Squeee! Gina Trapani has a new podcast!!

I’m a big fan of Gina’s as I watch every This Week in Google, her twit.tv podcast with Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis. Gina is a coder, founding editor of Lifehacker and author of a few fantastic apps including a great text based to do list app called Todo.txt. Lately she has been working on an open source project called Thinkup that lets people and companies capture all their activity on social networks and analyse it. Her projects are open source and she is an awesome role model for women and girls in IT, where we really need all the role models we can get!

Anyway, she has just announce a new podcast, In Beta, starting this Tuesday (US time) with freelance writer Kevin Purdy. It sounds like just my thing; a podcast “about the ever-changing state of web-based and open source software.” If you are interested in mobile, social and web apps then you will probably find what Gina and Kevin have to say interesting and enlightening. Go check it out from Tuesday at http://5by5.tv/inbeta.

Life without TV

I’ve lived very happily for many years now without a television or radio in my house and it seems so normal to me that I find it really jarring to go to someone else’s house and see their living room arranged around an enormous flat screen TV. When the furniture is arranged so that every seat (including dining chairs) faces the television it just make these massive screens seem like some kind of heathen idol, looming over the family and demanding constant attention. Or perhaps I’m over-imaginative

A few months ago the Nielsen Radio Ratings man came to my unit and wanted to get me to do the survey on radio listening habits. He didn’t believe me when I said I don’t listen to radio. He insisted that since I had a car I must listen to the radio when I’m driving. I explained that I walk to work and only use the car to drive to my mothers, during which time I listen to my music or podcasts from my iPad and trusty Belkin Tunecast. He’d never heard of such a device and looked at me like I was a Martian. When he came back the following weekend to pick up the (still empty) survey form I invited him in while I found it and his first comment was “where is your TV?” We’d been getting on pretty well up till that point but when I said that I didn’t own a TV I got the Martian look again and a comment “but you earn so much surely you can afford a new TV!” *sigh*

I know I’m not the only person in Australia without a television set in their house. My daughter any many of her friends in their early 20s seem not to have them either. So why is it so hard to believe that I could choose not to have a noisy, expensive marketing portal dominating my living room and reducing the available computer and book space? What is so good about television anyway? Are the shows so life changing and uplifting that it is worth putting up with the overtly misogynistic, loud, innane drivel that is a set of typical television ads? No, sadly it seems that the people who are most surprised by my lack of television are the ones with the least familiarity with the internet and digital entertainment in general.

It’s not as if I don’t ever watch movies or TV series, and I have almost as many DVDs as I have books, I just choose to watch mostly over the internet where I can filter out the offenses against my sanity, peace and self-esteem perpetrated by “the sponsors”. It’s not as if I hate all advertising either. Every week I listen patiently to Leo Laporte advertising the sponsors of his vodcasts (This Week in Tech and This Week in Google are my favourites). I’ve even tried repeatedly to buy one of those fabulous new cars from Ford, but alas, they are not yet available in Australia. But there is the difference; Leo is advertising products he actually uses, he is giving a personal endorsement and that means something to me. There is nothing at all personal about the ads we see on our televisions, quite the opposite in fact.

So I guess my point here is that I don’t have a television or radio because I find the marketing methods associated with those broadcast media offensive. The less intrusive advertising I get from Google is much more tolerable (even if it is a bit weird) but best of all is the personal recommendation style of advertising that happens through so many social media channels now (think Foursquare, Twitter etc). I know I am still being marketed to but at least it looks like the company went to some trouble to target me with an ad at a good time and place rather than interrupting something I wanted to see with a poorly executed grab for my attention.

Life without TV is calm, peaceful and very relaxed. I know some people can’t wait for the latest episode of their favourite show and get very agitated if they aren’t the first to see it but I’m just not one of those people. Here in Australia we rarely get a good new television show as soon as it is released overseas so we know about the trending shows from our social networks well before we can (legally) see them. This gives me a chance to pre-order on iTunes or, in the case of Time Team or Dr Who, set up my old Windows desktop to record them when they are aired. Of course many other people simply torrent the shows they want, which is understandable but still illegal. I do feel sorry for HBO, caught between a rock and a hard place with hugely successful shows like A Game of Thrones being torrented by way more people than legally watching it on cable.

For the sake of actors, directors and crew everywhere I hope the television companies soon find a way to finance distribution or broadcasting of their shows that breaks them out of their broken old model and stops the spread of annoying ads and rampant pirating. It would be so much fairer and nicer if we could all legally access and watch the shows that we want to watch as soon as they are released and without the annoyance of ads for things we will never be interested in. But I still won’t be buying a big-screen TV.

Blog every day of June

Fair warning to those who read my blog from afar – I am joining a group of my Twitter friends (mostly librarians) who challenge each other to blog every day of June. Since I currently only post once every week or so, and stick to posts about my current attempts at self-improvement, this is going to be a real challenge for me. The first thing I will need to do is widen the range of topics I blog about: even I don’t have thirty bad habits to discuss

If you’d like to follow everyone’s blogs you can search Twitter for #blogjune and while you are doing that I’ll go think up some good blog posts. “The magical alchemy of porridge” perhaps, or “What you can learn about a business from the number of FAQs on their website”.

Or possibly you can save us both by suggesting something better for me to write about…

Choosing a priority: debt free or thinner?

This weekend I have spent a bit of time reworking my spending and savings plans to try to absorb some extra costs for dieting and exercise. I’m paying a monthly fee for Weight Watchers which I had not expected when I set my budget and I would also like to start Pilates or some similar exercise class. My problem is that when I realised the exercise class was another unexpected expense I was very reluctant to take it up.

My budget was worked out so that I could pay out all my debt by the end of this October as that was my highest priority. Although these extra costs are not large, I also have some expensive dental work this week which will deplete my savings a little and my 17 year old car is making some very alarming noises whenever I turn left. Consequently I am very reluctant to do anything that jeopardises the remainder of my small emergency savings. I guess I must really have learnt to control my spending if I am reluctant to commit to and extra $25 a week for diet and exercise help! The old me would have just pulled out a credit card without thinking but the new me has more self control (and also no credit cards). I know if I want to do this I have to rework my spending priorities but I am having real trouble finding this money from anywhere but my debt snowball or savings.

I’m in a bit of a quandary now and don’t know if I should rework my debt payout plan yet again and accept a longer time before I am debt free or try to exercise without any classes to keep me on track for late October. I really don’t know what to do so I’m going to procrastinate for a few days. Maybe I will feel better about the exercise class on payday when my bank account looks remarkably full…

One down, forty-two to go

My first week on the Weight Watchers program has been very successful, I’ve lost 1.1kg even though I didn’t do much exercise. I normally walk to work (~2km each way) most days but my schedule was crazy last week and I could only walk one day. I’m really pleased to have lost so much despite being a big sloth! This week should be better. I will be able to walk most days (provided I get up early enough) and I have a few more recipes to try out for the week so I feel pretty confident I can eat to the plan each day.

All the advice I have seen indicates that between 0.5 to 1.0 kg a week is the safest or best amount to aim to lose each week but I think losing more in the first week or two should not be a problem as I would expect to find it harder to lose the last few kilos. I’m not going to worry about it, I’ll just rely on the law of averages to sort this all out in the end.

Its been a great weekend and I’m feeling very confident about the week ahead. I managed not to break my diet in a Mothers Day splurge today, despite having a very big breakfast which my brother-in-law made for all the mums in his family. My very supportive daughter did not send me chocolates or cook books, instead I received a lovely new pair of slippers in the mail, just in time for what passes for winter up here in Brisbane. The one big benefit of the colder weather is that soups and casseroles (which are easy to freeze as leftovers) are much more attractive lunch and dinner options. My freezer is full of very healthy leftovers already, thanks to my careful planning last week, and I picked up a fantastic fresh pineapple today to round out the fruit bowl.

This week I am going to start looking around for regular exercise classes or activities I can join to help me improve my fitness. I expect there would be some yoga or pilates classes nearby but I’m not sure what else I could try that I might like. Some type of dance perhaps, if you don’t need to bring a partner, or maybe a walking group? I’ve never been the type to join group fitness classes so I’m not really sure what I might like. No time like the present to find out though…

In an unexpected turn of events…

Today I got up early, went out and joined Weight Watchers.

I’ve had plenty of success with my financial habit changing but seem to have really floundered around getting nowhere when it comes to changing diet and exercise habits. I seem to be very easily derailed from healthy new habits and have not really worked out what the triggers are that cause me to persist with my unhealthy habits. My regular walking stopped completely in March and my repeated attempts to follow the CSIRO diet have not succeeded. It just seemed way too hard to find recipes that could easily be converted to single serves or which were freezer friendly.

This week I decided that I had most success with managing my money when I set a budget and tracked it daily. If I carry those skills over to my diet and exercise that should mean that if I set a food budget and track it daily I will succeed. So, I’ve been on the Interwebs all week looking for a diet that I can manage just like a budget and I think Weight Watchers is my best bet. Their program is points based and they have given me a daily points budget I must stick to with a little extra I can use if I want somewhere during the week. They have both online and paper tracking tools and pretty comprehensive shopping guides. I’ve got a huge pile of reading to do and don’t really have any food in the house that fits the diet/budget yet so today is a bit of a wash out, but I hope to get myself sorted tomorrow and make a plan for the week.

My ultimate goal is to get back to normal size for me, which is around the size I was in this picture (thats me in front, with my now adult daughter giggling in my ear). I’d like to do this by my 50th birthday which is just over 18 months away. In fact it is about 86 weeks away which is quite convenient since I want to lose 43 kilos in that time. 0.5 kilo a week on average. I’m taking the view that I ought to lose more at first and then the weight loss should even out as I get into a routine and new habits. Rather like the magic of compound interest on your savings: the more you save early on the greater the cumulative effect and the faster the goal is reached.

I must try to set myself up a graph I can add to my posts to show my weight going down and savings going up. That would be great motivation!

Shopping data and how it gives away your secrets

A few weeks ago an interesting article by Charles Duhigg in the New York Times came to my attention via Zite, probably due to my recent obsession with stories about “big data”. The article (about how companies learn your secrets) is a fantastic read, although much longer than I would have expected an article in a traditional newspaper to be. Perhaps I’m out of touch after all these years away from newspapers but I was impressed by how easily the charming Mr Duhigg managed to entertain and educate on a topic most people would try to ignore. I’ve been recommending the article to everyone I know, especially if they seem oblivious to their personal data cloud and its role in the data economy of the retail and internet companies.

The amount of data gathered in our consumer culture is truly staggering. Many companies know far more about individual clients than their closest kin would know and unfortunately few people really understand how much data is gathered about them and how it is used to  subtly influence their decisions and their lives. Many people simply don’t make the connection between the source of a company’s profits and the services it offers them. As the saying goes, if you are not paying for the service you are the product not the customer. I am a heavy user of Google services but I know they are only offering me free email and documents so they can advertise to me.  Many other people, including many politicians and journalists, seem sadly to believe that Google is in the search business, or even that it is some kind of public service rather than a profit making advertising company.

For many years I have lived happily without a television, newspapers, magazines and radio because I simply cannot stand advertising. I find many ads to be offensive, so I have avoided the consumerist culture as much as possible. This means that I have few of the common consumer data sources like loyalty or rewards cards, newsletters and linked credit cards. While I know I miss out on small discounts I think this also simplifies my life. I feel I have more choices because I am not constantly being bombarded with advertising that tries to convince me I can’t live without the latest gadget. I also don’t seem to be as envious of other people or as keen to look just like them and I have always put this down to being outside the consumer culture to some extent.

Although I might have avoided leaving much of a data trail in traditional retail with my lack of loyalty and credit cards I know I must have a massive online data cloud. Google, Apple, Dropbox and a few other companies on the web should be able to target advertising to me with incredible precision considering how much data they must have gathered on me. I checked my Google account before and after the recent change to their policies and was amused to see that before the change they guessed that I was a male and ten years younger than I am. After the change they correctly inferred my age and gender and had an excellent snapshot of my interests as well.

This really does make me wonder why the ads I do see in my gmail are usually so completely uninteresting to me. Tonight it is one from a company selling houses and promoting the current Queensland Government Building Boost. When I refreshed it was from a solar power equipment supplier. According to the info box these are based on emails in my inbox but I’m not in the market to buy a new home or any solar equipment and won’t be for years so I’m quite puzzled as to why I’m seeing these instead of the lose weight and get fit ads I would expect to see. There also seem to be a puzzling number of ads urging me to do nursing degrees and become an aged care or palliative care nurse lately, including the one opposite which shows up next to emails from both my professional associations, the Australian Computer Society and the Australian Library Association. The fact that I’m receiving emails from the member services address of these two professional bodies ought to be a pretty big clue as to my profession. I wonder if many IT managers take up a second career as a nurse??

I guess the lesson in all this is that the data boffins have a way to go yet before their algorithms will work perfectly for everyone. Or perhaps they are just lulling me into a false sense of security with a few random ads to hide how much they really know about me. That free trial of GoToMeeting does look pretty interesting after all

Two down, one to go…

A completely unrelated photo of a lovely old patchwork rug at Runnymede in Tasmania.

Yesterday I made a lump sum payment on my second last remaining consumer debt to pay it out completely. Now I just have the last, and largest, debt to go! I will probably have to break into my savings for food next week as I used all but $50 in my cheque account to clear that debt, and one cannot live on hot cross buns and easter eggs for ever! At least I know that if I do need to access my savings next week I can replenish them the following week from my next pay. It was a fantastic feeling to pay that debt out, especially as I had only had the debt since just before Christmas last year when I had my first and biggest slip-up on the road to financial security.

I have been using a modified debt snowball method to get rid of my debts (including the holiday for Mum), starting with the smallest and working up. What I am going to do now is pay $450 or more every week off the remaining personal loan with the goal being freedom from debt by the end of October. This is a very achievable goal, even if there are small emergencies along the way, so it is entirely possible that I could pay it out by the end of September. My plan (aka budget) includes adding to my savings as I go so if I see a cheap airfare for somewhere I want to go I will be able to get that as well!

When I finish paying out this last debt it will be the first time in my entire adult life that I have been debt free. Almost thirty years of debt. Almost all behind me! Although I have some long term plans for large investments what I plan to do first of all is reward myself by taking the overseas holiday I have been dreaming about for decades. I’m a big history buff and keen follower of Time Team and similar BBC history shows and what I have wanted to do for ages is to take a holiday in the UK so I can see some of the historical sights in person.

I’ve been so excited by my progress at saving money, cutting costs and achieving my goals that I have been tentatively costing out a week in London for Christmas this year. I don’t know if I could really do that as I absolutely will not pay anything toward the holiday until the last of my debt is gone and by October or November the prices for flights and accommodation may be too high for me. The habit of frugal living makes it almost impossible to contemplate paying to stay at a four star hotel in London at $400 a night! There are cheaper options on airbnb.com but they will just have to wait until I get over this one last hurdle…

Back on track and moving fast…

It has been a hectic few weeks since I got back from my holiday and I feel like I’ve spent them moving at breakneck pace until today. The lease on the unit I had been renting was due to expire on March 30th and I really wanted to move, for a whole lot of different reasons. In the two days after I got back from my holiday I had two open house events at my own unit and went out to look at a few others that were smaller, cheaper and in nicer locations. Luckily I found exactly what I was looking for and was able to sign a lease and move within a week! It was a whirlwind of packing, moving and unpacking and my expenses register for March looks horrendous with expenses almost twice my monthly income, thanks to the holiday and moving costs.

I’ve downsized from a two bedroom, two bathroom townhouse with air-con, dishwasher and remote internal garage to an tiny, old, wooden one bedroom flat with a shared laundry and garage. This might sound bad at first until you hear that I have nice, quite (non-student) neighbours and a shopping centre, parks and doctors within easy (and flat) walking distance. I’m also saving the not inconsiderable sum of $125 a week on rent (or $6500 a year!!)  plus hundreds of dollars a year on garden maintenance and utilities. And I am pretty confident that the nice people I now rent from are not going to be anywhere near as difficult as the last real estate.

Initially I started thinking about moving because I have been tracking my expenses and discovered that I spent more on rent than on anything else. In fact I live quite cheaply as I am trying to become debt free so I was shocked to see that the rent was 42% of my actual outgoings every month! The unit I was renting was nowhere near important enough in my life for it to take up so much of my weekly expenses, especially as I didn’t own it and couldn’t even hang my own pictures in it. What I really want to spend my money on is travel, so now that I have moved I intend to put the money I am saving on rent away in a special savings account. That $125 a week is going to pay for a very nice holiday for me at Christmas!

Needless to say the moving costs have wrecked my budget and savings, but I am not going to be thrown off by one little setback when I have been doing so well all year. I have written up my budget for April and am still planning to payout one of my debts this month and then snowball into the last debt of all. Even with the extra savings I am putting aside separately I am pretty sure I will be debt free by the end of this year, although possibly not as early as I had planned in September. This month I am also investigating ways to cut my weekly food expenses and stop wasting food. Every little bit of money I save will help my budget and every little improvement to my diet will help me lose weight and regain fitness.

After the excitement of my holiday in Tasmania I was out of the habit of walking daily and really noticed a change in my mood, and not a change for the better either. I also noticed to my amazement that all my clothes seemed to have shrunk slightly while I was away! Must be my washing machine, it also had trouble getting the stains out where I dropped one of the Pralines d’Anvers I’ve been eating in bed. You can’t trust some modern technology, my digital bathroom scales aren’t working properly either.

Anyway, I haven’t budgeted for new clothes this month so I’m off tomorrow to explore the walking tracks near my new flat. It would be good to shrink me instead of my clothes this month Hopefully I’ll re-establish my good habits quickly and by the end of the month I will pass another big milestone on my road to a debt free, healthy life.

Here I sit, in a steaming pile of collapsed plans…

Tasman Bridge taken from the Cenotaph

I’m back from taking Mum on the holiday to Tasmania (photos inserted) and contemplating the overspending and overeating which have resulted in the utter destruction of all my plans. I have no idea how much I spent (I gave up trying to record my expenses and it will take me a few more hours to work it out) but I know it was far more than I expected. It seems I spent it all on expensive and fattening food too as I appear to have regained a lot of the weight I lost in January and February. I did bring home some smallish bottles of nice whiskey (still unopened) but souvenirs from the visits to the cheese and chocolate factories, berry farms and bakeries are now only visible on my thighs (and backside, and belly and …).

Well, time to regroup, work out what went wrong and how to avoid it in future and then make fresh plans. Also this is the last weekday of my holidays and I need to find somewhere else to live as I have to move next weekend. Plus there is very little food in the house and not much money left in the bank.

Firstly, I was not in control of this holiday, Mum was, and her expectations were far different from mine. She wanted to drive around and see as much as possible and did not want to stay in one place or even make firm plans. This meant that we went down there with only half of our accommodation booked and I had to spend quite a bit of time and money looking for suitable accommodation. In the end I had to pay almost $600 for two nights accommodation over 200 kms from where we wanted to be. Even worse, it turned out to be a very ordinary country motel of about three stars. The lesson from this is that if I don’t take control of my holiday (and money) someone else will and I won’t like the outcome!

Inside King Solomon Cave near Mole Creek in the Tamar Region

Secondly, I had not planned well for activities Mum would be interested in doing. We could have saved money and had a more enjoyable time if I had sneakily planned ahead and known where and when tours and events were on that Mum would like and was fit enough to do. This would also have assisted with accommodation and dining choices as Mum is far more choosy and less adventurous than I am with food. This holiday gave me a good example of where apps like Urbanspoon and TripAdvisor are of little to no use as they recommended only places I would like and did not have many entries for the sort of old-style restaurants Mum would like. If I had thought about it beforehand I would have realised that my favourite apps that rely on crowd sourced data might not be so reliable in places where there are not crowds of smartphone owners like me! The lesson to learn from this is that planning ahead is much cheaper and more reliable than relying on apps, especially if you are doing things you would not normally do.

Thirdly, I did not stick to my habits of expense tracking, using the cash envelopes and daily exercise while I was on holiday. Part of the problem was that I had no time to myself, was quite rushed and had a lot of responsibilities. I did not want to make Mum sit and wait while I entered all my purchases and also did not want to leave her on her own while I went to take a long walk. She is convinced that everything and everyone is dangerous and any small patch of scrub is teeming with deadly and ferocious creatures desperate to get their teeth into me! Without a supportive environment with enough time and control to take my daily walk or enter my expenses or even to go to the ATM and withdraw my cash on payday all my newly built habits were confounded and I ended up sliding back into my old default behaviour. The lesson to learn from this is that my habits are completely dependent on my personal, social and structural supports. Next holiday I need to plan in advance so I can build structures to support my new habits while I travel.

The old bridge at Ross, a beautiful place to stay!

My next holiday will be quite different to this! Once I have paid off my debts this year (which I think may still be possible) I will be saving for a month in Europe. This time I will be going alone and planning accordingly so I don’t overspend and don’t waste time trying to book things at the last minute.