Author: Nick Momrik

I'm searching for my first hole-in-one. I enjoy being active and making things. I work for Automattic.

A Record Streak

Nick Momrik4 Comments

screen-shot-2017-01-26-at-9-17-37-pm This post makes 79 days in a row, breaking my old streak, which was set on April 13th, 2009. When I took notice of the posting streak and decided to keep going, I was worried I’d run out of things to publish within a couple of weeks. I haven’t had any issues though. These things have really helped:

  1. I quickly made the decision not to get caught up in the length of posts. Sharing a video or a simple link would be just fine some days.
  2. Whenever an idea strikes, I try to get an early title and some quick notes saved as a draft post in WordPress. I usually have at least 5 drafts in progress and had 10 at one point. Some of the drafts are waiting for a specific date or event while others just need to be completed.
  3. In Apple’s Reminders app, I have a repeating daily reminder. I don’t mark it as completed until I have published or scheduled the post for the day.
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    The notification on my iPhone as well as my computers doesn’t let me forget.
  4. Speaking of scheduled posts, I usually have at least 1-2 posts set for the upcoming days. I tend to move them around when I want to publish something right away, but it helps to keep the process stress free.

I don’t follow my blog stats closely, but I’m curious if the increased activity has caused the decline in visits and visitors. I would expect the numbers to move in the other direction.

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Home Assistant Pi

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With all of the Raspberry Pis I have (now up to 6 after adding “flapper”), I wanted to get a bunch of data in Home Assistant (yes, I’m still working on a larger home automation post) and have an easy way to reboot or shutdown each computer.

I wrote a little app which runs as a service on each Pi. Here’s an example of what shows up in Home Assistant.

home-assistant-pi-groups.png

The Python app and sample Home Assistant configurations are in my home-assistant-pi project on GitHub. Of course it’s all Open Source.

Garage Monitor Updates

Nick Momrik1 Comment

I made some updates to the Garage Temperature Sensor & Monitor. I didn’t like how the desired temperature was set via the app’s configuration file, so I moved it to a slider control in Home Assistant and updated the LCD to always show the value. Only being able to enable/disable monitoring via the device’s button also wasn’t great. I converted the binary sensor I was using to flag monitor mode in HA to a switch control and moved the actual monitoring logic from the Python app to HA automation. Everyhing is updated on GitHub.

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Info and controls in Home Assistant
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Custom temperature and humidity monitor

Thruster Attack Revisited

Nick Momrik2 Comments

I just finished my second go-round of the Thruster Attack program I created almost 2 years ago. I didn’t remember it hurting so much. I started on November 12th and had to stretch out this final week so today actually marks 71 days.

img_8758Basically you do thruster intervals twice a week. The days start on opposite ends of the energy pathway spectrum, aerobic and anaerobic, and meet in the middle during week 10. For specifics, read the original post (linked above). I’m really happy with how well the program holds up. I’ve seen solid improvements in my fitness both times I’ve done it and several friends who just finished or are in various weeks of the program are also seeing fitness gains.

Many of us who enjoy fitness say we’d pick a heavy squat if we could only do one movement for the rest of our life, but a thruster might be the better choice.

While I think the program as originally written is solid, I tried out some changes on myself this time:

  • During the first 3 weeks, I did 2 extra sets on the heavy days.
  • For the first 3 weeks of Tabata work I kept the rep count at 8 for every set.
  • In weeks 4-5 I started to increase the reps during later Tabata rounds.
  • For weeks 6-10 I did 9 reps for every set of Tabata work.
  • After the first week or two, I rarely did any other exercising on thruster days.
  • Until the last few weeks, I was only doing CrossFit 1-2 other days per week.

All of those changes worked well for me, but may not work for others. The rep counts were low enough in those initial weeks where I could recover fast enough to add in the extra sets on heavy days. During weeks 4-5 the heavy days were the worst and I had to break up some sets. When I originally wrote this program and was testing it out, I’m pretty sure I skipped one of those weeks due to a work trip. In week 4 I had to do the last set of 10 as sets of 6 and 4. Then in week 5 I had to go 6-4 and 4-3-3 on the final two sets. While some of the Tabata work gets boring and turns into a grind, I was never in danger of failing any reps.

How about some numbers? Over the course of 20 sessions, I completed 2,309 thrusters and moved 146,890 pounds! Warm-ups would push those over 2,400 and 150k.

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Thruster movement chart from Beyond the Whiteboard

Is it overkill doing so many thrusters? Maybe. Did I want to quit? Almost every workout. Does it work? Definitely.