Brian Breslin's Blog

Five years ago, a movement of sorts was born in Miami. It was born out of a need, and a desire. A need for community, and a desire to feel accepted.

When I moved back to Miami after college, what I found in tech down here was startling. There was no sense of community in South Florida tech. It was all about who you were and what can you do for me today. Thus, the genesis for Refresh Miami was born. A place where the creative and tech community can connect and engage.

Over the years, the purpose of Refresh has evolved and the need we originally saw has been largely fulfilled. The number of smaller groups that have emerged from the audience at the tech events fills my heart with hope. These groups could have emerged on their own, but it wouldn’t have been as easy for the founders to meet and feel the vibe or energy of the community. What was originally meant to fill a void from a lack of community has managed to surpass that, and now enables the creation of new niche communities. Refresh has fulfilled its original goal of sparking the creative fires in our respective bellies, now it must find a new raison d’etre.

So what should Refresh 2.0 (for lack of a better moniker) be? My dream is to see Refresh help more people than it has in the past. The hundreds of jobs it has helped fill, the thousands of friendships that have emerged, the millions of dollars in economic windfall its brought to the region — they are the tip of the iceberg. Refresh needs to refresh itself. The new Refresh will be less about individual meetups and workshops organized by us, but rather it will be about fostering events you want to setup, new relationships, and new opportunities for the community.

In the coming year, my goal is to see anyone from a javascript enthusiast to a final cut aficionado to a ruby guru be able to find, connect, and engage with other like-minded individuals and groups throughout South Florida. Refresh will be there to help you connect with others, and share your knowledge, your passions, and your love for tech. I’d like to see Refresh find more people jobs this year than in the past 5 years combined.

The people in the community I’ve spoken with have all mentioned the need for action and forward movement in our community. If we want to create the community we want to live in, raise our kids in, work in, and have fun in, then we have to take action. We cannot expect others to fulfill our dreams for us.

I’m asking you, the designers, developers, marketers, artists, business guys, teachers, consultants, bloggers, etc to take it upon yourselves to stand up and engage the community. If we don’t all participate, then who are we to blame but ourselves when the community isn’t there?

Thank you all for the last five years, they’ve been incredible. Cheers to another five!

If you’d like to get more involved in shaping the future of the tech community in South Florida, please let me know.

* Worth reading: Foundations of a startup community

This is a picture of the well you all helped create in 2008 (where we raised $1681!) through the first charity:water birthday campaign I participated in. The well is located in the AARITO GONO VILLAGE in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. This well should provide clean water for many years to come for the this little village of 30.

The 2011 September Campaign. Our 5-year-anniversary video from charity: water on Vimeo.

This year I decided to do something a little differently. This year I am incentivizing you to donate even more. So if you give to this year’s campaign, you will receive discounted drinks at my party as well as a charity:water wristband. The wristbands normally retail for $5 each. So make your donation in advance (any amount you feel comfortable with) and I will have wristbands for you.

So please come join me and my friends this Friday at the Grove Spot from 9PM onwards for drinks and celebration all for a good cause.

Details are on the facebook page. Many thanks to Olav from the Grove Spot for helping us out with this offer.

So last October I stated my goal to become an endurance athlete and do a half marathon within 5 months. Well I just realized I am well over 10 months late on that goal. In the last 10 months I’ve done a number of obstacle races, the longest being the 8 mile Super Spartan race in Miami in April, however I let the 13.1 goal slip through my fingers.

With that in mind, I figured the best way to motivate myself to do it was to just sign up! So I’ve officially registered for my first 13.1 mile half marathon race, the Rock n Roll series Latin Music Miami Beach Half Marathon.

Now I just need to figure out a plan and start training! Have you done a half or full marathon?

My sister was in town this week and we were talking about how she is interested in trying out the slow carb diet, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and post my simple tips for keeping with it.

Tip 1: Green Tea
I brew a pitcher of green tea every few days, and store it in my fridge. I don’t add any sweeteners (some artificial sweeteners could still spike your insulin response, and I haven’t figured out which). My trick is to drink it really cold with lots of ice, and keep some on my desk all day.

Tip 2: Jerky
Right now in my cupboard I have bison/buffalo jerky from fresh market, ostrich jerky (ostrim), and regular extra lean beef jerky. Whenever I’m hungry in between meals I’ll grab a bit to snack on. These are all low-fat options for lean protein. My only concern with them is sodium, so I only eat a little bit each time (a couple grams).

Tip 3: Ziploc bags/tupperware
I break up my chicken or steak into single serving size when I marinate them in advance and store them either in the fridge or freezer. I’ll buy proteins in larger quantities then split them up so that i don’t have to thaw out an entire package for one serving.

Tip 4: Beans + tupperware
I don’t often like to eat an entire can of beans at one time, but will rinse and store half the can after i’ve warmed it up (I’ve been told rinsing the beans reduces the gassy effect of the legumes) and consume it the next morning with my high protein breakfast. I like buying the unspiced ones from whole foods that have had salt added to them (salt level is pretty low). Careful with target brand beans as they often have sugar added to them as a preservative/flavor enhancer.

Tip 5: Egg white cartons
I buy Allwhites 100% egg whites, and mix with my whole eggs when I make my scrambles in the morning. I am not a fan of egg beaters or the other non 100% egg white products (they tend to have stringy feeling to them, or strange taste). These little packages are great as they will keep for 7 days in your fridge once you open them, so for $1.50 you can get 10 eggs worth of whites to use for a week.

Tip 6: Snack before workout/eat after
So I snack on peanut butter or nuts or jerky about 2 hours before I go to cross-train. I feel like this gives me enough time to settle my stomach, and still have some bioavailability of said nutrients for the workout. I try to also eat protein or dinner within a short period of working out.

One of the hardest aspects of adhering to a diet for me is always making it a routine, once its routine and second nature, it becomes much easier to stick to. Have any dieting tips that have worked for you?

So our economy is in the shitter. Its been in the dumps for 4 years now. No one is doing as well as the public thinks except for the banks. The jobless rate is over 10% (reported), actual unemployment is closer to 15% in my opinion. More and more homes are teetering on the edge of foreclosure and new jobs aren’t being created.

I have a solution for the job creation issue. This is going to be the single most overly optimistic and potentially rife with problems solution, but could be the fastest solution as well.

I propose a tax credit. Every business under 10 employees will get an 18 month tax credit up to $50,000 for creating a new job. This tax credit could be spread across two positions and go up to $75,000 in value if two jobs are created. How would it work? You hire someone new, and show a net INCREASE in headcount (so you don’t fire someone first then hire another to get your credit), and you can deduct the value of that employee’s salary up to 50k or 75k for 2 employees total from your taxable income.

Hopefully I don’t need to explain to you the benefits to the government. The cost is actually far less than 50k per company to the federal government, as the tax rate of $50k is far lower than the benefit of increasing jobs and reducing the burden on unemployment and welfare systems. The increased production capacity given to these small businesses could result in long term growth as well for said employers.

Think my idea is dumb? let me know why in the comments and please suggest ways to improve it. I’m not an economist, I just like economics.

So on June 30th I decided I was going to make a change in my life. A few days prior I’d been at the doctor for a 6 month follow up (I was told to lose weight and lower my cholesterol). I had not only not lowered my cholesterol but my triglycerides had spiked as well, oh and I weighed exactly the same as before. I didn’t know what could have caused it, I mean I was eating lots of things I had been told were healthy like fruits and whole wheat instead of white versions of things like bread and pasta. I had also joined crossfitX-train about 6 weeks prior so I was working out doing heavy cardio/weight lifting 4 or 5 times a week. So I was doing a lot more excercise than the average person.

I’m the type of person who likes to understand why things are the way they are rather than follow blindly (I was probably a REALLY annoying student in elementary school). I have seen my mom and countless others struggle with diets of different kinds over the years, and figured I wanted to know why some worked and others didn’t. Around the same time I picked up the 4 hour body book by Tim Ferriss, since I see this as a personal experiment, and he is all about hacking life. I also picked up the book Why we get fat by Gary Taube around the same time. So I read and read and took notes as to why each author speculates we get fat from a physiological perspective. Interestingly enough many people seem to think obesity is a PSYCHOLOGICAL problem rather than a physiological problem (i.e. all in your brain, and you can will yourself to not be obese, as if it were that easy).

One key theme from both books is that calories in vs calories out is bogus. Think about it for a second, if you were to eat 20 calories extra per day for a year you would gain 2 lbs of weight. 20 calories is like 4 peanuts; no one can that accurately track their day to day dietary intake vs burn rate. Its ludicrous to think that. They both also suggest calorie depravation is impossible to sustain (you’re basically starving yourself)

The other key theme is that fat accumulation is caused by sugar, and more specifically the hormone response to sugars. Sugar rich diets trigger an insulin response which tells your fat cells to store fat instead of burning it for energy. The key to fat burning is almost teaching your body to burn the food its consuming and not go into starvation mode and shift incoming food to fat reserves (remember fat = energy, and if the body thinks it is going to be in a deficit, it will shift food from muscles to fat cells).

So I decided to start with my own variation on 4HB’s slow-carb diet. The key points of slow-carb are high protein levels, high fiber (veggies/greens), normal fat levels, and low sugars/carbs. Similar to the paleo diet, which is actually even more strict in many ways, I tried whenever possible to eat grass-fed beef and free-range chicken, and other more holistic proteins. I cut out all sugars from my diet. Paleo diet discourages legumes, but I didn’t find enough scientific evidence to support this, so I didn’t cut it.

My diet was previously loaded with sandwiches, pasta, potatoes, rice, and fruits (juices as well). I didn’t give up milk products even though both Paleo and Slow-carb suggest you not touch them. I like cheese, and milk, and figured it was crazy to go completely cold turkey (though I might have lost more weight in the end).
I never passed up a beer that was offered to me either, beer is delicious who am I kidding. This one was surprisingly easy to give up actually. The hardest thing to give up was chocolate chip cookies. I LOVE cookies.

So this is what my diet consists of now

• Breakfast (every day within 45 min of waking up – one of following)
• 2 Eggs + 1 or 2 egg whites scrambled + bacon, or turkey sausage
• 2 eggs hard boiled (discard half the yolks) + sliced turkey or lean ham or chicken (if I don’t have time I boil the eggs the night before, bought a container to hard boil the eggs in microwave too)
• Mid morning snack (2 hours later – one of following)
• nuts (almonds, cashews, peanuts, pistachios, brazil nuts) lightly salted
• piece of sliced turkey
• carrots with hummus
• Ostrim ostrich+beef jerky snacks, or low-fat beef jerkey (small amount).
• Lunch (one of following)
• salad with protein on it (tuna, chicken, or steak)
• protein with veggies (chicken or steak or fish if available)
• soup (if lentil or bean soup or a non-cream based soup is available)
• Afternoon snack (3-4pm)
• peanut butter – natural kind only peanuts + salt (by spoonful, probably 2 tablespoons) 6-8 oz of milk to wash it down
• nuts – handful
• hummus (sometimes i eat w/carrots, other times straight, prefer garlic hummus)
• Dinner (post workout – veggies or beans are usually combined with others)
• grilled chicken- usually marinated in herbs or chimichurri style sauce and flattened to cook evenly (on george foreman style grill)
• steamed veggies – string beans, broccoli, bell peppers, mushrooms
• turkey meat sauce – made with ground turkey, sugar free tomato sauce, mushrooms, peppers.
• grilled fish (though not very often)
• canned tuna or salmon on spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette
• red, white, or black beans with salsa (sugar free) – i often save half the beans to eat w/the eggs the next morning.
• Snack after dinner (occasionally)
• sugar free jell-o
• sugar free jell-o chocolate mousse

Note on 1 day a week I eat whatever the heck I want. Usually its on saturdays. Occasionally I have a glass of red wine with dinner or while cooking dinner. Key things that have helped: my cuisinart grill has made preparing food much simpler and quicker, storing food in ziploc portions ready to toss in a pan or grill or microwave has also made life more convenient.

So what have I experienced? My starting weight was 191lbs, and its now 180lbs (this was on August 1st, 2011). My waist I’ve lost 2 inches at my belly button and 1.5 inch around my waist (where my pants sit). All my clothes fit looser than before. So 6% body weight reduction in 1 month, and reduction in pant and shirt size as well. I’ve maintained my crossfit regimen and am improving steadily in strength and endurance.

Most people have asked me if I’m tired more often due to the lack of carbs, and honestly it hasn’t been an issue. I think I’m probably eating more calories now than before, just a better combination of calories. I have also begun to think more analytically of food from a chemical standpoint than before, I look at food to see what is likely to spike my blood sugar or insulin levels (I’m not diabetic, but think that insulin levels are the key source to obesity).

Would I do this again? Yup, I’m still doing it. My goal is to refine my diet a bit more in month two and see if I can reduce another 10lbs. I’m shooting for a total of 20lbs lost by my birthday on September 23.

If you’re interested in my recipes, please post a comment and I’ll follow up. Also please post comments on your experiences with the diet or weight loss in general.

You can also save some money with a Barnes and Noble coupon for Gary Taubes’ book.

Let me preface this by saying that this is going to piss a few people off, however that’s not my intention. Lately I feel as though we’re wasting a lot of talent on tech which aren’t improving the world. I tweeted the other day that I feared we were wasting too much talent trying to solve “hipstersuperficial problems” and not real world problems.

So what are “hipstersuperficial problems” and how do they differ from real problems? Well hipstersuperficial problems are bullshit, they are inconveniences, they are in no way life threatening. They can be anything from ranking your favorite PBR retailer to organizing your manicure coupons to automating your foursquare check-ins. They are the “problems” which come to you when you think “now wouldn’t it be nice if…”

What are real problems? “I can’t find any clean water to drink.” “I am hungry.” “I don’t have books for school.” These are real problems. These are things we should be dedicating our resources to. Khan Academy is a great example of a real problem being solved with tech. Charity:Water is another great case. Kickstarter is helping lots of people’s dreams become reality as well.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think technology solving “wouldn’t it be nice problems” are often making the world a better more efficient place, and that’s great. AirBnB is a wouldn’t it be nice problem solver, but also a market changer at the same time, and for many it is solving a real problem (need somewhere to sleep). I am sure I’m being naive about this issue, but when I hear about startups that are building machine learning tools to figure out which pattern of plaid goes best with your non-prescription glasses, it makes me cringe a bit. Think of the billions of dollars in college educations and salaries that could be used to solve the worlds real problems.

Its my hope that we as technologists can strive to use our talents to leave the world a better place than we found it. That we can use our ingenuity to improve people’s lives through technology. Shouldn’t we all be striving to live a life of purpose?