Lowered expectations… or the lack of time

Posted on May 19, 2011 by InV4d3r

It’s a cross. I overslept like three times this week. Firstly, I missed gym two times in a row. Ya, I know that four o’clock in the morning is a terrible time to get off for some training. Anyhow, I feel good with and I’ll stay with it (if I can make it out of bed). Whatsoever, I also missed my regular alarm clock for work today. It rang, I noticed it and fell asleep again. Luckily the loss of time wasn’t that huge so I can get back home pretty early.

I took a training session the day before and, well, my overall condition was not that bad. Okay, okay, I just missed one week but I was actually expecting the worst. Maybe I’ll be able to throw some loops this weekend and get a little boost on my stamina.

The Sony network is back online and Sony’s offering lots of free stuff and compensations and all kinds of shit. I’ve got another 45 days left to play the “DC Universe Online” and hopefully Sony will come up with a lowered subscription fee as well. I was totally fine with 24 Euros for three month but unfortunately did I have some issues with one of my credit cards and they put me back on normal rate. Life’s tough sometimes, you know?

The curse of sleep

Posted on May 17, 2011 by InV4d3r

I feel so terribly bad today. It was set that I have to go to the gym today and continue training but I simply haven’t made it out of my warm, sheltering bed. I’m not sure where this tiredness actually comes from, but it’s horrible. I can never get enough sleep and I’m that kind of a guy that sleeps no longer than six hours a night, except for the weekend.

I was thinking about going to the gym this very afternoon, but I know how it’s going to be. The place will be packed as hell and all the exercise machines will be blocked by fat and ugly housewives pushing 5kg weights. I’ll try to make it out of my bed tomorrow and hit the road to training. Once again, I don’t feel very well with my whole condition. I feel fat and rusty and like I lost the last spark of power in my muscles. It has to be changed and it will be changed.

What else happened. Well, I’ve silenced my HTPC once again a litte bit more. I added a resistor to the fan located on the side of the chassis and I also exchanged the graphics card. Right now I’m using a Geforce GTX 560 Ti which is much quieter than the Geforce GTX 460 and offers much more power. A lot of frame rates are locked at the magic 60 mark. I’m not sure if I’m going to sell the old card our if I just put it in my fourth PC that is just standing around without any particular function.

Besides all this, well, I was off to Berlin last weekend without anything exciting to mention. It was just my father birthday that needed some celebration so I went there and celebrated. I was not going out or anything like that. I feel like I could need a night of partying again with all its benefits. Maybe somewhere in the future.

Thor’s hammer training

Posted on May 11, 2011 by InV4d3r

Here’s the thing, you wake up pretty early and you’re completely prepared to do your job at the gym, but the gym is not prepared to do its job. This is what happened. I woke up at 04:00am, like I do it every time. I brushed my teeth, push my hair a little from the left and to the right and hit the road with my bike. I got to the gym and was already wondering what all these trucks were doing there. Right after entering the building I saw that the locker rooms are getting refurbished. Actually, it’s more a decoration because all the lockers are getting exchanged by some fancy new ones with nice wooden fronts.

Anyhow, I wasn’t able to find the improvised locker room within thirty seconds and everything was pretty messed up so I decided to just leave and continue my training next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to shoot some hoops within next couple of days with some friends of mine. I’m really bad when it comes to aiming, but I’m a wall when it comes to defense. Whatever the case, it’s fun.

As you may remember, I was off to the cinema the day before watching ‘Thor’. Even though the movie was in 3D I wasn’t getting that much into it and did not affect me either even though I was a big fan of the ‘Thor’ comic books. The story itself was nothing more like, Thor made his father angry. Thor got banned from his world. Loki was jealous and betrayed Thor. Loki brought the enemy ice giants to Asgaard. Loki wanted to get rid of Thor. Thor returned with the help of his friends. Thor defeated Loki and saved the Yggdrasil. It sounds complex by just skimming these words, but the movie was pretty lame in a story matter. I also missed a little more action and the use of 3D was not worth it. Here and there a little depth of field and that was it.

A little exception

Posted on May 10, 2011 by InV4d3r

Today’s the first day of my recently started training period where I decided to stay in bed instead of hitting the to road to the gym. Actually, I was really tired and additionally will I meet up with a couple of friends this very evening to watch a movie at the cinema. It would be a waste of money getting there and just falling asleep only because I forced myself to get up too early.

I want to keep a little comfort for myself and I don’t want to get to a point where I start hating sports just because I can’t find time for anything else. Or I’m too exhausting to do anything else. I’m glad to be a person who’s totally fine with six hours of sleep per day (or night) and I don’t want to bend it to the limits too much. There’s still my gaming hobby. Photography plays a big role, too. And of course do I want to meet up with some friends even during the week. Not to forget my girl also deserves a lot of time.

Well, anyhow, I just wanted to mention that this is not going to be the end of the road and I’ll stick to my sports plan, but you sometimes have to make some exceptions. I assure you that you’ll find me in the gym tomorrow morning training my ass off once again.

The mystical cat report

Posted on May 5, 2011 by InV4d3r

Hello out there, it’s been a while since my last update on what’s going so far. First of all, fitness is still existing and starts kicking ass again. I cannot deny that I had some serious difficulty to get back on the track, but with this week, everything seems to be on a satisfying level. My stamina feels like it was the day I let the whole fitness thing fade away, for say, it’s still on a high level. For my circumstances. Actually, I still have like 15kg of weight too much on my bones, but like I said, I’m not facing any serious trouble during training. I’m running solid 30 minutes on the treadmill followed by 30-40 minutes on the cross-trainer.

I decided to take no prisoners and I also increased the weight on many exercise machines. I’m doing very well with this and I’m making a lot of progress in this particular area of my training. Besides losing weight is gaining muscles one of my main goals for now. I know, it sounds weird, losing weight and gaining muscle mass on the other side but according to the serious amount of overweight at the moment a goal that can be reached. Like losing at least 15kg of fat and getting like 5-6kg of muscle mass.

What else happened? Well, I got a little bit more into photo editing and developing of RAW pictures. I’m not making great progress but it finally is some progress to be found. I also joined a couple of new groups on deviant Art to get a little bit more feedback on my works. And of course a few eyes more watching my stuff. I’m also looking for a new camera, not for now but for the end of this year. I’m thinking about buying a Canon 7D, this camera got all the features I want and is not that expensive as the Canon 5D MarkII. At least, it would be a total waste of money according to the fact that photography is just a hobby mine. It’s like 1,500 bucks that ring on the bill, but I’m sure it’s totally worth it.

Gaming, another passion of mine. If the days has like 36 hours I would definitely play some games, but currently I don’t really have time to play some more story based games. I play a lot of “Bad Company 2” these days, for like one hour a day. There are still some games in queue that I need to play. There are plenty of games, as there are “Medal of Honor”, it can’t be more worth than “Homefront”. The “Dead Space” games, I started “Dead Space 1” several times, but never managed to finish or do any larger progress. Several LEGO games are waiting and so on. Most importantly, “Portal 2” is hopefully in my mailbox these days and I’ll definitely play this game as soon as possible.

Last game I played through was “Homefront” which was a kind of disappointing. Weird performance issues. Weird story and pace of the game. I can’t say that I didn’t like it, but, well, I don’t know. They whole concept was promising but the presentation was a big and epic fail on the whole line. I instantly switched back to my beloved “Borderlands” after finishing the four hour campaign. I barely had any interest in the multi player mode.

Passions regained

Posted on April 27, 2011 by InV4d3r

This is the announcement, that I’m back on track. Well, actually, it’s just an announcement that I’m finally back to a fixed, regular schedule for my gym sessions. It’s three days a week in the morning and one day in the afternoon. I’m totally happy and completely satisfied with this new schedule, it doesn’t burn me out too much, leaves enough room to rest and I don’t have the feeling to lose to much free time. Apparently, I’ve to go to bed pretty early because the alarm clock rings at 4:00am but like I said, it’s easy to handle when you have only three days per week to get up that early. I’m also making good progress when it comes to dexterity and pure muscle strength. The dexterity is good so far and much, much better as it was in times where I was a smoker, even with my massive overweight. Even though I’m at the beginning of training my strength is as good as it was the time I let the training fade away. I was also able to increase weight on some stations in the gym. Right now, I’m focussing on chest and neck. I guess it’s pretty obvious and I don’t have to mention it explicitely that I always train belly and back. Nothing’s more important than a well trained centre. Within the next couple of weeks I will also start a protein diet to get a little boost to muscle growth and lose some fat.

Secondly, I’m once again a little bit more into photography. During my trip to London, I haven’t even used a whole SD card for my pics. Compared to previous trips it’s an improvement, because I used like two or three cards within one or two days. A lot of crappy pictures came up these days. Just let us say I reached a border where quality took over quantity. Whatever the case, I personally see me making progress in photography and my picture are getting better. There are still some issues with incorrect focusing and a weird usage of depth of field, but this okay for the moment. I do no longer have these completely wrong exposures. It’s natural to get a couple of pics that too bright or too dark, but you don’t have to forget that some pics are snapshot style and I’m not always rethink light and stuff before a shoot the pic. This happens from time to time.

My besty gifted me on X-mas with a nice book about Lightroom and Photoshop. I’m currently working myself through the Lightroom book and it’s giving me a blast in knowledge about digital photo development. Until a short time ago, I was using Lightroom for collecting and organizing my picture only. The whole editing always happened in Photoshop and it happened a couple of times where the final product was worse than the original picture. Lightroom is fun and it’s so awe-inspiring to see how my pictures can still develop, even those that I already abandoned.

Finally, shame on me, I still owe you an article about XBMC and a couple of nice add-ons I don’t wanna miss anymore. It’s coming. Just be patient.

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.

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.

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.

What was and what will be

Posted on January 3, 2011 by InV4d3r

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.

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.

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!!!

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