A few years back, I had some free sessions with a personal trainer at my gym, and one of the most useful takeaways was this:
Unless you write stuff down, it’s too easy to “fudge the facts” in your mind.  How much pushups are you doing with good form?  What are you eating each day?  We tend to maximize the former, minimize the latter, and that’s not good.

For starters, he made me write down each day *everything* I ate and drank, along with estimated calories associated with each thing I put in my mouth.  Boy, that was a depressing but enlightening shocker!

Well, I decided to go one better and start my own personal health chart (in Excel), daily noting my progress on several fronts (weight, body fat percentage, pushups, etc.).  Alas, after a few months, that kinda fell by the wayside, so I picked it up again a year later.  And, once again, that only lasted a few months. 

I’m trying yet again, and—now that I have the regular routine of a full-time job—I’m hoping it’ll somehow be easier to keep up the list.  For the very curious, I’ve included below exactly what I’m measuring:

I’ve had the good fortune to travel a lot over the last years (mostly for fun, not business, though that’s shifting) and also am blessed with many fun and photogenic friends.

With no further ado, here’s a sample of photos I’ve recently uploaded:

Talented Tjapukais

A sexy swing dancer

Watery wires

Korean combo

Gregarious Greeks

A fab flower

Here’s the entire list of my photo sets on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thatadamguy/sets/

Enjoy, and comment away!

Okay, I admit it.  I missed the boat and jealously hollered that naming anything Web 2.0 is a bunch of crap.  So more recently I thought, hey, that’s no problem, I’ll just glom onto Web 3.0, the semantic Web.  I mean, look, I have lots of nice Jewish programmer friends, so who am I to be anti-semantic?!

But dammit, then I discovered that Nicholas Carr has already laid claim to Web 3.0!  The bastard!

Never fear, dear BLADAM readers… I have the solution!  I am hereby claiming as my own Web 4.0… with t-shirts and stickers, special edges, an expensive conference, and a network of blogs.

Yes, yes, I hear your skepticism already:  So, Adam-you-total-killjoy-smartass, pray tell us… what exactly is Web 4.0?  Well, I thought you’d never ask!  Allow me to explain this scintillating new Web with crystal clarity.

Lots of folks have noticed that five very cool new features debuted today in Gmail:
1) Enhanced UI, with Reply and other handy features placed at the top of conversations.
2) Notification when new messages have been made in the conversation since you started drafting your reply.
3) Forward an entire conversation (all messages).
4) Send chat messages to your friends using Gmail chat or GTalk even when they’re offline (the messages’ll be held for them).
5) Get Gmail on your mobile phone with a rich app (not just slow Web pages).

[Read more about these new gmail features]

But what I have to share with you is even more deliciously glorious… especially for those of you who are on lots of mailing lists or who have boring (albeit perhaps well-meaning) friends who just won’t shut up.