On the first day of Christmas,
a Klingon sent to me
An 8 Gig USB key.

On the second day of Christmas,
a Goa’uld sent to me
2 ipods playing,
And a brand new Nintendo Wii.

On the third day of Christmas,
a Vulcan sent to me
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a copy of Windows XP.

On the fourth day of Christmas,
a Jaffa sent to me
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And “The Matrix” trilogy on DVD.

On the fifth day of Christmas,
an Ewok sent to me
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a Computer Science PHD.

On the sixth day of Christmas,
an Ocampa sent to me
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a keyboard with a missing Tab key.

On the seventh day of Christmas,
a Twi’lek sent to me
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a router outside of a DMZ.

On the eighth day of Christmas,
a Vorlon sent to me
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And Stargate Atlantis Season 3.

On the ninth day of Christmas,
a Gungan sent to me
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a biography of Pierre & Marie Curie.

On the tenth day of Christmas,
a Ferengi sent to me
10 WoW guilds raiding,
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a hosting plan with a low setup fee.

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
a Wookie sent to me
11 hackers scripting,
10 WoW guilds raiding,
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a Tetris theme song MP3.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
a Jawa sent to me
12 networks lagging,
11 hackers scripting,
10 WoW guilds raiding,
9 cables tangling,
8 desktops crashing,
7 friends a-twitting,
6 blogs a-posting,
5 iphones ringing,
4 torrents seeding,
3 apps compiling,
2 ipods playing,
And a 40 inch LCD TV!

Related posts:

1. Tweaking English For Fun And Profit … Facilitating Poetry
2. Why Web 2.0 Sucks
3. The Best Funny And Educational Geek Songs

I recently upgraded my computer chair to a fully ergonomic model. Nothing too fancy or weird, just a regular chair but with fully adjustable everything. I used to slouch terribly in my old chair so I considered the $500+ (yeah I know, not as much as some, but still not too shabby) that I spent on my new chair an investment in my health and posture. When I brought my chair home, I had all the best intentions in mind, I would adjust everything perfectly and begin to sit at my computer properly, according to all the rules. I lasted about 3 hours after that I was back to my old slouching ways.

It’s the funniest thing, but maintaining correct posture while sitting at your computer is damned uncomfortable, no matter what chair you use, which means I for one start slouching very quickly. So, after finding some comfortable and creative ways to slouch in my new chair I decided to do some research and find out if there is an ergonomic chair out there that can completely prevent you from ruining your posture slouching.

I found that there were 5 distinct types of ergonomic chairs out there.

1. Standard/Mesh Fully Adjustable Chair (With Lumbar Support)

This is your regular stock standard ergonomic chair, looks like a normal chairs except you can adjust everything, height, back tilt, seat tilt and sometimes you can move the back further away from the seat as well.

You can’t really prevent yourself from slouching on these ones, you either have to constantly keep adjusting it, or you let your slouchy creativity flow. Try sliding down low on one of these babies, lower back problems anyone. How about leaning over to the side and putting most of your weight on one of the arm-rests, also very possible and reasonably comfortable.

These chairs don’t really do anything special to stop you from slouching, they are only good for people who don’t slouch already and just need a comfortable chair to support their good posture.

2. Saddle Ergonomic Chair

Now, we are cooking with gas.  The saddle chair is shaped somewhat like a horse saddle (duh!), and comes with a back or without that’s up to individual preference. These chairs can put you into a half-straddling, half-standing position which makes regular slouching down in a chair impossible.

Those people who think standing up prevents you from slouching have never seen teens “hanging out” down at whatever local hang-out spot they frequent. Relaxing your shoulders and curving them slightly forward while standing up is the very definition of slouching and it’s super cool too (TV says so, therefore it must be true).

This chair fails also. Good concept and if it works for you then by all means use it, as far as I am concerned you can slouch on this as much if not more than on a regular chair.

3. Exercise Ball Ergonomic Chair

Everybody knows that fitness balls are good for you, right? I mean they’re in all the gyms and everybody uses them for all sorts of funny exercises so they must be awesome. So, we put a chair on a platform to prevent it from rolling away from you and we have the perfect office chair. Not only will you help your posture but you can get those rock-hard abba-dabbas all at the same time.

Well, I have to admit, as sarcastic as my last paragraph was this is actually not a bad concept. You can’t slide down on one of these and slouching sideways is also closed to you with no armrest. However once again, the fitness ball relies on you consciously keeping your back straight, nothing is preventing you from stooping your shoulders working on that perfect S-shaped spine that is all the rage these days.

And so another one bites the dust, it is certainly a possibility for some, but only if you have the motivation, willpower and presence of mind to consciously work on your posture.

4. Kneeling Ergonomic ChairI’ve seen these ones before, it is an older concept that has been around for a while and there is probably a reason why it hasn’t disappeared in that time. The idea is that there is a platform in front of the seat that you rest your knees on so that your feet are pointing back rather than being in front of you as in a regular chair. These also come with or without a backrest depending on preference.

Because of the way your legs are positioned it is impossible for you to slide down in this chair or slouch sideways. The even better thing about this chair is that it also makes it fairly difficult for you to slouch your shoulders forward. It is not impossible mind you, but it does tend to be more comfortable to sit in this chair if you back is straight.

Out of the five types of chairs that I mention, I would consider this one the best type of ergonomic chair to help you correct and maintain your posture while you’re at your computer. That is, the best one if you want to still look more or less like a regular Joe office-worker. If you however want to get your weirdness meter going full bore there is the next chair.

5. Zero Gravity Recliner ChairI love the idea of this chair. This one is a full-on recliner chair and it is meant to be used by people who have back problems and simply aren’t able to use a regular chair for long periods of time. With this one you sit in a semi-reclined or even an almost fully reclined position. Obviously if you’re using one of these chairs, you can’t use a regular table (if you’re asking why, then think about it). You need to get a special desk/table that attaches to one of these chairs you can then out your laptop on it or write on it as well. I wouldn’t recommend trying to use a desktop PC with one of these, don’t think they are designed for it.

This one is probably tops as far as preventing you from slouching. Since you’re in an almost fully-reclined position, you can’t slide down and going sideways is also tough even though there are armrests. Slouching your shoulders is also not a problem, you’re reclining after all.

The biggest point in favour of this chair is that if you’re using one of these you probably already have some back issues which most likely provides you all the motivation you need to not slouch while you’re working. Even if you did find some creative ways to do it (which I probably could if I tried hard enough), you wouldn’t do it cause you know how much of an issue back problems can be.

Lessons Learned

So what did we learn from all this? Well, sadly slouching is like an addiction, once you’re used to it it is very hard to stop yourself from doing it and just like with any addiction willpower and persistence are the only ways to break your slouching habit. The first thing to do is to admit that you have a slouching problem (I definitely do). The second step is that you have to really want to kick your slouching habit, sadly I don’t think I am at that stage yet, if there was an easy way I would probably go for it, but I just don’t have the motivation to really put in the effort to teach myself not to slouch. I hope the motivation will come eventually, knowing something is bad for you is one thing, but doing something about it is altogether a different story.

The question I have for everyone is this. Do you know of any easy tips to help someone teach themselves not to slouch when they are at their computer? Maybe there is a simple way to slowly wean yourself off slouching and I just don’t know about it. Here is an idea, maybe I missed some sort of ultra-super-slouch-preventative chair (that doesn’t make you the office posture mascot). If you know of any other types of ergonomic seating, then please leave a comment and tell me about it.

Related posts:

1. Different Types Of Encoding Schemes – A Primer
2. Fitness for Software Developers (and Other IT Professionals)
3. Types Of Agile Projects And The Value Of Velocity

As a software developer I periodically find that I need to dabble with a bit of poetry (yes one is a consequence of the other – sort of – see my post about software developer traits for an explanation that almost makes sense). However, every time I start dabbling I find myself getting annoyed very quickly. Poetry is difficult and I don’t necessarily mean writing it, even reading it is difficult.

Well, not the actual reading part, but trying to puzzle a meaning out of the twisted phrasing, allegory and the absolutely stupendous number of hoops that people jump through to get the darned things to rhyme. And are they always successful? Well, you can be the judge, here is a “fine example” called Gap Toothed Know-It-All.

I am thinking English is just not a very flexible language, there are all these rules and regulations you have to follow, or the grammar police will eat you alive. Well, I spit in the face of the grammar police, I say, why should I adjust to English? English should be forced to adjust to my needs. We don’t need to do any major changes, but just tweak it a little bit. I’ll demonstrate with an example.

I want to write a poem which will convey the following thoughts:

I like walking in the park on sunny days. I find that it makes me more productive and focused at work.

Here is what the poem would have to sound like without tweaking English in any way:

Not too bad, gets the meaning across, but is too long-winded and so much unnecessary allegory! Would you even know what I was trying to say if I hadn’t told you?

Let us try this again, but now we can tweak English to suit our purposes:

See, this is much better, short and sweet and almost no extraneous words to clutter up the verse. The meaning is completely transparent, if you didn’t know what I was trying to convey you’d easily be able to work it out almost exactly.

So, I threw in a little bit of slang and made up some new words by “tweaking” the endings of some existing ones to facilitate rhyming, so what? The funny thing is that the meaning of the words I “tweaked” is still obvious. Everyone can easily tell what the un-tweaked versions of the words are.

To summarise, doing some minor creative surgery on the English language allows us to not only maintain clarity and create more compact verse, but also to completely retain the meaning of all the tweaked content :).

So I put this to you, why shouldn’t we tweak language? I tweak my code all the time to make it more compact, more concise and more readable. And yet here is poetry, coming in and doing the exact opposite. I tell you, it conceptually undermines the structure, clarity and higher productivity that we as software developers are trying to bring to the world. And anyway it surely is against some sort of best practice somewhere. Right? Am I right???

This post has been marked with my funny flag:

For other example of flag usage see this post marked with my sarcasm flag. It is so sad that I have to do this, but otherwise some people would undoubtedly take this post seriously and try to sic the grammar police, poetry police and who knows what other police on me.

Related posts:

1. The Anatomy Of A Rhyme And What Really Rhymes With Orange
2. Converting Integers To Words – Bringing Order To English Through Code
3. Here Are Some Words That Rhyme With Orange!

Update: Well I got at least one of the interviews that I wanted from this post, and here it is:

- Interview With The ‘I Drink Your Mikshake’ Snorg Tees Girl

I love Snorg Tees (you know those t-shirt ads you keep seeing on digg.com, explosm.net and everywhere else), well to be more precise I love their ads, well to be even more precise I love the girls who model the t-shirts in the ads (so I am a guy and I like girls, so sue me :)).

I recently came across some blog posts here and here, talking about Alice the original snorg tees girl and even an interview with her in another post here (she seems like a nice girl). However after reading these posts I realised that there are a few other snorg tees girls that I really like, so I thought I’d create this small list and to make it even more interesting I thought I’d turn in into an experiment in the power of social media.

Here is the idea, I think the other snorg tees girls on this list deserve to be interviewed also, just like Alice was (obviously Alice is one of the girls on the list :)) and since I don’t know who they are I thought I would turn to social media to provide the answer. What I would like to see happen is for this post to become popular enough to come to the attention of either the girls themselves or people who know them, so that they can contact me, so that I in turn can interview them and post the interviews on my blog for everyone else to read :)(I know there are probably easier ways to do this, but then I wouldn’t get to do my little experiment and that’s no fun :)).

I am sure there are other people out there who are closet fans of these girls :), so if you are one of them, or even if you’re not but want to support the experiment what you need to do is cast you vote. Vote this post up on your favourite social media site, that means I want you to Digg and Stumble it, to Mixx it, Spurl it, Pownce and Twitter it, to Reddit, Furl it, Sphinn and Tumblr it and do whatever else your social media site does. Oh, and don’t forget to share it with your friends. The more people see it, the more chance this experiment has of succeeding! So, what are you waiting for, go ahead…

Oh yeah, almost forgot :), here is the list of the snorg tees girls we all want to know more about (well, my list anyway :))

5. It’s Ok Pluto I am Not a Planet Either	4. I Drink Your Milkshake	3. I Love LAMP

2. #1 Threat To America BEARS	1. With A Shirt Like This Who Needs Pants?

Number 3 – Ultimate geek t-shirt or what?
Number 1 – Who else thinks this is best t-shirt ad ever :)?

If you’re one of the snorg tees girls in this list or someone who knows one of them and can talk them into doing an interview over e-mail or IM :), then please contact me, my details are on the contact page. You can also just leave a comment with your details and I will contact you (you know, to verify that you are who you say you are :)).

Oh and if there is a question you want to ask one of the girls, please post it up as well, if this experiment is successful you may just get your questions answered (please don’t post anything vulgar, I will treat any vulgar comments as spam and deal with them accordingly).

Don’t forget, vote this post up! Do it :)!

Related posts:

1. Interview With The ‘I Drink Your Milkshake’ Snorg Tees Girl
2. How NOT To Run A Social Community – Subject Digg
3. Tweaking English For Fun And Profit … Facilitating Poetry

The IT industry is notorious for its high turnover rate of employees. Infact it has gotten to the point that most companies don’t expect to keep IT personnel for a longer than around 18 months when they hire them. If you’ve ever worked in software or IT you would certainly be familiar with phrases such as “… none of us are gonna be here 2 years from now …” or something along those lines. I believe it has almost become a self-fulfilling prophesy, since noone expects IT people to hang around for long, most of them don’t.

Of course the industry itself is partly to blame. It is still a very young industry and growing rapidly, which creates a lot of new opportunities and being by nature a fast-paced field it creates perfect conditions for people to “jump ship” whenever the fancy strikes them.

Despite all of this I believe there are many things you as an employer can do to keep your staff for longer and it is certainly in your best interest to do so. The hiring process is expensive and time consuming and you still don’t really know what you’re getting. Most importantly however, domain knowledge is not something you can easily replace. It takes years to acquire business and technical domain knowledge and it should certainly be high on your list of priorities to not loose the employees who already have this knowledge. Especially not to your competitors!

Fortunately the power is very much in your hands when it comes to creating the kind of environment where employees feel happy and never want to leave and I am going to tell you exactly what you can do to achieve this in 7 “easy” steps.

7. Provide opportunity to learn and improve yourself.

Many companies already do this since it is fairly easy to pay for a conference or a book here and there but, you can differentiate yourself even here. Do pay for the conferences and the books, also try organising a training course or two onsite (ask your staff what they would like, don’t just offer a random useless course). Another good idea is providing some company sponsored time on a periodic basis for personal projects/study (e.g. Google 20% time). Try and hire some people who are highly respected in their field, working with a guru is a learning opportunity in and of itself. Be creative.

6. Provide a career path.

It is amazing how many companies don’t pay any attention to this. How do you expect people to stay around if they don’t really know what steps they can take to advance their career if they stay with the company? If you do have a career path for people, then make sure you actually articulate it – that is to say – tell them what the career path is. If there is no career path for a person at your company, they you have some work to do. The more varied career paths you can provide for people the better. This is of course much easier in a big company, but smaller companies can be creative with this as well. Think of different a novel ways how someone can progress their career while staying at your company. Maybe it is time to open a new office somewhere or shake-up the board a little bit with some fresh blood or perhaps getting a new partner on board is not such a bad idea. There are plenty of ways, listen to what a person wants and find creative ways to meet those goals with them. Many will appreciate you and your company just for trying. The thought really does count!

5. Hire people who are better than you and make sure they do the same.

This one is crucial as it will directly affect number 4 as well. Never settle when you’re hiring, even if you have to reject hundreds to find the right person, you will not be sorry in the long run. Hire people that you would love to work with and if one of their responsibilities is to hire other people, make sure they are also doing the same thing. By doing this you will create a group of people that will naturally want to “gel”. Conflicts will be easier to resolve, and most conflicts won’t lead to enmity. You will also be not only maintaining but improving the skill levels in your company and since you’re hiring for retention you will ultimately be the winner as these great people advance up whatever hierarchy you have and themselves hire even more awesome people to work with. John C. Maxwell explains how this works in great detail in his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says but his core logic is certainly sound.

4. Foster a friendly and open atmosphere.

If you have a handle on number 5 this one should be a cinch. However do keep an eye on it. You need to handle conflicts if they develop and do actively make sure that people are socialising outside of work. More bonding happens in 30 minutes at the pub than you could get from weeks if not months in a work environment. The socialising thing doesn’t just apply to your people, it applies to you as well, after all you’re part of the group. People love to work with their friends, make sure they have the opportunity and they will want to hang around as long as their buddies are hanging around too.

3. Be flexible.

It is not the 19th century any more. The world is a fast, connected and busy, lots of stuff is happening all the time. Your people might want to be involved in some of this stuff. Such as – oh I don’t know – spending time with their family, or going on an extended holiday or maybe running a burrito stand on Friday afternoons. Who knows what they might be into? If you can be flexible enough to accommodate these little quirks, not only will people be happy and grateful, but if yours is one of the few companies that can offer them the kind of flexibility they need, who do you think they’ll want to work for? The funny thing about IT work is that it is there 24/7, it doesn’t have to get done between 9-5 on any particular day; it can get done in all sorts of different ways. You just need to be open to them.

2. Provide interesting work.

I am well aware that you can’t always control what kind of work is in the pipeline. However, the work itself doesn’t have to be inherently interesting as long is the way you execute the work is interesting. You can be building the next great spreadsheet application or accounting package, but if you use interesting and new technologies, let people experiment and don’t hold the reigns too tightly, it can become the most fun and exciting project that people have ever worked on. Numbers 3, 4 and 5 can also contribute a lot to how the interesting the work is perceived to be by the people doing it. In short, being a control freak is bad, keeping up with the latest and greatest in IT is good, being open to using the latest and greatest in novel and interesting ways is best.

1. Pay your people what they are worth.

How many companies do you know who just won’t shut up about how they hire the best people (just about all companies I guess :))? Well, news flash, if your salaries are commensurate with the average market rates, your employees will most likely be commensurate with the market average as well, unless you get lucky. Good people demand good pay, more than that, good people deserve good pay. A really good developer for example can be 2, 3 even 5 times more productive than an average one (maybe even more, there are studies on this, use Google to find them). So you should certainly be able to afford those extra few thousand if the productivity increase you are gonna get will be in the orders of magnitude higher. Am I right? Regardless, if you want to retain good people you have to pay more than most other companies are willing to pay. Otherwise people will just go and work for those companies that do pay more; it’s the smart thing to do after all.

All of these are very much common sense, right? Well, you will find that most employers can’t provide all seven and most can’t even provide three (it is so hard to part with money, even when it is for the greater good). Of course the most important one is number 1 :). If you do nothing else make sure you have number 1 covered, be warned however, that by itself it will only get you so far, unless it is supported by at least some of the other points, 1 will have only a marginal effect on your level of IT staff retention.

Endeavour to provide all seven points and you will be extremely surprised at what it does to your retention rate. People might even want to – god forbid – have a career at your company. At the very least your IT staff will hang around for longer and you will find that as word spreads, you will slowly get the better people applying for positions at your company. I don’t need to spell out the benefits of any of this, they should be pretty self-evident.

One final note, sometimes the best thing for someone is to go try new things and find new challenges, for whatever reasons. Do support your staff as much as you can if that is the decision they make. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to change their mind, but if the decision is final, do your best to help and support them. This will leave your relationship with that person with a positive “emotional bank account” (I borrow that phrase from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey which is a great book by the way). This – of course – means that you will find it that much easier to hire that person again down the line should the opportunity present itself. It is only common sense.

Related posts:

1. Java and .Net Taking On Contenders And Winning
2. 3 Things They Should Have Taught In My Computer Science Degree
3. If Software Development Was Like Medicine: Part 1

A software developer these days is almost certain to engage in some kind of activity to maintain their fitness. Well, I may be stretching things a little :), but there are certainly more than a few developers who exercise pretty regularly; fitness is the “in” thing to do after all. I however found that many developers are either doing the “wrong” kind of exercise or focusing too much on some muscle groups to the neglect of others.

Every profession puts different kinds of stress on different parts of the body, this means that some exercise is very beneficial in some occupations while being almost harmful in others. Here, I will attempt to give some pointers on the types of exercises and muscle groups it would be best to focus on if you’re a software developer (or indeed any other IT professional).

Focus On The Core

For the uninitiated, by “core”, I mean your stomach, or more precisely, your stomach (abs), side (obliques) and lower back muscles. Your core muscles are arguably the most important muscles in the body. As software developers we sit at the computer all day, this puts a lot of strain on our lower back muscles, especially when we slouch (I know that I can slouch even on ergonomic chairs :)). This puts us at high risk of damaging our lower back in some way, so it certainly behooves us to strengthen our lower back muscles. However – with core muscles – balance is key. If you work your lower back, you need to pay equal attention to the abs and obliques. An imbalance in your core muscles puts you in very high risk of injury and since the core supports your whole body, it can make you a very unhappy developer. And by unhappy, I mean you’ll be in some possibly significant pain.

So, how do you work your core muscles? Well, despite what TV would have you believe, the machines of the AB* variety (e.g. ab roller, ab doer etc.) are not necessarily better than plain old crunches and leg raises. Infact I have found them to be worse in many situations. Not to mention the fact that you need the machine with you if you want to use it, where as for crunches and leg raises all you need is an even surface (floor, bench etc.). So I favour crunches and leg raises for your abs and obliques. For lower back, try doing some back extensions, they are surprisingly hard and also surprisingly effective. If you don’t know what back extensions are, then Google is your friend :). Oh, alright, it looks like this:

No matter which exercise you do to strengthen your core muscles, make sure you do it regularly. As a developer who sits at the computer all day, the worst thing you can do for yourself is ignore these muscles. Do not ignore your core!

Engage Many Muscle Groups At Once

We are all busy people and only have so much time to devote to our exercise program. It is therefore surprising how much time people spend doing exercises that engage at most one muscle group (wrist curls anyone?), while ignoring exercises that can potentially work almost your whole body.

There are two exercises that should be part of just about every work-out you do, I am talking about chin-ups and push-ups. Yes, I know that these are very hard and you usually can’t instantly crank out ten reps like you can with a light dumbbell, which is precisely why most people ignore these great exercises. I would however recommend that you give these a good try and don’t give up. You will slowly find yourself doing better and better and the benefits are tremendous.

Push-ups focus on your chest but will also work your arms, back, abs and to a lesser extent your legs. Chin-ups not only give your whole body a good stretch, but will work your arms, shoulders, latissimus dorsi :), abs, and are also good for your spine. But wait – there is still more – these exercises are great for building lean, strong muscle mass (i.e. you’ll be much stronger without looking bulky).

Your time is valuable, there are games to be played, books to be read, code to be written (that is, complained about how badly it was written in the first place and then re-written to be better :)). So, do yourself a favour and use the exercises that give you the most bang for your buck.

Stretch Or Else

One of the most accurate definitions of old age that I’ve heard has to do with your muscles loosing flexibility and suppleness. I wholeheartedly buy into this theory. Work on your flexibility, if you have time to do only one exercise, make sure it is a stretch. This is not just advice for software developers; this is good advice for everyone.

Always stretch, your arms legs and torso before a work-out (and preferably after as well). And don’t just do those half-hearted stretches to “loosen up”. Push your muscles a little bit, but within reason, you can injure yourself even while stretching. Your aim should be to become a little bit more flexible every week, there is no such thing as too much flexibility. I am not going to go into the kind of stretches you should be doing, there is plenty of info around. My job is to remind you of the importance of stretching. If you can’t touch the ground with your fingertips while standing up, no matter how old you are, you’re not flexible enough (touching it with your palms would be even better).

If you subscribe to this theory you will find that as you get older you will be able to easily maintain your lifestyle no matter what you love doing and you will feel good while doing it. Ignore this advice and you will feel old by the time you’re 40 if not before!

The Good Cardio

Aerobic exercise is a tricky one. As developers we spend the vast majority of our time sitting down. Therefore all of us are aware that we should be doing some kind of cardio activity to balance this out, it is simply common sense. Many people join some sort of local sporting team which is great, have fun with your friends while getting a cardio work out. However, team sports can be prone to injury especially if everyone is very competitive (injury is not good for your body no matter how minor). The other problem is that you usually can’t maintain your heart rate at a consistent level when playing a team sport and this is the whole point of a cardio workout.

Running is therefore the perennial favourite to get a good quick aerobic workout. I agree that it is an exercise that makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something, but a word of warning. Running is terrible for your joints, it is very high impact and your bones and joints take the brunt of it. You probably won’t notice it while you’re young, but there is a very good chance that you will pay a high price for it when you get older.

Therefore I favour either walking or cycling as a cardio workout. Both of these are nowhere near as high impact as running, they can still burn some decent calories, especially cycling. They will still give your legs a nice workout (which is a good side benefit). There are other kinds of cardio exercises, but I do recommend doing one that uses primarily your legs, such as the ones I mentioned. This is so that your legs get a workout along with the aerobic exercises you are doing for your body.

“Executive” Summary

Most of the things I talked about above don’t need to be done at the gym (although they certainly can be). With a bit of ingenuity you can do most of these exercises anywhere (e.g. any likely tree branch is your chin-up bar). So, to recap, I am going to keep this short and sweet:

Stretch, Walk/Cycle, Chin-ups, Push-ups, Crunches, Leg raises, Stretch

Then rinse and repeat. It is in your hands from here on in. All your bases are belong to you!

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With the Olympics drawing to a close shortly, I couldn’t help noticing the tremendously high number of Olympic and world records that have been broken. According to the official site 36 world records and 74 Olympic records have been broken as of August 19th. It certainly makes for an entertaining Olympic games, but this started me wondering about the future of sport in general and the Olympics in particular. The question I ask myself is, just how close are we to the limit of human potential as far sporting endeavors go?

Where are we now…?

I would say that if we haven’t passed that limit already, then we are surely very close to what humans with no technological assistance are capable of. And this of course raises the point, just how much of a role is science and technology currently playing in sport?

It is clear that sport has become more professional over the last several decades. Just about all athletes now competing at the games do their sport professionally and certainly training techniques have improved tremendously as well (sport is big business now after all). However, noone can say that technology isn’t playing a major role:

• sophisticated monitoring equipment
• specially formulated drinks and meals
• statistical analysis supported by advanced data storage and retrieval techniques
• etc.

All these now play a major role in the life and training of a professional athlete. And none of those things would be remotely possible without powerful software, hardware and advances in chemistry, biology and medicine. Let us also not forget the medical imaging and testing technologies that can help avoid injury and help athletes recover much faster and more fully in the event of injury. All of this goes on behind the scenes, the only things the public sees are chiseled muscles and jaw-dropping performances.

Of course, one can still argue that all this science and technology is only indirectly supporting athletes, but noone can argue that equipment used by most sports has become, fully as sophisticated as the training methods. This equipment is in no small part responsible for how far performance in many sports has advanced. There has been a lot of controversy already about the shark-skin swim-suits that have become popular in recent years; with some experts saying that they give too much of a boost to what someone without the aid of a suit would be able to do. And let’s face it one of those things could make Buddha look like Apollo tight as they are, so I am inclined to believe it. But what about some other sports that have benefited directly:

• tennis (graphite and carbon rackets, nylon strings)
• pole vaulting (poles made of fiberglass composites rather than bamboo)
• running (specially designed runners and spikes, skin hugging body suits etc.)
• cycling (a decent racing bike costs almost as much as a decent car, I am not even going to go into the technologies involved)
• rowing (they don’t make those boats out of wood any more :))
• there are many others

Surely the results we are seeing now could never have been possible without the modern equipment that science and technology has produced. So, can we really say that all those world and Olympic records are purely the result of human effort? I don’t think so.

What about the future …?

Where does all this leave us in years to come? Well, modern equipment, training methods and fancy suits can only take us so far. The way we are going, given another couple of decades, we will surely hit a performance plateau. What will happen then, no highly entertaining sport competitions, Olympics where no records are broken? Possible but unlikely, like I said sport is big business; losing audience is simply not an option, so we are back to the original question, what next?

Surely none of us are naive enough to believe that all the athletes competing in the games are drug free. I would certainly bet good money that at least some of them are using some kind of performance enhancing juice. Therefore the next step might be to legalize such drugs. Given free reign, science can surely come up with some very interesting substances (with equally interesting side effects I am sure :)) that would push athletes beyond anything we ever dreamed possible. That possibility is somewhat horrible to contemplate, certainly interesting, but no less horrible for the fascination.

The other option, is for us to redefine what “purely human endeavor” actually means. We can allow the use of “assistive technologies” in sport, it would surely provide a lot of entertainment value (miniature jet packs anyone :)), but it will no longer be the sports we know, that is beyond doubt.

Looking even further into the future, will drug tests be replaced by genetic modification tests, or will genetic engineering technologies become an accepted way for athletes to “reach new height of excellence”? Well, I say, bring on the monkey-robot-clone-trooper synchronised diving team it certainly appeals to my sense of the macabre. I would however love to hear other opinions, do you think science and technology have pushed us beyond what humans are capable of, or do you think blood, sweat and tears are the cause of the impressive results that we have seen in the Olympics?

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