No time for a post this week due to my new obsession of playing Island Life on Facebook. Don't be a hater: instead, have a new freebie image for wallpaper goodness. It's a blue/green version of my 365 Project shot for today (seen here). I was pretty lazy tonight and didn't make happy desktop sizes- but it should be big enough at 6MB for you to make it fit your resolutions. Enjoy!

Click here to download. You probably wanna right-click save as.

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda


photo credit: carolyntiry

A lot of people don't like to make New Year's resolutions for a variety of reasons. I'd like to think that I've heard every excuse there is at this point but people continually find new ways to surprise me. The two most common (to date) that I've heard are:

1. "Oh, I don't need a reason to make goals, I have them year-round."
2. "People never stick to resolutions anyway so why bother."

There's a whole slew of ways to argue these points, but for me it just isn't worth it. While I agree with the first statement in principle, New Years and its associated traditions provide a logical, easily remembered point in time to set goals for yourself for the coming year. If you're committed enough to not need such a landmark date that's great, but I'll stick with what works for me.

In years past I never bothered setting goals for myself. Sometimes (infrequently) New Years was a good time to look over what happened to me in the last year and try to figure out what went wrong. The past two years were the first times I tried setting concrete goals for myself and it worked out pretty well. I think that where this practice fails for a lot of folks is that they don't set concrete enough goals. If you don't know your goal, how can you judge your progress or success / failure?

Now without further pontificating- my goals for 2010.

Fitness

• I want to maintain a 30-31 inch waist.
• Make it to the gym 4 days a week at least every other week, if not every week.
• Reduce my bodyfat. My scale currently says I'm at ~8-9%, but I wonder how accurate that is. That might be true overall, but most of my bodyfat is concentrated around the 'ole waistline. Needs to even out!
• Be able to squat 160lbs, bench press 180lbs, and do 100 pushups. Not necessarily all of these back to back

Hobbies

• Read at least 3 books a month (or 36 books for the year) with at least half being non-fiction. I'm great at tearing through fiction but I'm slow on the nonfic.
• Draw more. I haven't actively sketched anything in years, and the LA Ink marathon I watched while fighting off the deadly ninja sinus virus ..thing rekindled the creative urge in me. I haven't decided what I'm going to draw yet but I want to have at least four finished pieces by the end of the year.
• Photography. I definitely want to take more pictures, and I've started on that by joining the 365 Project. It's not a competition- you just take a picture every day and post it. I also want to enter at least two photo contests this year.
• San Diego Exploration. At least once a month, try something new around town. This includes hiking.

Self Improvement

• Learn a foreign language. This is one of my failed goals from last year, sadly. Logically enough I'm starting with Latin American Spanish since it's the second most popular language here. I'd also like to be able to talk to the nice smiling people who run the 24 hour burrito drive thru near my house.
• Add a new technical skill / certification. I'm leaning strongly toward PHP here due to my increasing WordPress involvement. Currently I'm more of a talented amateur hacker at it than anything else.

So thems my goals for the year. The fitness ones should be a breeze, the hobby ones a bit harder, and I think that the self improvement ones will be the hardest of all.

Hey! It's been a while hasn't it?

I'm sorry I haven't posted more. Life in California is pretty busy, so I don't have a lot of free time to hang out on the internet. It's somewhat ironic to me that I feel busier here than I did in Alabama when by and large the culture here is far more laid back and relaxed. Work hours start later and are far more relaxed, holidays are longer and there are more of them, and no one really ever appears to be in a hurry. I don't know if this is true for most jobs here, just tech jobs, or just "game industry" jobs of which I'm on the very periphery of.

So what's keeping me so busy you ask? The biggest push for me personally has been re-furnishing my pad. When I left Alabama I threw out just about everything that I didn't personally pick out, or furniture that I didn't like. I took pictures of my old apartment right before I left of everything packed up. It's pretty drastic that when moving from a 989 sq foot, 2 bed/bath apartment to a 830 sq foot, 1 bed/bath apartment almost everything I moved fit in half my living room. I had 86 "items" for the movers to move. That's it. I threw away a lot both physically and mentally to make this move, and one of my first orders of business has been to get my sense of "home" re-established. It's still a work in progress, but I'm done enough to actually show it to people and not feel like I'm living in a dorm room. You can see the full album on my photos page. Here's a few samples:

Some of my free time has been devoted to working on my official blog of course (www.thefirestarter.org), working on my dad's photography site (www.thruthelenz.com), and I just finished a website for Dennis my old personal trainer (www.1on1personaltrainingnow.com). Website work is sort of hit or miss for me, I don't generally enjoy it and have to be "in the mood" to get anything done. I need to finish Thru the Lenz and one more site for a friend's computer consulting gig before I can quit for another year or two. Hopefully. What's left of my free time has been split between gym, various social events, reading, and a renewed interest in gaming. I'm still trying to find a good multiplayer (co-op) RPG, so if anyone has recommendations I'm all ears. Gym is indirectly taking up more time than I'm used to; eating 3000 (or more!) calories a day while trying to bulk is not as easy as I would hoped. There's food prep time, sleep time, longer gym sessions.. but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was worth it and didn't enjoy every minute of it.

The only thing I'd like to do more of that I haven't is hiking. I got to do a quick 2 hour trip to Torrey Pines a few weekends back (photos here), but I haven't done any real stuff yet. I'm trying to get a group together to do a hike at Volcan Mountain this weekend but those pesky social obligations I mentioned keep cropping up =). Along with the hiking comes photography of course, but that's still very much a shelved project until all my website work finishes up.

Next post will be sometime this week and will probably be a Rogaine update. Stay tuned!

I was reading through my new favorite site The Sneeze when I came across the following article entitled "An Open Letter to My Hair". I won't lie, Steve's letter to his hair really hit a chord with me. As you can see from the picture my hair and I haven't really been on good terms since July 15th, 2006. Much like Steve and his hair, my hair and I hadn't been on the best of speaking terms for months when I made the decision to end our relationship for good. It was tearing me apart slowly but surely as I watched my hair quit trying in our relationship.

It's been three years now that we've been separated. Every now and again I try and give our relationship another shot, but each time it seemed like my hair was trying less and less. Why was I the only one?! Didn't it care anymore? I mean sure, it might be a LITTLE miffed about my constant shaving of it. I wasn't giving it room to grow but it never listened to anything I had to say. Either way it was clear that our relationship wasn't going to move forward without some outside intervention.

The only flaw in my plan was that apparently the profession of "hair therapist" is just a fancy-schmancy way of saying someone went to beauty school for four months. It was not, in fact, a fully licensed and respected member of the psychiatric community! Pretty short-sighted if you ask me. Either way, since there wasn't professional therapy available, I figured I'd try for a little over-the-counter chemical therapy instead. There are probably more websites out there dedicated to male hair restoration than to male enhancement (not that I wanted to do a hand count), and the sheer number of fake blogs and testimonials out there is enough to mislead anyone. With no other options I went with the most popular: Rogaine.

Let me stop here and explain something to the ladies. For many men, there's a certain amount of shame involved when your hair starts to go. It's worse if it starts young; mine started around the age of 25. It's also VERY hard to pull off the receding hairline look unless you're Jason Statham or Mr. Clean. As the foremost champion of the slogan "Bald is beautiful!" it almost felt like betrayal when I ordered my four month supply of Rogaine.

Fast forward 5-7 business days for ground shipping and my Rogaine arrived. It sat on my bathroom counter for a week as I wavered back and forth. Use it, and possibly get my sexified hair back? Not use it, and stay true to my legions of "Bald is Beautiful" followers? Decisions! It didn't help that I would have to stop shaving my head for four months to test its effectiveness, and if it DID work, I couldn't quit using it: any new hair growth will fall out if you stop. You thought service plans were the best way for companies to get your money for nothing? No sir. Rogaine is probably the best scam, evar. If it works. Which it says it does on 85% of men! But if I let my hair grow, people would know that I was balding as it grew out! What good is having hair if EVERYONE saw your bald spots for the last four months?! What a crock! I should just send this back with a nasty letter regarding their slowass product.

...or buy lots of hats. "Hrmm. Yeah. Hats. That's the ticket.", I said to myself. "No one would ever think it suspicious that I was chrome-domed, then wore hats for four months, then BAM! I got better hair than Zach Braff. A foolproof plan.

So there you have it. Today was day 1 of the great Rogaine experiment. I'll try to take pictures once a week or so and update the progress. I won't say I'll keep it up forever, but I'm definitely willing to try the four month supply. You happy kids at home can follow along and see how magically Rogaine will help my hair and I become reunited.

So here's my head, pretty similar to the first shot 3 years ago huh? A little tanner sure, but no photoshop here, nosir! All natural iPhone pics only. The last time I shaved my head was yesterday, so we're looking at 24 hours worth of stubble (natural, not Rogaine). Stay tuned for updates!

PS: Was the pun in my title awesome or what? Get it? Folly? Follicles? You know what? Screw you people. That's funny.

Over the past year I've gotten lots of questions about eating and diet. I never think I have a good answer either; there are so many factors that go into what works and what doesn't (metabolism, activity level, age, sex, etc) that it's nearly impossible to give accurate advice. It took me having an awesome trainer for about 8 months to figure it out and that's only because he gave me a good base diet to work from. That being said, I have managed to work out a few things that are pretty applicable all around.

1. Drink lots of water. By lots, I mean as close to a gallon a day as you can get. This does not include cokes, coffee, tea, or anything else. Be prepared to visit the little boy's (or girl's) room frequently.
2. Eat more, smaller meals. Right now I'm doing 7 meals a day, but that's not really necessary unless you're exercising strenuously. Even breaking things up to 4-5 a day is good, like having a mid afternoon snack of raw veggies.
3. When snacking, eat lots of vegetables. Fruit is good too, but be wary of the sugar content. Avoid dried fruit at all costs due to the extra sugar (dried pineapple is my kryptonite, fyi).
4. Don't eat out.
5. If you do eat out, try to eat salads. Honey mustard the condiment in the grocery store is ok to eat, honey mustard dipping sauce and dressing generally are not. Try to go with salads that have grilled salmon, tuna, or chicken on them.
6. Don't eat the free bread.
7. Do a little preemptive calorie legwork. Most big chains have their nutritional information posted online. Read up and make informed choices before you get there.
8. If you're like me and like Asian food, look for menu items with oyster sauce and make sure to ask for light sauce. Avoid eating rice too!
9. In general, avoid restaurant starches like pastas, bread, potatoes, etc. The portions are huge. Try to swap it for a side salad instead.
10. Many restaurants have vegetables on the menu. If they're not steamed or grilled, it's probably best to just get a side salad. Green beans aren't that healthy cooked in bacon, and neither is corn steeped in butter.
11. Speaking of vegetables, the order of general "good-for-you-ness": green -> red -> orange -> yellow.
12. Stick to lean meats as much as possible like chicken, fish, and turkey. Beef should be rarer in your diet. A good general rule of them is the fewer legs the better.
13. Avoid sauces for flavor. Seasoning is ok, but get the sauce on the side or not at all.
14. Don't go to fast food places!
15. Try to plan your meals in advance for the week. I've found that if I plan the menu in advance (and the nutritional info) I tend to eat out less.
16. Carry your lunch to work- "quick" lunches at Hooters are an easy way to pack on the pounds.
17. Last but not least, avoid alcohol like the plague.

There are literally tons of little substitutions you can make and never notice: light bread instead of regular, fat free cheese, fat free / light yogurt, sugar free jello, rice cakes (flavored are ok), I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Do a little investigative grocery store shopping. Don't worry about cheating; yes you will slip up from time to time. There will be that pie, or that beer, or whatever. Try to keep it in control and cheat only about once a week. Of course all of this is tons more effective with exercise, but we're all busy people right? Worse comes to worse if you're in the Mobile area, I can recommend a guy who will sweat it off of you pretty quick.

Ants in the pants? ANTS IN THE PANTS?! YOU SONOFABITCH! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET ME THE RED MEGAMAN YOU CHEAP PIECE OF CRAP I HATE YOU! -Cartman (Damien, 1998)

My very first exposure to SouthPark so many years ago was this episode; Damien the son of Satan comes to earth to herald he arrival of Satan. It also happens to be Cartman's birthday. This episode and "Pinkeye" were on a VHS tape that was a birthday present from my sister Theresa. I think this particular tape was given to me sometime in 2000... yeah, I got on the SouthPark bandwagon kinda late.

Let me start by saying I'm not normally a light sleeper. Certain things (my cat, gym trips, hurricanes) have changed that for the worse. You would think I should sleep better with a cat constantly walking on me but somehow, that's just not the case. Last night I had another issue: ants. That's them in the picture up there.

You know that state of sleep, right as your about to fall asleep? Where you always think you're about to roll off the bed and you jerk, waking yourself up? Yeah, that one. I couldn't manage to get past that because every time I'd doze off, I'd feel like something was ever so slightly brushing against me. My arms. My head. My leg. I'd swipe at it and doze back off, only to have it happen again. I finally stumbled out of bed at 3am and turned on the light. Sure enough I hadn't been dreaming something was definitely touching me. Ants were crawling all over my comforter and me and I had been swatting them in my sleep. I can't begin to describe the level of "freak the fuck out" that hit my sleep addled brain at 3am in the morning.

Now I don't have anything against insects in general, but anything that bites pretty much gets nuclear winter declared inside my house. I got pushed into a fire ant bed as a kid and had too many "lawn mower meets ant hill" incidents while growing up to be nice to ants. Luckily California ants don't seem to bite much, and are generally just looking for water. Call me an ant racist, but I smashed all the ones I could see (black ants on a dark wood bed half asleep at 3am!), threw my comforter in the corner, and dragged my mattress, pillow, and a blanket off to sleep on the floor. I've only been here 10 days and had my own bed for the last 4 days and now somehow I'm back to sleeping on the floor. I was just drifting back off to sleep (Wifecat curled up at my side of course) when I heard the little voice in the back of my mind say the Cartman quote. I managed to scare the cat into finding somewhere else to sleep by laughing my ass off.

I'm coming back from work with Raid though. No mercy!

Editor's note: This photo is from a previous incarnation of the site; I had just packed sans roommate to move out of the awesome loft apartment we shared. I decided to include it here because it's the only chronicle I have of the move before this one. I've come a helluva long way since then, and learned a lot about people thanks to the roommate I had at the time. I actually have real furniture now and luxury items like hangers.

Editor's note: This photo is from a trip to Atlanta back in 2007. They seriously need one out in San Diego. This is not a bad picture for a camera phone, and it even got included in some Atlanta hotspots book/brochure thing.

I got introduced to the Flying Biscuit when I went up to visit Chioke in Atlanta in January. I didn't believe it was worth the two hour wait in 30 degree weather, but when I saw the line of people waiting on either side of the street, I began to reconsider.  It was ENTIRELY worth the wait.  Their menu is totally organic food, all fresh made.   I think I need to order their cookbook.

Editor's note: This photo is also from the Atlanta trip; I honestly had never tried to picture DL Hughley as a bouncer before that. It's suprisingly effective.

Atlanta at night as we drive around trying to find some new Chinese place in Atlantic Station. Turns out it wasn't in Atlantic Station, so we ended up going to Outback instead. That's not to say we didn't find a Chinese place, we were just turned away at the door by the bouncer because I was wearing shorts. He was very apologetic, but it wasn't enough to overcome the uncanny resemblance to DL Hughley.

Editor's note: This is one of the early photos of Wifecat. She was a stray that followed me into the house one day and never left. The first 6 months she was weirdly attached to me; she would follow me from room to room but never "cuddle" or curl up with anyone. She's only slightly warmer towards me now.