Ben Folds Five will be releasing their first new album in a decade later this year and Mr. Folds gave us an update on the progress. If you’re a fan, read his entire note. It will make you fidget with excitement.
Ben succinctly described the value in an independent release (which they’re planning to do in September) later in the post.
Just seems [that] a musical experience I hate to be in [is] the position of selling it to people who don’t care. I’d rather spend my time telling people who DO care and save the money and time. Sell fewer records probably to those who want it. That leaves more time to make new records and tour. Less ass kissing, more music and life.
It makes you wonder why anyone passionate about their craft and connecting with people would do anything else.
I feel like I watch far more couch gags than actual episodes these days. Fun fact: I recorded the first 8 seasons on VHS tapes using the TV/VCR+ combo in my bedroom. I had several pages listing the start time and tape number for each episode. I lost them one by one in the dorms my freshman year of college.
P90X is, as the full name suggests, extreeeeemmmeee. You work out at home 6-7 times a week for 60-90 minutes with a different set of exercises each day of the week and a new set of routines every 4 weeks. In other words, it would require significant effort to not get fit (assuming you finish). Through a combination of peer pressure (folks at my office can get pretty serious about tests of will) and a desire for a worthy health challenge, I am ten days into the 90 day program.
I’ll talk a little bit about my experience so far, but first I’d like to clarify that this is primarily a personal challenge. Getting ripped, if you will, is not an explicit goal, but I admit that it’s a part of the equation. I’m not convinced that I’ll end up with a sculpted physique, but I’m damn curious. Will I feel better? Will people look at me differently? TBD, but I’m focusing on finishing over the next 80 days.
The details of the program are freely available online, but I’ll cover some basics before I focus on how I’m managing to complete a 60-90 minute workout, consume enough of the right calories, and still spend time doing the things I love on a daily basis. I should note, this isn’t a review as I’m only 10% of the way done.
Scheduling
The workouts are definitely intense, but they stagger weight training with cardio. For example, here’s the first phase:
Day 1: Chest & Back (lots of pull-ups and pushups)
Day 2: Plyometrics (high-impact, jumping)
Day 3: Arms & Shoulders
Day 4: Yoga (a mix of balance and power)
Day 5: Legs & Back (more pull-ups, various lifting)
Day 6: Kenpo (kickboxing)
Day 7: Rest (You can stretch, but you’ll want to chill)
In addition to this, you do a 15 minute ab routine on days 1, 3, and 5. You can expect to be sore all over your body, all the time.
In order to continue going out a few nights a week, I decided to do all of my workouts in the morning. I am not a morning person, so this was a concern for me. I prepared by going to the gym in the mornings twice a week throughout March and trying to go to bed by midnight. I guess it helped because I’ve been able to get up without much trouble at 6:45 every morning. My Tuesdays are a bit tight as I finish yoga at 8:30 and have to leave the house by 9, but it works.
The next decision was when to schedule my off-day. I decided on Friday for three reasons.
I don’t have a lot of weekend travel planned over the next month, so it made sense to take advantage of both weekend days.
Since I thought I’d have trouble waking up, I wanted to give myself a break at the end of the week.
All of the jumping on day 2 will likely piss off my downstairs neighbors, so I’d like to do it on the weekend. And since day 1 requires the pull-up bar, which only fits on my bedroom door, I thought I’d keep from annoying my wife with a lot of (WORKOUT) grunting for one more morning.
Another bonus is that you go to work on Monday having completed half of your workouts. It’s nice to go into the week with a sense of accomplishment.
Equipment
Since you’re doing this at home and probably don’t have a home gym, you’ll need to buy some supplies. Here’s what I got and what I didn’t.
Universal Power-Pak 445 Adjustable Dumbbells: You can either use weights or resistance bands, but I wanted something I was familiar with and would prove useful with any exercise system. I first bought a much cheaper set of dumbbells, but they weren’t going to work with P90X. You change exercises often and I didn’t want to extend an already long routine. The most popular set are the Bowflex SelectTech. They’re built slightly better and offer 2.5 pound increments up to 25 pounds (we have a pair hanging around the office), but they’re $100 more expensive and those improvements aren’t worth it.
Black Mountain Pull-up Bar: There are a lot of choices for these, but this product seemed to have the best value to quality ratio. Do note that you need a pull-up bar for a number of exercises and they don’t fit in every doorway. This unit claims it’ll work in a doorway 24-36” wide, but I had trouble with all of my doorways under 32”. Give this one a shot, but the resistance bands might be the way to go if you don’t have a good spot.
Clif Builder’s Bar and Muscle Milk: Never in my life did I think I’d buy a product named Muscle Milk, but it turns out this program demands it. The first few days, I ate roughly the same as before, but had peanut butter or eggs in the morning. P90X recommends you buy their expensive recovery drink, and now I understand why — you’re pretty weak if you don’t get some energy immediately after these workouts. Instead, I have a serving of Muscle Milk (it’s cheaper than P90X’s mix) for protein and an orange+banana or Emergen-C for vitamins and sugar. I feel a lot better throughout the day. And, while it seems like a lot, you’ll end up eating a protein bar every day in the beginning. I’ve tried a few brands and the Clif product is the tastiest. You’re basically eating a candy bar. It’s awesome.
This hard-boiled egg recipe: It’s nice to be able to grab a couple of these and some fruit for breakfast when you don’t have much time in the morning.
A yoga mat and blocks: We had extra around the house, but you’ll need the blocks if you can barely touch your knees on a hamstring stretch (Hi) and the mat if you’re bony (Hi again) and don’t want to bother your neighbors too much.
I skipped the pushup stands and heart rate monitor. So far, it’s been fine.
There is a pretty intense diet plan to go along with the exercise, but I’m mostly skipping it. Instead, I’m roughly following their ratios for each of the three phases. I’ve also found that I’m craving healthier foods anyway. I don’t know if it’s psychosomatic, but I’ll take it.
But is it enjoyable?
The short answer is yes. The variety of workouts are good (for your muscles too, apparently) and I find Tony, the creator and host, really likable. I’ve always been a treadmill and machines guy. I used a trainer once, but he wasn’t too pushy. So, I was worried the leader would be a steroid monster or suburban jazzerciser, but Tony is entertaining without being annoying, while pushing you just the right amount.
Now, if you don’t work out at all, you probably shouldn’t start with this cold. They have some minimums (a PDF of their fit test) and you should be able to get pretty close to each of these. If it’s any help, I was running about a 9’15” mile and benching 80 pounds before I started. I’m pretty gassed at the end of every workout, but I can keep up.
For some, doing the workouts at home could make it harder. You have a couch and a computer and a TV and an everything calling your name. For me, it’s proven easier. Since I’ve been working out in the morning prior to starting, not having to travel 10 minutes each way is a bonus. Another benefit is being half awake when I start — I’m less likely to get distracted. Most importantly, I feel energized when I start the day (now that I have my diet mostly in order). It’s made the suffering easier to swallow.
Last Set
I’ll finish up with some quick thoughts.
You will be really fucking sore. Apparently it gets better after a few weeks. I’ll let you know. Aleve is your friend.
It helps to do this with someone else (not in the same space, but on the same schedule). Whether it’s motivation or competition, it makes it easier.
You’d think doing a workout almost everyday would be hard, but it’s easier to get into a routine. I haven’t been tempted to skip yet.
While I was nervous I’d hurt myself or chicken out, I’m feeling confident. The next 80 days don’t seem quite as daunting as the full 90 did on day 1.
Like most blog posts, this was written for me as much as it was for you. Let me know if you have any questions.
The Knicks have had some trouble at point guard. They were also coming up quickly on a deadline where they had to make a decision about players with non-guaranteed contracts. Enter, Jeremy Lin. He led the Harvard basketball team, but was not drafted by an NBA team. After floating around the team for a year, the Knicks picked him up.
In the first 23 games, he averaged 2.3 minutes and 1.4 points a game. In the last two he has averaged 40.5 minutes and 26.5 points. He’s now the starting point guard for the Knicks and the talk of the city and American Chinese/Taiwanese community. It’s pretty amazing.
His contract, potentially worth nearly $800,000, was not even guaranteed until Tuesday afternoon. So for the past six weeks, Lin, 23, has been sleeping in his brother Josh’s living room, waiting for clarity and career security.
“He has his own couch,” Josh Lin, a New York University dental student, said cheerfully.
And to make it even more interesting:
Dwyane Wade per 48 minutes: 29.4 PTS, 6.2 REB, 7.6 AST, 2.8 STL. Jeremy Lin per 48 minutes: 30.2 PTS, 6.0 REB, 11.4 AST, 2.5 STL.
I have a (very delayed) announcement to make. After 5 years, depending on how you count, I have left SAY Media (aka Six Apart aka Apperceptive) to join OKCupid. Also, this happened about 3 months ago. What can I say, I’ve been busy.
I am in their office in Times Square, but not working on the product directly. Instead, I’m working with a small team (about 8 people) to build new social products. You could call it a startup incubator or a research and development lab, but it’s just a few smart people building web products. And so far, I’m having a blast.
For a little catharsis, I’ll share a bit about why I’m making this move. During my last year at SAY, I transitioned completely to a product management role. There was a lot to like about it, as I had almost complete control over my product and there were a ton of really smart people (not to mention the company is doing quite well). I also learned that I’m far more excited and effective when I’ve got my hands in the code or design than when I’m just poring over Gantt charts and JIRA tickets. In fact, I think it’s pretty difficult to effectively lead a product without getting your hands dirty. I didn’t do that nearly enough at SAY, but it’s a part of my daily routine now. When I have an idea, I build it, we play with it, and we move forward. It’s been a great way to work and I’m feeling a lot more productive.
I’ve also confirmed a long-held suspicion — I work best in the early stages of a project. Conceiving, prototyping, building, and shipping a new product is what I do best. It’s why I liked working in client services with Appercetive and it’s why I took this new gig. The ridiculously smart people in this office is just icing on the cake.
While we don’t have any projects ready for the public yet, I can guarantee I’ll write about them here. I’ll also work on improving my event to blog post latency. Either that or I’ll start trumpeting the hot new thing, Slow Blogging.
The artist Yayoi Kusama painted everything in a room white, provided every kid that visited the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane with colorful stickets, and unleashed them. You can see the results above. I think it’s somewhat engenius to have kids do it. Adults would have tried to impose some kind of order. In fact, I insist the artist do this again, but only allow adults or women or old people to affix stickers.
I’ve become a bit maniacal about avoiding paper waste, but I don’t see how I will keep myself from buying the Little Printer. It’s a an incredibly cute thermal printer that connects wirelessly to the web. Using BERG Cloud (also new), you can send all kinds of “publications” to the printer at prescribed times or on-demand. You can also send other people messages. It’s like an awesome ticker tape!
If you’re not excited yet, or if you are, you should watch this video. You’ll want one too.
Near Antarctica, salt water gets excluded from the ice, forming bring, which sinks quickly. This brine creates an icicle that reaches down to the ocean floor, freezing everything its path. The BBC caught the phenomenon in a time-lapse film. Watch.
The science is pretty awesome (as is much science).
In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath.
The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a brinicle.
Apparently the character is coming back for a second time, first airing in 2009, but I’d never seen it. I guess it’s working for Target.
“She represents the whole notion of Black Friday being a contact sport,” says Dustee Jenkins, VP of communications at Target. “Love her or hate her, she resonates with our guests.”
If I needed reminding, I’d ask you to remind me to not go to Target on Friday.
Co.Design decrees that the Jawbone UP is a failure. Their primary complaint is the lack of integration with your phone, which seems like a big flaw. While Bluetooth would be a big drain on the battery, it’d be fine so long as it lasted for a couple days.
It’s also a problem that affects the Fitbit, a device I’ve been wanting for a while. I think it’s something I could get over.
My biggest issue with the UP is that you have to wear it as a bracelet. If I was going to do this, I’d want to have it on all the time, and that makes its current form impractical. On the other hand, as the author of the article points out, having it out in the open has some benefits.
[T]he UP band itself is a subtle bit of smart UX design. Seeing it on your wrist constantly is like a mnemonic device reminding you to make better choices. When wearing it, I found that the simple fact of making that visible commitment to being healthier did, in fact, make me think more about every choice I made.
For the 2010 Winter Olympics, Google took their Street View technology to the ski hill by mounting it on a snowmobile. They then built maps of several ski resorts. First, here’s a video of the snowmobile in action.
Before I opened up the map, I was skeptical this would be practical, but it is. It’s a great view into what each trail is like and would be useful for creating meeting spots on the mountain. And imagine if Google licensed this technology to the resort. They could put the cameras on top of the snowcat and have a new view of the groomed run each morning. That might seem like magic, but it can’t be far off.
For a full year, a camera took a picture from the roof of the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. Ken Murphy took the photos and made 360 stop-motion films, then tiled them together into a mosiac. When you watch this, turn on 1080p and make it full-screen. It’s worth it. [via kottke]
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have not made these yet, but I am going to. The good news is that Deb has determined that we have reached the pinnacle of ginger-snapness.
Anyway, in the lineup was a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for molasses spice cookies. I wanted to see how the gingersnaps I’d made would compare to them and was shocked to find the two recipes to be nearly exactly the same, ingredient for ingredient. I then turned to Google to find more gingersnap recipes and again, discovered that a whole lot of gingersnap recipes agree with one another.
In a different week, I might have fretted over this. I would feel the need to tweak them, to offer you an improvement upon the gingersnap status quo. Not this week, though. This week, it’s clear to me that if many people agree on what Gingersnap Greatness should taste like, I should feel no need to argue. I have a playground date to attend to, after all, and then maybe a nap.
I was reading Pat’s Papers this morning when I discovered this fact. Ronan Farrow started at Bard College at 11 and was then accepted to Yale’s Law School at 16, but deferred admission to work with UNICEF and Richard Holbrooke. Wikipedia explains his post-law school accolades.
In 2008, Farrow was awarded Refugees International’s McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award, for “extraordinary service to refugees and displaced people.” In 2009, he was named by New York Magazine as their “New Activist” of the year and included on their list of individuals “on the verge of changing their worlds.” In 2010, Harper’s Bazaar named him their “up-and-coming politician” of the year.
On November 19, 2011, he was named an American Rhodes Scholars-elect for 2012.
The Bears won their fifth straight game last night, but Jay Cutler, their quarterback, is down for around 6 weeks with a fractured thumb on his throwing hand. What’s crazy about it is that no one knew until after the post-game press conferences. Peter King explains how it went down:
Early in the fourth quarter of Chicago’s 31-20 win over the Chargers, Cutler threw an interception to Antoine Cason. Trying to tackle Cason near the sideline, Cutler flailed at him while being blocked, and his right hand slammed on the ground. When Cutler got up, he looked at his hand and flexed it a couple of times. But he stayed in the game and finished, throwing two more passes. After the Bears’ fifth straight win (and third straight game scoring in the thirties — the first time the Bears have done that since 2005), Cutler greeted some Chargers on the field as he normally does with foes after game. Nothing said about a sore thumb. A Bears’ PR man escorted Cutler to talk with NBC Sports’ Alex Flanagan. Nothing said about a sore thumb. Cutler showered and did his local press conference. Nothing said about a sore thumb. Coach Lovie Smith did his press conference. Nothing said about a sore thumb for Cutler.
Cutler had gotten a lot of shit about his injury during the NFC championship last year, so he probably felt the need to act a little tougher, but this is kinda crazy.
Now, I don’t think the season is dead. In fact, I think the Bears have a pretty good chance to make the playoffs. They play five bad teams and one great team. Going 3-3 puts them in good position and going 4-2 should secure them a spot. I’m probably being overly optimistic, but I think this will be a great finish to the season and the Bears will end up the top wild card spot.
Update (11/21/11): If you’d like to know more about Caleb Hanie, Cutler’s backup, National Football Post has a good summary. He had a really good preseason, which is part of the reason I’m optimistic.
By many, Di Fara is considered the holy grail of pizza. Girl Slice disagrees. Strongly.
Why is it so smoky in there? When I have visited Di Fara, there are times that my eyes have burned so much that I was crying… from pain and unhappiness, not from deliciousness. Eating at Di Fara is like eating in a coal mine.
She goes on to explain that the pizza is “…often burned, the sauce can be bland, and worst of all, it’s way too oily.”
I skew closer to holy grail than coal mine, but Girl Slice has a point — waiting over an hour for a sometimes-burnt pie with no guarantee of seating is typically not worth the effort. I’d go to Best Pizza or Totonno’s ahead of Di Fara any day.
I am not a (talented) musician, but I recognize game when I see it. At last night’s Hack and Tell, Grant Kot demoed his mobile app (iOS and Windows 7) that functions as a digital musical instrument. I bought it (99 cents on the app store) and had fun with it on the couch tonight. Of course, Grant, who’s a Julliard student, shows you what’s really possible in this video (should start 45 seconds in).
Have you ever mocked your bridge and tunnel friends about they likely live at 300th St. & 35th Ave.? Well, now you have a tool to do so. Harold Cooper created ExtendNY to show what it would be like if the NYC street grid were expanded forever by measuring the distances between streets and avenues, accounting for the curvature of the planet, and extending it across the Earth. Manhattan’s north pole resides somewhere in Uzbekistan
The Sartorialst visits Paris and now they they think they’re New Yorkers? It might be tough from 64,908th St. and 12,778th Ave. Yeah, Chicago is just like Brooklyn, except it resides at 4,443rd St. and 4,363rd Ave.
I should note, this is another great project I discovered via Hack and Tell, a meetup in NYC.
