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comment by veen
veen  ·  1478 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A return

Dude, congrats on finishing Lambda! Welcome to the illustrious Club of Coders. (It's mostly stuffy and could use more deodorant, but the pay's good.)

What're you coding in? What field or topic? How are you staying fit these days?





blackbootz  ·  1478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Veen! It's great to be a part of the club.

I'm essentially a python developer using natural language processing frameworks and libraries. I'm building a medical records search platform. I turn unstructured medical data (a bunch of .txts) into indexed metadata that's made searchable by downstream business users. The systems guy works on the back end and we have a few web developers. Something like a hundred million records will pass through my machine learned model and entity attributor. I didn't know how to code 13 months ago.

How do I stay fit?? Funny you should ask: I have a twitter thread and a fitness instagram with highlights. Right now I'm doing the 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge; 500 per working day. My first set took 36 minutes. I broke 18 minutes just the other day, and I have two more days left.

How are you?? How's the turning code into money going? How are transportation reform efforts? How's the young and beautifully in love going?

veen  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sounds great! Python is lovely if you ask me. Did you dive into other languages too? I can't recommend mastering SQL enough after you've figured out how scripting works. It's frustrating at times, but also lifesaving at times.

Holy fuck that's a lot of kettlebells. I thought doing 50 was a lot. Are your gyms open still? Or some of the time? The most sportive I've become is by picking up running after corona hit. I'm doing 3 to 4 miles at a for-me-decent 10 minute/mile pace thrice a week, which is better than I've ever done. Hit 7,5% body fat percentage at 151lbs this summer briefly, whoops. Doing better now. My SO's still with me, we moved in earlier this year and it's been nothing but wonderful.

My paper's online and open access! All it needs is final typesetting and printing. These past months I've done almost no programming, as I've been quite succesful in moving from coder to (mobility) data expert. If all goes well, I can helm a project to get more research related to my paper into practice at a big dept. of transportation here.

blackbootz  ·  1476 days ago  ·  link  ·  

SQL, eh? I've the barest experience. I don't wind up using it for work, although I know it's something so many developers, data scientists, analysts use, so it does seem eminently useful.

I do most of my workouts at home, although I went to this gym and quite like it, feel good that it's largely outdoors.

I'm at ~11% bodyfat percentage per Amazon's Halo and am considering going all out and hitting 5 or 6 percent, just to have done it once in my life in peak shape. Take some pictures, eat ten burritos. It's a vanity project, and it's so hard. We'll see.

Congrats on the paper. Do you have a website? I'm curious, how much different a style is it written in than, say, the style you'd write it in if it were a blog post?

user-inactivated  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·  

500 kettle swings per day sounds like a neat winter project to go along with my other winter project, (exercise) biking the length of lake superior

in the past, after about a hundred kettlebells, i would have a little lower back twinging. so i tapered off. if i bring it back 5x i'm really going to have to get the form down, i guess.

blackbootz  ·  1476 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Now that you mention it, I do have some lower back pain and it might be from that. I thought it was from the weird positions I get into when I sleep, but the swings sound more likely. Good thing I only have 1 set of 500 left.

b_b  ·  1476 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You gotta be careful with that shit. How heavy?

blackbootz  ·  1475 days ago  ·  link  ·  

55 pounds. Time has gone down from like 36 minutes to sub 18 last session. Have one more session left. But I'm ok with not doing more swings for a while after this.

steve  ·  1473 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That one time when I forgot how much of a mancrush I have on you and spent an hour scrolling your Instagram only to be inspired to get interested in fitness again

blackbootz  ·  1472 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Flattering, and I know all about the instagram scroll. Hope it was positive and not anything like the doom scrolling that I sometimes do

steve  ·  1472 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm a total fanboy - and still on board to shoot your video application for American Ninja Warrior

Foveaux  ·  1474 days ago  ·  link  ·  

10k kettlebell swings challenge.. I've hit some lifetime lifting goals and am genuinely stuck for something new to aim for. May give this a go!

Cumol  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Shit. blackbootzis FIT!

Been also working out loads lately (to manage my stress at the end of this PhD). Still recovering from my ACL surgery last year. I am happy if I manage 3x 10 squats

blackbootz  ·  1476 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There's nothing like exercise to reset, induce the hormones and preferable body feedback loops, break up the monotony of a day job, boost the flow of feel good endorphins.

I pulled my MCL day 3 learning jiu jitsu. It sucked, I stayed off it for 6 months. It gets better!

Cumol  ·  1476 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My injury happened during Karate training. I was back to training (second month) after a 6 year break. Sucks :(

Doctor told me I am hypermobile and should have been avoiding any contact sport whatsoever...

blackbootz  ·  1476 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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