An Apple a Day

At the hairdresser's on Tuesday I could only remember 11 out of my 12 resolutions! The one I forgot was "Eat healthily." Over on the facebook Will suggested I quantify this to make it easier to remember and also meaningful - so I resolve to eat one piece of fruit per day. I will also consider any other suggestions for how to eat quantifiably healthily! Note I am already down to only one beef meal per week thanks to the conflict of resolution 1 with my need to go observing in Hawaii.

oh deary Me!

Hello -
RIGHT, Can I ask oh 'mighty resolutions Phil' if I can postphone some of my resolutions for a bit?

Not the one about marrying phil K so don't worry everyone the wedding is still on!!
just the cooking one and the dressing nicely one and the gym one?

WHY??
Well ...
1) I have no cutlery or crockery (I only have ONE fork and TWO of those spoons for cough mixture with a small spoon one end and a large spoon the other end (Why I have two of those who knows!!) anyway they are rubbish for anything but cough mixture-you really can't really stir the perfect tomatoe sauce with one of those!)
2) I have no washing machine,
3) I have to spend my evenings in waiting for spaniards to maybe or maybe not turn up and buy my stuff......
YES you've guessed it! I'm moving house! AND..... (now this hopefully will redeem me a bit) - moving country ..as ... I have a job! wooo! IN Oxford! woo!
so would that be ok ... just until I move out??!

update, update

i know you all have been just dying to hear updates on how i'm doing on my resolutions! fear not! your wait is over. let's go through them one by one:

1. i received the following message the other day (after my first hour of work, clearly): "you're not online in the mornings anymore!" certifiable proof. 2. um, well, anybody that's within 6 degrees of phil m is learning something about carbon emissions. i read the first few chapters of the MacKay book over the holidays, and intend to finish it.
3. i've been doing really well at avoiding meat. i have not been buying it and have even told a few people about why i've made that conscious choice. i made stir fry with tofu the other day; i cried the whole time i was cooking at the lack of meat. my tears added a unique flavor...no substitute for meat, however. i think ken should make me bacon as a reward for my diligence on this resolution. the government in germany came out for curbing meat intake the other day, following in the UN's footsteps. i guess the german diet now consists of only potatoes and beer.
4. i'm almost done with Everything is Illuminated. i also got within 20 pages of finishing Orlando and couldn't do it. i'm holding onto it as an ace up my sleeve in case i'm a little short come december 2009. i also acquired quite a few novels on my birthday a week ago. yessssss.
5. jerry and jen have received an e-mail alerting them of my resolution to go camping. it also informed them that they are in charge of this trip. this resolution has been successfully delegated!
6. phil pointed out the lost coast. that's as far as i've gotten, though.
7. there seems to be much debate about onions vs. garlic. all information i have about the perfect tomato sauce at this time however is rigorously untested.

At last, some Python

So I've learnt some Python, and written a cool clock. Yay for me.
Anyone who is interested can take a look; it's in the link. You'll need
pygame installed as python, and it's been 'tested' on ubuntu and Windows XP.

I'm quite impressed with how easily I've managed to get a cross-platform
graphical application working. That was the idea though!

I know my resolution to learn Python and qt, but qt designer looked too interactive for producing this. That'll be the next project.

A captive audience in Irvine

Yesterday I gave the astrophysics seminar at UC Irvine - a captive audience! I took the opportunity to fulfill NYR#2 ("Explain why I am replacing flights with videoconferences") and hit them first with this slide:


and then this one:


It generated 25% of the questions! Yes, there were only 4, but still - just the fact that I turned up on the train gave them something to think about, and we spent some time talking at lunch and dinner about flying, beef, solar power etc etc. I left them with an emailed link to David MacKay's book, so we'll see if any of the Irvine astronomers decide to fly less (and perhaps donate some of their saved air miles to me...)

James Bullock, the head of the group, got quite excited actually - he thinks it's silly that we keep flying to Hawaii all the time, and was suggesting things like paying the observatory to hire more support astronomers instead. He might be a useful ally if I decide to take on the W.M. Keck Observatory!

Some progress/fulfillment

Last week, the morning after I posted my NYRs, I got up and would normally have gone back to bed (it was Sunday, and I'd gone to bed at 330) or had a lazy morning, but I had NYRs in mind, so I stumbled to the Farmers' Market, where I was able to make headway on #1-3. In particular, I bought lovely local produce that helped with #1-2 and discovered that as of December (I hadn't been in > a month) there's a stand selling grass-fed beef (that isn't THAT expensive) in addition to an older one selling pork (which I hadn't known was mostly grass-fed, but is quite expensive). These greatly alleviate concerns I had with carnivorism and #2. I also chatted up the local garden club for advice re: #3. Apparently "cold" is not a concern in SB, so plans for #3 will move ahead when time permits.

As for #4-7, no progress there. I think my weekly cleaning was ambitious, so I changed it to every other week. Sue me. Re: #8, I've recently been working on rowing (erging), which pushed me past the "beginner" level on the 2k row. Lots of work to do to get past "intermediate": 7:30 2k. For the rowers among you, is an 8:10 2k really a beginner's time? I don't think I'm terribly unfit, but my body was horrified after clocking 8:01.

tales from the tredmill

I went to the GYM today
on the tredmill i did not think up any great new research ideas nor did I solve any prolems or complicated sums in my head like some accademics probably do. Instead I thought about Homer Simpson, in that scene where he is on a tredmill, and his wobbling love handels slowly morph into a larva lamp, and then the doctor says "its kinda hypnotic"
I hope I don't subconciously think I'm Homer!
Tx

Progress

Exams are over until April! Phew!

Now I can get on with some proper self-improvement :)

I'm off to buy myself a copy of vol.1 of Marx's Capital today. I have a post-exam free day before lectures resume on Friday, so I'm going to make the most of the opportunity to read something other than a law textbook today :)

I have booked a weekend of wheel building with my uncle into my diary (7/8 March) and triathlon training has resumed! Woo-hoo!

Watch out world here I come!

question for phil about trains...

Phil; I've been thinking about the reduction of energy usage. Although I've not calculated
my energy usage like you have, I'm still pretty good. I cycle to work for example. But there
are occasional days where I get the train. (I don't (at the minute) drive in; hard to find parking and traffic is a pain. This may change when Claire gets a job and I have to take the kids to school...) So I come up with three energy usage figures.

1 - I cycle in. Zero energy cost.
2 - I get a full train (ie before 9am). The energy cost is the energy cost of getting
the train 6 miles divided by a full train-load of people, over two carriages.
3 - I get a half-full train (ie after 9am). The energy cost is the energy cost of getting
the train 6 miles divided by a half a train-load of people, over two carriages.

My difficulty is that if I am on the bike, the trains still run. And if I get to the station late, the energy cost has gone up!

So I think my big question is: should large communal public service transportation (trains, buses) be counted to individual who use them, or should they be counted to the population as a whole?

Is the argument that if no-one used the train, Adam Smiths' silent hand would come and remove the trains, and so the overall energy cost would fall? How does that balance with ego projects that are heavily subsized by the government?

(I thought that the TGV was an example of this, but http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/map.html as it as making a massive profit each year, and it's only blog posts that seem to argue that its subsidized. Maybe my google-fu is weak.)

Oh, and as we are talking about trains:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/organic_fuel.png

All work and no play ...

means Phil's resolutions aren't really happening yet ...

Thanks to exams this Tuesday and Wednesday, with the exception of number 2 - "Study a bit harder" - my NYRs haven't really made much of an impact, although I haven't eaten lunch at the uni canteen I suppose (largely because I haven't been onto campus yet though!)

I also think that my NYRs might need some tinkering ... too much emphasis on big single projects ... watch this space. Triathlon training resumes this week however, on Thursday with a run, and then swimming with Oxford Tri on Friday. Wish me luck.

Revision calls ...

Ken's NYRs

Howdy. Hi all. I'm Ken, Phil M.'s neighbor-in-the-physics-building as well as -across-the-parking-lot. I steal his wireless connection, among other things. One could call me a parasite, and one would be correct. Changing that is not one of my resolutions.

I had been planning on taking some time to write down my New Year's Resolutions in a coherent form, but I made an 11pm resolution (with witnesses) while out drinking to write them down when I got home tonight, regardless of my state of mind.

My resolutions can be split into 2 somewhat overlapping dichotomies: food/non-food and global-/self-improvement. Here goes:

1) Eat a meal (and better yet, cook a meal) with someone else at least once a week (not counting campus meals), as well as host more dinner parties. As an effective bachelor (the better half lives 300 miles away and I live solo), I can easily go several weeks cooking and eating dinner by myself. Eating should be a communal activity appreciated with other people, and it's hard to appreciate food when you eat it alone while reading a magazine. As for the non-campus caveat: when I'm on campus, I often just grab a hasty lunch with the officemate, which doesn't really fall under the guise of food-savoring nor socializing, since we often talk about science.

2) Eat more sustainable / less unsustainable food. In my ideal world, I would raise all my own food or personally know and visit the people raising my food (and participate in the slaughtering; people who can't stand the thought of animals dying shouldn't be allowed to eat meat!). That's pretty tough in this day and age, but one can make some headway by shopping more at the farmer's market (which also has meat stalls in addition the plentiful local produce), eating more local sustainable seafood (montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch has a nice list of sustainable seafood, and the SB fish market has knowledgeable people), and eating less meat in general, which is tough because meat is so freaking delicious when it's good. At the very least, I can avoid so-so meat and try to make meat as a side dish rather than the main attraction. In related news...

3) Construct and plant a nice vegetable garden with trellises and beds and the like. I don't even mean my own garden, since that would be pretty tough logistically with no yard and minimal space for pots, but just a garden at all for others to benefit from. One option is Emily's house, which has a giant backyard currently devoted to an unproductive grass lawn. This would take a day or three of serious effort and then maintenance/watering on their part, bless their green souls. But I'm pretty sure Emily's on board, right? Another project is the significant other's balcony, which gets some sun and could be put to use.

4) Clean a major part of the apartment every other week. I haven't really scrubbed down the range or oven since I moved in 1.5 years ago. The bathtub has pink bacteria cultures where the curtain meets the porcelain. These are not the worst offenses in my apartment. Let us move on.

5) Go outside of SB-proper at least once a month. The surrounding area has a lot to offer: wine-tasting, hiking, biking, camping. I never do these things out of sheer laziness. I've only got 1.5 years left here, so I'd better take advantage.

6) Make my bike something to take pride in. I got a bike off Craigslist that's been finagled into a quasi-single-speed. It can be made better. It should.

7) Have a regular chamber music group, ideally with a performance for charity. I played violin for ~15 years, but stopped when I got to college. I can still play okay, but I've found that playing solo is not nearly as fun as playing with others. Even better would be a performance with the side-benefit of proceeds for charity. But that's sort of a long-shot. Isn't that what New Year's Resolutions are for?

8) Achieve the advanced Crossfit standards (http://www.crossfitseattle.com/Skill%20Levels%20poster.pdf). This one will be sort of tough. Some of the things I've already met, but others (like the rowing-related ones) are not even close. A more realistic goal would be the intermediate standards by July.

Okay, it's extremely late. We'll see what gets edited after I read this in the morning...


-Ken

Recipe list

Before I forget, I'd better write these down - the 5 new things I plan to learn to cook this year (photos of which you are all looking out for). Here they are:

• Chow mein (recipe from Marcus, aiming at that UK Chinese takeaway flavour)
• Tomato sauce for pasta (Sicilian-style from Stefania, arrabiatta from Tommaso)
• Corned beef and cabbage (by St Patrick's Day I guess!)
• Spanish omelette (I even have the right little pan and everything)
• Risotto (mushroom to start with, then we'll see)

I always feel better with a specific plan. Other resolutions are going well, almost across the board, and even into the unwritten ones! I went to work and worked yesterday (except for one football-related email and 5 mins out to sing happy birthday down the phone to a friend). I was 30 mins later into work but hey, work-life balance is going to improve I reckon. I also set up a direct debit, told Quetin about playing 4 rounds of golf and then discussed club-buying optionswith him, organised Matt's python hints into a website (coming soon, Will!), had salad for lunch yesterday, and am smiling as I type! Now, am I doing all of this so I don't have to get contacts? Hmm.

A confession

Bless me, blog, for I have sinned...

I've failed on the drinking water thing. It's too easy at work to just drink Coke and coffee. I think I need to get a water bottle; just refilling Coke bottles doesn't work.

I've also failed, big time, on clearing my games backlog - I bought a Wii. Admittedly it was a present for my wife, and the games (Wii Sports etc.) aren't really story driven, so there is no real end point. So it's not really adding to a backlog, just taking up time that should be used to clear the backlog.

The not drinking booze one. Ah. Well, it was my wife's birthday, so we went to the pub. So that scuppered that one. And I did order some more malt extract and a wine kit for homebrewing. It's not against the letter of my resolution, but it will end up putting more temptation in my way. Maybe I'll resist and be a better person...

Will's Resolutions

So, here are my resolutions

• Drink more water.

• Only drink booze on Friday or Saturday nights

So those two are kind of related. I find it very easy to come home after a day at work, drinking only coffee and Coke, and then just drink a 6 pack of beer (when in the US) or 4 cans (in the UK). Get up in the morning, repeat. Either I'm young and great and my body just copes, or the caffine and alcohol are attacking my liver/kidneys from two different directions and so that feels like an even keel. Either way, not sustainable, and so drink more water during the day, and cut out school-night-alcohol.

• No laptops twice a week.

In an effort to speak to my spouse more often (!), we have agreed to limit our computer usage. No random surfing/working, more quality time with each other.

• Write papers.

A work related one. It's kind of hard on big instrument projects (because there's that big instrument paper at the end) but one way is to get involved in more of the quick turn around development aspects. Also 'diversifying' and doing some observing would help...

• Clear computer game backlog.

A non work one. :-) I have a stack of computer games that are half finished. I need to complete them before buying more.

• Learn Qt & Python.

I should learn something new this year on a computer, and everyone raves about Python. Although I'm slightly worried that it's the 'in thing' at the minute, but it does look like a better version of Perl (where better means 'doesn't look like line noise'). Qt... Well, I'd like to add gui-ness to some things, and so qt is mentioned there. Although the Python book I looked at today was mentioning nice GUI support through Python, so these two fit together nicely.

• Read astro-ph every day.

Work again. I need to keep up. It doesn't take much. In fact, I realised how to do this. I've got a 'daily' folder in my firefox bookmarks, which I do a 'open in tabs' at the beginning of the day. It's got the daily comics I read (including hack-a-day and slashdot), so I just add astro-ph, and the instrument development section, and job done. The trick is then to read the interesting papers as well...

• Deal with annoyances rather than ignoring.

This is a very general, hard to do one. I let things slide, and they get annoying. And then they get more annoying, so I just ignore them harder. And then they get built up in my head to really big things to sort, and just doing them stresses me out. If I just replied to the email immediately, or took the library book back in good time, it wouldn't be so bad....

Confession

oh dear!

its only the 6th of january and I'm already failing on at least one of my resolutions.

Yes, this is the resolution I thought would be tricky and it is! the dreaded NUMBER 3! ("wear more fashionable clothes")

last night I found myself in a kind of cool bar type restaurant in Barcelona wearing a rather ancient Oxford Triathlon Club hoodie that I had been wearing for 3 days and some dirty jeans!! Nooooo!!!  And to make matters worse I couldn't take the hoodie off as underneath I was wearing a very old THERMAL VEST!  oh dear! 

someone teach me how to be fashionable ... please!

Will's introduction

Hello,
Just in case some people don't know me, I'm Will. I'm an astro person like Phil (we met in Cambridge, all those years ago) but more on the building hardware side.

I've "just" (6 months ago) moved to Wales after 4 years in NYC. My two kids are 3 and 4.5, I'm very happily married. Every year I make some half hearted New Years' resolutions, and keep to them for about 2 weeks. I'm joining this blog so that I can actually fix this!

I remember a friend telling me a couple of years ago that humans keep habits if they do them for more than 6 weeks. (Obviously this doesn't count for addictive things.) So I just need to keep in the habit of

• posting here
• following my resolutions

for two months to really cement them into my lifestyle.

Nicole's Resolutions for 2009

2009 holds some significant changes for me -- graduation, moving to the other side of the school desk, and publishing -- so a blog seems a useful way to keep connected and keep events in perspective. Thanks for putting this together, Phil.

Resolutions:

1. Wear better shoes. I know the whole wardrobe needs a professional upgrade, but that overwhelms me. I'm starting with the shoes.
   
2. Answer letters and emails when I get them. No more procrastinating. No more avoiding tasks. No more crafting the perfect email that never gets sent because the moment has passed.
3. Learn to blog and keep up with it. Blogging has become a key to publishing success, so it's high time I start.
4. Volunteer more time. This will be a busy year, but I want to feel more connected to the SB community.
5. Dance every week. Any kind of dancing is great (and counts), but I specifically want to rebuild skills I've let slip over the last few years.
6. Do yoga. This may appear to overlap with resolution 5, but it is quite different. At least in my mind it is.
7. Do more with friends. As life gets hectic, I become a hermit. This isn't healthy. So, anyone want to take a yoga class with me?
8. Read more short stories. They are an endangered art form that can take as little as one bus ride to read. And I want to work on my ability to evoke -- to say more with fewer words.
9. Understand and identify pass interference in American Football. It's one of the most common calls against American Football players, and yet its identity is inexact. It is nuanced and subtle. This resolution may be impossible.
   

That's enough for this year. Maybe next year, when the dissertation is done and I've taught a class or two, I'll try for ten resolutions.

I look forward to reading your posts!

emily in 2009

ok, here goes ;). this is by far the most extensive set of new years resolutions i've made...let's see what happens!

1. sign completely out of email/IM/google reader for my first hour of work.
2. learn more about carbon emissions to inform a new, yet-to-be-defined resolution on the most effective way for me to limit my own impact. this one is basically a holder for a "reduce my carbon footprint" resolution until i have a more specific plan.
3. eat less meat. i've been waffling because i allow myself to consider it anti-social, when really i know how to do it without compromising that and just haven't been. also, be willing to talk about this resolution, which i totally avoid.
4. read 12 fiction books. i've been letting fiction reading slip too long in favor of news and nonfiction.
5. go backpacking once. jen's and jerry's move to CA should help out with this...
6. make a trip north of san francisco.
7. cook the perfect tomato sauce.

hopefully writing these down will keep me honest... here's to a productive, healthy 2009...

Phil's 2009 Resolutions

Well, not quite - but I do have 12 this year (count them!). I think if this community grows a bit, and we get the feed going into facebook, and follow the blog, and comment, and post little and often, 12 should be very do-able. Also, I picked some pretty easy ones.

1. Replace flights with videoconferences. You can read more about this here, but the bottom line is that I have to fly less than 22,000 miles this year for my energy consumption to fall to that of an average Brit.
   
2. Explain why. As in, explain why I am replacing flights with videoconferences. (It's because the oil is running out and I don't really want to give up plastics, medicines etc, and because dangerous climate change is bad enough without it becoming catastrophic, thank-you. Tick!)
3. Play 72 holes off 36. Another forward-thinking one this - one day I will not be able to run enough to be useful on a football/cricket field. I think golf is going to be my retirement sport, and I'd quite like to be good at it. If all goes well I'll move up to a "handicap" of 35 next year, and so on, so that by the time I retire I will be a scratch player, ready for the Open qualifying.
   
4. Learn to cook 5 new things. Honestly, I have begun to bore myself.
5. If you're going to work, work. No more half-working, half-browsing, deeply unsatisfying Sunday afternoons, or workdays when I do not earn my beers.
6. Smile. How hard can this one be? It's bad news when someone you haven't seen for a year tells you how serious you have become...
7. Get contacts. Alright, this one is going to be tricky - I have a severe phobia of having foreign objects stuck in my eyes, and yet I want to make perfect first time passes that open defences right up. What's a short-sighted attacking midfielder to do?
8. Save. This year by direct debit. I have to make the most of this exchange rate! And also of having a salary at all.
9. Take 10 days contiguous holiday, and go away one weekend in six. I had this last year (not that you knew) and nailed it, but just to make sure it gets cemented into my lifestyle I'm sticking it in again.
10. Eat more healthily. Too much junk food at lunchtime ,with the excuse that "I'm playing football later," has led to Jeremy raising his fat ugly head again, hence undoing all the good work of that 2007 resolution.
    
11. Learn a language. I choose python.
12. Don't say no to the beach. I'll be leaving SB in the autumn (fingers crossed) so need to make the most of living by the sea. It's surprisingly easy to take it for granted, which is stupid because I love the sea and will miss it terribly when I leave, I know. So anytime anyone asks me to the beach, or whenever the thought of going to the beach pops into my head, I have to go. However, I reserve the right to say no to surfing, which knacks in my arms and tends to disappoint.

Happy New Year!

Jen's resolutions for 2009

2009 is going to be an important year, I can tell, thereby justifying 10 resolutions for self improvement and for me being a bit better global citizen. It might have been easier to do this before consuming multiple bottles of bubbly and dancing till 5 but with a slightly fuzzy head, here goes....

1. If you are going to do it/work/go, just do it/work/go. No more time wasting, procrastinating, not being focused. It wastes my time not anyone else's.

2. Spend less. And if I have to spend, spend on organics, on good quality, on things that last, things I need. To this end, avoid casino supermarket and always shop with a list and purpose.

3. Get out and exercise to feel good, energetic, productive and healthy. Do what I enjoy - go to classes, salsa, swim (fast). But do something and stop making excuses.

4. Get out into the fresh air and out of urban life: enjoy the beach, mountains, green spaces as often as possible. Plan holidays accordingly.

5. Change my job. In line with no 1. Remember this is my chance to be CJ Craig!

6. Send more personal, thoughtful gifts to important god children, family and friends. And just generally make sure I stay connected.

7. Improve my mind at least once a month so that I can contribute to interesting discussions and make more of a difference through informed choices. Read the economist more. Read more intelligent books - on subjects that expand my horizons more. Follow Obama's policies. Vote. Monitor what's going on in the middle east as much as Africa. Listen to more different music. Learn more about different music.

8. Visit India and Nepal to see Margie, Candy and Lydia (and the mountains) (thereby using lots of carbon, I know but I think my job choice might reduce my footprint overall).

9. Do something to actively campaign on issues that I believe in. Action against climate change. Peace in the Middle east. Political change in Zimbabwe. Reduced trade in mines and small arms. Don't focus on me so much - as evidenced by resolutions 1-8.

10. Life is too short: have fun and be happy.

That should be enough....

Happy new year all!