Anxiety is great for weight loss

Having lost 27 pounds thus far I wanted to share a few comments about it. But first, a plea: I’m job-hunting and could use help finding a gig which involves programming, technical writing, QA, IT support, system and network administration, and/or project- or team-management. Thx.

Now, onto weight-loss: these seem to be the salient points to remember.

It’s all about the calories. There’s two phases, weight loss and weight maintenance. If you’re thinking about carbs and protein you’re ahead of yourself. Decrease the calories you take in (which is where a calorie-counting app like LoseIt! comes in very handy) and increase the calories you burn (by walking, for example). Get under a magic number and you’ll lose weight.

It’s slow and miserable. It took you a long time to gain that weight, and it’ll take just as long to lose it. You’ll think more about food than you can imagine, but after a short while you’ll be satisfied by smaller portions.

My trick: eat small apples and carrots during the day and save big calories for the evening comfort time. Then use microwavable meals – I couldn’t survive without Trader Joe’s Indian cuisine – which have calories noted and are easy to track.

Stay under your daily caloric needs and don’t freak on your once-a-week splurge.

Realize it’s going to take time, weigh yourself frequently, and persevere.

There’s nothing better than adding hole after hole to your favorite belt!

- Posted using BlogPress on iPhone.

Location:Mission St,San Francisco,United States

Solved: How to sync multiple Google Calendars with an iPhone

Scenario: I have several Google Calendars in my life: a family hosted one, a personal one – attached to my original GMail account, and a work one. I want all my events to appear automagically, over the air, on my iPhone.

Prerequisite: You must pick one as the master calendar. I chose the personal calendar because that’s the GMail address by which folks know me (on email and GChat). I’m guessing you can undo all these steps if you decide another calendar ought to be the master, but save yourself the trouble and think a moment on how you want things set up.

Summary: After spelunking around the ‘net for a bit, I’ve come up with a set of steps that seems to work for me. What’s happening is that one shares the other calendars with a master calendar. Your scenario may be simpler, or more complex. I believe the following steps will work for your situation.

Caveats: I’m not sure that appointment invitations get back to the original calendars; it may be that they all go to the master calendar, but I’m testing that, and even in the worst case, at least absolutely everything is at my fingertips.

1. On your iPhone set up the master calendar to synchronize with your iPhone with the Microsoft Exchange functionality. As of iPhone OS 3.x only one Exchange sync may be set up. The official instructions, Mail, Calendar, & Contacts Setup: Setting Up Your iPhone or iPod Touch, do a good job of walking you through the steps.
2. On the desktop, for each of the other Google Calendars, log into the appropriate Google account and from the pull-down by the calendar name select “Share this Calendar”. You will be asked to provide the email address to which the calendar should be shared; I provided my personal.account@gmail.com information. You will also be asked to specify a level of information sharing. (Depending upon the administrator’s choices when configuring the account – I’m thinking mostly of hosted Google accounts – you may be allowed to only see the free/busy state, the information, and/or change the appointment information and even the calendar sharing configuration (although this tutorial doesn’t use the latter ability; I mention it only for completeness, even though I’m not sure it actually works.) Once you click Save you may be asked to confirm whether you really want to share information outside of the hosted domain; click ‘Yes’. An email will be sent to the master calendar GMail account, but it contains no links and you need do nothing; the calendar will be automatically added for you.
3. Log into the master calendar Google account and confirm that all the calendars you’ve shared have been received.
4. Still in the master calendar Google account visit https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and select each of the newly-shared calendars.
5. Back on the iPhone, visit http://m.google.com/ for the master calendar Google account and select the Google Sync icon. Select the device listed, and then the calendars.

The next time information is pushed to your iPhone – you select the interval on the iPhone in the Settings app under Mail, Contacts, Calendar > Fetch New Data – fire up the Calendar app on the iPhone and you should see the shared calendars. When an invitation is sent to any of the calendars it will appear on the iPhone. As mentioned above, I still have to play with this a bit to confirm that you can accept invitations on the iPhone, and where the reply is added (to the master calendar or the appropriate shared calendar).

If you fire up iCal on your desktop Macintosh you should see the shared calendars as well.

Plea: if you play with this before I have a chance to try it again, please email me where I’ve gone wrong. Many thanks.

Macworld FAIL

I have much to write about Macworld, which I’ll do later, but I wanted to vent about several vexing cases of Macworld FAIL.

First: Duplicating existing offerings. Several places now offer on-device decals. Been done. External batteries, all from the same off-shore producer, just in different colors. Fail. Hawking other duplicates of long-available cheap products? Fail.

One entrepeneur reinvented instant messenging. Really. No differentiation from AIM, Y!IM, Google Chat, jabber,
etc. It’s been done. Fail.

Second: We appreciate the booth bait. It’s a fail if the technical guys DON’T
SPEAK ENGLISH!! Answering “what your meaning?” to every question may not be the winning Macworld presence for which your boss might have been hoping.

Lastly: Telling us about software and hardware that’s not yet released. If we can’t play with it or buy it that’s no more than a press release email. Fail.

There was lots of good at the show, about which I’ll be writing. But this was bugging me. I feel better. Thanks.
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Location:Mission St,San Francisco,United States

Twenty Pounds Down!

Just before Thanksgiving I started using an iPhone app, LoseIt!, to track calories.

I was shocked to find out that a latte had a couple of hundred calories, mostly from the sugars that naturally occur in milk. No wonder hours of Hapkido weren’t keeping up with the café :-)

This far it’s working. Last night I hit the twenty pounds lost mark, after a very frustrating ten day plateau. Unbelievably satisfying.

Now it’s onto the next twenty. I’m aiming for my college weight, which may not be where I wind up (because I grew a few inches and added muscle mass). But it, and the associated BMI, are a goal. See you there!

- Posted with BlogPress on my iPhone.

Location:Collingwood St,San Francisco,United States

iFail

I was going to write a long, witty, heck, memorable piece about the just-announced iPad, drawing on my experiences with the mourned Newton MessagePads, the GO/EO PEN-based tablets, the many Palm Treo iterations through which I suffered, but I’m drained by the mediocre specifications.

@SenatorGrant summarized it best: “no camera, no usb, no unique value prop[osition], no way #ipadfail”

Let me get this straight: a writing-paper-sized iPhone without the ability to make phone calls or videoconference? No camera? Can’t leave my iPhone or MacBook Pro at home? Clearly I’m not the target demographic. It’ll be easy not to buy this. I’m already waiting to see if the next release is worthy.

iFail, indeed.

- Posted with BlogPress on my iPhone.

Location:Market St,San Francisco,United States

Liveblogging Sucky Weather Sucks

Liveblogging the weather is compelling for the blogger but only marginally interesting. That having been said I beg your indulgence in documenting the heavy rain, high wind, and rare thunderstorms slamming San Francisco.

I guess I picked a cold time to become clean-shaven for the first time in a decade. It just felt like the right time.

My cheeks feel the 28 mph wind! Argh!

- Posted with BlogPress on my iPhone.

Location:Elizabeth St,San Francisco,United States

3G at Moscone = FAIL

Good grief, the 3G service at the Moscone convention center is beyond miserable: it’s almost at a standstill.

What an embarassment!

The free WiFi isn’t much better. The best I’ve seen today os 0.05 Mb down, 0.08 up.

I recall when, a few years ago, the management said they’d upgraded capacity for a Macworld Expo. It seems they’ve done nothing since.

Time for someone to hang their heads in shame. I’m looking at you, AT&T, and Moscone mgmt. FAIL.

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Location:Howard St,San Francisco,United States

Fancy Foods Show at Moscone

I just realized that today is the Fancy Foods Show at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Yeah!

January for me has been Macworld Expo (since 1985) and, for the last several years, the Fancy Foods Show. The former has been moved, but the latter is on, thanks be.

Every year I hang out in the international pavillion, eschewing the too-sweet candies that litter much oh the show. Good dark chocolates excepted, of course.

Previous finds have included truffle pâté and oils, breseola, awesome coffees, and, last year, Sardinian cuisine. Who knows what’s in store for this year?

So here I am, on the subway, heading downtown. Updates to follow.

Cheese! How in the world did I forget cheese?

- Posted with BlogPress on my iPhone.

Location:Market St,San Francisco,United States