CodeMash 2016 - Program some health into your life

Another awesome CodeMash is coming to an end, with a lot of great sessions and a bunch of fun activities throughout the conference.  I attended the full 4 days and was joined by my family for the last 2.  For the first time my kids attended KidzMash, where they had a great time learning game development, how robots work, building an Altoid-flashlight and learning how to count to F! In the CodeMash spirit I attended mostly sessions outside my immediate comfort zone; including pre-compiler on 7 languages, front-end talks, UX-talks, softskill-talks and a few pertaining to what I am currently working on; microservices and modularity.

 I was honored to be presenting at CodeMash for the third time.  This time on a non-technical subject dear to my heart.  My talk was titled Program some health into your life; where I walked developers through what it takes to stay healthy at a desk job, the basics of nutrition and exercising, and offered various tips on loosing weight and getting the most out of your effort.  It went very well and I was not even booed when I suggested bacon was not the cornerstone of a healthy meal plan! :)  Apparently there was a free candy buffet going on at the same time I gave my talk, so I was pleased to see a room full of programmers giving up sweets for health advice :)  Below are the slides from my talk. 

As in years past, hats off to the CodeMash organizers for putting on a great conference.  I am already looking forward to CodeMash 2017!  Now off to the water park with the family!

Program some health into your life from Steinn 'Stan' Jónsson

Biking to work

Last week, during a monthly lunch and learn, I gave a talk on bicycling to work.  I have been riding to work once a week for a few months now and this was my attempt to get some of my coworkers to join in on the fun.  Aside from multiple health benefits, I have found that when I ride I arrive at work much happier and better prepared to tackle the day, than on days when I commute via car.  During the talk I shared various tips on bike commuting and on how to go about mapping a bike-friendly route from one's home to work.  Using Strava.com and Google's Bicycling and Street View data I have been able to map out a relatively safe route from my home in Hilliard to my current work in Easton, Ohio.  The route is rather long (around 29 miles) so I have only been doing it once a week.  Below are the slides from the talk.  If you have any good bike commuting tips to share, I would love to hear from you!