I agree. There are tons of interesting ways to make coffee, not all of which require investing hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in fancy espresso machines: i.e. french press vs. aeropress vs. traditional drip filter vs. gold cone, etc...
Cone drip filter. Grinder. (Get a used burr grinder or a good Krups or Braun rotary is good enough.) Whole bean coffee roasted in the past two weeks from a local roaster. Candy thermometer. Pot of boiling water.
If you actually get fresh beans and figure out exactly how much water and how hot it needs to be, the coffee gets really good.
The key on race day is to get as much water as your stomach can handle -- one coach (Benji Durden) recommends about a quart of water 1-2 hours before the race, and then almost a half bottle every 6 miles or so. That's a lot of water when you're trying to run 5:30/mile pace!
Be extremely careful if following this advice. Hyponatremia--dilution of the blood resulting in low levels of sodium--is a serious concern for marathon runners. Dehydration during a race won't kill you; hyponatremia might.
Absolutely, positively do not "get as much water as your stomach can handle". Your stomach can handle enough water to kill you.
Dehydration absolutely can kill you during a race. Ask most (if not all) race medics and/or first-aid volunteers and they'll tell you dehydration is by far the bigger issue at marathons.
You took that quote out of context. If you're an elite marathoner trying to run sub-3:00 pace, then I stand by my comment to get as much water as your stomach can handle. Hydration is the limiting factor.
And if you hadn't taken that quote out of context, you would have seen that I was recommending between 60-70 ounces of water from 1-2 hours before the race until race finish, which won't put you at risk for hyponatremia and is, in fact, in line with what the American College of Sports Medicine recommends.
I'm scraping together every bit of money towards my startup... but not skimping on food at all. Perhaps that's because it's a food startup and I'd feel hypocritical eating ramen everyday! But, really, it's more because I think there are better things to skimp on than food.. i.e. the fuel that makes us who we are and sustains us everyday.
Besides I've got 3 years of data to show that it's possible to eat cheaply and still get great food.. you just have to do a few things:
1. buy in volume
2. cook for yourself/others, don't eat out
3. cut back on meat
4. waste as little as possible!
Agreed - foodspotting does food visuals well. We're less about dish discovery, though, and more about food shopping. The problem we're trying to solve is picking through the 100 choices in the cereal aisle, where having pictures of the boxes (which we DO have, btw) isn't as important as how popular, healthy, tasty, or sustainable those items are.
Do you mainly eat out or eat in?
It's perfectly healthy. as a sidenote: you can mimic those effects through exercise (and a smaller window of caloric restriction). I've had some great mid-distance runs on no calories for the prior 6-8 hours (they felt great.. but I couldn't have gone much further given the low glycogen).
there's a great soundbite in that video from Reid Hoffman: "launch so early you're embarrassed by your product." the context is important (i.e. get customer feedback before you spend too much time building stuff that nobody will use).
True. as someone who's been working on something for 6 months, and who finally feels almost ready to post something here, I'd say: take the startups which were obviously thrown up in the last few weeks with a grain of salt.. but don't lump the ones which have clearly had some thought (and serious manhours) put into them into the same bundle.
Agreed, it's just very hard to see quality in some of the items that get posted. That's not to take away from the effort gone into building and marketing them, I know it's hard work. I've failed in the startup world before myself. Just one of those thoughts that runs through your mind sometimes.
Yup, it might be helpful to see metrics along with every "review my startup" post. not # customers/users, since obviously the startups that post will have low numbers; but maybe things like manhours spent coding, number of people involved, time since ideation, etc.
I'm not sure how useful those metrics would be at any point, since some ideas are simple, and others complex. Plus how do you quantify time since you got the idea? Just for example.
they wouldn't be good metrics for comparing apples and oranges. you're right. what other proxies are there for how serious/committed the founders are and/or how well thought out the business plan? or do you just take all 'review my startup' links with a grain of salt?
Due to lack of any good metrics, I always take all "Review my startup" links with a grain of salt. I try and keep note of the ones that look interesting, but generally after perusing the site, I forget about it. Some are downright ridiculous, others look interesting. There's an opportunity here somewhere, I just don't see it. :)
there are a couple startups in this space (GrubWith.Us, gogrubly.com, maybe others?). what differentiates housefed? is it the international angle? the kind of foodspotting-esque type focus on user-generated photos?
any plans for adding descriptive content so that the comments aren't just "is that [fill in the blank]?
Btw, I'd love to see a lot more positive user feedback before I sign up. I'd say get some good traction from friends/beta testers before spreading it too widely. Oh and I agree with others: lose the food porn reference.
Good luck!
