Wii90X: The Introduction

Welcome to a new segment on my blog I hope to actually keep up with, Wii90X.

What is Wii90X?

First watch this informercial.


Yeah...it's not that. Not at all...at least not yet.

It's actually going to be more like this guy.

The Wii Fit Experiment - Workout Montage from WiiNintendo.net on Vimeo.

Basically Wii90X is going to chronicle my efforts of living a healthier lifestyle by actually having some daily physical activity centered around the, you guessed it, Wii Fit. Why am I doing this? Well, it is actually more of a personal experiment for myself with the following questions. Does Wii Fit actually work? What would happen if I actually did exercise often? Is 90 days enough time for a significant lifestyle change? Does Wii Fit actually work? I also have this Wii on loan from my brother, we have had this long going exchange of video game hardware for 4 years now, and now I have a Wii, so my only big monetary investment in this is currently only the Wii Fit.

The Plan.

P90X, from what I have learned, consists of an X-TREME workout for about an hour everyday. So my plan consist of clocking in an average hour of "Fit Credits" everyday. The way Wii Fit's exercises work is that they are split up into four sections; Yoga, which focuses on honing your sense of balance, Strength Training, supposedly it focuses on building your strength, Aerobics, this is where cardio exercise are separated into, and Balance Games, that seem generally useless from a fitness standpoint. I will be spending all of my time posing with Yoga, lifting with Strength Training, and running in place with Aerobics. The balances games section, albeit more fun than say a torso twist, do not seem to be any sort of useful for the purpose of my experiment, so I will not be clocking in any time tightrope walking or ski jumping. My diet for the most part will remain unchanged, no strict dietary regimen here, although I will try my best to make healthier descisions about what will be passing through my lips. I will be updating this blog weekly, every Sunday is the plan, which will help me be accountable throughout this experiment. In the entries I hope too give status updates about how I am feeling at time, what kind of exercise I have been doing and overall progress about the whole thing.

The Goal.

The guy in the second video from WiiNintendo.net wrote that he lost 15 pounds in 41 days from adding Wii Fit to his daily routine. He did not change his dietary habit either. He simply did a whole-hearted Wii Fit workout for 30mins to an hour EVERYDAY. Wii Fit has the feature to set a weight goal on your profile. My goal is set to lose 20 pounds within 3 months. If I am able to pull this off I will be at a weight I have not been at since middle school, I am currently 22.


The Entry.

Now that you know what this is all going to be about I might as well start with my first post. I started this last Monday, September 14, I weighed in at 219.8 lbs. with a Body Mass Index of 31.47. I registered my profile at 5' 10" so with all of this together Wii Fit categorizes me into the "Obese" demographic. Wii Fit initially does not come with every single exercise unlocked, in fact I am still unlocking some of the strength exercises, so when I first started on Monday I only clocked in 30 minutes of "Fit Credits," the actual workout gameplay time, without over lapping or repeating any of the exercises. However, as time has passed I am now reaching a point where if I do a whole "lap" of all the exercises included in the game the Fit credits easily excede an hour. I must admit at first, I did not feel a thing. I mean, sure I broke a sweat, but the first few days just left me feeling tired, but not worked out. With more of the exercises unlocked now, that is becoming a rarer case. Have I seen any physical changes after a week? Well, sort of. The strength training exercises seem more geared toward toning muscles than building muscles. So personally, I have noticed my arm is slightly bigger, I have been able to increase reps of certain exercises I used to have trouble with, and after a week where my arm muscles used to be sore now my thigh muscles feel a bigger burn. Unfortunately, Wii Fit currenly has me at 221.8 lbs but I'm doing my best to not be discouraged. This seems like a pretty long post to read, so I will stop here. Until next week.

It's like someone recorded my geek dream.

What happens when you combine my number one action anime with my number one game of all time?

The world probably would explode, or at least my head would.

While not being a cataclysmic threat, this video does get pretty close to my cephaclasm.

Cloud Computing, Before Your Eyes

This video is proof of concept balls-to-the-wall amazing. So to give a brief premise this video is going to show you the power of cloud computing applied to normal applications we use everyday (i.e. video games)

I know, I know, you have a lot of questions. I am going to try my best to demystify some of the magic going on. You are probably asking, "John, what the heck is cloud computing?" My answer, "Well, it's basically parallel or distributed computing across multiple systems." And before you ask the next question about computing let me just give you an analogy.

Think about sometime ago when you were doing your homework. You had your math, science, and social studies homework to do, but you could only really work on each subject one at a time. So let's say you are a computer, and instead of math homework, you are doing computation. Doing math homework with one hand and social studies with you other hand, is sort of where we are today in computing in the world of multi-core processors and concurrent programming. What is an even easier way of getting homework done? A study group of course! A good study group, the one that just lets you copy down the answers and has the group do all of the work. That is cloud computing. You, the user, are having what is called "The Cloud," do all your work for you. Instead of the aforementioned study group, it is actually the Internet, which is nothing but a bunch of computers connected together doing the work.

I hoped that helped. With that in mind, a man by the name of Dave Perry decided to put words into action. He uses the power of cloud computing, a basic install of Firefox with Flash, and what has to be some sort of devil programming to hopefully open the world of video games, which tends to have and entrance fee and equipment prerequisite, to everybody by playing games like, "Spore" and "World of Warcraft" all within a Firefox window. Seeing is more believe so just watch the video.

Gaikai Technology Demo (JULY 1, 2009) from David Perry on Vimeo.

So true.

So wrong.

Week Links: Non-Valentine's Edition

It's that time of the week again.

These ones are coming at ya, and have nothing to do with love...I think.

First thing, eff planet earth.

If that was too many words for you, then this Wallace and Grommit clip has no really talking at all. In fact the sound effects have been" enhanced."

I bet you thought this was going to another all video Week Links. Well you're only 4/5s right.I like art and video games too. And hybrids of the two every time.

And for more video whoring. This music video is pretty awesome. The music all sorts of mellow.

Speaking of whoring. Ends up I was wrong, I do have one relationship video on here. It's from this website called videojug.com that just has all these video guides on random stuff from cooking to kissing.

If you know me at all. I'm probably your "friend." Whether or not I meant to be, it's a blessing and a curse. Mainly curse, cause I'm not one to take advantage of people. Anyways, here is their tips on getting of what they call Frienditis.

I'll maybe post later again this week. This weekend, I actually had some fun...at a club. WHAT?!

More on that later, and you know it's gonna be in my cryptic speak so no one is really gonna understand anything of what's going on.

Look for it.

Exit faux euphoria. Enter Slap-In-The-Face cynicism.