“groovy mother...”

“Creatives”

This is video of a 5 minute talk I gave at Ignite Bay Area 2. It’s inspired by the collision of cultures ten years ago at my first job, when they went from a purely tech/business/enterprisey consulting firm to being a cool sexy web firm. (I was worried before giving the talk that the problems had all been solved in the last decade — the reaction I got from the audience suggests not!)

The video isn’t the clearest, so the slides (sans nice fonts) are embedded below. If you hit the Play button on the slides at roughly the time I start talking, it should auto-advance in time with my blethering.

Incidentally, there are a bunch of upcoming Ignite events in San Francisco — at the Chirp, Google I/O and Web 2.0 Expo conferences — and it’s fabulous fun (and a great challenge). I highly recommend submitting talks.

MMX - XXL

I have never been svelte.

This much should be stated at the start. The closest I’ve come to a healthy weight was during my four years as a student. Deprived of the contents of my parents’ fridge, and not yet able to enjoy the slap-up dining that a salary would afford, I was never “skinny” or beerbellyless”.

But I am currently fatter than I’ve ever been. I’ve put on almost 30lbs in the last year. Something needs to change.

I chose January 1st for two reasons:

1. It’s traditional to make a new year resolution. The new beginning of a new year, and all that.
2. I could gorge during the Christmas period.

By luck, last week, Richard Wiseman posted a blog entry on how to keep your resolution. Some good solid advice in there. In particular, state and track your goal publicly, and keep it measurable.

This has worked for me in the past. I decided that my goal for 2008 was to move to San Francisco, was open about it, and by the end of March, I had a job all lined up.

So here is my official goal for 2010: Weigh 210lbs on December 31st 2010.

That’s a drop of almost 60lbs. I think I can probably shift about 5–10lbs this month (the start of a diet always sees a quick drop), then sustain losing 1lb a week for the rest of the year.

My expectation is that this will require experimentation and tweaking. So here is my plan for January:

• Using Lose It, a free iPhone app to keep track of calories. (Hat tip to Daniel Jalkut for mentioning Lose It on Twitter). I’m doing good old-fashioned calorie counting—no complex points calculation, no rules on what can and can’t be eaten. Your standard “Burn more than you consume, and you’ll lose weight” plan. This isn’t about changing what I eat; it’s about changing the quantity I eat.
• In the spirit of keeping it public, I purchased the Withings WiFi Body Scale, a sleek and sexy set of bathroom scales which upload your data to the web. My progress can now be tracked by anyone at @lardyarsedgit. Go on and follow it! One tweet a day, and it’ll make me feel a lot better!
• Regarding exercise, I’m starting off easy. Not going to join a gym or buy (another) treadmill. Instead, I’m going to try to take a smattering of small steps. For the beginning, I’m going to stop riding the elevator at work (taking the stairs to and from my team area on the 6th floor), and pledge to take Bacon for a 40-minute walk three times a week. If I can’t do these little things, there’s no point throwing $$$ at a gym.

At the end of each month, I’ll adjust the plan. But right now, it all feels very achievable.

My BHAG for the year? Next January, I’ll be able to sign up for The San Francisco Marathon Training Program and be able to run the SF Marathon in July 2011.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Asking the questions that need to be asked

Me: “Apparently, in the first draft of Back to the Future, the time machine was a fridge, but they changed that because they were worried about kids climbing into fridges and getting trapped.”

Joy: “How did they get the fridge up to 88 miles per hour?”