing up for a 1 pound month trial.
- The reliability stats are also useful, though I’m sure it won’t be too much of a spoiler if I tell you basically you should buy Japanese if you don’t want it to die. If you insist on European, go Skoda.
- Parker’s is great for used car values. I put together some depreciation charts that were a great tool when bargaining with dealers who assume women will buy anything so long as it’s the right colour.
- WhatCar? generally has a refreshingly different take from the very sensible Which? reviews, with the added bonus that there is no gate fee to view. The valuations are a good rule of thumb as well.
- The Motley Fool Loan Calculator is a nice simple tool to check much your payments will be and for how long.
- In the UK, I find AutoTrader a good place to look for listings.
- Once you’ve shortlisted some options, your money is well spent doing an HPI check. I tried a couple of places and found that the cheap and cheerful offering from MyCarCheck was perfectly sufficient and highlighted that two of the cars we were considering really were too good to be true.
Any other suggestions? Add them in the comments
For those interested, we were deciding between a Toyota Yaris, a Skoda Fabia and a Honda Jazz. Found the Yaris cramped and not particularly fun to drive, the Fabia pretty much a carbon copy of our Polo and the Jazz spacious and engaging to drive. Went for a Jazz but likely would have been happy with a Fabia if we didn’t want to have as much back seat / boot room for cross country Xmas trips.
This year was full of work-related travel — a lot in the South West of the UK as I was leading P&G’s recruitment team down there, as well as Cincinnati, Brussels and Philly for the IT projects I was leading. I managed to get a week in Mallorca when Elly was busy studying & so sadly couldn’t accompany me — we then had a great holiday in South Africa visiting with family & friends. There are many photos on Flickr.
ABROAD
- Brussels, Belgium
- Port de Pollenca, Mallorca
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Stellenbosch, South Africa
- Mossel Bay, South Africa
- Port Elizabeth, South Africa
- St Francis Bay, South Africa
- Cincinnati, USA
- Philadelphia, USA
UK
- London
- Cambridge
- Bath
- Bristol
- Exeter
- Tiverton
- Weybridge
- Egham
- Basingstoke
- Maidenhead
- Woking
- Walsall
- Market Bosworth
[This was a post I realised had been stuck as a draft and not published at the time written -- now rectified]
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One of my FAVE Eddie Izzard bits, only improved by the wicked lego animation
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"Here’s a list of ways that I’ve almost killed FreshBooks over the years"
Some interesting stuff here
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"… this pretty much sums up my entire life. Other bloggers get invited to go on CNN or get free furniture. I get an angry transvestite army." ROFLMAO!
