Sunday night our family spent about three hours preparing, cooking, and cleaning up a pretty big dinner. The entire time, I'm thinking, "This is madness. Why should this have to take so long and be such a chore?"
The short story is that I was missing my Soylent. I ate nothing but Soylent for a week a couple weeks back and documented that experience, and I found it rather freeing.
Pretty much every meal I've prepared since then, even juicing, has been an exercise in patience. I enjoy food prep. I really dislike food cleanup, and they kinda go hand in hand. I missed the simplicity of going to the fridge and pouring myself a glass of lunch.
Note: I was an early backer of Soylent. I love the concept, and despite the criticisms, it's working for me. My first batch was Soylent 1.0, and I really enjoyed the flavor and texture by the end of things.
I did become a subscriber. Once a month, a week's worth of Soylent will be dropped off at the house, meaning that I can enjoy a "Soylent day" about twice a week and be happy with my occasional vacation from the tyranny of cooking and cleaning up my own meals.
This new batch was Soylent 1.1, and they certainly are taking care of their repeat customers, as it shipped a week after I ordered it. New customers have to queue up for the stuff, while I get the leisure of the monthly subscription being delivered without fail.
So how does Soylent 1.1 stack up to the previous formulation? I have a couple reactions. One, the texture of the drink is a little smoother, as if the tiny oat flakes are more finely chopped. I am not sure I like this new mouthfeel. It makes the Soylent feel a little thinner than the previous version. Second, 1.1 is not nearly as sweet as the previous version. I heard it was made that way to be a little easier to flavor the way you want it, but I preferred the slightly more sweet variety.
I still feel it's kinda odd to want this liquid food. It seems crazy to me that the food I'm eating is being versioned like software, but overall, I find myself drawn to it. The gas we pass is still strong with this formulation, but I don't intend to do it more than a day at a time, so I don't expect it will reach the former levels of toxicity.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Where is the Marketplace for Part-time Work?
I know I've hit the subject of part-time tech work in the past. But that was over a year and a half ago. In tech, everything moves at the speed of light. As a result, you would expect that any question I would have had wayyyy back then would have been answered by now.
But... crickets.
I like to think there's no problem so big our development community can't figure a way out to solve it. We're an extremely well-educated and curious bunch. We have many entrepreneurs in our space. We have extremely diverse interested.
We've solved the problem of getting around town using spare capacity in cars (Uber), and solved the problem with staying somewhere else where there's spare capacity (AirBnB). And there's a question here about the legality of those.
Why then is it so difficult to manage the excess capacity in the world of development? I don't know of a single development team that doesn't have lower-priority tasks that need working on, while the full-time, primary employees and contractors do the heavy lifting. Things like fixing the build server, updating installed dev tools with new versions, doing low-priority bug fixes that keep your site from looking really polished.
If I were a product team manager, I would love to have access to a part-time off-hours person that could pick up some of these small tasks and run with them independently and check them in, fully tested.
But it's weird. I hear nothing on the part-time work front. I do see the occasional developer wondering, as I do, about the possibility of moonlighting, but all I ever hear as answers is "Have you heard of oDesk, eLance, freelancer.com, etc.?"
I have heard of those, but serious articles warn against being either a client or a developer on one of those sites. The warnings make it all sound as if it's a big scam.
Furthermore, this whole things seems like a good consulting model. If you're a consulting company, why not have some extra folks on the bench to do short-term part-time staff aug at lower cost to your clients? A way to scale up and down when you don't need a full FTE to get some things done? Consulting agencies, have you considered doing this?
I'm still focused on why we're able to solve spare car and space capacity with technology, but we can't do the same with technologists. Is it that it's too hard to commoditize development work? It's easy to specify a bedroom or a space in a car, but not a build system, so it's hard to figure a price for the spare capacity?
I often hear as an answer to the "I've got some time evenings and weekends, how can I leverage my skills to do a little work and get compensated?" question: "If you've got extra time, there's always open source frameworks begging for extra help getting features implemented. Why not do that?" Sure, there's a lot of things I can do, technical and otherwise, if I consider volunteering an option. But when I'm looking to trade spare time for money, it seems that the well dries up.
What do you think? Feel free to drop a line in the comments section below.
But... crickets.
I like to think there's no problem so big our development community can't figure a way out to solve it. We're an extremely well-educated and curious bunch. We have many entrepreneurs in our space. We have extremely diverse interested.
We've solved the problem of getting around town using spare capacity in cars (Uber), and solved the problem with staying somewhere else where there's spare capacity (AirBnB). And there's a question here about the legality of those.
Why then is it so difficult to manage the excess capacity in the world of development? I don't know of a single development team that doesn't have lower-priority tasks that need working on, while the full-time, primary employees and contractors do the heavy lifting. Things like fixing the build server, updating installed dev tools with new versions, doing low-priority bug fixes that keep your site from looking really polished.
If I were a product team manager, I would love to have access to a part-time off-hours person that could pick up some of these small tasks and run with them independently and check them in, fully tested.
But it's weird. I hear nothing on the part-time work front. I do see the occasional developer wondering, as I do, about the possibility of moonlighting, but all I ever hear as answers is "Have you heard of oDesk, eLance, freelancer.com, etc.?"
I have heard of those, but serious articles warn against being either a client or a developer on one of those sites. The warnings make it all sound as if it's a big scam.
Furthermore, this whole things seems like a good consulting model. If you're a consulting company, why not have some extra folks on the bench to do short-term part-time staff aug at lower cost to your clients? A way to scale up and down when you don't need a full FTE to get some things done? Consulting agencies, have you considered doing this?
I'm still focused on why we're able to solve spare car and space capacity with technology, but we can't do the same with technologists. Is it that it's too hard to commoditize development work? It's easy to specify a bedroom or a space in a car, but not a build system, so it's hard to figure a price for the spare capacity?
I often hear as an answer to the "I've got some time evenings and weekends, how can I leverage my skills to do a little work and get compensated?" question: "If you've got extra time, there's always open source frameworks begging for extra help getting features implemented. Why not do that?" Sure, there's a lot of things I can do, technical and otherwise, if I consider volunteering an option. But when I'm looking to trade spare time for money, it seems that the well dries up.
What do you think? Feel free to drop a line in the comments section below.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
My Soylent Experiment : Post Soylent Blues
Ok, so as I was drinking my last bit of Soylent last night, I was struck dumb by a thought:
"I'm going to miss this little brown drink."
I could hardly believe it. I'd come to appreciate the texture and the flavor. I was actually enjoying every glass. I wasn't really interested in flavoring it differently, or making it into a shake. It was good enough for me. The gas problems were an annoyance, sure, and I did get a little heartburn toward the end, but for the most part, I was loving not worrying about food.
Contrast that with this morning. I got up, knowing that I was out of my beverage meal, and decided to chop up some mushrooms and crack some eggs into a skillet. 10 minutes into the process, I was thinking to myself, "Oh jeez, c'mon already! Why is this taking so long? Why am I dirtying all this cookware?"
And then eating. To stop what I was doing to pick up the bowl and fork and take a bite felt... well... awkward. It was a bit crazy to me to think that I'm stopping what I'm doing instead of taking a sip of a simple drink. Making and eating breakfast took about 20 minutes out of my day. And at the end of it, I wasn't really any more satisfied or happy about what I ate than when I drank my Soylent.
So yeah, I miss Soylent already.
It's pretty great that I got an email from them saying that my next shipment should be here in a few days, and it is the new formulation (Soylent 1.1), so maybe the gas will be less an issue. I won't do it 100% exclusively, but I'm sure happy to have the option to forego meal planning and still have something good.
"I'm going to miss this little brown drink."
I could hardly believe it. I'd come to appreciate the texture and the flavor. I was actually enjoying every glass. I wasn't really interested in flavoring it differently, or making it into a shake. It was good enough for me. The gas problems were an annoyance, sure, and I did get a little heartburn toward the end, but for the most part, I was loving not worrying about food.
Contrast that with this morning. I got up, knowing that I was out of my beverage meal, and decided to chop up some mushrooms and crack some eggs into a skillet. 10 minutes into the process, I was thinking to myself, "Oh jeez, c'mon already! Why is this taking so long? Why am I dirtying all this cookware?"
And then eating. To stop what I was doing to pick up the bowl and fork and take a bite felt... well... awkward. It was a bit crazy to me to think that I'm stopping what I'm doing instead of taking a sip of a simple drink. Making and eating breakfast took about 20 minutes out of my day. And at the end of it, I wasn't really any more satisfied or happy about what I ate than when I drank my Soylent.
So yeah, I miss Soylent already.
It's pretty great that I got an email from them saying that my next shipment should be here in a few days, and it is the new formulation (Soylent 1.1), so maybe the gas will be less an issue. I won't do it 100% exclusively, but I'm sure happy to have the option to forego meal planning and still have something good.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
My Soylent Experiment: Days 6 and 7
After five days of writing, there's really not much to say. I've enjoyed having a break from cooking and cleaning. I've enjoyed losing a couple pounds.
I even enjoy the product, texture, and taste. I think it's a good product.
Ultimately, though, I could not exclusively live on Soylent. The "industrial sulfuric hate" gas that comes with the product is not worth it - not living with a family, and not even while living alone. I'm going to pick up some more and use it as a supplement, maybe doing a day or two a week on it, as it is really easy and it does taste good. My daughter had a sip and really liked it.
So thanks to everyone for their support. I think I am going to try to do a little juicing to augment my clean eating diet.
If you're interested in eating healthier, check out "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" and "Hungry for Change" on Netflix.
I even enjoy the product, texture, and taste. I think it's a good product.
Ultimately, though, I could not exclusively live on Soylent. The "industrial sulfuric hate" gas that comes with the product is not worth it - not living with a family, and not even while living alone. I'm going to pick up some more and use it as a supplement, maybe doing a day or two a week on it, as it is really easy and it does taste good. My daughter had a sip and really liked it.
So thanks to everyone for their support. I think I am going to try to do a little juicing to augment my clean eating diet.
If you're interested in eating healthier, check out "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" and "Hungry for Change" on Netflix.
Monday, October 13, 2014
My Soylent Experiment: Day 5
As I mentioned in my first post, I'm overweight and have an unhealthy relationship with food. It would be crazy not to think of Soylent as a possible weight loss vehicle. If it provides all my nutrition in a measured number of calories that also happens to be an amount of calories that would lead itself to weight loss, that'd be ok, right?
Yep. Fine with me. As I said before, that's not entirely the goal, but it is in the back of my mind. Weight loss, when you're overweight, is always in the back of your mind, to some extent.
That said, while I am certainly trying to make positive changes to my life by eating clean, and by trying Soylent, there's always the little motivation in the back of my head that life would be better if I were, say, 33% smaller.
Friend and That Conference colleague Clark Sell recommended that I watch a movie last week called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". It's on Netflix, so it wasn't a problem to watch it. Hulu seems to have it in its entirety online, so there's really no excuse not to check it out if you're interested.
The movie is about how two men with similar physical conditions used juicing to get down to healthy weights from fairly precarious health conditions. One bloke from Australia sets off on a 60-day juicing fast while driving across America, and while he's on his journey, meets another fella with similar conditions and convinces him to juice, too. They both lose a couple people's worth of weight over the course of years and become fairly well known for it.
But the juicing thing seems very Soylent-esque. And given the gas we pass on Soylent, possibly I'll try a juice cleanse in the near future. Be sure to read about it here if I do.
So, to the point, I appear to be down somewhere between 4-5 pounds over last week. That includes a day of liquid diet, however, but I do believe that calorie restriction is partially responsible for that. We'll see how things shake out.
Yep. Fine with me. As I said before, that's not entirely the goal, but it is in the back of my mind. Weight loss, when you're overweight, is always in the back of your mind, to some extent.
That said, while I am certainly trying to make positive changes to my life by eating clean, and by trying Soylent, there's always the little motivation in the back of my head that life would be better if I were, say, 33% smaller.
Friend and That Conference colleague Clark Sell recommended that I watch a movie last week called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". It's on Netflix, so it wasn't a problem to watch it. Hulu seems to have it in its entirety online, so there's really no excuse not to check it out if you're interested.
The movie is about how two men with similar physical conditions used juicing to get down to healthy weights from fairly precarious health conditions. One bloke from Australia sets off on a 60-day juicing fast while driving across America, and while he's on his journey, meets another fella with similar conditions and convinces him to juice, too. They both lose a couple people's worth of weight over the course of years and become fairly well known for it.
But the juicing thing seems very Soylent-esque. And given the gas we pass on Soylent, possibly I'll try a juice cleanse in the near future. Be sure to read about it here if I do.
So, to the point, I appear to be down somewhere between 4-5 pounds over last week. That includes a day of liquid diet, however, but I do believe that calorie restriction is partially responsible for that. We'll see how things shake out.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
My Soylent Experiment: Day 4
One thing I didn't expect with this Soylent stuff, though a peek on their online forum confirms it's common, was the associated gas.
Note, I'm not talking about gas pains here. The issue is the actual emitted flatulence.
And it's a deal breaker, in my book, for a Soylent-only diet. Started to have problems with it on Day 3, but given my long term experience with flatus, I dismissed it. But as of today, there's no doubt as to the source.
And when I say deal-breaker, I mean deal-breaker. Until they get the formulation under control, there isn't anyone that's going to live with me while I am emitting these particular toxic clouds. They've been called "mustard gas" and "sulfarts" by folks on the forums. One person even said that "I've had to wash things several times to get the sulfur smell to go away." That, my friends, is a deal-breaker in action.
A couple of folks have suggested that the gas is coming from drinking it too rapidly. After all, 670 calories is not intended to be pounded down in 30 seconds, despite the ease of doing so. We'll see, as I'm trying to drink more slowly now. But I think that this particular effect leads me to the idea of drinking Soylent only part-time.
A couple parting thoughts for day 4.
I've given you my impressions, but I'm not the only one interested. See what other people have to say about Soylent and what the experience is like.
Note that there's been a lot written about the taste and the texture of this foodstuff. Some folks have had a bad experience. Some reviews have called it gross. One thing that's certain. The company continues to refine Soylent to make it better for everyone.
Note, I'm not talking about gas pains here. The issue is the actual emitted flatulence.
And it's a deal breaker, in my book, for a Soylent-only diet. Started to have problems with it on Day 3, but given my long term experience with flatus, I dismissed it. But as of today, there's no doubt as to the source.
And when I say deal-breaker, I mean deal-breaker. Until they get the formulation under control, there isn't anyone that's going to live with me while I am emitting these particular toxic clouds. They've been called "mustard gas" and "sulfarts" by folks on the forums. One person even said that "I've had to wash things several times to get the sulfur smell to go away." That, my friends, is a deal-breaker in action.
A couple of folks have suggested that the gas is coming from drinking it too rapidly. After all, 670 calories is not intended to be pounded down in 30 seconds, despite the ease of doing so. We'll see, as I'm trying to drink more slowly now. But I think that this particular effect leads me to the idea of drinking Soylent only part-time.
A couple parting thoughts for day 4.
I've given you my impressions, but I'm not the only one interested. See what other people have to say about Soylent and what the experience is like.
Note that there's been a lot written about the taste and the texture of this foodstuff. Some folks have had a bad experience. Some reviews have called it gross. One thing that's certain. The company continues to refine Soylent to make it better for everyone.
My Soylent Experiment: Day 3
Hm. Day 3. It's almost fallen away into the background. I'm not really thinking about eating. We had a lot of errands to run today, so I wasn't home much, and I'm just happy not to have so many dishes to do. I feel normal, and feel like I could probably continue drinking Soylent indefinitely. I don't have any intention to do that, but I have to say, it's ok for me, at least on day 3.
When I tell people I am trying to eat nothing but Soylent for a week, I get a lot of questions, and I thought I'd create a Frequently Asked Questions list.
Why would you do that?
Well, I have already explained this in detail, but it comes down to needing a way to keep food from taking over my life, a way to ensure I'm not taking in too many calories, and managing my time.
Wouldn't you miss chewing?
I haven't been drinking Soylent long enough to know about me personally. Maybe. But in the first few days, it's not been a big deal. I chew gum if I want to, but it really doesn't come up. You really do forget about eating a bit.
Wouldn't you miss flavor?
Well, I was on a pretty restrictive diet prior to starting Soylent, so it's not like I'm going from pizza and burgers to Soylent. I went from a pretty bland salt-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, low-carb eating plan to Soylent. I was already drinking protein shakes every day, so this doesn't feel that unnatural. Seriously, when you aren't going to eat or drink anything else, you stop thinking, "Hm... what do I feel hungry for?" You don't wonder what's going to be for dinner. It's a bit surreal for someone like me who would plan food days in advance.
This is all you eat/drink?
For the course of this week, this is the only nutrition I'm planning to have. If there's any issues where I feel I need to have something else, I will, but so far, that's not the intent. I do make decaf hot tea a few times a day. I drink water all day, too. I do both of these things on any average day anyway.
Are you ever going to eat food again?
According to the explicit goals of the folks behind Soylent, I shouldn't need to. The founder of the company appears to have had nothing but Soylent for at least a year. But I have no intent of eating nothing else for the rest of my life. That's not the point, either. Yes, this meal replacement is a possible food replacement, but my hope is to use it to simplify -- to have the occasional Soylent day, to ensure I'm not overdoing the calories.
Why would you subject yourself to such a restrictive diet?
I'd argue that we all make compromises when choosing what to eat. If we all ate what we wanted and only what tasted good, no one would ever eat broccoli. Sorry, broccoli, but you suck. This isn't a restrictive diet at all. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want to. But I recognize that left to my own devices, I can't make the right choices. I'm choosing to explore this option for myself so that I can be healthy. Another arrow in my quiver, another bat-tool on the utility belt.
Isn't it unhealthy to eat just a bunch of chemicals?
The word "chemicals", like the word "toxins", is a relatively meaningless term. Everything we are and everything we consume, is made up of chemicals. There's a difference between Vitamin C (a chemical) and sulfuric acid, in terms of useful nutritional content, but make no mistake: everything you eat is a chemical. A vitamin extracted into a pure form in a lab doesn't mean it's different from that same vitamin naturally occurring in nature. I guess my point is: you shouldn't be scared into reacting based on scary-sounding name-calling.
But seriously, how is this possibly healthy?
I don't claim that it is. But there are people like me trying it out now, and a strong body of work should be forthcoming. I like articles like this one, that provide the collected data.
Why not drink Ensure, or Slim-Fast, or any of the other things that claim to be meal replacements?
Soylent isn't formulated to replace a meal, or keep you from dying when you have stomach issues that keep you from eating solid food. It's intended to be a theoretical replacement for food. Each serving doesn't have 100% of your daily value of vitamins. Each serving has a third of your daily calories, and each serving has a third of your recommended daily intake. Slim-Fast and Ensure are not the same thing. Check this thread for more information.
When I tell people I am trying to eat nothing but Soylent for a week, I get a lot of questions, and I thought I'd create a Frequently Asked Questions list.
Why would you do that?
Well, I have already explained this in detail, but it comes down to needing a way to keep food from taking over my life, a way to ensure I'm not taking in too many calories, and managing my time.
Wouldn't you miss chewing?
I haven't been drinking Soylent long enough to know about me personally. Maybe. But in the first few days, it's not been a big deal. I chew gum if I want to, but it really doesn't come up. You really do forget about eating a bit.
Wouldn't you miss flavor?
Well, I was on a pretty restrictive diet prior to starting Soylent, so it's not like I'm going from pizza and burgers to Soylent. I went from a pretty bland salt-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, low-carb eating plan to Soylent. I was already drinking protein shakes every day, so this doesn't feel that unnatural. Seriously, when you aren't going to eat or drink anything else, you stop thinking, "Hm... what do I feel hungry for?" You don't wonder what's going to be for dinner. It's a bit surreal for someone like me who would plan food days in advance.
This is all you eat/drink?
For the course of this week, this is the only nutrition I'm planning to have. If there's any issues where I feel I need to have something else, I will, but so far, that's not the intent. I do make decaf hot tea a few times a day. I drink water all day, too. I do both of these things on any average day anyway.
Are you ever going to eat food again?
According to the explicit goals of the folks behind Soylent, I shouldn't need to. The founder of the company appears to have had nothing but Soylent for at least a year. But I have no intent of eating nothing else for the rest of my life. That's not the point, either. Yes, this meal replacement is a possible food replacement, but my hope is to use it to simplify -- to have the occasional Soylent day, to ensure I'm not overdoing the calories.
Why would you subject yourself to such a restrictive diet?
I'd argue that we all make compromises when choosing what to eat. If we all ate what we wanted and only what tasted good, no one would ever eat broccoli. Sorry, broccoli, but you suck. This isn't a restrictive diet at all. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want to. But I recognize that left to my own devices, I can't make the right choices. I'm choosing to explore this option for myself so that I can be healthy. Another arrow in my quiver, another bat-tool on the utility belt.
Isn't it unhealthy to eat just a bunch of chemicals?
The word "chemicals", like the word "toxins", is a relatively meaningless term. Everything we are and everything we consume, is made up of chemicals. There's a difference between Vitamin C (a chemical) and sulfuric acid, in terms of useful nutritional content, but make no mistake: everything you eat is a chemical. A vitamin extracted into a pure form in a lab doesn't mean it's different from that same vitamin naturally occurring in nature. I guess my point is: you shouldn't be scared into reacting based on scary-sounding name-calling.
But seriously, how is this possibly healthy?
I don't claim that it is. But there are people like me trying it out now, and a strong body of work should be forthcoming. I like articles like this one, that provide the collected data.
Why not drink Ensure, or Slim-Fast, or any of the other things that claim to be meal replacements?
Soylent isn't formulated to replace a meal, or keep you from dying when you have stomach issues that keep you from eating solid food. It's intended to be a theoretical replacement for food. Each serving doesn't have 100% of your daily value of vitamins. Each serving has a third of your daily calories, and each serving has a third of your recommended daily intake. Slim-Fast and Ensure are not the same thing. Check this thread for more information.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
My Soylent Experiment: Day 2
Well, I decided to start work about 45 minutes early today. Why?
I was full of energy. Energized in a way that I've not been in weeks.
I won't say it's the Soylent. I don't believe it's the Soylent. Statistically, I'm entitled to an energized day now and again.
All I can say is that it didn't prevent me from feeling great. 2000 calories yesterday, a day that included a 5k walk/run, and I don't feel tired, run down, or anything.
I'm not hungry either. Like I posted earlier, my immediately preceding diet set me up for success, however. It's pretty easy to go from a diet of nutritious food you don't like to a liquid diet where you're not thinking much about food.
About halfway through the day, I was about halfway through the pitcher. I took my normal lunch hour, but I didn't spend half of it scrambling for food. I got some extra chores done, putting away laundry and dishes so that's stuff I didn't have to do later.
I did get hungry around dinner time. Another glass of Soylent, however, and I was set for hours. I finished the last bit around 9 p.m. and prepared the pitcher for the next day.
One thing occurred to me today. Over the coming week, I will probably only dirty a handful of dishes. I won't spend any time cooking, cleaning up, or doing dishes for me at all (still will have to help out the family). If I were a bachelor and wanted to eat like this full time, I wouldn't need the following:
I was full of energy. Energized in a way that I've not been in weeks.
I won't say it's the Soylent. I don't believe it's the Soylent. Statistically, I'm entitled to an energized day now and again.
All I can say is that it didn't prevent me from feeling great. 2000 calories yesterday, a day that included a 5k walk/run, and I don't feel tired, run down, or anything.
I'm not hungry either. Like I posted earlier, my immediately preceding diet set me up for success, however. It's pretty easy to go from a diet of nutritious food you don't like to a liquid diet where you're not thinking much about food.
About halfway through the day, I was about halfway through the pitcher. I took my normal lunch hour, but I didn't spend half of it scrambling for food. I got some extra chores done, putting away laundry and dishes so that's stuff I didn't have to do later.
I did get hungry around dinner time. Another glass of Soylent, however, and I was set for hours. I finished the last bit around 9 p.m. and prepared the pitcher for the next day.
One thing occurred to me today. Over the coming week, I will probably only dirty a handful of dishes. I won't spend any time cooking, cleaning up, or doing dishes for me at all (still will have to help out the family). If I were a bachelor and wanted to eat like this full time, I wouldn't need the following:
- A dishwasher
- Huge amounts of china, silverware, glasses
- Large number of pots, pans, tupperware, kitchen gadgets
- Large number of cabinets to house all that extraneous stuff
- Anything more than a small nominal refrigerator
Now obviously, this is a thought experiment taken to extremes, but it has some useful applications. Life is not so much a hassle that I don't want a kitchen anymore, but what do you do when you don't have a kitchen? What if you live in a tiny house, where every last square foot of space counts? What if you live in a third-world nation, where power is spotty, and you don't have easy access to refrigeration? Soylent or similar formulations could be a real boon.
Anything different from the average is scary and weird. I've gotten some pretty weird responses to saying, "I wanna try that Soylent stuff." But remember, everything that we do everyday was once new and decried as a stupid fad.
Don't be a get-off-my-lawner. Embrace change. Try new things. You never know where the thinks will lead you.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
My Soylent Experiment : Day 1
So this morning, I pulled the shaker of Soylent out of the fridge. I mixed it up last night per instructions.
I was a bit disappointed with it off the get go. The water and powder had separated overnight. The mixture was beige, and having separated overnight, it didn't look appetizing.
But I did as the website said and shook it up vigorously. It turned into a smooth beige mix. Sometimes the community refers to it as a slurry. To me, it didn't look much different from any of the other dozens of protein or meal replacement shakes I've tried in the past.
So I poured myself a tall glass of chilled Soylent and took a sip. My first impression of Soylent is that it tastes like just about every other meal replacement shake out there. It's mildly vanilla. It smells a little like a protein drink and a little like toasted oat ring cereal. Not at all unpleasant, really. They have gone to great lengths to make it pretty flavor neutral, and it is.
I was a bit disappointed with it off the get go. The water and powder had separated overnight. The mixture was beige, and having separated overnight, it didn't look appetizing.
But I did as the website said and shook it up vigorously. It turned into a smooth beige mix. Sometimes the community refers to it as a slurry. To me, it didn't look much different from any of the other dozens of protein or meal replacement shakes I've tried in the past.
So I poured myself a tall glass of chilled Soylent and took a sip. My first impression of Soylent is that it tastes like just about every other meal replacement shake out there. It's mildly vanilla. It smells a little like a protein drink and a little like toasted oat ring cereal. Not at all unpleasant, really. They have gone to great lengths to make it pretty flavor neutral, and it is.
The texture got me a little bit. It was a little gritty and chalky in consistency. I see many similar complaints on the online forums. But it wasn't too bad. Also, compared to other protein powders and similar stuff, it was gritty, but usually I use milk or soy milk with those.
Another thing that was a bit surprising is that it doesn't look like you have enough to eat for a day. The pitcher isn't very large. I poured a full glass, and it was maybe 1/8 the pitcher. Given the pitcher is 2000 calories, that was about a 250 cal glass. So a decent breakfast snack.
On the second time I tried blending it with ice, thinking I'd end up with a Soyleccino, or a Soygarita. I added too much ice, however, and it came out so thick, I basically had Soylent sorbet to eat with a spoon. That was good too.
The rest of the day passed without incident. I was never really hungry, and I took my son out for a 5k walk/run and don't really feel anything other than normal.
Day 1 in the bank. Time to mix up food for Day 2.
The rest of the day passed without incident. I was never really hungry, and I took my son out for a 5k walk/run and don't really feel anything other than normal.
Day 1 in the bank. Time to mix up food for Day 2.
My Soylent Experiment: Why Soylent?
I have a confession to make. I'm addicted to food. More specifically, I guess I'm addicted to overeating. In a situation where I allow myself to eat anything I want, I find myself overeating. I don't have an off switch, it seems.
When you fight something for thirty years, you tend to start thinking it's not just about willpower. Those that know me, know willpower isn't exactly my issue. I have willpower. I can stay on a pretty strict eating regimen, but only if it's super strict. As soon as I get cheat days, or cheat foods, I cheat. That's the way it is.
It is in this way that my problem is like an addiction. I can't have "only one" slice of pizza or "only one" scoop of potato salad. If I have one, I'm having more, in the same way that a former alcoholic can't have "only one" glass of wine, or a former heroin addict.
But food is ubiquitous and not intoxicating (it could be argued otherwise), so how do you keep from eating too much? Calorie counting?
I'm a complete calorie counting failure. I have tried apps. Many people have seen me try apps and fail eventually. It's boring, difficult, and fraught with error and estimation. There are easy ways to cheat yourself without realizing it.
If I want to maintain my weight, I have to go cold turkey from really high-calorie-density pleasurable foods. And that brings me to a dilemma.
Because food is everywhere. It's part of the social contract. Go to someone's house? Here's some food. Refuse? It's insulting. Try to explain that they've just done the equivalent of offering a recovering alcoholic a beer, and they can't understand it.
So a while back, Nicole found a medical group treating "metabolic syndrome". It sounded super hokey, and I still don't necessarily believe I have a "syndrome" beyond "I really really like cheesy pizza", but they offered her a restrictive meal plan that made sense to me. It is basically a super-low-salt, no-dairy, no white carb, fresh foods only, clean eating program that takes all the joy out of eating.
Seriously. It becomes a real chore to eat. On such a restrictive program, I found it hard to eat anything that tasted remotely good, and everything you eat is so low-calorie-density that it's almost impossible to take in too many calories.
And it worked! It worked really well! In the course of a year or so, I'd lost about 50 lbs and was feeling really great. It mainly worked because food wasn't on my mind all the time, because I didn't like what I could have, so it broke the cycle for me, and I stopped thinking about food, except when I was really hungry. When I can't choose what I eat, I think about eating less, and I actually eat less.
And then the day came where I started cheating. A day a week at first, and then that day wasn't convenient because there was a party somewhere on a different day. Once off the track, I couldn't get back to the diet. My resolve crumbled. It took a couple of years, but the weight returned, because the food returned.
So at the beginning of September this year, I went back on the metabolic diet. It sucks for the first week, as your body readjusts to not having so much sugar and salt on everything, and then it becomes a background hum.
And it's working again. Down a few pounds and the clothes feel looser, and I'm starting to feel better, but on this diet, you end up spending a fair amount of time trying to balance your diet. You can't eat celery all day, or have a day of only ground beef. The prep, the cleanup, buying too many vegetables and they go bad; it's all coming back to me.
I remember that feeling from before - that my resolve will crumble before the work involved with eating healthy. I remember thinking, "If only there were a way to get a balanced set of nutrients without having to think about it." Sure, you can go the ultra-expensive route and do Nutrisystem or something similar. That would work. But I'm not Rockefeller either. Who's got those kind of megabucks lying around just for their food?
Then I heard an episode of Penn's Sunday School where the gang discuss the fact that dogs and cats eat the same balanced meal every day, ever meal, from the time they become adult dogs until they die. And once you find a brand that works for your pet, you stay with it. They don't have or need variety. They need nutrition. And the folks on the show speculated about the creation of human chow.
I don't remember whether this episode came before the idea of Soylent or after, but it really hit home. I decided to become an early backer of Soylent, to reserve me a week's worth of the stuff. I figured that it was worth a shot for me.
Soylent is designed as a healthy meal replacement. You apparently can substitute a cup of this stuff for any meal that you don't want to bother with? Too tired to cook? Shake up a glass and feel confident you'll get a balanced set of nutrients to replace that meal with. Tired of doing dishes? Take a week off and only wash the shaker and your glass.
That's the idea anyway.
Well, my box of Soylent came about a week ago. I decided that I'm going to commit to the experiment of replacing my meals for a week with Soylent. Note: I was already on a pretty restrictive diet, on which I have a protein shake a day, so I figured that this wouldn't be a big change for me compared to many other people on the web that have tried it. I've been through the "three days in, and I'm crabby and hungry phase." I've even had a day on a liquid diet in the past week, so I figure it should be easier for me than just about anyone else around.
Time will tell. The experiment begins today. I'll log my experience.
When you fight something for thirty years, you tend to start thinking it's not just about willpower. Those that know me, know willpower isn't exactly my issue. I have willpower. I can stay on a pretty strict eating regimen, but only if it's super strict. As soon as I get cheat days, or cheat foods, I cheat. That's the way it is.
It is in this way that my problem is like an addiction. I can't have "only one" slice of pizza or "only one" scoop of potato salad. If I have one, I'm having more, in the same way that a former alcoholic can't have "only one" glass of wine, or a former heroin addict.
But food is ubiquitous and not intoxicating (it could be argued otherwise), so how do you keep from eating too much? Calorie counting?
I'm a complete calorie counting failure. I have tried apps. Many people have seen me try apps and fail eventually. It's boring, difficult, and fraught with error and estimation. There are easy ways to cheat yourself without realizing it.
If I want to maintain my weight, I have to go cold turkey from really high-calorie-density pleasurable foods. And that brings me to a dilemma.
Because food is everywhere. It's part of the social contract. Go to someone's house? Here's some food. Refuse? It's insulting. Try to explain that they've just done the equivalent of offering a recovering alcoholic a beer, and they can't understand it.
So a while back, Nicole found a medical group treating "metabolic syndrome". It sounded super hokey, and I still don't necessarily believe I have a "syndrome" beyond "I really really like cheesy pizza", but they offered her a restrictive meal plan that made sense to me. It is basically a super-low-salt, no-dairy, no white carb, fresh foods only, clean eating program that takes all the joy out of eating.
Seriously. It becomes a real chore to eat. On such a restrictive program, I found it hard to eat anything that tasted remotely good, and everything you eat is so low-calorie-density that it's almost impossible to take in too many calories.
And it worked! It worked really well! In the course of a year or so, I'd lost about 50 lbs and was feeling really great. It mainly worked because food wasn't on my mind all the time, because I didn't like what I could have, so it broke the cycle for me, and I stopped thinking about food, except when I was really hungry. When I can't choose what I eat, I think about eating less, and I actually eat less.
And then the day came where I started cheating. A day a week at first, and then that day wasn't convenient because there was a party somewhere on a different day. Once off the track, I couldn't get back to the diet. My resolve crumbled. It took a couple of years, but the weight returned, because the food returned.
So at the beginning of September this year, I went back on the metabolic diet. It sucks for the first week, as your body readjusts to not having so much sugar and salt on everything, and then it becomes a background hum.
And it's working again. Down a few pounds and the clothes feel looser, and I'm starting to feel better, but on this diet, you end up spending a fair amount of time trying to balance your diet. You can't eat celery all day, or have a day of only ground beef. The prep, the cleanup, buying too many vegetables and they go bad; it's all coming back to me.
I remember that feeling from before - that my resolve will crumble before the work involved with eating healthy. I remember thinking, "If only there were a way to get a balanced set of nutrients without having to think about it." Sure, you can go the ultra-expensive route and do Nutrisystem or something similar. That would work. But I'm not Rockefeller either. Who's got those kind of megabucks lying around just for their food?
Then I heard an episode of Penn's Sunday School where the gang discuss the fact that dogs and cats eat the same balanced meal every day, ever meal, from the time they become adult dogs until they die. And once you find a brand that works for your pet, you stay with it. They don't have or need variety. They need nutrition. And the folks on the show speculated about the creation of human chow.
I don't remember whether this episode came before the idea of Soylent or after, but it really hit home. I decided to become an early backer of Soylent, to reserve me a week's worth of the stuff. I figured that it was worth a shot for me.
Soylent is designed as a healthy meal replacement. You apparently can substitute a cup of this stuff for any meal that you don't want to bother with? Too tired to cook? Shake up a glass and feel confident you'll get a balanced set of nutrients to replace that meal with. Tired of doing dishes? Take a week off and only wash the shaker and your glass.
That's the idea anyway.
Well, my box of Soylent came about a week ago. I decided that I'm going to commit to the experiment of replacing my meals for a week with Soylent. Note: I was already on a pretty restrictive diet, on which I have a protein shake a day, so I figured that this wouldn't be a big change for me compared to many other people on the web that have tried it. I've been through the "three days in, and I'm crabby and hungry phase." I've even had a day on a liquid diet in the past week, so I figure it should be easier for me than just about anyone else around.
Time will tell. The experiment begins today. I'll log my experience.
Friday, October 3, 2014
What Good Is Code History?
Seriously, I'm asking. I had this discussion with a colleague the other day, and it left me feeling unanswered, so I'm curious to hear some anecdotes.
I assume that since it's 2014, we are all using some kind of source control repository. One of the main reasons we have repositories is to keep our code safe in case something happens to our dev machine. If you didn't have a saved copy somewhere, having a hard drive failure would be catastrophic to your organization.
One of the ancillary features that comes with source code control is incremental history. As source code files are added, deleted, or changed, source control repositories dutifully keep a history of all changes, and they keep that information indefinitely. I have always assumed that was a good thing to have an indefinitely long history of all code changes since inception.
Now I'm not so sure.
At face value, the code history is about finding how things were in the ago, some indeterminate time in the past. They don't represent the production codebase of today (especially if you release features frequently). In a lot of agile shops, the code in them is stale after only a few weeks.
Some companies have processes that theoretically allow you to pick any date in the past and redeploy the entire system as of that date. You have to have code history to enable this. Unfortunately, despite unlimited rollback being cited to do any number of things in the software industry, it's rare that rolling back is actually plausible. DB changes, business processes, bug fixes that have been made since that date - those can all torpedo the idea of rolling back to some generic past date.
Maybe there's a legal case for keeping code indefinitely. I'm not aware of such requirements, but I can imagine that maybe certain industries/entities may require it. If it's a requirement for you, I give it a pass, although I still question what the actual benefit of digital hoarding is.
When I think about the uses I've had for code history, it's almost always been to research something that the team is certain was working at some point, and we have a new bug reported. The purpose of the research is to look at the history of the file and find out not only what change was made who made the change.
Why does who made the change matter? The only thing that you should really care about as a team (assuming you're all competent developers) is whether the code works, right? Something is broken, and we want to fix the problem.
One reason you might want to know who made a breaking change is to ask what the thought process was behind the change, and whether they have a reason that the change wasn't made differently. I've never seen this reasoning hold up in practice. Most often, the person responsible has implemented dozens of features since the one that's broken and doesn't have the slightest idea why something was done a particular way. Also, frequently, the person making mistakes can feel checked up on or targeted. Making team members defensive or concerned about not being valued or thought less of will not help the team.
Also, figuring out who made the breaking change has the effect of personalizing the code, when it's actually the team and the team dynamic that allowed the change to be made. We want to keep things as ego-free as possible.
So is it all about blame, then? Is that the only reason you would want to know who made a change? I'm on the fence about that. Modern development shops all have some kind of automated testing associated with their development cycle. While it is not impossible to introduce breaking changes into well-tested code, it should certainly be difficult. When implementing a new feature, if the code you're changing isn't already tested, it's your responsibility to get current behavior under test, and then introduce new tests for the new behavior.
Strong teams hold each other accountable for not mistakes, which are unavoidable, but for process. If there is an indication that, say, testing process was subverted, it's useful for a team lead to pull a person aside and say something like, "Hey, I just fixed a production bug, and it looks like you may have been involved with this code in the past. I noticed that we could have had better test coverage of the feature, so let's check out what I did to test this code. I'd value your insight, in case I'm missing something." It could be that the feature was urgent and the developer on the story was too afraid to ask for help testing. Turn the problem into a teachable moment without belittling or threatening and the team member levels up without fear.
I'm curious to hear what y'all think. Could you live without your source control history? Why or why not? What other uses have you had for digging into the ago?
I assume that since it's 2014, we are all using some kind of source control repository. One of the main reasons we have repositories is to keep our code safe in case something happens to our dev machine. If you didn't have a saved copy somewhere, having a hard drive failure would be catastrophic to your organization.
One of the ancillary features that comes with source code control is incremental history. As source code files are added, deleted, or changed, source control repositories dutifully keep a history of all changes, and they keep that information indefinitely. I have always assumed that was a good thing to have an indefinitely long history of all code changes since inception.
Now I'm not so sure.
At face value, the code history is about finding how things were in the ago, some indeterminate time in the past. They don't represent the production codebase of today (especially if you release features frequently). In a lot of agile shops, the code in them is stale after only a few weeks.
Some companies have processes that theoretically allow you to pick any date in the past and redeploy the entire system as of that date. You have to have code history to enable this. Unfortunately, despite unlimited rollback being cited to do any number of things in the software industry, it's rare that rolling back is actually plausible. DB changes, business processes, bug fixes that have been made since that date - those can all torpedo the idea of rolling back to some generic past date.
Maybe there's a legal case for keeping code indefinitely. I'm not aware of such requirements, but I can imagine that maybe certain industries/entities may require it. If it's a requirement for you, I give it a pass, although I still question what the actual benefit of digital hoarding is.
When I think about the uses I've had for code history, it's almost always been to research something that the team is certain was working at some point, and we have a new bug reported. The purpose of the research is to look at the history of the file and find out not only what change was made who made the change.
Why does who made the change matter? The only thing that you should really care about as a team (assuming you're all competent developers) is whether the code works, right? Something is broken, and we want to fix the problem.
One reason you might want to know who made a breaking change is to ask what the thought process was behind the change, and whether they have a reason that the change wasn't made differently. I've never seen this reasoning hold up in practice. Most often, the person responsible has implemented dozens of features since the one that's broken and doesn't have the slightest idea why something was done a particular way. Also, frequently, the person making mistakes can feel checked up on or targeted. Making team members defensive or concerned about not being valued or thought less of will not help the team.
Also, figuring out who made the breaking change has the effect of personalizing the code, when it's actually the team and the team dynamic that allowed the change to be made. We want to keep things as ego-free as possible.
So is it all about blame, then? Is that the only reason you would want to know who made a change? I'm on the fence about that. Modern development shops all have some kind of automated testing associated with their development cycle. While it is not impossible to introduce breaking changes into well-tested code, it should certainly be difficult. When implementing a new feature, if the code you're changing isn't already tested, it's your responsibility to get current behavior under test, and then introduce new tests for the new behavior.
Strong teams hold each other accountable for not mistakes, which are unavoidable, but for process. If there is an indication that, say, testing process was subverted, it's useful for a team lead to pull a person aside and say something like, "Hey, I just fixed a production bug, and it looks like you may have been involved with this code in the past. I noticed that we could have had better test coverage of the feature, so let's check out what I did to test this code. I'd value your insight, in case I'm missing something." It could be that the feature was urgent and the developer on the story was too afraid to ask for help testing. Turn the problem into a teachable moment without belittling or threatening and the team member levels up without fear.
I'm curious to hear what y'all think. Could you live without your source control history? Why or why not? What other uses have you had for digging into the ago?
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