With Exercise and Diet, Less is More

I lived a fairly athletic life growing up. I swam competitively from the age of four and didn't stop competing until graduating High School. Aside from developing a freakishly strong cardio endurance and some very sore shoulders, swimming didn't prepare me very well for being a gym bro with plates and bars.

When I started hitting the gym I'd always go too hard too soon. By this I mean I'd go every day for a couple hours and get so obsessed with pushing heavier weights that I'd routinely compromise my form and not give myself adequate rest. After months and even years of plateauing, overtraining, and overtraining related injuries, I've finally started to break through into new territory by simply doing less.

My overtraining injuries were usually in the vein of tennis elbow, hyper extension, and the occasional sprain during fairly boring movements. The tennis elbow was due to not enough exercise diversity and having poor form. The hyper extensions would occur due to swinging through the motion rather than remaining slow and controlled. And the occasional sprains were a result of not providing the body enough rest between workouts. It was also extremely inconvenient to hit my calorie targets, which was around 3000 calories a day (220 pounds, 6'2", ~12% bf). When I was hitting my calorie targets it was a full time job and I looked and felt like an ox. I always felt stuffed and had to eat even when I had absolutely no desire, it was gross.

At a certain point I decided I'd get down under 200 pounds and maintain a leaner build, since it'd be easier on my joints and stomach.

Nowadays I perform a medium to heavy full body workout three times a week, and my aesthetics are the best they've ever been. I experiment with a simple calisthenics routine that has an adequate warm up, and I perform a simple yoga routine every morning to stay limber. I'll have to link the yoga video once I find it again, I memorized it long ago when I had an extremely tight and painful lower back (now I'm pain free). In my workouts I opt for lighter weights and slower, more deliberate motions. And as many body builders tell us to do, I give myself 48 hours to recover before working out again, thus the M-W-F cadence.

My workouts are always balanced between chest, back, abs, and legs. While resting one muscle group I'll be warming up another, and as I finish sets for one exercise I'll already be on the second set of the fresh muscles. I stick to four to eight sets of four to eight reps, graduating myself to a harder progression once I'm hitting multiple sets of eight reps without much trouble.

Diet is obviously essential to a good physique, and after experimenting for a few years I've found that cyclical keto works the best for me. Rather than couting carbs and assuring I'm in dietary ketosis, I'll simply eat meat and veggies for all of my meals except for those immediately before or after a workout. For those meals surrounding a workout I'll add a small helping of rice and raisins or other fruit to have adequate glycogen replenishment. The keto snobs will likely say my diet is closer to low carb than cyclical keto, but imo that's splitting hairs. I've developed a good gauge for when I should have some carbs and the craving is always satisfied with an extremely small amount, like a cup of rice or less. In a given week I may consume three cups of rice total. I also don't consume any oils, I cook everything in boiling water with very light seasoning.

I'm hovering around 195 pounds and can probably drop more, but feel quite healthy at my current weight. I've recently become curious about fasting, as the couple times in my life I've tried it I felt very light on my feet and clearheaded.

As always, the key has been to remain consistent and patient with myself. The takeaways here are that it's easy to do too much. For exercise, your muscles make their gains during rest. If that rest isn't facilitated constantly, you're setting yourself up for injury since you'll be causing a net positive number of micro-fractures and micro-tears, aka overtraining. It's worth it to even have a week break every three months or so, just to make sure you're completely healed and not overtraining.

For diet, it's easy to consume way more carbs than your body needs. Carbs are extremely cheap to cook up and they provide a bloated feeling, so every restaurant is happy to shove them in your face. If you stick to meat and veggies, you'll be surprised at how much food you can put away; this is mostly because you're not spiking your insulin nearly as much as you would with carbs. Once you've weened off carbs you'll realize how few of them you actually need.

So for both exercise and  diet, less has been more. Hopefully these nuggets give you some inspiration to experiment and find your sweet spot as well.

The Best Mouse Option

As mentioned in a previous post (about Dvorak), I enjoy experimenting with comfortable computer peripherals and efficient input layouts. Today my setup includes:

• A ZSA Moonlander keyboard running four layouts
• A wireless Kensington 'expert mouse' trackball

Although my setup doesn't include a pedal or a power glove, it's probably weirder than most, but today I want to commend the trackball. After using a standard mouse for my entire life I noticed that my right shoulder felt incredibly loose after a long gaming/computer session (through my late teens and 20s). Out of an abundance of caution, I branched out to experiment with other mouse options.

Today I'm hear to spread the message of giant trackballs. 

I've been using the trackball for over a year now and can't praise it enough. While my shoulder sensitivity may be due to a brutal swimming career as a child/teen, I haven't had to deal with any shoulder discomfort while on the computer since switching to the trackball, since my shoulder no longer has to move!

There's something incredibly satisfying about the dimensions of the 2 inch diameter trackball itself, and I almost wish it was larger. But the feature I love most is the scroll ring going around the trackball. To scroll down a giant webpage I can give it a nice flick. Since the scroll ring is larger than a standard mouse wheel, it has tons of momentum for effective scroll flicking. And with the four customizable buttons I can position the track ball in the middle of the split keyboard or to either side without issue.

Not only is it ambidextrous, but you have flexibility with just one hand. If certain fingers are tired of pushing the trackball you can easily use others. Hate fingers? Move the mouse with your palm. Scroll with the back of your pinky, or your thumb, it's amazing. 

Apparently the original trackball from Kensington could use a pool cue ball, too bad the units are hard to find!

"Why are my downloads so much slower than my speed tests?"

Aha but speed tests and downloads are measured differently!

I've seen a bunch of bologna online where people say that speed tests at sites like speedtest.net aren't accurate because your evil ISP will allow uncapped access to that specific site, but otherwise cap your speeds. I work for a small ISP, and that is absolutely not a thing ISPs care about (at least not this one). 

When you perform a speed test, it'll be measured in megabits per second, where as when you're downloading a file your browser or downloading client program will typically measure the speed in megabytes per second. Before I explain why this makes sense let's break down the verbiage so everyone's on the same page.

Downloads 101

As many of you know, computers communicate in 1s and 0s, aka binary! Each one or zero is a bit. Traditional computers have no smaller measurement of data. There's a tiny switch, and it's either on, or off. One for on, zero for off.

Eight bits is equal to one byte. In an IP there are four numbers separated by periods(or decimal points), such as 192.168.1.1. Each number can be anywhere from 0 to 255, and the reason is because each number in this context is an octet, meaning it's eight bits long, or one byte. All the networking protocols on all the networking devices expect eight bits in each octet, so if you try something weird, it just won't work.

I know this seems like a tangent but bear with me. Let's have eight zeros, 00000000. < That's an octet! The value for that octet is 0! Let's have eight 1s, 11111111. < That's also an octet! The value for this octet is 255! So the highest value IP you can have is 255.255.255.255.

Since we can't add another digit, or a larger number(because it's binary, 1s and 0s only) 255 is the highest number you can make with eight bits. Sprinkling zeros in this octet will get you any number between 0 and 255 (We don't talk about 256). Making more sense now?

'So what? What are you getting at V?'

Well these eight bits can also make letters! ASCII is a standard used by computer for this very thing! 128 characters including numbers, letters, and punctuation are all made with only eight bits! So the letter A is one byte, the letter B is another byte. Other standards like Unicode can use more bytes per character.

Now that we know what a bit and a byte is, let's get back to the matter at hand.

A is a byte, B is a byte, CAT is 3 bytes, SWEET is 4 bytes, you're getting this right?

Alright well 1024 bytes is equal to 1 kilobyte(KB).

1024 kilobytes makes 1 megabyte(MB).

1024 megabytes makes 1 gigabyte(GB).

1024 gigabytes makes 1 terabyte(TB).

1024 terabytes makes 1 petabyte(PB).

It just keeps going, after petabyte comes exabyte, then zettabyte, then yottabyte. There are some great 'orders of magnitude' illustrations on the web to give some perspective on how much a petabyte really is. I remember hearing that every word ever spoken in all of history could be stored in less than four exabytes.

We use similar wording for bits! 10 bits is a decabit, 100 is a hectobit, 1000 is a kilobit, and 1,000,000 is a megabit.

A megabyte is roughly 1,000,000 bytes! To get the number of bits, you'd multiply that number by eight, which would give you 8,000,000 bits!

Now the difference between speed tests and downloads should make sense.

50 megabits per second on a speed test, is really about 6 megabytes per second.

It makes sense to have a speed test be in bits, because it would be much more accurate than a test in bytes, unless you were provided some extra decimal places on a byte reading. What would give you a more accurate reading for measuring distance, centimeters or kilometers? If you couldn't measure past two decimal places, you would surely say centimeters! The same goes for megabits!

On the other hand it makes sense that a download is measured in megabytes, because the files we download and upload are usually huge if measured in bits. A 100 KB file would be 100,000,000 bits! But if the reading is in KB, then there's no crazy math to do, and you could easily approximate how long a download would take. You could definitely perform a speed test in megabytes and there are downloads that are measured in bits, but this is rarely convenient.

Before we finish let's also point out the abbreviations. If the names weren't similar and confusing enough, the abbreviation for megabyte is MB, while the abbreviation for megabit is Mb. Just one B changed from lower to upper case changes the actual value referenced dramatically!

Luckily there's typically enough context around what you're doing to discern between bits and bytes.

So there you go! Now you can calm your frustrated friends with this newfound wisdom.

Hackers, Credit Cards, and Commercials

I watched this episode of American Greed recently, and I thought it was worth sharing. Rather than insert the video, I'll just link to it.

A quick summary for those that'd rather read; a group of hackers would find open wifi hotspots provided by department stores, then sniff the traffic until they were able to pick up customer credit card info and/or the means to access the point of sales system to get card info. Then they'd write that credit card info onto a blank card(with a cheap card writer) and go 'cash out' the victim's account at an ATM. They were so successful that rather than writing the numbers to cards and cashing them out, it was more profitable for them to just sell the card numbers in bulk to mobsters and kingpins for $100-$200 each. They were getting millions of card numbers. Watch the video when you have time, it's fascinating.

Nothing too thought out for this Tuesday. I started rambling below, then decided to come back up here and warn you that it's midnight and I'm writing like a 5th grader the night before a paper is due. It's probably best if you just wait for a better post, where I show you the world on a magic carpet. Here I throw thoughts at the screen like a caveman.

---

The next time you see a commercial for a laptop, a tablet, or a phone, ask yourself why the ad isn't describing the speed of the processor, the amount of RAM or storage space available, the inputs, or other component details during the sales pitch. These things determine how well the phone is going to function and how compatible it's going to be with the rest of your life, so why aren't specs mentioned? It would seem the focus of these ads shows that the main demographic doesn't know or care about jigglybytes.

So what are people really interested in?

The ads say you care about how it looks, how that guy looks with it, how this girl can take a picture with it, and how happy they are. Don't you want to look cool and be happy with your phone? That's really as far as ads go. A wider lens for your selfies, a better photo editor for your selfies. Forget that there's virtually no advantage this phone has over last year's model besides these small tweaks.

Consumerism is interesting. It creates all sorts of markets. Some markets benefit from educating you, while others benefit from doing the exact opposite in what can only be described as short-sighted exploitation.

Despite what seems like misinformation or a dumbing down of people, humans on average are becoming more intelligent every year by something like two IQ points. IQ tests are constantly adjusted for this grind upwards. 

It might seem gloomy, but the collective spirit is resilient and collective mind constantly growing and deepening.

Through Flu and Poo

After getting sick with what felt like the flu I had to give up the push-up regimen as per a doctor's recommendation(I was crazy exhausted 24/7 x.x). And as of yesterday I discovered two leaking capacitors on my desktop motherboard(I'll be putting together a new machine in a few months, this build is going on eight years ha). I've de-soldered the popped caps and ordered new ones, so until the 25th I'm on my work laptop. It's a shame because I just installed fedora 20 on the desktop and spent an hour just playing around with the mandelbrot wallpaper generator.

The good news is I found some nice guides for body weight fitness. See here. The idea is to use your body weight for strength training instead of weights(although weights can't hurt). It's a great idea, and a lot of the exercises are progressive, which makes things more interesting(at least for me). It makes great sense, rather than doing 30 elevated push-ups eight times a day like I did before, I'm pushing myself towards one-handed push-ups through harder and harder exercises with less sets at lower reps.

A push-up progression goes something like this;

Let's say you want to learn how to do one-handed push-ups. Jumping right into one-handed push-ups would be crazy, you probably wouldn't be able to do one, and when you finally learn how, your form would probably be terrible.

Instead you focus on regular push-ups until you can comfortably do 25 or 30 reps. You don't have to do eight sets a day, but obviously the more sets you perform the faster you'll progress ;)

After a couple weeks of focusing on proper technique(flexed butt and abs, straight back) with a set or two every day or every other day you'll feel that it's less of a challenge, so you progress to diamond push-ups, again focusing on proper technique to that you're not straining your shoulders.Your rep count will drop, and you'll work on getting it back up to 25-30.

Once you're comfortably doing 25-30 diamond push-ups you can progress to elevated diamond push-ups. These are the same, but with your feet up on a chair or even a desk, off the ground by at least several feet. Every new progression will lower your rep count, challenging you to bring it back up.

Once your bring the rep count back up, you can progress to where I'm at now, which is archer push-ups(This was kind of a big leap). These are pretty challenging for me, and I'm currently at eight reps on each arm. There are lots of variations to all these progression exercises, but in my mind these archer push-ups are the last step before one-handed push-ups with proper form. It's super important to stop if your form breaks at all. Technique, technique, technique!

There's tons of great progression exercises, they're all about crazy core stability and give a crazy pump. I'll be focusing on the progressing to the full planche, handstands, eventually 90 degree push-ups, the L-sit, and eventually the V-sit, as seen below.

The beauty of all of this is how creative I can get with absolutely no gym equipment. If you're at all interested, the first link I have in this post is a good starting point.

I'm also going to give leangains a shot to help lower my body fat% and stay lean. This is just a neat intermittent fasting routine. The guide explains that for males, ideally you want to fast for 16 hours a day, and limit eating to those eight remaining hours. I'll experiment with my timeline, but I'm going to start with eating from 10am to 6pm, then not eating again until 10am the next day.

There's going to be tons of calorie counting and constant adaptation, but hey that's what life's about! May the gods of consistency and accountability be upon me ha.

The Form, It's All in the Form

Well I've been sticking to 240 push-ups a day and I've been neglecting a post about stretching like crazy. The good news is I found a slight variation to my push-ups that puts less strain on my traps. If I keep my eyes forward during my set, it almost feels easier on my traps. I'll have to do this continuously for a week or two to see if it makes a huge difference.

So far I've been doing tons of head rolls to keep my neck and traps loose. Desk work really doesn't help but hey could be worse!

I've noticed that my triceps are starting to look a little developed, making my biceps look small by comparison. I looked around for a stand alone pull up bar I could buy, but the cheapest ones are over $300. I figured for that kind of money I could take some welding classes and just bring in some pipes to open shop and make my own power tower; a custom pull-up bar with the added bonus of a new skill under my belt.

It's late and I'm feeling energized for no reason. The hardest part about these push-ups is remembering to do them. Yeah eight sets throughout the whole day isn't that much but I've gotten into the habit of leaving four sets until the last couple hours of the day. No bueno.

From 30 to 30

I've stayed at 30 push-ups a day but there's definitely some tightening in my traps. I had to have a break day where I did only three sets, and I had another cheat day this week where I only did five sets.

I did pick up the little 'perfect push-up' rotational platforms from my buddy who never used, they should help ease the constant strain on my wrists. I was surprised to discover that these little puppies make push-ups a lot more challenging, even without rotating the hands. It might have something to do with how much lower I can get my body with them. Or it may be the additional dexterity required to stabilize on them since they're basically bars on wheel bearings.

Anyway, I won't be increasing my rep count to 35 just yet as I feel 30 is still a challenge. I'm sure I could do it but I'd rather get my stretches down first to keep the tense traps under control. My arms definitely feel and look bigger, and I'm noticing some tiny gains on my chest. If I keep it up I'm guessing it'll be more noticeable after say, 16 weeks. Every now and then I feel some soreness in my pecs but that's a good sign! My posture is definitely improving and my shoulder cuffs feel much more secure. Years of desk work and competitive swimming wore them down and made them pretty loose (lol).

The main issue I'm having is the tight muscles. They feel extra tight after each set, which leads me to believe the push-ups are the main cause. I'll have to focus more on stretches, and I'll share a post probably tomorrow detailing the stretches I'm trying to focus on(mainly trap stretches). Although my yoga friend explained that if I stretch all the muscles around the traps, they'll naturally relax as well. I should really take the time to stretch in the mornings and evenings... maybe I'll start tonight.

So far I can't complain. I still look healthy, I'm making small gains, and haven't even thrown in sit-ups or pull-ups yet. Who knew that simplifying down to one compound exercise could be enough to get in shape. I'm sure if I committed to two hour gym trips and supplements I'd get pretty beefy, but my aim is efficiency and economy. So far I've spent nothing monetarily on my workout and I get to split up the sets throughout the day. Each set takes less than a minute, and I enjoy a little pump every now and then.

That's all for the push-up update.

From 25 to 30

It's been exactly a week since my post on the push-up routine I've started. Today(or yesterday I guess) I started doing eight sets of 30 instead of sets of 25. This puts my daily push-up count at 240.

At the start of the routine last week 25 push-ups in a row was quite challenging, but by Monday and Tuesday of this week it was a piece of cake. I'm starting to like the pump. It's a great anxiety buster and helps me focus at work.

I haven't noticed many gains yet, although this is only the start of week 2 into the routine.

What I have noticed is that my shoulders tend to sit wider rather than slouch, and my posture is more upright. My arms are a little bigger from the constant pump, but I haven't noticed anything on the pecs (this is probably from too much shoulder activation). Putting my feet up on something all the time feels like it puts some stress on my trapezius muscles, they've been tighter than normal. I've asked a yoga friend to show me some stretches later this week that I can perform daily to keep myself loose. I already have a theracane if it comes to having to push out any knots.

I took some pictures today. When I decide this project is over I'll have some photos to study.

I'm also considering putting sit-ups into the mix, and possibly making a super set of sit-ups and push-ups in the morning, to knock out two or three of the eight sets for the day in one sitting, alternating between the two exercises.

I've also changed my diet to exclude any processed sugar and minimized my meat intake to two times a week. I don't want to overwhelm myself with a strict diet so I'm starting with some simple rules. They should be easy to stick to. The diet idea is also a big money saver, I'll hardly be eating out at all. The diet is mainly to reduce my body fat % and to clear my skin of any acne.

Overall so far I'm feeling more alert and more calm. I'm able to control my emotions much better and I feel generally better and more upbeat throughout the day.

That's all for now.

Pushup Routines

Since I've decided to quit the gym I've been mulling over different push-up routines I can stick to that won't interfere with my daily life.

Thoughts on push-ups:

I've done the 'Evil Russian' push-up challenge three times, which consists of two weeks of hardcore push-up action. The Evil Russian challenge works like this;

First you do as many push-ups as you can in one go without stopping. Let's say you perform 30 push-ups, this is considered your 100%.

For the next week you'll perform a percentage of this total at different frequencies. At the start of the second week you take another 'test' to do as many push-ups as you can, then for the rest of the week perform a percentage of that max.

Then you're done!

WEEK 1

RI - Relative Intensity (Percentage of your max test)
SF - Set Frequency (How often to perform the set)

Mon: 100% test, relative intensity (RI) 30% Set frequency (SF) 60 min (So here you've done your max which is for example 30, and for the rest of the day you'll do 30% of 30 every 60 minutes. About 10 push-ups an hour.)

Tues: RI 50% SF 60 min (This day you would do 50% of 30 every 60 min. 15 push-ups every hour.)

Wed: RI 60% SF 45 min (30*0.6=18 push-ups every 45 min)

Thurs: RI 25% SF 60 min (30*0.25=7.5 push-ups every hour)

Fri: RI 45% SF 30 min

Sat: RI 40% SF 60 min

Sun: RI 20% SF 90 min

You get the idea. On Monday of this second week you'll definitely be able to perform more push-ups in one shot. My 100% usually doubles at this point, and by the third week I can do close to 100 push-ups without stopping.

WEEK 2

Mon: 100% test RI 35% SF 45 min

Tues: RI 55% SF 20 min

Wed: RI 30% SF 15 min

Thurs: RI 65% SF 60 min

Fri: RI 35% SF 45 min

Sat: RI 45% SF 60 min

Sun: RI 25% SF 120 min

This routine is great for building up some back, shoulder, arm, and chest muscles. It's also scales fairly well, meaning if you can only perform 10 push-ups to start, or if you perform 100, the program will still work. The problem is it can be extremely inconvenient to stay on track when at work or almost anywhere!

You're allowed to skip a set if you make up for it later, but look at Wednesday of the second week, push-ups every 15 minutes!

Go to a movie and you'll have to make up tons of push-ups. Another downside is once you're done with this program, the muscles can deteriorate just as fast as they came. There's no real structure in place to maintain what was gained and if you try to create your own you'll have to maintain similar numbers.

I'm going to develop a routine that's a nice balance between intensity and frequency that I can perform indefinitely. I want it to be flexible in case I go out of town or am busy for most of the day.

I always try to have my feet at least three feet off the ground to demand more from the upper pecs and shoulders. So far I've been doing five sets of 20 push-ups for a total of 100 push-ups a day.

Today I'm moving that total to 200. It's obvious that increasing the number of reps in a set will mean less sets, and less sets is less annoying! Today I'm trying eight sets of 25 for the 200 total. This is only three more sets than I've been doing and only five more push-ups per set. I'll be increasing the number of reps in a set every week or so, and I'll probably be delving into technique on here when I have the time.

I'm expecting obstacles once I hit 500 push-ups a day. Probably in the form of muscle fatigue, joint pain(although my shoulder cuffs feel stronger since I started), and tight muscles if I don't stretch enough. Btw Simonster's workout was definitely an inspiration for this experiment,

Quitting the Gym

I've decided to quit the gym. I'm 23 and in good health. It takes virtually no effort for me to stay in healthy shape, so why should I pay $90 a month just to use some fancy equipment? I have no idea!

I joined the fancy gym over a year ago but began seriously working out about 4 months ago. I was 180 pounds, and decided I would make the leap to 200. At 6'2'' 180 pounds is kind of scrawny in my mind. Taking some protein shakes and vitamin supplements I worked out a little over an hour a day, 6 days a week for four months. I also did cardio three times a week as a 5-7k run or swimming 3000-5000 meters. I was reading about proper exercises, bulking vs cutting, all that jazz. Anyway I think I move between 10 and 18 percent body fat depending on how active I am. It was a great daily ritual but needless to say it took up a lot of time, and the number of showers my god. Three out of five days a week I was taking three showers a day! I put on the 20 pounds of muscle, and now rest at 205lbs. I was spending $90 a month for the gym, and close to $200 on protein shakes and vitamins. Yikes right?

I've decided to see if I can not only maintain but continue to make gains without supplements AND the gym entirely. The annual savings would be over $3000. AM I CRAZY!? MAYBE! I think it's possible.

I started a couple days ago and I've decided to replace the expensive gym procedure with some simple exercises. For now I'll just be doing pushups daily. I was doing about 60 pushups a day when I started, now I'm at 100. This doesn't even compare to a hard one hour workout, but I plan to move this number up as high as I comfortably can. I'll add more exercises(situps, pullups) and maybe some cardio to keep the body fat percentage under control.

It's not a very complicated strategy, but I'm confident that it can work. If I ever start slipping I can just join the gym again, right?

Back in Action... maybe

Well I've decided to start writing posts again, let's see how long I keep at it this time ;)

I wanted this to be a professional blog, with oxford grammar and technical topics, but my interests change frequently. I'm in a constant state of discovery, and I usually feel too humbled to assert myself as a publisher(ha) on any one topic. Maybe that's all normal.

Time seems more valuable each day. Between two jobs I can hardly find time to really probe my curiosities. I do have time for some though ;) I'm lucky enough to be working for a small ISP that allows for a late afternoon/evening work shift. My mornings are completely free, so I've passed my Series 56 and saved up some initial capital to start day trading. I went live early last week and I can't believe how eye opening this process has been.

It's late so I'll be keeping this short. I'm obviously a little nooblet when it comes to trading, but I was expecting daily number crunching and mind boggling formulas that would force me into deep calculations. The Series 56 was somewhat technical, more about the numbering of regulations than anything else.

From the bit I've read in a Mark Douglas book called 'The Disciplined Trader' I've realized the markets give a trader so much freedom, so much control over his own destiny, that the main reason for failure is not always the lack of direction, but the lack of perseverance to focus on that direction, the very root of which are subjects that I can relate to anything in life.

What I'm reading and learning to be the foundation of any successful trader is attitude, expectation, personal philosophy; things that I didn't expect to be learning at all. The book is covering simple topics about objectivity and discipline, with interesting points. For instance the markets are a reflection of yourself. The market does not show pity, it doesn't listen to you, you can't control it(at least not for long), and it's continuous. The only thing you can control is yourself and what you do. The successful trader has unlimited freedom and understands he is completely accountable.

The book refers to the market as a river, with participants making up the waves. There's a small group that consistently profit from the market, and these are individuals that know exactly what they're doing and why, they are the highest points on a wave in the middle is everyone else trying to stay as close to these people as possible, being lower and lower points on a wave going outwards from the middle with the lowest point of the wave being the trader last to jump in and out, the clueless trader.

I've always been interested in how we think and why we think the way we do, and this book brings that deduction to trading. The main idea being that once you surpass your own limitations, you'll be able to identify these limitations as a movement in the market (Easier said than done!)

There's also so many emotions that come into play in a trade. To actually analyze what these emotions are and why they come up has changed my trading style already. I'm starting to understand how a sloppy entrance into a trade can snowball into not only a bad trade, but a bad habit, and eventually a hole in my wallet. Big losses become 'psychological damage' which manifests fear. Fear being the one thing that paralyzes a poet or an artist from expressing himself through his craft. I've only read a small piece of the book but I'll have to pick a topic like fear or greed and cover them one at a time. I should probably finish at least one book first ha. Anyway that's enough for tonight!

The Spotlight on High Frequency Trading

Michael Lewis, had a segment on 60 minutes(watch the link, seriously) to discuss the topic of his new book, "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt". Lewis was a bond salesman in the '80s and '90s, which was the subject of one of his first notable works, "Liar's Poker". He's also written "Moneyball" and "The Big Short", among other works. The first line in his 60 minute segment was;

"Stock Market's rigged." BAM!

It's not this line that's exciting, it's that there's someone who has decided to do something about it. Brad Katsuyama started IEX, an exchange that's actually focusing on creating a fair marketplace, which is extremely refreshing to see from an intermediary.

The 60 minute spot scratches the surface, but in short, HFT(High Frequency Traders) in the market receive market order data from investors before it's reflected on the exchange, then act on those orders, again before it's reflected on the exchange. This happens SO FAST that the ordinary investor's order isn't completely filled with traditional routing, effectively frontrunning the investor. The biggest players in the game have price data before the exchanges do. The solution Brad Katsuyama and company came up with is clever; staggering their routing, so that the order is sent to the furthest exchange first, and the closest exchange last. All these orders come to their destination exchanges within one or two milliseconds of each other, cutting out the frontrunner.

Here's a clip from CNBC with William O'Brien(President of Global Markets at BATS), Michael Lewis, and Brad Katsuyama hashing it out.


O'Brien is shocked that anyone would vilify ANYTHING about the industry. Haven't we seen this card played before? Yes, because the financial industry has repeatedly shown itself to be the pinnacle of virtue and ethics! Yes, of course! How dare ANYONE claim there's frontrunning! ...with empirical data... and testable ideas... that any trader can verify for themselves...

Doesn't this emotional outburst show your cards more than it hides them? You claim to be upset because you think Lewis and Katsuyama are scaring people away from the market and attempting to gain traction for IEX, but I see no crashes... I see record highs... An ordinary investor is ATTRACTED to the market when whistle blowers like this come to light. This kind of unveiling takes power from those that have no divine right to it. This is EXACTLY what the market needs to restore investor confidence.

Turns out O'Brien was lying anyway.

I have yet to read the book, but I've ordered it.

"You're not really providing liquidity if you're not taking market risk." - Lewis

Bitcoin Crash and the Alternatives...

After hitting a great high of $1242 back in November on the Mt Gox exchange, Bitcoin has recently taken a plunge down to $220. The majority of this huge loss occurred just recently in early February. The price steadily dropped from $900 to the $220 price point in just 16 days!
Click on the image below to see a screenshot, or better yet just visit the widget yourself here(use the scroll wheel of your mouse to zoom in and out, time frame options can be found in the bottom left.)
The Mt Gox exchange, formally one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, has even halted withdrawals. Ironically this recent run on their exchange seems to be stemming from failed USD withdrawals. Users wait weeks after requesting their money, only to see the transaction fail. Some users report that even a repeat attempt fails. This problem of inconsistent payouts coupled with vague "we're working on it" responses from Mt Gox could be eroding the very trust they need for the exchange to function. The exchange seems to constantly be tackling some giant issue, from delayed account creation, to DDOS attacks, to a 30% payout success rate.

If you're at all interested, this coinwatch blog has some more detailed info on the crash.
It's sad to see such low volume being pumped through the exchange nowadays, and it's not uncommon to see a $20 spread. Hopefully the exchange can regain some traction and finally make a noticeable dent in their technical issues(of which they've been having for a suspiciously long time). The bigger concern seems to be the lack of feedback from Mt Gox. There's just no sense of damage control coming from them, as if this is completely normal.
Granted, this is a completely unregulated, extremely volatile market based on a currency that doesn't tangibly exist...
When you've swallowed that, bitstamp is showing a price of double that of Mt Gox, currently sitting at $615 while Mt Gox at $300. Since this currency is meant for easy transfer, what's to stop a purchase on Mt Gox, a transfer to Bitstamp, then a sell off? AKA arbitrage. What stops most arbitrage is simply that some exchanges do not accept deposits or withdrawals in USD.
In the meantime there are plenty of Litecoin derivative cryptocurrencies that have popped up and become reasonably profitable as a form of triangular arbitrage. For instance dogecoin, has absolutely no mining limit. This is a currency that can be created at will, has a mining difficulty just like bitcoin, but absolutely no limit on the amount that can be mined. This is a completely intangible currency that can be converted to USD, without limit on creation. It'll be interesting to see if/when the doge market becomes extremely saturated. Would this force the value down? What's currently keeping the value up?
Fascinating stuff!

Bitcoin Trading and API Setup

So I'm sure you've heard about bitcoins, and how valuable they've become since their inception. The value of a single bitcoin was as high as $266 on April 9th, 2013, and is currently fluctuating around $115(according to the MtGox exchange). I assume you understand what a bitcoin is, if you have absolutely no clue, check out the FAQ on the bitcoin wiki.

There are different exchanges around the world that will take my USD or whatever currency, and let me invest in bitcoins. I can always mine bitcoins, but the focus of this post is on trading bitcoins. There's currently no licensing required to trade bitcoins, and no minimum deposit for a trading account. An exchange is just an organized market for trading. The most prominent exchange with the highest trading volume is MtGox which seems to be based out of Japan. Recently they've been caught in some trouble, causing the US Federal Gov't to get involved. There are other exchanges like campbx, but the price of a bitcoin between exchanges vary (arbitrage anyone?!). The price of a bitcoin at campbx may be a couple dollars off MtGox at any given time, and MtGox could trade at values that campbx never reaches just because there are more people trading on MtGox to move the price.

Before going any further it's important to note how much information I can see about the orders. Ideally I would want to see not only the highest bid and offer (seeing only the top bid and offer is the 'top of the orderbook'), but the second highest bid, and the third, and so on (seeing all orders would be full book rather than top of book). It also makes a huge difference to see the volume of the order. If someone puts an order in to buy bitcoins, I want to know how many bitcoins they're looking to buy or sell. There are 3 different levels of order insight in tradable markets, Level I, Level II, and Level III. They're described fairly well here at investopedia.

Ideally I would want Level III. I want to be able to see all the orders, the size of those orders, who's ordering, and I want to be able to put an order in at any time to execute a trade at the press of a keystroke. Unfortunately once I set up an account on any bitcoin exchange, the options given by the site UI are barely giving me Level I access, and it's all with the mouse(ugh). So trading is tedious and is meant to be for long term holding. I can only input one buy or sell order at a time, and it's extremely time consuming to flip through different pages of the exchange's site, trying to modify, cancel, or add more orders.

Luckily there's hope! All I have to do is write my own program, that connects to the exchange's API through a full-duplex websocket connection. A nice challenge would be to make an program that will make it easy to trade on multiple exchanges, all with a simple keystroke, such as with popular trading platforms for stock trading. There's a nice charting and Level II type resource for bitcoin that's publically available, and that's bitcoin.clarkmoody.com. If you want to dedicate a screen just to the chart, just go to http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/widget/chart/. As you can see the service only reflects prices on MtGox. It's nice just because the clarkmoody site uses the charts from RTBTC, and RTBTC is currently in private beta, so there's no real other way of getting these charts short of creating your own or begging RTBTC.

Resetting Your Address Bar Search Engine (Firefox)

Remember those sneaky AVG and Ask toolbars that are hidden in certain software installation wizards? There's others, but I've noticed AVG is extra invasive as it changes your default homepage and the default search engine for your address bar. The most recent time I contracted the AVG toolbar bologna there was no question. It was either my installation goes through with the AVG bar, or not at all.

These sneaky installations really benefits AVG, since they hijack your search engine option, every query sent through them gives them some money from yahoo or whichever engine they're routing to. It's funny but this is how firefox originally got most of its funding. The homepage for firefox is a google search bar, but every query sent through the firefox version gives mozilla a little coin. I recently found this nifty add on for firefox that puts all these sneaky settings back to default.
It's called SearchReset, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchreset/

All this temporary add on does is change some settings in about:config

Mining an Asteroid

The idea of mining an asteroid is astonishing. Let's explore this idea a bit more.

Here's a video showing us that there have been more than 500,000 asteroids discovered orbiting our sun between Mars and Jupiter. The 'Asteroid Belt'.

Elon Musk, the same man who started Paypal and Tesla motors also started Space X. Space X seems to be focusing on commercial space flight. But there's also a company called Planetary Exploration, which is planning to send drones to mine asteroids. Strangely the founder of Planetary Exploration said the goal is not to mine minerals and bring them back to Earth, but to refine them where they are found, creating usable resources for a space adventure.

Here's a nice TED talk about how we would divert an asteroid too big to blow up that was headed straight for Earth. We could change its trajectory, and have it orbit our planet, or our moon, then mine it!


To see companies ALREADY hopping on this idea is mind blowing! Many of the asteroids in the asteroid belt are rich with all kinds of rare earth minerals and even water. Water can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen on site to create rocket fuel. So imagine a space mission that will rely on fuel that's sitting on an asteroid, which we've pulled into orbit around our moon or mars. And the fuel has been mined and refined by drones sent there months earlier. It's like some sort of science fiction, and yet there are already billion dollar private companies turning these ideas into reality. Asteroid space stations here we come :O

Cat 5 Cabling Tips

Here's a nice video describing the wiring difference between 568A and 568B RJ45 modular plugs.



here's also a nice video showing how to properly punch down a cat5 into a 66 block.



I like the BlOG acronym for remembing the Blue, Orange, Green, Brown wire order. Always remember the white primary color; white blue is first, then blue, same for orange, and so on.

Here's a useful diagram:


It's also useful to note that PCs send information on pins 1 and 2, and receive information on pins 3 and 6. So you would need a 'cross over' cable if you wanted a PC to talk directly with another PC. 

PC to PC = cross over cable. Some machines are smart enough that such a cable isn't needed, but that can be our secret.

Straight through cables are for plugging to a jack, meaning both sides of the RJ45 cord are 568A or 568B. This is why you've probably had trouble connecting two PCs directly. With the straight through cable both PCs are sending on pins 1 and 2, and both receiving on 3 and 6. This doesn't work! PC 1 needs to receive on the send pins of PC 2! Thus the cross over cable is born! This means the cable is 568A on one side, and 568B on the other! Look at the above diagram again... notice how the Orange White and Orange wires from 568A on pins 3 and 6(receiving pins) are pins 1 and 2(sending pins) on 568B. It makes sense now right?

You also need a cross over cable between switches and hubs. PC to switch just needs a straight through cable. A mod plug adapter is used to turn a connection from 568 A to 568 B, or vice versa. Cheers!

My Dvorak Keyboard Experience

At the age of 16 I typed at about 65 wpm(words per minute) using Qwerty. I felt limited, so I decided to give the Dvorak keyboard layout a try. The supposed benefits are a doubling of typing speed, and less finger 'walking', so less stress on your hands and fingers. It's part of an ergonomic environment! Here's an illustration of the typical Dvorak keyboard layout:



This is the layout I use, and I absolutely love it. Using this layout I can feel just how much less my hands have to move to type, and it's made a significant impact on my hand stress levels. The layout comes conveniently included in all operating systems. On a windows machine all I have to do is bring up the run dialogue(Windows key + R) and type in intl.cpl like so:

 < I hit enter and the Region and Language settings come up. From the Region and Language window click on a tab that says something along the lines of 'keyboards and languages'. There you can 'change keyboards', and add whichever layout you prefer. Even on a machine I've never touched before, I'll be able to switch the keyboard within 30 seconds, and hotkey it to switch between Dvorak and Qwerty(In case someone has to jump in and type something on it). When I'm done I need another 30 seconds to disable it so no one hits the keyboard switch hotkey by mistake and freaks out. Or if I'm coming back to the machine later I'll set a custom hotkey that is nearly impossible to hit by mistake. Since I've memorized the layout to memory, I don't need to pop out keys or carry around my own keyboard.

A little Dvorak history:

Qwerty(the layout that comes printed on the keyboard you're using) was developed in the 1870s, and was made for a typewriter. You had to hit the keys hard, and one at a time, otherwise you'd end up with a jam as shown to the left here.

The interesting thing to note here is that the Qwerty layout is designed to make sure you don't type too fast, because if you do type too fast your typewriter jams! Qwerty is made to have your fingers 'walk' or move more to reach the desired key, to help prevent jams.

Silly fact: You can type the word 'typewriter' by using just the top line of the Qwerty keyboard layout. This made it easier for salesmen to pitch their products since they didn't have to learn how to type, and they could show off the speed and efficiency.

We've moved beyond the limitations of a typewriter, but unfortunately the Qwerty layout has stuck around, and most people don't think twice about a more efficient layout. 

August Dvorak developed the Dvorak layout in the 1930s, studying specifically which letters were used more frequently, and placing them closer to the home row. In the 40s he also developed a left hand layout and a right hand layout, for the one armed typist, or I guess for someone that wanted to type on two keyboards at once.

My experience with Dvorak:
I thought it'd be silly to buy a keyboard with the Dvorak layout. There's also keyboard covers that you can slip over your current keys to see the layout. I felt like I didn't have to spend the money since I could just pop the keys out of my keyboard, switch the layout on the computer, and place the keys back in according to Dvorak. So I did! I was a decent Qwerty typist at this time, probably about 65 wpm.

The first couple days were dreadful. Sometimes I would search for a letter on the keyboard for MINUTES at a time, getting frustrated. I didn't switch back to Qwerty unless it was absolutely a matter of life or death. I was at 1 wpm on a good day.

After about a week I started remembering some of the letter's positions, but still had to look down to find most of them. I probably had 5 or so key positions memorized. My wpm was still terribly slow, below 20.

After a month I would still look down for about 50% of the keys, but the positioning came to me the second I looked, whether I saw the letter or not. That split second of focus on the layout was all I needed to remember. I was probably at 35 wpm.

I finally surpassed my Qwerty typing speed by month three, and by the end of month four I had memorized the layout. Typing speed was about 80 wpm during month four.

After six months I switched the physical keys back to Qwerty style on my keyboard, for the sake of my friends. They'd come over and trip out trying to type, 'whoa...' was the usual reaction. So now my keyboard looked like Qwerty, but I could switch the layout with a hotkey, and type happily in Dvorak since I didn't need to look down at the keys anymore. Just for fun I would do typing exercises to see how fast I could be, and here I got to 105 wpm, almost double my initial Qwerty speed. I'm sure I could get it faster, but I didn't have a job that demanded it, so I figured why do the exercises so religiously.

Conclusion:

Funny enough it felt like my Qwerty speed had gotten worse, but it didn't, still at 65 wpm. It was just slower relative to Dvorak. It's been at least 5 years since I learned Dvorak and I still use it as my default, and change to it any chance I get. The difference between the two layouts is hard to describe, just imagine every key being in a more ideal spot. Your fingers leave the keys less often; when you see me typing with the Dvorak layout, it almost looks like I'm not typing at all. Look at the home row on Dvorak, AOEU HTNS. Not having to move my fingers at all for these common letters is such a nice feeling. Since I haven't been doing essay after essay, my speed has slumped to a casual 80-85 wpm. With a little practice or just a typist occupation I'm sure that would go back up. Who knows maybe this blog does it. Either way it's made typing more enjoyable. My thoughts shoot onto the paper, and all the while my fingers are strained much much less, it's extremely noticeable. I used to feel as though I was limited by Qwerty, I felt frustrated, wondering why I couldn't type any faster. Turns out that's all by design!

For anyone interested in learning the Dvorak layout I say DO IT TO IT! It's an awesome learning experience, a fun trick, easier on your fingers/hands, and it increases your typing speed! The slip on covers are a good idea. That or taping little pieces of paper to your keys, next to the letters printed on the keys. Or you could take the barbaric approach I did and just pop them all out. (Funny, I just realized Mac keyboards have the printed letter centered on the key, where as other manufacturers have pushed the letter to the top left of the key, to give room for additions such as foreign language letters like so:
 
)

Anyway overall I'm glad I learned Dvorak, it's saved me tons of stress. If you choose to take the journey, enjoy your new typing super power and party trick!

Cygwin

I downloaded the cygwin terminal to get a bash unix shell experience on my windows laptop.

There's also tcsh(C shell), an upgrade of the csh, which was started a couple years before bash, but they're both Unix shells. bash is supposed to be sh, csh, and ksh 'bashed' together. I'm sure they differ in functionality and I want to find which one I like best. An environment that emphasizes the terminal would be fun to learn, and a useful tool!

I'll try a couple different ones on VMs (VMware) before I reformat. I want to find nice dynamic, well supported coding environment. I'm open to any suggestions!

Cryptography with Paint

A friend once asked me how cryptography works. That is, how can 2 parties communicate something secretly with a 3rd party always listening? Well here's an awesome primer on how cryptography works in the modern world that answers this very question.


Some notes while researching computational complexity theory(one way functions and the like):

• There's also a 'trapdoor one-way function' or just trapdoor function:
• 
  1. If a function |code: x(1, 2, 3)| is passing elements like the figure above, it's called an injective surjective function. It's a bijection, which means the pairing of elements is exact. There are no unpaired elements.
• 
  If the same function |code: x(1, 2, 3)| performs the change shown above it's called an injective non-surjective function. This is obviously not a bijection.
• 
  And this would be considered a non-injective surjective function. It's a surjection, which means some elements will be turned into the same element.

Just some handy terminology for reference. It's also nice to match the terminology with a process we can understand through a visual representation. So there's some hip coder lingo.

nice video describing the above from khan academy here