Bahamut

Is it bad that when I saw Blizzard I immediately thought of Blizzard Buffalo?

Ah you missed it, I gave away a Heavy mask last night! I also traded away my Einstein too last night! I have an extra pyro costume piece left though (The Fallen Angel - the wings).

So ilp0 went ahead and claimed A Whale (La-la-la)! There's a nice smattering of artists here .

Being too obsessed over the numbers in the short run is bad - that is not how your body works. It is not uncommon to see a big dip in numbers when you work out hard and then after a bit of recovery do a similar workout. That is the idea behind breaking down to build when it comes to muscles (although mentally that is how the military works too). Your muscles need time to recover to full capacity, so as you keep working out, your body will gradually adapt accordingly.

Tonight is the last day of the Halloween update! I unfortunately probably won't be around until 11pm or so, but I'll do my best to show up for a good old late night sendoff. I should mention that I have a few costume parts for trade, an extra shoestring budget (or whatever that soldier shoes one is), The Fallen Angel (the pyro wings), and Silver Bullets (sniper). I also have an extra Heavy mask. I deleted a few custom maps that I remember not getting such rave reviews from the maplist, but it's still large. A lot of its largeness comes from there being a sizable number of official maps. If people want to play test some more custom maps in the coming days though to help whittle down the list, I'd more than welcome some help in reviewing the maps as we play them!

http://www.jamwithchrome.com/ Saw this on Google News just now, how useful would it be for collabing in the community? I don't know if I'm particularly convinced it's really for musicians who are comfortable using a DAW, but I figured at least to see what others think about it. I'd fathom that Google Hangouts are much better.

I don't know of any such research - I will say that the military feeds its personnel eggs with box chows though, often packing 1 egg (or 2 if you are lucky). If you have a history of high cholesterol, is there anything you can do to mitigate that, like with intense cardio?

I've heard only glowing remarks on P90X, so that's strange to hear. zirc - a good workout will mix all sorts of different exercises. The elliptical is not a good replacement for running in my experience - you don't get as much of a cardiovascular workout from the elliptical. Your heart definitely gets pumping a lot more easily from running, whether it be from sprints or longer runs, or going uphill or downhill. A lot of people like the supposed increased calorie burn with the elliptical, but I feel the tradeoff with the good cardio from running & (IMO) lesser core workout isn't worth it. I don't like treadmills either - if you run too fast, you start to feel the burn on the bottom of your feet, similar to running too fast on downhills. There is of course an increased risk of injury with running, but that is mainly if you're not paying attention to your body and if you're pushing yourself real hard. For example I noticed signs of a stress fracture in both my feet last Wednesday when I ran ~9 miles after having run a marathon on the Sunday before - my friends told me that was probably a big mistake, as most people who run marathons take a week or so off, especially since it was my first one and I pushed myself exceptionally hard. I rested my legs for a week and ran 11.5 miles pretty hard just fine earlier tonight. I have a tendency to push myself hard in anything I do though. In general with working out, there are a few principles that are important. You want to keep pushing your boundaries in a sensible way - your body will get used to your workouts over time, so you have to push yourself to get more out of them. Also because of your body's tendency to adapt to your workouts, you want to vary them too - muscle confusion is important for maximizing development. This can be accomplished with pyramid sets for workouts (going from 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. until you fail at an exercise and then going back down to 1 - your starting point and increments can be adapted for whatever workout), low rep sets to failure with little rest in between, starting with a high rep set and going down from there, or doing as many reps as you can in a certain time limit. And lastly, you have to be dedicated for the long run. There will be days where you want to skip a workout - once in a while is ok, but you have to be willing to fight that urge many times and just do it.

I have an Iron Gym - they're pretty good, even if the build quality leaves something to be desired. Combine that with some resistance bands (stuff like this), you can build up your pull ups (depending on where you're at - you may not even need such a band). At your weight, you likely need to bulk up. For example I'm at 5' 9", and I currently weigh around 180 lbs, although ideally I'd like to get it down to 170 lbs w/ muscle. To make sure you stay lean while bulking up, focus a fair amount on muscle endurance. Crossfit style workouts are great for that, but if you apply those principles to weights, you have to be careful. If you're not familiar with crossfit, it's a workout that consists of not stopping & switching workouts to different muscle groups throughout. Even without weights, I think just doing those types of workouts will get you to bulk up for a while.

I'd be down with that!

I personally am a huge fan of the Lost Odyssey soundtrack - IMO it's one of Uematsu's best. I also like the Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Legendia soundtracks.

I talked with Jason about this - I'll hold off on saying too much, but there is an intention to rekindle this album, just keep your eyes out.

Perhaps I chose the wrong phrasing - the compositions themselves have more substance to them than a lot of SNES soundtracks overall. That in itself doesn't make it more memorable necessarily, but there is more to the melodies to work with since there is more to them.

I'd like to say much kudos to Brandon for taking this over and seeing this through!

Vegetable & cereal diet doesn't sound terribly healthy. Just eat a balanced diet. Maybe 50% carbs, 40% protein, 10% fat or something like that would be solid - make sure you're getting good nutrients too. If you're exercising hard, push those carbs to 60%. You don't need any protein shakes or anything like that to get the protein you need - just eat foods good in protein like nuts, chicken, fish, etc. Your body needs some protein though for muscle recovery/strengthening. Make sure you're working out your whole body as OA mentioned - if you skimp on an area, it will hurt you. The most consistent results I've seen for weight loss are crossfit type workouts. Ever see any jacked up Marines? It's because crossfit style workouts in boot camp (combined with starvation) slimmed them down and subsequent weight lifting built them back up the right way.

Ghetto Lee Lewis

You sure that what you're doing is a burpee? A burpee involves going from standing to the push up position, doing a push up, and then jumping up. You're probably going to have to do some sort of crunch or sit up to get the abs well - there is the upper and lower part for them. Working out your core in general is a good thing too - jumping jacks, burpees, and mountain climbers are good for that. Oh, you can also work out your abs by doing planks.

A little more on that statue. A little more about finding people - I think part of being able to find people is whether you're able to recognize them (or them you), how extroverted (or introverted) you are, and how much fun are things around you. It goes with meeting people in general though, so a lot of it is about you as a person.

I just played Breath of Fire for the past couple of days & beat it - it's a shorter game than I remember. Then again, there are moments where you can become totally cheap with the side exploration...and I totally abused that. I'll probably start Breath of Fire II again sometime in the next couple of days - I have never beaten the game, as Barubary (sp?) totally destroyed me in the final dungeon. For a SNES game though, Breath of Fire's soundtrack is surprisingly detailed.

There's an option right at the top for 'Track' - it didn't take me too long to figure it out.

Restarted the server - I'll be on in the next 15-30 min or so.

Don't forget the need for artwork!

From what I've observed, the gift drop rate does not change with the number of players - what I mean is that it will drop at x% per second for the whole server, so 10 players get a better shot at getting them than when there are 24 players on the server since that x% is divided by 24 instead of 10. I am going to be changing the starting map tonight - any suggestions for the starting map?

I don't listen to music while exercising - I rather be attentive to my body so that I know when something is wrong. Music also tends to get you to change your workout pace depending on the tempo of the music, which can screw you up or get you to not work as hard. Headphone also can create a danger when working out if the headphone cord gets caught on a weight or machine. If I'm in the gym, I put up with whatever crappy music is playing. Edit: If I had to choose songs for workouts though, I'd go with some good old metal. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Helloween, Gamma Ray, Blind Guardian, Iced Earth, Demons & Wizards, Angra, HammerFall, Manowar, Symphony X, etc.

I'm not familiar with the Silent Hill series music, but this one has a nice haunting nature to it given that the series is iconic for its horror aspects. This is a great short piece though, it's almost as if it's meant to be a fleeting transition into something else. The piano & vocals really drive this piece, and the string instrument that enters helps build it in a subtle way. The drum helps add some disruption and tension before it all fades away.