I'm busy designing my training routine/schedule/nutrition plans/requirements and I've I'll post this as I go.

Last night I was drawing up my morning routine and a lot of it stems from my past experiance that I had in place before joining my new workplace in the City. Unfortunately with working in the City and living far from it, there has to be a few compromises if I want to continue doing both.

The most obvious is that I have an hour on the train in the morning and an hour on the train after work. The other is that its less likely that I'll run home after work because I've got my laptop/books with me - as I've brought them in as i can use them during the hour before and after work.

My morning training sessions usually take this kind of form: 

1. 5am-7:10 - 1.4h gym (I break this up with 30 min break at 6am)
2. 7:15am - Go for my 20min run.

After my morning run is when the real work begins because I need to get the train by 8am and I get in after my run at about 7:45am which leaves me with 15 minutes to dress, shower etc. and board the train. So I've got a bit of optimisations perhaps to make to ensure that this all happens smoothly. A logistics strategy is in the works and those optimisations should be evident. I'll post it shortly. 

For now I've got my daily dietry requirements which look a bit like this: 

Total daily* dietry requirements

• Total 28 units of carbs
• Total 22 units of protein
• Total 17 units of fat

*Nutrition requirements, per day for 73-75 kg adult/2 hours daily exercise 

Of which:

 Before Training 

• 400-600ml water before training
• 5 units carbs 2-3 hours before(LGI)
• 5 units carbs 1 hour before(LGI) 

During training

• 150-350 ml water every 20 mins 

After training 

• 450-675ml water
• 5 units carbs immediately(HGI)
• 5 units 1 hour after exercise
• 4 units protein 1 hour after training
• 5 units 2-3 hours after exercise 

Continue with normal training diet thereafter and drink fluids until clear urine.

Now I find that when you need to work to some sort of requirements, setting up a means to efficiently execute these requirements in a practical way is needed. This is in order to ensure you a) meet all the requirements and don't forget stuff b) make it easy to do. I'll post a nutrition implementation strategy up shortly when I figure it out.

I’ve been studying recently about the distributed nature of some types of databases. Whilst going through the reading material - I’m studying at university- there is a lot of referenced reading material, often being articles that articulate the topic under discussion. Perhaps articulate is a bit too weak, perhaps drill them to death is more appropriate. I’ve come across this phenomenon quite a lot during my studies – where you are given a lot of information to start with and then you are given much, much more supporting information. Enough frankly to drown in.

Its this supporting information that for me presents a bit of a problem/annoyance.

In most cases when studying a technical topic, you get loads of information that you need to process, much like a computer. You need to analyse, find similarities and join ideas together. This means that reading becomes more of a highly functional cognitive endeavour than just ‘hearing’ what the text has to say. Often, I find myself having to avoid reading supporting information because a) its too detailed in an already detailed process of trying to understand the generics. b) the information just takes far too long to assimilate. This is a timing issue. How do you read everything all the time and retain everything all the time – specifically to the detail that usually each one specialises in? I don’t like spending weeks studying the same thing but the material is always geared towards this.

In most cases, i feel that these supporting materials do more harm really – just my opinion. They are often books, topics and specialist areas in themselves and they can often clutter but more problematicly over load ones already strained cognitive system. Its simply wasteful in some respects.

I guess you need to use as much rope as you need to in these cases, using your own judgment. Using too much, is detrimental – using as much as you need and ignoring the rest, perhaps is the sensible approach,

Either way, sometimes you need to ignore information. Its interesting but i think that its fairly common to feel that completeness is a function of volume and if you dont read all the material, then you can’t understand it all. This is simply not true.

Do as much as you need to do.

Wow, I've been unwell these past couple of weeks. It all started with a little tickle in the throat that i noticed while I was in a coffee shop meeting up with an old work colleague. It turned out to me pretty damn nasty. It turned to be a really bad case of Pharyngitis.

I just had to go to the Doctor, and that usually means that I'm pretty unwell. I got up at around 5am and decided that I needed to go because I'd not slept in 4 days straight and I was so tired and weak. Coughing was incredibly uncomfortable and swallowing was a nightmare. This basically helped me stay up all night and every night. I didn't want to do anything - at all. I'm really supprised at how weak I was actually - my muscles were all jelly-like and I had a real bad case of not wanting swallow. It felt like my throat was super-glued together. So to cut a long story. I got some antibiotics and that's when things got real. 

I basically got knocked out for six...

I don't know if it was just timing or the stage of the illness but it may have just coincided with the antibiotics but it just went all to hell. I got a lot worse but it was no question that the antibiotics were nessessary as I certainly had an infection in the throat. It was just terrible. Everything got worse. There were times honestly that I questioned being single. A long-time realisation that often comes up when I an infection of some sort - the last one was an infected fingernail after clipping it to short with the nail clippers. That though is how back in the olden days, any infection would most often mean death, certainly the case in the middle ages and anytime i guess when there was no antibiotics. Thats a sobering thought. If I'd rewinded time back, if I was back in a time without antibiotics - I'd probably be dead. Woah.

There were times honestly that I questioned being single

 I remember waiting in the waiting room in the doctor's room and thinking how I must be very accurate about my symptoms so that i can correctly get fixed. So right there I wrote down all my symptoms into my phone. Here they are for fun:

• Started experiancing my throat scratchy on Saturday (today was Monday).
• Couldn't sleep Sunday and today.
• Shivers. Hot and cold at the same time.
• Not hungry. I've eaten rye bread with marmite though.
• Muscles are weak.
• I feel dissy.
• Swallowing really hurts.
• Incredible sore - not like any sore throat I've ever felt before.
• Sometimes when I have a sudden boat of coughing, I feel nauseous.
• Strepsils don't sooth the throat in anyway.
• I had  headaches and I took day and night nurse and that helped but in no way helped the sort throat.
• There is mucus and it was originally yellow but now it appears to be white and a lot less is coming up but still sore if not more so.

So that were my symptoms for Pharyngitis. This was during the firist week that I took off work. After a while things started to subside and once I'd finished my antibiotics and survived the rest of the week, the throat started to ease up. Thank god. The next week i think I was recovering from the antibiotics and now I had a normal cold/flu so I had to deal with that. Someone cut me a break!

The 2nd week actually allowed me to want actually use the computer. I decided to contribute to some work that I'd started before I joined my new company. I made some good progress on an Excel Javascript plugin I'd been working. I also spent some quite time reading the main code base. In hind sight, I think i really needed a break from work, I'm just unsure, this was how i wanted it!

I went to work on Friday, a little weak but compared to the preceeding weeks - I had superman's strength.

I've not and will not be pressuring my body moving forward - I feel me and my body have gotten a lot closer. So no gym or running until I know I'm totally better. The guy at work asked me if I'd be ready for the weekly work-run. I said probably not.  I told him about the story about the girl at my school who was sick (bronchitis I think) and played netball that afternoon and she died. No jokes, deadly serious. That had always struck a chord in me. Don't exercise or play sports when you're not well. So I'm not going to tempt fate.

Actually while I'm here - the current thing that is annoying me is how long it takes for my code to get merged into main...maybe its because I'm new and the reviewers keep me and my code at arms reach. Anyway.