In three minutes I’ll talk about how to use the following to help in your job search:
- LinkedIn.com
- About.Me
- Twitter
- And more

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Out of everything I’ve ever blogged about, my experiments with weight loss using popular tools like P90X have always been the most popular. Perhaps, I’m blogging about the wrong stuff?

Anyway, like most people in the past two weeks, I’ve been completely engrossed by The 4 Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss (the best selling author of The 4 Hour Work Week). In it, Tim talks about a myriad of techniques that he claims, should be seen as a buffet, not a prescription.

My first blog about my experiments with cold exposure actually gained me a lot of comments on Twitter and a few e-mails. Not to withhold too much information, I decided it would be cool to tell people what I took from the buffet table (re: table of contents).

How I lost 5 lbs. in 3 days with The 4 Hour Body

The only way for me to get anything done right is to make an obsessively detailed list. After pouring over the book for days, I started listing techniques and applicable uses into Omnifocus, my to-do list maker of choice. After that, I spent about another day re-arranging tasks into a timeline for a daily schedule of experiments to try.

Here’s a breakdown of what I did last week to lose 5 lbs. The exact details are left out because I don’t want to fully detail everything in Tim’s book without his consent.

1. Before anything, I’ve made this experiment conscious.

Now I had told myself I would take photos, make it my cell phone and computer background as well as take photos of what I eat. I didn’t do all that, but I did download the DailyBurn app and tracked my food consumption, workouts and weight fluctuations.

The free version of the app doesn’t allow you to fully track everything, so I purchased a one month subscription to track all my other nutrients and filled them in with guidelines that I Googled. (A note: most will be based on a standard, 2,000 calorie diet which may not be for you. In fact, DailyBurn will calculate your needed caloric intake so what you will find Googling will not be accurate. I’m bad at math so I didn’t find out what would be MY accurate intake amounts – I merely used what I found as “guidelines”.)

I also only have been tracking my weight and not measuring my body fat percentage or physical measurements. (I really should though). I also decided to blog about it every week or so and here we are.

2. I’m following the “Slow Carb Diet”

I’m also not following this to the letter, but am trying my best to at least make my breakfast Slow Carb.

3. I’m using a series of temperature manipulation techniques

I’ve already blogged about the showering, but let me give you a breakdown of what I did over those 3 days (without exact numbers, don’t want to post the book’s content online, for free):

- Cold water first thing in the morning
- Cold shower in the morning
- Ice pack on the back of neck at night, while playing Xbox
- Cold shower at night

These are the easiest to do. By far the easiest is drinking water in the AM, which I do naturally, just not ice cold water and not the amount the book suggests. Also, putting an icepack on your neck while sitting down is also really easy and not nearly as shocking to the system as the showers can be.

4. I’m doing “Fleur’s workout” and the myotatic crunch

If you read the book, I only did two sets of the work out Tim suggested to “Fleur.” I did one set on Monday, ending with one set of the myotatic crunch and then another set on Wednesday with no crunches. That’s about it.

By now you might be wondering, why did I stop? Well, I’ll save that for another blog post but in the heart of experimentation, you’ll run into failures and mistakes and nearing the end of my week I hit a big one that actually threw me off course for almost an entire week.

Stay tuned.

Also, has anyone heard of http://www.paggstack.com? (Definitely looking into them for a future blog post!)

Related posts:

1. Cold Showers – 4 Hour Body – Week Zero

I noticed no one was putting out videos about experimenting with cold showers. I’ve created a month long experiment using techniques in The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and Ray Cronise.

Manipulating my temperature is one of the things I’ll be doing over the course of a month starting 01/03/11.

More on Ray Cronise:
http://about.me/raycronise

More on The Four Hour Body:
http://su.pr/1ZEzm2

And check out my video:

Related posts:

1. How I lost 5 lbs. in 3 days with The 4 Hour Body

Okay, I admit it: I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to my digital life. The biggest problem is the disorganization of all my digital media. I sort and resort my Twitter lists. Fuss around with what blogs go in what folder in Google Reader and let’s not get started with how I organize bookmarks. (I don’t. I have so many to sort through!)

The thing that gets me the most frustrated is a disorganized and poorly tagged iTunes collection. For most people, it’s not a big deal, but when you DJ for a living, it’s vital to have a well organized MP3 collection. Thankfully, we have software like TuneUp to save people like me.

TuneUp claims to fix your music “automagically” and they do not lie. It truly is automagical. While I wasn’t surprised it fixed MP3s I had of current music, I was actually quite shocked and impressed that it properly tagged all my video game music. I’m a huge video game music enthusiast and it’s extremely hard to find good quality video game music outside of spending a large sum on import CDs. (Which I do most of the time and it gets pricey. Even then, you have to manually tag those MP3s after you rip them!) It literally cured years of pent up MP3 disorganization aggression in minutes. I would pay for TuneUp again merely for clearing up my video game music collection.

Get TuneUp and stop being mad at your MP3s. It’s not their fault they don’t know their own names.

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The amazing app VideoPano, that only works for the iPhone 3GS, makes panoramic images straight from videos! Will it beat out Pano as my favorite panoramic iPhone app… ever!?

Let’s find out!

Granted, the test image was done in very, very low light. So let’s try the kitchen again, shall we?

Actually…

I’m not even going to post the picture since VideoPano could not do the entire kitchen like Pano. It did only about 1/4 of the room. It’s not even worth posting! I’m upset that it can’t do extremely large panoramics (the Pano shot took almost 16 photos to make), but it does do amazing quick shots and provides the user some really interesting perspectives. Here’s another example:

So who wins? For of it’s ease of use, I would suggest VideoPano… to beginners. It’s great for those who want to take quick panoramics and I love that I can create interesting perspectives on close up shots. For people who want better looking panoramics that take advantage of the 3GS and it’s auto-focus camera, I would say download Pano. Making a panorama takes longer and requires more work, but you get much cleaner pictures, which is worth the effort.

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EDIT: Well hey now! This post was linked to by the lovely folks at Joystiq.com! Thanks guys!

For some, Winters in New York City can be the worst time of the year.

Living in New Jersey most of my life, Winter was never truly that bad. Sure, digging your car out of the snow wasn’t pleasant but most homes and apartments were always well heated and I was graced with an autostarter on my car. Trips anywhere were always toasty the moment I got behind the wheel. Traveling anywhere in NJ during Winter meant bundling up in your warm home, running to your car, getting into a warm car, driving, running out of your warm car into the outside world and getting inside somewhere. Living in New York City is totally different.

Even if you live close to a subway stop, sometimes your destination may be a few blocks away from your home. And no matter how crowded the streets are, it’s always cold in NYC. The worst part about living in NYC is the amount of residents an apartment building may have. Because of which, the temperature is not controlled by you, but by your landlord. Most New Yorkers’ Facebook and Twitter streams were littered with complaints about freezing apartments the moment the chill came into the city. Some resort to space heaters even though those may hike up their electricity bill. And since New Yorkers love to drink, alcohol consumption has also been used as an alternative to stay warm. (I wonder which is cheaper per month?)

However, I’ve made a great discovery in how to keep warm this Winter.

I live in a brownstone in Brooklyn and I have two small rooms. One is my bedroom and the other is my office/TV room. Since this building is old, we have old iron radiators.

Unfortunately, the landlord sets the heat on and off at the oddest intervals and the heater in my office/TV room doesn’t work at all. So when it’s off, my bedroom is freezing. However, no matter what, I’ve noticed my office/TV room is NEVER cold when I’m in there. Lately, I’ve been doing work on my laptop while watching TV and I’ve been catching up on shows via Netflix with my Xbox 360. I’d fire up my big HDTV, put on a show, sit on the couch and work away for a few hours. After I was done, I’d get ready for the day. I would take a shower and head into my bedroom to change only to get hit by a giant wave of cold… But why? How did I not expect my bedroom to be freezing? Then I realized what has been keeping my other room so toasty.

Who would’ve guessed that the Xbox 360 would act as a lovely space heater. We all know the Xbox 360 generates a lot of heat. We also know that Xbox 360s can overheat, especially if they are kept in a closed cabinent. But my TV rack is open so the heat from the Xbox can leak all over my room and keep me warm. Between all the work I can do at home and the TV shows to watch on Netflix, I just saved myself some money on buying a space heater and spending more on my electric bill!

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I just read a great post by Seth Godin about Dunbar’s Number.

With the ever amounting number of friends on social networks, can we realistically keep track with and engage all these people? How far does the number scale up? I personally have about 600 people on my Facebook account. The thing is, I personally know 97% of those people. I only add people to my Facebook account that I’ve met in real life. Only about 3% are “Internet friends.” Although, these are people that I actively engage with and that’s why they also exist on my Facebook account.

Seth’s post is a great read for anyone that has issues with realistically keeping up with all these people.

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I’ve been pretty lax with how I’ve been using Twitter as far as a marketing tool. As part of the classes I’ll be teaching next month, I decided to start apply what I’ve been researching on myself. Last night I tried using the technique I found to get at least 50 – 100 new followers on Twitter a day. So how did I do?

I received over 140+ new followers instead! This makes me feel confident that what I’m teaching will be effective! I’m excited! I’m even more excited about TwitterCounter.com‘s prediction that I may have 3,000 followers in 30 days time! Let’s hope!

I’ll post more experiments in the coming days!

EDIT: This image is now out of date. Two days later, the number jumped to 464! Over 200+ new followers all in less than an hour’s work!

And don’t forget to add my Facebook Fan Page to keep up to date with all my postings, links and discussions!

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I just completed P90X using their Lean routine! I went through the entire 90 day workout and here’s my results!

April 1st, Pre-Vegatarian: 180lbs.
May 18th, First day of P90X: 172lbs
June 15th, 30 days of P90X: 166lbs!
July 13th, 60 days into P90X: 165lbs!
August 18th, 90 days into P90X: 161lbs!

And here’s my reaction video:

I uploaded this through YouTube’s live capture so I’m sorry that the sync is off! AND NO IDEA why the last 45 seconds cut off! Sorry! Silly YouTube!

Here’s a link to Beachbody’s P90X.
Here’s a link to Beachbody’s Insanity.

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Alexis Bauer and the Ignite Show will guide you through the steps!

The Ignite Show is a series of five minute speed-presentations that forces speakers to present awesome geek topics like multi-person pogo sticks to hacking chocolate to crowds of thousands all over the world with auto-forwarding slides and mounting pressure! With a slogan like “enlighten us, but make it quick,” you’ll love these great, quick and insightful presentations!

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