Boston seems like just a city - but there’s so much more if you get out into the surrounding areas. One example is Prospect Hill Park (which isn’t even that far out). It’s a nice park with a hilly path that is simply gorgeous right now with the falling leaves. Once you climb to the top (or in my case, bike to the top), you get a great view of Boston and its surrounding areas.

Here’s a picture of the view [Source: Jake's Album on Picasa Web]:

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I just watched Tom Yum Goong last night, which featured Tony Jaa the Muy Thai master, in a similar style martial arts flick as the original Ong Bak. The movie’s plot quickly degenerates after the first few minutes and becomes a sort of ridiculous Hong-Kong martial arts style movie.

The protagnoist, played by Tony Jaa, grows up in a Thai village with elephants. When the elephants that he grew up with are kidnapped, he journeys to Sydney, Australia to try to capture them.

The best parts of the movie are when Jaa runs into the scene yelling, “WHERE IS MY ELEPHANT!?!” It can be anything - a business meeting, a press conference, a brothel - that is his opening line.

The second best part is when not one, but FOUR WWE wrestler come into fight Jaa. Jaa smashes and slashes them to bits with…elephant bones.

This seems to be perfectly in line with my post from yesterday about the WWE, but I watched the movie AFTER I wrote the post. Which made it that much funnier - to me.

In case you were wondering what Tom Yung Goong means, it’s the name of the restaurant. It refers to a Thai soup made with prawns.

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I use Pandora frequently as a source of music. Pandora always has ads on the side (otherwise how else would they make money?). But I saw a strange one today.

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Look closer:

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Now it’s fine that Harvard Business School is advertising on Pandora. After all, aspiring businessfolk spend most of their hanging out on Pandora listening to music. But why the line, “Where can this seat take you?” Do Harvard Business School students sit on steel chairs in class? Red ones are stylish, but that can’t explain everything.

Well, I do have an answer. Some geniuses at Harvard Business School are using subliminal messaging to promote their new business venture, World Harvard Entertainment.

Where is this idea drawn from? The WWE, of course.

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In conclusion, Harvard Business School = WRESTLEMANIA!!!!!

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Yes, I know, there are no red chairs in the video. But Harvard can’t copy WWE exactly. This is just a new style, based off of WWE’s use of chairs and red gloves, rope, knee bands, etc. 3…2…1…woot!

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I’m going to be covering the election from my blog! Okay, that would be slightly pointless, given all that all the news channels and web sites are covering it with much better technology and reporting.

A few things that I do wish for:

1. Online voting: This would greatly increase voter participation, particularly among younger people. This might scare older people for that reason (and for security reasons, etc), but I think it’s worth it! Better than hanging chads, anyhow.
2. More substance: Presidential elections feel like popularity contests. I thought this aspect of running was gone once you got past high school class elections, but obviously not.
3. More clout: I wished I lived in a battleground state, so I could see what it is like to be showered with campaign ads, negative media, phone calls, answering machine messages….maybe not. I’ll just sit in the strongly blue states of Massachusetts and California. Those will never vote Republican anytime soon. “Ohio ohio!”
4. More tests: Popular/electoral votes only one part of the presidential race. Also need to win in arm-wrestling competition, bicycle sprint, and SAT scores.
5. More TVs: I want one in my room.

Thanks for tuning in!

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Update: 8:15 PM EST

OMG, Texas is blue! Okay, <1% precincts reporting, but what a strange map. New York Times would have done better just to keep the state grey until more results came in.

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Update: 8:45 PM EST

New York Times still has only a few states reported, but NBC already has a bunch! I’m undecided between whether it’s better to be conservative or aggressive in forecasts. Or you could be like Fox News and try to get best of both worlds: leave the electoral map basically blank, but have flashing news headlines calling states every which way.

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Update: 9:15 PM

I have a lot of tabs open: NYT, Yahoo! (AP), WSJ, ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX, and some other ones. Someone, somewhere, is getting paid to do this. If you happened to be depending on my blog for the latest, best, unbiased, accurate, and comprehensive election news: When we wake up tomorrow morning, the president will be…

George Bush!

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Update: 9:50 PM

Guess I was wrong about NBC being the most aggressive. The award for the earliest forecaster goes to: The Harvard Crimson!

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Update: 10:40 PM

My latest election reports:

• Yahoo! News has a nice cover of a smiling Obama with the headline “Obama takes Commanding Lead.”
• They should increase the total number of electoral votes so the winners needs to take 300. This is no longer America, this is SPARTA!
• Obama’s pretty much won this.
• Poor George Bush, the lame-duck-president. Especially so with an election this dramatic.

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Gmail has a bunch of new emoticons (79 to be exact, unless I’m miscounting). There’s a sneak-attack-hug, a wide face, a cake, a radio, and pile of poop. There are some new smileys for chat (Google Talk) as well, but they are limited to the old emoticons - the standard smileys and some of the secret ones (monkey, pig, cowbell, etc). What I want IMMEDIATELY is to be able to put poop into my chat windows. Someone petition Google, quickly!

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WebMD just posted an article called “The Truth Behind 10 Diet Myths.” This is what I’ve been saying all along though! For weight loss, there’s minimal effect of eating times, food types, etc on weight loss.
Calories are calories.
Calories are energy. Unused energy is stored as fat. And fat is weight. Of course, there is a difference between weight loss and health - the two are not by any means the same thing. You can be fat but healthier than someone in their proper weight range.

LINK: The Truth Behind 10 Diet Myths

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This man’s skills make me jealous, but also thankful that I can bike without the need to navigate New York traffic.

I wonder if he would be a good competitive cyclist.

This is my first new post on my hosted wordpress blog. My website is now entirely hosted by dreamhost, including the blog, which was previously a free-hosted wordpress.com blog. The transfer process was pretty simple, and the theme integration was straightforward, since this is the second time I am doing it.

Overall, a success!

I’ve been working on some websites lately, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how efficient <div /> is compared to <table />. In the example below, my home page condensed from over 80 lines of code to a mere 29. Of course, this was aided by better use of CSS, but I feel that it was easier to use CSS once I had divs in. There are some things that table do better though, and for me it is the vertical-text align. Trying to center align some text vertically involves creating multiple nested divs, alignment of the first inner div to 50% of the outer div, and then alignment of the second inner div to go up 50% of the text! Nonetheless, it’s a sacrifice worth making. See below for before and after screen shots.

In theory, I suppose I could discount the meta tags to get an even lower line count.

To best calculate your daily caloric needs, you can use the Compendium of Physical Activities Tracking Guide [link]. It’s a huge list of very specific daily activities, including physical activities at different intensity levels as well as general tasks, such as eating in church. For each activity, calorie output is represented by a number called “METS” (metabolic equivalents).

To get calories from METS, multiply your weight in kilograms (pounds divided by 2.2), and multiply by the number of hours you performed the task for.

For example, if you weigh 70 kilograms and went to dig worms with a shovel for 30 minutes, you look that up on the chart. It’s METS = 4.0. Calories burnt = 70 x 4.0 x 1/2 = 140 calories.

To find out your daily calorie needs, take an average day, and track all of your activities during that 24 hour period, including sleeping, walking, studying, exercising, eating, etc. The more detail you put in, the more accurate your results will be. Here’s an example for one of my days:

As you can see from my example, I’m burning about 3600 calories in that day. But if you saw my previous post, my average output is 3200 calories a day. This is because for this sample day, I’ve included my morning bike ride - but I do not do this everyday. To compensate, you  may need to average a few days worth of calories.

Of course, these figures will be different based on your age, gender, metabolism, etc. But overall, they are pretty accurate, especially if you are exercising a lot. This is because metabolic differences will become small relative to calories consumed during exercise.

Now all you need to do is consume a number of calories that’s approximately equal to your caloric needs if you want to maintain your weight. And if you’re trying to lose or gain weight, then eat less or more! A good estimate for calories to burn is that ~500 calories per day = 1 pound of loss a week, or 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat.  Healthy weight loss is about 0.5-2 pounds a week, depending on your original body weight. I’m not a qualified nutritionist, so you should contact a professional before starting any weight-loss/gain plan.