Happy New Year!

Well, 2008 was a craptastic year, wasn’t it? I think alot of people feel like we’re stumbling away from it, shell-shocked and shattered by economic meltdown. Even on a personal level, looking back at my resolutions for last year, the year looks like a big fail; I gained 20lbs, haven’t restarted Galacticast, and totally failed to produce a movie …

Except many great things DID happen last year. Globally, I was one of many voices that sang highly enough of what a wondrous thing the 2008 American election was, and, again looking personally I took a big change in my life, moving out to Los Angeles. Which, despite the headaches of getting a social security number and the credit situation preventing me getting a loan, I do not regret for a moment.

So a New Year calls for new resolutions and challenges to face. Or in this case, old challenges revisited. I’m going to go more specific . In no particular order, here are my goals for this year:

1. Get ripped – Last year was a series of starts and stops in the body department. First half actually went really well, as I pursued Turbulence Training, start climbing, and began the One Hundred Pushup Challenge. But with the mid-year move to LA and the introduction of delicious, rich American food into my diet, my fitness goal tanked. No matter! Immediate goal is to lose 10-20lbs by month’s end. After that, it’s rippin’ time.
2. Bring back Galacticast – Another thing set by the wayside by the move and other life’s interruptions was the return of Galacticast. Now settled here on the West Coast, surrounded by our many talented friends and co-creators, Casey and I are both hungry to make something new. By Zod, we are coming back this month.
3. Produce something OTHER than Galacticast – Galacticast is our baby and our calling card. But the year I’ve spent privately writing, playing with story structure, and deciding what I want to do has me excited about working on different things. I can’t wait to show you all the cool toys I have to play with.
4. Produce SOMETHING daily – Last year, I promised daily blog posts AND photos AND videos AND … too much, and I just got overwhelmed. This year, I am going to renew the commitment to MAKE something new a day, whether its a post, a photo, a video, or code.

So what are your resolutions? I’ll keep you honest if you keep me too. Let’s make this year glorious together!

My dear Casey McKinnon tagged me as part of the 666 Photo Meme. Yes, people are calling it the Sixth Photo Meme, but c’mon; choose the 6th photo on the 6th page and then pass on the meme to 6 friends? A devilishly good time, if you ask me …

The above photo was taken at my “goodbye” dinner from my last day-job, WebMD Montreal nee Conceptis. On the right is Gord Lamb, our systems administrator and wunderkid extraordinaire. Man has an epic curiousity on a wide range of subjects. It scares me to think what would happen if he applied it to evil.

On the left is Eric Beaudoin. For most of my time at Conceptis I really didn’t get to deal with Eric that much. Honestly, I use to think he didn’t like me (but then again, I think most people don’t like me). Over the many ups-and-downs with staffing and structure, I eventually found myself reporting to him, and what a pleasure it was. A strong but balanced vision, ability to cut through the crap, and sometimes straight-up honesty was his deal. Would love to work with him someday.

Now for my 6 vict… I mean “friends” to pass this virus (memes are just mental viruses) off to. I CHOOSE YOU:

1. Rick Rey
2. Matt Campagna
3. Julien Smith
4. Chris Brogan
5. Lynn (if only to get her to update her blog)
6. George Ruiz

Yes, she calls me “monkey”. Move along.

I was actually terribly impressed when I used the device and understand it’s appeal. Shooting controls are very basic, but to have it simply plug in as a hard-drive, with it’s editing/management tools built-in as executable applications is great. And the fact they’ve kept it fairly open should be applauded.

National Vlogging Month is upon us, and I am using it as yet another excuse to try and to get into daily content work. So I am setting out my personal goals for this month.

1. As always, a new workout. I started taking spinning 2 weeks, and I am loving it. So I’m making up a workout to try for a month .
2. We’re going to be bringing back Galacticast this month, and I’m going to document it here.

Lesson learned doing this so late: don’t overproduce these things!!! Next one will be more straightforward.

The straight up weights were easy. It was all the new body-weight exercises that killed me. Spider-man push-ups, Decline Push-ups, Burpees, Squat thrusts … combined with 100 pushups, I should soon have an All-Star physique that matches All-Star Superman …

And no, that’s not the Halloween costume I am building up to.

Current body shots:

For Workout B.

And for Workout A

Furthermore I also attended the inaugural session of Web 2.0 Fight Club, about an hour and a half session of punching and kicking under the guiding hand of George Ruiz.

Photo courtesy of George Ruiz, all rights reserved.

And I even did my 100 pushups workout right after. Still looping on week 4, level 3, as the last day always kills me. But at this point, I can repeatedly pump out 20 pushups in a row, with a minutes break in between, or drain myself in a single round of 50.

So, whiter my Turbulence Training Twitter Challenge final post? Well with Casey getting food poisoning and my being relegated to the couch for nights, I haven’t been in the mood or shape to take some photos. Plus, while I have putting on muscle mass, I can’t seem to shed these pounds.

Is TT a failure? Hell no. I love the workouts, and have fun doing it. But I have been undermining myself with my terrible eating habits, skipping workouts, and late nights. The failure is mine … as is the little victory of working out again.

I am setting up a new challenge for myself. The goal: to proudly go shirtless on Halloween. I have a great costume in mind. And this is the backup:

So I have no choice but to get into shape.

TT shall continue to be the foundation of my program, as I move onto to Level 2 of the Dumbbell/Body-weight Fusion Workout. I am also going to start doing cardio everyday; no one tell Craig! Light on weight days, intervals on off.

I am also once again giving serious thought to taking up a martial art. Last time I stopped due to issues with the instructor. But the session with George reminded me what a joy it is to learn under proper guidance, and my fellow fighters encouraged me to find a class. The Israeli military fighting style Krav Maga has caught my attention as one of its center is near our new apartment.

Finally, in addition to ACTUALLY twittering my meals, it’s time I bit the bullet and take a daily photo of my body. It’ll make for an interesting montage, like on Billy’s site.

Here we go!

Progress is finally being made weight-wise! Though I keep smacking myself for my lack of consistently doing my cardio between days. I’ve also missed days, but still on track for doing 4 weeks of Turbulence Training.

My performance continues to improve:

Plus I am now doing the inverted rows with no leg support AND hitting 20 pushups maximum during the intense post-workout body-weight sequence.

Speaking of push-ups, I’ve been stuck repeating the first day of week 4 of the hundred push-ups challenge. I manage to pump through it, but just barely, and was never satisfied to go on. I had even considered moving back down to week 3 just so could regain the sense of progress.

Except, I swear, they’ve just changed the program TODAY. Week 3 now looks way too easy, and week 4 begins with a set of 21. Given I can now do 3 sets of 20 pushups AFTER weight-training, it makes no sense to go back. So once again, tomorrow, into the breach!

Also, there is now a Push-up logger to track your progress and of your friends. My user-name is (duh) rudyjahchan. Drop me a note on yours.

Today I did two things radically different. First, I GOT UP ON TIME AND DIDN’T SLACK OFF AND WENT STRAIGHT TO THE GYM. (Traffic was actually horrible so I was still late for work). But the second thing I did was say “fuck it” and go for both challenges on the same day.

The WOOH I did both of them. Not only did I pull off push-ups week 4, day 1, level 3 AND Workout 1B from the Dumbbell/Body-weight workout, I also pumped out all the push-ups in the TT workout which I has SKIPPED last time.

I also managed to increase my weights:

Now, my weight is still the same, which does bother me. Casey, though, swears I am putting on muscle mass which if true would explain the weight increase. The real blame for not LOSING weight lies at feet of my bad eating habits. But I started correcting that last night, and today was not too bad.

Ummm … yeah …not TOO bad

Actually, it’s simple to fix. Move the coffee (sorry, I need the hit to get through the day) as a mid-morning snack, and changed my mid-afternoon to some sort of protein-heavy goody; a bar, a shake, or smoked salmon.

Onwards.

Above is the core of what I dub the Shia LaBomb. Notice the stylish use of crotch shots.

But the full Shia LaBouef is the above video playing as the DESKTOP BACKGROUND of its intended target MacOSX system. Yes, a terrible weapon, but these terrible times demand nothing less.

Assembling your own is easy, and I post them here for the sake of mutually assured destruction:

1. First, collect images from here.
2. Then, use some long forgotten music.
3. Assemble the above with your favorite video editor into a loving montage of the man in question. I used iMovie.
4. Grab this freeware screen-saver that let’s you play movies.
5. Load the video in question.
6. Using Apple’s Script Editor, create an application using this code:

   tell application "System Events"
   	if process "ScreenSaverEngine" exists then
   		tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" to quit
   	else
   		do shell script "/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background > /dev/null 2>&1 &"
   	end if
   end tell
   

7. You run it to turn on/off the currently selected screensaver. Run it to start the ball rolling and and voila, instant Shia LaBomb!

So what could bring me to develop such a monstrous creation? Well …

Last night, we had a last-minute get together with Tim Shey, his beautiful wife Rachel, and our friends (and leaders in the independent show producers field) Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf. Among the catch-up and laughs, Casey and my horrible seekrit came out.

We don’t like Shia LaBouef.

Actually only I don’t like him. Casey LOATHES him.

In my case, its nothing personal, and I respect he’s a working actor. I just want to see him move beyond frustrated joe reacting to shit that’s so much cooler than him. Not entirely his fault I realize but hey, I am pathetic enough to funnel my anger at a meaningless target.

When rumors emerged of Shia possibly starring in the adaptation of one of our favorite comic-book series, Y: The Last Man, it came with a shocking image. Probably photoshopped but who knows. For us Shia-haters, it’s just painful.

I joked with Casey that one day I would play the nasty trick of setting her desktop to that image. Well, that didn’t go over well, so she went for the preemptive strike.

Of course you realize this meant war.

I believe in shock and awe (but don’t ask me about a follow-up), so created the Shia LaBomb, and left it running on her laptop, enjoying her twittered reactions.

WARNING: It came at a terrible cost. For the rest of the day, images of Shia and how he wouldn’t never gonna let me down haunted me.

But it was worth it.

I am disappointed about my weight gain, but a heavy dinner night before (filet mignon, asparagus, and some sort of corn mash at The Farm) was followed by a hefty breakfast (steak and eggs). I REGRET NOTHING! Plus it was in the middle of the day.

Still it was a solid workout; increased the weights for my squats and rows, and rocked the jumping jacks. Mentally note though: sneakers are rough on your bare feet when doing jacks. Rubbed me a new blister!

Tomorrow: Re-takeup hundred push-ups and introduce interval-cardio on my off days.