Mark Carroll's Journal

A small update

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:17:13 GMT

It's been difficult for me to get around to much lately around the day-to-day needs so here's a small slice of latest events. First, the weather's been glorious lately, it almost makes it feel okay to live in Glasgow; I could get used to this. Yesterday, we took our dog L. over to Glasgow Green and today I still hope we get to bring him for a walk along the Clyde.

Recently, we got coffee with R.'s childhood friend and their partner: they were passing through Glasgow, which was great. It is interesting to see here somebody who lived so near R. far away and long ago.

Yesterday, R. observed that our mattress really isn't great in how it transmits disturbance on one side of it over to the other. So, this morning we headed to IKEA to replace our VALEVÅG pocket-sprung mattress with an ÅNNELAND hybrid mattress. I was skeptical about how well we would be able to fold our old mattress and fit it into the car but R. led and it all worked out. The council waste centre was rather busy on a sunny weekend afternoon but there was parking near the mattresses and, with the help of R.'s sons, the mattress replacement is now complete.

We also stopped at Sainsbury's, which is near IKEA. It's one of the more pleasant supermarkets to shop in: the aisles are generally wide and the self-scanning handheld device's UI isn't annoying.

I realized that I've generally been sleeping rather well for quite some time now. I think it may be the change in job: having dropped a couple of grades in responsibility, going from leading teams to taking Jira tickets, the stress is reduced commensurately.

On not-in-office days, I've been using the cross-trainer more often than not. I am pleased to be achieving this change in habits. My calf is a bit sore but, as always, ignoring an issue seems to work fine: if I don't use it as an excuse not to exercise then the exercise tends not to make it any worse. My eating has not been anywhere near modest enough but the food has been tasty so, well, there's that.

At work, I have an on-site visit in NYC coming up and I have already checked that the hotel also has a cross-trainer. It will be interesting to try getting between Newark Airport and Penn Station by rail: it looks easily achieved but is a new experience for me. We do have business Uber but I got on so badly with the Uber app and their customer service that I am happy to avoid it.

Often, I've felt as if my body and mind were moving through molasses: I can do what I must but everything's effort, whether mental or physical. More recently, that's happened less. It seems premature to link the improvement with exercising but time might tell.

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Broken record of recurrent thoughts

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 18:12:07 GMT

I mention a few recurring topics, probably because I still haven't properly addressed them. For instance, ( I remain overweight and unfit. )

I also need to get back to writing code in Haskell and in Rust. Quite how and when this happens, I am not sure. I do need ( to sort out my personal computing. )

R. is thinking about when and how we move to live somewhere else. For a couple more years yet, high school catchment area remains quite a constraint, though I can look around ( for where we might move to someday. )

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Back on a diet

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 10:03:21 GMT

I am indeed settled back into watching what I eat. I am not monitoring carefully but I am certainly eating rather more strictly than previously, mostly by favouring vegetables and reducing portions and frequency of various calorific pleasures. I make the occasional exception, though: especially, I ignored my diet for Burns Night (haggis^*, turnip, potato, cranachan, etc.) and for Chinese New Year (round fruit, and takeout from Yum on Aikenhead Road). Mostly I haven't been distracted by hunger so perhaps I need to be stricter; time will tell.

^*We found a nice large non-pork haggis in Aldi.

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Still-suspended diet

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 17:18:25 GMT

I held my diet for seven weeks, weighed myself, and had lost only a kilogram, which dispirited me enough that I've eaten more freely since, though at least without gaining much. I don't know when I'll actually start my journey back to what I weighed when I moved from Tennessee.

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A varied update

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 16:57:25 GMT

( I was busy with a family visit. )

( The rented Volvo was a little annoying. )

I have also been involved with a major product launch at work and have been somewhat covering as colleagues have also been taking some days off. At least work stuff has gone fairly smoothly and I have enjoyed getting back to writing some code. My work-life balance is back under control, at least to a first approximation.

Given the above activity, last weekend was my first reasonably free one for quite some time. I spent the Saturday with family visiting from Dundee. Now we are to ready the flat for relisting for sale through a different agent. Among all that, we will try to find another weekend for camping, not that the current weather is encouraging.

( Our dog's a good weight, I am finally dieting to improve mine. )

( Money's tight at the moment. )

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Still busy

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 05:35:49 GMT

( Work remains busy, bringing my first project nearer delivery. )

( British unemployment benefit isn't generous. )

( I filed my US taxes but am not holding my breath for the refund. )

( Tax paperwork for charity donation irritated me. )

( Me and our dog are both heavier. )

( We are looking to move just a little south. )

I am not managing to read others' journals anywhere near as completely as I once did. Perhaps if I post rather more briefly, I will get around to posting at all. It's been very many weeks. I will try to mention the occasional random things, even if the picture of things as a whole is left even more incomplete than before.

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Difficulty staying on course

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 12:11:51 GMT

In recent times, I have not enjoyed an abundance of energy and willpower. Of course, all the house-moving and setup and whatnot has been quite the stressor. Still, all that is now mostly past. Things still go wrong with the flat, the latest is that next I must chase an installer harder about some bad wiring they did, and money remains tight while we pay off the flat setup. On the other hand, I have R. here with me, they are a great help in various ways, so it's just not me dealing with things as it was back in Tennessee.

Aside from my regular full-time work, I try to do something each day, whether a chore or some more leisurely expedition. For example, on Sunday we explored Pollok Country Park then sat a while in the sunshine, reading, and yesterday we shopped for groceries, and for items for high school next month. So, things do get done. But, quite often, I do no more than one per day: after that, I feel tired, ready to just rest, watch television, whatever before bed.

My eating is not going as I might hope. I make plenty of good decisions, just some bad ones too, the overall effect being insufficient discipline to stay on track. This is partly a money thing: in checking discount expires-soon shelving, it is difficult to pass up anything both tasty and cheap. However, it's mostly me just feeling tired and hungry and thinking, screw it, let's eat a nice thing.

I do think that I shall get there in the end but right now it feels like it will be a slow journey. The money situation will ease (though I wish the mortgage were on US interest rates) and we'll crawl ahead on our to-do's, as we settle they should arise with less frequency, but all this takes time.

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Travelled back to Scotland

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 11:11:49 GMT

I am already settled back in to life in the flat here in Aberdeen. I was relieved that driving to Tesco on a rainy Sunday to stock up on many foods went fairly quickly and easily, that was encouraging. Still, lazily I overate rather in Taguig and, with returning from the tropics and being stricter about my food, on my quest to once again fit comfortably into my trousers, I am back to routinely feeling cold and hungry. I am used to that but, especially with such international travel and seeing all kinds of people and places, there's always a sense of wondering if I might like someone else's life, so long as my wife and kids could be along with me for that change.

It's not entirely clear I am back in Scotland: HMRC (who handle UK income tax) are now engaging a specialist team to convince their computer that, with my living in Aberdeen and working for an Edinburgh-based employer, I should be taxed as a resident of Scotland. The computer thinks differently. Welcome to software projects for the public sector, Her Majesty's Government has quite a record on commissioning those. An ex-colleague once had similar trouble, having their computer believe that they lived in England.

The final leg of my journey, from Dublin Airport, wasn't the most impressive. I had to come all the way groundside to achieve the transit, though with no need to pick up my bag at the carousel. Then, the Loganair flight was substantially delayed, eventually we were taken out to look at our airplane for a while from the bus then, from inside the airplane, I got to watch through the window as they repeatedly loaded luggage, unloaded it, loaded different luggage, etc. They seemed quite cheerful about it all though, and I turned out to be one of those who won the lottery of having their bag come along. At least it was better than watching the handling at Manchester, where a guy would set the bags tumbling down a long metal staircase onto the concrete below, and that's the part they do in open view of passengers.

Setting out from Manila wasn't the most impressive either. That flight was also delayed and check-in was very slow given all the overseas workers who needed their employment documentation checked. My own check-in was less smooth than usual as, I think from what I could infer from the conversations in Filipino, they worked on the thorny question of if British citizens need a visa to visit Aberdeen.

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Beyond another plateau

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 14:23:36 GMT

For the second time recently: I stay the same weight for a few weeks, I post an entry about it here, then the next week I'm finally lighter. I shall continue being stricter about desserts, also cut down my wholegrain portions by a third, those ought to suffice.

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A new plateau, perhaps

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 12:48:28 GMT

I remain the same weight that I was at the end of last month. Maybe I drift downward extremely slowly? I have been eating a little less on most days although, maybe once a week, I have an off-plan not-extravagant lunch, typically outdoors with colleagues, last time was a pork, rice, bean burrito. I have also exercised more, though not enough to make a difference to weight. Now I must decide if to cut down even more or just be very patient. No need to decide immediately.

I have some off-plan vacation coming up for the second half of next month and I have yet to lose the other half of what I gained on vacation over three months ago.

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A small nutritional deficiency

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 17:19:00 GMT

I had been relying partly on retort pouches of Indian vegetarian dishes for some nutritional variety, including palak dishes as a source of spinach. Since cutting my typical daily calories somewhat, I have averaged maybe only one of these dishes per week, as one brand is typically over 200kcal per pouch and the other can be up to 400kcal. Such infrequency brings little variety and even less spinach. I needn't address this issue immediately but it bears thought nonetheless.

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An improving trajectory

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 22:26:42 GMT

I feel as if I am finally managing to get back onto track. I've been working out more days than not and will do better if I can more reliably get to bed sooner. I have started using the cross-trainers at work and, it's a long way back to my workouts in Scotland, but steady progress will more than suffice, it all helps. Eating a little less is also feeling sustainable. Today I finished cutting some larger insertable filters for my masks and am now thinking about assembling the next bedside table. Admittedly, mopping the floors may have to wait yet.

Stopping into work on a Sunday morning just to use a cross-trainer may seem undue effort when I could be exerting myself around my neighborhood here but I endeavor to establish a sustainable routine and that goal is served by minimizing the influence of the weather. Presently I work on campus on Wednesday and Thursdays and work out afterward, Sunday is nicely distant from both. I could buy a cross-trainer of my own but they are large and unwieldly and work provides nice ones for staff use. If only they had a pool too, at least one not exhibiting Cherenkov radiation.

It also helps that I am pausing work on the house for a while. There is some work that I hope to get done later this year, such as getting the attic insulated properly at last, but the handyman should be coming over tomorrow to wrap up the current drainage work and deal with the scrap and trash that's been left. What remnants he leaves, I shall dispose of myself. It is difficult for me to relax and get on with things when I have others around.

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Plateau broken

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 12:56:51 GMT

Further to last week's entry, I have indeed slightly reduced my eating below what it was when I previously lost enough weight, certainly below what I think a regular guy ought to be able to eat, and have now dropped another pound. Maybe it's coincidence but, with luck, I am back on course either way.

I used to eat a sandwich each morning, then moved those calories into slightly larger lunches instead, including some fish and an Indian vegetarian side in the same meal. I now still skip the sandwich but have also returned lunches to their previous form. Further, I am being careful about allowing myself small dessert treats on typical days, though I may have picked up discount donuts yesterday.

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A plateau in my weight loss

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 23:33:25 GMT

The past three weekends, I have weighed 145lb. Those pounds I gained over the holidays just will not budge. While I am not carefully counting calories, my diet is constant enough to be amendable to adjustment. I am now eating a bit less on typical days, with luck that will finally get me back to where I was.

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Inefficacy of cloth masks

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 17:30:12 GMT

I remain ongoingly irritated by the news coverage of cloth masks versus surgical masks or N95s. It reminds me of the red meat / white meat research that tends to be vague about pork or, if mentioning it, doesn't distinguish between cured or not, etc. Anyhow, sure, I would expect that many cloth masks suck. I'm using cloth masks made from densely woven fabric that sandwich many square inches of edge-to-edge HEPA-rated filter and with a wire for the bridge of my nose. How do those compare? Given the popular reporting's vagueness, I have no idea, but I am struck by how loosely some surgical masks fit. Though, for events like grocery shopping, I wear an FFP2 underneath it anyway.

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Nice Thanksgiving food

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 16:23:58 GMT

I enjoyed a modest and quiet Thanksgiving. I saw family online, I breakfasted on a poblano pepper omelette, and later ate some convenience-food traditional Thanksgiving fare, also some crab rangoon with smoked salmon. Toward the end of the day I had beer and chicken wings with a neighbor. Today, for lunch, I think I may treat myself to tilapia and scallops then a little blueberry pie.

This morning, while I was washing the dishes I'd lazily left from Thanksgiving, I found myself remembering what I had made with each dish. The radio played Beethoven's Sixth which reminded me that, thanks to Soylent Green (1973), this season I can also be thankful that my Thanksgiving meal wasn't made of old people.

I gained several pounds during my visit to Scotland. This week will not much help that but my diet can wait a little longer.

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Blood donation failure

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 23:03:09 GMT

I failed to donate blood yesterday because my hemoglobin level was just a touch too low. Admittedly, I have been eating oddly this past fortnight. I expect the issue to be easily remedied for next time I donate, it's just not something that I'd had to think about before. In future I'll try to be sure to eat appropriately for a while before the appointment comes.

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When to fast

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 15:46:02 GMT

Since switching my diet's daily fasting from mornings to evenings, I find that one unanticipated benefit is that it encourages me to drag myself out of bed: if I like, the first thing I can do today is to finally eat something again!

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Situation and progress

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 01:19:02 GMT

A few years ago I mentioned how I side with the minority here in placing the start of fall at the start of September. Again, it fits: lately the house has been mid-seventies, the air conditioning hasn't much cut in. Still, it was pleasant and sunny. I may even have mowed the yard had I slept better last night, or not eaten too much pizza for lunch. My weight had again dipped enough for me to briefly indulge in unrestrained consumption which, today, included a spinach feta pizza from Domino's. They're reliably quite good and my local branch is walkable, though not such that I want to walk there for carryout. I also ate a small butterscotch meringue pie. They are a little sweet for me, and I do rather like lemon, but I am also partial to butterscotch and those were the meringues significantly discounted.

Progress on the house is painful. More urgent issues involve leaks and drainage, for obvious reasons, also finishing the floors, for livability. With my now paying out of disposable income, everything else with the house, and there is yet plenty, probably has to wait for next year. I am coming to terms with this, it still gets me down. I think it is part of why I have not been getting much done lately on the domestic front.

Work is coming back under control. Practically, I am settled into a routine, with desk setup and meals and the like. My attention is mostly on three projects, on all of which I can try to make progress this coming week. The C++ project involves instrumenting existing code, the Java one is a web portal, the Python one is on deep learning. Soon I expect to be down to two on-site days per week. Recently I attempted to use an evolutionary algorithm, mutation guided by biases, to optimize spiking neural networks that I was using as classifiers of input sequences; they worked on easy problems but not on harder ones, so more investigation is indicated. I find that my work laptop has two USB C Thunderbolt connectors and the monitors provided me have, more or less, a dock built into the back of each. Linux support for such now seems decent.

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Weight loss brings more fast food

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 13:03:06 GMT

Being a little stricter with myself seems to have been working, my weight returned to its gentle trend downward. Next, I should focus on my resting heart rate, I am still slacking in trying to get back into exercising most days.

Whenever I come in under 140lb, I get a day off to eat whatever I like. Yesterday I tried Krystal for what may be the first time. I am used to White Castle, which is soon to celebrate its centenary, and this seems similar. The meal was quite good, mostly in terms of spice: the default condiment on the cheeseburgers is mustard, chili cheese fries are readily available, and the apple turnover had plenty of cinnamon; altogether a nice combination. If I order online from home then I reach the Krystal drive-through just about on time for pickup.

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Satisfying lunches at work

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 00:00:35 GMT

Now that I spend some workdays on campus, I am trying to navigate the resulting dietary changes. To give myself more flexibility for lunches, I have reduced my breakfasts to being no more than a bowl of granola with milk, and some fruit. Unfortunately, I do not have to eat much before I start to gain weight.

Working at home today, I fried tilapia and mushrooms gently, dumped them into rajma masala, topped it with rice, thus making a satisfying lunch for less than half of my daily energy allowance. For my next lunch at work, I plan a couple of sandwiches, filled with chicken salad (in the American sense) or similar. These lighter lunches balance other, higher-calorie days, like if I were to order something from the cafeteria instead.

An interesting puzzle is, while being similar in calories, today's at-home dish is both more nutritious and satisfying than the sandwiches. However, it is freshly prepared in the kitchen and at home I don't bother others with the smells. The at-work sandwiches remain good while they wait over the morning and I can eat them easily with my hands and no tableware.

With my living alone, some fresh foods are not worth buying because, before halfway used, they would be well past their best. Nonetheless, perhaps there are inoffensive cold bean salads or similar that I could consider making, something that could sit in the refrigerator, then need little more than a spoon as I eat near or with others.

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Lunch, and adapting to change

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 16:29:39 GMT

For today's lunch, I shall fry a couple of fresh steakburgers that were on discount at the grocery store, alongside them I have diced half an onion, which I had left over, and sliced one of the leeks I bought yesterday. I also have a potato baking in the oven, I'll probably put butter and cheese in it. Once cooked, I'll save one of the burgers for another day.

At the moment I have an easy time with meals. I work from home and the kitchen's but a few steps away from my desk. Even on weekdays, it is easy enough to prepare all kinds of meals without bothering anybody or much stepping away from work, even while something's cooking I can just step back over occasionally to check on its progress, maybe stir it again.

I am not aware that we yet have any results from the Big Breakfast Study but my general impression of current chrononutrition thinking is that it favors eating earlier in the day, rather than later. I vaguely recall that this may also be true of exercise. Anyhow, I eat breakfast and lunch, then fast for the remainder of the day. It's not as if I can eat much food without becoming overweight, and some degree of fasting seems to help against diet-related disease.

As a high fraction of my colleagues are now fully vaccinated, later this summer I expect to have to work on campus each day. I do not wish to much change my overall diet, it works well for me, but I get to figure when to try to exercise and what to eat when. There are refrigerators and microwaves around the office but, say, frying fresh vegetables and fish is probably no longer the kind of direction to take. There is also a cafeteria, though daily use would cost a fair bit.

I haven't decided what to do. I am not going to get time to fit a decent meal in before work. My inclination is to maintain the evening fasting and cut some of the fresh foods out of my typical diet, use the cafeteria a little, frozen ready meals too, maybe sometimes cold sandwiches, then I can continue to devote the evening to other things. I may need to correct course as I see how the changes affect my weight. At least I have time to think about it.

Update: I ought to have noted that, before the ~~Event~~pandemic, lunchtimes were during my fasting period so I was already out of the habit of eating at work.

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Gaining weight

Wed, 26 May 2021 12:17:26 GMT

In recent weeks I appear to have slowly gained weight despite not intending to. Not much, and I am not doing anything much different from when I lost it, so there is no real concern. However, it does mean that I should be doubly cautious about portion sizes or extra treats or whatever, maybe there's an unsustainable habit developing. I shall be a little stricter with myself then see what happens.

With the disruption in my schedule from my late-for-me nights when my handyman's worked late, I've not much worked out for a while. I don't expect that to have made much difference to my weight, though: I don't work out a whole lot anyway and it takes a substantial effort for exercise to noticeably affect weight, I work out for other health reasons.

I am trying to vary my meals a little more. For lunch today, I plan mushroom omelette on toast.

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Finally feeling warm

Sat, 22 May 2021 15:12:07 GMT

Since losing weight I have felt far colder than I used to, quite the opposite of how I was before. Therefore, I rather looked forward to moving to the South. Indeed, today is forecast to reach 87°F and, while this is nowhere near enough for me to consider turning on the air conditioning for myself, and I am still wearing denim jeans, I am finally moving to wearing a short-sleeved shirt. It is so nice to no longer feel cold most of the time. No wonder I enjoyed visiting the tropics last year.

On the continuing remediation for the house: it turns out that, one reason I felt cold in working from home this winter is that the room I was in had no insulation in the exterior wall nor in the attic above it. Also, two of its windows were sealed poorly.

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Diet and exercise

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 15:02:01 GMT

I thought it wise to double-check BMI numbers. It's hardly a comprehensive indicator but it's significant. The WHO have the normal range starting at 18½ and I am maintaining my weight comfortably above 20½ so I am not overdoing the dieting. Though, careful experimentation reveals that my still-healing back injury rules sit-ups out of this coming week's workouts too.

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