After being amazed and inspired by the incredible talent of Danny Macaskill in Industrial Revolutions, the following video by Sebastien Montaz-Rosset of a group of extreme sport fanatics is sure to blow your mind. Following is a trailer for his upcoming 40 minute documentary that is due to be released online in the next few days.
30 Day Challenge: Drink 2 Litres Of Water Daily
Since I started gradually losing weight over a year ago now, I’ve been on the look out for small changes I could make to my lifestyle that I felt I could maintain moving forward.
I’ve never been much of a water drinker across the course of the day, which I suppose is quite silly since the human body is over 50% water. I certainly drink my fair share of water when exercising but it isn’t a drink I think to consume throughout a normal day.
I recently attended a Franklin Covey training course and it was mentioned that it takes around 21 days to set a new habit. That reminded me of Matt Cutts, a famous Google employee among the online marketing world who regularly does 30 day challenges.
It’ll be the first time I’ve ever taken on a short term challenge like this before and it seems like a great opportunity to assess different aspects of your life and make some small changes around things that might have a meaningful impact, either short, medium or long term.
Tomorrow I’m going to buy a 1 litre bottle of water so I can easily keep track of how much water I’m drinking across the day. Just like I did with my weight loss, I’ll be keeping track of my daily water intake in Google Docs so I can see how successful I’ve been over the month.
As an added benefit, I’m hoping that increasing my water consumption will have the opposite effect on my coffee intake. I really do love drinking coffee, however I know I drink too much of it. So if drinking more water helps with reducing that at the same time, it is definitely a win win situation.
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Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
24 February 1955 – 5 October 2011
Adopted at birth by a Californian couple, Steve Jobs grew up in a middle class lifestyle. Destined to attend university as a result of a promise from his adopted parents to his biological parents, Steve attended a university that he couldn’t see the value in and was draining away his parents savings, ultimately dropping out in the first year.
While not realising it at the time, dropping out of university was going to be the most important and pivotal decision of his lifetime. It allowed Steve to attend university classes that he wanted to attend and ultimately lead him to meet Steve Wozniak, who he later founded Apple Computers with in his parents garage in 1976.
In the following ten years, Apple Computers had grown from two employees to thousands and was worth over USD$2b. In another amazing turn of events, Jobs was fired from Apple by the then CEO over an ongoing difference of opinion. Not being dissuaded from his passion, Steve Jobs managed to turn it into a positive by founding a new computer company named NeXT. Later in 1997, Apple acquired NeXT and opened the doors for Jobs to be reinstated as the CEO of Apple. The list of amazing things just keeps on going, like buying a small computer animation business from Lucus Films for USD$10M, which was later renamed to Pixar. Pixar has released a string of animated feature movies, is the most successful in the world, has received six Academy Awards and was sold to Walt Disney in 2006 for USD$7.4b. Apple computers is among the biggest in the world, of any type of business with a market capitalisation of over USD$350b, more than twice that of Google which currently sits at approimately USD$170b.
It goes without saying that Steve Jobs has had a massive impact on the computing and electronics industry. In his 56 years he has literally helped change the world and has been hailed by world and industry leaders as thought leading, visionary, one of a kind and much more.
I’m genuinely sad to hear that Steve Jobs has passed away. Not because I feel a deep connection with him or that I think that Apple is now at risk of collapsing but because through his ideas, determination and brilliance, he helped change the world. There are a small number of people that have lived on the planet that have had such a profound impact on the way we live our lives and it saddens me to think the world has been short changed on more spectacular advancements that we didn’t even think were possible, didn’t know we needed or that could exist.
Rest in peace Steve, the world is a little less bright with your passing.
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Basal Cell Carcinoma
A couple of months ago Claire mentioned to me that she thought a freckle on my right forearm looked different. As a general rule, the skin cancer organisations say that if a freckle or mole changes size, colour or teture that you should go and get it checked.
After several reminders from Claire, I booked an appointment with Doctors @ Cavill which is conveniently located across the road from my office and went and got checked out. It was the first time I’ve ever had a skin cancer check and I was pleased that after a full body assessment, none of my other freckles or moles raised an eye brow. However, the funky freckle on my arm was cause for a skin biopsy in the same appointment.
A week later I received my results and the doctor confirmed that it was a basal cell carcinoma. I had no idea what that was, but after asking the doctor about it and researching it online, basal cell carcinoma’s are the most common and least dangerous skin cancer, are typically located on the upper body and are a non-melanomo skin cancer.
Nearly as soon as the doctor had given me my results, we were walking back down to the surgery room where I had the initial skin biopsy done and was being prepared to have the carcinoma cut out. Roughly 15 minutes later, I’d had a local anesthetic and the doctor had cut a section of my right forearm out about 3cm long and a few millimetres wider than the carcinoma on each side. The specimen was placed into a jar with fluid in it to be sent to pathology and five minutes later I had three nylon stitches in my arm to pull everything back together.
I’m certainly not going to win any awards from the Cancer Council of Australia for diligently applying sun smart practices. That being said, I’m always aware of the fact that I have fair skin and don’t go and lounge around in the sun. People that know me will often hear me joke that the sun and I don’t get alone very well and this has been a stark reminder of that.
Next time I’m at the shops, I’m going on the hunt for a wide brimmed hat to wear when working outside to give my face, neck and ears a better chance of avoiding going under the knife in the future.
Meet Finnegan, A Crown Tail Siamese Fighting Fish
Anita dropped in yesterday to wish Hugo a happy 3rd birthday and gave him a spectacular present, a crown tail Siamese fighting fish!
When Anita asked Claire what a cool present might be, Claire suggested a pink fighting fish because pink is one of Hugo’s favourite colours. Of course, not knowing what colours fighting fish come in, we were shocked to see a beautiful pink/purple coloured fighting fish arrive.
Needless to say, Hugo is very excited by Finnegan and regularly stops to gaze into his bowl and drag one of his chairs over to get a closer look. Throughout the course of the day, Evie managed to say “fish!” a few times as well. In case you were wondering, the exclamation point is there deliberately, Evie says fish with gusto.
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