First Dance
I’ve been working on this version of tumbledry since January of this year — there were times I never thought it would be finished — and yet, we’re almost there now. During the next few days, there will be a short beta period in which I will add a few features and iron out any remaining kinks; leave comments here with your thoughts.
There’s an adage in the web development industry — don’t overhaul different parts of a website simultaneously. I only found out about this little piece of wisdom mid-way through trying to overhaul every single goll-darn last component of this website. Ultimately, my approach was a bad, but quite fruitful, method.
I’d like to reserve this paragraph for Mr. Justin Gehring. First, Justin and Amber got married this past weekend — congrats, you guys! Second, Justin has been kind enough to host tumbledry since before it was even called tumbledry. Yes, my writing space used to be at alex.jrcorps.com — five years have passed since then. In addition to hosting me, Justin has helped me with web-design for, well, about a decade now. Nothing you see here would exist were it not for Justin’s boundless patience and generosity.
I now politely say “farewell” to hosting with Justin, as he is cycling himself out of the hosting and into the web design and management business. So, tumbledry no longer lives in Minnesota. We reside at Joyent, in Sausalito, California.
Thanks for visiting, and allow me to raise a virtual glass to the entertaining years of tumbledry ahead. I’m excited.
At the Saint Paul Farmers’ Market, they have fresh flowers.
Farmers’ Market potatoes!
Summer raspberries, farmer’s market fresh.
This was one of the most perfect days I’ve had. I called in sick to work, and then Mykala and I went to the zoo. We rode the merry-go-round and lay out in the sun. The weather was gorgeous, and as we looked up at the blue sky from our blanket on the grass, I realized that life does not get better. It isn’t the dark dull days at the office that indelibly print on your memory — no, it is the days in the sun. As the skies turned cloudy and threatened rain, we fell in love all over again.
From Robin Nixon of LiveScience, Exercise is physiologically good for your brain:
Because it burns calories so quickly, aerobic exercise is a threat to the body’s energy reserves. Heeding this danger, the body acts to protect one of its most precious, and energy-demanding, organs: the brain.
…
By acting as a mild stressor, exercise is an alternative way to spur many of the protective benefits associated with calorie restriction and the release of brain-building growth factors, said Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at the University of California in Irvine.
What kind of exercise? Well, running is quite effective:
Even when we are sitting or lying down, our bodies send our brains regular updates about how our limbs are positioned. When we, say, stand and begin walking, these electric messages need to be sent more often. (Knee is bent, straight, bent, straight …) Move fast enough and the electrical activity doesn’t have time to dissipate between each message. It begins building up in the brain and eventually triggers a release of chemicals called growth factors.
Growth factors are like manna for neurons. “They make neurons stronger, healthier and improve their ability to learn,” Cotman said.
Anaerobic activity does little to aid the brain via this mechanism, but aerobic activity seems to do the trick.
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