Random Wikipedia of the Day (RWotD): Groats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groats

Stumbled on this today, clarifies what they are, have known sorta what they were, but always wondered about the details, because one of my favorite Sci Fi series, the Miles/Vorkosigan Series, mentions them often.

[Sidenote:  Fans of SciFi that are trying to get girlfriend or boyfriend into SciFi might have very good luck with this series.  The first two books of the series, Shards of Honor & Barrayar available in single book titled Cordelias Honor are really a prequel to main character in rest of the series.  Both my girlfriend & mom, who are not SciFi fans really liked those prequel books a lot.  The entire series has very strong female characters, most would probably kick Xena & Buffy's butt, one of them could even make River Tam work hard.]

Found it interesting that supposedly lot of NFL players are using them for Carb loading day before game.

Think part of my confusion is that particular term isn't used commonly in US version of English, here this type of food is usually called "Steel Cut Oats", though that would only be one type of Groat if I understand correctly.

Nerd Gear: Sensor Drone turn your Android, iPhone, or iPod Touch into an even more Powerful Tool!

I really like this, it is on my must buy list!

See http://www.sensorcon.com/sensordrone/ or http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/453951341/sensordrone-the-6th-sense-of-your-smartphoneand-be for more information.

Detailed specs (PDF) http://www.sensorcon.com/forum/download/file.php?id=8

I have bad Asthma/Allergies, this will really help with some air quality issues for me. 

Both for warning when my local air quality is bad, Ozone detection/warning will be very useful for my Asthma issues, and also to help me better determine just what triggers are a problem.

Also as a Star Trek fan, TNG is my favorite, this will let you turn a Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note 2, Nexus 7, iPod Touch, or other iOS device into something like a real Tricorder.


Cut and Paste of Features from http://www.sensorcon.com/sensordrone/:

Included Sensors/Features

• Air Sensor Port (Gas & Weather Sensing)
• Light Intensity (illumination) & Color Sensor
• Non-contact temperature (infrared temperature) sensing
• Proximity Sensor (Proximity capacitance intensity)
• External Hardware Connection (easy wireless connection for your hardware to Android Devices)
• Programmable LEDs

Training & Health: Laptop Mount for Exercise Bike or Treadmill

I, like a lot of Nerds, spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer.   That is bad for both health and comfort in the long run.

One partial solution is to do some of our work or play from computer on a treadmill or exercise bike, youtube & link below is to a very cool Do It Yourself (DIY) setup for a laptop.

But you could also do this for keyboard and large screen TV, your not going to be able to do high level micro this way, but watching replays or streams is certainly doable.

How To:  Mount a Laptop to Your Exercise Equipment by ManMade.


Advanced Training Tip:

Stress is Stress, the body doesn't know the difference of Stress because of exercise to the Stress of Tournament competition.

So you can train for Stress of Competition, with interval exercise (ie do high or moderate intensity at intervals with slow periods between), and doing a game during easy intervals between.

Fine Motor control (things like Micro) and Thinking both drop much lower than normal under Stress.

Practicing under Stress helps with that, because you get used to it, called Habituation in Psychology, and also because you improve your performance under Stress.

For more of my posts on Training & Practice, check out Starcraft 2 Skills:  Cross Training.

Also the Labels Learning SC2 and/or Starcraft 2 Skills.