Jason's Log

The only Best of 2014 playlist you will need

The best holiday gifts aren't the ones that cost the most money. What matters is the time, effort and thoughtfulness - at least that's what my mom used to tell me.

Which is why I've spent the last few weeks listening to every track on every "Top Songs of 2014" playlist I could find in order to bring you the 2014 installment of "Jason Listened to Everyone Else's Best of 2014 Playlist so You Don't Have To" playlist.

Various sources used for inspiration include the following:

• NPR Music
• Rolling Stone
• CMJ
• Spin Magazine
• Topsify

In no particular order, here are the 90+ tracks I selected for the list this year. If you believe I've made some egregious error, feel free to email with your suggestion on what I missed (or wrongly included).

Cultural Foundations of a Team

Been thinking about healthy team cultures and how they develop lately. Decided to try and put those thoughts into pictures (and words). This should be considered a high-level sketch.

Where does it start?

The standard list of ingredients for a healthy team culture are trust and respect. But for a new team, you have to work to obtain both. Start with the hiring of A Players (1A). As many others have demonstated, A Players tend to hire other A Players (2A). Which leads you to the first building block of culture - respect (3A). A team composed of highly variable talents and skill levels will lead to a lack of respect among members. The only way to prevent that is to set the hiring bar appropriately high and making sure it stays there.

But respect is only half the battle

Respect alone won't sustain a team. Team members need to trust one another too, which in theory is simple. You make promises (1B) and you keep them (2B). As the members of a team repeat that loop enough times, they will come to trust one another. Team members who make commitments but fail to follow through will quickly erode trust.

Foundation in place

With both trust and respect firmly in place, you have the necessary ingredients upon which you can build a positive team culture (4). But the next step is what almost everyone gets wrong. The arrow from (4) to (5) only flows in the direction indicated. The foundations of a positive team culture make the social cohesion of the team possible.

All the "team bonding" activities in the world will not create a positive culture!

Anyone telling you that you need more team social events in order to build a strong team culture doesn't understand the problem. They've made a fundamental error with the direction of their causal arrows. Positive cultures make social events possible, but social events cannot generate resilient cultures.

Something you can build on

With the foundation of a team culture in place, and the social interactions they enable, teams can start to develop their sense of unique identity. Through the creation of team lingo (6A) and customs (6B) the team will begin to create an identity separate from the organization that surrounds them (7).

Feedback loops

As the team's unique cultural identity emerges, it leads to more opportunities for social integration (5), and the cycle repeats. 

 

Marie Warda Buberel - March 20th, 1939 - August 28th, 2013

Marie Warda Buberel, daughter of the late Pearl Warda, passed away on Wednesday, August 28th, 2013.

She is survived by her brother Phil Warda and her three children, Jason Buberel of San Jose, California, Anna Hoyou of Algonquin, Illinois and Christa Fialkiewicz of Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as her four grandchildren who were her pride and joy, Marek, Isabelle, Colin, and Emma.  

A public memorial service will be held in her honor on September 6th, at Ahlgrim and Sons funeral home, 330 W. Golf Rd, Schaumburg, IL from 4:00pm to 8:00pm with a prayer service beginning at 7:00pm.

 

 

 

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Silicon Valley humane society: http://www.hssv.org/donate/

Vegetable protein powder similar to whey

Next up in the search for vegetarian replacements for animal-based protein powder is whey. If you've ever read an article, book or blog post about the "best protein supplement for athletes in training" you were probably told that whey is the gold standard. It's been studied extensively and repeatedly shown to be the most effective at helping people in training build strength and grow their muscles.

For those of us who'd prefer to minimize the amount of cheese-and-butter-making byproducts, I decided to compute which mix of five vegetable protein sources would most closely mimic the amino acid profile of whey protein.

Again this time the list of possible ingredients was:

• Pea/gemma protein isolate
• Rice protein isolate
• Hemp protein isolate
• Potato protein isolate
• Sacha inchi protein isolate

The non-linear solver problem was setup in this MS Excel spreadsheet and the solver engine was run. The goal function was to minimize the sum of the squared differences per amino acid. This produced the following match:

The mixture that computed used was:

Please keep in mind that just because the amino acid profiles are similar, I am not going to claim that the two powders will have the same physiological effect. Feel free to experiment with your own custom mixes the next time you order.

A vegan protein powder mixture close to the amino acid profile of beef

I decided that this weekend I would figure out how to create a mixture of vegetable protein powders that most closely matches that of beef. This is based on the generally held belief that the "best, most human-like" source of protein for people who perform strength training workouts is beef.

Being a non-beef eater, I decided to look at the overall amino acid profile of beef, using a flank steak as the example. Using the wonderful amino acid data available on Nutrition Data you end up with the following breakdown - the second column is the milligrams of each amino acid per 100g serving, and the third column is the normalized % composition of each amino acid:

I then retrieved the amino acid profiles of the 5 vegetable protein powders that I was planning to use in my evaluation - pea/gemma, rice, hemp, potato protein isolate, and Sacha inchi protein isolate. 

To determine the optimal mixture of vegetable proteins that would most closely match the % composition of beef, I setup a non-linear solver problem in Excel. I configured the problem to solve for the minimum of the sum of the squared differences between the percent of each amino acid in the vegetable mixture vs. beef. Solving this problem yields the closest possible match.

The results were a bit surprising:

The mixture show above resulted in the following amino acid profile. The values for beef are shown for comparison:

You are welcome to download and experiement with my original Excel spreadsheet. 

So my next custom protein mixture order will be something along the lines of:

60% gemma/pea protein
15% hemp protein
10% sacha inchi protein
15% potato protein

This mixture will give you all of the 9 essential amino acids, and it will deliver them in a ratio that is similar to that found in beef.

Why did I not include soy protein isolate? Primarily because of the known estrogenic effects that soy isolates are known to have. 

Why did I use Excel for this? Because the solver features in Google Sheets and OpenOffice Calc only handle linear solver problems. Other commercial solver engines that hand non-linear problems often cost in the hundreds or thousands of $$.

Using Google MapMaker to measure workout distances in your neighborhood

The training program that I'm currently following calls for a track sprint workout with intervals of 400m, 300m, 200m and 100m. For those of us who don't have a highschool or collegiate track and field stadium nearby, it can be tough to meausre off the right distances.

However, using Google MapMaker, it is easy to measure out the correct distances, and use the satellite images to figure out the visual milestones in your own neighborhood. Here is how to do it.

1. Open MapMaker in your browser: https://www.google.com/maps/mm

2. Use the zoom and pan controls to zoom in on your house. Then press the "Create Map" button (red arrow):

3. Give the map a name ("Sprint Workout Distances") and click "Save":

4. Next, select the line drawing tool:

5. Now, switch to Satellite view:

6. Now left-single-click on a good starting point for your fist distance - 100m - at a convenient spot, such as the street just at the front of your driveway. You can still use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out if needed. Then extend the line until the measurement tool indicates the line is the right distance. If you need to turn a corner, just right-single-click once to set a waypoint and continue to extend the line. 100m is about 380ft:

7. Double-left-click on the end point of your line to finish drawing the line. Then give it a name, like "100m" and press OK:

8. You can now drag the small yellow Street View Man to your end point to see exactly where you should end your 100m sprint if you're not sure exactly where the line ends.

Repeat this for the other distances, or just use the 100m mark as a turn-around point for your 200, 300 and 400m distances.

 

 

 

 

Crickets and mealworms, stir fry!

Or, scenes from my kitchen on a Sunday morning [full photo album]


The release of Mary Roach's new book, "Gulp" got me thinking about adding a few animal products back into the diet. Decided that it was time to give insects a try.

After spelunking a bit on the internets, found myself in email conversation with Harman Johar, founder of World Ento. They offer organically raised mealworms and crickets specifically for human consumption (they do all of the dirty work: http://goo.gl/LVnzW). 

I ordered a small sized (100g) batch of each - crickets (Acheta domesticus) and mealworms (larval stage of Tenebrio molitor). They arrived on Friday via USPS.

I grabbed a copy of "Creepy Crawly Cuisine" (http://amzn.com/B0062C5S5W) to read up on prep, cooking and recipes. Decided to keep it simple the first time, and just stir fry. Both were seasoned lightly with Jane's Krazy Salt (http://amzn.com/B000GZU8VU). 

Also found a recent journal article in Molecula Food and Nutrition Research by Birgit A. Rumpold and Oliver K. Schluter, "Nutritional composition and safety aspects of edible insects" (http://goo.gl/cuFL5)  from which I learned:

100g of fresh adult crickets:
505kcal, 70g protein, 18g fat, 16g carb

100g of fresh mealworms:
565kcal, 49g protein, 38g fat, 6.5g carb

But how do they taste?

Both have a fairly mild flavor - nothing too strong or pungent. But no, they do not taste like chicken. The mealworms had a surprisingly light crunchy texture. The crickets were also nice and crispy. The small bits of the exoskeleton - wings and antennae - weren't noticeable at all.

Would I eat them again?

Yep. Because they both have a mild flavor, they take on the taste of what you cook them in. I kept it simple this time, but could easily see them becoming part of my diet.

What about the price?

They ain't cheap if you buy them in small quantities. And keep in mind that these are specifically sold for human consumption. While there are many on-line sellers who cater to the reptile owner crowd, these are considerably more expensive. 100g of crickets were $15 and 100g of mealworms were $11.

For a quick comparison, you can get a pound (454g) of Foster Farms chicken breast for $6.49, or about $1.40 per 100g. The vegan protein powder mix that I normally use - hemp, rice, pea, potato, sacha inchi - costs me about $9.82 per pound, or $2.15 per 100g.

That being said, Harman at World Ento assures me that as they ramp up their production capacity, those prices will drop significantly. Look for lower prices in late 2013!

ABSI calculator now supports metric

Given that greater than 90% of the world population uses a sensible system of measurements, I've now added metric units support to the online ABSI calculator. Give it a shot, and let me know if you come across any problems.

 

Updated ABSI Calculator

Based on user feedback, I've now updated the ABSI online calculator. This version will now display the smoothed average value for your age and gender, as well as the standard deviation. According to the original article, an ABSI value that was greater than one unit of standard deviation above the average indcated a significantly increased mortality rate.

A Body Shape Index (ABSI) online calculator

A paper published recently in PLoS One - "A New Body Shape Index Predicts Mortality Hazard Independently of Body Mass Index" - describes a new approach for assessing mortality rates based on a few, simple body measurements. It expands and improves upon the BMI - Body Mass Index - which has been used for years as the basis for a clinical definition of obesity.

The paper describes the new formula, but does not provide an online calculator for the new measure - ABSI - A Body Shape Index. So I decided to implement a simple online ABSI calculator, which you can access here:

http://absi-calc.appspot.com/

The best way to evaluate your ABSI value to the general population is to view the larger version of Figure 1a from the article. The chart in the top-left corner shows the mean ABSI values by age and gender. Using that chart, you can compare yourself to the US average values.

My score - 0.071 - which puts me comfortably below the mean for men in their early 40s <whew>