Andrew Benton

Workout Log: WOD 1/2/2008

Andrew Benton — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:43:34 +0000

Clean 8-7-5-5 (135-135-155-165)

Bench Press (10-9-8-7-6) 195lbs

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Workout Log: WOD 12/31/2008

Andrew Benton — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:23:07 +0000

As fast as possible:

50 squats
20 pull ups
10 push ups
40 squats
10 pull ups
20 push ups
30 squats
5 pull ups
30 push ups
20 squats
5 pull ups
40 push ups

Took me 14:10, not great, but the squats and last 40 pushups killed me.

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Is This Really News? Honestly…

Andrew Benton — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:13:46 +0000

So, the Marine who they believed killed a fellow Marine and fled to Mexico… big news, everyone is following it, but on the frontpage of CNN they have this interview with someone who knew him well, and they say:

A woman who once worked with fugitive Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean and the pregnant Marine he allegedly killed said Wednesday that Laurean has “MacGyver” skills and training that could enable him to adapt to life on the run…

He can rig just about anything — as could the lead character in the “MacGyver” television series of 1985 to 1992 — is strong, a fast runner and can handle weapons, including an M-16, she said.

Okay, so you just described the exact kind of person that all Armed Forces try to train, someone who has smarts to get out of sticky situations, can use his surroundings, and can shoot. I thought the mention of the M-16 was extra laughable… you know, because he’s the only Marine who can probably use an M-16…

/sarcasm

Anyways, just venting, I hope they get this guy though, Marine or not, he committed a crime.

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Google is NOT White Bread for the Mind

Andrew Benton — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:37:08 +0000

I recently read a short post on Mashable.com that was titled “Google is White Bread for the Mind, Says Teacher”. The article isn’t too in depth, but it basically comes down to a teacher banning the use of Google and Wikipedia as forms of research for projects in her class. FTA:

The story goes like this: professor Tara Brabazon, from the University of Brighton, is unhappy about their students taking the easy route and using Google and Wikipedia for their research. She calls this phenomenon “The University of Google”, saying that “The education world has pursued new technology with an almost evangelical zeal and it is time to take a step back and give proper consideration of how we use it. Too many students don’t use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis.”

The author of the post goes on to link to his article “Why Google is Making Us Dumber”. He has the following to say:

Let’s face it: we’re not exactly becoming brighter by using Google. In fact, in the traditional education sense, we’re getting stupider, at least with certain types of tasks. However, we’ve learned to do something else. We’ve learned how to use Google to get information. It sounds like an evolutionary step, a natural progression. Instead of using your brain, you’re using something else - something that works faster and easier. It will be interesting to see how this - if it keeps up, and my bet is that it will - will affect our ability to think in the future.

While I think both arguments hold weight, I think that ultimately Google is not making us dumber, just a hell lot more efficient. If they would have used the word “lazy” instead of dumb, I may agree with them, but I think both titles can replace “dumber” with “more efficient”. My reasoning for this is through a look at our history of learning, and how we as humans condense knowledge over time to make it easier to digest.

While I think Stan’s example of memorizing that 1LB is 0.45 kilograms, I think his point is lost to most ears for a simple reason. Why? Why should we be required to memorize that 1Lb is 0.45kg? There is something to be said for memorizing really important things, like birth dates of loved ones, facts and information for your career, what your yearly income was for 2007, when your last oil change was, etc. I don’t believe however that for what people generally use Google and Wikipedia for makes us dumber. It truly just makes information sharing and learning more transparent. It makes knowledge that would traditionally waste a persons Saturday in the library, instantly available, thus allowing them to continue on with things that truly matter… like life.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that while Google and Wikipedia can make us lose track of the ancient form of research that included 4 Tons of books, which google tells me is 3,628,738.96 grams, it is a change in both society and education. It is a change in the way we think, learn, discover and grow. But then again, isn’t that what the Internet and evolving societies are all about?

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No Country For Old Men

Andrew Benton — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:00:25 +0000

My Review: It Sucked

Sorry for the short post, but this movie, which was heralded as a absolutely great film, was quite possibly my biggest let down for a movie in 2007. I usually “get” the whole deeper message and all that stuff, but this film seriously left me saying “WTF”.

Maybe someone can explain why I should have enjoyed it more, but it was just a very well directed, acted, and casted movie, that I completely wish I hadn’t watched. It had hints of “chance” and “luck” struck by similar movies like Magnolia and Crash, but just for me, it didn’t get it right.

They should rename it to “No Good For Andrew Benton”…

So, am I way off here? If I am let me know, maybe I missed a part of the movie that was the “groundbreaking” section.

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Why MC Hammer Might Have it Right This Time

Andrew Benton — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:00:46 +0000

You all remember MC Hammer, the parachute-pants wearing guy who brought you the heavily sued, “stuck in your head and cant help but know every word” song “Can’t touch this” guy, right? If you don’t, you either lived under a rock or were just born (if you’re the latter you have mad skills to be able to read at age 0).

Well, it seems MC Hammer is throwing his hat into the ring with DanceJam. Basically, its a social website to share dance moves. I think this will absolutely be successful. It’s a niche that has no real base. Sure, you can find this kind of stuff on youtube, but they usually suck, and plus, MC Hammer is a good force behind this. Here is an excerpt from an AP report:

The Web site, scheduled to debut in mid-January, will try to upstage YouTube and become the Internet’s hub for sharing and watching dance videos. DanceJam then hopes to make money by grabbing a piece of the rapidly growing Internet advertising market, which is expected to rake in $27.5 billion in 2008, according to eMarketer…

But Hammer’s involvement in DanceJam has more to do with his technological savvy than his celebrity, said Ron Conway, a longtime Silicon Valley investor who is part of a small group that provided DanceJam with $1 million in startup funds.

“I expect him to integrate all his knowledge into this Web site,” said Conway, who befriended Hammer at a baseball game seven years ago and has been tutoring him in the ways of technology ever since. “He is the lightning rod for this whole thing.”

Hammer, 45, started poking around Silicon Valley while he was still selling millions of records. He often hung out at computer makers like Silicon Graphics Inc. and Apple Inc., hoping to learn more about how technology might help his music career.

“There is no high-tech lingo or business strategy that you can talk that is above my head,” Hammer boasted during an interview. “I breathe this stuff.”

So, be on the lookout for DanceJam.com, it’s going to be the big thing to hit the internet in the 1st quarter of 2008. I’ll report more on this site once it’s launched, but I have big hopes. It taps a niche that is very, very profitable.

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Beginning of a Permanent Change

Andrew Benton — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:04:44 +0000

So tomorrow will be the first day of my new fitness routine, and also the beginning of my attempts to put more weight on. I’ve decided that I’m going to do 5 core workouts per week, splitting up body parts and trying to hit everything twice per week. Sounds weird, but I guess I’m becoming a body builder.

In addition to this regimen, I will add 3 days per week where I’ll wake up early and hit the gym. This will mostly be for cardio, but will plan on focusing mostly on things that will help me as I start Officer Candidate school soon. For these sessions, I will probably focus on some pretty hard cardio for 20-30 minutes, push-ups, pull-ups, and ab workouts.

Bodybuilding isn’t something that is easy at all, especially nutritionally. While doing this, I plan to attempt as much as I can, to eat 5-6 times per day. I will try to make breakfast my heaviest meal, and maintain 300-400 calorie meals throughout the day. With my schedule, they will probably mostly be protein shakes. I am going to make a grocery store run tomorrow to pick up some chicken breasts and egg-whites, etc.

Anyways, that’s all for now.

Oh, one more thing, I’ll be documenting the new design for this site sometime early in the week, check back often!

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My New Years Resolutions For 2008

Andrew Benton — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:29:17 +0000

So, new year, everyone has their resolutions, here are mine:

250 Subscribers
I would really love to get up to at least 250 subscribers to this site. That’s why I’m going to focus more time to this blog, and give the masses what they want; great content, a good message, and understandable. I’d also like to shoot for 400 on my other site, which is growing more quickly it seems than this blog.

Develop More Blogs
So I already have this one and That Single Guy, which is taking off quickly. I’d really like to start some more, and devote more time to writing, as I really do enjoy it. I think any new projects would be unique and let me experiment with my writing style and imagination…

Run a Half-Marathon
Ever since I enlisted in the Army, I’ve been an avid runner. The feeling you get after a long, hard run is unrivaled. I ran my first 5K in early December, and plan to run many more 5 and 10K races in 2008. My real goal is to run a half-marathon without stopping once.

Gain 15 Pounds
Yes, you read that correctly, I want to gain weight, but not fat. I’ve been lifting heavily for the past year and a half, and before I left for the Army, was up to about 190-192. The Army life really took a toll on my body, and I’m back down to about 184-5. I would like to get up to 200lbs, while lowering my body fat and looking better. The half-marathon training will help with this.

With that said, I’ll probably add more to this list, who know what 2008 can hold for me? I hope you all enjoy the ride, and even maybe make it a better year. Happy New Year to everyone, and best of luck on this new year.

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Wordpress 2.4: What I Hope to See

Andrew Benton — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:05:22 +0000

So, its been announced that Wordpress 2.4 will be released on January 24th. While it seems that they just released 2.3, and even more recently released a critical security update, here are some things I’m really, really hoping for in Wordpress 2.4.

Better WYSIWYG editor

If I had one pet peeve with Wordpress, it’s the almost unusable editor that comes with it. While it’s nice to view and edit the code, Wordpress doesn’t trust that you know how to write HTML and CSS, dear god this is annoying. Oh, and I’m not alone. Why do they insist on changing my div tags to p tags? Why can’t they just trust, or better yet, put an option in the control panel to let me turn this on or off?

Plugin Automation

So, you say you don’t trust us to edit the code in our posts, but lets go over the steps you want a user to go through to implement a plugin. Get ftp, login, browse to wp-content/plug ins, upload the folder contained inside a zip file, maybe even chmod some stuff. While this isnt really hard, it’s definitely maybe a barrier for users who either aren’t comfortable using FTP, or just naive to how to do so. How about building on the OneClick plugin, and integrating an available plugins area into the admin panel? That way you cut out.. oh ALL the steps to installing new plugins.

Better Image Handling

So, another big pet peeve is no built in editing. While there are some great 3rd party plugins for this, it would be great to be able to upload a picture, specify the thumbnail size, and do it that way. Even better would be some kind of crop tool built-in, that would save bloggers a lot of time in posting images to articles.

Other

Here are some things that I would just love Wordpress to have, not required, but could help me build my site better.

Built in community features (profiles, messaging, etc)
Integrate with OpenID or Facebook, Digg, something so they can login with their identity and post)
Advanced Image Gallery
Built-In Code formatting for posts

So, that’s about all I can think of right now. January 24th is fast approaching, and I really hope I see a few of these, I have projects in mind that just cannot be done with Wordpress.

What do you guys think? Am I asking too much?

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Injecting Any Ads in Wordpress Posts Automatically

Andrew Benton — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:32:39 +0000

So, on one of my other sites (http://www.thatsingleguy.com), I wanted a way to automatically insert adsense (or any other ads source) into my posts without having to remember to use the adsense deluxe, select the correct one, and put the tag in ever single post I had written. Here is what I’m going to show you how to do:

At first I thought maybe altering the ‘the_content’ tag Wordpress uses to show an article was the way to go, but after being too lazy and too afraid to do that, I had a lightbulb moment. The answer was so clear I should feel dum, but I figure if I had this problem, countless others have as well. If nothing else, this can help the average blogger who isn’t great at altering themes, etc.

Step 1: Setup your ad

For my use, I decided based on the width of my content section, the 250×250 square ad was about as big as I figured my readers could stand. With AdSense Manager from http://www.mutube.com/, setup your ad as follows. I only wanted this ad to show up on single pages, and not on the main index template, but you can easily alter it to work on all pages, but be aware of the 3 AdSense limit thing.

Setup your size, channels, etc.
Make sure you have the Show Inline Ads settings like this:

Also be sure you make your HTML Markup section reflect where you want your ad (aligned right, left, etc).

Save that ad, and remember what you called it, mine was called In-Article. Once that is done:

Go to Presentation > Theme Editor
On the Right-Hand side, select Single Post

Find the line that has something similar to this:

Read the rest of this entry »

’); ?>

Directly before the opening

tag, or if you don’t have a

tag, directly before the 2nd line, add the code for your adsense ad. Mine looks like this:

And that should do it! Try it out. If you have any problems, please let me know, it may require some tweakage, but it should work for any wordpress blog, or any blog for that matter.