My Fat Ass and What I am Doing About It!

I have noticed that lately that I have been expanding outwardly and occupying more space than I feel comfortable with... so being a lazy man and not particularly motivated (as is evident by the tenacity with which I maintain my blog) I decided that instead of using exercise to lose weight I would instead alter my intake.

About two months ago I discovered r/keto and after reading up on it decided that I would give it a shot... after all; it required minimal effort (eat more cheese and meat...uhhh ok) and if the results seen were anywhere near the results reported I would have lost some weight.

Well after just under two months I am about 15lbs lighter and have slimmed down to the last hole on my belt!

I have completely stopped eating bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and sugars, and I rarely if ever eat fruit (however I do eat a lot more vegetable s to make up for that.)  I have TONS of extra new energy, and don't find myself craving or being hungry anymore!

The most obvious downside about the ketogenic diet is that I won't shut up about it... be it either (rare) blog posts, pics up on my G+ page, twitter and reddit posts etc.  Also I have been using myfitnesspal.com to track my eating, it is a great tool to use and there are a very active and supportive online community to help fat asses like myself take up a little less space in the world.

Well here we are again... its been over a year since the last time I posted an entry in this here blog... and I was going to make such a concerted effort to do better...

But alas, what can I do... I think to myself, yeah I'm really going to start putting some effort into this, but there always seems to be something more important to do or occupying of my attention that I get side tracked.

What's new?

New tattoos: Finished both my sleeves now.... New Pad: I live in a cabin out in the woods now...

I think its pretty funny that I have had this blog going for over two years and only made nine entries into it.

Hopefully I will be writing more...

Tech & Tattoos

Let's talk about the Cloud!

The big buzz word relating to the future of computing seems to be 'The Cloud'
Last week Apple announced a new service called the iCloud and there is a lot of excitement in the air about it.

Set to launch in the fall, the new service will allow users to stream content from their libraries to their iOS device when they are on the go.  5GB will be free, and costs will incrementally increase past that. 

In my last post I told you about how I have switched my laptop to run Ubuntu now, and it looks like they thought of this first!

Ubuntu One is essentially the same service, it allows you to store data online, and stream to your android or iOS device.  The cost of this is $3.99 per month.

The main feature of these two services is the ability to stream music, whether it means ANY music file from ANY source is yet to be seen with the Apple product, but Ubuntu One will not care about the source that you get your music from.

Aside from music streaming features you can also use these systems for online storage, which brings us to the third service I will be talking about today.  Dropbox allows me to to store (for free) 2 GB of data online and retrieve them from anywhere.

The Ubuntu One app allows me to stream music... and thats it.

So basically, as I am too cheap to care to pay an additional fee to take some more music with me, this makes the app rather unattractive for me.  I feel that the meager 16GB i have in my iPhone are enough to keep me in tunes, and what i am really interested in is a better way to access and share my Photos.

Since iCloud is not available yet for me to play with, I am only left to compare Dropbox to Ubuntu One.  The main appeal for me behind the idea of cloud computing is not in the ability to stream music, but the ability to share files across platforms.  In this regard Dropbox seems to be a MUCH better product.  It is not so much the actual service that makes it better, it's the iPhone app...

Enter DropBox:

The DropBox app is simply amazing.  It allows me to upload or download any files in any of my shared folders!
So, if i take a few dozen photos on my phone, instead of waiting to get home to retrieve them to my PC I can just dump them en masse into the appropriate folder.  I can combine this functionality with the ability to set up 'Shared' folders, and create custom URL download links to email and IM friends and family.


News from the Tattoo Front:

For Junes session of the 12 months of Tattoos I completed the piece I was working on from May:

First Session in May

We came up with the design based on something we found on the online and I liked the multi-religious suggestions behind the piece. The work was done by Darryl Hart formerly of Mata Mata Studios in Hamilton.  The outline went smoothly and without any issues and the follow up session in June ended up adding all the shading.

Finished Product

More updates to come soon... and we may soon be moving to another platform

Let's Talk Tech

I would like to make this post all about the geeky goodness that is technology and how I love it, what I have been doing with it, and how it affects our lives

There have been a lot of new things in my life over the last year that have moved me significantly foreward technologicaly.  The first step was me getting an iPhone.  I actually got one on launch day here in Canada and have been making sweet, sweet love to it ever since.

The phone has given me a reason and access to the social apps that I so long abhored and condemned.  I now have a twitter account.  Why not? I have the phone on me alll the time, it's part distraction, and part narcissism.  But at the bottom of it, it gets boring rather quickly.

I have a LinkedIn account.  I have been slowly putting together a profile there.  i am hopeful that it can potentially launch me into a new career and help me find work more locally.
The camera is has respectable 5 mega-pixel sensor and a quite capable processor in the phone means it takes great pictures.  This means I now have a flicker account, as well as instagram and I am constantly uploading pictures to imgur.

I really liked the camera capabilities and being able to snap a photo and share it via twitter, flicker, and instagram instantly is pretty cool.

I have also recently switched over my work laptop to run on ubuntu linux, and I am absolutely loving it! There will certainly be a future post about how awesome it is and all the cool stuff it does (as well as many of the hardships I've had to endure to make it work).

Thats all for now, more to come soon!

The Winds of Change

The times they are a changin...  The only constant in life that will never change is that life will always keep changing. 

And there are many changes going on.

June has turned out to be a ridiculously busy month for me this year.  Seems that I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off. 

I gave my notice to my superintendents notifying them that I will be moving out of my castle in the sky, so now it's time to pack up my meager belongings and move in with my girlfriend!

I am very excited and happy to start my life anew with Jacki and moving in together seemed like the next logical step after having been together for over a year now. 

I am shitty at this...

Boy, I am really bad at keeping a blog up to date it seems...

Its been many many months of no updates, posts, or other musings of mine.  There has been lots happening lately, not the least of which was the latest Canadian Federal Election, the first election of any kind in which I participated.


Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been ruling a minority government for approximately the last 4-5 years. The official opposition had decided that we (as a nation) have had enough of him, his lies, and his secrecy.

The polls from the beginning showed that he was likely to win again with another minority, however the hard work of the left wing New Democratic Party caused a surge in voters that was countered by a surge from the right wing as well coming out in support of Harper. 

The results?

A Conservative majority....

This was without doubt the worst possible outcome for this election.  The Liberal and Bloc Quebecois parties were decimated, and the NDP has established itself as the new official opposition party.

We can only hope now that Harper and his government will rule with a centrist approach, and not try to build more prisons, enact stiffer crime bills, and build more prisons. 

Only Time Will Tell...

You're Messing With My Zen Thing, Man

Lots of stuff going on lately...

For Christmas I decided that I would give my girlfriend the tattoo session that I had booked for last Saturday.  She had been wanting to get some work done for a long time and I really wanted to give her something that was meaningful and that she would have forever (and beats the shit out of jewelery... plus she won't be able to pawn it)

When we got to the shop and explained that I was not intending to be under the gun today my artist got a little upset... it turns out that he had drawn up a new piece for me and was really excited about it.

So he suggested doing us both!

Behold the new tall ship on my left inner fore arm! 

(Banner to be filled in at a later date...Once I come up with something...)

We also had some discussions about future pieces to go on the other side of the arm and some filler up into the armpit... but I'll post those pics once I am wearing them...

In Other Happenings:

I just saw Tron: Legacy starring Jeff Bridges on the weekend.  It was my first foray into the world of 3D film, and I did not hate it as much as I anticipated that I would.

The movie itself was pretty enjoyable.  I enjoyed the story and the visual effects were very good.  Even though it was my first 3D movie it seemed like they could have done more with it.  This makes me happy because the movie will be as enjoyable to watch on a television as it was in the theater.  Hollywood is doing a lot right now that I do not approve of as a fan of film in general.  This new fangled 3D is merely at the tip of the iceberg since it has not yet permeated into every single motion picture that is being made right now... hopefully it will disappear into the ether before this trend reaches any further.  The other major issue I have with the current generation of Hollywood films is the digitization of movies and the recolouring of every frame in the movie.  The abomination that is known as Orange and Teal (link for further explanation).

But getting back to the movie:

Tron Legacy brought us back to the 'Grid' and explored what has been happening over the last 30ish years since we left it back in 1982 (at which point most of the cast was not yet  born...)  Flynn (Bridges) has managed to get himself stuck inside his tabletop PC for the last 27 years, and his son is lured inside by an evil, younger, and leaner Bridges.  To accomplish this the producers digitally scanned Jeff Bridges' likeness into a PC and used reverse aging software to turn the clock backwards.  This combined with a much more fit body double equals a younger version of the man himself, which brings me to my next point: Lets start scanning the heads of actors living and dead!  We could exhume Bogey, reverse age him... or better yet skip the reverse aging, and make an all zombie remake of Casablanca!  We could reverse age Clint Eastwood and everybody would get a lot more bang for their buck in Cowboys and Aliens...

Aside form Daft Punk's soundtrack my favorite part of the movie was Jeff Bridges channeling 'The Big Lebowski'  virtually all movie long.

 

Quote: "You're messing with my Zen thing, Man."

What better line for The Dude?

I half expected him to say "Hey you mind if I do a J?" during the dinner scene... In fact, I'm pretty sure thats where he disappeared to at the end of that scene.

Also, who could not like a brunette Olivia Wilde?