Results: my 1st three months at Core Performance

Fitness is my themeword for 2011 and since I'm now 30, I've begun to reassess where I'm at, how I'm doing, and have started to devote some energy to becoming even better.

To that end, I've starting working out three times a week for an hour in December at a Google-subsidized program called Core Performance.

Though I've been tracking my weight and BMI nearly daily using my Withings WiFI scale, I prefer to rely on the body composition measurements taken manually by Core Performance staff. Today I got my body comp results for my first three months and the good news is that I'm making considerable progress:

	Dec 3, 2010	Feb 22, 2011	Delta
Weight (lb):	168.4	164.2	-4.2 lb
Body Fat %:	22.91	17.66	-5.25%
Lean Mass (lb):	129.82	135.20	+5.38 lb
Fat Mass (lb):	38.58	29.00	-9.58 lb
Waist (in):	37.5	37.25	-0.25 in
Hip (in):	41.5	39.75	-1.75 in

Apart from the weekly workouts, I've also become more proactive in my water intake, and monitoring what I eat and when (i.e. I now eat a banana and peanut butter an hour before I work out). I've been using Healthmonth and so far its gameified featureset is definitely helping keep me honest.

Now I just need to practice getting more sleep!

Who is Jake Ellis?

In love with "Who is Jake Ellis?", a new comic with art by tonci zonjic and story by Nathan Edmondson.

It's like Jason Bourne meets Incognito meets Powers. And that's just in the first issue!

HTML is the new HTML5

Well, I don't think I was completely wrong, but perhaps Jeremy was kind of right too.

I liked the HTML5 logo for what it was trying to achieve: giving a brand name to a collection of technologies that many people already refer to as "HTML5" (even if they're technically inaccurate in what they describe by that moniker). But now that Ian Hickson has decided to drop version numbers from HTML altogether, that kind of changes (in some ways) the power of the HTML5 brand.

I guess HTML5 just means HTML5 again.

Indeed, the updated FAQ goes a long way to (re-)define what the logo is all about, and how you should use it. Ah, the foibles of geek marketing.

The game I play

I joked to my manager today that all I do all day is play games.

He turned to me and said wryly: "I already knew that. You're Chris Messina. You win at taking the most screenshots everyday."

Bam. Busted.

HTML5 gets a logo

I'm pretty stoked about the W3C's new HTML5 logo. As Ian Jacobs writes, "We intend for it to be an all-purpose banner for HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, and other technologies that constitute an open web platform."

My friend Jeremy Keith is not a fan, and while I appreciate his perspective and concern about the lack of technical specificity of this effort, I'm not concerned. Quite frankly, the logo is an answer to iOS, a simple, elegant, declarative, and monotheistic statement on how software development should happen in the 21st century.

The open web has always been about pieces loosely joined, and that's one of the aspects from which it derives its power. Once and a while though, it's not a bad thing to bring things together and blur the edges of the component parts in order to tell a simpler, more forceful story. Insomuch as this logo and identity helps us bring HTML5 (in all its meanings!) to a broader audience, I'm happy to support this.

The price of media

Yesterday I paid $4.37 for Wolverine #3 at Whatever Comics in the Castro (turns out I'm a big comic book nerd). Since I usually buy a dozen or so comics at a go, I hadn't really noticed the slow, steady increase in the price of individual comics. At less than the price of a pack of cigarettes, I figure a comic book is still a reasonable price, even if they're no longer in the $1-2 range.

And then I read this article in the New York Times about the problems magazine publishers are having selling "magazines" on the iPad and iPhone... turns out that without a subscription, it's just too much hassle for users to go a buy a new issue every month, and people seem resistant to paying a premium for digital content.

Reflecting on my own behavior, I see a similar aversion to buying digital comics, even though decent solutions like Comixology and Graphic.ly exist that serve that particular purpose. Instead — call me old fashioned — I like the tactility and visual excitement of purchasing the physical artifact. And I'll pay $4.37 an issue, but can't bring myself to spend $2.99 on the same content in digital form.

Really begs the question: is this merely a generational thing, where collecting comics or buying magazines in the future will seem obtuse? — or is it that the digital medium of bits and pixels still still can't replicate the satisfaction one gets from owning and possessing discreet paper products?

I'm just not sure, but until someone else figures it out, I'm sticking with my weekly Wednesday fix.

The nexus of digital life and IRL

I've noticed these stickers popping up with increasing tenacity — and not just in San Francisco, although this shot is from Mission Comics and Art, a few blocks from where I live.

These stickers are a forerunner to a time when we will take for granted the connection between the digital and the real worlds, and be comfortable and familiar with asserting digital identities at regular intervals throughout our day. That we have to be reminded to do this today is just a curious circumstance of the times we live in — and the new behavior that will, in not too many years, be expected of us.

It's happened with washing your hands, not littering, and recycling. It's not far off that we'll be shided to not forget to "check in at X site" upon arrival, or "leave a review on Y site" on the way out. These stickers prove it.

In 2011 I will be Tasks focused

It occurred to me the other day that my email infestation is actually more under my control than I might have been ready to admit.

You see, I use this simple and devious feature of Chrome called "pinning tabs". It's easy — just right click on a tab and pick "Pin Tab":

How to pin a tab.

Instantly the tab minimizes to its favicon form and slides all the way to the left, cemented in place until you "unpin" it. This makes it super easy to access and find your favorite web sites and apps from that point forward.

What I didn't realize when I started using this feature, however, is that what you pin matters. And what you pin leftmost matters most!

As you can see in the graphic at the top of this post, for most of 2010, Gmail occupied pole position — always there beckoning me to check and see what new email had arrived. It was like my own silent-movie version of the "You've got mail!" guy.

Even when I didn't have new mail. (Which was basically never. Sigh.)

So, it's a new year dedicated to "fitness" and what better way to get productively fit than to banish my inbox from such a ubiquitous spot in my browser? My new experiment is to keep the stand-alone version of Google Tasks pegged up there, constantly taunting me with the work I really should be doing.

So far so good. Who knows — maybe 2011 will be my most productive year yet!

So, what are doing to ensure your productivity in 2011?

The power of a preposition

I've noticed that a few networks are starting to elicit otherwise implicit relationship data to build out the edges of their social graph. Specifically, Facebook, Yammer, and Path all now ask you with whom you work, hang out, and do things:

Facebook - Activities

This kind of data will prove invaluable for determining the relative strength of ties, measuring interactions between people, and delivery relevant content between friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.

I definitely think they're on to something big here.

And then there was the Mac App Store

Overheard in a coffee shop:

"Hey, so did you know that there's now an App Store for your computer?"

"Huh?"

"Yeah, you know, like the one on your iPhone."

"Oh yeah, uh, sure."

"Yeah, it's cool so now you can install games on your laptop just like on your phone!"

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The Mac App Store is all about gaming. Let the solitaire begin!

Chris Messina

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