2012-05-16 Rome

Withings WiFi Scale

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that I track my weight. Ever since the days of the fat teenager, I wanted to keep it under control. I’ve had my ups and downs, but in the past 20 years, I have never moved more than 10 pounds from my standard weight of 174.

I wrote software to track my weight on a variety of platforms. It became the default thing for me to do with every new programming language and UI environment: create a widget that allows you to enter weight (and later bodyfat) data and display it in a meaningful way.

A proud moment

Without much further ado, here two YouTube videos that illustrates the progress you can make in just a few weeks of surfing. First a video shot at the end of February (uploaded on the 27th):

Then this latest video, from mid-April (uploaded on the 13th):

Notice the differences:

YHIHF: Microsoft is Going to Buy Nokia

Nokia is not doing well. The once juggernaut of the mobile space is still a ubiquitous household name in most of the world, but its name is increasingly associated with “low-tech,” cheap phones. In particular, Apple is eating its lunch in the lucrative smartphone space, where Nokia once ruled the roost.

After ruling out a refresh of its aging Symbian OS, Nokia was trying out various variants of Linux. We first had a tablet, the Nokia N770, refreshed a few times. Then we had a phone, the N900. Another phone, the N9 followed. And then, nothing.

2011

Why this site changed name, and why you should be cautious about GoDaddy.com

You may have noticed the change: this site used to be hosted on the domain gawd.at. Now it is on mrgazz.com. Why?

Let’s start from the beginning: what was that with the gawd.at domain in the first place? Well, if you go and look at your old feature phone, you’ll see that the letters that form the name are all first letters on the keypad. G is 4, A is 2, W is 9, D is 3, T is 8. The domain name was meant to be typed quickly on an old-style phone. That’s it. No reference to gawd intended. Dawg.at was taken.

The Euro Debt Crisis - Explained

It’s one of those moments in my life when people around me ask the same question over and over again. This time, it’s, “What’s wrong with the euro?” Since there are only so many hours I can spend explaining my version of the story, here is an article about it, and I hope this will answer some questions.

What Was Before the Euro?

I grew up in Europe, a child of a mixed marriage between an Italian and a German. They were not just citizens of their respective countries: my father and mother came from families that were deeply embedded in their cultures. When my parents fell in love, there was strong resistance to the marriage outside the culture. I can imagine the surprise that everyone felt when the marriage actually worked perfectly well for over twenty-five years, until my mother passed away.

Did Jesus Bless a Gay Couple?

This is a post in a series expanding themes encountered in the novel, In the Mission

There were many passages in the Gospels that I didn’t understand, as a child. I would read them with my mother, she would explain them, and they still didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I decided that I’d just have to wait to understand them, just like when the adults talked about sexy things. There was going to be a time when I’d understand all these things that were adult-only.

2011-09-24 Mount Shasta

Mall of America Security - a Witness Account

Several news outlets (for instance, PBS here) have reported that Mall of America has taken suspicion a little too far and has created terrorism reports on visitors performing nothing but routine visiting. Some of these visitors have allegedly ended up on counterterrorism lists. Here is my first-hand account, sent to friends a few days after a bizarre incident occurred to me. It’s a first-hand account, unmodified (down to the very lazy all-lowercase spelling):