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Going Farther

February 24, 2012 By

Not having been on a bicycle for a number of years (apart from the few times at the gym on the stationary bicycle) I decided to take a leap of faith and purchase a flat-bar road bicycle to get myself out and about.

Not having ridden regularly, and losing a lot of my fitness from when I left school, I have to start slowly before going out for a 50km bike ride.

Since getting married and moving out of home , finding either a gym or a cycling partner to exercise with hasn’t really happened as all I have to travel to meet up with them, it isn’t exactly motivating to travel to exercise.  So what I have been doing is attempting to motivate myself by going to a short ride after work twice a week, with the possibility of a weekend ride, or a weight-based gym session.

Unfortunately my motivation hasn’t driven me to cycle twice a week, with a gym session as well, however I am a least attempting one bike ride a week for about 25 minutes, so far from my first ride, I have increased my ride distance by 50%.  It sounds amazing, but when you know the actual distance ridden, it isn’t actually impressive.

Assuming the increases the distance continue, I will be at a respectable distance by the middle of the year, the only problem is the lack of daylight hours, but we will see what happens when the time comes.

I’m curious as to what other cyclists do with the reduced daylight hours in winter.  Let me know by leaving a comment or contact me by email.

Filed Under: Fitness & Diet

The Slow-Carb Diet

February 10, 2012 By

I’m willing to give the Tim Ferriss diet a go from his book The 4 Hour Body.

Avoid “White” Carbohydrates

Bread, rice, cereal, potatos, pasta, tortillas, fried food with breading.

Bleach used to whiten flour, chlorine dioxide, combines with residual protein to form alloxan, and alloxan is used to induce diabetes in lab rats.

Eat the Same Few Meals Over and Over Again

Protein: egg whites, chicken breast & thigh, beef (grass fed), fish, pork

Legumes: lentils, black beans, pinto beans, red beans, soy beans

Vegetables: spinach, mixed vegies (broccoli, cauliflower, cruciferous vegies), sauerkraut, kimchee, asparagus, peas, green beans

That’s It!!!

There are other parts to the diet, but these two are the primary mechanisms.  This has primarily come about from experimenting by Tim, and actually seeing and experiencing the results with his own body.  Tim isn’t one to bluff his way through a book.  He has a reputation to uphold.

Want to read more: Go buy the book.

Filed Under: Fitness & Diet Tagged With:

Achieved 14% of my Weight Loss Goal

February 8, 2012 By

Down 2.6% and enjoying the food!!

Progress

I started the Slow Carb Diet from Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Body a week ago, and so far I have lost 2.6% of my starting body mass, and the plan is to lose 18.5% of my body mass.

Having lost 2.6%, that means that I am 14% of the way towards my goal. That sounds absolutely incredible, and I hope to continue the downward trend until I hit 100% of the weightloss goal, and reach my target weight.

I have previously shared that the best method to achieve a goal is to measure progress. I created myself an Excel spreadsheet to track my weightloss, and that is where I have calculated the numbers from.

I set myself a goal to lose 0.5kg per week, entirely reasonable, and well within recommended weight loss targets, and I am tracking myself, almost daily, but only comparing weekly numbers rather than daily numbers. There are some days where I have put on weight, and that is most likely due to water intake, high carb intake, or even just time of day. I generally try to weigh myself at the same time each day to minimise fluctuations, but alas, I can’t help the weather.

I have found the best time is in the morning, as soon as I get out of bed, but after using the toilet (I have found that can make a difference of up to 0.7kg).

Eating

Of the dishes that are part of the Slow Carb Diet, I have found two that work well together, and I eat these for lunch, especially when I am at work, Fish Cakes and Bean & Bacon Coleslaw.  I love coleslaw at the best of times, and I love bacon, but beans not so much, but I am willing to eat the beans to enjoy the coleslaw.

The biggest change to my diet so far is the fact that I have cut out virtually all bread, pasta and potatoes.  I had expected to feel hungry without eating bread for lunch, but most days I haven’t felt the need for mid afternoon snacks like I previously did.  There is obviously something to the diet about increasing protein and reducing carbohydrates.

Exercise

During the period of being on the Slow Carb Diet, I have been for one 20 minute bicycle ride, with no other exercise.  Some would include walking, but any walking I did only had a reason to get my from A to B, without any other intentional walking.

I might expect to see increased weight loss if I started exercising, which is part of my plan, but I wanted to see how the first week went without the exercise.  So my second week of the Four Hour Body will include short periods of exercise, weather dependent.

Filed Under: Fitness & Diet Tagged With: , ,

Bean & Bacon Coleslaw

February 8, 2012 By

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

  • 420g Red Kidney Beans (no added salt)
  • 2 cups Shredded Cabbage
  • 1/2 cup Diced Celery
  • 1/3 cup Chopped Onion
  • 4 slices Cooked & Chopped Bacon
  • 1/2 cup Mayonnaise
  • 1 tablespoon Vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon Sugar (optional)
  • Salt & Pepper

Mix the vinegar, mayonnaise, sugar and salt & pepper in a small bowl.

In a large bowl toss the cabbage, celery, onion, chopped bacon and the red kidney beans.

Add the mayonnaise mixture to the tossed cabbage and mix together.

Serves 3-4 people

Filed Under: Fitness & Diet Tagged With:

Personal Branding

February 6, 2012 By

Being the web junkie that I am, I have accumulated a number of domains over the last few years, some of which feature my name.

Having started and failed many times over in terms of a successful blog, I do wonder whether I should create a resume and personal branding website using those domains.  I know that I am not actively looking for a new job, but there is the possibility that someone is looking for a Civil Engineer in Sydney that has my expertise and experience.

Not only that, but the personal branding page will differentiate me from Andrew Barnett the forex trader, Andrew Barnett the web developer from Melbourne and Andrew Barnett the wigmaker.

Now I just need to create a design that I am happy with, or to find a theme that I am happy with.

Filed Under: Thoughts

Four Hour Body – Day 1

February 3, 2012 By

Tuesday was the first day of the Four Hour Body created by Tim Ferriss.

  • Breakfast consisted of a Chocolate XS Protein shake from Amway – 23g protein
  • Lunch consisted of Bacon Coleslaw and 3 fish cakes
  • Snacks throughout the day consisted of celery and one nectarine
  • Dinner was Chicken Fried Faux Rice & small home made ice cream

Considering the size of the portions were slightly smaller than what my body has been used to, I actually found myself less hungry than many other days where I have eaten more than I did today.  I suspect it is something to do with the high quantity of kidney beans, one of the main ingredients of the Slow Carb Diet from the Four Hour Body.

I’ll share the recipes when I get an opportunity to take photos of the outcomes.

 

Filed Under: Fitness & Diet Tagged With:

Firefox Flaw

February 1, 2012 By

With Google Chrome overtaking Firefox in the last couple of weeks as the second most popular browser, I actually wonder if this flaw is something that is one of the driving reasons between the shift towards Google Chrome.  I use the incognito browsing feature of Chrome regularly, and the way that Chrome handles incognito windows is the reason behind why I use Chrome after using Firefox for many years.

Firefox’s “Private Browsing” feature saves all the open tabs in Firefox, and changes the browser into “Private Browsing” mode.  So I am stuck with a single window, and trying to tweak features and widgets within WordPress, while checking out the changes on the front end as a logged out user, the “Private Browsing” feature of Firefox isn’t really all that helpful for me.

I use Google Chrome and have both a normal browsing window, and n incognito windows open at the same time.  I can make changes in the WordPress back end in one, and use the incognito browser windwo to view the site as a logged out user.  I simply swap between the two like switching between two applications.  I can easily refresh & you don’t have to wait for the browser to reload, and then the website to load.

I do hope that Mozilla considers following Google Chrome in having two browser windows open, one set to “Private Browsing” mode and the other in normal browsing mode.  I would probably consider switching back and using Firefox more regularly than I currently do.

Filed Under: Thoughts Tagged With: ,

Adding Social Twitter

January 30, 2012 By

I haven’t implemented this here on the blog, however I am definitely considering doing so.  Do you want to make sharing of your blog articles on Twitter easier than ever?

The easiest option is to add a Twitter button on each post.  The following code does just that, and the button will only appear on a single post, and not blog, archive, or search pages.

add_action( 'the_content' , 'itsb_tweet_button' );
function itsb_tweet_button( $content ) {
	if ( is_single() )
		return '<div class="twitter-button"><a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="'. get_permalink() .'" data-count="vertical" data-via="oursexsecrets">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div>' . $content;
	return $content;
}
view raw functions.php This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

The code adds a div before the main content that you can style as you want.  You can float it to the left or the right, and position as you want.

You can also customise the output of the function, and move the twitter button to the end of the content.  Or add other social media buttons as well, tweaking the output and position the way you like it.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With:

Using LessCSS

January 27, 2012 By

I’ve been experimenting with a number of CSS methods to try and make WordPress theme development more friendly for both myself, and for others who may want to tweak the theme when I have released it into the wild internet.

One particlar method I have been using is LessCSS.

I use the following code to add the less.js file, as well as linking to a .less file.

add_action( 'wp_head' , 'itsb_lesscss' );
function itsb_lesscss() {
?>
    <link rel="stylesheet/less" type="text/css" href="<?php echo get_template_directory_uri(); ?>/style.less">
    <script src="<?php echo get_template_directory_uri(); ?>/js/less.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<?php // Download the less.js file from http://lesscss.org/
}
view raw functions.php This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

You can adjust the locations of the files to suit your file structure for your theme, but this will add the necessary code.

Filed Under: WordPress

LineType Gen

January 25, 2012 By

Sick of editting all your polylines to turn LTGEN to On?  I know I was until I was told that you can have LTGEN set to On by default.  Simply type in:

PLINEGEN

and set the value to 1.

Filed Under: Random Tagged With: