Author: Jeff Ammons

Best of Posts, music1 Comment

Improving Memorization Technique for Opera

Jeff Ammons

Memorization of music has always been something that I’ve struggled with. I think in part I’m not as good at it as many of my musical peers, and I also have study methods don’t lend themselves to memorizing. I don’t like tedious work where it’s difficult to see progression. Memorizing can be very intangible, where you’ve memorized something one day, only to have it disappear the next. While discussing singing with a friend recently, I noticed that she seemed to have a much better idea of the structure of her pieces that I do. This kicked off some inquiry and … Continue reading Improving Memorization Technique for Opera

nutrition, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Fencing Tournament Follow-up

Jeff Ammons

Note: this is a follow-up to this post: https://jeffammons.net/2011/04/fencing-tournament-physical-and-nutritional-preparation/ Alright, so I survived two tournaments since posting last. The first one on May 1st was a much tougher crowd as it was a regional qualifier, meaning I was fencing pretty much strictly highly rated fencers. I knew that going in though, and I think I got some useful learning out of it. I finished 33/36, so not dead last which I suppose I can be happy about. I also lost my direct elimination to a B, but only 8-15 or something like that. The second one, on May 7th was a … Continue reading Fencing Tournament Follow-up

musings, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Locational Filtering

Jeff Ammons

If you wanted to find fish, where would you go? Certainly not the desert. Despite trying to avoid this for as long as possible, I’m going to devote a post (partially) to some of my thoughts on romantic relationships. Luckily this concept applies to more than just meeting women though. It just happened to occur to me while thinking about picking up women in a grocery store. To set the scene: I recently went grocery shopping at both Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, and as I often do, I was checking out women in the store (in a non-creepy way … Continue reading Locational Filtering

Best of Posts, life-mods, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Update and review: 100 Pushups Program

Jeff Ammons

I posted a while ago (in February I think) about starting the 100 pushups program to try to get to 100 pushups in a row. I was a bit skeptical at the time of the 100 pushups program but figured it was as good a place as any to start. I quickly became impossible though. I tend to find that this is the case with most programs that claim to be able to do X number of something in X weeks. I’m pretty sure they just do the math to see how many you’d have to increase per week if … Continue reading Update and review: 100 Pushups Program

musings, Uncategorized3 Comments

Happiness and Improvement

Jeff Ammons

As humans, we have a constant desire to improve our lots in life (well most of us do anyways). Improvement makes us happy, or perhaps it’s lack of improvement that makes us unhappy. Either way, it’s a good survival adaptation. It stands to reason that the humans with a stronger instinct to improve themselves and their surroundings would become those with better housing during a blizzard or more food during a period of drought. I think it likely that this sense has been bred into us by natural selection. It manifests itself in strange places though. Now that many of … Continue reading Happiness and Improvement

life-mods, Uncategorized, workouts1 Comment

Rebooting and the 100 Push-up Program

Jeff Ammons

The last few months have been frustrating physically for me. I injured my back a long time ago (December 2009). After doing physical therapy at 3 different places, getting an epidural shot, and working with a few different trainers, I’m still pretty clueless as to what to do. I have an aggravated nerve in my lower back that flares up during a number of activities, most notably while sitting and after working out. Well, I sit all day at work (although I recently acquired a standing desk, which helps). Because of all this sitting, my back stays in pain for … Continue reading Rebooting and the 100 Push-up Program

business, technology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

What’s an API? An explanation for the layman

Jeff Ammons

So working as a web developer, I work with a lot of APIs. I’m also frequently asked things by non-coders about our API and the APIs of other sites. The concept of API seems to be that of some magical coding device that solves problems. However, while this is an amusing concept, it’s not entirely correct. In trying to explain the details of this to a coworker the other day, it occurred to me that I needed a good parable. So here you go: Imagine if you would, a grouping of small islands in the middle of an ocean. Many … Continue reading What’s an API? An explanation for the layman

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Mahalo 4.0 Launched

Jeff Ammons

Last Tuesday morning, after 6 months of working on it, the Mahalo team launched our newest version of the site: Mahalo 4.0. I have a lot of thoughts on what went well and what could have been better during the whole process, but I’m going to save those for later. We had a nearly flawless cutover (technology-wise) It total our downtime was only about 3 hours, and for most of that it would have been unnoticeable to most visitors.  Not bad for a complete rewrite of our backend storage layer and our front-end js/css/html. We’re still working on some bugs, but that … Continue reading Mahalo 4.0 Launched

life-mods, Uncategorized2 Comments

Life-Mod: No Soap

Jeff Ammons

Back in December, a co-worker sent me an article (this one I think), written by a guy who had decided to give up soap and shampoo for a month and seemed none the worse for it. At the time I was looking for some good things to experiment with and this one required no additional time from my schedule and cut some chemicals out of my daily routine, so I quit showering with soap and shampoo on December 6th, 2010 (note: I still showered. I’m not a hippy). The only real caveats I have to applying chemicals to my skin … Continue reading Life-Mod: No Soap