Intervals

I try to power walk / run during lunch at least a few days a week. Some days fast, some days slow(er), and some (okay, most) days I fall somewhere in the middle, although it's never a slow mosey like when I'm walking with my sweetheart. Usually, I have my Zen Stone on to help me keep the pace, and today I wanted to share one of my current favorite exercise albums: Blood on the Asphalt. Produced and released under the Overclocked Remix umbrella, BotA contains remixes of all the main themes from one of the best video game soundtracks to come out back when I was an arcade regular: Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Each character had a theme that perfectly fit their personality, stage, and nationality, complete with really catchy hooks that would leave you humming the tunes days later. Here's the bit I like to run to most often, one of the fastest stretches of the overall album:

• (warmup) Dhalsim
• (fast) Guile
• (medium) Zangief
• (fast) Fei Long
• (mellow) Cammy
• (fast) Ken
• (REALLY fast) Ryu

Anyway, this isn't just a post about how much I love the album, or how perfect it is for doing interval power-walking. What I really wanted to share was my humble little add-on to the album, a little something I whipped up a while back to make this awesome album just a little bit more so:

Blood on the Asphalt: cutscene add-on

In the original game, there was a little cutscene between matches, where a jet plane would fly, Indiana Jones-style, to the country of your next opponent, while the announcer would call it out: "China!", "USSR!" and so on. This add-on pack adds those little interludes to the album's sonic storyline, taking you back to those glory days of yesteryear when you could perform a flawless bajillion-hit combo against all takers. To use it, just unzip the archive into the same folder as the album itself, and your player should insert them into the right places in the playlist. Easy-peasy.

Enjoy, and let me know in the comments about your favorite exercise music. I'm always open to suggestions.

Slaying the Beast

(cross-posted from my code blog)

So tell me if this sounds familiar:

goal: build up my online portfolio.
how I'll do it: maintain a regular blogging schedule (this, too, I'll write more about soon)

Yeah, not so much. Instead, the past 6 months of my life have been swallowed up by a ravenous beast known as "graduate school," that has grown more and more aggressive in the past 3 or 4 weeks. I dealt it a mortal blow when I passed my defense on Monday the 19th, but it limped along for a while, whispering to me of Target Audiences, Proper Whitespacing, and Nested Bookmarks. Today, I think it finally gasped its last breath, but I have to wait until tomorrow for the official word from the graduate reviewercoroner.

So, this is me saying "I'm back." I have a half-dozen half-finished posts in draft, way more free time than I'm used to, and a lot to catch up on.

See you soon.

Postcards from my Recent Past

So. This has certainly been an eventful year, and it's only a little better than half over. I recently returned from a 10-day trip with Sweetheart and the kids to Utah, where we had almost more fun with our extended family than humanly possible for as long as possible. Oh, and I successfully defended my Master's project, capping 6 months of insane sleep schedules and kicking off two weeks of seemingly-endless rewrites. At least, that's how it's felt. Tonight, I uploaded the final(?) version to the BYU thesis/project/dissertation website, and should hear tomorrow if it's golden... or if I have to do more revisions (sigh).

Also, in preparing a blog post over on my code blog, I was reminded of my resolutions from the beginning of the year. I thought it would be not at all depressingfun to review those goals, and see how I'm doing:

Spiritual

goal: read the entire Old Testament this year, from start to finish
how I'll do it: make time to read daily

This is one where I'm doing horribly. We read scripture together as a family at least 4 or 5 nights a week, but it's been a while since I've had a daily personal habit. Maybe that's something I should be doing with my commute time... (ya think?!?)

Academic

goal: finish my MA project
how I'll do it: get back on my roadmap (I'll blog about this in more detail soon)

Yay, one I can report complete success! I'm done, and qualified for graduation! Not that I'll take the time off and pay the airfare to actually walk in the graduation ceremony, but I'll have the "soup label" to pin on my wall, and will be able to take the "(pending)" off of my resume's education section. WIN!

Professional

goal: build up my online portfolio
how I'll do it: maintain a regular blogging schedule (this, too, I'll write more about soon)

Any semblance of a regular blogging schedule went out the window as a direct result of my focus on my academic goal. Now that that's out of the way, hopefully I can right the Good Ship Buyog.com.

Physical

goal: lose 15 pounds, and then maintain the loss
how I'll do it:

• change my diet (less junk food!)
• workout at least 3 times per week
• sleep at least 6 hrs every night (this is a toughie for me)

I still haven't lost that weight, but that's probably in large part due to my general lack of sleep and steady diet of refined sugars and Mountain Dew. Trying to wean myself from that little caffeine IV drip is going to be a bit of a challenge, but so far, so good. Plus, I'm exercising a couple of times a week. Sleep, I'm still working on. Speaking of which...