Tag Archives: fitness

Random links for week 50

Posted by Praveen Kumar on December 12, 2009 No comments

We were troubleshooting an interesting problem with GCC/gdb that caused gdb to report an argument passed by reference as if it was passed by value. In the process, I was digging up some DWARF information. Ever wondered what exactly gcc is adding to support the debuggers when you use ‘-g’ switch? Michael J. Eager has an excellent “Introduction to DWARF Debugging Format” article.
I Found that Sun Studio dbx can handle binaries created by GCC with DWARF-2 debugging information very well. Sun Wiki has a page describing the DWARF differences between Sun Studio and GCC compilers.
Last week, the launch of Russian missile, Bulava caused quite a stir in Norway. Russian strategic nuclear forces blog claims that the test was a failure. However, I see some comments that suggests that the spiral motion was a feature instead of a bug. Here is the video of one of those UFO (later identified as Bulava) sightings.
To include a little more variety in my exercise routines, I am planning to include some Plyometrics. Currently, I am improving my weighted squats by going for high intensity squats. Squats is one of the exercise that I hate. However, in terms of fitness routines, I find doing something that I hate pays off very well.

Posted by Praveen Kumar on November 14, 2009 No comments

Editing big chunks of text in Firefox text area is a pain. I am using “It’s all Text” Firefox add-on to edit text from a text area in external editors like Emacs, Vim, etc. I have configured my add-on to use emacsclient. I use this heavily when I have to edit text in TWiki, Bugzilla, WordPress, etc. This post is written in Emacs using this add-on.
Speaking of TWiki, I discovered last week that there is an Emacs major mode for editing TWiki markup. It is erin.el, named after Erin Gray. It has some WYSIWYG capabilities and a markup sampler. I will start using it to see how useful it would be.
I started using Org-babel, that lets you to execute source code in various languages within Org-mode documents. It is really cool! It can also do cool syntax highlighting in the exported files.
I store my daily weight measurements as an Org table in Emacs. I was using Gnuplot to plot these values to track progress. Last week, I learned about R project and started experimenting a bit with it as well. Data visualization really helps.
From next week, I am adding HIIT cardio sessions to my exercise routine. I am going to have my HIIT sessions on non-lifting days, which seems to be the most recommended strategy. I don’t love cardio as much as lifting weights. But, I am eagerly looking for experimenting with HIIT.

Posted by Praveen Kumar on November 7, 2009 No comments

I have an Apple TV and I run XBMC and Boxee on my Apple TV using Patchstick. Apple introduced Apple TV 3.0 Software last week. Somehow, the software just got upgraded automatically causing me to lose XBMC and Boxee. Patchstick isn’t available for Apple TV 3.0 yet. So, I had to downgrade it using another Patchstick product (Canadian based).
I am using Whey protein supplement as my post workout drink for a while now. Recently, I came across Casein protein supplements and started using it too. I take Whey after workout and take Casein before going to bed (only on workout days). Here is an article that compares Whey and Casein.
I am using magit mode in Emacs with my git repositories. It is quite helpful most of the times.
DTrace is a powerful tool for tracing a process. Recently, we have started working on defining Statically Defined Tracing for our system. I feel that it is a quite powerful way to approach system tracing.