Diet and Surgery Update, 10 Months Out

Had to do an update today as I weighed myself, and as of this morning I am down to 243.3 from 258, 14.7 Pounds! Nice! Now it has been 3 months, but I seem to be going down fairly steadily now, if slowly! Of course I am also doing quite well exercise wise and eating wise.

I go to sleep around 10PM and asleep by 11 and up around 4 AM with my alarm set for 5 AM.

I start my day with a 2.1 mile walk, and I have started jogging in it. a 1/4 of a mile section and then 2 1/8 mile sections I jog in. And I don’t even get all that out of breath, do I do sweat a ton! My new GP has me then doing some weights, I do some kettle bell focusing on legs, some hand weights and sit-ups. I then go to work, but right now am taking the subway from universal into Hollywood, and take as many stairs as I can handle, while carrying 3 bags, a backpack with my lunch, my briefcase with iPad and Kindle and my big bag with 2 big bottles of water and ice. The first walk is around 4500 steps, and the subway is around 3500 both ways, plus a lot of stairs in between. For lunch I have a salad (I pre-make a lot of salad) with chicken I bake and slice with my meat slicer and red beans. And some Briggs salad dressing cut with straight vinegar to make it less fattening. I have 3 apples during the day and a handful of nuts, though I do chew sugar free gum to get by as I get hungry by 11. I bring another salad, but have been saving it for dinner and having that when I get home along with something else. I have had nuts or a handful of goldfish or yogurt. And I end with a couple of 15 calorie sugar free popsicles and stop eating by 8 PM. Now I have cheated some, as we usually eat something bad on the weekend (I would prefer a rueben at Brent’s) and some days where I have been working late I got a couple of big burgers at Carl’s JR, and have still been losing weight! And my dad was just in town, so I had steak rice bowls at Take a Bao and made Bulgogi, and still am losing weight!

As for the surgery. Well honestly my chest is really sore. Not only working, but the weights I am sure. Chest just hurts, so need to do a little less weights, maybe the 10 pound Kettle bell instead of 15, and take some weight off my hand weights.

Now i just need to find more time in the day! Ha! Doing pretty darn well, just need to get taxes done!

Arstechnica on Developers problems with iCloud, and my own personal issues with it.

Arstechnica has an interesting article on problems of working with Apple’s iCloud.

It is really interesting to hear that developers are having so many problems with iCloud, since as a user I have completely given up on iCloud because I have found it to work so incredibly badly.

My first issues were with bookmarks and iCloud. I use X-marks to sync my bookmarks between browsers, since Chrome (and formerly Firefox) is my browser of choice, and I don’t use Safari at all, but since Safari is what syncs to my iPad and iPhone I needed it to have my bookmarks.

And every time X-Marks overwrote them it worked fine and they were correct until they went to the cloud. The cloud ones had become corrupt and would overwrite not only Safari on my mac, but also on my iPhone and iPad. And there is no way to get rid of the bookmarks! Now most companies would create a way to overwrite either on your computer or online, but not Apple. Their simplified iCloud bookmarks have no way to get rid of the bookmarks from iCloud, so I had to turn off iCloud syncing and just do a direct sync via itunes, which directly brings Safari’s bookmarks to my iPad and iPhone.

My Second issue cropped up when I moved from an iPad 1 to an iPad 3. I had been a Mobile Me user, so I got 25GB of space on my iCloud (necessary to backup an iPad, and not enough for both my iPad and iPhone), and had 3 months previously moved to iCloud backup. When I attempted to move everything to my new iPad, it would not work. None of the apps would install. They started to download, and then stopped there, for days! And I could get no help on the issue, so I ended up going to my 3 month old previous backup on my home computer and have been syncing with my computer every since.

Why should I even try putting stuff on iCloud when I have no control over it? And it does seem to get corrupted often! So why not just leave everything on my Mac and use Dropbox or Sugarsync or box.net or even my Synology NAS to sync to. They all actually work and don’t seem to screw up all the time, like iCloud does.

iCloud at the very least needs basic controls to allow overwriting of items on the cloud or on your computer (though they could probably get away with just overwriting iCloud, since that is where the glitches happen!).

CG Meetup on release of Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite

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CG Meetup has a post on the new features of the newly updated Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite. You can also check it out at Autodesk.

They have various versions of their suite from $5775 to $8395.

They all include Maya, 3dsMax, Motionbuilder, Mudbox and Sketchbook designer, and the two higher end versions also have soft image.

Would love to get my hands on 3dsMax, but it is just too much for me to play with.

PVC Previews Adobe Refine Edge

The Pro Video Coalition has a preview of a new After Effects tool, Adobe Refine Edge. It is an extension of the powerful rotobrush, but with the ability to pull objects from backgrounds you never would have thought possible.

Sounds very cool, but rather than see this demoed, I would rather have it go out to Creative Cloud users. I thought that was the point of paying more and constantly, that we would get early updates to software. And while we have, it hasn’t been anything for the production bundle, which is really what I need anyway.

Come on Adobe I want Premiere Pro and After Effects Updates, even if they are testing betas! Let us give them a try!

Element 3D 1.6 released!

Video Copilot has released version 1.6 of Element 3D it’s 3D plug in for After Effects. They have a video of new features on their blog. It is a Free Update to registered users. It has a bunch of new features and bug fixes.

FEATURES

  • Added world position pass.
  • Added scene relink.
  • Added replace model option.
  • Added a subsampling mode for post effects.
  • Added planar and polygon mapping types.
  • Added render order.
  • Added group nulls.
  • Added generate 3D position null.
  • Added shape order animation mode.
  • Improved automatic relinking.
  • Fix: issue with baked animation in different groups.
  • Fix: crash due to path aspect ratio fix.
  • Fix: occlusion map was rendering below diffuse.
  • Fix: masks with different aspect ratio than layer.
  • Fix: baked animation wasn’t working with 3D object replicator shape.
  • Fix: rendering issues on OSX.
  • Fix: crash when rendering empty scene with missing assets.
  • Fix: licensing popup on Windows when opening old projects.

I love this plug in and think it is a must have and it just keeps getting better and better with each update.

Did closing Google Reader have somethign to do with privacy concerns?

All Things D has a good article on the closing of Google Reader. It contends not only did Reader not even have a product manager or full time engineer when it was closed, but now every team needs a team dealing with privacy issues, with lawyers and others, and since google wasn’t making money off of it, they didn’t want to put those people on. And it claims it was too integrated into google apps to sell it (though I don’t believe that).

Interesting point, but I still think they could keep their users happy and keep it going, especially after killing the rest of the market with it, but we are all finding alternatives now, and will be moving to them if we already have not.

Decided to give CrashPlan a try, and I don’t think a 1.5 year backup is going to work for me

CrashPlan1-5
1.5 Years! I don’t think so! Though to be fair I do have 5.3 TB of data, and the 1.1 TB music drive is on a NAS connected via 10/1000 ethernet, but still! And the number does change. I see it go down to 6 months sometimes, but I also find that for a good portion of every day it seems to be just scanning my drives, and not uploading. And I am on Fios with 35 Mb up and down so I have a fairly fast connection.

I am thankful for the free 30 day trial so I could learn this, very cool, otherwise I would have purchased and realized I would paying for likely 2 years before I had a full backup! Now way!

Now I went with CrashPlan after reading all about it, and seeing reviews and it does look like an excellent cloud based backup solution. And it’s Java based app is easy to use and free and can be used for local backups as well.

And they have many plans, from 32.99 for 10GB, 59.99 for unlimited on one computer and $149.99 a year for unlimited on 5 computers. Seems reasonable, though you can only download a certain amount and must pay and send a hard drive for more, (EDIT: I was wrong, they don’t charge to download, which is awesome, thanks to the comment) but it does keep your data secure away from your home.

I wanted a cloud backup as I had a drive go down recently and it really screwed me, but I don’t think this is the solution. I am still thinking a large local storage would be better for me, though I certainly can’t afford it right now.

EDIT: And yes I do have a local backup, though not of everything, I just don’t currently have the hard drive space. I have a 3TB backup, and everything on MUSIC is RAID 1, so I have a copy of what is on there, but if things get messed up, they will be messed up in both places.

ADDITIONAL: Been keeping Crashplan running, hoping it will jump forward and have downloaded a lot more by the time the time the demo is over so will then buy it and use it. Lots of the time it seems to spend re-scanning all my drives, and with the amount I have, that takes a lot of time, but yesterday I came home to this:

HA! 10.5 Years huh? And when I tried to snap the picture it was 11.5 years, but I didn’t snap fast enough! Now I know that isn’t the actual time, but that is a long time to say it needs to back up!

I need a big raid as storage, but with redundancy, though I do like the idea of an offsite solution with great encryption, which Crash Plan is. It just isn’t for someone with the storage needs that I have.

I CAN JOG! Surgery Update at about 10 Months

I wen to a new General Practitioner and he wants me to lose weight faster, and do my morning 2.1 mile walk in 30 instead of 45 minutes. To that end, yesterday I jogged part of it. 1/4 of a mile, then 2 1/8’s of a mile, and I did the same today. And it really wasn’t a problem. Didn’t even get that out of breath, though I did sweat allot! Still I could NEVER JOG! Not at all, ever! This is a huge difference! Absolutely huge! Wow, I can jog! Now I need some better sneakers and I bet I can jog a whole lot more! Wow!

He also wants me to exercise for another 15 minutes when I get home. Leg exercises, so I am doing kettle bell, and core, so situps and some hand weights, like I used to do. Not too much with my chest as it is still sore, but as much as I can.

As for my weight, I am still losing some weight, and am still on the 8 hour diet, though things are moving very slowly, but I am trending down.
weightloss
Here is my last week from Fitbit. Tend to go up a bit on the weekend, but still trending down. Even with some days getting fast food as I get off work so late (hate still driving at 7:30 PM).

Still I am sticking with the 8 hour diet (though the doctor said to eat breakfast, but I have never liked breakfast, it makes me hungry all day!).

Surgery10Months

Here is my scar. Still not white, and if anything it has gotten bigger, or at least wider. Still not hurting so much, though I am still using a pillow under a seatbelt as it feels better in the car.

Brain fog is better, though my creativity really isn’t better, but getting home by 8 and going to bed at 10, and having super busy weekends may not be helping on that end much either.

Overall I am doing pretty great, and I CAN JOG! WOW!