Home Gym

This is something that I have been meaning to write about for a while. A few months ago, I built a home gym. Or, I should say that I have started building a home gym, as there still is not much in the way of equipment.

I bought a set of P90X3 DVDs, and realized that I needed a few things. While I really enjoyed the difficult workout sessions, my living room is simply not big enough to be jumping around, and doing all of the moves that they do in the program, at least not without bumping into the coffee table or television. So, I decided to look into putting together something in the unused side of our garage.

I started by laying down two 4’x6’ non-slip indoor rug pads, that you’d buy for a carpet on a hardwood floor. I bought two sets of 24"x24"x1/2" puzzle exercise mat tiles, and taped them together with Gorilla Tape. P90X has you jumping around back and forth, so the tape and non-slip mats were important to make sure that first the mat doesn’t move too much, and also to make sure that it doesn’t pull apart.

A friend of a friend had a freestanding pullup bar that he wasn’t using and said that if I came to pick it up, I could have it for free. Score!

I had some resistance bands from a couple of years ago, which are nice to start with, but I also decided to get a basic dumbbell set, this one totaled up to 40lbs. I also bought a set of push up stands, since there’s lots of pushups in the routine, and I figured that they were cheap enough. I like them, and find that I can achieve better form using them.

I also used some tape on the top of the mat to mark out a couple of parallel lines like they use in P90X. The ones shown are not final, as I replaced the white duct tape with the same gorilla tape that I used on the underside, and changed the position slightly.

All in all, I am very glad that I decided to do this. I have been able to be fairly consistent with working out every morning with a dedicated space that I enjoy working out in, that is well suited to it. It was also fairly inexpensive to put together.

As an added bonus, since I started working out regularly, I have found that I have been enjoying more and more physical activity. I really wanted to get into better shape so that I wouldn’t be suffering at roller soccer (it worked). Since I started doing P90X, I also took up surfing, freebording, and swimming. (Still not sure if I’ll end up sticking with the freebord, but that’s another story.)

Note, this post contains affiliate links to Amazon. I linked to the exact items that I bought for this project.

Sous Vide Eggs Benedict with Hash Browns

This morning, I decided to try making eggs eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce, and a side of hash browns. I used the Chef Steps 75ºC egg recipe, along with their recipe for hollandaise sauce.

I’ll give the short versions below, what’s really nice about these two recipes is that they are both cooked at the same temperature, so you can actually cook them at the same time.

Hollandaise

Ingredients list from Chef Steps:

• 40g Champagne vinegar
• 25g Shallots, minced
• 150g Melted butter, salted
• 85g Egg yolk
• 60g Water
• 20g Lemon juice
• 3g Salt, kosher

Reduce the vinegar with the shallots, and strain out the shallots. Then, combine 20g of the vinegar reduction with the rest of the ingredients in a bag (I used a food scale to get the amounts right), and then use your immersion cooker at 75ºC for 30 minutes.

When it’s done, you’ll want to cool the ingredients in the bag a bit, by running it under cold water. Then use an immersion blender or food processor to combine the ingredients together. After the food processor, I put the sauce back in the bag it cooked in, and cut a small hole in one corner for dosing it out.

Eggs

When the hollandaise has 13 minutes left on the timer, drop 4 eggs into the water bath, and let them cook. When they’re done, crack them, strain them with a slotted spoon, and place on top of the muffin.

Everything Else

The rest of this is pretty straightforward, so I’m not going to spell it out. Though I will say that hollandaise makes for a great topping on crsipy hash browns.

Lessons Learned

The hollandaise didn’t come out perfectly, since I substituted the champagne vinegar and shallot reduction with plain white wine vinegar. I also added a couple extra grams of lemon juice, which was noticeable.

The larger issue, was that I’m not sure whether or not a food processor does the job, and I don’t know if an immersion blender would work any better. If you look at the photo, you’ll notice that the sauce is not entirely consistent. I’ll play around with it and try again sometime soon.

Should vs I'd like to

I used to think that there was a lot of stuff that I should do. I have many interests, and ideally would like to pursue as many as possible. I would make lists, and schedules, and invariably, not get to everything, or not follow the schedule at all. This, would typically lead to guilt, and a general feeling of “I’m not doing what I should be doing”. That I was feeling guilty and already not doing what I should be lead me to skip even more things that I felt I should be doing. By the end of the day, I’d feel like I hadn’t accomplished much, and after longer stretches of this, I would get more and more depressed.

I’m reading a book called “Feeling Good”, which is about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (in short, an effective, non-pharmaceutical treatment for depression). The general idea of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is that our thoughts generate our feelings, and that if we change our thoughts, we can change how we feel about things. One of the key points to the book is that depressed people tend to have distorted views of the world in one way or another. Among the list of cognitive distortions is “Should Statements”. Here’s a quick description from the linked Wikipedia page:

Should statements: doing, or expecting others to do, what they morally should or ought to do irrespective of the particular case the person is faced with. This involves conforming strenuously to ethical categorical imperatives which, by definition, “always apply,” or to hypothetical imperatives which apply in that general type of case. Albert Ellis termed this “musturbation”. Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham describes this as “expecting the world to be different than it is”.

Example: After a performance, a concert pianist believes he or she should not have made so many mistakes. Or, while waiting for an appointment, thinking that the service provider should be on time, and feeling bitter and resentful as a result.

I think that I had been falling into that trap a lot. That said, I still had things that I wanted to do every day, and I still wanted to have some way to remind myself every day of those things. I started using an app that’s designed to track daily tasks like this. (The one that I’m using is Streaks, though there are many out there.)

Using an app, in and of itself doesn’t solve the problem though. I could still beat myself up about the things that I don’t get done. So, I have also shifted the way in which I communicate this to myself. Instead of saying that there are things that I should do, I say that there are things that I would like to do. If I don’t happen to get to them, that’s ok, there’s always tomorrow. I can’t do everything all the time, and I have figured out that I don’t think that I could accomplish everything on my list and get work done.

Here’s my full list of things that I’d like to do every day (in no particular order):

• No beer today
• Learn one new thing
• 1 interview prep question
• Consume News
• Brain Training
• Play with Raena
• Plan day
• CBT
• Headspace
• Hack
• Exercise
• Spend time with Elizabeth
• Spend time with Lydia
• Wake up early
• Take a walk

Most days, I’m able to do the following:

• No beer today
• 1 interview prep question
• Consume News
• Exercise
• Spend time with Elizabeth
• Spend time with Lydia
• Wake up early

Whereas, I rarely do these:

• Learn one new thing
• Brain Training
• Plan day
• CBT
• Headspace
• Hack

If I look at the list of things that I have done in a day, that I wanted to do, I can feel good about getting those things done. As long as there’s not something critical that I’m skipping every day, then that’s all this needs to be. A gentle nudge to remind me of the stuff that I said I’d like to do, and a pat on the back for those things that I did.

Hopefully, you’re not strapping yourself with lots of things that you should be doing, and are instead doing things that you’d like to do.

Surfing with Dolphins

I was out surfing before dawn this morning, at 6am, as I usually do on Saturday mornings. The waves were bigger than expected for near low tide, since there was a bit of wind. While I wasn’t doing so well at the actual surfing, I did happen to see one sea lion, and several dolphins swimming around. I felt like that made the trip well worth it.

(Photo was taken back in early July.)

Pacifica Beach Day

Last weekend, it was fairly hot in our area, so we took the opportunity to head to the beach. I was out surfing at Linda Mar in Pacifica at 7am, and a couple hours after returning home, we headed back there for some relaxing.

Lydia had a great time playing. It was a fun and relaxing way to spend a hot day.

SFVR 10

Earlier this week, I headed to SFVR #10. I had attended their previous event, that included a Google Tango hackathon, and had a good enough time to want to come back. This event didn’t disappoint. There were a handful of demos that were pretty interesting. A couple games, some hardware accessories like an exercise bike as VR input.

One especially interesting project was a very simple looking demo that showed how a smartphone (or a smartwatch) could be used for very accurate 2d input, using nothing but sound. They use inaudible frequencies, and determine position using the Doppler effect.

Here is a video demo of the technology. (Rehosted in case it gets pulled.)

It’s academic research at the moment, being lead by Lili Qiu. They recently received a grant from the NSF to try to find commercial applications. The project is called “Champion Air Tracker” or CAT, since they intend to eat the mouse.

Pork Tacos

Over the weekend, I bought a ton of meat and cooked it all on Sunday. I used the immersion cooker, and froze most of what I had made. From what I didn’t freeze, I took one pork chop, popped it in the food processor, and ground it up. I made pork tacos with it, and they were delicious.

It’s pretty much just what you see there, pork, seasoned with taco seasoning and a sliced up chili pepper, lettuce, tomato, onion, and green onions. Then, on the side, I heated up some corn and black beans.

Ramen at Home

One of my favorite foods is Ramen, but I have never attempted to make it at home. It’s always seemed a bit daunting to me. My favorite Ramen dishes have included pork belly. Since I bought my immersion cooker, I’ve been thinking about trying this out.

I didn’t have pork belly, but I did have a lot of really good bacon. So, I attempted to cook the bacon as if it were pork belly. I set it up in the plastic bag with the slices stacked up next to each other, so that it was between an inch to an inch and a half wide. Then, I set the temperature to 158ºF for 16 hours and waited.

That was on Monday, and by Tuesday morning, I had about a pound of bacon that had been slow cooked, and was ready to go. Yesterday morning, I went to a local Japanese grocery store to pick up the some ingredients for the dish. I found a couple of packages of fresh whole wheat ramen noodles with miso soup packets. I also grabbed some seaweed for garnish.

I ground up one pork chop that I had slow-cooked over the weekend, and split that between two servings, heating it up in the skillet and setting aside. I heated up a skillet and seared all sides of the pork-belly/bacon. I used the immersion cooker to make poached eggs, slightly more well done, at 75ºC for 15 minutes. I followed the package instructions for the noodles and broth. I also roasted some garlic in the skillet.

The dish came out tasting pretty good, but not quite what I wanted. There were a few things a bit off about it. Primarily, bacon is not pork belly. The bacon that I had was smoked, and that flavor was apparent and obvious in the final dish, overpowering much else. Beyond the bacon, the garlic was a bit too strong, and I should have taken more care with its preparation. Finally, the broth was a bit weaker than I had wanted, since I had intentionally made it a bit weaker than the package suggested.

What I got right was the ground pork, and other ingredients. The egg especially turned out well, I liked that much better than the hard boiled egg that usually comes in Ramen.

I’m planning on trying again this weekend. While I’ll still be using the bacon, I hope to at least fix the other issues.

That Sugar Film

A documentary about all the hidden sugar in “healthy” foods

I read this article in the NY Times about an upcoming documentary, styled after “Super Size Me”, where a guy consumes 40 teaspoons of sugar a day. He does this while eating seemingly healthy foods. Reading that made me thankful for my wife, Elizabeth, who has been bringing this sort of thing to my attention for years, and has helped us to avoid this particular problem.

Talkray On Chrome

And other Android apps!

There’s a way to pull in Android apps into Chrome, and now have Talkray up and running on my laptop! Here’s hoping that Chrome support gets better.

There are two versions of the how-to. The first is something that should work, but that I have not tested. The second, is what I actually did, though it is more work. What’s more, this should work for many different Android apps.

Here’s the one that should work:

1. Install the Android version of the Evernote app in Chrome
2. Install twerk (Android APK packager for Chrome OS)
3. Run twerk from Chrome App Launcher
4. Download Talkray apk from somewhere.
5. Then drag an apk of Talkray into Twerk
6. Set the package name to com.talkray.client, and then set it to be tablet and landscape
7. Save it, and load the output into Chrome as an unpacked extension
8. You may be able to manually edit the generated output to add a different icon

Here’s what I actually did:

1. Download this: http://archon-runtime.github.io/
2. Unzip it, load it into Chrome from chrome://extensions as an unpacked extension
3. Install twerk (Android APK packager for Chrome OS)
4. Run twerk from Chrome App Launcher
5. Download Talkray apk from somewhere.
6. Then drag an apk of Talkray into Twerk
7. Set the package name to com.talkray.client, and then set it to be tablet and landscape
8. Save it, and load the output into Chrome as an unpacked extension
9. You may be able to manually edit the generated output to add a different icon

The major difference is that I manually downloaded and installed the Android runtime. The runtime is supposed to be installed when Evernote is installed, since it’s also an Android app, and requires the runtime. However, I think that the version that I’m using is different than the one provided by Google. I have not had time to test the differences between the two.