Time to man up!
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under General, Personal, Sport
For some time now, I have been struggling with my weight. It’s not exactly a secret that I’m a big guy, how can it be I can’t be missed!
I wasn’t always this way, when I was in the R.A.F I was in great shape However there came a point when my civilian career career had to take priority. Unfortunately by doing this my fitness took a back seat.
I have been struggling for a while now, I want to lose weight for the same reasons everyone else does. Firstly I want to be healthy, being this size must be having a negative impact on my health, luckily though my blood pressure, blood sugar levels and body as a whole seem to be fairly resilient! Of course there is an element of vanity, but it’s not traditional vanity, I’m not on the pull! I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and be happy with what I see. Not to mention, when I met my now wife I was *deep breath* 5 stone lighter and in great shape. It’s not fair for her in the slightest, while she is very supportive and loves me for me, I want to be in the best shape I can be for her and for my future family (whenever that happens!)
So what have I tried. I have tried everything, but nothing seems to stick. Rather than list everything I have tried, just believe when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING.
A few years back I ran a “Fight Club” with some of the guys I used to work with, it was essentially freestyle MMA sessions. This was something I found really worked and kept me fairly focused, it helped me lose weight and it turns out it fighting was something I enjoyed. Obviously we weren’t at UFC standards, but I would have been quite happy to step into the cage in an amateur capacity. However when I left my last job fighting fell by the way side, I didn’t have the guys there to motivate me anymore and to be honest I wasn’t really game for driving the 60 mile round trip to to have a few fights. In November last year I got into Kettlebells, now THIS was something I got into. Holy shit it’s hard going, I mean it’s hard going up to the point where I wanted to throw up and die; not a word of a lie. To illustrate my point, at one session we did the “10 Minute Test”. The purpose of the test? To break you, to push you so hard your body wanted to explode; it was insane. At the end of it some people were in tears, some were throwing up; I however just stood in the corner trying to remember my name! This is a great workout, but at the level I was training at, it was just unsustainable. So I have now scaled back on the kettlebell and I’m using it as a training supplement as opposed to a mainstay. With this in mind I have decided to go back to fighting. The way I see it is, once I start fight training I have to stay the course. If I let slip I’m not just letting myself down, I’m letting down the rest of the training team. It’s going to get to a point where I’m going to want to compete, so again this is something that I need to help me focus. Let’s face it, if I get into an octagon with 5lbs of leather between my opponents fist and my face, I NEED to be in the best condition from a skills perspective, and potentially more importantly a cardio vascular perspective. I’m starting my Ju-Jitsu classes next week, well they aren’t really classes. The guys that go just now are cage fighters/ mixed martial artists; they are going to trade skills and improve their ground game. It’s no secret that I like to ground and pound when it comes to fighting, sometimes throw in the odd submission here and there; the problem just now is I’m doing a bit of a “Roy Nelson”, using my weight to essentially pin my opponent and hammer them until the fight stops. I want to be able to control the ground with some fluidity and really develop a skill. My stand up (I think is pretty good!) will hopefully be developed by just training with these guys on a regular basis.
At the weight I am not now, I’m too heavy even for the heavyweight class, however if I aim for the top end of the weight class it’ll give me something to aim for. Sure improved health and vanity/self image are the overall goal, however if I use the weight class targets as a goal it’s only one thing to focus on.
One thing I do lack though is training partners for my cardio workout. Sure I could go with a personal trainer, but to be honest given the experience I have with them in the past they just aren’t value for money. So if anyone in the Lossiemouth area wants to go out running with me at 6am gimmie a shout! 
I’m 30 next year, physically this isn’t where I was supposed to be, far from it. But if I screw the nut I know I can get there. Time to man up, no more excuses.
Open Source: Good or bad for learning?
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under General, Tech
Many years ago, my now wife went on a night out with the girls. It meant I was home alone until the early hours of the morning; so instead of buying handfuls of Columbia’s finest export and drafting in a few high class ladies of the twilight hour, I decided to geek out.
At this time I was quite into dabbling with graphic design, I had my copy of Macromedia’s Fireworks and Adobe’s Photoshop; however it didn’t really grab me. So I decided to look into this web design malarkey. So I trawled the net for HTML tutorials and learning material. Armed with notepad.exe, a bucket of coffee and an insatiable thirst for learning off I went. Within the first few hours I had coded basic wee pages, by the end of the night I had moved onto CSS and I was properly hooked! I got a buzz from sitting down and coding a page, and looking at it in my browser! Soon enough the buzz of staring at my beautiful creations on my own 14inch CRT bad boy just wasn’t enough; I needed to let the world see my awesome skills. So I did the only thing I could think of, I turned to Geocities.
Keep in mind I was brand new to this whole publishing content on the web malarkey, I set about making myself a wee site; a few hours later I publish my first site. Words couldn’t explain how chuffed I was! Something I had made all by myself was online for the word to see! Ok it was only a few basic pages of HTML about me, but it was still my own creation. From that point on, I knew I was hooked totally and utterly.
“But Steve, what has all this got to do with Open Source being good or bad for learning?” Shhhhh child, all in good time, all in good time.
One of the guys I used to work with at the time had his own wee mobile DJ business on the side, and as a result he had made himself a rather funky wee website (looking back it was utterly horrible, but to someone like me it was like looking at a Picaso). He pointed me in the direction of a company that were uber cheap for domain name and hosting packages. I can’t remember their name but they were proper terrible, I had to pay for CGI/Perl access and for individual e-mail addresses. At the time though I thought that this was the pinnacle of my very young web career. So I published my first site, it was great fun digging deeper into HTML and CSS, then Java script came along.
As was the fashion at the time, damn near every site had scrolling titles, floating menus and damn near every imaginable piece of Java script in there to make the page look awesome. Now I had tried to learn a wee bit of this magical mystical coding base, however for some reason it just didn’t seem to stick. This frustrated me somewhat, so I started looking for more tutorials on Java script, and came across www.dhtml.com; this was the beginning of the end for my creative juices. dhtml.com back in the day was a bit of a Mecca for us Java script junkies, you had a search about, copied and pasted the code snippets and you were off! I could have all the shiny shiny Java I could get my grubby hands on without ever having to mess about with coding! YAY! This was my new buzz. Soon my site became a massively bloated mess of various Java scripts, but I didn’t care, all I needed to do was find the cool new feature I wanted, copy and paste and it was live! Soon after I started getting lazy with the designs, I found www.elated.com and their pagekits. I downloaded all of em, and reverse engineered them to fit what I wanted. So my site now consisted of absolutely nothing original at all, I hadn’t designed the site, I hadn’t coded any of the extras; but I didn’t really care.
At the time I was a member of a forum called thedude.org. This was the very first forum I had ever joined, and I loved the idea of running a forum! So instead of going back to learning, I went straight to open source. The first forum I ran was called Cutecast and it was made by some guys over at www.artscore.com. This was written entirely in perl, so I had to go back to learning so that I could set it all up and configure it. After a few hours (yes hours) of uploading (dial up 56k zzzzz) configuring and tweaking, my new forum was live! It felt awesome! Totally amazing that I was now the administrator of my very own forum! Little did I know, this was the beginning of the end. My thirst for learning had done a bunk with the Postman and my new Open Source addiction was here.
To cut a very very long story short, I jumped from open source application to open source application, installing bigger and better scripts to waste my time with. I have never considered myself a designer of any sort, sure my graphic skills have gotten better with time, and I have picked up some skills while working with the applications I have come across, but I’m by no means a real designer or coder. In a way I’m quite gutted that I bailed on learning so easily and so early on, I wish I had just stuck to it a little longer and taken the time to build my skills. Instead of the buzz I got from being creative, I got it from finding plug and play solutions to my problems.
This brings me to today. It got me thinking, did open source “ruin” my learning path? Well no, no it didn’t. I got a different buzz from using open source, and because of it I strayed from what had gotten me into the scene in the first place. I don’t regret it, I have been able to help so many people set themselves up online using these Open Source applications and the knowledge I have for tweaking and customising them, I have found a new passion for the dedicated coders and designers out there. I have been able to pick up on newer skills and coding languages. So after many many years of being lazy with the learning aspect of web design, open source has led me back to it. I feel the need to learn and code again, all because open source software has shown me what can be done with time, patience and bucket loads of skill.
So instead of web design, I have started a new journey with application design. Ok I’m virtually back at square one picking up on the likes of PHP and MySQL. Hopefully I don’t get side tracked again and start being lazy again!
Tips for being married to a gamer
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under Funny, Gaming, General
Here’s the deal. As much as I love my wife, when it comes to gaming quite frankly I could shit myself I get so frustrated sometimes.
She knew I was into gaming when we got married, however just recently she has started to step up an offensive on my beloved gaming time. Now I know it’s not meant to drive me bat-shit insane; however it does. So if your husband/wife is a gamer, this wee nugget is for you.
Anger Management
If we are having a bit of a loud sweary moment given the frustration we experience in some games, the worst thing you can say is “But it’s just a game!”
We know it’s a game, and we know in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter; however when you utter those words (and keep in mind if we are going mental shouting/throwing joypads/head-butting the wall) we are liable to fucking explode. We invest time and effort progressing in a game, and if something infuriates us that much to the point that we are visibly unstable, being condescending about it is likely to end you up in a pool of blood screaming “WHY O WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHHHHY!”
How much??
“Yes dear, this game cost £49.99.” Do not preach about “expensive” games; EVER. These are small nuggets of pleasure that we can escape away with when the mood strikes. Especially when you spend £70 on a HAIRCUT. O.k maybe that last point is geared more towards me. Anyway, the point is yes, £50 for a wee game may seem expensive (especially if you are guilty of my first point) but the few hours of escapism we get is priceless. Feel free to fuck off to the shops and spend an equivalent amount on yourself, at least it gives us an hours peace to play!
FEED ME NOW!
On the rare occasion you do let us game for an hour or two, please don’t bring us food or drink while were busy. It’s not that we don’t like nourishment, it’s just that if we want it, we can get it ourselves. If I’m immersed in a game and you put a tin of beer and a plate of fish and chips on front of me it means I have to stop what I’m doing (as not to appear rude) and chow down. If you must provide us with sustenance, the please make it finger snacks, or meals that can be eaten with one hand to allow maximum pwnage.
Can I play?
As far as I’m concerned, you get one chance, and only once chance. I once let my wife join me online playing Rainbow 6 Vegas, after a good 5 minute breakdown of the controls we started. While I fucked up terrorists, she span round in circles staring at the roof/floor saying “This is just shit!”.
On the rare occasion you don’t wander aimlessly like a retarded rhino, and you can venture out of the spawn point, please don’t complain when you get pwnd within a matter of seconds and then proceed to blame it on the game being shit. You are shit, we have skilfully honed skills that only hours of staring blankly at a TV can achieve. Although, at the end of the day you are to be commended for at least trying.
HTC Hero gets ready for Android 2.1 OTA in UK
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under Tech
Waaaaaay heeeeeeey!
About time too HTC! Talkandroid.com last week wrote about the 2.1 update possibly coming to the UK a little over a week ago. Well apparently good things come to those who wait. HTC Europe has begun pushing out groundwork for the 2.1 update OTA to Hero owners today. If your phone receives the update, you will see a notification on the phone and all you have to do is press OK to accept the update, which will download via your data connection or wifi. After installing the update, you can verify it installed correctly by checking the Build number.
From the Home screen, go to Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Build Number. Once there, the new Build number after the update will be 2.73.405.93; 2.73.405.94 (Nordic) & 2.73.405.95 (Greece/ Ireland).
I’ll be keeping my beady little eye on my handset today! I can but hope!
[via HTC]
Wake up HTC!
Posted by Stevieb | Filed under Tech
When I decided to take a foray into the Android market, I chose the HTC Hero as my companion. Solid reviews coupled with a very good deal from a friend that manages a Three store (biiiiiig managers discount, good times….) seemed to make the Hero the obvious choice. I wish I did some more research.
The phone isn’t the problem; quite the opposite the phone is great! I have been using the iPhone as a comparison, there are a few features I’d like to see available on the Android OS that’s currently native on the iPhone, but these things are minor.
What really bugs me, is the shocking speed in which HTC work on implementing the new OS versions. Android is currently sitting on V2.1 (I think but don’t quote me!), and all us poor old HTC Hero chumps are STILL on 1.5! The myriad of features on the newer versions make me wish I had just manned up and spend some cash on a Desire instead. The new Google Maps has turn by turn GPS introduced, and this morning the guys over at the Firefox mobile site released a pre-alpha Fennec build for Android! The only problem, both require 2.0 as a minimum. There are hundreds more awesome apps out there, none of which I can use.
Is this perhaps the idea from HTC? The Hero was a great way for HTC to introduce a handset to the Android market, now they have a good foot hold, fuck the poor Hero chumps; we’ll only actively work on upgraded OS on new models. Is this a ploy to make us upgrade to new shiny handsets? They haven’t given us any other reason to support any other logical conclusions. If they had turned round and said that there were compatibility issues, or some kind of hardware conflicts, then I’m willing to bet the community would have rallied round and helped work towards a resolution. The Android OS is great that it has a dedicated developer user base, why not use that to your advantage when developing and working on compatibility for your HTC hardware?
HTC have said they will release a prerequisite update in June, once the new Éclair OS goes live, then the networks here in the UK will have to fuck about with them to keep them relevant to their network protocols. This is a promise HTC have been making for some time now, I’d be surprised if we see 2.1 for the Hero anytime before October…please PLEASE prove me wrong HTC.
This is me, Steve Bremner. I’m a 29 year old recruitment consultant in the North East of Scotland. I’m happily married to Becky and have been together for 10 years. When I’m not busy being awesome at work, I’m generally being awesome at home doing awesome stuff. Check out the