P90x Day 8: Chest and Back

Day 8 of P90x... We did the Chest and Back routine again. Did 222 push-ups total with all the variations.

So far Chest and Back is my favorite of all the P90x workouts.

P90x Day 2 and 3

Yesterday on the P90x schedule we did Plyometrics. It was pretty rough on my legs.

Today was Shoulders and Back plus Ab Ripper X and it was pretty fun.

Just gotta keep going!

P90x: First day Complete

First day of P90x is finished. Starting out with the Classic or Doubles schedule, I will have to see whether I have time and want to do the doubles in round two four weeks from now.
Did Chest&Back plus AbRipperX today.
Avram is doing it with me, its great to have a buddy so you can push yourself harder.
BRING IT!

Protein Drinks(including Muscle Milk) with heavy metals

Was looking into getting some protein drink mix to take since I'm starting P90x and found this article by Consumer Reports. I'm sure you'll be better off making your own shake/drink every day.

I was just about to order some Muscle Milk but this popped my bubble.

Looks like I need to figure out what I can make that will taste good and be good for me as an energy drink every day.

Here are two quotes from the article:

"We purchased 15 protein powders and drinks mainly in the New York metro area or online and tested multiple samples of each for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. The results showed a considerable range, but levels in three products were of particular concern because consuming three servings a day could result in daily exposure to arsenic, cadmium, or lead exceeding the limits proposed by USP."

"Cadmium raises special concern because it accumulates in and can damage the kidneys, the same organs that can be damaged by excessive protein consumption. And it can take 20 years for the body to eliminate even half the cadmium absorbed today."

Here is the article.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/july/food/protein-drinks/overview/index.htm

Update

The Canon Rebel T1i has held through the two week music academy and is still running strong. I still have a lot to learn but its already producing photos that look much better than any that I could take with the Powershot.

Took just over 1000 photos at Music Academy but haven't uploaded them yet. I also took HD videos of almost all of the performances from camp and have been busy uploading the videos this past week. The pictures should be up soon.

As for computer benchmarking, in this new house we cleaned out a shed in the back and are setting it up to be a worthy bench area. I will be setting up tomorrow and testing graphics cards once again. Looks like I'll do pretesting with my modded GPUs on water then switch over to dry ice in this garage. Possibly can do LN2 in this shed but I'm not sure yet.

An Antec 1200w Power Supply arrived today. This will be the unit to power all of the setups I will be testing from now on. Should be a good one.

Moving

We are moving to another house so its going to be a busy week.... :)
Camp pictures and movies will be up later this week hopefully... The HD videos are taking a while to upload.

Canon T1i/D500

Getting a new camera in by next week. Looking forward to taking some macros of scenery! It will definitely be an upgrade from the point-and-shoot camera I've been using.
Going to a Music Camp next week so if it comes in time I will have to take plenty of pictures!

Camera:
Canon Digital Rebel T1i SLR
Lenses:
Canon 55-250mm
Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM

Will update with a little review when it comes in.

Memories

Found a picture from when I was in a soccer team while going through our stuff today getting ready to move. Hard to believe it was nearly 10 years ago!

8MB/s DSL

Got 8MB/s internet as advertised. Its been running at 6.8MB/s for about a year now daily, but it changed today.

Workshop and Cascade

We cleaned out our gararge Monday and set up a computer workshop in the corner.
We also have the Cascade unit running and have it in the garage as well.
I have been testing out quite a few different CPUs and gpus and getting a motherboard and CPU to work together at -100*C... I have a lot to learn still about subzero computer testing for sure.
Pictures to come soon.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod

BSA Polar Bear Award trip

Posted pictures from this weekend's cold BSA trip. http://picasaweb.google.com/Danielee.linux/BSAPolarBearAwardCampingTripOakMtn#
We camped overnight at Oak Mtn State Park in below-freezing weather and cooked three meals for the BSA polar bear award. We had a great time and learned more about camping in the cold and about our gear. :)

iPod App

Favorite app so far: TuneIn Radio
I can get all of the local radio stations as well as many more all over the world!

Some new toys arrived yesterday... currently testing out all of their features...
Ipod Touch 3G and a Gigabyte X58 UD7 Motherboard. :)

The motherboard supports USB 3.0 and SATA 3, I don't have any USB 3 devices to test unfotunately... :(
I got it up to 227bclk fairly easily, I will have to work on it some more to get 237bclk. (The "bclk wall" for this UD7 board for many other overclockers)

The Ipod supports microphone voice recording, haven't tried that out yet either. I'll have to see if the voice recognition software works as well as my headset with Windows...

I've been pretty busy and neglecting to post lately.
I haven't taken many pictures in the last few months of people and scenery but instead have been getting many shots of my computer builds.
Around this Christmas season I have been up to building 3 or so computers a week. It has been fun to assemble and test them.
I have a Cascade CPU cooler to freeze any CPU to -100*C for extreme overclocking and have been learning a lot about insulating motherboards because of that. :)
I will try to post much more this month, pictures, results, and maybe a few hardware reviews.

I have missed my church family over the last two months and hope to see you all soon!
Daniel

Lian Li PC-P80 GTX 295 H2O build pictures are up!

Uploaded some "showcase" pictures of a build made in a beautiful Lian Li PC-P80 Full Tower Case. The CPU and GPUs are watercooled.
Enjoy!
Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/Danielee.linux/LianLiPCP80GTX295H2OBuild#

Hwbot medals from Q9650 overclocking

I have been working really hard on overclocking my Q9650 CPU lately... and earned 3 medals with it on Hwbot!
I got 2nd place for wPrime 32m, 3rd place in wPrime 1024m, and forth place in CPU-Z running it at over 4.9ghz!
#2 Core 2 Q9650 (3Ghz) in wPrime 32m with 8sec 29ms - 9.7 points
#3 Core 2 Q9650 (3Ghz) in wPrime 1024m with 4min 21sec 380ms - 4.8 points
#4 Core 2 Q9650 (3Ghz) in CPU-Z with 4959.48 mhz - 6.3 points
My hwbot profile is Linuxfan2000
I'm going to be testing out a core i7 system with 3 GTX 280s in SLI next to get points for them on Hwbot next week...

Don't know what hwbot is?

Hwbot is a website dedicated to gathering specifications and benchmarks of computer hardware. You can use hwbot to compare processors or videocards with each other, or to compare your own computer to ten thousands of other people, to see whether it performs well. Hwbot is not limited to one benchmark application, but a whole suite of the most popular benchmark applications available.

Hwbot is unique in several ways. In contrary to other hardware sites, the performance of the hardware is not based on one user experience, but based on a community of thousands of users. This is especially usefull when inspecting the overclockability of a processor or videocard. One reviewer being able to overclock a certain processor 20% over stock speed means very little, but if hundreds of users manage to overclock it by 20% on average, you know a whole lot more.

Using hwbot encourages your forum vistors. You can configure our botservice to scan a specific forum topic to monitor for benchmark results. If a forum visitor posts a benchmark result in the topic, it will automatically be added to the team ranking once scanned by a bot.

Due to the excellent set of features and active crew, hwbot has grown to be the favorite place for overclockers (people who run there system faster than factory settings) to compete. Check out the team, member and result hall of fame.

www.hwbot.org

Judge Rules Microsoft Word Can No Longer Be Sold

Thought this was an interesting piece of news...
From HotHardWare.com article here: http://hothardware.com/News/Judge-Rules-Microsoft-Word-Can-No-Longer-Be-Sold/

Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ruled Tuesday that Microsoft can no longer sell Microsoft Word in the United States due to patent infringement.

One can imagine Bill Gates having to pick himself off the floor after reading that ruling. Indeed, the ubiquitous software that you probably use every day infringes a patent, according to Davis.

To be perfectly honest, Davis' ruling simply upheld a $200M verdict issued in May of this year, when jurors found that Microsoft willfully infringed an i4i patent, (No. 5,787,449) on a method for reading XML.

According to the press release announcing the judgment, the injunction prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML. Microsoft has 60 days to comply.

The injunction reads:

Microsoft Corporation is hereby permanently enjoined from performing the following actions with Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007 (collectively “Infringing and Future Word Products”) during the term of U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449:

1. selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States any Infringing and Future Word Products that have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM file (“an XML file”) containing custom XML;

2. using any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;

3. instructing or encouraging anyone to use any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;

4. providing support or assistance to anyone that describes how to use any infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;

and

5. testing, demonstrating, or marketing the ability of the Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML.

This injunction does not apply to any of the above actions wherein the Infringing and Future Word Products open an XML file as plain text.

This injunction also does not apply to any of the above actions wherein any of the Infringing and Future Word Products, upon opening an XML file, applies a custom tranform that removes all custom XML elements.

This injunction further does not apply to Microsoft providing support or assistance to anyone that describes how to use any of the infringing products to open an XML file containing custom XML if that product was licensed or sold before the date this injunction takes effect.

Naturally, since Microsoft has 60 days to comply, you can expect that during those 60 days, some sort of appeal will be filed to allow Microsoft to continue selling the product. Either that, or Microsoft and i4i will come to some sort of an agreement (or will in the future).

Pictures from BSA trip and PCC Computer Science Camp

Pictures from our troop's recent orienteering trip are now on Picasa Web Albums here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Danielee.linux/BSAOrienteeringMBTripJune2009#
It was a short overnight trip to complete requirements for the Orienteering Merit Badge.

Also on Picasa I have uploaded the pictures from PCC's Computer Science camp, they are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Danielee.linux/PCCComputerScienceCamp2009#

Unloading the grand piano

Grabbed a few shots when this grand piano was being delivered... :)

Its a 1988 Kawai GS-50 6'8" Grand Piano.

Some more pictures of flowers, played with the lighting and colors, used a handheld tripod for some of the shots too... no flash, evening with medium-low sunlight.