Something Not So Obvious About Exercise

A recent Time Magazine article explains why most people who go on exercise regimens don’t lose weight at all.

You’ve heard it for years: to lose weight, hit the gym. But while physical activity is crucial for good health, it doesn’t always melt pounds — in fact, it can add them. Here’s why.

It’s nothing new to someone who has taken fitness seriously. But given that a lot of people are not aware of the simple facts brought forward by the article, I think it’s still worth sharing.

Bottom line: if you want to lose weight, don’t feed yourself with more calories than you can handle, exercise or no exercise. When I was on the way to lose 20 pounds, not only did I perform regular cardio and strength training exercise, I also skipped the high-calorie snacks served at our company’s pantry and ate salt crackers (Skyflakes) instead.

Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin [via Time]

Bridged Network not Working in VirtualBox

Problem

The Ubuntu VirtualBox instance I use for Rails development can’t connect to the network unless you do some funky sudo ifconfig eth0 up/down and sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart magic.

Cause

I upgraded to Windows 7. Apparently, the Windows 7 adapter is buggy.

Solution

Thanks to this thread, all I needed to do was to change the adapter to “IntelPro/1000 T server” in the network settings.

Great Laws of Software Development

laws
laws

Agile: In A Flash is a great source of software engineering tips regardless if you’re planning to go agile or not.

Out of the many flash cards in that site, I find the two cards above to be the most important to a novice software developer. It should make them feel less surprised when Brook’s Law or Hofstadter’s Law hits them from out of nowhere.

Upgrading 32bit Vista to Windows 7 64bit

Windows 7

Problem

As a last ditch effort to deal with my motherboard problem, I’ve decided to upgrade my OS from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 RC1 (Ultimate).

Problem is, I’d like to upgrade to the 64bit version of Windows 7 (so that I could take advantage of all of my 4GB of memory). But as the upgrade chart from Microsoft states, you can’t do an in-place upgrade from 32bit Vista to 64bit Windows 7, keeping all of your files and settings intact.

Solution

Fortunately, there is a way to keep a good portion of your files and settings intact via the Windows Easy Transfer utility. I just used Method 3 and transferred my entire C drive to my 1TB hard drive.

As an extra precaution, I made a copy of my “user” directory (in my case it’s C:\Users\bry\ folder) in the backup hard drive. We’ll see a use for this backup later.

After backing up via Windows Easy Transfer, I went ahead and reformatted my C drive and installed Windows 7 64 bit on it.

Once I finished installing Windows 7, I restored my settings via Windows Easy Transfer again, following the “Copy files from the source computer” section in Method 3.

After that, I went ahead and installed new drivers for all of my devices. Windows Easy Transfer only backs up settings so I also had to re-download and re-install all of my old programs like Firefox, Chrome, Yahoo Messenger, etc.

Turns out that some of the files and settings were not properly transferred to the new OS installation. Here’s how I restored my settings to various programs:

  • Firefox 3.5 – I copied the contents of my old profile from [user backup folder]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default to the newly created C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yyyyyyyy.default folder.
  • Chrome 2 – similar to Firefox, I copied the contents of my old profile from [user backup folder]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default to the newly created C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default folder.
  • Yahoo Messenger – most of the important data (e.g. contacts, current display icon) is already stored in the Yahoo servers. The main reason why one would want to restore their old profile would be their Message Archive. To restore your profile, copy [user backup folder]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\[your Yahoo ID] to the newly created C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\[your Yahoo ID] folder. Don’t forget to set the Archive Preferences to “Yes, save all of my messages”.
  • FileZilla – Copy [user backup folder]\AppData\Roaming\FileZilla to the newly created C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\FileZilla folder.

Stuck on Stupid

Yes, this is basically a repost of Lex’s latest post. But since over half of my readers aren’t Sugoi or AME peeps, I thought it would be a good idea to share it too.

Francis Kong has a very insightful (and very blunt) article entitled Stuck on Stupid on the Philippine Star.

Why do certain people go deeper into debt? Because they are stuck on stupid. They are not only acting their age, they are not acting their wage…! Buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have from people they don’t know to impress people they don’t like.

Why do certain people cannot get a steady job? Because they are stuck on stupid. Anywhere they go they feel like the world is against them. Poor people skills and the inability to respect authority. They are all wrapped up in themselves and they make a small package.

Why do certain people destroy their relationship with their families? Because they are stuck on stupid. Playing with fire all the time and not expecting to get burnt?

Why do certain people continue to work in a job they don’t like, live in a house they don’t want and live a life they hate living? Because they are stuck on stupid. They have not taken the initiative to stop doing what they are doing and to start working on themselves more than they do on their jobs.