Highlights of 2015: investments in health

Waiting to get my septoplasty

Waiting to get my septoplasty

After returning from Jamaica in August 2014 with muscle twitches that wouldn’t seem to stop I decided it was time to take my health more seriously than I had been, so last year I decided to invest more in my health. I began daily walks at lunchtime at work, doing a circuit around N.C. State’s Centennial Campus for about 20 minutes a day. I installed a fitness tracking app from Google called Google Fit to help me keep pace. My goal was an hour of activity per day and I’m proud to say that I regularly exceeded this. Not only that, but I continue to exercise daily. My current job puts my office a little over a mile away, so I frequently walk or bike to work. I love doing this!

2015 was also the year I took advantage of my health care coverage from the Veteran’s Administration. I had several tests done to determine the cause of the twitching (so far nothing definitive, though several baddies have been ruled out). I have to say I’m impressed with the VA. It gets knocked quite a bit but the people are courteous, I’m always whisked back to see the doctor during my appointments, and the quality of care is good or excellent. The only real concern I have is that the majority of useful appointments must take place at the Durham VA hospital. Raleigh has a VA medical clinic but cannot perform most of the most useful tests or procedures.

Driving to Durham for VA appointments is not convenient for me. I can only imagine what veterans with fewer resources have to put up with.
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Al Jazeera America to shut down

Sorry to hear that Al Jazeera America is shutting down. I liked the kind of journalism they did. Perhaps they were too truthful?

On the bright side, perhaps Al Jazeera will become available again on the FTA satellites.

Al Jazeera America, the American cable news outlet owned by Qatar-based Al Jazeera, plans to shut down less than three years after its much-ballyhooed launch, unable to overcome low ratings, operational problems and a lack of advertisers.The cable news network will be phased out by April 30, according to a memo that was emailed to staffers Wednesday.

Source: Al Jazeera America to shut down

Can changing your mealtimes make you healthier? – BBC News

Fascinating experiment on how fasting longer at night might make you healthier. The only issue is that a pool of 16 subjects does not make for a definitive, scientific result.

Many people want to eat more healthily but find it difficult to change their diet. So what happened when Michael Mosley altered not what he ate, but when he ate?

We’ve known for some time that altering the time at which you eat can affect your weight and metabolism. At least if you are a mouse.

Based on mice studies, it seems the secret to improving your health is to restrict the time window within which you eat, and by doing so extend the amount of time you go without food.

Source: Can changing your mealtimes make you healthier? – BBC News

Adaptive firewall rules with the react module

I’ve been fighting off hackers to MT.Net for several years now. My traditional way of doing this has been to manually flag the IP address of the attacker and add it to a block list. This used to be very effective, but then attackers began enlisting bot networks with dozens of IPs per attack. It because impossible to block them all without making it a full-time job.

About three years ago I implemented adaptive firewall rules which will track URL requests and only allow a certain number of those requests before blocking further ones. I blogged about their success and then … promptly stopped using it for some reason!

Today I noticed I was no longer using these amazing rules and promptly put them back into place. Like magic, the huge load I had seen on my webserver promptly disappeared. Now it doesn’t matter how many IPs an attack originates from, it will be blocked! That IP will not be able to launch any further attacks for 5 more minutes.

I love using smart approaches to problems. Just wish I remembered to keep them around next time!

Planting flags around Dix Park is so 17th century

Raleigh Planning Commission member Matt Tomasulo recently planted thousands of survey flags to lead people around the Dix Park property.

Dude, planting flags is sooooo 17th century. There are apps for this. Create a Google Map with landmarks at the sites worth seeing. Include links to photographs and, more importantly, open up comments for others to say why these sites are meaningful. I’m all for bringing people out to Dix but they should be out there seeing the beauty of the park and not thousands of plastic flags.

With help from thousands of pink survey flags, one city planning commission member is hoping to bring more people to the former Dix hospital site near downtown.

On Tuesday afternoon, Matt Tomasulo and five volunteers planted 4,399 pink survey flags throughout Dorothea Dix Park, creating small trails that will lead visitors around city-owned portions of the property. Tomasulo called it a simple gesture to say thanks to Mayor Nancy McFarlane and Gov. Pat McCrory for making possible Raleigh’s purchase of the former psychiatric hospital campus.

Source: Raleigh Planning Commission member installs hundreds of flags at Dix Park | News & Observer

Bowie bonds: Ziggy Stardust’s adventures on Wall Street

Sure, David Bowie was the most inventive rock star of his era. And yes, he matured gracefully (more or less) into an elder statesman of pop, working with younger independent acts and capping his late career with a pair of moving, reflective LPs.But did you know he also left his mark on the world of asset-backed securities? OK, so the achievement doesn’t quite rank up there with albums like Low and Ziggy Stardust. But in 1997, Bowie, who passed away from cancer Sunday at 69, did manage to kick off a brief financial craze after becoming the first musician to sell bonds backed by the royalties on his catalog.

Source: Bowie bonds: Ziggy Stardust’s adventures on Wall Street

David Bowie utterly humiliated Ricky Gervais on Extras · Great Job, Internet! · The A.V. Club

This bit David Bowie did on Ricky Gervais’s Extras is hilarious, as is his explanation for doing the show.

Fans and critics will undoubtedly spend the upcoming days debating which of David Bowie’s many memorable songs should be considered his very greatest contributions to the canon of Western Music. While titles like “Life On Mars?,” “Changes,” and “The Man Who Sold The World” will be bandied about, some consideration should also go to “The Little Fat Man With The Pug-Nosed Face,” an impromptu ditty with which the erstwhile Ziggy Stardust joyously serenaded Ricky Gervais on a memorable 2006 episode of Extras. In the episode, actually titled “David Bowie,” Gervais’ character, self-involved actor Andy Millman, is already starting to chafe from the notoriety he’s gained from starring in a hacky, catchphrase-laden BBC sitcom called When The Whistle Blows. Spotting Bowie in the supposed “VIP” section of a bar, Gervais’ character makes the spectacularly ill-considered decision to accost the musical legend. Then, with no prompting whatsoever, he proceeds to spill his guts to this unwitting stranger. A gentleman to the last, Bowie actually listens politely as Gervais whinges about his own, hopelessly trivial “problems.”

Source: David Bowie utterly humiliated Ricky Gervais on Extras · Great Job, Internet! · The A.V. Club

The 19th Century plug that’s still being used – BBC News

The BEEB covers Apple’s rumored plans to kill off the phono plug. The story includes a quote from an Apple analyst:

“It feels painful because you’ve got hundreds of millions of devices out there that are using the old standard,” says Horace Dediu, a technology analyst with in-depth knowledge of Apple.

… and …

“Studying Moore’s Law and the history of technology, it’s clear we’re not going to stick around with something analogue for long,” he says. “It’s almost puzzling that it’s taken so long.”

Maybe because analog phone jack technology Just Works? Any guesses why an Apple stock analyst might like this move?

The Sum of Us petition is here, if you care to sign it.
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The Beatles Rarity » #askNat – concerning John Lennon’s contribution to David Bowie’s “Fame”:

I love this story of how John Lennon came to work on David Bowie’s first #1 song, Fame.

By late 1974, David, having moved to RCA Records, had already recorded most of his ninth studio album, Young Americans, but the record was in a holding pattern while David went through the necessary legalities to break all ties with his shady management contract with Tony Defries. Staying in a New York hotel during this period, David had a little party that John Lennon, together with his girlfriend May Pang showed up for. Record producer Tony Visconti was also in attendance and recalled later that both John and David were high on cocaine and Cognac and while sketching caricatures of each other were having a dark discussion about “what does it all mean?” – with “it” being “life.” As a side note, it was at this party where May Pang first met Tony Visconti and the two would eventually marry in 1989.

After the party, the ice was properly broken between John and David and a week or two later in early January 1975, John got a phone call from David who explained he was at New York’s Electric Lady Studios working on a cover of John’s Beatles classic “Across The Universe” for his Young Americans album. Unbeknownst to John, Young Americans didn’t need any further material. David was apparently seizing the opportunity to get a Beatle on his record and make a replacement or two of some of the tracks – if it turned out okay, that is. John obliged David and came down to the studio to sing backing vocals and play acoustic guitar on “Across The Universe” with David and his band. John was later to comment that Bowie’s version of “Across The Universe” was the best one. After jamming with the band on a 1961 hit by The Flairs called “Foot Stompin’,” they teamed up with guitarist Carlos Alomar, who had been playing with David since the previous year, and the three of them wrote “Fame” on the spot.

Source: The Beatles Rarity » #askNat – concerning John Lennon’s contribution to David Bowie’s “Fame”: