Missing Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a city of passion. Art goes up in the middle of the night, unlooked for and often uncelebrated, usually there for the passion of the artist alone... but many of us enjoy that art, and I find that the creativity of these pieces is something I have missed horribly since heading to SF.

I've been looking through some of the photos I took of some of my favorite pieces in LA, and thought I'd share them here. If you know how to attribute some of the uncredited pieces, let me know!

Mural by El Mac + Retna @ Wilton and Hollywood (work in progress while photographed)





Art @ the 4th Street Bridge, Downtown Los Angeles (artist unknown)

σωματική τέχνες

I'm stepping back up on the self-hacking game, which will mean a lot more technê of the mind and body. It will also mean a lot more self-awareness, discipline and adaptation. I'm going to try to write more about my process and progress as I go, which should give me another fun record of what I'm doing, and possibly also elicit some feedback.

Today was a big, full-body plyometrics and neuromuscular engagement kind of day. I had been about a week off of training, due to work, illness and life's fun scheduling complexities. It felt good to get everything moving, and to really burn some of the week off. This wasn't the kind of set that you'll see muscle heads doing - it's geared more toward sustained, high-capacity generation of peak force with the entire body, usually in ways that will end up being useful in actual movement through the world.

Today's session:

• 1mi run @ 7:30 pace - just to warm up and get the blood flowing
• stretch - no long static holds, as I don't want to attenuate muscles right before lifting hard, but some good dynamic movement to loosen things up
• abdominal work - crunches, twist-crunches, roman chair extensions and oblique crunches
• press + plyometric chest combo - incline dumbbell press @ 80% current max for 3 sets, followed immediately by 3 sets of plyometric pushups (this forces the engagement of both Type I and Type II muscle fibers, and will train toward more capacity in the fast-twitch system)
• isolateral dumbbells thrusters w/ balance - stand on one leg, raise a dumbbell through a curl, up into an overhead press, and back down into neutral in one smooth motion; do this with each arm for each leg, so you have oppositional and complimentary balance loads to work with (this will work not only your biceps, triceps, deltoids and stabilizers in the shoulder, but also core and leg stabilizers - lots of fun!)
• pull-ups in pike position - fun for your arms, back and abs, all at once
• suitcase step-ups - hold a moderately heavy dumbbell in each hand, roll your shoulders back and down, and lock out your arms with some tension in your tricep; from here, step up with one leg onto a bench or step, driving upward with your quad, hip-flexors and glute; return to the ground with a controlled motion; mix up sets of one leg and sets that alternate both legs (this will sound like a lower-body workout, but I assure you that it is full body, and that it works your stabilizers, arms and shoulders far more than you will expect)
• reverse forearm curls - the suitcase step-ups tend to put a lot of load on your inner forearm, as you support the acceleration of the weights, so I like to balance it out with some reverse forearm curls; take a relatively light dumbbell, and, with your palm-facing down, curl your wrist back and up, to work the oppositional muscle chain
• weighted jump squats - take a weight plate or ball (I'm working with a 35lb plate for the moment, but hope to get back up to my old weight again soon), and hold it in front of you with slightly bent arms; descend into a deep squat, with the back as upright as possible; explode out of the squat, driving with the hip-flexors, glutes, quads and calves in a chained motion - this should propel you into a jump, at the height of which, you tuck your legs up as high as possible; extend your legs and carry the landing of the jump into the controlled reset motion of your squat; repeat this as quickly and explosively as possible for the duration of the set, being careful to maintain good form (it's easy to hurt your lower back doing this if you aren't mindful of form, so be careful)
• corkscrews - take a weight plate or ball (usually the same that was just used for the jump squats), and set yourself with feet slightly more than shoulder width apart; holding the weight in front of you, rotate on the balls of your feet down to one side, crouching with the back relatively erect; from this position, rotate and extend in the opposite direction, raising the weight and using a "throwing" motion as you guide it across your opposite shoulder; drive this movement with the extension of your legs and your core rotator muscles, again being careful of form to avoid injury; repeat 10 as quickly as possible from one side, then switch sides immediate to do 10 in the other direction - this is 1 set; get 2-3 sets in, as fast as you can without losing form
• shoulder raises - take kettlebells or dumbbells and raise them laterally and medially to work the various muscle bands of your deltoids and linked back muscles; I chained this on at the end of this workout primarily to give an easy loaded stretch to the delts, which just took an ugly beating

I'll probably follow this up with a body-weight and mobility exercise set this evening before bed, and another similar body-weight set in the morning, just to keep the blood flowing and the nervous system engaged.

These posts will probably evolve as I work on them, including more journal references, more specific weights, more technique, and probably some food logging as well.

Just hacking on my favorite bit of design - the human body. It's truly my favorite technology, temple and toy.

Signal All the Way Down

Face Of God (Feat. Nadine Risha) by R/D

Fever Ray - I'm Not Done (R/D's Just Beginning REMIX) by R/D

Eskmo - 12 minute dj mix for Ninja Tune (free download) by Eskmo

Driving Across the Horizon, One Beat at Time

Sometimes you need a proper bassline to keep you moving in time. This is today's line-up for high velocity design. Re-working my life, one hard note at a time. And loving it.


Two Fingers - Fools Rhythm by One O'Clock

Akira Kiteshi - Machine by Akira Kiteshi

The Glitch Mob - Starve The Ego, Feed The Soul (R/D's Soul Full Remix) by R/D

Kether-DROID(unreleased) by Ruff Hauser

Sofi Needs A Ladder - DeadMau5 (Brion.Charles REMIX) by Brion Charles

Project | Product Management

I have come to acknowledge a few core principles that are important to guiding projects and products through conception, development and release. I just want to get them down here for now. I'll come back to add to them and expand upon them further in the near future.

You can't know how effective you're being if you don't know what your goals are.
It is critical to understand how to define requirements in the domain of the client, and to be able map those requirements to the technical execution process.

Change is the only constant. Knowing how to adapt is the key to successful projects.
It is important to understand the likely sources of change, to build variability into the scope of a project, and to control the outcome.

Multidisciplinary excellence is the road to true happiness.
Being able to communicate effectively and with native competence in the creative, technical and business realms is central to managing a modern project.

Focused design is incredibly effective.
Attention is finite, for both developers and users. Keeping an application focused on its most salient elements will deliver a more effective and compelling product.

Yes We Can

Heroku | Rails done Right

Heroku has finally launched into a more public beta. TechCrunch picked it up this morning, and they've been getting the kind of traffic and praise they deserve ever since.

Orion, Adam, James... congrats, guys.