The Blog of Harald

Well, it’s been a year since I started this thing. My intention was to play with technology, and I’ve certainly succeeded in that! As with many things, this toy has taken on a life of its own; it’s kinda fun writing about the things I find interesting (even if nobody else is reading them :-). In the process I’ve met some new, interesting people, an unexpected bonus…

I started with Movable Type, but the “technology” list has expanded quite a bit:

* “Apache”:http://httpd.apache.org/ (1 and 2)
* “IPv6”:http://www.hs247.net/
* “mod_ssl”:http://www.modssl.org/ and certificate based access controls
* “Python”:http://www.python.org/
* “PHP”:http://www.php.net/
* “XHTML, CSS, and friends”:http://www.w3.org/
* “MySQL”:http://www.mysql.com/
* “mod_gzip”:http://www.schroepl.net/projekte/mod_gzip/
* “Wiki”:http://moin.sourceforge.net/

The server was upgraded by an order of magnitude (something I never blogged about, apparently), thanks to “Greg Wilson”:http://www.third-bit.com/~gvwilson/ and so I’ve been playing with other related software:

* “tomcat”:http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html for the students
* “mailman”:http://www.list.org/ to make it easier for my users to run their own mailing lists
* “postfix”:http://www.postfix.org/ originally because it plays well with Mailman, additionally for its anti-spam features
* “squirrel mail”:http://www.squirrelmail.org/ webmail for me and my users
* “courier imapd”:http://www.inter7.com/courierimap.html because it uses maildir, which makes squirrel much faster

This is fun. I think I’ll keep it going for another year…

Wow, what a weekend. It was +8°C on Saturday, and almost +12°C on Sunday, with lots of sunshine. Everything has finally started melting with the heat, so on Saturday I removed the 3″ layer of ice from the sidewalk, and broke up a bunch of other snowbanks and ice jams. Our driveway is now completely clear (instead of having just enough space cleared for the cars). The ice dam on the north roof has mostly melted away, a good thing since it looked heavy enough to tear the eavestrough off the side of the house.

I went for a nice drive on Saturday to move hermione.cfrq.net to its final location; it was so warm in the car I had to take my coat off and open the window a bit, which of course reminded me that the driver’s side window mechanism is broken (it lost a battle with ice a couple of months ago). It sure cooled off fast once the sun went down…

Sunday was our planned expedition to the “Bruce’s Mill Sugarbush Maple Syrup Festival”:http://www.trca.on.ca/parks_and_attractions/activities/sugarbush_festival/ with several families from the kids’ school. The kids mostly ran around and played in the snow, and rode the horse-drawn wagons, and generally ignored the details of maple syrup production, but that’s ok; they’ve all got cabin fever after this long cold winter. It was wonderful to be _out_ without losing the feeling in one’s fingers!

Of course, I ate too many pancakes…

My doctor has informed me that I can stop losing weight right now, and he certainly doesn’t want to see me below 170 lbs. His hand-waving metric is waist size; anything less than 36″ is fine by him, and I’ve dropped from having my belly hang over a 38″ pant to fitting comfortably inside a 33″. Actually, looked at that way, 35 lbs is even more impressive to me!

Sadly, my blood pressure is still slightly high; I’m not one of those lucky people for whom weightloss alone does the trick. Formal exercise come the springtime.

Anyway, I’ve got two weeks left on the current @work series, so I’ll finish that, which should take me down to 179, and then go onto maintenance. I figure trying to stay between 175 and 180 gives me a nice comfort zone… We’ll see how well that actually works :-)

According to a new study trying to lose weight is better than not trying, even if you don’t succeed.

bq. In a study of more than 6,000 obese and overweight people 35 and older who were followed for up to nine years, the death rate was 24% lower in people who lost weight intentionally than in people who did not try to shed pounds and whose weight stayed steady. But the death rate was 31% higher in people who lost weight unintentionally, the researchers report in the March 4th issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

bq. For people who were trying to trim down, those who actually lost weight had the lowest death rate. In a somewhat surprising finding, however, even people who were trying to lose weight but did not succeed had a lower death rate.

When I first saw this on Chuq’s blog, I was particularly fascinated by the _”death rate was 31% higher in people who lost weight unintentionally”_ part. Apparently one focus of this new study was to try to filter out unintentional weight loss:

bq. “There is a widespread assumption that weight loss is good,” Dr. Edward W. Gregg told Reuters Health in an interview. Weight loss is proven to have beneficial effects on several risk factors for disease, including high blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugar, explained Gregg, who is at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

bq. But the evidence linking weight loss to these improvements comes from relatively short-term studies, Gregg said. There is not really any very convincing evidence that losing weight decreases the risk of dying, according to Gregg.

bq. In fact, the CDC researcher pointed out that a large number of studies have suggested that people who lose weight may actually be at greater risk of premature death.

bq. The problem with most of these studies, Gregg said, is that they did not separate intentional weight loss from weight loss that occurred because of disease.

I guess this is more evidence to support the “every little bit helps” theory of health management. We already know that going from “couch potato” to “exercise 30 minutes per day” has the largest health benefit; now we have a similar result on the weightloss side. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should get complacent!

It was -25°C this morning here in Toronto (it normally drops to -8°C at this time of year). We had a cold snap pass through yesterday; the temperature dropped from 1°C to -16°C in five hours Sunday afternoon.

I walked out my front door this morning to find a river running down my driveway (and mostly freezing before it got to the end of the driveway). Eeek! I opened the garage to find a jet of water coming straight out of the wall; the cold water pipe had come off. I suspect that it came off when I turned the dryer on this morning; the dryer vent runs through the same hole into the garage as the water pipe.

It amazes me how much water can come out of a 1/4″ copper pipe. It’s a good thing we were late this morning, and so saw the problem before we left the house. The water would have fairly quickly frozen over all of the holes it was using to exit the garage, and then would have probably started pouring back into the house…

On the other hand, it was really cool seeing the water freeze so quickly on the driveway. I walked through the puddle a couple of times while getting the car ready and cleaning up the mess, and when I walked onto the dry (cold) pavement, my boots would freeze to the ground; it was like walking on a giant sheet of flypaper.

The life of a home owner is never boring :-)

Well, it’s working again; I lost 2 pounds this week.

As I continue to struggle to take off the pounds, people I know are all telling me that I look great, and many of them think that if I lose any more weight I’ll be too skinny. I’m certainly happy; My size is back down to where it used to be years ago (and none of my current clothes fit me anymore :-).

My original goal was 50 pounds, but I’m starting to question that. I don’t want to be one of those people who is constantly obsessing over every pound, which cuts both ways. On the one hand, if I don’t take off enough weight now, I won’t have any margin for error. On the other hand, if I set my weight goal too low, I won’t be happy with the amount of food I can eat to maintain that weight.

I’m not averse to losing more weight, and if I’m going to I should do it now, all at once, while I’m still in the mindset. So it’s time to take a different tack; now that I’ve lost 30 pounds and (more importantly) been eating healthy for 6 months, how’s my health? I’ve booked an appointment with my doctor, and he _loves_ running tests, so I should have a better place from which to make decisions in a couple of weeks.

My weight has been the same three weigh-ins in a row now. I can tell you exactly why, though.

* Firstly, I’ve been a relative couch-potato for the last two weeks. The winter cold is finally getting to me; I don’t _want_ to walk home from the subway, or walk to the GO Train in the morning. I could take long walks (in the underground) at lunch instead, but I haven’t wanted to do _that_ either. So, mini-resolution number 1: get back to walking to/from the train, or go for walks at lunches. Catch up on laundry and housework; that’ll get my activity level up again. To measure this, I’m going to record my pedometer readings again.

* Secondly, I’ve been unable to say no to potato chips, and (more damaging) to birthday cake. This week I’m over my points total by 17, and that’s entirely due to two pieces of birthday cake and a small mound of chips, all on the weekend. Thankfully, the bag of chips is now _gone_ from my house :-). So, mini-resolution number 2: strict adherence to points limits, and no more birthday cake. (I’m not going to give up the chips, but I’m going to try to go back to getting my weekly fix on curling nights, when I have the extra points available).

On the plus side, I’ve been paying more attention to nutritional balance. I’ve been making sure I get my milk and veggie servings every day, and I’ve been paying more attention to balancing protein and carbohydrates. I tend to maintain a balance over time, while having some high-carb days and some high protein days, so I suppose that’s good.

Yesterday, somone looked at me like I was _insane_ when I told her I was on a weight loss program; I suppose that’s a good sign too (that I don’t _look_ pregnant anymore :-).

Anyway, “stay tuned”:http://www.cfrq.net/~chk/weightloss.shtml for the results :)

James complains that he isn’t reading:

My time has been wasted sitting in front of the tube, or typing on the PowerBook, not with a book propped before my face. This is not good.

I know the feeling. I find that over the years I’ve been reading less and less. I used to be able to demolish at least three books a week; I’m now lucky if I get through one in two weeks. (The book list in the links bar goes back about 6 months right now).

Some reasons are obvious: I now have two kids; My train ride to work is shorter than it used to be, and I now get a car ride to work about half the time; I work through lunch more often; the books I read are 2-3 times longer than they used to be.

But some of it is that I spend way more time watching TV, or parked in front of the computer (or both) than I used to. I’ve been trying to get my TV watching down, but people keep making good TV shows for me to watch :-) And then there’s this whole weblog thing to keep up with…

Ah well; I still get some reading done; I just have to be a little more selective than I used to.

Charlotte (the four year old) sounded out “Canada” on a map all by herself at story time today!

She’s the kind of smart that’s going to be capital-T trouble in a few years.

I’m so proud. :-)

I am officially no longer “overweight”! My BMI has dropped below 25 as of today’s weigh-in.

Wee ha! And now, to celebrate: stuffed mushrooms, caesar salad, a large steak, baked potato with all the trimmings, and (of course) cherry cheesecake for dessert. To say nothing of the bottle of wine.

Wow, there’s a fantasy image! That’d certainly push me back over. All things considered, I don’t really want it, either. Well, excepting the cheescake.

Wow, I’m strange.

Mark has got me thinking again. What do I want my personal website to look like?

When I find interesting things on the web or in email, I like to share them with people I know. I used to send them to chatter, whereas now I mostly post them here. I think that’s a regression; more people read chatter than read my weblog. On the other hand, the sets don’t overlap much; The “right” answer, then, is to do both!

I like the exercise in writing that a weblog gives me. In that context, I don’t really care if people are reading or not; writing my thoughts down allows me to organise them in my brain a bit better. On the other hand, feedback from readers is good, because I sometimes have some pretty whacked out mis-perceptions on the world. So in a choice between private diary and public weblog, I’ll stick with the latter.

Do I care if I’m an A-list blogger? Never. Do I want something interesting for people to find on Google? Yes. Do I care if a potential employer reads this site? Well, yes. Is there a conflict between all of these sentiments? yes :-)

I’m not unhappy with what I’ve got so far. But I’m going to put a little more effort into writing about lighthouses.