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A fascinating new study on genetically engineered mice has given a huge boost to the Mitochondrial Free Radical theories of cellular aging. The mice were engineered to produce a human enzyme that is a powerful antioxidant. Strains were created that expressed the extra enzyme in three different places (cell nucleus, cytoplasm, and inside the mitochondria). The breed that had extra protection in the mitochondria lived 20% longer, while the protection in the cytoplasm and cell nucleus had little improvement over normal mice.

This helps demonstrate why all the past hype about consuming lots of anti-oxidants like vitamin C, E, and all those other sources, has never really shown any promise in lab tests to have any effect on retarding the aging process. If a lot of the damage incurred during aging is happening deep inside the mitochondria, then it makes sense — ingesting antioxidants is not a very effective way to get them into your mitochondria. It’s questionable how well most of them even make it into the cytoplasm, let alone further into the mitochondria.

This is related closely to how caloric restriction is thought to work. With calorie restriction, the mitochondria become more efficient and burn less energy. Burning energy generates a lot of free radicals. Instead of mopping up free radicals after they are generated (using antioxidants), we just don’t make so many in the first place, stopping the damage at its source. It’s exciting to see research into this area gaining momentum.

Currently listening to Buy Me…I’ll Change Your Life by Snog

This weekend we had a BioTools vs BioWare poker competition. Eight of us from BioTools went on over to BioWare headquarters to face them in a no-limit hold’em freeze-out. BioWare is a hugely successful games company in Edmonton. They also started as a medical / biotech software company, and then transitioned to making games, hence the ‘Bio’. They pulled it off several years ago and never looked back. They now employ over 200 people. At BioTools, we’re now trying to pull off the same stunt. It is no wonder that people constantly confuse the two companies — I’ve even seen our shareholders mix up the two names.

One of the shockers of course, was that one of the BioWare team is a former BioTools employee. The other shocker, embarassingly, is that we LOST to them. Uhg. One of our guys placed second, but sadly we didn’t take the title. Ahh, that’s the bitter world of poker.

We finally arrived into early beta testing for Poker Academy Pro 2.0. It’s been a couple of long hard months getting it all banged into shape. Still a while yet to go before release, but she’s starting to look nice. Pretty new animations, beefed up stats, multi-table tournaments, and online play, to name a few of the delicious new features we’ve jammed in.

Saw Disney’s take on Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. T’was okay.

Hi There,

Had my bood pressure measured again today — 160/75. Then I went to the drug store and measured it in the machine. First reading was 154/94, 79bpm pulse. The second reading was 133/71, 78bpm pulse. I have no clue how accurate those things are, or why my blood pressure is so far over the map within just a few minutes. I think the anxiety about having my blood pressure measured may be making my blood pressure go up. Anyhoo, I got for a third reading next week, and if it’s still crazy high, my doctor wants me to go on medication. Uhg. I’ve got one week to learn how to relax.

At least my blood & piss results are looking good. My doctor called them ‘beautiful’. I’ve got no idea what several of these things are, just typing them in as they appear on the printout I got, with my best guesses in brackets.

Test results from April. 23rd 2005 (CR’ed for 3 Months)

Complete Blood Count and Differential
HGB 146 g/L (Hemoglobin)
RBC 4.74 10**12/L (Red Blood Cell)
HCT 0.43 L/L (Hematocrit)
MCV 90 fL (Mean Corpuscular Volume)
MCHC 345 g/L (Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Conc.)
RDW 12.9 % (Red Blood Cell Distribution Width)
PLT 184 10**9/L (Platelets)
WBC 5.6 10**9/L (White Blood Cell Count)
NEUT (42%) 2.4 10**9/L (Neutrophils)
LYMPH (47%) 2.5 10**9/L (Lymphocytes)
MONO (10%) 0.6 10**9/L (Monocytes)
EOS (01%) 0.1 10**9/L (Eosinophils)
BASO (00%) 0.0 10**9/L (Basophils)
Cell Morphology
Alkaline Phosphatase 62 U/L
ALT 15 U/L (Alanine aminotransferase)
Creatinine
Creatinine 88 umol/L
Calculated Glomerular Filtration Rate >60 mL/min/1.73m2
Glucose, Fasting 4.8 mmol/L
Potassium 4.0 mmol/L
Lipid Battery
Cholesterol 2.93 mmol/L
Triglyceride 0.67 mmol/L
HDL Cholesterol 0.94 mmol/L
LDL Cholesterol 1.69 mmol/L
Total Chol/HDL Ratio 3.10
Sodium 145 mmol/L
Urine Test
pH 6.0
Specific Gravity H>1.030
Protein negative
Glucose negative
Ketones negative
Hemoglobin negative
Leukocytes negative
Vitamin B12 504 pmol/L
Ferritin 112 ug/L
TSH 1.77 mU/L


After getting deluged with about 50 comment spams for a russian poker site, I just installed a CAPTCHA, (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) in the comments area. Hopefully this will either (a) stop the spam, or (b) lead to an arms race between ever more difficult CAPTCHAs and ever more sophisticated Artificial Intelligence needed to solve them. Either way, I win.

Terry and I have been working in our new office at work, a very big bright room, quite nice really. We moved in there last week. However, every day at around 5pm the ceiling tiles would start dripping on us and our desks. Late last week we learned that each of us has a dentist chair directly above us, and I reckon that at the end of the day when they flush out everything, it overflows the pipe system and dumps a load on us. We now affectionately refer to it as our evening hepatitis and AIDS shower. Today we had the building staff look into it and I think they fixed it as there was no dental drizzle this evening.

O’er the weekend Chris and I did a bit more CRONOMETER construction. Chris more so than I (he’s a code machine, especially since it turned out he was avoiding prepping for exams). It’s looking like it will come together real nice now.

~1700 kcals today. Lots of salad.

Egads! I went for my physical yesterday and I had really high blood pressure! 135/90!!! Arg. I have to go back next week to get measured again, to rule out a fluke. In the meantime I’m cutting back on the caffeine (I might have had way too much coffee just before I went) in hopes that that is all it is. If it’s not the caffeine then I can only imagine it is either stress or unlucky genetics. I rarely drink any alcohol, don’t smoke, eat a healthy low-sodium diet, and get a light amount of regular exercise. I can’t imagine why my BP is so darned high! I was up all night fretting about it — and all that fretting is probably just raising my BP. D’oh!

Going for a physical tomorrow. This will be the first one since starting CR. I *finally* have gotten around to it. It’s too bad I didn’t get one sooner, as I’d really wanted to have a pre-CR benchmark for comparison. Luckily, I’m only 4 months in, so I shouldn’t have seen too much changes yet.

Besides that, the CRONOMETER project at sourceforge is now alive. I invite anyone interested in participating in the development or design to join the mailing list I’ve set up there. Chris has been so kind as to chip in a hand at the start. I think he’s more motivated out of pure geekiness rather than a keen interest in the project itself, but that is just fine by me 🙂

I’ve been fairly low cal the last two days, since I went to a BBQ on the weekend, and haven’t been hungry anyhow. I also finally bought a thermometer and have been taking my temperature in the mornings. It is currently around 35.6 degrees Celsius (96.1 F). Let the bum jokes fly!

Well, I decided I liked my father’s suggestion of CRONOMETER. I must admit I have a weakness of puns and for blasphemous misuse of existing words. I also am a fan of ‘OMETERS’. My favorite feature name in Poker Academy is the Luckometer, afterall.

I just submitted a project request to SourceForge, so hopefully in a few days I’ll check in some of what I have. Then my geek coder friends like Chris and Chris can check it out, look it over, and then make fun of it.

I must admit, I haven’t done a lot of database projects, as I generally avoid databases like my cat avoids our vacuum cleaner. Maybe those aforementioned geek friends will have some constructive critisism 🙂

1650 cals today. I’ve discovered I really like brussels sprouts a lot more than I thought. I’d type it all in for y’all but It’s nearly my bedtime. My CRONOMETER will have to automatically generate blog reports someday. Ahh, dare to dream.

A diverse day was had today. This morning I woke up and did a little more coding on the CRON tool. I noticed Mary has written her own tracking tool in Access. I can’t seem to run it. I guess I need Access installed on my PC, and I don’t. I’ll have to find her email one of these days and see if she has any ideas for my tool.

Then I went out for a nice long walk with J, Colleen, ‘Nomes’ (Their adorable baby Naomi), and Darse. We walked by the river valley past all the giant million dollar homes owned by the local oil tycoons, hockey players, lawyers, mafia, et al. Some of these monstrosities could easily be turned into apartment complexes. These are homes people build when they have more cash than they know what to do with. When walking past one that had THREE FULL GARAGES, I fully expected the next house to have a garage on the third floor, just because they could.

We stopped for dinner at our neighborhood Wendy’s. Wendy’s is really a great fast food chain, as far as they go. I worked at one for two poverty stricken months during my undergrad days. I was impressed with the practices and food quality then, and they’ve gotten hip to healthier menus lately. They even will hand out a nutrition guide if you ask. I had a small chilli (220 kcals) and a small side salad (30 kcals).

Next I walked to the grocery store and picked up a few things and headed hope, slung on my apron, and got to work on a big old batch of Mega Muffins. I’m starting to get the hang of it, and it didn’t seem to be as much work this time around. They should last me about a week and a half. 24 would last me longer, but Christine eats ’em too.

Next I caught this week’s Arrested Development. Hilarity ensued, as usual. This brings us all up to speed for Aaron’s Sunday, April 10th, 2005.

Next I’m going to snuggle up in bed, and probably finish the remainder of George Blackburn’s The Guns of Normandy: A Soldier’s Eye View, France 1944. This is a harrowing first person perspective of the front line battle through Normandy through the eyes of an artillery FOO (forward observation officer) in the Canadian army.

…Suggests J, seeing as my day job is making ‘Poker Academy’. Hmm. Or even sillier, “CRONies CRON Academy”.

I spent a few more hours twidling my unnameable software together today. I think I spent more time writing TODO’s in the code than writing actual code. By far, the hardest thing so far has been properly defining the scope of the program. Without a good idea of the intended scope, it is hard to design things without painting myself into a corner, as far as future development is concerned. The main problem is the trade-off between a simple, elegant tool that does a core job really really well, and being comprehensive. The USDA food database for instance, has about 120 different nutrients in it’s database. I probably only know what half of them are. Do I just chuck it all in and end up with a huge unweildy program with 120 nutrients for every food? Or do I make some executive decisions and edit it down to the handful of vitamins, minerals, and other compounds that I think are important to track. This would be easier if I had a better grasp of the biochemistry involved. I am by far, in favour of keeping it as simple as possible, but don’t want to miss anything that is important.

By this afternoon I decided the best thing to do was to just write the code with as generic a notion of a ‘nutrient’ as possible, and have it handle dynamically the nutrient lists and classifications, so that I can fairly easily change things in the future. Of course this adds a lot of extra work up front, but should pay dividends down the road.

Currently working on the food editor which will allow editing and creation of new food items in the database. It’s grunt work, but has to be done at some point.

Made my awesome cream o’ veggies soup today: Potato, Carrot, Cauliflower, Asparagus, Kale, Spinach, Onion, Garlic, Milk, Spices. Ate my last mega muffin for breakfast. If I feel energetic maybe I’ll whip up a new batch tomorrow. I sure like them enough to keep them as a staple.

In recent weeks I’ve really managed to reduce my eating out, so my food has been much more controlled. I probably only eat out about two meals a week now, and with those I try to find things I lack in my regular diet, such as fish. Where for the last few years I had eaten out a fast food lunch for well over 90% of the time, I now bring a lunch every day save fridays, when it is customary for all at BioTools to go out to a restaurant for lunch. I weighed in at 164 pounds this morning. Back to coding.

Work has been topsy turvy. We just hired two new staff, with a third starting next week. Construction workers ripped a hole in our wall to connect us to the empty office space next door, into which we’ll be expanding as soon as they finish installing new carpets and paint.

In my spare time, I’ve been happily coding away at my diet tracker program. It’s still a rough husk of a program, but I’ve got a proper food database working, a basic food search UI, and a very basic daily food tracker, and a doubleplusbasic nutritional summary display.

All told, it’s a nice start and in it, I can clearly see the beginnings of a wonderful program. Here is a teaser screenshot of the current build:

I’ve been going with the name ‘CRON Buddy’, with ‘CRONWare’ and CRONIT. (CRON Ingestion Tracker) a close second and third. Let me know if ya’ll have good ideas for the name, or which of the above you like/dislike.