I have some more interesting posts for you this week, covering fitness, development and a few other things.

Fitness

Ten Tips To Help You Live A Longer, Healthier Life by Charles Poliquin

Lists like these are pretty easy to digest and take good things from. There’s nothing groundbreaking to take from it but it’s good, solid advice that is easy to forget about in the day to day of life.

A Surefire Way to Learn the Clean by Jon-Erik Kawamoto

This is a great post from T-Nation. I’ve been leaving the big lifts for a while now and the clean is one that I’m only just getting into trying more and more.

A Guide to Your First Kettlebell by Marianne

I was given a kettlebell as a recent birthday present. It was ‘only’ 25kg but it’s a killer to workout with. The weight is brutal and definitely put me in my place. I’ve done some experimenting with it and there’s so much interesting stuff out there from guys like Steve Maxwell and Dan John. This is a great introduction from Marianne.

There Is No Tomorrow by Smitty

Awesome motivation from one of the best in the business.

6 Secrets for a Supreme Squat by John Gaglione

The squat is another of the big lifts that I have been using for a few months now. In the beginning, I found it pretty intimidating but as long as you respect the weight there’s really no need. For me, it’s one of the greatest all round single exercises out there.

Web Development

CoffeeScript: A Roundup for Beginners by David Cochran

There’s been a lot of buzz about Coffeescript in recently months and to be honest, a lot of it has passed me by. If you’re anything like me, this is a great place to really dig into it and see what it can do. Either way, add it to your toolbox in case it ever comes in. Great stuff, David.

31 Weeks of Windows Phone Metro Design by Arturo Toledo

I find the ideas and principles behind Windows Metro interface and design pretty awesome. Grokking the basics of Windows Phone development is high up on my ‘to-do’ list and this series is the perfect introduction from one of Microsoft’s senior UX designers.

JavaScript Closures Explained

Closures are everywhere in Javascript these days. Derek Greer presents a detailed look into the ideas around them.

Essential JavaScript Design Patterns For Beginners

Addy Osmani has updated his essential Javascript design patterns work. Cheers, Addy!

A huge collection of Steve Jobs talks

Pretty much as it says on the tin.

Kinect SDK Media Controls

The release of the Windows Kinect SDK was perfectly timed as I recently upgraded my development machine to Windows 8. I’ve been digging in to it’s working and found this to be a useful introduction to using the kit.

The Future of JavaScript – take a peek today!

The next version of JavaScript aka “Harmony” is right around the corner and the V8 development team recently released a look into some of it’s new features.

Have a great week!

I have a great list of articles for you this weekend and I’ve altered the layout a little bit too so it’ll hopefully be a little easier to follow.

I was pleased that my Jeff Atwood post picked up some interest this week and found its way onto the front page of Dzone. It’s encouraging to get positive feedback.

I hope these lists are providing some value!

Away we go…

Fitness

12 Reasons You’re Not Losing Fat

When people find out I write posts about training, health and fitness, it’s not long before the topic of losing weight comes up. In all honesty, it’s not something I’m too comfortable discussing. I know what I believe and I know what has worked for me but talking about the things people eat is up there with politics, religion and salary as subjects that can cause conflict. Thankfully, from now on I can just point people to this post by Jason Ferruggia.

Web Development

Extroverted Developer #3 – Jared Parsons

Jared Parsons works as lead developer at Microsoft on the Developer Tools team for Visual Studio. He’s also racked up a crazy amount of rep on Stack Overflow. Here he discusses his work, SO, code comments and JavaScript with the Extroverted Developer podcast lads.

Differences Between jQuery .bind() vs .live() vs .delegate() vs .on()

This is a post I could have done with many, many times. I’ve got to be honest… this subject came up a lot on one of the recent projects I worked on.

A re-introduction to JavaScript

Mozilla’s Developer Network is a fine resource for JavaScript information. This post is a useful reintroduction to a programming language that is going through something of a renaissance.

Scaling Your Javascript Applications

JavaScript MVC patterns are picking up a lot of traction at the moment. Here, Addy Osmani presents his thoughts into how these patterns can be used for creating applications. The talk covers separating concerns, keeping app logic decoupled and how to build modules that can exist on their own or be dropped into other projects.

Classic Mistakes Enumerated

Steve McConnell is the author of one of the greatest texts that exists on the subject of Software Development. This is an extract from his 1996 book ‘Rapid Development‘. This free excerpt covers some classic development mistakes covering people, process, product and technology. As with most mistakes, these are easy to read about but are not always easy to avoid!

Other Stuff

100 Tips About Life, People, and Happiness

I like lists. This is a good one.

Have a great week!

I don’t recommend many books to you through this site but this is one of my all time favourites. If you’re interesting in training in anyway, then this is one book you won’t regret purchasing.

I bought the Kindle version of Dan John’s ‘Never Let Go’ last summer and despite ploughing through it in a couple of days, it’s a book that I’ve never really put down. There’s always something that reminds me to dip back in to it.

The book is a collection of Dan John’s hugely popular internet essays, mainly focused on the Olympic lifts but also taking in motivation, food and day to day life along the way. At first glance it may appear to be a book written for budding strongmen but in my opinion it’s not a training manual as such, more a collection of thoughts and guidance from one of the great fitness writers of the day.

This is a book which I have forced on other people I believe in the content that much.

One of the most startling points is the idea that everything works, for so long. Once your body adapts, it’s time to change it up or your progress will stall. It seems so simple once it’s laid out in front of you and that’s a regular occurrence reading Dan’s work. The key to progress is keeping things simple but simple is not equal to easy.

Dan has a passion for living and passion for learning and he applies these subjects to his training.

If anything, I’m glad I got around to reading this book now rather than in fifteen years. It’s saved a whole lot of messing about!

Never Let Go – Dan John

P.S.

If you’re unsure about purchasing the book outright and would like a taste of Dan’s written before hand, he has a free ebook available called From The Ground Up which is also a great resource.