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That was delicious. And a whole lot of kitchen time.
Luckily, with family around, the little man was well-occupied. Football in the background gave me some of my own distraction. But prepping the seven fish Christmas eve dinner was the main event of the past two days. Peeling and deveining the shrimp was the most tedious part of the prep – well worth it for the final product: my nana’s baked-stuffed shrimp. Simply amazing.
I did throw a few new recipes in the mix. And boy oh boy am I glad that I made the sausage stuffed squid.
The pictures tell the story better than my recitation of the recipes.
The traditional Italian Christmas eve involves a feast of seven (or more) fishes. My grandmother, a primary inspiration for my own love of cooking, took this tradition seriously and made our ancestors proud. And our family full 
Last year I decided to continue the feast for my own family. Cooking seven different types of seafood is an undertaking. It’s one I am happy to toil at.
Making my life a little easier this year – I crafted a menu, a grocery list and organized each recipe for timing. In doing so, I’m so excited for this year’s seven-fish-feast that I wrote a post about it and am sharing the menu here. Enjoy!
 - yum
Ever wonder how well or poorly you sleep? Or what happens after you close your eyelids for a third of the day? Thanks to the great folks up at Zeo I can now investigate more about my brain activity while asleep than when awake. Their device (see my earlier review) allows tracking of one’s sleep – everything from time in certain phases to quality to how you feel when you wake up. Incidentally, because they are great people, my Zeo sleep data is made available in glorious raw format for download.
My sleep is very dear to me. So I measure it.
Certain aspects of sleep hold more importance than others. My curiosity centers around how much deep and REM sleep I get each night. Also, I wondered if there were certain nights of the week when I slept better/longer. Am I woken up at night often? What time do I usually get up? The specific answers to these questions probably aren’t of much interest to anyone but me. However, they are very interesting to me. And I think they would be to anyone who could get their hands on this type of data for themselves. If you are even slightly interested or, like me, fascinated with sleep, I urge you to check out some of the great info on Zeo’s site.
 Cycles and phases of my sleep It turns out I don’t sleep as well on Thursday nights as I do the rest of the week. On average, I get just about 7 hours of sleep, waking up at 6:45. REM (2.25) and Deep (.75) constitute about 3 hours of my time on the pillow. To the left I charted out the cycles and phases of my sleep for over 100 observations (nights). As is typical, earlier in the evening the cycles are shorter, bouncing from deep to light to REM and back. Those cycles stretch out as the night progresses. I’m woken up a few times (red), on average about 2.5 times per night. That should come down as my son finally decided to go from 7:30pm to 7:30am
To capture this amount of information took only a small amount of discipline. The headband isn’t cumbersome at all, but some nights its just easier to hit the pillow and forget. I’ll continue to collect this data, now particularly with the idea to run a few experiments on what activities and foods make me sleep better (I also track exercise, calorie burn and everything I eat).
TechCrunch contributes dozens of articles and stories to my feed reader each week. Generally speaking, there is more than enough tech news to go around, and TC does a great job filtering, summarizing and critiquing important topics.
I haven’t read much Paul Carr that I know of. I don’t follow him specifically, nor would I have seen too many of his pieces while writing for the Guardian (UK). I would have even missed his latest missive if it weren’t forwarded to me, an article link wrapped between question marks and profanities aimed toward the author. Paul’s article, part of a “NSFW” series I guess, is titled, “NSFW: Generation Whine – Why I’m Relieved not to be a Millennial.” I summarize:
- Born after 1980? You’re lazy, incapable of loyalty, and arrogant.
- Oh, and you hold a dangerously short attention span.
- I can prove it with snippets from this 60 Minutes piece, a movie reference, and my interpretation of “The Social Network.”
While my own born on date places me slightly on the wrong side of the arbitrary 1980 stamp, I identify mostly with those millennials that Paul describes. And he does so sweepingly. Of course, he uses one data point (Veruca Salt) created IN THE 1960s to call out ”spoiled kids these days.” Can I imagine a few characters in my own real world experience who match the description? Sure. Can’t we all? At every age?
Does it describe an entire generation of individuals? Nope.
 I want an oompa-loompa now, Daddy. One thesis-binding example rests on the frequency of job changes in today’s workforce. I believe that commenters on the article get it right (where Paul gets it wrong). Job change is a symptom of the environment. Eliminated pensions make it less financial appealing to stay with a single company; rapidly shifting technologies move funding (and jobs) around the economy faster than ever before; layoffs in the face of multiple downturns…Paul, couldn’t it be the reverse? Not an expectation of “I want an oompa-loompa now Daddy!” but the ambition, drive and determination of a generation to go out and do something useful? I certainly don’t expect to be handed my own oompa-loompa. And I’m driven every day by individuals of my own generation and those younger than me constantly striving to fix problems, better the world, come up with novel technology, build the next big thing.
Back to the article…naps on the job. No matter that Zappos commands incredible margins in a retail/commodity business. Or that it’s downright hard to get an entry level job there. Or that dozens of cultures nap during the workday because it’s healthier. The nap room demonstrates milliennial laziness with tangible evidence (presumably the use of the Zappos nap room by only employees under the age of 30).
No matter that trillions of dollars of wealth and value have been created by pesky, meddling kids these days. Or that the corporations of today are run on the hardworking, long-hour-keeping backs of the same millennials.
It seems to me that Paul is jealous. The man has recently completed 30 turns around on this planet. He probably sees a few gray hairs on a balding head. Probably harder to pass for a young, energetic hard-working buck himself.
</rant>
The first in a series of analyses on some of the many personal expense related questions about which I wonder…
Do expensive tastes trump wallet protection too often? Is it really cheaper to eat at home? How much is our typical restaurant bill?
I can anecdotally say that I have had significantly more time to cook while back in school. And I don’t think its a stretch to say that restaurants in Chapel Hill, NC leave the wallet a bit more intact than those in Boston. So moving between the two – to NC last June, and back to Boston for my internship this summer – I would expect to see that borne out in a per-visit-cost view of my spending habits on food. Thanks to the aggregating powers of Mint.com I am able to present a historical view of the past three years of my own eating data.
Note: total dollar amounts and quantities have been omitted from the Y-axis to mask both the causal relationship between the height of the line and the width of my belt as well as preserve my own dignity.
 Where is my food money going? This graphic offers a quick visualization of one family’s evidence that
(1) Chapel Hill, NC is a far less expensive place to eat and drink than Boston, MA – duh!
(2) Cooking at home may have spiked our average grocery bill, but offers a real discount in terms of overall food spend, particularly around expensive restaurant choices. Moving back to Boston this summer for an internship has virtually eliminated my home cooking attempts, but I’m also surprised to see a further reduction in our restaurant tabs. Pizza every third night helps, I guess…as well as the option limiting (very well-behaved, quiet and awwww-inducing) 4 month old baby boy.
And yes, there are dozens of other reasons to cook at home; I simplify here to keep clear the focus of this hypothesis. And sure, a number of additional factors influence the cost of our food and our eating habits. This simply gives me all the more reason to continue to refine my cooking skills.
…as long as I don’t have to do the dishes
Giving thanks isn’t just for Thanksgiving!
I am glad to know…
what the sun looks like rising up from the Atlantic and setting into the Pacific.
the benefits and advantages of a post-secondary education.
how to build a PC from scrounged and purchased parts.
keyboard shortcuts.
my family – nuclear, extended, in-laws, assumed and otherwise.
the elation of standing on the winner’s podium…as well as the longing dejection each time I have not.
that loose != lose.
the sound and feel of a spinning reel with a bluefin on the opposite end.
that the right lane on Rt 3 as you approach the Sagamore bridge also goes over the bridge, making waiting in the left lane unnecessary.
the crack of a bat at Fenway and many of the intricacies of the MLB rule book.
port and starboard.
bacon.
italian food in Italy.
the smell of a late night beach bonfire.
the giggles and laughs of my own baby boy. And those of my wife.
In a bit of a rush this evening. Full hands and backpack…walking to my car. Pulled out the keys from my pocket…and as I did…..
Plunk.
 Unintended new home for my DirectLife There went my left pocket companion for the past 6 months. Straight down. No bounce. No ricochet. Directly into one of Back Bay’s darkest storm drains, never to be recovered (unless I want to get really dirty). Down there among the runoff from recent rains, trash from the street and whoknowswhatelse lies a small, white, lightweight accelerometer device which, at this very moment, just might be blinking a single green light, then 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 of the same, and flashing each light again.
Ciao DirectLife. Our time tracking together may end, but my memory of you will linger forever.
Or at least for one more month until my FitBit arrives.
Ian Li at Carnegie Mellon maintains a comprehensive list of devices, apps and sites geared toward the measurement of personal data. These range from mood diaries to goal setting templates to location trackers.
 personalinformatics.org As of today there are 187 tools listed. Having tried many of these on my own, I’ll say they each can accomplish exactly what they set out to do. Some, like the FitBit or Nike+, require little user interaction other than carrying a device on you somewhere. Others, diaries or food trackers like DailyBurn, expect much more attention from their account owners.
I spend a decent amount of energy these days collecting data on my own activities. Here is a rundown on what I track today:
I’m using these because they are pretty convenient and largely unobtrusive. The hardest one to measure now is food. DailyBurn has a great database of food items from which to draw and to my surprise the USDA has a great downloadable db of food data. I envision a day when our plates know what we eat and tell our computers for us. That day is not yet today.
Ideally, there would be one device (a stylish watch, perhaps?) to remember to wear instead of multiple. Conspicuously missing from my list is a heartrate monitor. Such an easy thing to track these days, and yet the best device/data combo are Polar watches and bands – which are great for in-the-moment HR tracking, but not so much for after-the-fact review. I can’t wait for the first of these.
Some other things I’ll be looking to measure over the coming months and years: energy use; media consumption; spending patterns; general daily time patterns.
Wearing a headband while I sleep? That seemed to me a real dealbreaker. Sure, I read dozens of the reviews of the Zeo already – most all of them positive. Even more, tracking sleep is one of the bigger, easier personal data points that can be quantified (and then dissected and understood). It took my attending the Boston Quantified Self meetup at the Zeo offices earlier this month to break down and spend the money. Moving for my summer internship and a few late nights with my newborn son kept my Zeo sleep monitor and headband in the box until a couple of weeks ago.
My early verdict with the Zeo: thumbs way up. To the notes!
The Hardware
 Zeo Sleep Headband and Alarm Clock The box arrives in my hand direct from the folks at Zeo. For a startup, they have nailed professional packaging…also, simple and straightforward setup instructions (maybe one too many pamphlets included in the box). A few of my notes about the hardware of the Zeo:
- First: the headband is incredibly lightweight and comfortable; it’s very easy to wear. I sleep very well generally, though little annoyances can definitely keep me up tossing and turning. The headband, one of the bigger Zeo-adoption-obstacles for me, is a non-issue.
- Second: easy, easy, easy to use. I set the alarm clock, charged and wore the headband for the first night. I awoke and placed the headband on the base station – which then asked me how I slept (1-5 scale) – how nice of you to ask. The steps are simple and the display is straightforward and uncluttered.
- Third: about the display. When I plugged the base station alarm clock in, the screen lit up nicely with much more info than I expected. The sturdy, robust base stations displays current time; alarm time; my last Z score; battery level in the headband; and, most impressively, 5 minute intervals of sleep data. It’s tempting to simply stay up to watch the intervals tick by…but that defeats the purpose doesn’t it? And then you’d only see the “wake” score. Better to drift off into dreamland to gain bars of light, REM and deep sleep…
- A final note about the hardware: The Zeo does not travel well as you’d have to bring along the base station with the headband. Perhaps that is an improvement to come with data storage in the headband?
 MySleep.MyZeo.com - the Zeo dashboard The Software
http://mysleep.myzeo.com (my, my) hosts all of the sleep data that gets uploaded (manually, for now) from the base station’s memory card/USB. The interface speeds along. Data is presented in many forms, all of which require only a few seconds of tutorial to understand. The best visualizations in my opinion are the actual sleep graphs which repeat the information from the nightly base station charts. The charts show total sleep time, times to bed and rise (Ben Franklin would not be impressed with me), and detail on the type of sleep in 5 minute intervals and also summarized. All in all, its about as much knowledge about my own sleep patterns that I could imagine viewing. Oh, and by the way, Zeo allows users to download a detailed csv of all of this. Yay freedom of data!
Zeo offers coaching, which I declined, but could be valuable for individuals with real sleeping issues. My sleep issues largely center around going to bed way too late, eating too close to bedtime, and other bad decisions made. The site includes a blog where new features and guides and general sleep stuff gets highlighted. And the company has listed a ton of great sleep resources in their sleep information center.
How does Zeo know what the heck my eyes and brain are doing at night? I dig both their transparency and ability to layman-ize the science here, not only in explanation, but also in comments and q&a with engaged users. This demonstrates why the Zeo better tracks sleep than any iPhone app or bed-motion-sensor equipment. It’s why I abandoned the iPhone SleepCycle app (which isn’t bad, by the way…just heats up the phone and battery too much for me).
So…can the Zeo help me sleep through a crying newborn? Not quite. But it does let me know that I woke up 3 times (largely due to my newborn son) and missed an average of 20 minutes each night. Over time, it will tell me the effects of that afternoon cup of coffee (I track my food using DailyBurn – review for another day), my run along the Charles River, and the stresses of each day. Tracking these instances and comparing Zeo MySleep data allows me to make better decisions about my life and, specifically for the Zeo, my sleep.
I began to play with Tableau Public a short while ago. Getting the hang of the functionality and abilities of the tool took some time. Having danced around it now I am impressed with how much the software can do. 14 different visualizations allow for flexibility of display. Most of the basic functions feel like any other data management software (filters, column/row management, dimensions, data tools), but Tableau really provides those of us without graphic design backgrounds to design nice looking graphics!
 Boston Red Sox monthly comparison For my first go around with Tableau I compiled Boston Red Sox season by season statistics for each year of my life. Since the Bill James’s of the world have a monopoly on every interesting player statistic…I thought it might be neat to look at some average monthly attendance figures. These I split between playoff years and non-playoff years for the Sawx. Since Tableau knows how, I also looked at average runs scored vs. runs against for each of the same months. Nothing surprising of course; in non-playoff years attendance trails off into the fall. Also not surprising, the Sox have outscored their opponents over the span of my life. For some reason, the Red Sox perform very well in August. More analysis to be done some other day…
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