Project Lose An Olsen Twin Week……many?

Well, it would be fair to say that I haven’t made a serious post in at least over two weeks, possibly three. I think the only way I could discern the amount of time that’s passed since my last blog is based on my current number of sit ups. I have gone up to 100 a night, which is a reasonable amount to stay at for the foreseeable future, instead favouring to work on my upper body strength via push ups, which I find currently extremely challenging.

I have been reasonably busy in other endeavours durring the time since my last blog. I made a trip up (or down, I forget) to London to help my girlfriends mum and uncle move some furniture out the house of another uncle, who tragically passed away recently. It was a lot of work, we had to drive a tank of a van to carry all the stuff back. In the end, we took 2 large sofas, 1 television, 1 shelving unit, 1 cabinet, 1 dining table and a load of various smaller items. Basically any item that could be of use picked up. It seems disrespectful to let a passed relatives former possessions go to waste. Much better to re-use what you can, almost as a way of remembering them.
There was lots of heavy lifting, more so upon arrival at my girlfriends house. You see, 99% of what we brought back was from the ground floor of her uncles house, but the living room of her house is on the first floor (they live in a gorgeous 3 story house). As such, everything had to be very carefully carried up a narrow set of stairs and around a few tight bends. But eventually everything was in space and cleaned up (there was so much dust). For the first time in over 2 and half years my girlfriend has furniture in her families living room. It’s amazing the difference a sofa can make.
There was a funny revelation about the sofas. A few weeks back, soon after her uncle passed, the majority of the family was staying down at the house. She and her sister were sleeping on the two sofas in the living room, which as anyone who has done the same can testify, isn’t the most comfortable. What was the first thing I noticed about the sofas just before moving them? They both fold down into full size single beds! This proved to be great for me as when I stay over, I have a proper bed to sleep on, rather than on the living room floor (my girlfriends mum is very traditional, a chinese thing, so we can’t share a bed, or participate in any activity that might arrise from said bed sharing, lol).

The following day i got a phone call. I had been invited to a recruitment event at the bar I applied to; the Gun Barrels in Selly Oak/Edgbaston, near the University of Birmingham. It was scheduled for 6pm till 9pm on Wednesday and I was obviously a touch nervous.
Upon arriving, there was already over a dozen people there and we were divided up into one of eight colour coded teams. I was Team Green and made quick work of getting to know my team leader, a current member of staff, and my fellow team mates as they arrived. By the time everyone was there, there was 8 people in each team, meaning that over 60 people were attending! We were told that about 16 to 20 of the people there were going to be hired, so I had a 1/4 to 1/3 chance of nailing the job.
My group was a great bunch, with a mix of personalities. There was a quiet, nerdy girl called Poppy who liked Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, a qualified hairdresser called Amy Whitehouse (not Winehouse) who was very bubbly and an asian guy called Suki who was very chatty and enthusiastic. We had to perform two group activities, both of which seemingly aimed at finding out how much we’d be willing to make idiots of ourselves. The first of which involved marketing two fictional products from a list. We chose the one legged stool (The Monostool) and laxative chocolate (ChocoLog, Bang, and the Turd is gone!). The joke slogans went down well, as well as the awesome art work (courtesy of myself).
The second activity was an awards ceremony, Dudes and Dudds of the Year 2010. We were given a list of celebrities and ‘celebrities’ and had to act out the various winners and losers. I was Buzz Lighthyear for this event, so had great bright pink cheeks and a black spiral on my chin. After donning a jumpsuit, I truly looked the part.
Following these two entertaining tasks, there was a one on one interview with one of the staff, which went really well. After a couple of drinks, including a pint of rather nice strawberry beer, I headed home, to await a phonecall the next day if I got the job. This was probably the most anticipated phone call for a job I’ve ever waited for. Then at 1730 the next day, about half an hour after what I thought the cut off was for the call, I noticed a missed call on my phone. Recognising the number, I rang it back and it turned out I got the job! I was so happy! My training starts on Monday, two till five, and the same again on Tuesday, with final training five to six thirty on Wednesday, followed by a small party for the newbie's!

Well, that brings us up to date with what has happened in this past week. I’ve also made a small change to my blog with the addition of ad-sense adverts to see if I can bring in some pence. I’m also adding a logo and I’ve started a new blog. Called The D-Twenty, it’s a dungeons and dragons themed blog for a lot of stuff i realised wouldn’t really fit properly on this blog. Check it out! Also give those adds a click!

Project Lose An Olsen Twin Week 4 or….

So lets get the dull stuff out the way, my exercise crap. This week was a bit of what I’ll call a ‘blip’. On two separate days I ‘over indulged’ By over indulge, I mean one day where I partake in a large amount of funyuns and mountain dew, and another where I again consumed an excess of said funyuns, followed by KFC for dinner, which is never a good plan. But both these transgressions can be put into a suitable context, which I will do so later on.
On a more possitive context, my exercise and fruit consumption has greatly increased. I’m walking an average of 15+ miles a week minimum, with any journey of 2 miles or less being undertaken on foot. As for my sit up reps, I’m up to 50 reps a night, every night (that’s 350 a week!) and hopefully within the next week or so, I’ll be up to 60. I’ve found a devious method into tricking myself that I’m doing less than I am. I break my set down into ever decreasing groups of reps. For example, for 40 reps, I would do 20, rest for a few seconds and have a drink, 10 then rest, 5 then rest, 3, then 2. For my current 50, I’m doing 20, then 15, then 10, then 5. This works very well at helping me pace myself effectively.

Now on to the more awesome parts of my last week. Firstly we have dungeons and dragons on Sunday. Postponed from the previous week due to illness, this session was a prime example in the importance in feedback. By working with my players, I managed to iron out some minor problems they had been having.
There was a hilarious exchange between the five of us about an hour into the session, towards the end of the last encounter. One of my players had received an update to her Magic Missile attack. It now was an instant hit, set damage attack, meaning that minions (high defence, 1 hp monsters) would fall like dominoes before her. She was getting a little drunk with power and in the very last room, she walked in and saw a man in the corner. Literally the first thing she said after I put down the mini was ‘I shoot him with magic missile’ to which the following exchanged took place:

“I use magic missile!”
”Are you sure?”
”Yeah! Blast him with magic missile!”
”Are you really sure?”
”Um, yes? [to other players] Am I sure?”
”What was your quest?”
”Um, kill zombies?!”
Other Player “No, wait, it was to save some guy…..oh! Don’t magic missile him Wessie!”

This lead to a running joke about the groups Wizard using her magic missile to solve every possible problem. Slight cough? Magic missile to prevent spread of infection. Can’t open a jar? Magic missile! Drops her wallet? Magic Missile! It was a running joke for the whole day!

Onto Monday, my girlfriends dad bought us all some really tasty cuts of steak, which combined with tasty chips and long beans, made an amazing dinner. I hadn’t had a rare steak in so long, so it was amazingly tasty!

Then came Tuesday, and the best day of the week by far. You see, I’m signed up with a website that sends people free tickets for advanced screenings of films. And I managed to score a handful of tickets to go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World! I’ve been psyched about this film for months, since reading the comics and I wasn’t disappointed! I’m not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but if you ever played an 8bit game, or played video games full stop, or just ever felt awkward and useless in life, this film is for you. I can best describe it as Wayne's World for bitpunk generation! They nailed the casting, the key plot points, everything! SEE THIS FILM!

THAT IS ALL

Project Lose An Olsen Twin Week 3

Or “My Most Productive Week in a While, With A Few Complaints Thrown in For Fun”

First off, lets start with PLOT. I’ve noticed 3 major things with my weight loss ‘program’

1. I’m finding exercise progressively easier. I’m currently doing 40 sit ups a night and happily walking/cycling at least 4 miles a day. I’ve noticed a steady decrease in how tired I am after each bought of exercise. Now the obvious result of this is that I’m going to have to increase the amount of exercise in order to keep the benefit up.

2. People have begun to comment on my appearance, in a positive way I may add. I had to laugh when Viv told me that her aunt commented that I looked like I had lost weight and Viv was worried that I’d be offended by that. The only way I could have been offended was if her aunt had instead said “Davyd isn’t looking as fat any more” which would have still be encouraging. I’m finding this kind of feedback much more motivating that looking at scales every morning.

3. I’m not losing fat from the desire areas of my body in the order I’d prefer. In order to illustrate this, let me refer you an diagram.

This is me:

Or, more accurately, this is me:

 

Ideally this is how I’d like to lose weight, with red areas being most urgent, orange being second most, yellow being third most and green being least urgent:

Now this is how I’m currently losing weight:

As you can see, I’ve got much thinner/less flabby arms, but not much change in my stomach, sides and chest. My face is the only area that I’m currently happy with. As I am now, I have knobbly wrists and stringy arms, lol. But it’s still weight loss and I’m going to keep working at it.

Now for something different. This week has been pleasantly productive for me. I’ve finally managed to sort out my job seekers allowance. As some of you may know, I’m currently unemployed and as such have had to resort to claiming benefits. The first of these was job seekers allowance, a not insubstantial sum of £50 a week, which goes a long way when you know how to shop sensibly and eat healthily. After claiming several weeks ago, I received my first payment today, meaning I don’t have to stress over phone and internet bills, which is a weight off my mind.
Secondly there’s housing benefits, in order to help pay my rent. Now I’ve been even more stressed about this simply because it’s taking so long and I’m already behind on this months rent. But today I got a great phone call. My landlord had received my email about needing a proof of tenancy letter and a break down of inclusive bills. Not only is he not annoyed over the delay, he also said that he would make my share of the bills (in other words, how much of my all inclusive rent goes towards said bills) less. Officially this is because I rent the smallest room. What this does mean is that I will receive more towards my rent. Once I’ve got this letter and all my proof is sent off, hopefully it will all finally be sorted.

On a more recreational note, I’ve finally finished writing my second Dungeons and Dragons campaign; volume 2: Evil in the Dark. As some of you know, I dungeon master for a group of my friends and my girlfriend, and as part of this I’m writing a series of custom campaigns. Now these aren’t short little dungeon delves, they’re full on stories. The last volume, The Clockwork Quest, was 3 chapters (a chapter being roughly equal to one in game day) spread over 40 pages. This volume that I’ve just finished is 5 chapters over 55 pages with more monsters and loot than I’ve ever had before. Thankfully my group has scheduled to play fortnightly on a Sunday, which is working out really well, with the next meet up this coming Sunday. I’m currently working on a fictionalised account of the players adventures which I’m going to try and publish on here shortly.

Finally, I’ve managed to fix my adobe CS3 master collection. To add a dash of context, a few months ago, thankfully just after I finished uni, I got a rather unpleasant message about serial authentication server errors when I booted up Photoshop cs3. Since then, no matter how many times I tried to install master collection, none of the programs would successfully install, meaning I was stuck using Photoshop 7! I mean considering that we’re on CS5, using cs3 is pretty dated (Photoshop CS3 was released in April 2007, Photoshop 7 in 2002!) I had all but given up, resigned to the fact that my install file was damaged some how. Then I had an idea, I would install it on my girlfriends computer to check it worked. And it did! So I now knew that I needed to fix the problem on my computer. After a bit of research, I found out the adobe clean script, used to remove all tracers of adobe cs3, had a ‘secret’ level 3 clean mode. Normally you’re only given two levels of clean, with the second being the most thorough. Previously this hadn’t worked for me. On discovering there was a third level, I thought hell, I’d give it a shot. And after a few restarts, a chkdsk scan and a long install, I finally had a working copy of adobe master suite cs3! Spectacular! The main motivation for this was the news that I might be getting a small inheritance sum from my gran, who passed away last year. This made me think about what would be the best way to spend this, and one of the first things that came to mind was investing in an Intuos4 Large graphics tablet by Wacom. Now, I’m not going to bore you with specs, let me just say this thing is a beauty! OLED buttons, touch wheel with 4 modes for zoom, opacity or layer scrolling, 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity as well as tilt sensitivity and a widescreen work area bigger than A4 all means this is the device I need to start producing some serious portfolio work. Now this money is definite, but if it does come through, I will hopefully be able to start publishing some sketches and digi-paintings to my deviant art.

Well that’s all for this longer than average blog. Look after yourself internet peoples!

Project Lose An Olsen Twin Week 2

So, week 2 of my ‘exercise’ routine has rolled around and how am I doing I hear you all scream so very, very loud. Well, mixed I would say. Because I spent a lot time at Vivs, I wasn’t able to do my usual cardio, but kept doing my sit-ups. As I currently stand, I can do 40/40 (that’s 40 minutes of cardio, 40 sit ups). The sit-ups are getting easier surprisingly quickly. But yes, no cardio for a lot of this week, which wasn’t bothering me too much, because I was under the impression, that my previous impression, that doing reps didn’t burn much fat, just built muscle, was a wrong impression. But it later turned out that I had the wrong impression about having the wrong impression (but both impressions were still wrong). Long story short, reps don’t burn as much fat as cardio, but the still burn fat and help maintain core muscle. So I was a bit disappointed that I’d let my cardio slip. But there I found out something (not really that) surprising; walking and running burn roughly the same calories per mile.

You see, I usually calculated my cardio burn based on calories per hour, which is a very deceptive measurement scale. If you think about it, it would be much easier to walk for an hour than maybe run at a solid pace for 30 minutes, but running burns more calories per hour than walking, so walking isn’t the best option. But then I discovered/realised that if I look at calories per mile rather than per hour, they’re both the same, and it’s all due to thermodynamics. You see, calories are a measurement of energy, and work is the amount of energy (foodies) expended/transferred by moving a mass (fatty me) through a distance (the walk to shops). This is independent of velocity, and as such, a walk to the shops one mile away burns as many calories as a run to the same shop. Obviously the power (work done over time) is much higher for running, but when time isn’t a concern, walking is much better an option.

With this ‘new’ found knowledge in hand, I decided to sort out some errands I had to run. Now, a 4 mph walk speed burns 114 calories per mile, slower than this burns slightly less. With this in mind, I came up with a clever little plan:

1. Using Google maps, I planned my route to where I was going, choosing the longest route I could feasibly do (just under two miles). The trick is to not pick a route that is inanely longer, just say the longest out of your usual two or three routes.
2. Again using the googly maps, I made a note of 1/2 mile way point landmarks along the route. This worked out really well.
3. Knowing that I wanted to average 4mph, I set myself of reaching each waypoint at 7m30s intervals.
4. I left, stop watch running to help me keep pace. 4mph is a little faster than most peoples walking speed, think ‘the train is pulling into the station, you’re almost at the platform, ticket in hand, don’t want to run so you’ll just walk fast’ It’s sustainable
5. Much to my surprise, I made it to my destination within a minute (under actually) of my target and my return journey was bang on.

After working out how far I’d walked today (about 10 miles) I calculated I’d burnt just over 900 calories! I did two forty minute round trips (had to take something back to the shop two hours after purchasing it) and one thirty minute round trip.

Having learnt that walking can be a very viable way of burning the pounds, I’m planning to do it more. Obviously 4mph might not be feasible if you’re walking with others, but even 3mph burns 90 calories a mile!

I found the majority of my information from this article on the interwebnettubes. I haven’t managed to weigh myself yet (I’m still assuming I’m pretty close to my starting 200lb) but I’ve noticed that my wrists are looking thinner, lol!