Farmdoc’s first million

An important part of my post CABG surgery rehabilitation is exercise. Not that I’d been a couch potato preoperatively, mind you. But it’s now a matter of life and death. My cardiologist told me I should walk for 30 minutes per day – every day for the rest of my life. What I should’ve done was buy a stopwatch. But instead, I don’t know why, I bought a pedometer – an Omron HJ203 [1], if you must know. It uses accelerometer technology, so I wear it on a lanyard around my neck. (The instructions say it’d count my steps even if it was in my backpack; but I haven’t tried that.) Anyway having this whiz bang device, it was only natural I’d join the 10,000 Steps program, with data logging on the 10000steps.org.au website [2]. The aim, of course, is to log 10,000 steps (or more) per day. The 10,000 Steps program’s run by Central Queensland University’s Rockhampton campus, with funding by Queensland Health. There’s even an iPod/iPhone app for entering each day’s steps into a database. And it sends me an email if I forget to upload the steps for the prior day. Anyway I joined the program on 16.7.11, and yesterday I passed the milestone of a million steps – averaging 11,295 steps per day, which for me equates to about 8.8 km per day. I’m chuffed. And what’s more, I feel fantastic. I reckon it’s the endorphins flowing through my (old and new) arteries. So I hope this million’s the first of many, many to come.

List: '12 Monumental Gadget Firsts'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Gizmodo tells us Sony launched its tape cassette Walkman on 1 July 1979 [1]. It wasn’t an instant hit. But eventually it took off. And with sales of 200 million it remained the world’s iconic low cost portable music device for many years. Arguably until Apple launched its iPod. On 23 October 2001. This week Sony announced – ironically on the iPod’s ninth birthday – it’s withdrawing the Walkman from sale in Japan. Technology sprints on, eyes fixed on the horizon. Or past it. And sparing no sentiment for its previous champions. Fittingly gizmodo – a tech website; or is it a blog? – provides today’s list: ‘12 Monumental Gadget Firsts’ [2]. (Click on each photograph to find out more about its gadget.) Its blurb says ‘These clunky ‘firsts’ will leave you hungry for a game of Duck Hunt and your favorite cassette. Or possibly send you scrambling to hug your sleek iPhone while giving thanks for the goodness that is modern technology’. All the ‘Monumental Gadget Firsts’ look clunky and outdated. But each of them – as the first commercially available model of their gadget – is a necessary step on the pathway of tech evolution. We all thought they were terrific in their day. And though their day’s gone, they still have an important role to play. At least 63-year-old Farmdoc likes to think so. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 627

Today’s not ‘List Friday’. But this week’s list comes to you today – Thursday – because tomorrow’s a special day for the most special person in my life. Last year, for many months,, and for a reason (or reasons) I don’t know, I stopped listening to podcasts (on my trusty old iPod mini (pictured)). But in the past few weeks I’ve started again. And my life’s the better for it. Here’s a list of the eight podcasts I currently subscribe to (in alphabetical order):

1. BrainStuff – short twice-weekly explanations of how things work. Really interesting.

2. Ethicist – also short. From Randy Cohen’s New York Times column ‘The Ethicist’. Fascinating scenarios. Great opera theme music.

3. Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 – No-one else does comedy like the Brits. Some of the content makes me laugh out loud.

4. Planet Money – Patchy, but mainly interesting. I love Chana Joffe-Walt’s voice.

5. Selected Shorts – Each podcast comprises 2-5 short stories read by actors. The stories are variable. But when they’re good, they’re very very good. The reading’s uniformly superb.

6. The Moth – true stories told live on stage without notes or any kind of safety net. Here too, the quality’s variable. But the best are brilliant.

7. This American Life – always high on lists of the most popular podcasts. I understand why. Enough said.

8. This I Believe – people describe the core values that guide their daily lives. It’s all a bit sugar-coated for me. Its contributors never talk about negative, impure or sinister beliefs.

I wonder how many of these eight podcasts I’ll be subscribing to in a year from now.