Pickling, part 2

My mom hid this cucumber plant in the corner of my garden. I was so happy to find it, though I nearly killed it when pulling out a bunch of weeds!

It recovered admirably, and hid two cucumbers from the ravenous squirrels in our neighborhood. I picked those two big cukes, and a few cute small ones, and made a second batch of pickles. I hope they turn out as well as the curry ones did!

     
Click here to download:
Pickling_part_2_tags_cooking_l.zip (4695 KB)

Chicago's New Bike Sharing Program is Up and Running!

So yesterday I tweet Mayor Daley and ask him when Chicago will get this. Lo and behold, today 'he' responds with this link. Sweet!

How your neighborhood influences your life

One fascinating paper shows that crime rates are also strongly affected by vegetation. In housing projects in Chicago with equal levels of poverty, taking account of factors such as size of buildings and vacancy rates, there's a clear association between the absence of greenery and both property crime and violent crime.

Another set of studies demonstrates a relationship between urban planning and body mass index. Where settlements are dense – and therefore able to support public transport – and close to shops, workplaces and recreation places, people are more likely to walk and cycle and less likely to be fat. One paper shows that women living in mixed places, where houses and amenities are close together, have a risk of coronary heart disease 20% lower than women living in areas which contain only houses. Suburban sprawl is partly to blame for obesity. (The references for all these papers are on my website).

Build loose suburbs carved up by busy roads and without green spaces and you help to create a population of fat, lonely people plagued by criminals. Build dense, leafy settlements with mixed uses, protected from traffic, and you help to create safe, fit and friendly communities.

This is a great opinion piece on how urban planning affects our lives. It reminds me of one of the patterns in Alexander's "A Pattern Language" book: City - Country Fingers, talking of the need for green space in urban environments.

Hmm, where to live? Where to live?

Incredible simplification: living on 100 items or less

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

This NY Times article touches the zeitgeist just right, I think. At least, it's hitting my spiritual nerve in a positive way.

I hope this spirit keeps rising in people: less stuff, more experience, less self, more community.

Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish and Circulating Water

This is awesome... Now, I wonder if Lora will let me make one in our garage... hmm....

No Booze, Coffee or Sweets?

I've been behaving badly lately. While I've not been chugging 12-packs
and whiskey, shotgunning coffee and polishing it all off with a cake,
it sure feels that way. I've become a bit puffier than this young man
should be. Since December there's been a succession of feasts, great
meals and sweet snacks parading through our house, for many good
reasons.

Today is the day Vivian came home from the hospital, last week was
Valentine's and my mother in law's birthday, tonight is our salon
(http://salon.fuzzymath.com/) and it's featuring Mari's Foiled
Cupcakes (http://www.foiledcupcakes.com/) which are totally delicious.
This weekend we're having not 1, but 2 parties for Sophia's 6th
birthday, it is getting insane. Those 6 year olds chug Vodka like
Russian hockey players in Lake Placid, 1980. And what they do with
cake.. it's unspeakable.

So, enough is enough. This dude is saying "No more!" I'm not
super-Catholic, but Lent seemed a good time to throw down a challenge
to myself and avoid all of the above, letting my system and my
waistline calm down a bit. The end of winter and the beginning of
spring means we need to be ready for renewal to come, and this young
man is starting his today!

Lifestyle design + city planning = secrets to a longer life

The secret to longevity, as I see it, has less to do with diet, or even exercise, and more to do with the environment in which a person lives: social and physical. What do I mean by this? They live rewardingly inconvenient lives. They walk to the store and to their friends' homes and they live in houses set up with opportunities to move mindlessly. They do their own yard work, hand-knead their own bread dough, and, in the case of Okinawa, get up and down off the floor several dozen times a day.

A good reminder of good habits for us all to reinforce in this new year.

Getting meta with it

I had quite a bit of feedback about the "Maker's Schedule, Manager's
Schedule" dilemma that Paul Graham wrote his essay about. The most
common response was "Yeah, I have that too!" If it was written by a
parent, it often was followed quickly by "What do I do about it?"

My answer is: I don't know, but I am experimenting with changing my
behavior and tracking the results on this blog. The more I work as an
entrepreneur, the more I realize the value of my time in business and
in life.

My initial hypothesis is that I can't make like Paul Graham and sleep
in until 11 every morning, though I can envy him. One daughter is up
at 5-6 am, the other at 6:45 at the latest.

Hypothesis 1:
8am to 1pm is for communication and easy tasks: meetings,
correspondence, and follow-ups
1pm to 5pm is for work
8pm, once the kids are in bed again, can be for work on fun projects
(Gary V. would be proud)

We shall see... I have to run to a meeting!

This dad is tired of his "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule"

There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.

The past few years have been crazy and hectic for me professionally in leading at Fuzzy Math and personally as our second daughter was born.

I find myself on a schedule like Graham describes, with long blocks of time unpunctuated by interruptions only coming late at night. It worked for Graham because he could sleep in. You can't do that with a finicky newborn and a daughter in kindergarten, meaning those late nights charge a brutal fee the next morning.

I have always been a do-aholic, but not a workaholic. What I mean by that is that I don't like grinding on one set of problems all day, every day, but I do enjoy keeping really busy. My dad is the same way. Like him, I've always had a main project and several side projects, hobbies or whatnots to keep me busy.

This past year, with family and FM, only was about those things, and I had precious little creative time. It showed in everything: my work, my attitude, my health.

Well, I'm done accepting the status quo for my life, since when I do the things I'm more passionate about, good things tend to happen, though they are less quantifiable than many other more tangible short term benefits. More on that in a bit.