Joel Spolsky (of Joel on Software) and Jeff Atwood (of Coding Horror) have created an excellent podcast for programmers called StackOverflow. Listeners can submit questions by emailing MP3s, so i promptly sat down and recorded one. But i think it’s silly to just send it into the ether and wait for someone else’s users to one day get a hold of it and begin discussing it, when i’ve got a perfectly good community right here! (all 3 of you…)
So give a listen and say something productive, you heathens:
Here’s the transcript for lazy listeners, Google spiders, and the Cubicly Challenged:
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Hey Jeff and Joel, great podcast.
My name is Loren Norman, and i’m a web entrepreneur and Ruby on Rails programmer in Atlanta, GA.
Joel, for your RailsConf talk, i think you should address the subject of Ruby in the enterprise. There’s a bit of a holy war going on for these fundamental Rubyists who shout “Ruby is so great, everyone should use it.” Of course, no language or technology can inherently belong, or not belong, in the enterprise, but the fact is it’s just not instantly practical for a corporation with millions of dollars of infrastructure in Java or .NET to suddenly inject Ruby into the mess.
So i think the real question is more along the lines of “How should a new language or technology go about entering the enterprise?”, is there a responsible path? perhaps it’s a task-by-task judgment? or maybe there ARE there some things that should inherently be true of a language before it should be considered?
So what are your thoughts, guys?
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And that question goes to my readers as well. To the comments!
Another podcast! Alas, the program remains nameless, and there has been no meaningful feedback. We forged ahead nonetheless, and now we’ve created even more discussion around cloud computing and live video broadcast to the web. Give a listen:
Topics:
Loren is considering alternatives to Justin.tv for his live video needs. Does anyone know anything about Stickam or Ustream?
Google FriendConnect: Webmaster’s Godsend, or Evil Empire Play? Facebook certainly doesn’t like it…
Loren broadcast his entire day yesterday, including home-brewing some beer, playing some old-school video games, a health round of drinking games, and then some chick shenanigans
Loren also likes to embed a Backnoise channel under his live videos for easy chat support/interaction
Marty spent a long time trying to get Canadian sports with web hackery, and then discovered via a local blog, The Burgh Report, that Justin.tv is full of people (illegally) rebroadcasting pretty much all sports
Lastly, the guys discussed the new GPS, connected, crowd-sourced mapping device, the Dash, and how cool it is that it was built on the open cell network framework, OpenMoko
Today I am attending Startup Riot, an event for startups who want to pitch themselves to venture capital and angel investor types. There’s something like 50 startups presenting today, so they each get 3 minutes and 4 slides. It is going to be brutal. Chad and I are here just to watch the bloodbath and do some networking.
UPDATE ABOUT THE VIDEO STREAM: Well, I was broadcasting this event live before lunch, but I was asked to stop by the organizer. (Something about some people still have day jobs, potential SEC trouble, etc. I’m sure i wouldn’t understand…)
UPDATE 2: Here’s the videos i took until my battery died, neatly archived by Justin.tv. I’m linking them here for posterity, but they really aren’t that interesting when they’re not live…
So we stopped the cleanse on Friday, after 6 days. Cara wasn’t feeling well with the laxative process, so we decided to go ahead and begin easing out of it. I’ve said before that after day 4, everything was pretty much golden, so I’m pleased with quitting after having gotten through the hardest part. Now we have to rebuild our gut flora!
The first day off, we only drank orange juice and organic veggie soup broth all day. You can really feel it going all the way through your stomach, it’s really gratifying to feel that clean. And only that little bit of substance literally filled me up, so clearly my stomach has shrunk quite a bit during this. I’ll go on and cite that as a benefit of the cleanse, since i’m definitely going to leverage my decreased intestinal capacity to develop some better eating habits.
I mean, doesn’t that effect put this fast at odds with the stomach stapling surgery that is all the rage now? So, you can spend all this money and have someone tie up your stomach to stop you from wanting to eat so much, or you can exercise some discipline. One site even advocates using the cleanse for that purpose, perhaps taking 6 days of cleanse, then 4 days of eating lighter, then back to fasting, repeat until your portions are where you want them to be. That might be extreme for most people, but if you didn’t mind the lemonade i could see it being a possibility.
I guess i’m kind of eating my words about weight-loss, now, but it isn’t the same. I’d still say that the fast itself doesn’t constitute sustainable weight loss (the water weight drop is worthless, of course.) But the complete reboot of your eating habits and physical makeup do leave you in an advantaged position to affect dietary change.
On that note, Cara and i went grocery shopping to restock the house with stuff. We spent a lot of money on a lot of things, but i’m proud to say that most of it was organic foods and little or none of it was money spent sustaining factory farming (don’twatchthesevideos unless you’re still eating meat and drinking cow’s milk.) As of now, we’re totally vegetarian.
We also stopped by Cook’s Warehouse at Amsterdam Walk to burn Cara’s $160 gift certificate there. We ended up spending most of it on a couple of appliances: an ice cream maker and a juice extractor! There are a lot of amazing and healthy recipes we can use the ice cream maker for (Alton Brown’s delectable Avocado Ice Cream comes to mind) and the juice extractor will make excellent and interesting supplemental possibilities to our newly-strict diet. Do you know how good carrot juice is?!?!?
On the second day off of the fast, we had a healthy brunch consisting of veggie wraps, pita and hummus, a vegetable omelet, and fruit (we were sharing a bunch of food from The Treehouse, so good and healthy.) Cara had a Mimosa (gotta get that OJ), and i had a glass of cabernet (alcoholism…) Later that night, we cut up some protein dogs (meatless hot dogs) into a bunch of veggies, cooked them up, and ate them on a piece of toasted wheat bread with a little bit of organic salsa on top. This was probably overboard, as my stomach didn’t feel great, and Cara was actually in a lot of pain that night.
The next day, Cara made us an amazing vegetable soup. I wish she’d post the recipe so i could link to it, but needless to say it was an enormous amount of veggies in organic broth. This is the meal we should have had the previous day, according to the instructions (and common sense.) After eating that soup and a bunch of fruit afterwards, i think my stomach is ready for anything again.
The challenge now will be to learning how to be a vegetarian in every day life. When i was eating fish, it wasn’t terribly hard to just go anywhere, anytime. But not allowing any meat at all will narrow my options at many restaurants considerably. Of course, if i do this right, and keep my portions low and my stomach nice and small, it should be just as trivial for me to skip meals when i need to (or just rely on side salads, etc.)
There will probably be one more Master Cleanse-related post where i actually decide whether to advocate this for anyone else or not, but that may not come for another week or so. Just wanted to give a heads up to those of you following me specifically for the cleanse updates, you may not find my technolust nearly as interesting (but that’s your problem.)
Saturday afternoon, Marty and I ground out our first podcast. It is literally me and him chatting over Skype for 45 minutes. Here’s the podcast, the summary is below:
Topics we cover:
Podcasting software: why are there so many pay walls around letting me record my own audio? Currently we are using Pamela, a Skype plugin that outputs mp3s
What should our podcast be called? What should it be about? Currently we’re thinking development talk, social web talk, and entrepreneurial talk.
Loren discusses his experience as an “expert” on web video at the Entrepreneurs Meetup
CamTwist is amazing, free video broadcast software for the Mac
Marty and Amy’s Credible Seminar Series
Why the hell did we do this?
Basically, Marty and I talk about a lot of topics via instant message on a daily basis, and it was time to start eating our own dogfood. We figured, if we’re going to have the discussion anyway, why not do it in the easiest way possible (talking instead of typing), and why not record it and give it away (podcasting to the rescue!) Of course, we learned a lot along the way just getting this first one completed.
Primarily, we’re unhappy with the fact that MOST people can’t just decide to start a podcast trivially, the way we did. And, of course, even we had plenty of bumps. A lot of this discussion is about these difficulties, the type of podcasting system we’d like to see, and how it can be really meaningful, socially.
Marty has actually begun work with Google’s AppEngine and Amazon S3, with hopes of getting some kind of podcasting hosting system created that we can use. If that happens, we’ll likely begin to host this podcast on its own domain, and set it up for subscription via your favorite software (iTunes or whatever.) For now, just look for future posts on our respective blogs.
Speaking of future podcasts, we need feedback and support! If you are interested in more podcasts like this, please leave me some comments here. I want to know what you liked and what you didn’t. I want to know what you would name this podcast. I want to know if you want to be a guest host with us in the future.
I slept in and worked from home in anticipation of the Web Entrepreneurs Meetup that evening, figuring i’d need my energy to go late. I did my saltwater bath (the video from yesterday showed it) then spent most of the day working on a gargantuan blog post that served a number of purposes, like preparing me for the presentation, keeping all of my resources in one place, and linkbaiting the internet to my company’s blog.
Then i squeezed in a haircut (what do you think?) before straightening myself up and heading to the Meetup. At this point, it was 6pm, and i had only drank 1 liter of lemonade, so i took the second one with me.
I was worried about energy because it’s kind of taxing to go to these events. There’s the stairs of the parking garage, all of the loud talking at the event itself, and a few blocks of hiking to get to the bar and back for networking afterwards. All in all it’s a good 6 hours of stress and exertion.
To my surprise, everything was great. I barely touched my lemonade and still wasn’t hungry or weak throughout the time period. It really seems like after about day 4, all of the bad stuff had happened and my body had adjusted to this routine.
My stomach has shrunk greatly during this, no doubt. If that isn’t a benefit of the cleanse, i don’t know what you’re looking for. When i reintegrate food into my diet, it will be really easy to enormously reduce my portions. Not to mention the fact that a nice veggie salad looks as good as a steak dinner, now. If you want to adjust your diet, but are failing to be disciplined enough to do it on your own, i’d recommend the cleanse as a nice way to affect some serious change. Not only do i not want to be stuffed with food, but i don’t want to eat nasty food since i feel so pristine inside.
While we’re on the subject, why do we celebrate being stuffed in this country, anyway? I’ve heard that the difference in us and the French is that we eat until we are full, and they eat until they are not hungry. Sounds subtle, but the difference is pretty huge, especially when you consider that there’s a 20 minute lag time between your stomach and brain in terms of hunger. 20 minutes? That’s a hell of a buffer to contend with, especially at the speed most people eat. I don’t think it’s out of the question that most people eat 5 times as much as they should, before we ever even get to the issue of eating things they shouldn’t.
At any rate, our diets are going to change drastically again after this, i believe. Meat will be entirely killed, portions will be shrunk further, and we’ll probably begin shopping at the organic stores much more regularly. So after the cleanse, its entirely likely that i will continue to blog about the foods we’re eating, and the lifestyle changes that go along with them.
I was watching the Food Network for a few moments today, and it occurred to me that there is no outlet for vegetarians, vegans, or organic advocates on there. Sure, there’s the occasional special episode or something, but overall the consumption of meat and the willy-nilly purchasing at the local big chain supermarket are just assumed in all of their programming.
Is there room for an Organic Network, a Vegetarian/Vegan Network? Man, i bet there is. Maybe we’ll launch a tv network from home before the year is up…
I’ve just posted a mammoth blog post over at the Snowcap Labs site about video on the web. I posted it in collaboration with my discussion tonight at the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs Meetup, where I’m speaking as an expert on web video.
I left a video today since i’m pressed for time. It includes me chugging the saltwater, a must watch! I don’t know why the spacing is messed up, i blame Seesmic.
Today was great! I woke up promptly at 6:30am (2 hours before the alarm), and almost immediately was able to move the bowels without any outside help. This time, it wasn’t just the saltwater, i actually passed some solid matter (i know, i know, TMI continues.) I guess it’s debatable as to what it was (a mass of now-dead gut flora? or these illusive ‘toxins’ that make everyone so mad to mention?)
At any rate, the exhaustion from yesterday was entirely alleviated afterwards, leading me not to care. I actually had ANOTHER movement mid-afternoon while at The Lab, with the same consistency. I maintained high levels of energy for most of the day, only starting to get tired towards twilight (a long day, even by eating-people’s standards.)
I have been skeptical of doing the saltwater bath at night since day one. The instructions call for it on an empty stomach, so they suggest doing it in the morning. We elected to do it at night for comfort, because it isn’t pleasant, and no one wants to go to work with an unstable bowel situation. Plus, you might need a shower afterwards…
But i’ve been wondering, does water and lemonade count as an empty stomach? That is, does it really work if you do it at night? Today’s results made me think i should try it in the morning, so we resolved not to do the bath tonight.
However, the instructions also call for something called “laxative tea”, which we also haven’t been doing. The tea is optional, it says, so if the bath is working, you don’t have to have the tea. If you take the tea, you are supposed to drink it before bed, then in the morning take the saltwater.
Well, opting for the morning saltwater, we decided what the hell, let’s try the tea also. So we grabbed some on the way home from work (Publix has it, and it looks like this.) Around 8:30, we brewed up a couple of cups and retired to the bedroom to watch Evan Almighty (which i don’t recommend, feels like PG Disney crap.)
I have to admit, it sat rather heavily in my stomach. It wasn’t terribly uncomfortable, but i was certainly aware it was there. What will happen when the morning comes and i combine the powers of the laxative tea and the saltwater bath? You’ll have to stick around for Day 5 to find out!
Also, the constructive comments have started to come in, and that makes me really happy. I’ve got my comments moderated (who knew there was so much hate on the net? oh wait…), so i apologize if you leave one and it doesn’t appear immediately. I highly encourage you to interact, especially if you have questions and curiosities! (I also added video comments yesterday. All you need is a webcam and a microphone, which most modern laptops provide, and you’ll be cussing me out directly in no time! Look for the link just below the comment box. Still moderated, of course…)
10:00 AM: Feeling really sluggish today. Could just be a case of the Mondays, but i’m hoping for some productive eliminations tonight…
Later: As the day went on, i continued to feel more and more weary and exhausted. I suppose this is probably to be expected during a fast, but quite frankly i’m too busy to be slowed down mentally, right now.
Eliminations actually yielded some pretty good results. I expelled some pretty serious demons, and i definitely found that i had a lot more energy afterwards. This is in step with the results i’m supposed to see, so that pleased me greatly (still being a skeptic myself.)
Socially, we’re being met with unreasonable bias and anger. It’s so strange. People whom i’ve known for a long time and whom i would normally say have no problem what anyone else does with their bodies are suddenly persecuting us as though we are standing on their doorstep, telling them that they have to change their view of nutrition and health, OR ELSE. Clearly this is not the case.
These are also people that i would have said are pretty bright about doing their research, or at least realize that i do mine (vigorously.) Yet, the types of things they say show no sign of having looked beyond the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, which is pretty unforgiving, to say the least.
To me, though, these social lessons are exactly the kind of thing that i set out to learn when i resolved to do this. There’s a strange irony here: that their bitching and moaning about this fast being bunk are actually validating the fast for me. Of course, most of them don’t even realize it actually is a fast, and they attack the lemonade as if i’m somehow worshiping the stuff as a miracle drug that precludes medicine and a healthy diet. (As a comical aside, i started calling my juice “jenkem“, because it’s really damn funny.)