Another sign of the times - a new indie film site called The Auteurs is promoting itself at the Cannes Film Festival with a video competition sponsored by HP, Facebook and Flip. 250 people will get the chance to grab a Flip camera and shoot a 3 minute short film. The winner, as determined by a jury receives $10,000 cash and a HP workstation with a 30 inch display - plus you get to keep the camera. Don’t expect the resulting videos to be Cannes-worthy though since the Flip video camera is a small solid state consumer device that only shoots 640×480 video. It will be interesting to see how many people actually participate in this competition. I think this sort of stunt/promotion would be better suited to another film festival such as Slamdance .
0 CommentsSearch Results for '"10"'
It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to a commercial print audition but tomorrow I will be going out for an IBM print job. I considered turning it down, but $1,500 for a 10 hour work day is actually more than I usually make doing freelance - so I figured why not?
0 Comments5k : 32.35min. I was able to shave 1min off my last run by sprinting for 10 seconds after walking. I’m still not able to run the entire 5k, but I’ve vastly improved since the Navy Seals Fitness Challenge where it took me almost 20min to cover 1.5 miles. I’m also trying to change my running style to become a fore-foot striker and incorporate Pose running techniques. So I’m running about a mile on my forefoot and the rest of the time mid-foot staying conscious of where my feet land (so that I don’t over-stride) and listening to the sound of my feet as they hit the ground so that my feet are light and I’m not creating unnecessary friction between me and the ground.
0 Comments5k : 33.37min. I just picked up the Nike+ iPod sensor to start timing my runs. Even though I’m wearing New Balance RC1001 I made it work by sticking the sensor under my front laces.
0 CommentsHere are my final results for the Navy Seals Fitness Challenge:
| 500m swim* | Push-ups | Sit-ups | Pull-ups | 1.5 mile run | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEAL Competitive | 10:00 | 80 | 80 | 11 | 10:00 |
| SEAL Standard | 12:30 | 42 | 50 | 6 | 11:00 |
| ME | 13:36 | 55 | 64 | 7 | 19:36 |
*breast stroke or side-stroke only
Not too shabby since my only preparation was a 250m swim and 500m swim the previous week. My only complaint is that I was stuck in a swim lane with 2 slow swimmers ahead of me. I passed one guy but couldn’t get around the second guy which cost me making the SEAL standard time of 12:30. The running on the other hand, is something I knew I would have problems with. In the end, I was the last competitor on the track, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to complete the course no matter how long it took me. Plus, I have never run a 7min mile in my life - which is about the pace I would have needed to run in order to meet the standard. My running is awkward to begin with. I’m a total “heel-striker”, which according to my Google research, is the most bio-mechanically inefficient way to run. So I really need to work on my running. But overall I had a great time. I’ve caught the competition bug. Next stop, Ironman. 
I’m burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. But I have nothing to complain about. This year has been incredible and I’ve been blessed with so many opportunities. I’ve got work raining down on me - and I’m not even talking about my day job. Unfortunately I’m not talking about acting either, but rather outside technology/internet projects. I can barely keep up. I feel I need to grab as many opportunities as I can while they exist ’cause ya never know what tomorrow will be like. Hollywood is quickly trying to converge into the digital/internet world and I’m a part of it in every aspect and from both ends of the business. It’s exciting albeit exhausting talking to so many people about so many different ideas, projects, opportunities. My own creative projects as actor and producer are also proving to have big possibilities - I just need the time to concentrate on them. At this point it’s a race to the new year as I have a couple projects I need to finish and deliver before Christmas all while taking care of holiday errands and doing XFlowsion (a high energy yoga/cardio) 4 times a week trying to reach my goal of 10% body fat by year’s end.
It’s amazing to think how much I’ve accomplished since the beginning of the year. I’ve been very blessed.
0 CommentsAt the beginning of the year H and I were lucky enough to be chosen to participate in a new yoga/fitness system created by Eric Paskel called XFlowsion. For 30 days we did intense yoga/dance/martial arts 4 times a week and ate according to the XFlowsion diet (whole grains, veggies, fruits, etc, etc). By the end of the program I lost 11lbs. A month after the program I dropped another 9lbs and ended up at 163lbs / 14.5% bodyfat. Well Christmas has come early this year because Eric has moved to LA from Michigan and has offered 3 weeks of free XFlowsion classes to those who participated in the original program. The XFlowsion commercial will be re-shot, AND Eric will be opening up his own gym sometime in Jan/Feb.
So H and I are back in XFlowsion boot-camp again. We started Friday. The schedule is Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun which means we just completed our 3rd XFlowsion class today. All I can say is that XFlowsion is one hell of a workout. H and I have been doing yoga at home and at various yoga centers, but nothing compares to Eric’s classes. By the end of each class I am absolutely exhausted. I never sweat as much in any other workout than XFlowsion. It takes a lot of concentration, strength, flexibility and endurance to get through his classes. It’s intense. But it’s as intense as you want it to be because Eric is so mellow. Each class is completely different too (other than the typical yoga down-dogs and chattarungas mixed in with everything). So now I’m starting off at my new weight of 163lbs/15% bodyfat and I’m hoping to get down to 10% bodyfat by Christmas. That means I need to lose 5% of my weight in bodyfat which would be 8lbs. To accomplish this I’m going to try to be even more precise with my nutrition. Using the Harris-Benedict principle, I can assess my basal metabolic rate — also known as BMR:
Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)
66 + (6.3 x 162) + (12.9 x 71) - (6.8 x 34) = 1771
I need to multiply this by 40% and add the total since I normally work out 3-4 times a week.
This means I need to eat 2,479 calories a day just to maintain my current body weight. So I need to create a caloric deficit be reducing calories. 1lb is roughly 3500 calories. So if I decrease my calories by 500/day I will lose 1lb a week. If I can also burn 500 calories a day I could lose 2lbs a week - which would put me 2lbs away from being 10% bodyfat in 3 weeks. The big challenge is that it is the holidays and H and I love food. That means on Thanksgiving we will not be following the diet. But luckily, Eric will have an XFlowsion class Friday morning to make up for our dietary “sins”.
Out of curiosity I asked Google how many calories Bikram yoga burns (it’s the closest I could think to XFlowsion). I know it it’s going to be different for everybody since it depends on your practice intensity and a lot of other factors, but from what I could find it sounds like it’s possible to burn 600-700 calories in an hour. So XFlowsion four times a week would be 2400 calories burned at the least. I will also be hitting the weights hard at the gym twice a week and have one day to rest and recover.
During this training period I also need to make sure I eat enough calories to keep my metabolism running high. That means I need to eat approx 400 calories a meal 5 times a day which would put me at 2000 calories which is roughly the 500 caloric deficit I need to burn fat.
So last time I lost 11lbs in 4 weeks doing XFlowsion 4x week and lifting on and off for that period of time while moderately following the XFlowsion diet. That means I should have no problem hitting 10% bodyfat in 3 weeks.
0 CommentsI recently noticed that I wasn’t receiving any comment email notifications from Movable Type so I decided to dive into the system to figure out what was going wrong. Running mt-check.cgi reported back that sendmail was installed so I thought it might be a permissions issue between the the apache user process and sendmail. I typed in ’sendmail’ at the prompt and received back a message talking about “Exim“. Well, I’m not a Linux guru, but I do know that Sendmail!=Exim. So I turned to google to tell me what the heck Exim is and how do I figure out what’s going wrong. Google pointed me to the exim log file on the system which I watched as I sent test emails from Movable Type. The exim.log showed that it could not resolve the email addresses and was failing. A second thing I noticed was the ton of spam it was successfully blocking. So I went back to google to find out more info. I tried searching on keywords “exim movabletype”, “exim configuration” and couldn’t find anything useful. Then after staring at the exim.conf file for 10min, the lines “domainlist local_domains=” hit me. Google had told me that Exim was used for transferring and relaying local mail. My mail is being hosted at google through google apps. So I did a new google search for “exim google apps“. That search gave up a clue that got me one step further: If you are using a linux server, don’t forget to edit the /etc/remotedomains file to delete your domain. Well after poking around the file system I knew that I didn’t have a “remotedomains” file, but it did sound very similar to my “/etc/virtual/domains” file mentioned in my exim.conf. So I googled “/etc/virtual/domains“. And saw my final clue titled: Disable SMTP to certain local domains? That article did not have the exact answer but gave me enough information for me to solve the problem. To disable SMTP/mail service for specific domains just copy “/etc/virtual/domains” to some other file such as “/etc/virtual/domains_with_smtp”, edit the file and delete all the domains which use google mail, then point exim.conf “domainlist local_domains=” and “domainlist relay_domains=” to use this new file.
Voila! Email notifications now work!
0 CommentsUpdate: 10,000 Joost invites now available here: http://www.joost.com/presents/techcrunch/
If didn’t already know… convergence is the wave of the future - the merging of Hollywood and the Internet creating a new digital media landscape. Joost is the company/buzzword of the moment which was started by the lucky bastards who created and sold Skype to Ebay for a couple billion. Joost is TV on the internet delivered to your computer full-screen with added features such as instant messaging and search baked right in. Right now, Joost is still in beta and is invite only. But you can get your own invite right here. But they only have 20,000 invites so you better click the link right now.
I’ll be trying it out on my MacBook Pro tonight.
1 CommentI stumbled upon this book on Amazon.com that sounds pretty cool:
Amazon.com description: “You’re smart. This book can make you smarter. Mind Performance Hacks provides real-life tips and tools for overclocking your brain and becoming a better thinker. In the increasingly frenetic pace of today’s information economy, managing your life requires hacking your brain. With this book, you’ll cut through the clutter and tune up your brain intentionally, safely, and productively. Grounded in current research and theory, but offering practical solutions you can apply immediately, Mind Performance Hacks is filled with life hacks that teach you to:
* Use mnemonic tricks to remember numbers, names, dates, and other flotsam you need to recall
* Put down your calculator and perform complex math in your head, with your fingers, or on the back of a napkin
* Spark your creativity with innovative brainstorming methods
* Use effective systems to capture new ideas before they get away
* Communicate in creative new ways-even using artificial languages
* Make better decisions by foreseeing problems and finding surprising solutions
* Improve your mental fitness with cool tricks and games
While the hugely successful Mind Hacks showed you how your brain works, Mind Performance Hacks shows you how to make it work better.”
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