Well another one that I've decided on based on my performance today. Today (slightly to my surprise) I went down to the treadmill and ran one mile straight besting my previous high of 3/4 mile set on Saturday. Must have been the shoes!
Anyway so my new goal is to add an additional mile of consecutive running for every month that I keep running. So by the end of September I should hopefully be able to run 2 miles consecutively and so forth. I can't wait to find out!
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Me+
I guess it's easy to define something as a "hobby" once you start spending money on it. So today I will officially announce running/walking ("traversing") as a hobby of mine as I went out and bought some running sneakers specifically just to run in.
I purchased the Nike Air Pegasus+ 2007 which allows me to use the Nike+ running sensor I have to upload my stats to the Nike running web site. Luckily I found them for a great price as the Nike+ sneakers generally are sold at a premium over their other running shoes. I also found out that you don't actually need a Nano to use the sensor; Nike sells a wristband for Nano-less people such as myself which is what I'll be using.
I'm not usually one for paying for the privilege of someone else to keep track of statistics for me since I can generally easily do it myself, but seeing how easy it makes things and the motivation it brings I'd recommend the Nike+ system (or at the least using a GPS) to anyone who wants to start running.
Finally, my monthly tally for this month is... 36.9 miles including 14 of that running.
This actually is only since 8/7 so I should be able to hit 40 miles next month pretty easily as long as I can keep up the same pace!
I purchased the Nike Air Pegasus+ 2007 which allows me to use the Nike+ running sensor I have to upload my stats to the Nike running web site. Luckily I found them for a great price as the Nike+ sneakers generally are sold at a premium over their other running shoes. I also found out that you don't actually need a Nano to use the sensor; Nike sells a wristband for Nano-less people such as myself which is what I'll be using.
I'm not usually one for paying for the privilege of someone else to keep track of statistics for me since I can generally easily do it myself, but seeing how easy it makes things and the motivation it brings I'd recommend the Nike+ system (or at the least using a GPS) to anyone who wants to start running.
Finally, my monthly tally for this month is... 36.9 miles including 14 of that running.
This actually is only since 8/7 so I should be able to hit 40 miles next month pretty easily as long as I can keep up the same pace!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
I'm a Proclaimer
I will walk 100 miles...and then I will walk 100 more.
I've decided on a new goal to walk/run 100 miles before the end of the year. I'm not including any traversing before I decided on this so currently I stand at 4.5 miles. I only need to average about a mile/day for the next few non winter months to make my goal which I'm confident I can do. Everything (walking, running, jogging, treadmills, ellipticals) is included in this, but I want to walk at least .5 miles to include it in my total.
I think I'll post monthly totals on here too.
On a similar topic Olaf has the Nike+ running kit thingie for his nano and it's pretty cool. Mostly because the kit keeps track of your running and updates the Nike+ website including keeping you up to date on whichever "program" you've chosen to do.
This is only for the Nano though and I already have a mini so I'm not getting another small iPod. I think it's pretty silly of Apple/Nike not expanding the user base of the kit even if the mini is a discontinued product. Supposedly one of the reasons for not supporting anything except the nano is that the other players are hard drive based, but I should be able to take the risk of my hard drive jumping up and down if I want to. Dumb.
I've decided on a new goal to walk/run 100 miles before the end of the year. I'm not including any traversing before I decided on this so currently I stand at 4.5 miles. I only need to average about a mile/day for the next few non winter months to make my goal which I'm confident I can do. Everything (walking, running, jogging, treadmills, ellipticals) is included in this, but I want to walk at least .5 miles to include it in my total.
I think I'll post monthly totals on here too.
On a similar topic Olaf has the Nike+ running kit thingie for his nano and it's pretty cool. Mostly because the kit keeps track of your running and updates the Nike+ website including keeping you up to date on whichever "program" you've chosen to do.
This is only for the Nano though and I already have a mini so I'm not getting another small iPod. I think it's pretty silly of Apple/Nike not expanding the user base of the kit even if the mini is a discontinued product. Supposedly one of the reasons for not supporting anything except the nano is that the other players are hard drive based, but I should be able to take the risk of my hard drive jumping up and down if I want to. Dumb.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
My Fatness
I generally try to go the gym, but as with most people I think I'll get in to ruts of not going or not going often enough. Several weeks back though I decided to attempt to exercise 4-5 times a week. This was like nothing I ever tried before... and I was able to successfully do it for a good 6 weeks before I inevitably got sick and was forced to take some time off.
That period was actually the incentive for this post as I woke up one morning and thought I noticed a slight flattening of my jolly belly. As anyone who's experienced a similar situation can imagine I was ecstatic. Was it just me though or was it really true?
Cut to present day. After my 6 weeks on, 4 weeks off, I've been back to the gym for the past week plus at the same pace as before I got sick. The cherry on top of all this is that I got a mention to me how my stomach looked slightly flatter recently (not a typo, there is an 'l' in there) which I've taken as confirmation of truth.
In general though it's hard for me to evaluate changes. My weight has fluctuated (on average) a tick upward; squarely now in the 160-165 range where previously it was 158-163. Is this good? I don't think my eating habits have changed, although it's difficult to always keep track of such things. I like to think this is a net positive though.
Bottom line, I feel better about myself, like to think I look better and have the confidence if some crazed HGH'd chick attacked me I'd have a chance to take her down now.
That period was actually the incentive for this post as I woke up one morning and thought I noticed a slight flattening of my jolly belly. As anyone who's experienced a similar situation can imagine I was ecstatic. Was it just me though or was it really true?
Cut to present day. After my 6 weeks on, 4 weeks off, I've been back to the gym for the past week plus at the same pace as before I got sick. The cherry on top of all this is that I got a mention to me how my stomach looked slightly flatter recently (not a typo, there is an 'l' in there) which I've taken as confirmation of truth.
In general though it's hard for me to evaluate changes. My weight has fluctuated (on average) a tick upward; squarely now in the 160-165 range where previously it was 158-163. Is this good? I don't think my eating habits have changed, although it's difficult to always keep track of such things. I like to think this is a net positive though.
Bottom line, I feel better about myself, like to think I look better and have the confidence if some crazed HGH'd chick attacked me I'd have a chance to take her down now.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
If You Can't Beat Them...Bribe People!
Perhaps coming off the heels of their failed attempt to purchase Yahoo!, Microsoft has decided to pay users to use their search engine. This payment comes in the forms of rebates when you link-through from their live-search site. Apparently there are hundreds of retailers signed up for this service, including most of the "major" ones.
Not only does this smack of desperation to me, I don't really see how it could work. Sure there may be an initial increase in users using their search, but will that really pay off in the long run? What about once the rebates go away or become insignificant. Not to mention the fact that if some how the idea becomes successful, can't Google just copy it?
I'm going to take full advantage of the generosity of Microsoft since it's available though. I'll continue to use google as my main search engine and just link through to a product on live search (or maybe even paste in the url?) if I plan on buying something to get my rebate.
You need a windows live account to sign up and have to accumulate at least $5 in your account before you can get the cold hard cash. As well due to return scams, you'll have to wait a good 60 days before the transaction is posted to your account.
http://search.live.com/cashback
Not only does this smack of desperation to me, I don't really see how it could work. Sure there may be an initial increase in users using their search, but will that really pay off in the long run? What about once the rebates go away or become insignificant. Not to mention the fact that if some how the idea becomes successful, can't Google just copy it?
I'm going to take full advantage of the generosity of Microsoft since it's available though. I'll continue to use google as my main search engine and just link through to a product on live search (or maybe even paste in the url?) if I plan on buying something to get my rebate.
You need a windows live account to sign up and have to accumulate at least $5 in your account before you can get the cold hard cash. As well due to return scams, you'll have to wait a good 60 days before the transaction is posted to your account.
http://search.live.com/cashback
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Like Looking In The Mirror
Netflix in it's attempt to move more to a hybrid social site introduced the concept of "faves" a little while back. This is essentially a watered down "friend". Where as a "friend" is probably someone you know in real life, and therefore netflix allows you to see basically all the information they can see about themselves, a "fave" is someone you probably don't know. Therefore you can only see limited information about them such as 5-star rated movies, and genres or actors they watch a lot of.
Each potential "fave" has a similarity percentage ("friends" have a percentage as well) based on some netflix algorithm which is a quick way to see (hey!) how similar your movie watching tastes are. So as I sometimes do I was on one of the netflix pages where you can see potential "faves" and saw a person with an 86% similarity percentage; which is very high. In fact this would be the highest of any "fave" similarity percentage I've seen yet. With all this "friends"and "faves" stuff netflix also introduced user names which if you don't choose one will be auto-generated for you from as far as I can tell your first and last initial, and then a string of digits. This specific "fave" (who by the way also had Kevin Spacey as the most watched actor...my favorite actor) had an auto-generated user name of "MZ 123456". (Yeah I changed the digits).
SPOOKY!!!
Each potential "fave" has a similarity percentage ("friends" have a percentage as well) based on some netflix algorithm which is a quick way to see (hey!) how similar your movie watching tastes are. So as I sometimes do I was on one of the netflix pages where you can see potential "faves" and saw a person with an 86% similarity percentage; which is very high. In fact this would be the highest of any "fave" similarity percentage I've seen yet. With all this "friends"and "faves" stuff netflix also introduced user names which if you don't choose one will be auto-generated for you from as far as I can tell your first and last initial, and then a string of digits. This specific "fave" (who by the way also had Kevin Spacey as the most watched actor...my favorite actor) had an auto-generated user name of "MZ 123456". (Yeah I changed the digits).
SPOOKY!!!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Type O Positive
I'm always impressed by so-called "creative types" (because I am not one of them). With the limitless power of the internet any artist can get their message out through various means such as shirts, music, comics and both of these.
Not only are the videos fantastic in itself, but they used scenes from several of my favorite movies. There are even more on YouTube as well if you decide to look!
Not only are the videos fantastic in itself, but they used scenes from several of my favorite movies. There are even more on YouTube as well if you decide to look!
Monday, March 17, 2008
Faux St. Patty's Day
On this technically non St. Patty's Day I present my list of music you should have listened to today while drinking your Guinness (non U2 division).
Dropkick Murphys - my favorite irish punk band
The Pogues - it seems every year they play St. Patty's Day in NYC and every year I forget
Flogging Molly - similar to Dropkick Murphy's
Black 47 - Only because I've seen them at Shea Stadium more than once without even knowing who they were! Not too bad.
Dropkick Murphys - my favorite irish punk band
The Pogues - it seems every year they play St. Patty's Day in NYC and every year I forget
Flogging Molly - similar to Dropkick Murphy's
Black 47 - Only because I've seen them at Shea Stadium more than once without even knowing who they were! Not too bad.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Instant Gratification
I'm pretty sure I've emailed everyone possible about this but I find it really cool in that some of the big TV networks are offering their shows on demand through their websites. Just tonight I was able to go to the fox website and catch the latest Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (nice little show while I can't get my 24 fix) and then afterwards surf to the ABC website to get back in to Lost. Terminator was available in several resolutions (including HD) and Lost is (seemingly) only available in HD (which is totally fine with me).
I can't see why this won't continue going forward, I'm more likely to watch a show even with commercials (which ABC has, fox didn't) when I get to choose when I want to watch the show. The reason I find this great and I think it will be successful going forward is because I'm being given a choice. My only other options are recording the show somehow and then I'm certainly not sitting through commercials.
While I was writing this I thought "Well I should check the web sites of the other networks and see if anything is available on there". I go to NBC and whoa; I can now see season 2 of 30 Rock. Awesome! It gets better though as they have "vintage" shows available for instant viewing also... including the mother f'n A-Team!!!! Actually it's only the pilot episode for now, but it looks like they will be adding one a week.
CBS had some shows available too but since most shows on CBS suck, I couldn't find much of interest on there.
Now I have even more useless ways to suck away my time!
I can't see why this won't continue going forward, I'm more likely to watch a show even with commercials (which ABC has, fox didn't) when I get to choose when I want to watch the show. The reason I find this great and I think it will be successful going forward is because I'm being given a choice. My only other options are recording the show somehow and then I'm certainly not sitting through commercials.
While I was writing this I thought "Well I should check the web sites of the other networks and see if anything is available on there". I go to NBC and whoa; I can now see season 2 of 30 Rock. Awesome! It gets better though as they have "vintage" shows available for instant viewing also... including the mother f'n A-Team!!!! Actually it's only the pilot episode for now, but it looks like they will be adding one a week.
CBS had some shows available too but since most shows on CBS suck, I couldn't find much of interest on there.
Now I have even more useless ways to suck away my time!
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