Me at the end of last summer (artist's rendering)

This is a very satisfying, hard-earned, post for me to write.

By the end of last summer, I was overweight, out of shape, lacking energy and entirely uncomfortable in my own skin. I had not committed to regular exercise, was not paying attention to the foods I ate and generally was living a decadent, wholly unhealthy life.

With a family history of hypertension, I was clearly playing with fire. My blood pressure had crept up into prehypertension, even stage 1 hypertension, ranges.

By the end of August, I snapped; fortunately it was in a good way. I was fed up with my lack of energy, my ill-fitting clothes and my general state of poor health. I chose change and I dedicated myself to it completely. With the support of my family, and the tips below, I succeeded.

This is my journey, my results, and the things that worked for me as I rebooted my life. It is primarily a written record for my own life history book. I do hope, however, that one or two of you might stumble across it and find something within that helps you out on your own journey.

Here goes…

Weight Loss and Body Recomposition: Power 90

Yesterday I finished my second 90-day round of the Tony Horton DVD bootcamps. I found exercising in my own living room, with the goofy yet charismatic Tony Horton, to be a highly satisfying and sustainable approach. The first 90 days I did “Power 90” and the second 90 I did the “Power 90 Master Series“ (get the Sweat 5/6, Sculpt 5/6, Cardio Intervals, Core Cardio, UML and Ply Legs DVDs). I highly recommend both programs and am personally a big fan of Tony’s programs and training style. After taking a crack at Sean T’s Insanity, I will definitely do P90X next.

From start to finish, my key health stats did this:

BF%   WT   BEL   WAI   CHOL  BP

====  ===  ====  ====  ====  ======

33.6  234  45.0  40.0  165   135/94 (Aug 30, 2011)

18.3  182  34.8  34.0  122   120/74 (Apr 12, 2012)

BF%: body fat percentage

WT: weight (lbs)

BEL: belly measurement (in.)

WAI: waist measurement (in.)

CHOL: total cholesterol

BP: blood pressure

Here’s a fun science experiment for you: put a tape measure around your belly and then let it out 10 inches. That’s how much of me is gone. Here’s another one: go down to your exercise room or local gym and pick up two 25 lb dumbells. Can you imagine carrying that weight around all day and night?

From start to finish, I averaged a daily calorie deficit of 980 calories. Of that only 308 (31%) came from exercise while 671 (69%) came from eating smarter. So, for my weight loss, eating well has been more than twice as important as exercising (exercising has, of course, given me much greater strength, endurance and flexibility).

Also, having my wife on board made all the difference in the world. The support provided by jointly making smart food decisions has been a powerful factor which helped insure my success. Find a friend to partner with, it will help you tremendously.

Weight Loss and Body Recomposition: Loseit.com

Without question, the most important tool I had for losing weight was LoseIt.com. For the past seven-plus months I logged EVERY SINGLE DAY/EVERY SINGLE MEAL. There’s even a free iPhone/iPad app which scans barcodes and automatically adds the food to your daily log.

Invariably, there are times when you go out to eat, or gorge on a banquet at someone’s house, and have a hard time tracking your specific foods. To deal with this, I have a generic food entry in LoseIt called “1000 Calorie Food”. As the name implies, it has 1,000 calories per serving, 45 g of fat, 3,000 mg of sodium, 210 g of carbs and 67.5 g of protein. For these “untrackable” meals, I estimate how many calories I consumed (e.g. 1,750) and add the appropriate servings of this “1000 Calorie Food” (e.g. 1 and 3/4).

The thing about tracking your food intake, is that over time you get very good about estimating your calories consumed. Personally, I find it incredibly important to track every single meal, every single day. The continuity and completeness holds me accountable for each meal and each day. My wife likes to joke that I run to the computer to log my food every time I eat a strawberry.

One of the best features of LoseIt is the ability to add custom foods and recipes and have the portion calories and nutrients automatically calculated for you. Knowing and logging what I eat has been, by far, the most important habit contributing to my reboot.

Weight Loss and Body Recomposition: Google Docs

I have also been neurotically diligent about tracking my daily results in a highly detailed Google Docs spreadsheet. A copy of my tracking sheet with my data is here. Every single day, I record these key markers of my physical health:

• my body fat percentage
• my weight
• my lean mass vs. fat mass
• my BMI (a totally useless stat, but I track for giggles)
• my blood pressure and pulse
• my body measurements (not daily, every two weeks)
• my calories consumed (from LoseIt)
• my exercise calories burned (every day)
• my total calorie deficit (every day)
• my completed workout (every day)
• and some notes (e.g. “Went out to dinner with friends”)

I have tabs for each month as well as a summary sheet with snazzy trend graphs. I find it very motivating to have a running record of my progress. It makes screwing up more costly, since it will be in my face every time I open the spreadsheet. I also have a strong “set completion” instinct, which the spreadsheet reinforces.

For my daily/weekly measurements, I use and recommend this Salter analog scale, this hand-held body fat monitor, this blood pressure monitor and this body tape measure. I also use a fitbit, which I hang from a chain around my neck and which really does inspire me to get up and move around more. I use an analog scale because I don’t like getting caught up in tenths of a pound. I generally log to full or half pounds.

I believe the most important metrics for tracking your recomposition are body fat percentage and body measurements. I used to focus on weight, but now body fat is the highlighted column in my spreadsheet.

Smarter Shopping, Smarter Eating

As mentioned above, eating better has been twice as important to my weight loss as exercise. Eating better starts with making smarter food choices. It also entails throwing out all the bad foods in your home. Remove the temptations completely, it is the best way.

As far as eating goes, these are some of my new food staples:

• chicken breast (look for ethically raised and humanely slaughtered, they say the chicken is the most abused animal on the planet)
• ground turkey (subbed in for ground beef in things like chili, the chicken ethics apply)
• salmon, tilapia, halibut and shrimp (wild caught, not farm grown)
• all beans
• whole grains: brown rice, whole wheat breads, whole wheat pasta, barley (say g’bye to: white bread, enriched pasta, white rice, white sugar)
• all nuts: almonds, walnuts, pecans, peanuts, cashews, pistachios (unsalted)
• steel cut oatmeal (prepare it with half a banana, some truvia and some crushed walnuts and it tastes exactly like banana bread!)
• all veggies: organic kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, squash, cauliflower, asparagus, sweet potatoes
• all fruits: conventional bananas and blueberries; organic apples, pears, berries (frozen berries are as good as fresh)
• greek yogurt (higher protein than other yogurts, we like Chobani)
• pitted green or black olives
• hummus
• eggs (true free range, organic, ethically harvested)
• skim milk (best if from a local farmer who’s milking practices you know)
• lots of spices, keep a wide variety on hand
• Truvia or stevia sweetener (we like Truvia and it goes great with my fave chai tea)
• daily supplements: ground flaxseed, a good multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D and calcium
• when in doubt, pick from tier one or two of Michi’s Ladder
• this book is also great for healthy food info

My Favorite Healthy Dinners

Based mostly on the above healthy building blocks, these are some of my favorite low calorie, healthy dinners: (Make AllRecipes.com your new best friend).

• grilled chicken (a staple – easy marinade choices: soy, bbq, ranch, italian, curry, cajun, lime, etc.)
• grilled salmon (or any fish, super good for you)
• grilled lean steak (rarely and in 4-6 oz portions per person)
• bean and kale soup (great with a hot sauce like tabasco or chulula)
• beef barley stew (make sure and chill and then skim off the beef fat mid way)
• 4-bean turkey chili (my fave)
• pea soup with shrimp (skip the cream, add some chopped shrimp – I really love this one)
• red beans and rice (sub in smoked turkey for the ham hock)
• butternut squash soup (skip the butter add some brown sugar)
• sweet potato and cauliflower soup (so easy, we blend into a pudding-like texture with our indispensable (though not cheap) Bamix immersion hand blender, very sweet – cauliflower is optional)
• fruit smoothies: vanilla whey protein powder, frozen fruit, skim or almond milk, truvia, yogurt, flaxseeds or chia seeds and a cup of cold filtered water (super healthy, 100% delicious and my kids love them, this is another great Bamix creation. For me, I add 5 g of micronized creatine powder to create a homemade post-workout recovery shake.)
• we also have this book for quick recipe ideas

We usually make a big batch of something on Sunday, store 1/3 of it in the fridge and freeze the other 2/3 away for easy last-minute dinners. Pro tip: buy some beano online, because you should be eating a ton of beans!

Healthier, More Ethical Shopping

Whenever you can, you should always buy organic fruits and veggies and ethically raised and slaughtered meats. For us, Whole Foods is our go-to store. If there is not a Whole Foods near you, find a good local natural food store or see if your grocery store has an organic section.

Never, ever buy ground beef at a conventional grocery store. One package of ground beef can have the “meat” of up to a thousand cows in it, primarily because it is often made with 10% pink slime. Oh yeah, it is also bathed with ammonia to neutralize the fetid waste it is tainted with. Whole Foods makes their own ground beef/turkey on site. Factory farming is the enemy of your health and of the environment, not to mention the horrors it puts the animals through.

For me, smarter eating has come in three distinct phases:

1. The first phase was eating for weight loss, which mostly entailed controlling portions and calories without caring too much where the calories came from.
2. The second phase was making smarter food choices to insure better health. This meant choosing whole organic foods, whole grains, beans, unsalted nuts, lean meats, and lots of fruits and vegetables. I also threw out and stopped buying most packaged and processed foods.
3. The third and final (?) phase has been trying to eat more ethically. This means reducing animal products like meat, dairy, eggs and fish and making sure that the meat that you do eat is ethically raised and humanely slaughtered. Watch the documentaries Food Inc., Vegucated or Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead to open your eyes about where your food comes from and what bad food choices are doing to your health and to the environment.

So there you have it. The above tips changed my body and health dramatically for the better. If you stumbled upon this post and read this far, I wish you the best of luck with your own journey.

As you can see, I have a lot of opinions about this stuff. This post, as long as it is, is really just the tip of the iceberg. I could go much deeper on each section. Until I do, however, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions you might have.

Lean on me for support, I’ll be here!

My new belly button...yeah, not so much, but it's closer to this than before the umbilical hernia repair

I recently passed the 40th day since my open umbilical hernia repair with mesh surgery.

Thank you all for the comments and email about my first post: what to ask your doctor prior to an umbilical hernia repair. I’ve also posted a summary of my overall body reboot here: A Life Rebooted: Lessons Learned on a Journey to a Healthier Me.

For the benefit of the community, I’ve included a few of your messages below with your names redacted (please pop me an email if you’d rather I remove your messages altogether).

As I mentioned in my first post, I was very nervous about having this procedure done. Yes, my belly button was disfigured and slightly uncomfortable when touched, but really, was that such a big deal?

I was at the tail end of an intensive 3-month exercise program and was very much enjoying the unencumbered physical exertion: jumping jacks, ab crunches, push-ups, resistance training, stretching and yoga. A week prior to my scheduled surgery, I had cold feet.

That’s when I reached out to my doctor with a bunch of questions and wrote up the previous blog post. Today, I’m happy to say that the entire procedure and recovery went exceedingly well, better than I expected even. Throughout the day, I have no reminders of the surgery short of a nicer looking belly button.

I’ve had no lingering pain, no “tugging” that others reported and no restriction at all when exercising (even ab crunches). Here are some day-by-day details of my umbilical hernia recovery experience:

Umbilical Hernia Recovery Day 1: the procedure and the first day

I had to show up at the surgical center at 6:30 am. They were adamant that I not eat or drink past midnight the night prior and that I didn’t take any medications for 36 hours before the surgery. After a brief check-in (I had pre-registered online) I stripped out of my clothing and into a johnny.

I was briefed by nurses, the anesthesiologist, the resident who did the surgery and my primary surgeon. I had an IV inserted into to back of my left hand and some preliminary sedatives administered. I was concerned about the risks and recovery discomforts of undergoing general anesthesia so I asked my surgeon and anesthesiologist if they could do the procedure with local anesthesia plus IV sedation, which they did.

After being in the prep room for about 20 minutes, and maybe 5 minutes after getting the preliminary sedation, they wheeled me into the operating room. At that point I was already starting to lose touch with reality. They started me on  the IV sedation and within a minute I was out. I have no recollection of the surgery at all and wonder why anyone would opt for general anesthesia over local.

After being wheeled into recovery, I was visited by my surgeons, given a vicodin, a muffin and some ginger ale. I was in recovery for a little more than an hour and was home by 11 am (you will need someone to drive you). At home, I lounged in bed and popped the prescribed pain meds. It was difficult getting in and out of bed for the first couple of days, but not impossible.

For the first day, I had a thin, clear plastic, 12″ by 12″ bandage over the area, probably to insure that no bad germs got anywhere near the hernia surgery site. I was told to take that off after one day.

Tip #1: Ask about local anesthesia instead of general. There seem to be fewer risks, no risk of throat irratation or chipped teeth from a required breathing tube, and in my experience, it is 100% effective.

Tip #2: Wear sweatpants and slip on shoes to make dressing after the surgery easier. Bending over won’t be easy for a few days.

Umbilical Hernia Recovery Days 1-3

I spent the first few days mostly in bed watching TV and using my laptop. I was definitely more comfortable lying down or leaning back than sitting upright but I could also move around much better than I anticipated. Getting in and out of bed was a little challenging since using my core was painful. I had to rely on my arms and legs to get up and down as much as possible.

For the first few days, I had to sleep on my back (I’m normally a side sleeper), but I was surprised at how well I slept even on the first night after surgery.

I was prescribed IC hydrocodon-acetaminophen (aka vicodin, for pain) and IC docusate sodium (a stool softener). I took both medications during the first few days to help manage the pain and get myself “regular” again.

At this point, I had about 7 small pieces of overlapping tape keeping the surgery incision closed. I was told to wash the area as normal but to keep these strips on until the follow-up appointment.

Tip #3: Without going into too much detail, know that prescription pain medications and surgery in general can disrupt your normal digestive “process”. In addition to my pain medications, I was also prescribed a stool softener and told to use a gentle laxative to help get things regular again. Based on my research, I had expected this and was snacking on prunes for the days leading up to the surgery. For me, things started to get back to normal on day two, but not consistently back to a regular schedule until about a week after surgery.

Umbilical Hernia Recovery Day 5

By day 5 I was feeling pretty good. I was moving around quite well and decided that I would attend a previously schedule birthday dinner out with friends. In hindsight, it was probably too soon for that as sitting upright in a chair for a couple hours put pressure on the area and was quite uncomfortable. I wouldn’t recommend going out to dinner until week two.

Umbilical Hernia Recovery Day 7

By the end of the first week, I was moving around normally and was no longer taking the pain meds. I had only slight pain when I actually touched the incision site, but in general I felt like I could do almost anything. At this point, my abdomen was still a bit swollen, which was only noticeable from a side view. Around this time, I pulled off the surgical tape because I was curious to see what the scar looked like.

Umbilical Hernia Recovery Day 14

By then end of week two, I felt almost completely back to normal. I still had some swelling under my belly button which made it look like it was when it was herniated. I had my two-week follow-up appointment with my surgeon and he assured me that the swelling would go away and I would, indeed, have an innie again (he was right, of course).

My surgeon gave me the all-clear to start working out again with the caveat that I not lift very heavy weights and not do intense ab crunches. On the next day, I started working out again with the Power 90 at-home routines I was doing for the three months prior to the surgery: resistance training, bodyweight exercises, low impact cardio, slightly higher impact cardio (jumping jacks), stretching and yoga.

Some of the exercises which engaged my core felt a little constricted, but that got better every day.

Umbilical Hernia Recovery Day 30+

After one month, all the swelling was gone, I had my innie back and I was completely healed. As I said in the opening, I have no daily reminders of the hernia or repair surgery. I have no pain, no pulling and no discomfort at all. It feels weird but nice to have no sensitivity when I touch the area and I’m still quite amazed when I see a normal looking belly button staring back at me in the mirror.

By day 30, I resumed all aspects of my workouts, including the “Ab Ripper” exercises which is 10 set (20 reps each) of 10 different abdominal exercises. My abs were very weak after taking a month off, after a week I was doing the 200 crunches again, just as I had been before the surgery.

My Umbilical Hernia Scar and Scar Management

The scar for my umbilical hernia repair is just below my belly button in a small 2 cm arc. It is quite small and to insure that it stays that way I started applying Mederma as soon as the surgical tape was off.

Soon after that I discovered silicone scar sheets which claim to be even more effective than Mederma and which I found to be more convenient since they stayed on all day and regained their stickiness if you gave them a rinse once in a while.

I’m not sure if either of these methods is working, but they are easy enough to do that I’ve decided to plug ahead with the silicone scar sheets.

In summary, I am very happy with my repaired belly button and recovery. I don’t have any tugging, pulling or pain like I read about in other online accounts. I am graduating from my first home boot camp program and starting up with the next level. Before the end of the year, we’ll take on the granddaddy of them all, P90X!

Below are a few messages from readers with a mixture of similar concerns and alternative outcomes …

Email #1:

Hi Mitch

You don’t know me but I came across your excellent hernia repair article via Google and was just wondering how it went for you.

I’m making arrangements for the same procedure myself and share the same preoperative concerns.

Like you, fitness plays a great part in my life and I’m apprehensive at the prospect of not being able to work out or any other permanent untoward side effects.

I’d be appreciative of any insights you may care to share.

Kind regards

Email #2:

Tonight during the Patriots/Chiefs football game I created a few Atari 2600 inspired designs. I chose three of the games that I played a lot as a kid. I will probably pick one of these and cut my own decal unless someone chimes in with a good alternative.

Missile Command: The Atari game with the lamest easter egg of all time.

Atari Missile Command MacBook Decal

Adventure: I loved this game and loved its easter egg too. I call this decal the “good news, bad news” composition.

Atari Adventure MacBook Decal

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Another game I played a ton. Damn those tsetse flies!

Atari Raiders of the Lost Ark MacBook Decal

I’d also like to try designs inspired by the ET, Defender and Earthworld games. Remember them?

My impression of umbilical hernia repair

(You can read the update on my recovery here: My Pleasantly Uneventful Umbilical Hernia Recovery and a summary of my overall body reboot here: A Life Rebooted: Lessons Learned on a Journey to a Healthier Me)

Fair warning: this post is well off-topic from my typical Python/Django/tech focus. It does, nonetheless, share some useful information that I had a hard time compiling from Google searches alone, which is well in line with this blog’s purpose.

Next week I will be having my small and typical umbilical hernia repaired. Since this is my first surgery, I have been freaking out a bit. I have done a lot of Google searches looking for recovery stories and similar cases to mine. I have been particularly interested in the benefits of open vs. laparoscopic surgery as well as the mesh vs. suture repair method.

Over the past few months, I have been doing a lot of intense home boot camp fitness routines and am eager to learn what the recovery time for my umbilical hernia repair will be for various activities.

Finally, after a lot of searching, I posed the following questions to my surgeon. His answers are included. For background, I am a relatively fit and active person with a smallish (about the size of a grape) umbilical hernia. My surgeon is affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston and Needham, MA and has been doing hernia repairs for about 10 years.

Where appropriate, I have annotated his replies with my own notes in brackets. This annotated information mostly came from speaking with him on the phone.

What method will you use to repair my umbilical hernia (mesh, mesh plug, suture, open, laparoscopic)?

- I think open surgery is a better approach for your hernia. It is the simplest and lowest risk approach for your situation. [Open surgery allows him to see the defect better, more accurately secure the reinforcing mesh (if needed) and has a lower risk of damaging surrounding organs.]

Is mesh required for the size hernia I have? Would sutures be an acceptable solution?

- Mesh is used when the defect in the fascia is greater than 2-3 cm and in obese patients. [He noted that recurrence rates for mesh-repaired hernia are typically less than 5% whereas recurrence rates for suture-only repairs can be as high as 25%.]

The common complications I have read about were caused by mesh problems (mesh movement, mesh balling, infection, foreign-body rejection, scar tissue, chronic pain and “tugging”). What percentage of your patients have experienced mesh-related complications?

- Mesh movement or balling is rare with open surgery. Scar tissue occurs with any operation and chronic pain is more common with inguinal hernia surgery and with laparoscopic approaches to umbilical and ventral [or incisional] hernias. Mesh infection is the most common complication. It happens in less than 1% of patients. I have done more than 2,500 hernia operations in 10 years in practice so of course I have had this complication.

Do you do any non-mesh umbilical hernia repairs? Why not for my case?

- Yes, we may still not use mesh pending the size of your defect which cannot be determined until surgery because you have some fat trapped in the defect preventing measurement until surgery.

Do you do laparoscopic umbilical hernia repairs? Why not for my case?

- Yes, I think that open surgery is a better approach for you hernia and your body type. [He noted that laparoscopic surgeries are actually more invasive than open surgeries with a greater risk of surrounding organ damage and mesh placement and movement problems.]

As mentioned above, I’m very concerned about mesh problems and chronic pain during my future P90X, boot-camp-style exercises. Which repair method is better for quickly returning to a very active lifestyle (sutures vs. mesh, open vs. laparoscopic)?

- Neither approach will prevent returning to full activity. However, you will need at least 4 weeks of rest from intense core work.

If mesh is recommended, would laparoscopic provide for a shorter recovery time? Is there a downside to a laparoscopic procedure?

- The downside to laparoscopy is that is “more invasive” even though we call it minimally invasive. We make incisions away from the hernia. There is more risk albeit small of bowel or vascular injury with laparoscopic surgery than with open surgery.

How big is the piece of mesh you will insert? What shape? What prevents it from moving? Will scar tissue form around it causing problems?

- The mesh size depends on the size of defect. It is usually 2-3 cm larger on all sides than then defect. We secure it in place with stitches and this prevents it from moving during tissue ingrowth/scarring. You want scarring and ingrowth to occur to prevent long term shifting of the mesh.

Will the incision be hidden within the navel? I don’t want a visible scar, and want my innie back.

- The incision will be small in a curvilinear fashion just below the umbilicus. It will be visible but small. You will have your “innie” back. [He noted that some surgeons completely hide the incision in the navel, but he has found that it is more difficult to aesthetically reconstruct the belly button when you do this.]

Is it possible to do local anesthesia plus IV sedation instead of general anesthesia?

- If the anesthesiologist agrees then we can do it under iv sedation with local. [The thought of general anesthesia scares me, as well as the potential for respiratory complications and throat irritation from the required breathing tube.]

What are my chances of getting chronic pain from a hernia mesh?

- very small in this location, less than 0.5% [Although he did say that I will be aware of the repair, but it shouldn't be painful.]

How is mesh-caused chronic pain treated and can it be reliably cured?

- Most chronic pain syndromes are in a different location hernias but are treated in multiple ways including mesh removal

What is your recurrence rate with non-mesh hernia repairs?

- It depends on many factors. Size of hernia, medical problems of patient, obesity etc. I would say that in your case the risk of recurrence is between 5-10%.

Umbilical hernia recovery times: how soon can I return to normal exercise activities?

Running: 2-3 weeks
Weight lifting: 4-6 weeks
Push-ups: 4 weeks
Ab crunches: 4-6 weeks
Skiing: 4 weeks

How soon can I drive?

- usually 48 hours after surgery and when not taking narcotics for pain.

How soon can l comfortably travel internationally (5 hr flight, 40 lb luggage, lots of walking, stairs)?

- 2-3 weeks

How soon can I comfortably go out socially (dinner, drinks)?

- 1-2 weeks [If I require narcotics to manage the pain, then I can't drink alcohol while taking them.]

How many times have you performed this surgery?

- all hernias 2,500-3,000 times

What kinds of complications are there to this procedure?

- bleeding, infection, recurrent hernia are the most common complications.

What kinds of complications have your patients experienced?

- all of the above albeit uncommon.

I hope this helps at least one reader become more educated about, and comfortable with, umbilical hernia repairs. I will post a follow-up after my procedure and recovery. Here are a few websites I found useful when researching umbilical hernia repair:

• New England Journal of Medicine: “A Comparison of Suture Repair with Mesh Repair for Incisional Hernia”
• A Long-term Follow-up: Suture versus Mesh Repair for Adult Umbilical Hernia in Saudi Patients. A Single Center Prospective Study
• Hernia Center of Southern California: “Surgical Techniques”
• Hernia Center of Southern California: “FAQs”
• Follow-up of a Trial of Suture Versus Mesh Repair of Hernia (only available without account if visited via a Google SRP, slimy)

Now back to coding

SEE MY UPDATE: My Pleasantly Uneventful Umbilical Hernia Recovery

Remote capture webcam images

I’ve had this WiFi enabled webcam looking down my driveway for over a year now. Since I work at home, it’s great for monitoring when deliveries, Jehova’s Witnesses and family members approach the house.

It is also useful for checking on home when I am away on vacation. I have grown to rely on it daily and I keep a small browser window with the video stream always up on one of my work monitors.

Up until this week, however, I didn’t remotely save any captured data from the camera. After reading about a home break-in over the weekend I decided to fix this. Below are the steps to quickly and easily store and display a series of 5-minute increment snapshot from your home webcam to a remote server.

Here is a sample day from my camera and my detailed reply on Wantbox to someone who was looking for an outdoor wireless security camera.

Prerequisites

1. A web accessible webcam.
2. A remote server (shared is fine, no root access needed, I use and love Dreamhost).

 The basic steps

1. Setup your home router to allow remote viewing of your webcam.
2. Figure out what the image file for your video stream is. Mine is “snapshot.cgi”. View source on the web page that displays your video stream and search the HTML until you find the correct file.
3. Create a shell script on your server which wgets and saves the image.
4. Create a cron job which fires off the script every five minutes.
5. Monitor and enjoy knowing that you’ll at least have a nice snapshot of you home intruder’s car.

Note: my simple little webcam has a few modes: one is a live feed from the camera and the other is tailored for smart phones and updates the camera image every few seconds. It was on this second page where I found the appropriate video image file for grabbing.

The cron job

Nothing fancy here, simply “crontab -e” on your remote server and add the following entry to call the shell script every five minutes.

# Grab a screen cap every 5 minutes
0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * ~/yourdomain.com/assets/grab_snap.sh

The shell script

The shell script does a few things:

1. Parses the current date into its year, month and day parts. You need this because the snaps are stored in a directory like “/2011/10/18/”.
2. Checks if today’s target directory exists, if not it creates it and creates a symbolic link to a standard “index.html” file.
3. Fires off wget to grab a screen grab from your home webcam. A sample snapshot filename is “snap_19:55_PDT.jpg”.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Grab and save a frame from our home driveway camera.
#   Usage: ./grab_snap.sh
#   Sample: 0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * ~/yourdomain.com/grab_snap.sh
#

curryear="`date +%Y`"
currmonth="`date +%m`"
currday="`date +%d`"
currtime="`date +%H:%M_%Z`"

outfile="/home/you/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}/${currmonth}/${currday}/snap_${currtime}.jpg"
target="http://yourhome.com:50881/snapshot.cgi?${currday}-${currtime}"

# Check if this year's directory exists
if [ ! -d ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear} ]; then
   mkdir ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}
fi

# Check if this month's directory exists
if [ ! -d ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}/${currmonth}/ ]; then
   mkdir ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}/${currmonth}/
fi

# Check if this day's directory exists
if [ ! -d ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}/${currmonth}/${currday}/ ]; then
   mkdir ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}/${currmonth}/${currday}/
   ln -s ~/yourdomain.com/assets/index.html ~/yourdomain.com/snaps/${curryear}/${currmonth}/${currday}/index.html
fi

# Grab the screen cap
wget --user=yourcamerausername --password='yourcamerapassword' --output-document=$outfile $target

The index.html file
This index file shows all of the thumbnails from your webcam and displays the full sized image when you rollover one (see demo). There’s a little bit of CSS embedded in the head. There are no other dependencies outside of this index file and the captured data.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="600">
<style>
    body {background-color:#000;}
    h1 {color:#FFF; margin-left:50px;}
    a {color:#FFF; text-decoration:none;}
    a:hover {color:#CCC; text-decoration:underline;}
    .container {width:1470px;}
    #preview {float:right; width:640px; height:480px; background-color:#222; border:1px solid #FFF;}
    .hour_row {width:880px;}
    .row_label {color:#666; width:50px; height:48px; display:inline-block;}
    .thumb {width:64px; height:48px; background-color:#111; display:inline-block;}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
    date=new Array();
    date=document.location.pathname.split("/");
    title="Snaps from "+date[2]+"-"+date[3]+"-"+date[4];
    document.title=title;

    // Thumbnail rollover function
    function update_preview(src,hr) {
       document.getElementById('preview').style.marginTop=hr*40+"px";
       document.getElementById('preview').style.background='url(' + src + ')';
    }
</script>
</head></pre>
<pre lang="foo"><body>
<div class='container'>
<div id='preview'></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write("<h1>Snaps from <a href='../..'>"+date[2]+"</a>-<a href='..'>"+date[3]+"</a>-"+date[4]+"</h1>");
for (h=0; h<=23; h++) {
  hour=h;

  // Pad single digit hours
  if (h<10) hour='0'+h;

  // Calc AM/PM and convert from pacific (server) to eastern time
  am_pm=' am';
  if (h>8 && h<21) am_pm=' pm';

  eastern=h+3;
  if (eastern>12) { eastern-=12; }
  if (eastern>12) { eastern-=12; } // yes, really needed, take it out and see why

  document.write("<div class='hour_row'>");
  document.write("<div class='row_label'>"+hour+":00<br>"+eastern+am_pm+"</div>");
  for (m=0; m<=55; m+=5) {
    minute=m;
    if (m<10) minute='0'+m; // Pad single minutes
    document.write("<div class='thumb'><img src='snap_"+hour+":"+minute+"_PDT.jpg' ");
    document.write("title='"+eastern+":"+minute+am_pm+"' width='64' height='48' ");
    document.write("onmouseover='update_preview(this.src,"+hour+")'></div>");
  }
  document.write("</div>");
}
</script>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Use an .htaccess file to protect your directory (for Apache users)
Personally, I don’t want people rooting around my webcam image history, so I have protected my server by placing the following .htaccess file at the root level of my camera archive web server.

You can create the appropriate entry in the passwd file by executing: “htpasswd -c /home/you/.htpasswds/passwd yourname”. When you are prompted enter the password that your would like to use.

AuthName "Dialog prompt"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/you/.htpasswds/passwd
Require valid-user

That’s all she wrote. If and when you improve on my default index.html file please share it with me!

How to import a CSV file into Django

Recently I downloaded a US zip code data file in comma separated (CSV) format. Below are the steps and python script that I used to import that data into a django model for my site Wantbox.com.

The Steps to Import CSV Data into Django:

1. Create your django model (mine is called “ZipCode”, see below).
2. Create a python script called “load_data.py” with your correct django project and directory info (see mine below).
3. Put the CSV file and “load_data.py” script in the same directory.
4. From that directory run: python ./load_data.py”

That’s it. For a CSV file with about 42,000 rows this import took about 15 seconds. You can verify that the data loaded correctly by checking your django admin.

My CSV File

ZIPCODE, CITY, STATECODE, STATENAME
02111, BOSTON, MA, MASSACHUSETTS
02481, WELLESLEY HILLS, MA, MASSACHUSETTS
05819, ST. JOHNSBURY, VT, VERMONT
etc...

My Django “ZipCode” model:

import datetime

class ZipCode(models.Model):
    zipcode = models.CharField(max_length=5)
    city = models.CharField(max_length=64)
    statecode = models.CharField(max_length=2)
    statename = models.CharField(max_length=32)
    create_date = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return "%s, %s (%s)" % (self.city, self.statecode, self.zipcode) 

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['zipcode']

My “load_data.py” Python script:

# Full path and name to your csv file
csv_filepathname="/home/mitch/projects/wantbox.com/wantbox/zips/data/zipcodes.csv"
# Full path to your django project directory
your_djangoproject_home="/home/mitch/projects/wantbox.com/wantbox/"

import sys,os
sys.path.append(your_djangoproject_home)
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings'

from zips.models import ZipCode

import csv
dataReader = csv.reader(open(csv_filepathname), delimiter=',', quotechar='"')

for row in dataReader:
if row[0] != 'ZIPCODE': # Ignore the header row, import everything else
zipcode = ZipCode()
zipcode.zipcode = row[0]
zipcode.city = row[1]
zipcode.statecode = row[2]
zipcode.statename = row[3]
zipcode.save()

Importing a TSV File (tab separated values) into a Django Model
This script will work for importing Excel TSV files into Django as well. Simply change the python script’s “dataReader” line to this:

dataReader = csv.reader(open(csv_filepathname), dialect='excel-tab')

About Wantbox
Wantbox is a consumer information website where users publish the things they want and other users supply purchasing recommendations, reviews and typical costs. The service covers a wide variety of consumer and business products and services. On Wantbox you can find someone to remove ice dams, remove a fallen tree limb or help you install new hardwood floors.

I really like Dreamhost’s hosting service, their nice dashboard and great customer service, but Wantbox had grown beyond shared hosting. I needed an environment that I could fully control and could no longer tolerate the downtime caused by other sites on my shared server.

I chose to move to Linode because of the competitive price, the positive experience from some friends and the great Django/Apache/MySQL StackScript setup script by Filip.

Perceptually, I noticed that the pages seemed to be loading faster, and confirmed an approximate 35% page load improvement using WebPageTest.org.

I didn’t pay much attention to GoogleBot’s reaction to this faster site hosting environment until I happened to check out Wantbox’s crawl stats today:

Not too shabby: an immediate drop in the time Googlebot spent downloading pages resulting in more pages crawled per day.

In real numbers (approximated based on the above graphs),  I saw an 83% drop in the time to download a Wantbox page which has resulted in a 200% increase in pages crawled per day. Booya!

ABOUT WANTBOX:

Wantbox is a place to post all of the things that you want and have your friends, neighbors and local merchants help you find them. Learn from other people’s shopping experiences to help you make more informed decisions. On Wantbox you can find someone to design a bathroom, install dog electric fencing or learn everything you need to find a domestic house cleaning service.

UPDATE:

Tommy asked a good question in the comments, namely, have my keyword rankings improved as a result of this speed improvement. After checking, over half of them have indeed improved while only 14% have degraded. The rest either have not changed or still do not rank.

In the end, I believe that Google felt I had too many links from my online birth announcement site into Wantbox. I removed most of the links and added “rel=nofollow” to the remaining ones. I admitted my error in a reconsideration request to Google (Google’s response to my request included below), documented specifically what I had done to fix the problem and waited it out.

Below is the graph of how the Google penalty played out. I wasn’t surprised by the 90-day duration of the penalty: I had read other reports of similar link-based actions. I didn’t expect, however, the gradual ramp-back of the the “penalty release” period. In all, it took about 4 months to get back to normal traffic.

Source: Clicky Search Traffic (my favorite analytics service)

The moral of this story? Make sure that you know Google’s Webmaster Guidelines like the back of your hand and be very careful with your site’s backlink profile.

My Google Penalty Timeline: [UPDATE]

• March 18: my site penalty started (day 0)
• March 18: Added “rel=nofollow” to the backlinks from my other site (day 0)
• April 6: Finished all site changes that may have caused a problem (day 19)
• April 10: Submitted a reconsideration request to Google (day 23)
• April 19: Received Google’s response to my reconsideration request (day 32 / day 9 after request)
• June 14: The penalty was lifted, traffic started to recover (day 88 / day 65 after request / day 56 after response)

Personally, I do not believe that my reconsideration request had any impact at all on the timing of my site’s penalty. All it did was inform me that the penalty was algorithmic and not a manual action by someone on Google’s webspam team.

I’m also not convinced that any of my site changes really mattered (NOINDEXing thin pages, NOFOLLOWing affiliate links, fixing duplicate titles, etc.) I think I collected too many backlinks too fast from one of my other sites, which triggered the penalty. If anything, the one change that mattered was adding “rel=nofollow” to most of my links from my other site.

For the truly curious: Google’s response to my reinclusion request

Subject: Reconsideration request for http://wantbox.com/: No manual spam actions found

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://wantbox.com/, We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://wantbox.com/ for compliance with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site’s ranking in Google. There’s no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site’s ranking. Google’s computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If you’ve experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site’s content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you’ve changed the URLs for a large portion of your site’s pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search. If you’re still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team

It doesn’t help that I haven’t standardized on a best-practices Django layout. Dreamhost shared servers require one site structure while the Linode StackScript I use (thanks Filip) suggests another. A move from Django 1.2 to 1.3 hasn’t helped either.

On my home development environment (Debian in VirtualBox on Windows), I use Nginx to serve static media for my Django development server. Although this improves my dev server performance, it complicates the setup of a new environment.

Recently, I was struggling to get Nginx in front of Django for a new project. To help with debugging, I wanted to see the headers returned by Nginx. My Nginx configuration adds a “X-Static” header which returns a “hit” or “miss” to indicate if Nginx served the media.

To see the HTTP headers in Google Chrome, first pull up the Developer Tools pane (Control-Shift-i or Tools > Developer tools):

Next, click the “Network” button in the top row and then the page url in the left pane:

You can now see the response headers returned from the server, including my custom headers. For reference, this is my Nginx configuration:

 server {
     root         /home/mitch/projects/polurls.com/app/webapp/;
     listen       8081;
     server_name  polurls;
     gzip         off;

     location = /favicon.ico  {
         rewrite "/favicon.ico" /media/static/img/favicon.ico;
     }

     proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;

     location / {
       if (-f $request_filename) {
           add_header X-Static hit;
           access_log   off;
       }

       if (!-f $request_filename) {
           proxy_pass http://192.168.1.3:8082;
           add_header X-Static miss;
           add_header X-Mitch Hello_world;
       }
     }
 }

When debugging, I find it helpful to use “add_header X-Mitch $request_filename” to see what Nginx is trying to load.

AJAX in Django using jQuery

I recently created a side project to explore a few tech areas I wanted to learn more thoroughly. One of those areas was how to implement AJAX in Django using jQuery.

In a nutshell, the site, TruthTruthLie.me presents three facts about you and challenges your friends to click on the one that is a lie.

When your friend clicks on a fact, I send the clicked fact_id via AJAX to a url. A Django url pattern routes the click to a view where I check what “type” the fact is, return the result via JSON to the client and update the page dynamically without a page refresh.

Below are the stripped down page, url pattern and view that I use to get this done. You can also check out my simple but working AJAX in Django using jQuery demo page.

ajax_in_django.html:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript"
 src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $('.fact').bind('click', function () {
      $.get("/test/"+this.id+"/", function(data) {
        if (data.fact_type=="T") {
          guess_result="This fact is true! " + data.fact_note;
        } else {
          guess_result="This fact is false! " + data.fact_note;
        }
        $('#result')[0].innerHTML=guess_result;
      });
   });
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="1" class="fact">I love bugs</div>
  <div id="2" class="fact">I love hugs</div>
  <div id="3" class="fact">I love pugs</div>
  <div id="result">Click on the lie!</div>
</body>
</html>

url.py:

# Process a quiz guess
  url(r'^test/(?P<fact_id>\d+)/$',
      quiz_guess,
      name='quiz_guess'),

views.py:

from django.utils import simplejson

def quiz_guess(request, fact_id):   
  message = {"fact_type": "", "fact_note": ""}
  if request.is_ajax():
    fact = get_object_or_404(Fact, id=fact_id)
    message['fact_type'] = fact.type
    message['fact_note'] = fact.note
  else:
    message = "You're the lying type, I can just tell."
  json = simplejson.dumps(message)
  return HttpResponse(json, mimetype='application/json')

This, of course, assumes that you have defined a model called “Fact”, that a fact has a “type” and “note” and that you have created the above three facts and they have IDs of 1, 2 and 3. In my real view, I do a few other things like save the click and check whether it is the first one on the quiz.

Also, in the page I do more than update the text of the “result” div. I also update the facepiles of the correct and incorrect guessors, change the percentage who guessed right/wrong and change the background of the clicked fact.

If you want to see AJAX in Django using jQuery as fully implemented, please go ahead and create a sample quiz for yourself by going here and clicking the “Make Your Own Quiz” button.

You will have to connect to the site via Facebook to create a test, but if this makes you uncomfortable, you can connect temporarily, see how it all works and then go to “Facebook > Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites > Edit your settings” and revoke the connection privilege.