Healthy Pursuits
The current economic condition within our industry has provided many of us with more free time away from our work than ever before. One benefit of having more free time, even when it is unwanted, is that we now have the luxury to concentrate on some of life's little issues that are outside of our work lives. For many of us, we are using this new-found time trying to reclaim some of our youthful heath after years of our sedentary work life styles.
In my own pursuit of personal fitness, I've made several new "health-nut" friends with similar goals. Many of these new acquaintances are from the email list groups of which I'm a member--the very same groups that traditionally have only dealt with technology issues. So for all of my new friends, here is a little tool that allowed me to combine my fitness pursuits with my love of programming.
Check your body fat percentage now.
Unlike some of my technical articles, I'm not trying to present any particularly programming tips here. If you're interested in the code, feel free to download it. The calculation engine is based on some tables and methods that I found in some government fitness guidelines. I believe the results are based on the actual "measured" body fat percentages of very large samples of individuals. Several of my "body builder" friends have compared the results of this tool with other methods of measuring body fat percentage and find this to be surprisingly accurate.
Conclusion
I'm optimistic that economic recovery is just around the corner, along with plenty of work for all of us. But if it's not, I pretty sure I'll need to stay healthy to continue working in some capacity well into my old age. My retirement plans have also taken a dive lately.
Downloads
You can download BFC.zip if you would like the C# source files to the calculator--you're on your own from here.
Here's an exercise for your .NET fitness program. Why not take the engine and turn it into a WebService?
Send your comments and let me know what you think of this article: steve@sharkcode.com
Steve Sharrock - www.AspAlliance.com/shark / www.SharkCode.com