Week 9: No Clever Title

After 9 weeks of working out I finally have crossed the threshold and am now at a mere 98.5% chance of dying from a heart attack. I think that means Jessica was taking it easy on us today.

Earlier in the week we learned a new torment that I like to call "being kicked in the nuts." For some inexplicable reason, other people call them Inchworms, and they are almost as bad as Burpies (which suck so royally that I'll never actually do one without someone there yelling at me to do so). Essentially all my muscles were in pain after doing them. Even the ones that weren't involved had sympathetic pains.

Now I am just plain tired. I need a nap.

Best Band Ever?: Front 242

I love too many bands to have a single favorite, but if I had to go through the process of picking a favorite, Front 242 would definitely make the shortlist. They are incredibly underappreciated considering the immense impact they had on subsequent generations of electronic music. For me, their digital artwork is also emblematic of an era, one which really resonates with me emotionally and aesthetically. They're another band that I became immediately and permanently obsessed with when I first heard them, back in my early teens.

"Front By Front" is one of the perfect 80s albums -- essentially flawless, and emblematic of its era. Every song is haunting yet full of rhythmic energy, a sound I closely associate with that Late Cold War era feeling of resignation to a bleak future combined with a pent-up desire to do something about it being funneled into creatvity, movement, and desire.


"Don't Crash" off the excellent "Politics of Pressure" EP is one of my absolute favorite songs, and fills me with nostalgia every time I hear it (it always has, even when I first heard it -- it's just got that nostalgia inducing sound for me, similar to Pink Floyd's "Remember A Day" or Project Pitchfork's "I Live Your Dream"). If you asked me for one song that summed up the feeling of the 1980s completely, "Don't Crash" would certainly be a contender. ("Work 242" is also especially good for getting into a dreamy mood.)


Front242 sounds like Cyberpunk reads (as do Clock DVA, Borghesia, and several other 242 peers). It's music to write software by, and the perfect soundtrack to dystopian dreams in which you're a dark, Deckardian hero fighting through driving rain, human foibles, and the misery of a dying world to try to find a better way. It's the sonic equivalent of a targeting HUD on a black helicopter stalking its prey in the night -- rendered 8bit. Mirrorshades and goggles, armored leather outfits, headsets with dangling wires... this is the proper attire to capture the feeling of Front 242 in an outfit.


Yet Front242 is not soulless machine music. It is cold and bleak, yet at the same time full of energy and desire. Later Front242 is even more layered, creating a fuller sound that is in some ways richer than their earlier work (and in some ways, not as exciting in its stripped-down clarity and evocatively bleak atmosphere).

That new direction took me a bit of getting used to when "05:22:09:12 Off" and "06:21:03:11 Up Evil" came out, mainly because of the band's lineup change and unfortunate embrace of the Techno aesthetic in their live shows, but these (and the later "Pulse") are absolutely a continuation of the Front242 sound and unequivocably are true Front242 albums -- all but one of which is excellent (the one is the unlistenably bad remix album "Mut@ge Mix@ge"). I now listen to those newer albums almost as much as the older ones.


Machine music has taken many different directions over the years, but the Front242 sound will always be among the most compelling. If you have never heard Front242, consider it your duty to "Catch The Men" and rectify this aesthetic deficiency immediately.

Best Band Ever?: Big Black

Time to blog again at least a wee bit about things other than working out and filmmaking.

So I'm starting a new thread for myself called "Best Band Ever?" in which I'll blog a bit about what certain bands mean to me. I don't really like writing reviews, so it'll just be thoughts about why I think a certain band is great.



Big Black only existed for five years, and they wrote and released only about 70 unique tracks in that time, but their impact on music history is immense. They are one of those bands that are utterly revered by musicians and music critics, even if they never achieved massive success with the general public. This popularity among musicians means their influence on later music is quite extensive. And frontman Steve Albini went on to produce tracks for just about every hip-yet-still-musically-interesting band ever.

The first time I ever heard Big Black I was about 12 years old, and the track was Steelworker. It was slow and sparse, yet still heavy. Simple, yet compelling. And vicious. It told a story. A simple one. But not a pretty one. Big Black's lyrics read like Noir poetry. Drawn from newspaper headlines and the band's own school of hard knocks experiences, their tracks chronicle the dark corners of American society, and pull no punches. They seemed to be angry about everything my teenage self was angry about, and their intense statement of this fact resonated deeply.

The music doesn't pull punches either. Big Black's music is heavy and loud, with a simple, driving rhythm and a layer of chaos on top. Big Black sounds like a cross between a bar fight and a cheap hotel room with a bare light dangling from a swinging cord. To this day, they are one of my absolute favorite bands.

Big Black decided to break up at their height of their popularity and musical development, so that they could go out on a high. I suppose this worked, because none of the successor bands (Arsenal, Rapeman, or Shellac), as good as they are, ever came close to the sheer awesomeness of Big Black. But I still wonder what amazingness might have been on offer had they kept going as a coherent unit. I played the LP of Big Black's final album, Songs About Fucking, over and over again so many times that I physically wore out the record and had to replace it.


Big Black are also responsible for one of the rare records I want most: the original Bulldozer EP with the acid-etched steel jacket and (paper) poster. That sounds amazing. I wish more recordings came in such insane packaging.

There are many awesome punk/postpunk/whatever bands in the world, but few compare to Big Black. Reunions often lead to new material that's far inferior to the older work, but if there's one band that really ought to at least give it a go -- it's Big Black.

Week 8: Ministry of Silly Walks

Eight weeks of torment, and I'm down to a 99.5% chance of fatal heart attack every time I step inside the Ice Chamber (a wedding this past weekend, starting with hot dogs at AT&T park, followed by a lovely wedding, which was followed by a late night of partying on a party bus, and then a bacon burger all conspired to set me back into the mid 99.xx% range -- stupid me, I could have been down to like a 98.97% chance of heart attack otherwise).

Today we did a workout which included a routine I now refer to as the Ministry of Silly Walks: skips, grapevines, butt kicks, and some generic hopping side to side thing. Apparently I look so utterly ridiculous and cartoonish doing butt kicks that I caused Anu and Jessica to burt out into nearly uncontrollable laughter. Ahhh... being laughted at in the gym. Now that brings back memories.

It turns out that the interval between being six and being thirty-six proves that skipping and hopping are just like riding a bicycle: you never forget how, but if you don't do it for thirty years, you'll still totally suck at it "remembering how" notwithstanding. It starts off as a near-convincing simulation of fun, and then about two skips or so into it you realize "this is f**king difficult." Yet, it seems so easy for children -- which is just one of many reasons why children piss me off.

Fatness -- Let's Do Some Math

Why are Americans a bunch of fatasses? Let's do some math.

Take a typical fast food meal:

Big Mac: 540 calories
Large Fries: 500 calories
Medium Coke Classic: 240 calories
---------------------------------------------
Total = 1260 calories

The canonical 2000 calorie diet is only a rough estimate, one that is within about 10% accuracy for a male of my age and height, but may be very wrong for other people. In fact, all caloric intake estimates are imperfect, but you need to take into account factors like age, weight, gender, and rough activity level as this about.com calculator does. (And remember, that calculator is showing what you need to maintain your current levels, not slim down.) My wife, for example, should be eating about 400 fewer calories per day than me.

If we don't even account for the problems of empty calories (low nutrition, highly processed food that may impede metabolic reactions needed to properly consume the calories), water retention from high sodium foods, the fact that carbohydrates are burned easily and therefore preempt your body's need to draw from fat reserves, and other more subtle barriers to weight loss (and, more importantly, cardiovascular health and athletic muscle toning), we can see the roots of the problem from straight-up calorie math.

1260 calories is more than half the RDA for someone like me (a 200lb, 6 foot, 35 year old male). If all three meals Americans are eating each day are around the 1000 calorie mark, we're talking approx. 3000 calories or about 750-1000 extra calories a day for someone like myself. (And if you're doing the two Big Mac thing, and adding a 250 calorie baked apple pie, that's another 750 calories in one meal.)

I've been watching the readouts on the machines as I've been hitting the gym, and by way of example someone my size, weight, and age doing a moderate (level 5) cardio routine on the StairMaster is burning about 10cal/minute.

750 excess calories / 10cal/minute = 75 minutes

So, if I'm averaging 3000 calories a day, and my break-even estimate is 2250 calories, I'm at least 750 calories over break-even -- which means an hour and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted StairMaster workout just to break even. Most people who say that they are "relatively active" and are referring to less than an hour of cumulative strenuous walking, stair climbing, and similar activity during the day are fooling themselves. "But I walk a lot" perhaps applies to active people in New York City who may average two hours of fast walking per day or San Franciscans who pound the hills at reasonbly high speeds an hour a day (but even that's still going to be break even at best if it's not coupled with caloric moderation), but not really to anyone who just happens to have to walk during the day because their refrigerator isn't sitting right beside their TV.

The reason so many people are heavy is quite clear: easy access to high calorie foods, combined with the prevalence of sedentary post-industrial workplaces, make for people who eating far more calories than they'll reasonably burn in a day. This seems like common sense, but as the saying goes: sometimes common sense ain't so common.

Week 7: Cognitive Dissonance

I wound up going to the gym 3 mornings this week. What this bit of overkill made me come to fully realize is that I keep going back for some inexplicable reason.

Seven weeks of working out is like being put in Guantanamo, being released, and then willingly reincarcerating yourself -- six times. And paying for it.

That's the really odd thing to me. I'm paying a not insubstantial amount of money in order to go to gym class. I spent a nontrivial amount of time in high school coming up with clever ways to avoid gym class, and now, like a schmuck, I'm paying someone so I can relive the experience.

Sure, Jessica is much nicer than any of the gym coaches I had in school. And unlike most of them she's an actual athlete, as opposed to one of those "do as I claim that I did back in the mesozoic era, not as I do" kinds of coaches. But I'm still paying someone to help me relive one of the most miserable aspects of my teenage years. While I'm at it, I might as well ask her to tell me that she wouldn't date me if I was the last guy on earth, and to ridicule me in front of everyone -- to complete the teen experience trifecta.

Week 7b/6a: Sit and Spin, Mofo

Since my gym blog post last week was for half a week, today was either the end of last week or the beginning of this week. Either way, I have to post twice this week. Not because anyone else cares, but because when you start working out it becomes an all-consuming obsession. The reason for this is obvious: flight or fight. Working out is like being perpetually chased by a hungry tiger, and if you get distracted and think about anything else, even for a moment -- instant death.

So speaking of instant death, the Spinner / Spinning bike is a fascinating invention. It is specifically designed to simulate climbing a preposterously steep hill in the name of fitness.

Ever since the Trojan inventor Equus of Dardanus developed the horse, riding a bicycle uphill has been the exclusive domain of children (who are too naive to know any better), the desperately poor for whom a bicycle is the only alternative to walking (who have no choice), and fanatical cyclists (who are too naive to know any better). Anyone with the means to procure a horse, or one of those fancy "horseless horses" that have become all the rage since Baron Ferdinand von Kombustin-Enjin invented the Internal Combustion Engine, would scoff at the very idea of something so archaic and ridiculous as uphill bicycling.

I guess the inventors of the Spinner bike are SCA types who enjoy reenacting prehistoric times when people didn't have horses and had to ride their heavy iron bicycles uphill into battle, panting like a dehydrated dog as they sweated away their precious bodily fluids (tm) and stabbed eachother with lances. Some people have strange hobbies.

Week 7: Fial

Wednesday I was only 99.2% certain I was going to die of a heart attack, but I was already starting to get sick (probably some nerd plague I picked up at Comic-Con) so it was an even tougher slog than usual. I missed today because I only got sicker yesterday and today rather than a pounding heart I am left with merely a sore throat and earache. The worst part is that it makes this weekly gym posting utterly boring. So sad.

On the upside, according to my bathroom scale I've lost 16 pounds in the last 7 weeks. But I think it's lying to me to save its own hide, because I'm gonna bust that mofo in half if it ever calls me a fatty lardass again.

Cheshire Cataclysm

My entry for Austin's "Chades Challenge XX" is a photoshop mash-up called the Cheshire Cataclysm.

Patents

Whatever you may think of software patents (such as the infamous U.S. Patent 4,197,590 "Xor patent"), whether you think they're harmful like the LPF does, or awesome like Paul Heckel does, the fact remains that most companies who create software file them. As such, my employer has filed (or started the process thereof) about seven patents with my name on them (two have been awarded, I forget where in the process the others currently languish).

It is a bizarre experience to see something that you invented, and described in engineering terms, regurgitated in legalese. An invention that I'm intimately familiar with in all of its details becomes a confusing morass of gibberish. I must then go into a room with lawyers (and sometimes other engineers) and attempt to verify, explain, and defend my patent application internally.

This is a grueling process because patent applications are almost totally unreadable -- even the lawyers have a hard time navigating them. Even the ones who write them for a living can sometimes get stuck in their own language. Frankly, it's rather ridiculous. It takes an absurd amount of time to reconcile what's on the page with what I know the invention does. Never mind the parts that are boilerplate explanations of what a computer is (apparently a computer has RAM, a network card, and... I got bored after that and just moved on).

Whether or not it's true that "there's gotta be a better way" when it comes to the patent system generally, there certainly must be a better way to describe inventions for the purpose of patenting them. A human readable way. And one which doesn't make the filing process take over five years.

On the plus side, I get a plaque when the patent is actually issued.

Comic-Con 09

Comic-con is done. I didn't stare at the spectacle much, so I have no clue what's k-rad about Avatar or the next Twilight thingy. But I did get lots of cool smaller press and independent books (I'll post about the best ones once I've had time to read them). It was great to see Jordan and Bella, and thanks to Ted & Derek for letting me hang in their booth and escape the madness when necessary. Check out http://www.roseandisabel.com and http://www.derekmonster.com -- both of them do excellent work.

I also got to see my friend Allen, whom I hadn't seen in about 10 years. That was great, and I definitely need to come back down here and see him again sooner rather than later.

And, finally, some sleep.

Week 6: Owner Of A Pounding Heart

Anu is out of town, so I'm on my own with the physical training thing. Very tricksy, that Anu.

On Wednesday I was about 99.9% certain I was going to die of a heart attack by about 3/4 of the way through the routine (which consisted of a circuit of beatings, waterboarding, truncheoning, fingernail pulling, simulated hangings, and having my genitals electrocuted -- or as the CIA euphemistically calls them in their dossiers: oblique twists, squats, lunges, sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups).

This morning I was only about 99.5% certain I was going to die of a heart attack. Improvement! At this rate I should consider myself "unlikely to die of a heart attack" in about 50 weeks. I think I shall celebrate with a bacon double cheeseburger at Dick's in San Diego when I go down for Comic-Con this weekend. That ought to round it out to a full 52 week year.

The weird thing is that it's only been about an hour since I left the gym, and yet I am already anticipating going back. This is bad. It means that Jessica, our so-called "trainer" (Grand Inquisitor might be a more appropriate term) is doing something to wear-down my natural instincts for self preservation. I'm beginning to crack. This is the onset of some sort of workout Stockholm Syndrome. Soon this empathy will turn into outright sympathy for my captors, then before too long I'll even be willing to tell them the launch codes (for what, I'm not sure -- but I bet these codes launch something). Next thing you know, I might become one of them. It happened to my friend Max, so I know that there's a real danger the terrorists may win.

Evidence I'm A Huge Nerd: Part 1

Today I received an e-mail titled: "My Staff Will Eliminate Your Debt."
This is basically what I pictured in my head (except I stole an image and modded it rather than making one myself):


Good grief am I a friggin' nerd.

Week 5: Youthful Exuberance

People say that exercise makes you feel young again. They are absolutely correct.

When I was young, I felt my life was miserable. Most of my time was spent thinking about escape, imagining a better life for myself. I dreaded each morning as the start of another day to suffer through.

Now, thanks to the power of working out, I've regained that youthful perspective on life.

Another aspect of the return to my youth facilitated by working out is the discovery that I still can't do sit-ups, push-ups, or pull-ups (the only ups I could ever do were 7-ups, regular or diet).

Today we did a slew of different exercises in fast bursts. It was sort of like being beaten-up, except that when you're being beaten-up at least someone else is doing all the work.

Since we did so many exercises, many of them new to our training, I've decided to make a helpful comparison chart for those unfamiliar with certain exercises:

burpies = Hitler
mountain climbers = Stalin
pull-ups = Chairman Mao
push-ups = Pol Pot
straight leg lifts = Idi Amin
sit-ups = Mussolini

On the upside, I'm so dehydrated I totally can't cry like the little pussy I am.

Google vs. Microsoft, Again

Google recently announced their Chrome OS. In addition to upsetting my various friends who once worked at the company called Desktop.com that was trying to do the same thing (and which may or may not still be kicking around in some post crash form, I'm not sure), it is intended to scare the pants off Microsoft. I'm not terribly worried about Microsoft's pants, but some folks have pointed out some interesting questions about the Google project.

Week 4: A brief history of Push-Ups

For the benefit of those not in the know, I have researched the history of the push-up. It's original crude form was invented by ascetics in the 10th century as a form of self-flagellation. During the 20th century it was refined by the Nazis into a highly efficient means of torture. Adopted after WWII by U.S. Military will-breakers (aka. "instructors" or "Drill Sergeants") as a means of reminding green recruits that they're really not much better off than a Nazi prisoner, it subsequently came back into vogue amongst new-age self-flagellant sects going by such names as Fitness Fanatics and Health Nuts. The push-up is intended to not only cause pain, but guarantee humiliation, as onlookers realize the futile pursuit of the prone Atlas wannabe before them who -- at the whim of his "Personal Trainer," "Coach," "Drill Sergeant" or "Fitness Master" -- attempts to shove the entire planet away from them whilst holding the entire sky on his or her back. Preposterous.

On the upside, I apparently can now jump rope again. I suppose one should be thankful for small miracles. I celebrated by eating a burger and some fries, thereby guaranteeing at least one extra week of torture in terms of my quest to no longer look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. What the hell was I thinking? (A: I wasn't.)

Art Show Pieces

I am happy to say that prints of these two pieces are currently hanging (framed together) as part of a show of personal artwork done by technical artists at work:





They are digital photomanipulations, both working from WWII source imagery.

Happy Independence Day

Remeber to take time out today to celebrate and remember those who gave their lives to free The Earth from the tyrannical clutches of the Space Aliens, who did not permit Humans to send representatives to their Parliament, and whose taxation policies threatened to undermine Humanity's right to delicious, nutritious tea.

Comcast Sucks

We recently replaced AT&T and DirecTV with Comcast, mainly because AT&T would not allow existing customers to take advantage of the AT&T/DirecTV reduced priced bundle to renew their service, and Comcast offered a decently priced package deal. With Anu recently being laid off, reducing our overall Internet/Phone/TV costs seemed like a very good proposition.

Holy crap does Comcast suck!

Since we had Comcast previously in El Cerrito, which is less than five miles from our current place, we figured we'd be happy with them. This is not the case.

I have a class that is conducted via Skype. Today my connection was dropped more than 20 times during the 3 hour class. Not since the days of dial-up have I had so many connection failures in such a short amount of time. Sometimes the connection failure lasted over five minutes. And it was total failure -- I couldn't connect to any Internet service at all. And since Comcast is now also our telephone carrier, I had no phone service either. Not even 911 service.

This has been going on since the day of the Comcast installation. A classmate in the online class said he had a similar problem during his last Skype class, and Comcast was so unresponsive that he could only solve the problem by switching to AT&T. We're far away from any central office, and I know we probably won't get perfect service. We also had some connectivity problems with AT&T, but not even close to as bad as with Comcast -- I did four other Skype classes with the AT&T link with no big problems. This is so frustrating that I'm already considering switching back -- after less than a week with Comcast.

Week 3: The Slowening

It turns out that if you've been strenuously working out for 3 weeks (and you're me), that is the exact right amount of time for you to start getting slower and your aching to persist beyond the actual day of workout. Well now isn't that exciting?

We did pull-ups (which I never could do) using gigantic rubber bands as an assist. And you know what? Using that mechanical assist, pull-ups are... still are preposterously difficult, excruciating, and make me want to cry. As an added bonus, when I get worn out (i.e. after two or three wussy rubber band pull-ups), I lose the tension in my body and the rubber bands shoot my legs out in front of me and I have to cling on for dear life. Come to think of it, maybe that is secretly the exercise, and the pull-ups are an elaborate ruse.

On the plus side, I got new sneakers (New Balance cross trainers), so now my feet only feel like they've just been run over by a bus 50% of the time, rather than 100%. And a gym jacket. Now I look the part of a chubby wanker trying to play himself off as some kind of athlete.

And I finally did 15 damned rope jumps in a row, without tripping and stumbling. For someone as athletically challenged as I am, that's got to be some kind of progress. I just hope I can repeat it.