Alex Bain's Blog

Life Expectancy Calculator

If you have some time to kill and want to see how long you have left on this earth, here's a good quick way to find out.

You answer about 20 questions based on your demographics, lifestyle, and family medical history, and it spits out your virtual age and expected of death. It's well designed, and neat to see how the answers impact your health.

It's also flattering to find out I'm a virtual teenager, health-wise (and probably in terms of maturity, too). Even if this news is coming from a website I've never seen before, good news is good news.

It looks like I'm not going anywhere for the next 19,800 days.

This makes me think I should really start saving more for retirement :-)

Johnny27: This is fantastic!

A friend of mine recently invested in a new startup called Johnny27, and it's a great product.

Here's the idea: you send a text message with any question you can think of to 272727, and you get a response in ~5 minutes or less with the answer. Questions can be broad, or really specific. The answers are thoughtful, typed by a human, and better than I could usually do with a laptop and a bunch of time to explore Google.

Examples form my Q&A with Johnny:

• Q: How much has Patriots player Rodney Harison [sic] been fined in his NFL career?
• A: Rodny Harrison has been fined $350,000 during his career. His last fine was $5000 during the Ravens game for tuanting [sic] the Ravens Coach.
• Q: Where is the best place in Cambridge to get a massage in Cambridge, MA, 7 where is the best pedicure? [Lisa was curious to see what they'd say]
• A: For a massage try Healthworks Fitness, they have a great spa 617-970-4454. They are also rated highly for their fabulous pedicures. Enjoy the spa!
• Q: What is a good recipe for eggnog?
• A: 1 qt. Whipping Cream. 1 qt. Bourbon Whiskey. 1 pt. Whole Milk. 1 pt. Brandy. Punch cup Rum, 12 eggs. Separte [sic] Yolks and Whites, mix separate & Combine
• Q: What's a good substitute for vermouth if I'm cooking and I'm out of vermouth?
• A: White win is a good substitute for vermouth in cooking. Try sauvignon blanc, if possible.

Sadly, it's not free. I'm in the middle of a beta period, where I get to try it for free, and then it becomes $1.99 per question. The price shoes up in my phone bill at the end of the month. I won't be using it for such trivial information, but I can definitely imagine using this to find a good restaurant when traveling, to settle bets over obscure sports statistics when out late with guys, or to get recommendations for all sorts of things I don't know much about (hotels, gift ideas, etc.). I'm pretty facile with Google on my iPhone, but there are situations where either I'm out of range from the EDGE network and can't surf the web or I am in the middle of something else and can't be bothered to tune everything out and stare at my phone. This is perfect for times like that.

It costs nothing to sign up. What do you have to lose? Check it out.

TriviaFix.com

One of the best things about having a blog is when people you don't know tell you that they enjoy your writing. In the last few months, I've received a handful of unsolicited invitations to try a product or check out a site based on someone reading AlexBain.com. Even if they just did search of people with Red Sox text on their pages, I'm excited to know that it's that easy to find me.

I got an email the other day from Dani Waxman at TriviaFix.com, and he mentioned that I might like his site based on what I've written about sports in the past.

I took a gander at his site, and it's excellent. I wish I'd thought of this. If you like sports trivia, give it a whirl.

I know that dog!

The Patriots get no respect

The best measure of whether or not a team is respected nationally is its record against the spread. According to this fantastic site that Bill Simmons suggested, the Pats were 40-13-1 against the spread in their 3 SuperBowl seasons. A team theoretically should have a .500 record against the spread, so if they consistently outperform, you have to assume they're being underrated.

When football fans from other cities would say that they were tired of hearing the Pats say "Nobody believed in us" after each title, I remember thinking that there was probably data to back up my team's argument. Now we have that data :-)

Every football helmet ever

As much as I love football, I've never paid a lot of attention to the uniforms. I do like logos though, and I was devastated when the Pats ditched their fantastic "Pat the Patriot" logo in 1993 for the "Flying Elvis" replacement. What I didn't know was that, before Pat the Patriot, the team had simply had a picture of a revolutionary's hat as their logo. It's actually really badass because it's understated, in my opinion. If they made a hat or t-shirt with this logo on it today, and fans knew it was the 1960 team logo, I bet it would sell really well. I know I'd buy it.

Anyway, if you want to kill some time, or see what your team used to look like, check out The National Helmet Project.

My favorite Boston history blog

I've mentioned more than once how much I love Boston history, and books on the topic.

Well, I've been reading a blog on the topic lately, and they recently had a post with a picture that blew me away. Isn't this a neat shot of the Public Garden?

I can't decide if I find the differences or the similarities more fascinating.

None of the buildings are very tall on Beacon Hill, and neither are the trees in the shot.

GTD item: Convenient lists to have

I know that GTD is not for everyone (some people don't procrastinate), but here's a list I came across of lists that are helpful to keep. No matter how organized you are, couldn't you use a running list in your life of "jokes to remember", "restaurants I like" or "product numbers I may need when I'm buying things"? Here's the rest of what he's got.

[FYI: these lists are even handier if you commit to reviewing all of them, albeit briefly, once a week]

Jyte.com: Making outrageous claims

Jyte.com is a fun website I just stumbled across.

You make "claims" that anyone can either agree with or not, and you can see the running tally on each side of the issue.

Below is my first claim:

Pecha Kucha

I hadn't heard of this before, but saw it referenced in one of my favorite productivity blogs.

Pecha Kucha ("chit-chat" in Japanese) is a style of presenting in which you present 20 images, each for 20 seconds, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Thats' the whole presentation.

According to Wikipedia, it's original intent was to attract people to Tokyo nightclubs, but it's not being modified for and used by the business world.

This seems like a great cure for the overuse and misuse or PowerPoint, and I would both like to attend and deliver such presentations, but I can't imagine explaining to co-workers in advance of the presentation why my talk was going to be such a departure from the office norms and having them take me seriously. After watching a few examples of these presentations on YouTube, I'm also convinced that this would be hard to do without sounding very rushed. You'd need to either really focus your talk, or keep it very high level. I guess either technique would benefit the audience.

Here's a good article that talks about Pecha Kucha in greater detail.