We wanted to get some “custom” theming in place to give the site a more fitting look. I was playing around with some very simple doodle-like ideas the other night and I wanted to get them up and start playing around with the style of the site (style as in CSS).

If things look a bit funky, I apologize (as I am directly responsible). I hope to tweak things a bit more over the weekend. More consistent colors would be a positive improvement.

So until then, please forgive some of the inconsistencies! We are moving things along and hope to have them ironed out soon!

I felt like the appropriate words for this comic post should come from the Veggie Tales “Dance of the Cucumber”, where I would be the tomato.

…snip…
Larry: “Pepino bailarin, pepino bailarin, pepino bailarin”
Bob: “Dancing cucumber, dancing cucumber, dancing cucumber”
Larry: “Baila, baila, ya!”
Bob: “Dance, dance, yeah!”
Larry: “Miren al tomate”
Bob: “Look at the tomato”
Larry: “no es triste?”
Bob: “Isn’t it sad?”
Larry: “El no puede bailar.”
Bob: “He can’t dance.”
Larry: “!Pobre tomate!”
Bob: “Poor tomato!”
Larry: “El deberia poder bailar”
Bob: “He wishes he could dance”
…snip…

This is a far cry from the person I was three months ago, when my weight hit an all-time high of 245 pounds. For a former runner and cyclist, this was huge. No, it was HUGE! Never before had I felt so… awful. My sleeping habits were wonky, my general health was poor and I was gaining over a pound a month. It was time for a change.

I’ve known for a long time that I was obese. First, what a terrible word. Second, what a revelation to hear my doctor tell me point-blank that I was obese. Fat. Large. Ugh.

The problem was, when it came to weight loss I didn’t know where to start. I had all the wrong ideas about weight loss. My assumptions were incorrect, at least for my metabolism, way of life and general diet. I needed to analyze my situation, and that’s just what I did.

I geeked out.

First, I started weighing every day. Most dieters will tell you this is stupid, that it can discourage you. I wanted to see a graph of gain/loss over time and I wanted it measured in twice daily increments. Is that too much to ask?

Second, I quit drinking soda cold turkey. Talk about massive addiction: I suffered severe caffeine withdrawal for at least four days. My family must’ve hated me. This was easily the most difficult task of the losing weight plan. But it paid off. In two weeks I lost over ten pounds… Without a change in regular diet or exercise. Empty calories to be sure.

Finally, after coming off of my severe caffeine addiction, I started exercising. Not a lot, mind you, just a half-mile in the morning and a half-mile in the evening, walking. Not a fast walk, just a walk.

I’ll discuss more tactics, some successful, some failures, in the next post. Losing weight isn’t fun: It’s hard work, a constant struggle. In the end, though, it pays off, and the hard work eventually isn’t hard at all. Just routine.

Share your weight loss stories below, I’m always down for tips.

To wrap up this series, I’ll discuss why installing Gentoo was completely worth the steep learning curve and why I’ve found operating system bliss.

Once I sorted out every issue with Grub and rEFIt, I found myself sitting in front of a typical Bash prompt. I didn’t really know where to start, but I knew I needed to setup my installation. The beauty of Gentoo is that it’s YOUR setup: Once again it’s an operating system of options. You can install whatever you need. Or not install anything. And once you install it, you configure it accord to your needs. It’s entirely up to you.

Speaking from the perspective of a seasoned Windows/OS X/Ubuntu user, I’ve haven’t quite experienced the beauty offered by a wholly customizable system since my old MS DOS days back in the… 80s, when I used to fiddle with boot options and write autoexec files to play particular games (remember that?!).

Gentoo is exceedingly powerful, and it’s power shines through in its fine-tuned package system, Portage. I prefer Portage over apt and yum, now that I’m accustomed to it. Like everything with Gentoo, there’s a learning curve and Portage is no exception. Mastering the ubiquitous USE flags, for example, is key to setting up an efficient, uncluttered system.

Similarly, because it begins life as a very basic system, configuring a custom kernel (and making sure it works) isn’t necessarily trivial but highly recommended. You will also need to write several configuration files in order for the system to work the way a typical Linux distro might work, but for the power user this just might be bliss (it certainly was for me).

Yes, after nearly pulling my hair out with frustration over frustration at the install process, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Gentoo, overall, happens to be one of the most polished Linux distributions that I’ve used. I now prefer it over Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSUSE. It’s truly the operating system for a computing power user, and offers unparalleled customization.

For me, it’s almost the perfect operating system. I look forward to further customizations, frustrations and power!

In previous posts I’ve made no secret of my love for git. It’s a simple, elegant and fast revision control system that works just as well for a single developer as it does with a team of distributed developers.

Primarily I operate across three different machines: A Gentoo Linux partition, my primary OS X partition and my Eee PC running Moblin Linux. Here’s where distributed revision control systems really help, and where git in particular truly shines.

First of all, each machine has its own local repository, each repository with different branches (I create branches as I see fit, but they follow a common naming theme). I “sync” everything between machines through my account at GitHub, however I could just as easily use any one of my machines or servers as the primary git repository. I enjoy GitHub’s feature list, however, and the monthly rate is reasonable.

First, having my source on multiple machines distributed geographically gives me real peace of mind. I’ve already flirted with losing my two primary partitions recently (a scary enough though), but I wouldn’t lose my source unless something truly catastrophic happened and both GitHub and my laptop died at exactly the same instance as my partitions.

I don’t think this will happen. Ever.

Second, git hub works well for what I do. A typical session might look something like this:

$ git pull
$ git checkout -b v0.1.6
-- write a little code, compile, test, get frustrated...
$ git add .
$ git commit -a -m "A few changes."
$ git checkout master
$ git merge v0.1.6
$ git push


I’m likely leaving a few details, don’t take the above snippet as gosphel… it’s just an example.

Finally, git offers me the ability to scale vertically. It’s already fast and stable (well, it has proven so for me). I don’t have any reservations about adding additional team members to any project I have stored in a git repository.

If it works for the Linux kernel, it works for me.

Do you use git in your personal or professional projects as a lone developer? Have any wisdom to share? If so, please leave it below!