The past two months have been full of exercise, creating good habits, and steady development on Android projects and best practices. This is my recap for the months of September and October.
Pillars of Fitness
Physical fitness has become a driving force for me. I feel stronger, healthier, and more motivated to challenge myself. Lifting weights in particular has been unique in that every workout is meant to top the previous, a concept that has bled into other aspects of my life. Exercise, nutrition, and discipline have also necessitated much research, and the creation of tools to streamline the process.
Strong Lifts 5×5 has proven effective for my first steps into the realm of weight lifting. I’ve gained a bit of weight in the form of lean muscle, and I’m starting to create some noticeable definition. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in getting into weight lifting. There is an app available to guide through the process, as well as to teach proper form and practice.
None of this is possible without proper diet. I’ve taken to experimenting with macronutrient balance in tandem with the rate at which I increase/decrease weights per exercise. I’ve spoken to quite a few people about it as they’ve taken notice to my improved physique, and one of the most common things I hear is “I could never do that, I don’t have the discipline.” I could write a whole blog post about that alone. It’s disheartening to hear what I now consider basic requirements for my health as being seemingly out of reach for many of my peers.
It’s not easy, it’s hard work, and it does require the cultivation of self-discipline. While this isn’t a negative commentary on my peers, nor is it a brag, my observation is that most get stuck on motivation. The important lesson that I’ve learned is that motivation is fleeting. Motivation will get you started, it’s the ignition to get the engine going. Discipline is often misconstrued, if I may continue with my engine analogy, as the required effort to hand crank the engine from that point on. That thought to me is tedious, exhausting, and demoralizing. The reality is that discipline is the fly-wheel that keeps things moving on their own. My personal experience tells me that it takes 3 months to turn anything into a habit, for better or worse. After that first week of fleeting motivation, it is my job to force myself to do it no matter what. Once I’ve reached that 3 month milestone, it genuinely feels like it takes effort to break the now well-established routine.
Failure is certain if these 3 components aren’t all there. A book I’ve been reading, Bigger Leaner Stronger by Michael Matthews, explains these components as necessary pillars of fitness. If one crumbles, they all crumble. Proper exercise, diet, and discipline are all moving parts within the same machine. All that’s needed once the machine is built is semi-regular maintenance.
Unrelated October themed avatars I made for some acquaintances.
RxFit Update
RxFit has been ongoing with small updates in the form of refactors and experimentation. It’s used often to keep daily macronutrients in check, while simultaneously building a well curated database of food items.
Each food item in the database contains detailed info and a photo. In the near future, the database will also contain combinations of food items called “servings”. Each serving has detailed recipe information, a photo of the final dish, and the collection of food items required to create the serving. One step above a serving is a “meal”, which is to servings as servings are to food items. The system is designed to allow users to contribute to the database by submitting their items for quality verification.
One of the experiments within RxFit is my efforts to learn and implement greenrobot’s EventBus. If I may indulge in colloquialism, EventBus feels a bit like cheating within Java. I’m able to pass data in the form of Classes around via a static centralized hub Class called EventBus. The issue is that EventBus does nothing to communicate how components are coupled, or even where data is being moved to and from. All of that information is on the developer’s shoulders to document as they develop, and it will bite you in the ass if you get lazy and lose track. Because of this, EventBus does not scale well with large projects.
I’ve started a small internal project to allow EventBus, and its many conveniences, to track and document itself. I’ve started to call it “EventLog”, which I’m sure is too generic to not create conflicts in projects other than my own. Any additional implementation is easily navigated via stacktrace or generated code comments above any EventBus implementations. As long as EventLog doesn’t become too coupled within RxFit, I may open source it.
RxFit action-bar navigation concept.
Android Peer Lab
Some of my colleagues have been hard at work creating a peer-lab for local Android developers. I’ve managed to attend every one so far, and am looking forward to attending more of them. I’ve met some talented people, ranging from students just getting started, all the way to experienced developers looking to help others. The range of skill and project variety has made for some engaging conversations. On a much smaller scale, I used to host “work nights” at my house every week for some of my indie developer and artist friends. It helped us all stay focused, and it created a productive environment to get a lot of work done, while still enjoying the company of other like-minded individuals. I aim to get more involved in our Android peer-lab in the future, but for now I’m simply enjoying the networking opportunity.
The Spirit of Andetroid, designed by Stuart Kent.
Closing Summary
In closing, I’m aiming to not only maintain my current disciplines, but to reinforce them over time with supporting habits and relevant knowledge. It’s getting close to the end of the year, and therefore an entire year of azeDev blog posts. I’m looking forward to what’s ahead.