Straight epic fail

It turns out these days that I’m real lazy guy. I mean, reeeaaal lazy. As you may know, I was announcing “Straight edge 3.0” a couple of weeks ago and had so many great plans and goals in mind, and now apparently NOTHING is happening. The biggest bummer is, that I don’t really feel the need for a project like this. On the other side, this is not a 100% correct. I do feel like a fat cow these days and it’s much more than just obvious that I completely lost shape. I’ve got around 104kg of weight, which is 12kg higher than my lowest weight in the very first straight edge project. It’s a kind of distracting to have these rules once again and till now does it take a lot of overcoming to get to the gym. The will to get to gym actually overcame me not at all till now, but the positive thing, I feel like I have to, I also feel the lust to finally do some fitness and sports but as mentioned before, I’m a kind of shy or afraid to finally go there. Not sure where this fear actually comes from, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to disappear as soon as I’ve been to gym for the first time again. When it comes to nutrition, I also fail, but not as badly as I did a couple of days ago. I was near cancelling Straight edge 3.0, but I guess, I leave it in this kind of a waiting position before throwing everything finally away.

For those of you, who were missing the “Game of the week #5/2011” I can only say, there wasn’t actually a game that totally deserved this title. I played a lot of StarCraft II and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and I haven’t really found the time to get into something more indepently. “Magicka” still looks promising for a title like this, but I would like to wait until the major bug fixing period is over and the game is getting playable without distracting bugs. I’ve got some feedback from other “Magicka” player telling me, that their game runs perfectly fine, maybe, I can’t share this point of view and will wait until I can tell the same. I’ll hopefully be able to announce and shortly review the new “Game of the week” at least on Friday.

What was and what will be

A year’s gone and a new decades arrived. So what’s my resume for the decade that has just passed in the 21st century on this ball called Earth (“How peaceful it looks…”)? Great Scott, I don’t know and it’s barely possible to capture a whole decade in one single blog entry so I simply don’t resume the past decade. But what are my plans for the next decade? Guess what, I just don’t know but I can tell you some of my plans for this year. 2011 will hopefully be the year were I’ll go back to more creative oriented activities. I’ll definately do some more photography and will try to switch to some portrait shots or let us say, I’ll switch from landscape photography to something more human related because for me is the portrait photography something that looks like hard to handle and I want this challenge, because challenges simply makes you better and let you improve yourself.

One thing that’s still unfinished and I simply haven’t found the time for, were the bunch of music plans I had for 2010. I missed to remaster Narcosis’ “Super Satan Terror Demon 665.5” mini CD and to upload it. I also missed to get the original tracks for the CDs so I have to do some more complex re-editing to tracks that I got. It’s such a pain in the ass that the studio were we once recorded this master piece of modern black- and death-metal is no more (/irony off).

The second music project hasn’t been touched since I first announced it here in this blog because of… well… urm… issues? Some might remember, it was this electro, industrial thing called “Degraduated to be machine” which includes till now two barely finished tracks. The problem is, that I was working on the studio software several times but it turned out that my plans are much more complex than they first seemed to be. I want this whole thing to get much better than the first solo CD of mine which was more a bunch tracks mixed together, this second one follows a concept and I want this as perfect as it can be. PERIOD! I guess, it won’t be finished by the end of this year so don’t expect anything.

Recording Studio

Something that I’m going to do pretty soon is to upgrade my PC. I decided not to buy me a new Android phone and to upgrade my PC instead. There were to many issues and failures that were bothering me that led me finally to this decision. It’s a kind of sad, because I really liked the black mainboard and the CPU watercooler with its red LEDs inside that made the whole system look so damn eeeeeviiiiiil. I’ll give some details on the upgrade in another blog entry.

Back to music and the whole life thing. I still have this plan to move to Berlin, maybe it’s going to happen this year if I can make it to find a job there. If I can make it I’ll free my guitars from the dust and try to find some guys/girls to start a new band, I still feel like a stoner band would be nice, with a girl drummer.

Some might ask, what happened to straight edge? Well, straight edge will be back as sooner as you think. It might start on January 16th, maybe later. It all depends on the big thing called time and I never have enough time for anything. It’s going to be the “Straight Edge 3.0 Project” with customized rules and a new training plan that does not only inlcude a plan for gym, it will also include some other activities. I currently drink some alcohol from time to time but only small lashings and no hard liqueur. I’m so NOT satisfied with the fact that I started with this bad habit again and it will stop because I simply can’t stand the dizzyness while drinking something.

Any traveling plans for this year? Yes, but nothing totally fixed. I was wondering if I can make it to Asia this year, countries like Japan, Indonesia and South Korea has always been in my focus, but unfortunately is it so massively expensive that I don’t know how to pay for this. For the opposite direction, well, there might be a trip to New York, I always wanted to go to New York, a huge, big, crowded, dirty city that always fascinated me. I also have to mention that I have these itchy feet for Seattle, I can’t help it but Seattle is beside Berlin a city where I can go to at any time. To make a long story short, there’ll be definately a trip to the U.S. but no exact plans for the rest of the world. Hmmm, the orient could be nice, too.

Hadouken

Concert plans. There’s only ONE concert by now I have a  ticket for and that is the rocking, mind blowing, beloved FU MANCHU. Yes, I got a Fu Manchu ticket for Christmas again and I will see them in March. Damn it, I fucking love this band. If there’s a Misfits concert somewhere here around Germany I would go there too, no matter what it costs. Till now I am very unsure if I should go to the Roger Waters concert in Berlin and see The Wall for a second time. It would be nice to see the show in Berlin, because for me it’s something special because this very one album influenced my musical taste so much, but once again, the tickets are expensive and the seats you can get at the moment are totally crap. We will see.

Last but not least, gaming plans for this year. First of all, I’m thinking about canceling my ‘World of Warcraft’ subscription because I don’t like the new add-on. The balance between casual gaming and going back to the roots of ‘World of Warcraft’ totally failed, in my opinion. Maybe I’ll switch back to ‘Champions Online’ as soon as you can play it for free or I will give ‘DC Universe’ a try. I’m following TotalBiscuit on YouTube and he’s playing the beta at the moment and it looked nice and auspicious to me. Non-MMO games I’m definately going to play are ‘Crysis’ and ‘F.3.A.R. 3’ in March. ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ sometime by the beginning of this year and hopefully id softwares’ ‘Rage’ in September.

There will be some minor changes to this blog, too. One thing is, that there will be a “Game of the week” post every week with a kind of a review and I will do the same stuff with music, movies and photography. Anyhow, the “Game of the week” thing is for sure and the rest will come up soon and simply follows within the next weeks and month. …hmmm… longest blog post ever… yeah!!!

Runner’s sickness

After a long period without sports caused by some rigid laziness and a week of simply being sick I finally made it back to the gym and some tough and rough training sessions. I say tough and rough because this is going to last till my long awaited vacation (hell, am I excited) and it will be four weeks, to be exact and offers no room for longer rests or pauses. It’s five times a week, two hours and a half of merciless training every morning. According to the fact that I haven’t been to gym for such a long time I will stick to these conditions only for these four weeks because more of this training plan could and will cause serious injuries to me and my body. Like I said, there’s no time for longer rests except the weekends. I try to watch my nutrition more carefully with a focus on protein rich food. Hopefully I’ll loose 4-5kg in these four weeks and my overall body condition improves.

I already found one big disadvantage of this training, because I got to know the runner’s diarrhea again. Fortunately does it not affect me too hard but my digestion is definately disturbed and is not functioning very well. I can’t deny that I have an overweight of around 10-15kg which is one cause for this digestion thingy. Another cause is a loss of blood in the digestive tract because, logically, the blood is needed elsewhere when I run for like 30 minutes. The regeneration phase takes about 10-16 hours after the training and everything is fine again. I’ve also did some research on this and it is said that this kind of runner’s sickness disappears after a while, mainly when the whole circulation got more comfortable with the “act of running” and can provide the correct amount of blood everywhere. Hopefully…

More sports

As you may I am stuck in a vicious circle that makes it nearly impossible for me to go to gym again. Well, a friend of mine noticed this problem too and so she asked me if she should give me some kind of a kick and join her for some company in the gym. I am pretty sure if I just licked some blood in gym again and can fall back to my daily habits everything will be fine again. It’s pretty necessary for me to get a little bit more sporty again because after this relatively long period without sports I feel a kind of rusty (back hurts sometimes, etc. etc.)

We’ll hit the road to gym in nearly two hours and I am much excited about how I’ll make myself in gym again. Hopefully I’ll not completely fail and the muscle ache will not be too horrible.

Reporting for duty

Nothing really special happened within the last few days except some nerdy things. The holy equipment for my paladin in WoW is nearly completely epic and I look forward to my first instances as a holy paladin though I have no idea how it actually works because I am a tank since level 25 or something. Probably will I use some non-hero instances to learn before I kick the real shit (yap, yap, yap… the overheal will shine over my healing failures). On the other hand I am busy in WoW with some crafting things that I left on the way while hardcore leveling my paladin. Damn, I hate it when a game turns to a work like thing. I used to start a priest and a warrior for some twinking. The priest plays a little bit lame in low level but the warrior totally rocks and I guess I will play it more often from time to time.

Besides all this were I working on my media center again and it’s in a kind of RC state now. Windows 7 was by far the better choice compared to Linux Mint, though Linux has had a fine performance but due to some screen tearing issues and the complexity that comes into play when using a dual-boot system as a media center, it had to leave the hall. The media center choice itself fell on XBMC. The Windows Media Center is a kind of a rude joke from Microsoft which is absolutely useless in all kinds of ways. The third choice was Moovida but I finally missed some customization features so I switched to XBMC which is more complex in the beginning but very easy to use in the end. I finally made to import all my TV shows correctly to the media library and my movies were found and tagged as well. It’s pretty easy to use and it looks great. I use the standard theme but I guess I’ll give some of the other themes a try in the future.

If you’ll ask yourself what’s up in project “Straight Edge 2.0” can I tell that I follow every rule except the sports rule. Unfortunately. I don’t know when I will do some sport again, probably next week or if everything works perfectly well this week, maybe this weekend. Gladfully am I stuck on a weight around 97kg and it does not increase (Yeah!). So, that’s it for now…

Finish it

This week is the week of the finishing line. Project “Straight Edge” in version 1.0 is going to end on 15th July and on the other side I am pretty sure that my paladin in World of Warcraft will reach level 80. He’s level 77 right now and I’ll kick him up to level 79 this very evening. I bought my first part of the tier-9 set, some real nice shoulder armor that I can send the old shoulders to my undead warrior. Yep, yep, yep account bound items rule

But back to straight edge and a preview of version 2.0 of the project. There’s no doubt, version 2.0 will last for twelve month and there will be some rule changes. I was recognizing a lot of rule breaks when it comes to nutrition. You might remember the change to rule #5 because there was a kind of backdoor in consideration with sweets. So I decided to introduce the exception meal where I can whatever I want but only if rule #7 is fulfilled. I personally think that this kind of connecting rules with each other will make the whole thing more interesting and a little bit exciting to me.

Unfortunately is the weather absolutely exhausting these days because the temperature increased drastically but the humidity did not decrease. This like a murder to sports especially when you’re overweighted and your stamina is not as good as it should be. I was on a good way to get a better stamina but with conditions like these I definately have to do a step backwards and I cannot do sports at least four time a weak. If I am able to have two gym sessions a week I could very happy. It’s more a torture than an amusement. I guess I can do two sessions this week and then my vacation and trip to France will start.

If I’ll ever get the chance to do some kind of sports on my vacation I’ll definately grab it by the hand and do it. Meal exceptions are not allowed though it’s my vacation and it mainly there for recovery and fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some nice pictures with my Canon EOS 500D. I haven’t touched my baby for nearly two month and before it comes to vacation I have to shoot some pictures on a marriage. I fucking hate taking pictures of people. Portraits are okay but only if it’s a person I like or I feel comfortable with. But these stupid snapshots of a dumb ass party crowd are what really pisses me off. I haven’t bought my camera to do stupid snap- and mugshots, this is what grannies and old daddies do with their ugly ultra-compact cameras.

The first month

There’s exactly one month that has past in the ‘straight edge’ project. A few friends and colleagues of mine followed me more or less successfull on my stone covered path to the ultimate “edginess” and some who tried to follow cancelled the whole project after a few days. Time for a conclusion…

Like I said a few times in the past, I feel much better now and I can’t say that I miss something urgently. I feel more and more comfortable with waking up at 04:00am to get off to gym to practice my every day workout and training. The training itself turns to a more interesting and less boring point by now because the muscle regeneration and buildup process is nearly done and I can focus more on cardio training. I have done a lot of muscle training, especially bulge, back and legs, to get a kind of more body control in the cardio training and to obviate joint problems. I had these problems last time where I started with sport though, mainly in my knees.

Every gym session, including last week, implied the cross trainer and the bicycle as the only cardio gear. From this week on I decreased the amount of muscle training and increased the cardio training, it’s now about 30 percent muscle to 70 percent cardio training instead of 50/50 that it was before. I jog every day on the treadmill and soon will start with rowing, each 30 minutes plus crosstrainer (40 min) and bicycle (10 min). I guess that this will give me an enormous boost to my reduction of weight (hopefully). I have to mention that the bicycle is only warmup gear, because I ride my bike as much as I can in everyday life.

workout by *Geironimo

My weakest point are my passion, or better obsession, for sweets and chocolate. One rule says that I am not allowed to eat chocolate and I almost made it to live without it. Well, I eat ice cream nearly every day but this is for sure going to be stopped with the next milestone of this project. And I bought me a bar of chocolate yesterday BUT it’s got only 528kcal on 100g and it’s a bar of plain chocolate. One piece every third or fourth day won’t really hurt.

One thing that I absolutely don’t miss are cigarettes and alcohol. Two good things about this are #1 it’s better for my health living without alcohol and cigarettes and #2 I save a lot of money because I don’t have to buy this shit. Drugs are taboo, too.

Well, what can I say at last. I feel very well with my new circumstances in life and I am pretty sure that I will continue with it after 15th July.

Buuurn baby

Before the beginning of the whole straight edge project thing I thought that visiting the gym is going to be a duty call for the first weeks or even months. But I was mistaken, the last two sessions in gym gave me back the passion and the willpower to get something done and moving and to improve myself. While being in gym and feeling once again the burning of my muscles and defeating my ratfink in the cardio area the joy and fun came back much earlier than I thought. Honestly I cannot wait to get into gym again. Today is a day off to get a little rest and tomorrow I will try to go to gym in the early morning at around 5:00 am just to see if it’s possible to get a satisfying train result or if I fall instantly asleep on the reverse butterfly. We will see…

I have to mention that since the beginning of my personal challenge project I gained about 4lbs of weight and I do not know where it came from. Well, okay there was this pepperoni that crossed my way and told me to eat her but on the other hand I don’t really care about weight in the first 3-4 weeks because I personally think that my whole body and metabolism is so irritated about the things happening right now that my weight for sure will go up and down like a rollercoaster. Anyhow, the whole project is mainly about resisting things in everyday life and NOT about losing weight.

Living straight edge

Something has to change, something real massive has to change – me.

My weight increased about 11kg during the past 6 months. Actually I stopped smoking and now I am smoking again. I stopped abusing alcohol and now I am drinking alcohol again. Disturbed by these three facts I decided to start a new personal project that will start on 15th May and will have its first big milestone 15th July. I will call it “Living straight edge” and by now it includes the following rules based on the straight edge movement

  1. Say no to alcohol! Do not drink alcohol!
  2. Say no to cigarettes! Do not smoke!
  3. Say no to caffeine! Do not drink coffee or coke and things like that!
  4. Say no to adiposity! Lose 10kg of weight and increase your stamina!
  5. Say no to any kind of drugs! Period!
  6. Say no to chocolate and candy! Subsist yourself healthy!
  7. Say no to couch potatoes! Do sport and fitness at least four times a week!

Like I said, these are the magic rules by now that I will try to follow from 15th May till 15th July. I will document progress in this blog and I will also let you know of the troubles and seducements I will have to handle and to face with. I am sure that this is a real hard project but life would be pretty boring without challenges. If this project lasts and survives until 15th July it will continue but the rules will change.