Cool idea. Unfortunately I signed up and linked my fitbit, and it didn't load any of my data. Though I did enjoy the "creating suspense.." loading animation.
FF/Chorme/Safari also give the Line 0 "script errors" when an error occurs in any JS file that isn't on your domain (IE jquery from a CDN, 3-rd party scripts, etc). This is a cross-origin security feature.
Not sure where in the midwest you are, but I live in the Minneapolis MN area and there is a blossoming tech scene, and many new startups eager to hire ambitions developers that are willing to learn. I have heard similar things about Madison, and Chicago is a tech hub with many prominent startups.
Find something outside the internet that motivates you, where if you start slacking or become lazy at it you see the results immediately. For me that was martial arts, learning how to eat/live healthy, and working out.
Dealt with this myself. The side projects only go so far to help you deal with this. I also found myself so into the side projects that I would often find myself distracted from my actual job. I'm sure you plan on sticking with your career field for many years to come. If you absolutely need the money/stability, stick it out (at least for a while). But if you are ready & willing to take some chances, ask yourself first if this corporate job is teaching you skills you can continue to use, and move up/forward, for the rest of your career or are you a 'worker drone'. A corporate job can teach you boatloads about how to run stable apps at scale, but usually stifle innovation & creativity. Working at a startup or smaller shop will usually get you much more exciting and creative projects and challenges, however the tradeoff is that you usually have to accept much more responsibility for what you build. You won't always have a rigorous test suite, QA department, and week-long rollout cycles. I can tell you though, from somebody who came from the exact same place, working at a startup is 20x more rewarding and fulfilling.
Looks cool - would love to hear more, I have a product that may be a good fit for this (www.fitbolt.com) - shoot me an email at evan@fitbolt.com if you are interested!
Ha - funny, this is the first thing I noticed when watching the video of this presentation, and it drove me so crazy I only made it through the first 3 minutes before I had to stop watching. Wish it wasn't the case, would have loved to watch the whole thing, but it was maddening....
GREAT poll topic, was considering doing something similar to get some data for my startup FitBolt (fitbolt.com), which helps to address this sedentary computer lifestyle.
Me personally, 8-10 hrs a day for my fulltime job, usually take ~4 hrs off for super/gym/etc, then back on the computer until 2-4am. So ~14 hrs a day on weekdays. I try to stay off the computer as much as possible on the weekends to reset myself, but that doesn't always happen..
Definitely a good idea! The only thing that would make me hesitant to use this service is that you are at the mercy of any kind of network outages between your servers and mine. If I have a DNS outage, a main network node down on the route when the request is made, etc then my cron will not get executed. A super great feature would be the ability to specify a retry flag for individual jobs. So if you attempt to call a cron endpoint on my server unsuccessfully, your service would keep trying every couple minutes until successful (or the next scheduled execution occurs). Otherwise, good work and good luck - surely solves a pain point many cloud devs have!
As fingerprinter pointed out this isn't universally true, however research (and my own experience) has shown that the main reason people don't feel well after working out is almost entirely due to nutrient depletion and poor nutritional timing. If you go to the gym and do heavy squats at 6:30pm without eating anything since your lunch at 11:00am you are going to feel like absolute shit afterwards. Post-workout nutrition is essential for building muscle and recovery, but making sure to eat a mix of complex carbs, protein, and fat ~1 hour before you workout makes a world of difference for how you before during, and feel after your workouts. If your diet is sound though, and working out still makes you feel so terrible that you don't wish to do it (I'm not talking muscle soreness or the usual reasons people find to not workout) you should definitely consult with a nutritionist or dietitian as something else may be going on.
Obviously don't know much about your situation, but this might have a lot to do with your diet & pre/post/peri workout nutrition. You should never feel exhausted and drained after a workout, but should feel invigorated and alert. Maybe something worth investigating more.
Great article, I have been meaning to write something similar to this myself! I became a health & fitness nut about 5 years ago, and though developing and designing is my biggest passion in life, working out and bettering myself physically is a close 2nd. Every day I work knowing that an awesome workout session is coming right after has done wonders for keeping stress levels down, helping me sleep well, and making me focus more during my workday. Having the gym after a crappy day of work DOES make the day turn around, and if you have a great day of work and a great day at the gym afterwards it makes for one HELL of a good day!
Many articles focus on bigger, high-profile companies with unique challenges but there are tons of great articles and tips on scaling normal web apps. Check the archives.
Thanks for the feedback! I definitely am going to take a hard look at modifying the design on the main page, including making the main point more prominent, visible, and easy to read!
Been working on FitBolt (fitbolt.com) for about a year, spent ~$200 setting up credit card processing & recurring payments, $50 on business cards, and about $150 on legal fees. LOTS of optimization has kept my appengine costs well within the free quotas, and everything else has only been my time.
Definitely funny as hell though! I like the part about looking at me through my webcam. I am more prone to try this product now than I would be after reading a normal privacy policy. This may be a jab at mozilla also as they REQUIRE a privacy policy for every addon.
This comic seemed super low-budget and cheesy from the website, but after reading the preview and laughing out loud I am forced to part with ~$1 to continue reading. Touche comic book writer genius, touche.
Still a work in progress, and none outside of my fulltime job:
FitBolt (fitbolt.com) - workday health & wellness platform. Gives you alerts/actions/notifications with posture corrections, exercises, stretching, health & nutrition tips. Currently have a web version, firefox & chrome plugin, and pokki (desktop) version
my vote is database concepts. With the rise of PaaS options out there the need to be able to build distributed systems yourself is lessening (unless it's referring to decoupled systems, such as standalone API endpoints) and falls more into the sys-admin domain. However database concepts will directly relate to your web dev career and will help improve your architecture design and general programming skills as well.
Good article - The thing that motivated me to get into fitness & health years ago was somebody telling me that you wouldn't believe how much more exciting and fun almost every activity in your life is when you are healthy & in shape.
(Shameless Plug Warning!) Relating to a healthy & fit lifestyle, I have been working on a side project to help people stay fit, happy, and healthy at their desk during the workday and was created out of my own need & desire to not have a lifetime of working at a desk affect my body & mind too much. The 'nutrition' portion of the app is forthcoming, but it's 80% complete and I encourage everybody to do your body a favor and check it out! (http://www.fitbolt.com/)
This article on HN this morning (and the comments on HN and the post itself) gives a lot of great indirect insight into this topic:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3404437