This past week I finally took part in something I had been curious about for many years but never actually tried - autocross!

There was a Level 1 training session this past week consisting of a classroom session Wednesday and an in-car session Saturday. What a blast! I think everybody there had a great time. I must really thank Jann for telling me about the school session and asking me to go along with him. Autocross in Winnipeg is put on by the WSSC - Winnipeg Sports Car Club. Check out their website for more information.

The training session was very well run and I learned a great deal from it. My first run on the training course was 61.727 seconds, and my fastest lap was 49.125 seconds - over 12.5 seconds faster. What an amazing rush!

Here are some pictures that Jann took of me. Thanks again Jann!













In my next post, I’ll talk about my first race that was held on Sunday, the day after Level 1 school.

Good afternoon,

Recently, Vimeo has started sending out quasi-daily emails with the three newest videos in my inbox. I’m not sure what my Vimeo inbox is, or how videos get there, but nonetheless there it is. This was one of the videos the other day that I found completely interesting. It combines several of my interests together in one. Music, multi-track video and audio editing, Japanese bonsai, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the MacBook Pro you see at one point.

This video is Diego Stocco using a variety of microphones and tools to create music on a bonsai tree. As you can see, the final audio track was created over many takes, one “instrument” at a time. In the description and comments, Diego says that this was neither scripted nor synthesized in any way; each take was improvised and added onto the previous tracks.

Here is Music From A Bonsai by Diego Stocco.

Wow!

Today is certainly a great day to be Canadian! What a gold medal men’s hockey game between Canada and the USA!! It was very close, and the Americans wanted it very badly, but we wanted it just a little bit more.

With this gold, Canada has set some great Olympic records in 2010. Here are a couple off the top of my head:

• The most winter olympic gold medals by the host nation (14, previous was 10)
• The most winter olympic gold medals by any nation (14, previous was 13)

Congratulations to all our Canadian athletes, and to all the athletes from every country who participated in these 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC!!!

Good evening,

It was a long time coming, but here is the video from the Frost Fire trip on December 20, 2009. It was recorded in HD (720p), so make sure to go full screen for best results. Enjoy!

Frost Fire December 20, 2009

Good evening,

I’ve got a problem with my car. When it gets cold out, my driver’s side door decides that it doesn’t want to close anymore. I’ve discovered the temporary resolution so that I can get home is to power lock the doors. Then when the door closes, the latch will catch, and I can safely get home. Then I’m stuck inside. From that point onward, that door will not unlock and I have to crawl over the manual shift stick, e-brake, and centre console to get out the passenger side door. The power lock won’t open it, neither will the latch inside, nor the key outside. Until it thaws out, that lock isn’t going anywhere. In the garage, I’ll aim a small electric space heater at the door lock area, and in a few hours I’ll be able to get back in again as if nothing was ever wrong. It’s not like I can prevent it either - the first time it happened to me this year, it had been almost three weeks since I had previously washed the car! Of course washing it doesn’t help any, but not washing it doesn’t help either.

When this first started happening to me last year, I took it into the dealer (this was before I started seeing a far superior and honest independent mechanic - Vtech Auto) and it had thawed in the meantime, so they couldn’t reproduce the problem. At the time, I hadn’t figured out that thawing solved the problem, so to me it just went away. They lubed up the latch and sent me on my way with no charge, which was very decent of them.

Spring came, and I forgot about it until it happened again several times during this last cold snap. I found some instructions online on how to remove the inside door panel for a 2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V and went at it. The Flickr link below has the pictures I took of the process.

Unfortunately, I reached a point where I couldn’t easily go any further and still hadn’t reached the locking mechanism. The plastic panel came off and revealed a great deal, but my target area was still covered up by another steel panel that doesn’t look like it comes off. This will take more research on how to further take apart the door, and it also looks more involved than I should attempt on a work night. Definitely a weekend task! If I wanted to get to the in-door speaker, though, this is far enough. In fact, the passenger door speaker vibrates and rattles some, so now I know how to gain access to it.

Putting the door back together again was a simple process of reversing the steps.

Flickr Page - Door Panel Removal

This weekend, I’ve got a date with my door panel. I’m going to see if I can find more instructions on how to get deeper into the door. Wish me luck!

Good afternoon!

Last night, Shannon and I finally went to see Avatar in 3D. All I can say is WOW! This was my first 3D movie experience, and it was incredible. Unfortunately, Shannon didn’t have the same experience as I did — she ended up getting nauseous for most of the movie. If you haven’t seen a 3D movie yet, be aware that you may end up feeling nauseous. I found that my eyes were sore for the first 10 minutes or so until I got used to it, and when the movie was over I found that I had one of those right-behind-the-eyes headaches. Seeing a movie in 3D is definitely an experience that you’ll have to adjust to.

Physical discomforts aside, I thought it was implemented quite well. It was really cool to be able to choose what object and depth of focus I want to turn my attention to. That said, sometimes it felt like they had some 3D scenes that were there just for the sake of being 3D and didn’t have anything at all to do with the movie. That’s okay, though — if I was a filmmaker and had this great new technology to play with, I’m sure I’d go a little overboard too. There were also some occasions where the 3D objects looked very flat. One scene in particular had the colonel’s body in front of some people and other objects in the background, but the colonel himself seemed very flat, almost like a cardboard cutout placed in front of something else. For the most part, though, I found it quite well done. I found myself turning my head to the side and tilting it trying to get a better view of a sign on the side of a wall. I also jumped back and to the left at one point when an object seemed to come right out of the screen just to the right of me. There were a lot of scenes that really implemented the 3D very well.

That’s a lot of discussion on the “gimmicks” of Avatar. How was the movie itself? I really enjoyed it! It was a long movie at 2 hours and 40 minutes, but that was fine. We originally went to see the 9:00pm show at Polo Park, but when we got there an hour early it was already sold out. We then ventured to St. Vital for the 10:15pm show and were third in line. I am very much a morning person, not at all a night owl, and so I was mildly concerned about being able to stay awake until 1:30am or so (after 30 minutes of commercials and previews — sheesh!). There was no chance of that. I was captivated from the first scene right to the closing credits. I don’t want to give any plot details other than to say that was one tough colonel!

Overall, I found Avatar to be a great movie, and the 3D effects were quite spectacular. I strongly recommend you go and see it in a 3D theatre instead of waiting for it to hit Movie Central or your local rental store.

Avatar 3D: / 5

Good evening,

Here it is, the last workout update for 2009. What a year it's been! Did I get all my fitness goals accomplished? Nope - not even close. That's okay, though, because I still came a very long way and learned a lot about how my body responds to varying types of exercise.

Let me just quickly insert the final tally here before discussing next year's progress:

December 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 23 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 35 lbs (actual: 2 x 7 @ 55 lbs)
Pushups goal: 120 (actual: 90)
Waist around navel: 33” (actual: 36.5” )

A few things to note here — the muscle pull from the November 30th test ended up actually being quite severe, much more than I first realized. It's been a month and I still can't push myself to the level I was without feeling my neck muscles starting to pull again, so that's why I only peaked at 90 pushups. It's so frustrating because after last month's 110, I absolutely would have made 120 this month! In fact, I probably could have done it last month too, I just stopped at 110 because that was the target for the month. This was so very frustrating and disappointing. Same thing with the pull ups; not that I would have completed a real one, but I had to go from subtracting 55 lbs to 85 lbs. I am pleased with the waistline, though. Making an improvement in that department during all the holiday season feasting was certainly an accomplishment.

Despite coming up far short of the final target for 2009, I learned plenty about how I felt versus the focus and exercises I was doing at the time. For example, when I strayed away from working strictly towards the 2009 goal items (pushups, pull ups, waist) and worked more on high intensity full body training, I was losing weight and trimming up quite nicely. Then, when I realized how far off course I was for the specific pull up and push up exercises, I reworked my focus for those items, and my waistline took a hit. I found I felt better and healthier overall during the high intensity full body training when I was slimming down as opposed to when I was cranking out 100+ pushups. At the end of the day, this is all about being healthy and feeling good. Though it will feel great when I do finally get that first pull up, my overall sense of health was better when that wasn’t the sole focus.

This year's fitness goals are taking last year's results and lessons learned into account. There is an expression: if you can't measure it, you can't track it. 2009 has shown to me the great benefits from tracking my progress and reporting on it here. It has kept me motivated to continue because with other people reading this and following along I'm accountable to more than just myself. This has been a great motivator all year long! Even though I couldn't keep up, I still kept going, and that is the most important thing of all.

Coming back to the expression, what metric will I use to measure and track 2010's progress? This year I'll be looking at body fat percentage (BF%). My research has shown that a healthy BF% for an early 30's male is about 15%, the very athletic are around 10%, and 3 - 4% is the minimum safe level. Using the skin-fold method, I've determined my BF% rounded to the nearest 0.5% to be 25.5%. Therefore, I'm tracking two goals for December 31, 2010. The most important goal is to reach a healthy 15%. However, I'll also be shooting for a very nice 10% and the six-pack that goes along with it!

Date	Current	Target 1	Target 2
01-Jan-10	25.5%	25.5%	25.5%

Date	Weight	Fat	Lean Mass
01-Jan-10	202	52	150

Once again, the number on the scale is only a guide for informational purposes. Maybe I'll end up weighing 175lbs (at 10% BF = 17.5lbs fat, 157.5lbs lean), or maybe I'll still be at 200lbs (20lbs fat, 180lbs lean). That doesn't matter. What matters is burning the fat while keeping and even increasing the muscle.

2009 was a great year! I went from ten pushups to one hundred and ten, trimmed my waistline by 2.5", and figured out how to work towards my first pull up (albeit far too late in the year). I'm really looking forward to the progress that will be made in 2010!

Here is the final Goal Tracker page for 2009. Since there is a new set of goals for 2010, the Goal Tracker page needs to change, but I don’t want to lose the 2009 information. This seems like a good place to archive the information.


Welcome to my goal tracker for 2009. Take the following snippet from the January 1, 2009 entry in my blog:

With this in mind, here are some of my goals for 2009. My focus this year is health and fitness. My legs have always been pretty strong thanks to several years of martial arts, but my upper body has always been weak and my spare tire ever present. This year, I’m going to remedy both of those problems.

1. 1 pullup by the end of January
2. 3 pullups by the end of February
3. Continuing on until 23 consecutive pullups by the end of December
4. 10 pushups by the end of January
5. 20 pushups by the end of February
6. Continuing on until 120 consecutive pushups by the end of December
7. Today (January 1st), my waist size (relaxed) around my belly button is 39”; 38” by the end of February
8. 37” by the end of April
9. Continuing on 1” every two months until 33” at the end of December (ideal healthy waist line for a 6” tall male; Tiger Woods is 6’2” and has a waist of 28” - source: http://www.collectivewizdom.com/NormalWaistforaManpage2.html)

This is not to say that all I’m going to do are pullups and pushups! I definitely have balanced workout plans (i.e. all muscle groups), but I didn’t feel like planning and spelling out my entire workout schedule for the year right now, either.


On this page, I will be tracking my progress along the way.

December 31, 2008
Pullups goal: 0 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 0 (actual: 5)
Waist around navel: 39” (actual: 39&rdquo

January 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 1 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 10 (actual: 10)
Waist around navel: 38.5” (actual: 38.25” )

February 28, 2009
Pullups goal: 3 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 20 (actual: 20)
Waist around navel: 38” (actual: 37.5” )

March 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 5 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 30 (actual: 30)
Waist around navel: 37.5” (actual: 36.75” )

April 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 7 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 40 (actual: 40)
Waist around navel: 37” (actual: 37.5” )

May 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 9 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 50 (actual: 50)
Waist around navel: 36.5” (actual: 36” )

June 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 11 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 60 (actual: 51)
Waist around navel: 36” (actual: 36.5” )

July 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 13 (actual: 0)
Pushups goal: 70 (actual: 35)
Waist around navel: 35.5” (actual: 36.75” )

August 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 15 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 80 lbs (actual: 80 lbs)
Pushups goal: 80 (actual: 36)
Waist around navel: 35” (actual: 35.75” )

September 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 17 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 110 lbs (actual: 105 lbs)
Pushups goal: 90 (actual: 55)
Waist around navel: 34.5” (actual: 36.25" )

October 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 19 (actual: 0)
Lat pull down goal: 2 x 10 @ 130 lbs (actual: 130)
Pushups goal: 100 (actual: 75)
Waist around navel: 34” (actual: 36.25" )

November 30, 2009
Pullups goal: 21 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 55 lbs (actual: 60 lbs)
Pushups goal: 110 (actual: 110)
Waist around navel: 33.5” (actual: 37” )

December 31, 2009
Pullups goal: 23 (actual: 0)
Assisted pull ups goal: 2 x 10 @ 35 lbs (actual: 2 x 7 @ 55 lbs)
Pushups goal: 120 (actual: 90)
Waist around navel: 33” (actual: 36.5” )

Wishing everybody all the best in 2010! I hope this year finds you all safe and brings you health, love, and prosperity.