Twin Peaks. Never saw it.

Recently been hearing comparisons of movies and games to it so I decide to check it out. Watched the pilot. I’m like: “why is Moby’s Go playing all the time?” So it turns out that Moby rerecorded the theme and put it into a tune he already had called Go. Apparently there was a large cult following of Twin Peaks in the electronica scene and many people were releasing remixes.

Then that Big Ed guy is the dude from Dune who says Mordeeb all the time. Oh oh, David Lynch did this. This makes sense because he did Dune. Weirdo.

Throughout, I thought this was the Northern Exposure show. Oh, it turns out that this show was shot in the same town and aired around the same time. How confusing. I thought the tone was going to be mild like Northern Exposure but it’s not at all. Continuing with ep #1 tonight…

Now this is interesting. This dude at nonsensicality.com wrote a pi.cgi program that takes the passed URL and tries to give you a directory to the next bit of π. Now, I can’t quite tell if it’s feeding back primes, I would guess it is but maybe it’s just giving back odd numbers. I’m not sure.

So the funny part is, I found this as a part of Google challenge. A Cory Forsyth was talking about solving the intersection between π and prime numbers. Google had a challenge where you’d enter {first prime number in π}.com and then that’d take you to the next challenge. If you got to the end, you got a job (I suppose). It turned out to be e and prime numbers but I was still impressed with Cory’s solution in ruby.

Anyway, I was searching for his answer on the web and this cgi program was indexed by google. I had 10,000 digits of π in a text file so I wanted to see how far it’d work.

It broke at 4096 digits which possibly is a browser limitation. 4095 digits worked which you can see following this OMG HUGE LINK. The slashes were inserted by me and are pretty random. I think his CGI would continue working for a while given an infinite POST string. Unfortunately HTTP POSTs stop at 4096, lol. That’s a big POST.

Maybe he has some memory limits on the input (like 32-bit int or something). I dunno, I’d guess he’s written it in Perl. His site reminds me of my old fuzzylemon screw around pre-blog site. Ah memories.

Bit.ly wouldn’t let me shrink that url, lol.

In the middle of a stackoverflow podcast, Joel’s PC started making a bunch of noises. He apologized, closed the app or hit mute and continued on. Today in a database course, a student in front of me got a little ding on their phone. She started typing away and each key she pressed made a little beep as she typed. Last week when I was playing around with Ventrilo coding, the full up Windows Ventrilo client makes a noise every time an event happens. You connect: *BONG*. You join a channel: *Whoop!*. You blink your face: *errrrrvvvrp!*.

Do we really need this kind of feedback? I know when I blink. I know when I press the add minute button on the microwave. I know when the letter F shows up in a mobile phone email subject line Re: STFU. I am not a goddamn leper. I can feel my face. I can feel my phone. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Let me look around my man cave. The only thing I want to make noise is my speakers when playing tunes. I want my headphones to make noise when making tunes. I want my piano to make noise when pretending I can sing tunes. Essentially these things are built to make noise. Without sound they have no purpose at all. On the contrary, electronics and software exist to get shit done. Not to convey a sense of blah blah blah with sound effects. The Xbox 360 makes a beep when you turn it on. As if you can’t hear the goddamn helicopter hooker fan blowing. It’s obvious that’s it’s on. I see a variety of blinking lights and my nasal cavities are cauterized by the GPU heat. It can’t be a seeing-impaired feature. There’s a really big VIDEO in video game.

I got your memo 360. You are on. You are on like Donkey Kong in Tron. I fucking get it.

Seven years ago I bought a microwave button soley for the reason that it has a silence button on it. When you pressed keys, it didn’t beep. Every PC I have control of has it’s volume muted. I specifically researched dummy headphone plugs because when you boot a Mac it makes the startup sound unless you have headphones plugged in. I know where Skype, Ventrilo, Windows, Mac, Linux, iChat and every other beepy-swooshy-bongy-pongy software keeps it’s sound profiles. The ones that I like are the ones that have a “No Sounds” profile. The ones that don’t get moved to the “maybe uninstall if a better alternative comes up”. I’m goddamn serious.

Shut the prison-rape fuck up.

A really awesome birthday present just came in the mail. Chris Lange, a local artist and photographer makes collages out of nintendo power mags. This one took a while to arrive, I think he’s been busy lately. I don’t know for sure and that’s not the point. I love his work. He’s already got one of his pieces hanging in the Nintendo office. Go successful art!

We asked him to do a black mage (Vivi style). It came out really great. You can see a page number from nintendo power and all the detail that he had to do.

Went to the beach for New Years 2010. It was about 30 degrees there and windy as crap. Obviously no one was the beach because it was a very cold January. A few interesting things happened while we were there.

• There were surfers in the water. I don’t get it. They had bodysuits, sure. But we all were freezing in the air and they were in the water. Crazy pants.
• My gas cap closed in the wind when I was filling up. A little gas cap. The car door was like a sail. I didn’t have to close it, I just let it go and the wind slammed it shut.
• I heard an older couple talking at the outlets. The woman said, “you should get that coat”. The old man replied, “well I might die tomorrow and that would be a waste of a coat”.
• I was buying a poker set at Wal-Mart (so crappy) and I was Twittering while I was waiting for her to ring it up. She rang it up faster than I thought and she was waiting for me to pay. I looked up eventually and she was Twittering. I swiped my card and walked out. For a moment there, we were both Twittering at the check-out and everything was standing still.

On another note, I’m trying to say twenty ten instead of two thousand ten because it was nineteen eighty and not nineteen thousand eighty.

Happy New Year. We spent many days at the Beach with my sister. It was good seeing her bump. I really had a good holiday this year, it was heartwarming and refreshing. Cinnamon buns, family/friends and time away from tech/media.

Getting back to tech/media (doh), I fired up Borderlands finally and it’s a blast. It’s got a lot of ‘tude and style for sure. An outside Bioshock really. I was inspired to play it after watching a quicklook on Giant Bomb. A quick word about Giant Bomb, it’s Jeff from Gamespot’s new gig. I mean, he co-founded it. It’s a good site that I mostly agree with (although I don’t agree with everything they recommend). It’s got a fresh take on reviews and it’s currently my go-to site for game news/reviews. They have a podcast I listen to a lot and they have lots of good footage and explanations in the quicklooks. The quick looks to me are very organic “show me” intros to a game. Their explanations of Magna Carta 2 and Shattered Memories (just to name two) were uncommercial and humorous.

Resolutions were thrown around and I was not one of the throwees. I’m sticking to my plan. I quit WoW again (although I really wanted to kill Arthas once) and I’m sticking to my gym plan. Holidays were great but now it’s back to figuring out hard shit at work and today is chest/arms workout. *fist pump*

Before pic: summer running but no lifting. After pic (this is a no pump pic): crappy workout schedule and lots of gym time, including natural protein bars and 5 small meals a day instead of 3 big ones. Improving routine and will track more progress. Before it was about going from zero, now it’s about continuing to build.

My routine has gotten seriously complicated after talking with a lifter at work. He said I wasn’t doing enough activity in my 1 hour. So I reworked everything and I’m going to give it another month to see if it works (thus the pictures). I’m really sore today from dead lifts. I think this new routine is going to work. I hope I can stay focused during the winter.

Good segment on The Bradley Effect by On The Media. Debunks myths like frogs actually hop out of slowly heated water. Ha.

Vibram shoes helps speed

I got some vibram fivefingers shoes. It’s near-barefoot running. It might sound painful but it’s not that bad running on pavement and asphalt. You have to learn to run right because the Nike foam platform is gone. Is it hard on the knees? No one knows yet. My knees don’t hurt but that’s just anecdotal.

Anyway. My goal of sub 06:05 mile came suddenly close when I ran a 06:35 after running a 07:00 flat. I think some more time at the gym doing squats and time at the track with the barefoot stuff will let me break 6 minutes. Just once. I just need to do one mile sub 06:00 to break my middle school and all-time fastest pace. Suddenly it seems very possible. In running shoes, I’d kill myself for 07:15 but barefoot forces you do concentrate on fast turnover (versus long stride). Your feet just can’t hurt themselves when you run barefoot, it’s too painful.

I could go on about general fitness stuff but there’s just too many resources and tips on youtube for free. You can get training tips just by watching a bunch of short videos. I found that a fixed routine isn’t that important but proper technique and insight from these videos is valuable.

So that’s the running bit, let me ramble on about the weight training.

The gym

For my own records, 2 weeks ago I was doing around 3 pull ups and yesterday I did 11. 4 days ago I did 10. These pullups are where my thumbs face me (halfway between a pullup and a chinup), it’s just the type of bar the gym has. It’s good to see the weight that I use go up too. Yay progress. My upper body routine goes something like this:

1. Do as many pullups as I can, last was 11
2. Two hand tricep cable pulldown (overhead leaned over, not in front) – 77 x 15 reps
3. Military pulldown – 90lbs x 10-12 reps (my forearms really burn here, I don’t think I’m doing it right)
4. Do as many pullups as I can again, usually 2 or 3, tired
5. Tricep cable again, 77lbs x 15 reps. Then another 15 with 60lbs keeping hands apart (harder)
6. Bicep curl with 30-35lbs (cable or dumbells)

After all this, I’m just doing repeats of all these in random order. I aim for 45min to 1 hour. Usually I do it too long and sometimes throw in a set of 10 squats @ 110lbs if the gym is busy or I’m getting bored. It’s probably bad to be mixing so many things together. If I’m really pumped and worked hard, I’ll have a protein shake at the end (usually have a protein shake 1 hour before working out). Some days I jog to the gym, on those days it’s really hard running home because my arms feel stiff. I don’t jog to the gym on lower body days.

A full-out lower body day goes something like this:

1. 10x squat rack @ 110lbs (I was using 70lbs to get my form right) These are great! So much energy to do these! Form is key here. Find youtube videos. Don’t hurt yourself. At the end I am very out of breath and hamstrings/quads are burning
2. 10-20 Calf raises @ 70lbs – dumbells or squat rack. Just started these because my calves give out first while running. Not sure yet, running form might be wrong and my routine isn’t solid on these.
3. Leg press. Nothing makes you feel stronger than moving a couple of tons. I do 2 or 3 sets of 10 reps @ 270-290+lbs. I try to explode up and lower slow. Then some calf raises with same weight.
4. Hamstring curl with machine. These are really good for running. It seems to give me more ass-kicking (literally) power during a sprint. I do 2 sets of 10x @ 90lbs.

So the other thing I’ve realized is that remembering my workout isn’t important. If it’s too light or too heavy you learn quick after going 7-10 times to the gym. Eventually you figure out what you should be working out with. I try to work with weight that I can do 3 sets with. If I can’t do 3 sets then I’m doing too much weight. Many times I do a subset of the workouts above. Someone told me that going past 1 hour in the gym is too much.

Rest is important. I wait a day in-between these routines to rest. If I went hard I won’t jog on the rest day. If I jogged on a rest day, I won’t go hard at the gym. Starting out, I was really sore. Now I usually am not sore the next day unless I started a new exercise. For example, playing tennis with a friend made me sore because it was new motions. I don’t know if the protein shakes help with the soreness, I’ve recently stopped drinking them to find out.

So if I do hit sub 06:00, I wonder if I’ll stop all of this crap? Hmm …

I don’t own a netbook but if/when I do. I’m putting jolicloud on it. It’s exactly what I imagine when someone says netbook: a netbook is a stateless window into the internet.

Everything in jolicloud runs fullscreen and there’s no browser. You install webapps with a single click and they run as if they are desktop apps. Maybe this sounds backwards but it’s seamless and transparent where or how you are working. You just work on the cloud. People see your install / removes as social events so you can possibly see what’s cool and new with people you trust or know.

I like the netbook as an AUX device. Something off to the side, like a taskbar or dock icon on steroids. Big ass growl event messages would rock too.

Jolicloud isn’t out of alpha yet. Until then, I guess there’s only the ubuntu netbook remix that it’s based on.

Also, zero hits for better than jolicloud on google. I’ll be the only one with a false hit. Sorry. Googling “better than whatever” with quotes on google is something I swear by. Nothing sifts out opinion and uncovers new ideas faster. Nobody start exploiting it with fake “better than [product | brand]” bot sites goddamn it.