Posted by Trixter on January 16, 2007
A mild improvement:
Mel thinks my body is hoarding everything in some sort of survival mode because, up until a few days ago, I’ve been limiting myself to 1200 calories a day. A few days ago is when I learned 1200 a day for a male was unrealistic (I achieved it without a hunger problem, but it was affecting my mood adversely) so I’m up to 1500 calories now.
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Posted by Trixter on January 13, 2007
So a secret part of my weight-loss plan was to have something to look forward to — nearline, not far. I know the ultimate goal is looking and feeling better, but that’s hard to justify when you pass by some donated goodies in the office or are invited out to the Bust-a-Gut Cafe for lunch. So, much like Weight Watchers allows 35 extra points per week, I’ve been saving up Saturday as a day of sin. I figure from 9am to 9pm Saturday I can eat whatever I want, and stick to 1500 calories the other six days like I’ve been doing. My body can absorb only so much, so even if I cram 10,000 calories into my gaping maw on Saturday, most of it is going to come out the pooper.
So here I am, it’s Saturday, and I’ve got two apple fritters next to me. I eat one… and I’m full. I swear, I feel like I’m going to make myself sick if I try to eat the second one.
Yesterday, I built myself a salad so large it needed a bigger bowl. And I couldn’t finish that either (although I did my best).
Can stomachs shrink?
Posted in Weight Loss | 3 Comments »
Posted by Trixter on January 10, 2007
Now that the MindCandy Volume 2 is finished, it’s time to archive the project and get all 550 gigabytes of it off of the video rig so that I can completely retrofit the rig with service pack 2, new drivers, the works. Compressed, it will fit onto about $20 of DVDs, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and buy some 16x DVD-Rs and some 16x DVD+Rs to see which is faster.
The results are disappointing. They both suck, never coming anywhere near the rated burn speed until the very end of the disc (which is the last place you need speed).
Back when the DVD format wars were new, one of the major differences noted between the formats was that DVD+Rs burn at CLV (Constant Linear Velocity, where the disc slows down toward the outer edge so that data is burnt at the same speed “under the laser”), while DVD-Rs burn at CAV (Constant Angular Velocity, which means the disc spins at the same rate throughout the burn). CLV burns slower, but supposedly results in a higher quality burn. So you would think that DVD-R would spank DVD+R in terms of speed, right?
Wrong again. Burning 100 meg shy of a full disc, here are the numbers on my LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-160P6S PS0B:
They’re the same! Worse, the best you can do with a 16x drive feeding it 16x media is really 11x. At that rate, I’ll just keep buying 8x media; they cost less, but only take 80 seconds longer to burn.
So, what’s the point of 16x again?
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Posted by Trixter on January 10, 2007
TMI alert — turn back now if you don’t like TMI!
So I know I must be on the right track again, because I have become re-acquainted with one of the weight-loss side effects that I had forgotten about: I am defecating 2, sometimes 3 times a day. My anus isn’t used to this and is extremely unhappy with me at the moment.
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Posted by Trixter on January 9, 2007
Looks like unorthodox worked, although it was an unintentional fluke:
Hm… 3 pounds, but no fat loss. Water-weight? Loss of muscle?
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Posted by Trixter on January 4, 2007
The past few days, I’ve had to work long hours and generally had no willpower at all during the day. I’ve had two 1800 calorie lunches and today I had a 1500 calorie lunch. So, to make up for it, I’ve had nothing but my mainstay snack for dinner all three nights in a row — My giant bowl of popcorn:
One meal a day is an unhealthy and stupid way to lose weight, since your body can’t possibly use a giant meal right away and it gets turned into fat. And yet, rumor has it that Sid Caesar used to do just that — he’d have one giant meal for dinner and tough it out until the next dinnertime.
Obviously, when work calms down, I plan on going back to my original plan, which was a slimfast for breakfast, a giant salad for lunch, and a reasonable dinner.
Posted in Weight Loss | 5 Comments »
Posted by Trixter on January 1, 2007
Hope this gets past the spam filters :-) As promised, MindCandy Volume 2: Amiga Demos is available for sale from www.mindcandydvd.com. Both NTSC and PAL versions are available.
Posted in Demoscene | 5 Comments »
Posted by Trixter on January 1, 2007
My previous attempt at losing weight was so tenuous that, when the body fat percentage scale broke about 3.5 months in, I allowed the event to spin me into a devil-may-care attitude that — don’t act too shocked — eventually ballooned me right back to where I started a year ago.
Such is life. Well, I have a new scale, a new year, and new motivation: I’m one of the speakers at Block Party, the only North American demoparty in 2007 and I would really not like to look like the comic-book guy on The Simpsons when I’m up there. I’ll be terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought anyway; I don’t need my appearance adding to the anxiety.
So this new body fat scale is… newer, which means it has a few more features. It takes sex into account (type, not frequency) as well as height, which means in addition to my weight and body fat percentage, I can view “total percentage of body water” and “general health index”. The percentage of body water is mostly useless (the scale claims 80% accuracy, but more importantly it doesn’t factor into my weight loss program), but the general health index is cute.
So here’s how we measure up on week one:
Okay, so the actual “health index” text reads “obese”, but I thought I’d have a little fun.
Posted in Demoscene, Weight Loss | 1 Comment »
Posted by Trixter on December 14, 2006
Some of you might know of my MindCandy DVD project, where a group of sceners and I get permission from demogroups, compile their productions onto DVD, get commentary from them, add some special sauce, and serve it up. Well, the second volume is finally finished after four long years, and I just got my samples today:
I became weak in the knees when I got it. It truly was a labor of love for all involved, and I’m glad to say it’s exceeded everyone’s expectations.
I will post again when it’s available for sale in a few weeks.
Posted in Demoscene | 3 Comments »
Posted by Trixter on November 8, 2006
The majority of my 15 minutes of fame, it seems, has come from google video and youtube, with my 8088 Corruption demonstration. I did it mostly to impress other demosceners at a wild compo, but I’ve received at least 100 emails about it, had it reverse-engineered, and had unix and gameboy players made for the data file… it’s quite humbling.
Ever since then, people have asked for more. While I can easily do more — the framework supports 60 frames per second instead of the 30 used in 8088 Corruption, and let me tell you, 60fps CGA video is wickedly creepy — I have always wanted to do a “proper” 8088 megademo. This means it would work off of two floppy disks, use no more than 640K of RAM, use the internal speaker for sound, and of course, work with stock CGA.
That may not have the “wow” factor of 8088 Corruption, but just like the numa numa guy, you can never really make a sequel to an internet phenomenon, can you? It never turns out as good. So I’ve pretty much made up my mind that, should I ever have the free time to make another oldskool demo, it will feature — amongst other things — 60Hz CGA demo effects.
I can hear it now: “CGA demo effects? CGA sux! CGA has 4 ugly colors, slow memory, and only one video page! What are you going to do, make it look even shittier?” Well, non-believer, I’ve been dorking with CGA for a while and have already come up with some neat stuff. But the concept went into 2nd gear when my old friend Andrew Jenner (the guy who reverse-engineered Digger) contacted me with some CGA questions and we got to talking, then experimenting. You see, Andrew has been working with the MESS guys trying to get their CGA emulation 100% perfect, and has been studying the Motorola 6845 character generator documentation and CGA tech reference for weeks, so he had some unique insight I never had the patience for.
Here’s a taste of what we’ve been able to do with stock CGA on a regular XT:
100% successful:
50% successful:
Should Be Possible But Untested Due To Lack Of Time:
When I have trouble falling asleep at night, I think of the possibilities… then shortly before I drift off to sleep, I remind myself of what a colossal nerd I must be. But still, it’s very satisfying doing things that nobody else has done, let alone even thought of.
Posted in Demoscene, Vintage Computing | 11 Comments »
Oldskooler Ramblings 