It’s floating away

Posted on March 16, 2011 by InV4d3r

There’s this strange, weird phenomenon I’ve recently discovered in my life. Everytime I start something with a special goal in a creative matter, it’s no longer coming to an end. When I was younger, like years ago, I finished so many art projects like solo album (which was more a compilation of some tunes of mine). I did some nice stuff with the band I once had and so on. Nowadays everything gets a start and right after beginning the whole thing is stuck or abandoned. I was working on my second solo album and it didn’t make any progress. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop workflow to improve my exposure with these tools. I wanted to do much more photography and it stucked as well. I feel more and more as if time is slipping away. Actually, time is always floating away and barely able to grab, but why do I have this immense lack of time? Probably because I’m working too much. Work is wasting like eight and a half hour a day and it feels like an eternity or two till it’s over, so one reason for this time lack seems to be my daily work. For the love of God, I can’t quit because I need the financial income. Damn it.

Sleep might be a reason but I cut down the time for daily sleep to something around five to six hours, which has to be enough. Sleep is for the weak, never forget that. One thing that was sucking time like a blood-thirsty vampire during the last month was the need for technical maintenance on my PCs. Changes to another operating system. Service pack crashes. Raid crashes. Hardware exchanges. All this cost a lot of time and most the invested time was wasted, because it mostly led to another maintenance or repair. Right now, I finishing working on my PCs so that I can go by and work with them instead of on them. PC number four is still in queue, but it’ll stay there for a while because I simply don’t have the delight to build up another machine that wastes time.

I actually forgot what I wanted to say in this particular post, because I’m pretty tired and exhausted today and today’s gym session will be horrible I guess. Anyhow, I’ll continue unveiling the time killers in my life and hopefully get back to more creativity or other kind of ways to spent my rare free time.

Straight to the basics

Posted on March 10, 2011 by InV4d3r

I’m a kind of proud for a very good reason about myself. It’s been a while ago where I announced the “Straight edge 3.0” project and it failed epicly. Actually, I never cancelled the whole thing. It was more a permanent breaking of rules set. The worst thing wasn’t the nutrition that bothered me, it was more the fact, that I wasn’t able to get my ass off to the gym and train. This has changed during the last three weeks. It started with one single session per week and finally reached the normal rhythm that it deserves. I can also proudly announce that I found the fun in sports for me again and that it does not feel like an evil force that gets me to the gym, it’s now pure lust and passion for sports. Due to the fact that I’m no longer smoking, for 10 month now, my cardio problems weren’t as big as they were when I was a smoker and started with cardio training. Nowadays it’s not a problem to do a one hour and a half of pure cardio, back in my days as a smoker I was gasping for air after nearly thirty minutes. You can be sure that there’s no reason for me to restart smoking.

Even alcohol consumption reached its lowest level since my childhood. This, besides non-smoking, has given my life a boost. No more drunk, no more any lost days because of hung-overs. I can say, without a doubt, that I feel much healthier these days, even on those days where I wasn’t that much into sports. I still do not consider to quit the “Straight edge 3.0” project, but like I said in a post before, I don’t want to be bound that tight to a set of rules as I’ve been in the two projects before, because this would cause a lack of comfort in living. Another important thing is, I still don’t waste time by watching my weight each and every day, because it simply doesn’t make sense. I prefer the overall feel of comfort and awareness of being “healthy”. This counts much more for me than stupid digits on a weighter. Finally, you notice an improved stamina more than one pound more on your hips.

For the rare time being

Posted on March 1, 2011 by InV4d3r

The last couple of days has been very busy for me, not that I had too many “private projects” but some too intense of time. First things first, my gaming system got crashed during the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 update process and I wasn’t able to revive it any way. I had to reinstall everthing, had to setup a lot of applications and so on. Good thing about this, the system can now be rebooted again without getting a raid failure, which was one big issue with the previous setup. I’m nearly finished with the system, like 90 per cent, and I only have to restore most of my games profiles. Actually, this whole thing wasted a lot of time on my last weekend and is also responsible for missing, once again, the game of the week feature here in this blog.

Besides all this were I still in modifying and hacking my Motorola Backflip cellphone. I now managed to install Android 2.2 aka Froyo including multitouch, which isn’t a stock feature of the phone, and I also installed an unlocked kernel that I’m able to overclock and also underclock it. The phone now runs with a stock Android, without any Motorola software features, and it’s, compared to the default Android 1.5, as fast as hell. I’m testing the battery at the moment to see, if my also also increased the lifetime of this particular part of the phone. It’s such a hilarious feel to finally have features on my cellphone that aren’t supposed to be there actually. And most importantly, for my subjective estimation, the phone has now a status, where I would say, that one can use it instead of just getting angry about it.

Far from all this nerdish stuff did I come back to a more healthier living style without all this unhealthy, calory rich and fat food. I also visit the gym from time to time and as expected, it’s giving me a boost in many ways. Say whatever you want, after a fine session in the gym, you feel refreshed and the essence of life creeps back to your bones and you feel recharged. I mentioned it in one of my previous posts, I don’t want to exaggerate anything at the moment and I want to keep it on a level where I still have fun with all this too. Getting into a boot camp like training plan as I had it once before is not my intention, even though I can say, that this was fun too. Anyhow, I’m losing weight, I start feeling better now and hopefully my cardio will increase once again. There’s no particular muscle training on the schedule right now, I just want to sustain my back and belly muscles at the moment to get a strong centre for future training plans.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found any time for photography or any creative stuff in that kind of way. I also haven’t managed to get a little bit more into the whole Photoshop/Lightroom thing that was actually on my schedule for this year’s beginning. Saying that there was no time is not totally correct, I actually wasn’t in the mood to do anything like this. Maybe later, when my bike is fixed and I’ll be able to get out a little bit more often and most importantly further away.

Androidified backflip

Posted on February 24, 2011 by InV4d3r

After a long period of reading, learning and researching I’ve finally made it and customized my Android phone. The customization included things like the simple rooting of the device, upgrading to a newer version of Android, overclocking and getting rid of some factory default applications. But, first things first. I got a Motorola Backflip (MB300) last year’s October and it was my intention from the very beginning to use this cellphone as a “learning device” to get into the whole Android stuff. Unfortunately did I figured out that this phone wasn’t able to be upgraded by simple clicking “update” here in Europe. The cellphone was shipped with Android 1.5 as factory default. It was more than clear for me to get this device to Android 2.1 which is officially only available in the U.S. for AT&T customers. A lot of theory followed after getting this phone though. Worst thing about this, I had to get back to Java coding.

It took a while but I finally found some ROMs with Android 2.1, also one version without the Motorola BLUR applications that slow the phone on factory default setting pretty direful. I’m not going into detail nor do I offer a tutorial at this point. I tried every ROM I could find for my cellphone and tried to figure out which one has the best performance, which one has the lowest number of bugs and most importantly, which one looks nice the most. Finally I found disturbing bugs in every ROM and none of these ROMs had all the “optical features” I was looking for. The solution for this problem was simple and trivial at once. I picked the ROM with the lowest number of bugs and errors and merged the features of the other ROMs into it. As expected, the system was buggy and unstable the first time but after flashing the phone the fourth or fifth time with debugged ROMs I finally had the Android 2.1 version I actually wanted.

The most important applications from the Android market for me were ADWLauncher, SetCPU, TitaniumBackup and Android Task Manager. The first one was to get rid of the Motorola look. SetCPU is used to overclock the phone and to increase the battery life at once. TitaniumBackup was my companion to figure out which of the applications of the ROM can be disabled and removed. Last but not least, Android Task Manager was and is my RAM cleaner on the phone.

Straight epic fail

Posted on February 8, 2011 by InV4d3r

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.

The laziness of being edge

Posted on February 1, 2011 by InV4d3r

It’s been three days now in the new Straight edge project and not much has changed in particular. Right now I’m just find to get away from the gluttony that was possessing me over the last few weeks. I also changed my daily schedule a little bit, I started to get up much earlier in morning with the simple goal to recently have more of the day. Actually I am very tired these days, but I guess it’s a circumstance only for the time being and I guess I’m done with this by the beginning of the week. When it comes to sports I have to announce that I haven’t made it to the gym yet and I’m not sure if I can make to the gym this week. It’s not because I don’t have the time for that, it’s simply that I don’t have the lust for gym. I don’t want to fall into a strict day schedule where I have to do things I actually don’t want to do. My weight has increased drastically since my last vacation and I honestly don’t feel like I can go into public with all that fat on my hips. I should lose some weight by simply changing nutrition and then go to gym. Otherwise do I feel that urgent need to go swimming, while underwater no one can realise how fat I truely am.

Of weather, bugs and gluttony

Posted on January 28, 2011 by InV4d3r

Just some updates for the end of the week without any particular order or category. First of all the most common and maybe the thing that costs the most boredom; the weather. It’s getting colder and warmer, dry and wet, pale and sunny. There’s no direction to be found and this bothers me, because I wanted to go out these days to take some pictures and gain some experience with my new camera lenses, but nothing. It looks promising right now because the it’s sunny with barely any clouds. Hopefully it’s going to stay this way.

Most of the time this week did I waste with gaming, I finished the single-player campaign in “Battlefield Bad Company 2” and I’m now into the multiplayer part of the game to train for some league appearances, that will hopefully be in the next season. Secondly, I am nearly finished with “DeathSpank”, the game itself got more and more funny in the last couple of hours while I was playing and I still recommend this game, especially if you like “Monkey Island” or “Penny Arcade” like humour. Last but not least, this week was the release of an indie game called “Magicka” which unfortunately lacks of thousands of bugs. Well, okay, it’s not a thousand bugs, but there are lots of errors right now. But I have to admit, the developers take their jobs serious and do a lot to get rid of the bugs and I salute an attitude like this. It’s just a small, independent software company working their asses off to finally create a great product, something that publishers like EA and Ubisoft disregard so many, many times. ~kudos~

Finally, “Straight Edge 3.0” starts on Sunday and this means the time of gluttony is over. There’s not much that changes in particular, it’s mainly that I return to gym and sports and that my whole nutrition is set up much more healthier. Either way was my nutrition really, REALLY bad over the last couple of weeks and it couldn’t have gotten more worth than it is right now. This changes and I will hopefully lose some pounds by the way.

Champions of the battlefield

Posted on January 25, 2011 by InV4d3r

Today is the beginning of the free to play era of Champions Online. I started playing this game right after its release but it was not able to catch me in complete. It’s too much instanced and the world felt a little pale compared to a MMO like World of Warcraft, where you can find something interesting under nearly every single rock. So now, where Champions Online can be played for free, I’m going to give it a new try these days and will see if it has changed that much that I can say, “This is my new MMO addiction game”

Besides this did I make this plan with a friend of mine, who also quit in World of Warcraft, like I did, to start a new “esports career”. We had a discussion for month and month what to play and or final choice was Battlefield Bad Company 2, which is in my opinion a good game for “casual frags” and even the “professional” ones. I played the old, basic Battlefield 1942 for a while and I returned to this gaming series after years by the release of the genious, but in the beginning totally imbalanced, Battlefield 2. I skipped Battlefield 2142, which was, for me, just a re-textured version of Battlefield 2 with a modern setting. Bad Company 2 is the big punch right into the face of the Call of Duty series, the single player campaign is way more fun than any Call of Duty since CoD2 and the multiplayer is without any competitors. To make a long story short, I like Battlefield too much to just leave it behind and to never play it in a more “professional” way. There were other possible choices like Enemy Territory but I played ET in a clan years ago and CoD was an absolute “NOT!” for me.

This is actually the game that comes into play with the Straight edge 3.0 project. Besides the pure physical training and the healthier nutrition is it time to also get some training in first-person shooters again. WoW devastated a lot of skills and it’s time to rebuild them.

Game of the week #3/2011 – Osmos

Posted on January 21, 2011 by InV4d3r

This week’s “Game of the week” is something I’ve chosen, because I actually haven’t really found the time for playing as much as I do it normally. Anyhow, to get a little bit more relaxed and to calm down did I choose “Osmos”. Nowadays would you say that this game is an indie title, for whatever that means, and you can get it for real cheap, like every indie title does. Its game design is very simple to learn but it’s hard to handle. You are a small organism, that’s not an offense, that’s what you play in the game, and you have grow bigger. Sounds easy but it’s not. You can only absorb other organisms when you are bigger than them and you can only move by investing energy. Investing energy does mean that you lose valuable mass and when you lose mass you may become smaller than other organisms so you cannot absorb them.

This whole things happens at a very slow pace and the ambient soundtrack of the game also gives you a feeling that you don’t have to rush anything. I personally really like the ambient soundtrack of that game and this is actually one of the major points why I like this game, besides the simple but ingenious idea behind the game. As mentioned before, this game is something if you don’t feel like playing something with a large amount of complexity, but you also don’t want to play a brawler. This is what you play when you want to chill and relax and I personally recommend this game to everyone who wants to play something different. The setting is nice, the music is great and the whole gameplay feels ‘organic’.

Links:

Official Website

Wikipedia

Rules for Straight edge 3.0 project

Posted on January 20, 2011 by InV4d3r

So here’s to you, in a very short and simple way, the rules for “Straight edge 3.0 project”. I’ll give some details of the goals of the very project in later post.

1. No smoking!

2. There’s no alcohol consumption on training days or the days before training.

3. There’s no consumption of any unnecessary sweets at all.

4. There’s no special nutrition plan, just eat healthy and well-balanced.

5. There are at least three training days at gym per week and one optional training day with a sport of choice.

6. Every fourth week is a so called “hardcore week” with at least four training days at gym and one optional training day with a sport of choice.

7. Find relaxation and rest on days without sport and training to avoid injuries or infections.

8. Improve hand-eye-coordination and reaction time by using modern technologies.

9. Improve your stamina and reach a healthy BMI.

As you can see, the set of rules is not as tough as it was in projects before for one simple reason, it costs too much time and energy in everyday life and finally leads to a lack of luxury and well-being. To keep all this in balance I introduced the hardcore week so that I’m not turning into a gym addict or something like that. I also find it very important to find relaxation, that’s why I set rule number 7. I got a weird infection during the first straight edge project and I don’t want to let this happen again. Even on the first training days it is very important to avoid any kind exaggaration or presumption.

Rule number 8 might be strange to some of you, but I found out during the first two projects that my “gaming skills” also improved, so I want to train on this, too. To get it all straight, this project goes away from a monastary style of living, more to something balanced and capable for everyone out there. I don’t want to waste my whole free time with training and healthy food, I want to keep a little vice in my life, because I think that this is healthy, too. I erased the caffeine rule, for one simple reason, I love coffee – PERIOD.

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