Radixhound's Blog

Christopher Dwan's personal thoughts, interests and family life

Keep on blogging...

Wow, how sad! On my own website I say "You can’t let your web presence become stale!".
This week I'm working on plowing my way through all the tasks I've been neglecting for the past few months. I came across my own website and my heart sank. The most recent entry in my online contributions being from six months ago. It's like I disappeared from the internet.

Well let's kick this thing off with a little reminder. Sing along with me!

Dori

Hey Mr Bumpy Blogger
You know what you gotta do when life gets you down?
Just keep blogging
Just keep blogging
Just keep blogging blogging blogging
What do we do we blog, blog, blog
OH HO HO How I love to blog
When you WAAAAAANNTTT to blog you want to blog

Check your brakes - another use for your iPhone!

My iPhone is just friggin awesome. I keep finding great uses for it. Here's another one. It used to be that I would have to pull the wheels off my car to check the break pad wear. (not having a small mirror hanging around). It just occurred to me today that the placement of the camera on my phone along with the flash would make this easy..

Apparently my brakes have some life left. :-)
Photo

Why Websites are Difficult

Ok, this isn't the only reason why building websites is difficult, but it sure does illustrate a point. 

Please take note of that moment when you were watching the video and you realized that none of the words were entering your mind, your eyes felt glassy and the sounds might as well been birds chirping in the morning sun.

The point is when get someone to build you a website they must care about what you say on your site and spend time to help you to speak plain english. If you insist on saying things your way and your site developer never once bats an eyelid or tries to suggest ways of editing and trying to engage real people then you should try to find someone else to help you with your site. Otherwise it may be as useless as this video.

Fitness awesome - Ido Portal

I just had to share this. Robb Wolf mentioned this guy on his blog recently and I just ran into it today. This is what I am going to dub 'fitness awesome'. This is an exemplar of what I my fitness ideals are - fitness for me is about freedom!

When I improved my fitness, I started running up and down stairs just because I could, doing hand stands all over the place and instead of walking someplace, I would run - just because I could and it didn't hurt one bit. I even started using the monkey bars again at the kids playground.. it's amazing what freedom fitness gives you. 

Now, let me be clear - doing cardio (e.g. stairmaster) for hours each week is not going to lead to fitness. It's just not. 

If you have any doubts about the freedom that comes with real fitness then just watch a dance show like So You Think You Can Dance. Look at the freedom of movement they have! Some of them can practically fly!

Check it out!

Could bicycle helmets be a bad thing?

Could it be that bicycle helmets have done much more harm than they have ever done good? 

It's amazing how many times lately that I'm seeing that things in the world may not be nearly so clear as they seem. You would think that the bicycle helmet, surely, is a good thing. Someone has proven that it's a good thing, right? Not so fast!

Here's some 'facts' from Wikipedia:
  • statisticians are in major contention about what the facts tell us about bicycle helmets
  • it may be that bicycle helmets increase the chance of brain injury and death due to extra rotational force that they can cause
  • many kids have died around the house and playground from being strangled by bicycle helmets
  • bicycle usage has dropped by 80% or so in places where helmets were made legally mandatory
  • the more cyclists on the road, the safer you are statistically speaking
That second last point is a biggie for me. I have a bike, but really I never take it out. When was the last time you hopped on a bike?

Anyway, I stumbled upon this line of discovery after checking out this new electric bike that is totally awesome. I want one.

What a day Canada!!

Wow, just wow! No one could imagine a better ending to the 2010 winder games. Way to go Canada!

I also want to say to team USA: you guys were awesome. That hockey game was ass kickin' in every way! We managed to come out on top with a glorious moment, but it wouldn't have been nearly so good if team USA wasn't such an awesome hockey team.

Way to go to all the athletes. I'm truly inspired by your dedication, performance and strength of will. Goodbye 2010 Olympics. Goodbye world, it was nice to have you here in Vancouver with us!

The butterfly kip!

I don't want to forget that as I was doing pullups today I felt like my body was naturally wanting to do a butterfly kip. The problem is that I haven't trained myself to do them yet. So here's a great video that I found once before. I'll have to try it and see if I can get it down. The trick will be doing it chest to bar..

(Wow, two blog posts in one day!)

Angie took me down today..

Angie: 100 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats - for time. Angie - 1, Chris - 0

I did manage to do 70 of each in about 18 minutes, but broke it up into a set of 50 and a set of 20. The most time was spent on the pull-ups, since after I hit 20 it was a slow slog.

Here's what I learned:

I didn't want to do Angie this morning. I have heard that for some people long slogfests like this can have negative effects on their strength and power. I was starting go down the road of being a perfectionist. Here's the reality though - I'm still a rank amateur! Thoughts of perfection need not trouble me! I still pretty much suck at everything.

What are my goals?

Here's the other thing. My primary goal for getting up and working out in the morning is not to train my body. That's more of a secondary goal. My number one goal is to train my mind and my willpower. I'm tired of being a sissy and I've decided that I've had enough of it. There is too much that needs to be done in life to rest. There are too many people that need someone to give them a hand. That's what training is about for me. I'm overcoming my tendency to sit on my ass and to want to rest and relax all the time. I'm learning what mind over matter really means - and in the morning that means squeezing out 5 more reps even though I want to stop to take a rest first.

I want to spend every moment of life bettering myself or bettering someone else. This means that every moment of every day I should be actively improving myself - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Rest should be an active state - not a state of doing nothing but a state of doing something - getting rest! This means mainly lights out sleeping. When it comes to down time, there are lots of active options: light reading, stretching, listening to a podcast or saying a rosary.

So this morning Angie was perfect! It was right along the lines of my goals. I tossed out all my thoughts of perfection and went to tackle Angie. Turns out I was the one that got tackled. Next time Angie! Next time.