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!

Project Lose An Olsen Twin Week 1

So, I’ve managed one whole week of better eating and conscientious exercise. And I’m already seeing the benefits! What a great start! It’s all part of the Philip DeFranco inspired project ‘Lose An Olsen Twin’. In other words, lose 65lbs. This may seem like a lofty goal, but I always like to aim high. My starting weight for this is 200lbs (14.5 stones), whereas for my height, my ideal weight is somewhere in the region of 155lbs (11 stones). This is something I really want, so I’m going to go for it!

Now to clarify, this isn’t some kind of fad diet, where I’m only allowed to eat watermelon, orange peel and cabbage leaves steamed under a full moon. Rather, I’m simply counting my calories while reducing my intake of negative dietary components. You see, the crux of losing weight is consuming less calories than you expend. You do that and your body begins burning your stores of fat, thus you lose weight. Additionally, eating slow burning carbohydrates (long sugar chains) gives you energy that keeps you going and doesn’t get immediately stored as fat. Conversely, avoiding simple sugars (short sugar chains) means you don’t have to worry about doing exercise straight after eating a mouthful. The same goes for swapping out saturated fats (hard to break down, thus more readily stored as fat deposits) for unsaturated fats (easily broken down into fat acids, thus not stored as fatty deposits) helps. I’m still getting to eat what I like, including the occasional burger, or even kebab. I’m just eating in moderation.

As for exercise, I have a simple routine. I do a period of cardiovascular exercise, good for getting up heart rate, followed by reps, one rep for every minute of cardio. This mix of endurance and intense exercise covers all bases and is more enjoyable than just running or just lifting weights.

Now for my progress. When I started out a week ago, I was doing 10 minutes of cardio and 10 reps. Within a week, I’m up to 30 minutes of continuous cardio and 30 reps, in my case, 30 sit ups. I’m hoping to reach 60/60 by the end of the month and maintain that for the long run, adding some additional routines or varying my reps to including push ups, once I’ve got my upper body strength up a bit more. The fact that I’m doing 30 sit ups a night daily is amazing me, I never thought I’d be able to do that.

In real terms, I’ve not been able to monitor my weight due a lack of bathroom scales. Instead I’m monitoring my progress in three ways. Firstly, as I mentioned above, I’m tracking the improvement in my stamina and endurance, which is very encouraging. I’m also starting to enjoy that sense of being worn out afterwards, which is very satisfying.

Secondly I’m observing my appearance, which is the primary motivation. I want to look healthier, and already it seems to be working. I’ve lost a bit of weight from my face and arms and my ‘love handles’ are beginning to reduce.

Finally, I’m using my wardrobe to see how well I’m doing. As I’m sure a lot of people do, I have a few articles of clothing that range from ‘snug’ to just damn well don’t fit. My goal is to not have to buy new clothes, just fit into the stuff I haven’t worn in a while. And it’s working already. A shirt I bought about a year ago that got to tight for me to comfortably wear around Christmas is already fitting better. I have a scale of various tops that will let me gauge my progress in real, practical terms and also serve as excellent motivation.

I plan on keeping a photographic record (which won’t be posted on here you’ll be glad to know) so I can make better comparisons of my progress. This is a long term thing for me, so I’m not expecting to hit my ideal weight any time soon. Wish me luck!

What? He’s Back? (I honestly didn’t care)

Hello all 3 people that read this. As you’ve probably not been caring about, I haven’t posted a blog entry in fucking ages! This is because…..

dum dum dum

…I really couldn’t be arsed. It was mainly due to the fact I started doing these 365 Da(v)y(d)s, monthly summaries of last year. It seemed like such a great idea at first and I was enjoying myself. But I have this horrible mentality that the moment I’m ‘forced’ to do something, I immediately hate doing it with a passion. That’s the main reason why I don’t play games like Resident Evil. The whole mentality of playing between save points makes me feel ‘forced’ to play, so I just stop playing. Today I was going to get a book out of the library, but it was on 7 day loan only. Now I knew I could read not only this book, but the book I’m currently reading, easily within the week, but being forced to would mean I’d absolutely hate it. Well back to the blog. So I was feeling very forced to complete each entry, but I also felt that it would be a terrible sin to publish any other blog entries before I completed my 2009 summary, ‘breaking’ the chronological recap of my year. So my blog became covered in digital dust as I tried to recapture the desire to finish my ‘09 recap. In the mean time, half finished blogs on other subjects built up in my drafts column, until today. Today I decided that I just needed to blog what I felt like. I’ve been dying to blog some of my dungeons and dragons exploits because I know at least 1 person who reads this (I’m talking about you Will!) will find that interesting. So sorry if you were remotely interested in my coverage of last year, that’s old news!

So what will be happening in the blogs to come? Well first off, I’m gonna talk more about personal stuff. I don’t really have anywhere to vent that’s as good as here. Secondly, there’ll be more dnd stuff. I’m gonna try my hand at summarising the adventures of my friends party in literary form, along with talking about my design process. And finally, whatever else comes to mind. For example, I’ve started a more conscientious weight loss ‘program’ called ‘Project Lose an Olsen Twin’. Inspired by my favourite Youtuber, Phillip DeFranco, the goal is to lose 65lbs (a little over 4 stone or 30kg) It’s a hell of a big target, but will put me in a much healthier weight bracket (borderline obese/overweight to ideal)
My game plan is the following: walk any distance 30 mins or less on foot, unless raining (I don’t want to get ill), 20 sit ups a night, increasing by 5 sit ups a week minimum, eat less than 1800 calories a day. Fingers crossed this should help me shed some pounds. I’m currently at about 200lb (14.5 stone/90kg), but don’t have any scales atm to keep track of my progress.

I think the next post will be my dnd post, so laters.

Scott Pilgrim in cubeecraft form. Ramona Flowers and Knives Chau to follow

365 Da(v)y(d)s - July

This month was the month of being made unemployed, two weddings, a funeral and a theme park, so a bit uppity downy for me (literally). It got off to a mixed start with my last day of work. I haven’t mentioned my work up until now really, so let me explain. I worked, up until this month, in a bureau de change in WH Smiths in Solihul. It was hardly a sensible business choice in opening it there, seeing as opposite/adjacent the store was 4 other bureau de changes. Needless to say, business was sloooooooooow, to the point where I’d take a book from the book department upstairs and read it in one shift ¬¬. So yeah, after working there for little over a year, they decided to close the branch.
It wasn’t all bad though. I got some nice redundancy pay and also would be getting student loan for my final year, so I wouldn’t need to work, although an income would be beneficial.

Following that final weekend of paid employment, me and Viv made our way south, to the sleep realm of Devon, home of farmers and hobbits! It was my dads wedding, third times the charm, and me and Viv had been invited.

We first made our way to Bicester, where my brother would give us a lift down to Devon. Viv enjoys big sofa + big TV whenever we are down.

The journey down was a bit hecktic, as on the way, my brother had a prang with another car. It looked a lot worse than it was and my bro was a bit shook up. It didn’t help that the husband of the driver in the other car kept getting up in Chris’ face, which was really intimidating for him.

We finally made it down to my dads. As is a tradition there, we made a fire and blew stuff up!

I’m not kidding. Whenever I go down to my dads, we always start a little fire in the garden burner and drop a can of something into it to watch it explode. I think this time it was a tin of kidney beans, which sprayed burning beans all over his (and his neighbours) garden with one helluva bang!

For all the isolation, the view was quite nice

When it came to the actual ceremony, all in all, it was quite a nice little affair. The whole thing was held at a post restaurant by the side of a river, and I have to say, I scrubbed up okay. My brother was best man/photographer, two responsibilities I was glad not to burdened with. I had to laugh at my dads reaction when trying to get round explaining that he’d asked Chris to be his best man, I interrupted and explained that a) I expected him too, as Chris spends more time down with my him than I do and b) I HATE speeches. I’ve never given one, but I don’t EVER plan to.

Chris gets his photography on while my dad posses.

Seeing as we were down for a few days, my dad paid for ‘us kids’ (me and Viv included) to visit Crealy Park. Think of it as a kiddy theme park combined with a petting zoo. It was a bit immature, but still fun. Viv had a lot of fun in the petting zoo part, especially around the rabbits, as this facial expression will testify:

Following our little day trip, me and Viv had one good nights sleep before the journey back to brum, for the following day, we would be travelling into London for a CHINESE WEDDING!

A CHINESE WEDDING is worthy of ALL CAPS for one simple reason; the food! We were only going to the banquet, which is simply the best part.
I can’t remember all the courses we had, but there was easily more than six! I had roast piglet, fish, crabs, prawns, beef, sticky rice, *drools* and it was all so good. I think the piglet was my favourite, prooving the following graph true

Viv and I had a lot fun in London and at the banquet, but we were both glad to get back and relax a bit from travelling. Well, my relaxation would be short lived. A little over a week later, my gran passed away. She had been suffering from cancer and to be perfectly honest, it was a blessing for the suffering to be over. I’m not really the kind of person that dwells on or is bothered by death. My approach to mourning is that you shouldn’t. Celebrate the persons life instead. So, back down to Devon, this time for much less cheerful reasons than my previous visit.

Just to prove that this truly was my month of epic travellings, the day after getting back up from Devon, me and Viv were heading down south again, this time to Guildford for Viv’s resits. I was going because it would be a chance to hang out with some cool peoples and offer Viv moral support (not that she’d need it. Viv is most awesome with exams) Little did I know what awaited me!

You see, Will and Hannah were planning and driving to Thorpe Park! And I had some BOGOF vouchers courtesy of my mum! So me and Viv got to go to Thorpe Park with Will, Hannah and Annie, for free! And it was AMAZING! I’ve been to Alton Towers before, but there was something better about Thorpe Park. It had similar rides to Alton Towers, but they were bigger, fasted and higher. Here’s a little summary of the rides we went on:

Samurai – A three on three spoked ride with chairs on each arm and the arms swivelled. Not very long or fast, but quite dizzy making.

Colossus – A long, standard type rollercoaster featuring the most number of loops of any coaster in the UK. This was definitely lot of fun and a good description would be Quiddich as a ride.

Nemesis Inferno – Much like Nemesis famous at Alton Towers, a feet loose coaster, but faster and higher, and long I think.

X:/No Way Out – A backwards facing rollercoaster, in the dark. This one wasn’t too fast, but very disorientating.

Vortex – 6 sets of inward facing seats on an arm that swings through an almost 360 degree arc, this was the first ride we went on, and a bloody good start to the day.

Stealth – This was an incredible thrill of a ride. Basically, you accelerate STUPIDLY fast (0-80mph in 2 seconds), then travel straight up (over 200 feet). After that, you pass over the outside of the arc at the top and plummet downwards. I had to close my eyes for this one, only to open them at the top and all I saw was sky, until the car when further round the arc and I saw the whole park!

SAW – This was a ride based on the popular film series and was probably the best ride there. It featured stops, starts, loops and vertical drops. At one point it looks like you’re going to drop straight into some blades, but the car dips just underneath them. A great ride.

All in all, the 5 of us had an amazing time. Annie didn’t like Stealth so much, actually turning green in the queue as we waited to get on, but she loved the other rides.
All things considered, I think this was a really great month, even with my Gran dying. But in a way, that was a good thing too, because it meant she didn’t had to suffer the cancer any more, so there’s always a silver lining.

Number of Updates: 28

First Update: “Davyd last weekend of work is fast approaching (Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:46:06 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd is tired (Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:43:13 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd is bittorrent an example of quantum mechanics? The speed seems to drop whenever I observe it! (Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:56:29 GMT)”