Vivi22

I have EWQLSO Silver and Garritan, and I'd say silver sounds better with a lot less work, but it's also quite the CPU hog. If you have an older system (ie: Pentium 4), it can be a bit of a pain by comparison, but there are ways around that. That said, a lot of the sounds in Garritan are great. To start out I'd probably go with silver, but in time you'll probably want to expand and have a few ochestral libraries to choose from since all have their strengths and weaknesses.

Checking in late as well since it's a little difficult to type right now. Went climbing on Tuesday, had Jiu Jutsu on Wednesday, and then again on Saturday. This week was kind of light since I spent most of my free time Thursday and Friday doing things to prepare for getting my new car (getting insurance, bank loan, that sort of stuff). Anyway, Jiu Jutsu on Saturday threw a kink in most of my work out plans. I ended up bending my right thumb back, injuring one of the tendons in it. Now I have to keep my thumb totally immobile for the next few weeks while it heals which means no Jiu Jutsu, climbing, working out at the playground or even biking. All I can really do is run, so once the pain in my thumb subsides some more I'll get back to that. I'm really annoyed this happened, but I'll have to make the most of it. Hopefully it's better in time for me to get some more workouts in this summer and for the release of MGS4.

I don't claim to be an expert, but I don't have to be to see that the acting was pretty stiff and the CG doesn't look good. I'd swear the actors were reading from a teleprompter the performances were so bad, particularly Edward Nortons which is a shame since I respect the man as an actor. Maybe only the worst parts of the performances came through in the trailer and the rest is actually good, but I find that hard to believe. And considering friends of mine who do 3D modelling and animation agreed with me that the 3D in the trailer looked pretty bad, I'm inclined to think my feelings on it are quite valid.

Except he's been in plenty of video games.

Did you watch the trailer? Aside from some of the worst CG in recent memory, it featured terrible acting and dialogue from everyone who wasn't William Hurt. It already looks like the worst comic book movie since Elektra if you ask me.

Great video. My only nitpick (because I love the game and am anal about this); it's pronounced ee-ko, not I-ko.

Weekend update a day late: This past week sucked for exercise. Diet stayed about the same except for Saturday. Didn't get any exercise in Monday and Tuesday though. Wednesday I did a workout at the playground. It consisted of chinups to failure, one armed rows (using a bar that's about 2.5 feet off the ground give or take), followed by 5 dips on parallel bars then walking to the other side on my hands and doing 5 more. In between each set I would jog half way down the soccer field that's there and then sprint back for the next set. After all of those sets I did a set of 5 sprints up a small hill. Did that all twice with a small rest in between then finished off with some sets of chinups rows and dips without the sprinting. Thursday I went climbing again. Friday I biked downtown to pick up my comic books, then to my fiances and then back. Spent about two hours on the bike through all that. I even got caught in a bit of a downpour on the way home. Pretty sure everyone driving past me thought I was insane, but I love biking in the rain. No exercise Saturday since I was too busy all day. I also let the diet slide since it was my sister's birthday. Cheated big time with some pizza, cake, and irish car bombs but was back on the diet track yesterday (though I didn't work out on Sunday either).

Try not to feel too bad about not working out enough. I've been busy since the weekend and have only really gotten in two good workouts since last Friday. Part of my problem was not having time, but I've also had trouble getting into a regular schedule with everything. I'm kind of all over the place. Oh well, I'll be getting back on track now since things are letting up.

You know, in high school I actually did the same thing and ended up being a crunch machine. It didn't take long before I had worked up to being able to do pretty much any number of crunches without stopping. I think I started with about 50 or so a night in a few sets, and eventually it turned into 500 a night in one set. By that point it's not really helping you though, not to mention that it's incredibly boring. There's a reason I stopped doing those. I whole heartedly support doing some exercises while watching TV though. It's a great way to keep yourself distracted from things like fatigue or boredom that can sometimes set in, while staying active during your favourite shows.

Umm, I did check in. It's at the top of the page.

My diet is the same as before. I haven't been as good with the exercise in the latter part of the week, but I'll be back at it this week for sure. Monday: Went for a 2 hour walk downtown to order the power supply for my new computer. Tuesday: Went climbing in the evening for 45 minutes. Tried doing only runs that were extremely challenging to complete, or actually impossible to finish at my current level of strength. I'm a strong guy, but my core strength and strength to body weight are a little lacking. Wednesday: Went for an hour bike ride to pick up my power supply. Jiu Jutsu in the evening. Thursday: I had some very sore muscles and joints from Jiu Jutsu so I decided to have a proper rest day. Friday: Another hour long bike ride. Today I may not get out for anything as a friend and I may be assembling my computer, but if not I'll try going out for some interval training. So far I've lost about 10 lbs. If I keep going at this rate I may have to set a new goal for the summer.

That was pure awesome.

He did try to take credit for the song in the video from the first post though. He's since changed the description and is giving a lame excuse like his friend changed the description of the video without him knowing. An apology would be better, but at least he's not taking credit now.

I seem to remember once seeing a cheaper set of rings out there. I think they were about $50, but I can't seem to find the site right now. I didn't go for a run or bike ride yesterday, but I went climbing last night for about 45-50 minutes. I spent most of that on the wall, and usually trying climbing paths that were extremely challenging or even impossible for me to do. I'm not that sore today, but my upper body is feeling pretty dead.

I'd stay away from buying something with a Pentium 4. My dad's desktop is an older one with a 3 GHz Pentium 4 and a gig of ram, and while using Sonar 7 on it things were going fine with CPU usage until I added my recently aquired East West Stormdrum to the mix. My CPU useage immediately jumped from about 10% to over 55% at some points. The only thing we can figure is the small cache size was holding it back. Pentium 4's have decent clock speeds, but their caches aren't as large as current processors and can hold them back. And are you sure you can't build something through Dell or another company for less than $1200? I just went on Dell.com and built an Inspiron desktop with a Quad-Core and a 17" Monitor for about $949, and a Core 2 Duo for about $829. They didn't have the best graphics card, but it was decent, and they had 2Gb of Ram and a 500 Gb HDD. You'd probably spend as much or more if you buy your friends computer and have to get a monitor. $750 for his desktop just isn't a good deal at all. If you have the know how to build your own machine then you could always look for good deals on parts on Ebay and put together something even better for about the same price. I'd say definitely get a desktop now and get a cheap laptop a little later when you're going to school.

I'd say the odds are he's read all or most of those as well. They're among some of the best known stories in comics. Same goes for The Sandman; it may be the single best comic series I've ever read, but odds are any comic fan worth their salt has at least given it a shot. Some trades he might not have read may include Superman: Secret Identity and Superman for All Seasons. Those are two of my favourites that don't seem to be as widely read as something like Kingdom Come. For recent comic series I'll second DarkeSword's Atomic Robo reccomendation. The first mini series finished just recently and it fits the awesome and hilarious criteria. It's also up for a couple of Eisner awards this year and I hope it wins actually if only to bring some more attention it's way.

Maybe there's a reason I'm not aware of, but would you be able to simply run or walk to the gym? I'd think if it's that close a drive that you'd be able to make it in a decent amount of time on foot even while avoiding a sink hole and get a good warm up in the process. Anyway, that sinkhole is crazy.

My friend bought a pair of these: http://www.ringtraining.com/?gclid=CMjZ2Ji2o5MCFQptswod1RbdoA Great quality and easy to set up in all kinds of places. We took them to a nearby playground and looped them over the monkey bars.

Definitely give them a shot. I can hammer out 50 regular pushups in a set if I really want to, but doing them with elite rings really forces your stabilizer muscles to keep you steady and I'm not sure I could do more than 10 or 15 in a set right now. It definitely makes a huge difference.

Well, yesterday I only had time for a small workout. My friend and I did a series of 10 chin ups, 10 dips then walking with our hands across a set of parallel bars, 10 pushups on elite rings, followed by climbing a 12-15 foot rope twice, all with no rest in between the sets. We did that twice and though my biceps and triceps feel fine (I was doing more than that a few months ago so I doubt I'll be too sore until we work back up) my chest and shoulders are certainly feeling the burn, most likely from the pushups with the rings which I've never done before. Today I didn't really do any work out in particular since I'm using Mondays largely as my rest day, but I did bike to a friends house, and from there we walked downtown to order a power supply to finish building my computer. It was about a two hour round trip, then I biked back home. Still sticking to my diet, though I allowed myself a small bit of candy yesterday. I have to treat myself a little bit afterall. I'm down 6 lbs. in total as of this morning.

I first saw this pop up on another forum a few weeks ago and a lot of people freaked out about it, but everything I've read about it and seen people more familiar with it and American copyright law than I say about it says that it will not result in you having to register to hold a copyright. Such a practice would not only make it difficult for someone to exercise their rights as the legitimate creator of a work, but wouldn't fit with the copyright laws of many other countries. Anyone who thinks this will allow someone to just snatch up an unregistered work would seem to be reacting to false information/misunderstand what the bill proposes.

I can't wait to get on the server and actually play with you guys for once. I picked up some of the final components for my desktop today. Going to get a Power Supply tomorrow and grab my friends not so used mother board and processor (he's decided to stick a quad-core in his PC instead of the dual core he has and hasn't used much). Once it's up and running I'll finally have a PC that doesn't chug with TF2.

Lack of games? It has 156 ranked on Metacritic while the Wii has 196. That's not exactly a huge difference for systems that have been out the same amount of time, especially considering the Wii's talent for attracting third party shovelware. Lack of games my ass. And of the games ranked above an 80% average thereand on Game Rankings, it has more new IP's than the Wii. I'm not trying to knock the Wii here, I'm just saying the facts don't support the statement you made. As for Boom Blox; it looks like it would be a fun diversion for a while, but nothing overly amazing that I''d sit down and play for hours.

Well, I only really got started on Tuesday, but I'll post my progress and my diet. I'll even include recipes for some of the things I've been eating later. I'm not sure of how many calories are in each thing. It's something I'll probably look into and try to reduce if necessary. My typical diet is: Breakfast sandwich Peanut Butter sandwich and apple for my first snack Pesto Pizza Raspberry smoothie in the afternoon Chicken salad Small protein shake in the evening occasionally with another apple My workouts consisted of: Tuesday May 6 Run in the afternoon. Not sure of the distance, but I was out for about an hour. Rock Climbing in the evening. Wednesday May 7 Bike ride with a stop at a playground for the planche and tucked lever in the afternoon. An hour and a half of Brazillian Jiu Jutsu in the evening. Thursday May 8 Bike ride in the rain. Since the playground was wet I left out the planche and tucked lever that day. Gym in the evening for an arm workout: Bicep curls: 10 reps with 40 lbs., 3 sets 6 chin ups, 2 sets Preacher curls: 8 reps with 60 lbs., 3 sets Standing tricep press: 10 reps, 3 sets. Not sure what weight the machine was set to. It wasn't labeled well. Overhead tricep press: 10 reps with 45lbs., 3 sets Friday May 9 Did some interval training mixing sprints with jogging. I damn near puked when I got home, but god did it feel good. I was out for about 45 minutes. I may be going rock climbing again later, but I'm not sure. If not I may head to the playground for an alternative workout. You'd be surprised what you can do on playground equipment. I'm pleased with myself so far. I've kept to my diet almost religiously. The only little cheat moment I had was having a small hot chocolate on Wednesday at a restaurant. Keeping to working out twice a day is pretty tough but it's incredibly satisfying and feels great when you get used to it. Having to report here certainly keeps me motivated. It's probably the reason I've lost at least 4 lbs. already.

Had a great workout today. I went for a run this afternoon. I'm managing about 3/4 of what I was able to do last year, admittedly at a slightly slower pace, but I'm doing better than when I ran for the first time in a while last week. I think finally putting the effort into eating healthy all day every day is helping my stamina again. I suppose the 25 extra pounds I'm carrying doesn't help either, but still, I'm getting back to where I was. This evening I also went to Jiu Jutsu. We did about 20 minutes of warm up, 20-30 minutes drilling technique, and then maybe 30 minutes of sparring. We cut class a little short today, but we got in four solid rounds. Jiu Jutsu is easily one of the best strength and muscle endurance workouts I know of. My muscles always feel exhausted at the end of it, since you're pretty much constantly trying to get into a good position against the other guy and get a submission on them which often takes as much strength as it does skill. Even though I was exhausted in the end, I still felt like sparring some more. As for tomorrow, it'll be bike riding with the planches and levers, then either rock climbing or the gym in the evening. Haven't decided yet.