Living in the Future

Tag: Life

  • Election Day

    Election Day

    This weekend, we had an international podcast on East Meets West. Matt “Tom” Staroste joined us from Australia to discuss the election that’s upon us today. And while you might not have time to listen to the whole 2 hour podcast today before polls close, I really encourage you to listen to Matt’s and Nick’s 3-4 minute endorsements of the NDP and Liberal parties at the very end of the episode. It’s how I decided my vote, and it’s really worth your ears.

    This part of the conversation starts at 1:44:00 of the 10th episode, which you can jump to right here. The full episode can be found below as well.

  • Losing Weight Isn’t Hard

    Losing weight is easy, and let me tell you why (and how!).

    I have something to tell you that could either be unbelievably hard to believe, or possibly instantly understood, depending on your own experiences. I’ve been talking a LOT about my weight and my health in the last 3 months or so, and I’ve started posting my weight on Twitter every day as a way to motivate myself to eat more responsibly.


    This is how I feel now, stepping on the scale.

    The thing that I’ve learned in losing almost 30 pounds in the last 7 months or so (and 25 lbs in the last 2 months) is that starting to eat isn’t the problem. In losing this weight, I really haven’t limited myself in the food that I have been eating. That’s not to say I haven’t changed my habits, but I still eat burgers, and pizza, and nachos, and all kinds of other delicious foods. I can probably even say I basically eat about as much of those things as I always have.

    The MOST important thing I have learned when losing weight is this: stop eating. Don’t let your hunger decide how much you should eat for the first little while. Restaurants are the worst for this. You have no control over the portion of food you get, and it can be difficult to control your intake this way, especially if you despise the inconvenience of doggy bags as much as I do. When I go to a restaurant now, I get the main dish I really want (be it a big, juicy burger, or a pizza, or whatever other thing I might want), and then get a side that has very little food in it. Fries are a terrible example of this, because there is a LOT of food in fries. I’m not trying to survive a year and a half on Mars, so I probably don’t need to eat several hundred grams of potatoes along with my meal.

    Once I accepted that I could eat less than I had been, I was fine missing “meals” and just eating a little bit when I felt like it. It is darn near impossible to gain weight while eating only fat and protein. Carbohydrates (sugars) are the real problem here. And in our modern grocery stores, everything is full of carbs. The simple reason for this is that carbs are incredibly cheap calories. Dipping those carbs in fat and covering them in salt is an easy and cheap way to make them DELICIOUS.

    The other really important part of weight loss is your metabolism (to put it simply, that’s the amount of food energy your body burns when it’s just sitting there doing nothing else). I’ve been biking or walking 1-2 times per day since I really started focusing on my health. Because my bike ride is to work, that means I get 25-30 minutes of pretty intense exercise about 8 hours apart, splitting the day up nicely for my metabolism. It’s a pretty common excuse that around 20-25 years old your metabolism drops off and you stop being able to eat whatever you want and maintain your health, but I really think the “change” isn’t in your metabolism, but in the average adult’s activity level.

    With the activity that I’ve been trying to do every single day regardless of other circumstance, my good metabolism that I had written off as having “lost” in my late teens is back, and I can eat a good amount while still losing or at least maintaining my weight. For a little more background on this, Nick and I discuss active transportation and its impact on healthy weight in last week’s episode of East Meets West (the discussion of health and such starts around 44:15, but I encourage you to listen to the whole thing).

    Anyhow, to simplify things, or if you’re looking for an easy set of guidelines that have been working for me so far, here are the easiest things I can recommend:

    • Have a food around that you can sustainably eat every day, and can prepare in a few minutes (no more, and no less; that is Soylent for me). Any more prep and you will do something easier. Any less prep and you will already be eating before you’re hungry enough.
    • Exercise at least a half hour every day, twice throughout the day if you can, to keep your body burning energy.
    • Try not to order fries at a restaurant, unless that’s all you’re having (soup, salad, etc. is much easier to control the total amount you eat).
    • Stop thinking that fat will make you fat. Carbs will make you fat, but don’t necessarily avoid them completely (you will need quick energy sometimes). Keep in mind that not all sugars are created equal, and simple sugars (like in candy) will spike your blood sugar and make you crash.
    • Stop using dinner plates (and stop eating “dinner” at all at home, if possible). The modern meal, and the size of dinner plates, means that on average we tend to eat way more than we need. Eat when you are hungry, and give it 15 minutes before deciding you need more.
    • Eat eggs. However you like them cooked, they are a great source of life stuff (vitamins, minerals, fats, protein, etc.). There’s a reason you can grow a whole chick from an egg. It has everything you need for life. And stop thinking that eating cholesterol will make you have high cholesterol (it won’t).
    • Last, I forgot one of the very important things, drink water! Not lots of water, but definitely some water. It keeps you from feeling hungry when you’re not actually hungry.

    It honestly wasn’t that hard for me to lose a lot of weight just keeping these simple principles in mind, but if you have had trouble on “diets”, I’d recommend keeping track of your weight every day. It will give you a good sense of how your habits are affecting your weight (and overall health, in general) and you will be able to stay ahead of bad habits (like eating too much on weekends). You can follow the steps here and download a useful spreadsheet to track your weight (ask me about it if you’re interested in the modifications I’ve made to my version). And you can follow along with my weight loss journey here.

  • How to Turn the Page (on Life)

    How to Turn the Page (on Life)

    I’m not sure there is a wrong way.

    This week, I learned that I will be entering a new chapter in my life. For those of you who are following me on social media, you will probably already be aware that I found out that my contract at NSERC, where I’ve been working for the last 11 months or so, will be ending come October 9th. That means that as of right now, I have a little over one week left to find work to replace that job.

    Obviously, there are a number of negative ways I could choose to look at this. It would probably be very easy to sit back and let the bad news occupy my mind and bring down my mood. But I’m not going to do that. I’ve been here before. Since I left school in 2011, I’ve been unemployed 3 times, the longest time for 6 months (most of that by choice). The work I’ve done since I left school only vaguely relates to the work I am doing since I finished my degree.

    Mostly, the reason I’m not worrying about new ventures is that things are going REALLY well in my life overall. Despite this looming potential unemployment, my life is mostly looking way up, which is something I’m really happy about. I just got married to the girl of my friggen dreams, I’ve lost almost 20 pounds since the beginning of July, I’ve got a large number of very satisfying hobby projects, and I have an amazing network of friends who have been incredibly supportive of everything I do.

    I was very briefly hesitant to talk about my soon-to-be unemployment as publicly as I have, but in the many years since I basically became an open book to the world socially, my life has only gotten way better. And the reaction and help I’ve gotten from friends, colleagues, family and many other people is really quite touching. Once you tweet your weight to the world, directing them to a website where anybody can see what you’ve weighed for the last 30 days, there’s really no reason to keep anything too secret.

    Oddly (though maybe I shouldn’t be surprised), the main question I get when people want to help me look for a job is “What kind of work are you looking for?”. I think this is a weird question mainly because I don’t really think too much about it. I want to work, I want to make a living and I want to do something I love. I really like media (video, audio and writing), the internet, technology, and science. I’m getting to the point where work I do in those fields can be put on my resume as real experience, something I definitely didn’t see happening just a couple of years ago.

    I’ve talked before about how wonderful if would be if Canada instituted a basic income for its citizens, because more than anything what I want to be able to do is to be creative. I want to share my experiences and knowledge with people who want to learn and try new things. I want to open minds. I’ve been thinking for a very long time about doing a big project where I get to do things like this on a regular basis, but for that today I really do need a day job where I make enough to support what I’d like to do for the other big part of my life.

    However, even considering all of this, the biggest priority for me, and the reason why I’m so keen to get a new job as soon as possible, is that I want to start a family. I’m not in a rush to do that, but I do want to start sooner rather than later. And, seeing as how my wife and I are responsible and financially prudent, we’d rather wait until there are two sources of secure income in our lives before moving forward with that. And that is the most frustrating part of all of this. I just want to express my ideas and thoughts in a positive, constructive way and make the world a better place, and pass those traits along to the next generation of humans. But first, I need someone to take a chance on me.

    It’s worth it.

    If you know of any job openings or places that might be hiring, especially those looking for young people who are ready to learn and looking to make a difference in the world, please let me know. You can send me email at [email protected].

  • The “Honeymoon” Phase of #JuliaRoberts2015

    The “Honeymoon” Phase of #JuliaRoberts2015

    Getting married has honestly been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. The idea of committing ones-self to only one other person for the rest of your life seems like the kind of thing that would be terrifying, but so far I have been completely fine with it.

    “The One Where They Got Married” #juliaroberts2015
    Posted by Jacquie Watkins on Saturday, July 25, 2015

    Even though the day-to-day events of Julia’s and my life since we got married are basically unchanged (finalizing wedding stuff obviously notwithstanding), everything feels very different. Getting home and seeing Julia’s beautiful, smiling face is that much nicer, going and running errands as she recovers from her excellent party on Saturday feels like no effort at all. I know we’re still fully in the “honeymoon” phase of the marriage, but I think we are both acutely aware of the fact that this is going to take work. More importantly, Julia and I should easily be able to put aside our minor squabbles and disagreements, and focus on what really matters, our life together and our mutual happiness.

    We are still fully entrenched in post-wedding business, like writing thank yous to everybody who was SO generous this past week, with their time and with their love, and our friends and family have proven to us just how much they care about our future together. I can’t wait to get started!

    At what point do we change #JuliaRoberts2015 to #JuliaRobertsForever?

  • Bliss (The Aftermath of #JuliaRoberts2015)

    Bliss (The Aftermath of #JuliaRoberts2015)

    Wow. There is nothing like a wedding to make a guy feel loved. I have about a billion thoughts and feelings going through my head right now, and I need about 4 more hours of sleep than I got last night, but it has all been so incredibly worth it.

    I’m going to need several weeks or even months to process this past weekend, and to sort out all the thank yous, acknowledgements, and hugs that my friends, family and everybody else deserve for helping to make Saturday the best day I’ve had, ever. This won’t be the last thing I write on the matter, and today it won’t even be very long. Due to the incredible depth of my distraction in the last week, my work has been somewhat neglected, so I’ll be focusing hard on making sure everything I need to do is complete before going on the honeymoon next week.

    I just want to say I am so very grateful to everybody in my life for the incredible amount of support, friendship, love and kindness I’ve received in the last week. I will never forget the way I felt and still feel; I have a blessed life.

    Pictures are just starting to trickle in, you can check out Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to see what people have been putting up. I’m just so excited to see what adventures will come next for Julia and myself!

    A photo posted by Brian (BL) (@mystical_wizard) on Jul 25, 2015 at 11:23am PDT
  • Weight Loss (How I Am Breaking The Pattern)

    Weight Loss (How I Am Breaking The Pattern)

    One of my favourite things to do is open up and talk about things that are going on in my life. If you want to hear about me in more detail, I convinced my co-hosts on Ottawhat? to let me talk about myself for an hour this week (listen here).

    But that’s not what today is about. Today, I want to tell you what’s been going on with my weight in the last month or so. You can see all the past stuff I’ve written about Soylent here, but this isn’t really about Soylent either. This is all about my weight, and health.

    Trust me, I was too small.

    For the majority of my adult life, I have weighed between 230 and 250 pounds. Most health experts will tell you that for my height, that makes me about 50-70 pounds overweight. This puts me just a smidge past overweight, and into “obese” territory. For almost a year, when I tore my ACL in 2010-11 and couldn’t do any real physical activity, my weight actually dropped down as far as 190 pounds, and I honestly looked like a skeleton. That is my “healthy” weight, so I know that I can’t depend on a measure like BMI (which doesn’t take density or body structure into account) to measure my health. Buoyancy is dependent on density, and I would drown if I tried to float, so I know I’m pretty dense.

    All of that being said, in the last few weeks, I have been cycling to and from work about 70% of the time, and I have also not been taking a lunch. Instead, I have been having one serving of Soylent around 12:15 PM every day, in addition to breakfast and whatever I eat in the evening. The result of this is a pretty drastic drop in my weight since the second week of July, as you can see here.

    The last month of weight measurements.

    Luckily for me, since I first bought a WiFi-connected scale in February 2014, my weight has been a known quantity as long as I stand on it every day. What I saw from the last 18 months is that what I had been “doing” to lose weight, wasn’t doing much. Even Soylent and cycling, as you can see from the graph above (starting at the end of June), weren’t really having any effect on my weight.

    The thing that finally started me down the path you see on the right side of the graph is a pretty simple change, that is, using this graph. I am currently using the measurements from my scale, and feeding them into the graph described here. It keeps a moving average of the last 10 days (so 9 days ago is weighted at 0.1 in the average, 4 days ago is weighted 0.6, etc., and today is weighted as 1). What this means, as described if you read the article above, is that if you have an off day or eat a whole pizza, it doesn’t completely ruin your weight trend, because you will still have a string of good days before it that are factored in to your weight.
    What I’ve been trying to do with this information is keep the blue line up there below the red line. That makes weight loss incredibly simple, and it means that I can in theory eat whatever I want on a given day, just that I have to be healthy overall. As you can see, I went to a birthday party last weekend where I ate a little bit too much. Where that would normally be a huge discouragement, with this data available, I can see that as long as I put work in to make up for it, everything will be fine.
    This was a really good, too big meal, from 2012.
    What all of this really comes down to is that to lose weight, I have had to limit what I eat. I don’t necessarily need to eat healthy foods, but that definitely helps. Even more than losing weight though, this has come from a desire to be healthier. I know that I just plain eat too much food. At home, I have a lot more control over what I eat, and that really helps, but restaurants are becoming a bigger and bigger pain to eat at. The problem that I end up having is: the portions restaurants give you is WAY too big. Any restaurant worth its salt (heh) will know that the economics of food mean that they will make more money if they give you bigger portions. As meals (and servings) get bigger, you can charge more for them, and the only downside is that it’s WAY too much food for any one person in one sitting.
    What I have to get into the mindset of doing is mentally setting aside some of the food on my plate when I’m at a restaurant, and knowing ahead of time that I actively shouldn’t be eating all of the food I’m given. At the moment, I treat the food on my plate at restaurants as a goal, even though I stop being hungry very early in the meal. I think, if I can keep up these measurements and motivations, and actually change my restaurant habits, I can keep this up and get to a weight where I feel a little better about myself and feel healthy all the time, as opposed to feeling like I should eat a salad more often (because salads are the worst).
    That being said, as a work food replacement, Soylent has been unbelievable. It’s all I’m eating at work these days, and it’s been filling enough that I don’t need to eat any snacks before lunch, and I don’t feel starved biking home if I only have one small portion in the morning. Although I still don’t love the sucralose taste.
  • New Polished Chrome

    New Polished Chrome

    That’s fancy!

    Well, it’s finally here. The new look for UnwindMedia.com is ready to go, and you can go and take a look now! I am really happy with how it’s turned out, and it is now quite a bit easier to see information about the shows on the network.

    I’m getting married this weekend, and going on a honeymoon the week after, so if this blog goes dark for a few weeks, please don’t be surprised. Episode 67 of Future Chat is the last one until I get back in late August, but we are doing our best the next few days to prepare new episodes of Ottawhat? to come out while I’m gone. Hope you’re having a great summer!

    Ottawhat? 61 – Zoe Georgaras
    We spoke to fire dancer and actor Zoe Georgaras this week on the show. We learned how she got introduced to fire dancing, how fire safety and good insurance…
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    Future Chat 67 – Cars Are Driving Over Your Internet
    In this episode, we discuss the possible coming shortage of medical isotopes and decay rates, we learn a little about Nick’s work with gold, and we can’t…
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  • Website 2.0 is in Private Beta!

    Website 2.0 is in Private Beta!

    Unwindmedia.com 2.0 is almost upon us!

    As I mentioned yesterday on Facebook and Twitter, there’s a medium/big re-skin of UnwindMedia.com coming very soon. I’ve been researching podcast network websites and taking cues from some of my favourites, and there’s also some brand new custom code pulling strings behind the scene to make adding new shows and hosts much easier should that ever be a thing that needs to happen. These changes would also make moving websites much more straightforward, in case THAT is a thing that ever needs to happen.

    Below, you’ll find links to Future Chat and Ottawhat as always, and if you’ve been waiting patiently for Feedback: The Music (I know I have), we want to take some time to really get it right. Hopefully there will be more to share soon!

    Ottawhat? 60 – Megan Honey
    On this episode, we sat down with Megan Honey, an up-and-coming standup comedian who will be competing this summer in a couple of comedy contests at Absol…
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    Future Chat 66 – We Might Need A Couple Moose
    In this episode, we discussed T-Mobile’s new Uncarrier US-Canada-Mexico roaming plans, Sweden buying trash from Norway, and Mike doesn’t believe you could…
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  • Dear Taylor, Love Rob

    Dear Taylor, Love Rob

    She’s kiiiiind of a big fan.

    Dear Taylor,

    You’ve got a lot going on. Last month, a letter you wrote on your blog helped potentially millions of young musicians to get paid during Apple Music’s 3-month free trial. Not to mention that you’ve been on a world tour spanning 7 countries and several continents since May. How you find the time for a 4th of July celebration with so many of your friends this past weekend is totally beyond me.

    Anyhow, the reason I’m writing this is to let you know about your most incredible fan. She’s my fiancée, and her name is Julia de Carlo. Last year, when your 1989 tour tickets went on sale, Julia decided she would have her bachelorette party at your concert that is happening tonight. She bought 5 tickets to the show the day they went on sale, and sadly she wasn’t able to get 5 seats together (but the girls will work something out).

    Almost immediately after those tickets were bought, I decided that I needed to do something big to try to show you just how much Julia is looking forward to your show and potentially meeting you. I thought hard about it for weeks and decided to coin the name #Taylorette1989 for the entire bachelorette weekend. In February, I released the first video I made to tell you and our friends all about Julia’s bachelorette, and her love for you and your music. She even made her Tumblr all about her love for you and her excitement for this concert.

    Julia is such an incredible person, she’s smart, cute, funny, sexy, adorable, fun, outgoing, generous, loving, loyal, and she’s an incredibly inspiring elementary school teacher. If anybody deserves a little face time with you, this woman does. I would do absolutely anything to help her see her dreams realized.

    So, that first video and other #Taylorette1989 video projects have been shared a ton on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, but obviously it was going to take something truly special to get this message to you. Julia and her fellow Taylorettes have really gone all out making signs and costumes for your concert tonight. You can search #Taylorette1989 on Twitter to see what I’m talking about. I’ve done everything I can to help, but at this point all I can do is hope that tonight, the stars will align and she will get a chance to meet you.

    It was my birthday this past Saturday, and all I’ve really been wishing for is that Julia’s wish to meet you will be granted tonight. I hope with all my heart that her excitement will be enough to bubble over and you’ll be able to see just how much she loves you as an artist and a person.

    Thanks a lot Taylor, from myself and from Julia, and I hope tonight and the rest of your world tour is incredible!

    Love Rob

    ps. Here is just some of the noise Julia and her Taylorettes having been making lately!

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  • Things to look for when buying a laptop

    I’ve bought many computers, and I’ve helped friends shop for many more. They don’t always take my advice, but when I do, they’re generally happiest with the following things:

    Must Haves

    • 8GB+ of RAM
    • Newest or 2nd newest generation Intel processor
    • More than 1366×768 px display
    • Battery life rated for more than 4 hours (preferably much more)

    Important but I guess not critical for all people

    • 256-512 GB SSD (So worth the slight extra money)
    • 1080p or better display
    • Backlit keyboard (this is such a crucial feature more laptops should have these)
    • HDMI port is really convenient unless you’re all about the wireless
    • Get a light computer, weight is pretty important unless you plan to just plunk it on a desk
    • Touch screens are pretty affordable and they will be nice to have in the future

    Other Tips

    • Spend $100-200 more than you think you should (you’ll thank me in 4 years when you’ve spent $50 a year on a better computer)
    • Buy from a place that will accept returns, and preferably a place that will service the computer in their store (man the Apple Store is great for this)
    • Don’t be afraid to return a computer if you don’t like the way it feels
    • Start a backup plan for your important files today. If you computer falls in a lake, you should be sad/angry, but you don’t need to lose anything
    • Talk to your friendly neighbourhood tech guy. Odds are he’s bored of his computer and will have fun looking at what’s new and talking to you about it.