NoSQL - No: NuSQL

There is this whole motion afloat, trying to declare SQL bankrupt and do without. Instead of SQL, one hears, there are going to be much better databases in the future. Dozens of projects are floating around, each with a different notion of what “better storage” mean, all aiming at being better data stores for the Internet.

Now, it is clear that SQL databases have their supreme annoyances, and the need for reform is clear. What pretty much all NoSQL project have in common, though, is that they look at the wrong problems and try to solve them with a more theological than philosophical or architectural approach.

MVC I: Hierarchical Views

I thought I’d start this architecture blog with a post on one of the things that, traditionally, have given me the most heartburn: the implementation of view in MVC architectures.

As a refresher, MVC is by now the standard architecture for most applications, web or not. It stands for Model, View, Controller. Model is the abstract representation of the data you are handling (for instance, invoices). The view is the particular representation of the data (for instance, the invoice edit screen). The controller is what ties the two together and add user input. The controller fetches the data by instantiating the model, and passes it to the view, which can take the data and make it into a page.

printf(“Hello, World!”);

I’ve been working on the architecture of Internet systems since 1994. It’s been a wonderful time, one that has seen software architects move collectively from obscure geekdom to running the development departments of the biggest Internet juggernauts. The best of times and the worst of times, frequently very close to each other, sometimes even coinciding.

I find that the world of software needs a lot of architectural attention. You won’t agree with all my ideas of how things should work, but I guess you’ll always have an opinion about them. The more people think about architecture, the more they actually do architecture, and that can only be a good thing.

Enters Starvation Mode

One of the things calorie counters like to say is that if you don’t eat enough, then your body enters “starvation mode.” I held that to be a bit of hyperbole, akin to the notion of ketosis in Atkins Diets, but I could finally watch that happen in real time.

For that, I have to thank a combination of habits I’ve developed:

• I wear my heart rate monitor at every workout
• I perform some workout every day
• I started calorie counting after my accident and the resulting loss of exercise and gain in weight

What happened? Lately, the weather turned really nice in San Diego. I mean, summer in March kind of nice. And when the weather turns for the better, I lose (temporarily) all interest in food. So I would get to the end of the day with sometimes 1,000 calories to spare – almost half my daily intake. I wasn’t trying, I wasn’t going for it, it just happened.

Tracking Calories by Bar Code

It’s been a while now that, whenever I need to lose weight, I start calorie counting. Most recently that happened in February, when I gained 15 pounds after a bad snowboarding accident. I was incapacitated for weeks, barely able to get out of the house, and the only place close enough to walk to was the grocery store. A fancy grocery store (I live near La Jolla, after all) with the best junk groceries you could imagine.

Rain and No Workout - the Lethal Combination

This has been a horrible winter for all of us in San Diego. The usually fairly dry city has been beset by a series of winter storms, the latest passing over my head right now. It’s an El Niño year, which always means more rain for us, and this one is particularly nasty (nothing like the 1998 season, though).

Unable to get to my workout (and too lazy to replace it with something else), I decided to just eat less. Sometimes I just let myself go on days like this, but this time it was too important to me: I still have to lose 10 of the 15 pounds I gained after my motorcycle accident, and stopping right now would have been terrible for my motivation (especially since the weather is going to be nice tomorrow).

Change Your Brain - Change Your Body

I just happened to channel surf last night and stumbled across a weight loss information segment on PBS. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist telling his audience how he used brain scans to determine pattern and causes of overeating. All in all, an engaging two hours, and I would advise buying the DVD from the PBS site.

Aside from he shock and awe-inducing pictures of brain scans of old people, football players, and alcoholics, and from the constant references to chemical imbalances that cause overeating, the focus of attention was on the notion there are different kinds of personality profiles that tend to overeat.

The Importance of Posting Nutritional Values

I am sitting at my favorite coffee shop, Peet’s, sipping a cappuccino like I used to in the old country and eating a pastry. It’s my afternoon treat, has been for years. Only that back in Italy they’d think me weird for drinking cappuccino after lunch, without sugar, and in a 16 ounce cup. There are definitely lots of advantages to living in the United States.
While I could always figure out the calorie content of my drink (which I shouldn’t drink, but sue me), things were dicey with the pastries. Peet’s in Northern California posts the nutritional information on their web site, but the Souther California region has different pastries and I had no idea what I was eating.
You might jump to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be drinking coffee and eating pastries in the first place. Well, feel free to think that way. I have found that depriving myself of things I love doesn’t help manage my health at all: it just makes me resent health in general and healthy nutrition in particular. In general, I find that I am able to manage what I eat much better if I don’t consider anything off limit, letting my cravings build into frenzy.
But back to the original post. As I got into the store today, I saw they had little flyers with the nutritional information I had been looking for. And there I had the best proof possible of the importance of that info.
Here I’ll give you a few pairings, and you tell me which in each has more calories:

Recovery and Weight

Well, tomorrow my accident will be exactly a month old. To mark it, I’ve been following the snowboarders at the Olympics, and I’ve enjoyed both the competition and the attention it has gotten. Between Seth Wescott, Shaun White, and the marvelous Hannah Teter, there is a lot to watch and get excited about, and I hope the sport will benefit from this rush.

That’s of course despite the fact I am grounded for the time being, at the very least until the end of the season. And that I blame snowboarding for my injury. But that’s beyond the point.

Why is Exercise So Important in Weight Management?

I was just talking with a friend of mine who is trying to lose weight and doesn’t have the time to work out. She has family, cleans up, feeds kids, drives them around, and has what we call a full-time career on top of that. Not an easy life.

Of course, with all that stress and the temptation that comes with feeding teenagers and with power lunches, she is not losing an ounce. She complained to me and she asked me the simplest question: