Wii Work Out

Hey! We meet again (and if it's your first time reading this space… lucky you!). Now I'm downloading a new iteration of iTunes (9.1.1 I believe) and I figured it'd be a nice time to blog a bit. Hope your week has been alright, don't ask about mine, I've been reading a lot, making notes and hardly leaving home. So, what happens when you miss a bit of that outdoors experience? Well, you just do, there's no substitution to it… oh well, sort of.

Since I like to exercise (not sure about working out, I just like to be active) sometimes I need to squeeze a bit of time here and there in order to do so, but the thing is, even though you find a good 1 hour to do your thing you still lose time in driving to the gym, getting there, if you're not lucky to wait for the machine in use, and then, after you're all sweaty, to get back home. Don't think I hate that (for many, the idea of working out is all that), because I don't, but what if you only want to work out and nothing more? How can you make every 60 minutes count?

Sure you can avoid all lost time by working out home, that's sort of the solution here… but working out on your own can be boring and non-motivational, so what can we do? Well, I'm happy to say I've been experiencing the solution for a while now and I love it… a session of Wii Work Out!! Since I've been 'playing' with it for a while now I'd like to tell you my thoughts about this new way to do some exercise. I think I'd not be fair to call this a 'game' (not in a narrow sense of the word) since I never rescued any princess, killed a demon or lived in an apocalyptic world (neither in video games nor real life). But it's still a disc you insert in a console, so people can debate all they want. For the sake or writing, I'll refer to it as a game -though I'd prefer another term- since I can't think of any other fancy word for it.

There're some 'games' designed to work out with the Wii, my experience was based in the EA Active line. As most titles, you create your Avatar (way slimmer than the real you), pick some clothes, add data as weight, height, age and such and just like that you're about to start a work out session. And, as expected, you choose what to do, either in a predefined session or selecting each exercise to customize it your way. What I liked about this scheme was the related data to each exercise, you can know the level, time, calories burned of each routine, so you can plan and maximize the work out.

Once you've picked the routine, you start it. Here's where the real fun begins, and since the first moment you can tell if this new way of exercising is for you or not. You do what you see on the screen, and a personal trainer (if that's even possible) tells you exactly how to perform your moves and -for me- the best part… he/she motivates you. A simple 'Way to go!' or 'Two more reps and we're done' from time to time are enough for me to run that extra mile when wearing out.

And, once you've finished, you get your stats, some health tips and sweat on your face, all without leaving the room. But the experience doesn't end here, since there're challenges to keep for days or even weeks and feeling great. Overall, from my point of view is a great choice if you want to work out not caring much about the whole 'gym experience' said before. Even my mom joins the fun each other time.

Final thoughts? Well, is a great alternative for those of us who love squeezing time to the max, you just need to have a decent free space to do your thing (don't want to end up smashing the tv with your wiimote like many people have). Hope you give this a chance someday, it may be the best new way to work out, who knows? Time and burned calories will tell. See y'all next week and eat your veggies!

You are what you eat

Good _________! (Fill in the blank accordingly to your time zone). So, the beginning of another week, some people like starting things, it feels like a fresh beginning, leaving past things behind. For me, I might like starting a week, but is way more awesome to finish it and remember what made it worth living… won't you agree? In either case… happy beginning of week!

There are certain things that happen to us every day… waking up, shower (for some), eating, talking, you name it. I wish we could help to make our lives better at least in these basic task that we perform every day… ever heard about eating and resting well? Sure we live rushed by our schedules, squeezing every little second and make it count, sadly there's little time left to worry about how to improve these tiny but paramount details… what to do?

Take eating for instance, nowadays we simply eat what we please (not saying it's wrong) and not what we need to be healthier. Open the fridge, scan the inside, and in less than 10 seconds you see what's available, you heat it up and voilá! A bit of salt, pepper, a drink and you are ready to go. Maybe you're not that lucky and you couldn't make it home and you gotta eat elsewhere… eating simply what's available (of your own liking, of course). Oh yeah, that's for us our daily diet… any way to improve that? Well, you can definitely think about a trillion plans how to, but I will tell you a way I'm sure you never came across with and it will be part of your future!

Let's say you have a great diet, you take care of all nutriments you need and life is great… need an extra help? No problem, just take your spoon and you're done… what? Ok, let me rephrase that… just take your 'intelligent' spoon and you're done! How a spoon can be intelligent? Well, not that it is, let's say is simply less dumb than all other utensils at your place. What this little bad boy does is to analyze your food as soon as it gets in touch with it and tells you all sort of info about it. Let's say you're always unsure about how hot is your soup, you need to take a scary sip to check it out… most of the times you're lucky enough and all is good, but what about that one time when you had to spit it out because no one told you how hot it was? This spoon can tell you how hot the food is… cool huh? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Other food qualities can be measured, such as how salty the food is, its acidity and viscosity, but it doesn't stop there. Since it can be paired to your computer, it can tell you, for instance, if there's enough salt to make your dish taste better… now that's what I'm talking about! Magic? Nearly. I bet you never thought you'd be needing one of these, but if you ever have one, it's going to sound almost too good to be truth. Need to say this spoon is still some sort of prototype, so we might need to wait a bit to see them in our kitchen drawers. Price? Hard to say, but I dare to say it won't be as expensive as you may think, 20 USD? Sounds fair to me.

Any other good ideas to make our lives a bit better? Sure here's one, hope to see them soon in stores. Have you heard of any other device from the future to help us have a healthier/better/less complicated life? Drop a line in the comment section and start to save some money to get these awesome gadgets! Sure they'll be a hit! See y'all next Thursday!

Invisibility cloak

Happy Earth Day! (Right, like if you are meant to give someone a present) How's life guys? Having a good week? For me this week is sort of my deadline week, so I'm a bit rushed, but all ok. The other day I came across a bit of news, and since I think this is quite awesome, well, you know… let's talk about it, shall we?

I'm pretty sure you think I'm gonna quote Harry Potter here (sorry, not the case) but by judging the title you might think that way. Have you ever felt like disappearing without a trace? You know, like unplugging from the world and vanish from the face of the planet… and I'm not talking about hiding underneath the bed or getting a blanket, I really mean to disappear.

It turns out what I thought it was mere science fiction it's actually true. Maybe in a near future we might be able to be invisible, transparent to the naked eye… the implementations seem limitless. From the humanitarian to the recreational, from the stalkers (has to be said) to the military, you think on your own ideas!

Who are responsible of this creation? Well… such technology is work of the scientist at the University of Tokyo. Remember how the blue screen effect works? Just like the weather guy is in front of a blue wall and we see a world map instead. The difference here is, we will see the map but the weather guy will be gone (invisible, if you will). If you like video games I can tell you three words : 'Metal Gear Solid'… but the results are sort of more limited, but you've got the idea.

This is called optical camouflage (fancy name for invisibility, but anyway). There's a tiny inconvenient with cloaks though, if you think of a wall it's always flat and it doesn't move, and when we see it from the tv the camera angle rarely moves. In real life a cloak gets wrinkled and people move all the time, what to do? Well… they create more fancy names and attach some technology to them… that's the case for augmented-reality technology.

This starts to feel like a high school class, don't worry, we won't go into detail about it, just saying that hi-tech piece adds computer generated info to our vision (like glasses). In mortals words, is as if a camera was plugged to a camera filming what's behind someone with the cloak on and transmitting that image for us to see what's behind the cloak guy, all really really quick.

How does someone think about that solution? You got me, all I know is that it works and the results seem amazing to me. What would you do with such a cloak? I'm picturing many of you trolling about it saying stuff like: 'Yeah… I'd go to the ladies locker rooms'… c'mon guys, be original with those replies! For me? Probably I'd take a walk through town and see how people behave when they 'think' there're not seen, or maybe going to a club for free, I don't know, I'm spit balling here.

I know there're tons of cool things one can do. Leave all your answers in the comments section and I'll see you all this weekend… or not? Take care guys!

Can people fly?

Hey guys, so… what's up? And please don't come up with responses such as: 'The sky', 'clouds' or the common classic 'the ceiling'. Hope you had all your batteries recharged to face this new week, so let's bring it! Now I came up with a very unusual question, since you read the title (and if not, no need to scroll up). Its unusualness is not because of the answer -not going to fry the pill here- but because someone was smart enough to ask it in the first place.

Ever had that dream where your feet are off the ground and suddenly you are above clouds meeting mountains as equals? Light as a feather, people have said. I believe this is probably the most recurrent dream after the one standing on a stage crowded… and naked (mmm… another blog topic?). So, I guess is fair to say the idea of people flying wouldn't be too bad, would it?

But the reality is… we simply can't, we are doomed to be strapped to the ground and vehicle-dependent to try differently. Ok, I know I playing fool here if I insist, but for the sake of argument I'll do it just this one time more: 'Can people fly?'. And as a rush of voices drilling in my head I hear a solid: 'No, people can't'. Ok, no worries, now I get it. Now I feel compelled to dig in and to find all the reasons why people can't fly, probably if we can find out every single explanation why humans can't fly -on their own- we, in the very distant future, can work out something… right?

Believe it or not, some peeps have done some pretty weird explanations why people can't fly, from the very basics one to ones dealing with physics, formulas, equations and what not. We are going to know the surface about them and if you can come up with a new one, feel free to share it with the world (and, once you're at it, with the slightly less number of people who read this blog).

First, gravity… yeah, some laws simply can't be broken, not gonna be around the bush with this one, pretty basic. Two, lack of wings, this one is more of a workaround with gravity, a way of defying, just like airplanes or birds do… the questions arises, given our anatomy, if we grew wings (BIG conditional) would our bodies be capable of flying and steering in the air? Can't say if they would, maybe we'd be as graceful as a hypo doing ballet. Those are sort of the basic answers, but wait… there are more.

Wind can't keep us up, even with winds (I have no idea how to sustain this argument, the one who said it maybe have done the proper test with real human wings… just saying). Another explanation I read said something like, in all our thousands of years in the evolution cycle we never needed to fly… cool, I wish we had at one point the need, wouldn't you say? A fun argument stated we humans can't fly because we only use 20% of our brains, but if we used 100% we'd be able to fly using brain energy. Sorry, I don't know the units of that -brainjoules (bj?)- Can't speak for that argument.

As you see, science can be fun too, not only tells us what we can do but also it knows very well what we can't possibly do. Can you think of any other reason why people can't fly? Or maybe you can come up with a great and original response. If something hits your brain leave a comment in the section below and how know, maybe in the year 7865 we may start seeing the first steps in human flying evolution. Until then… just keep walking.

Questions you'd ask God

Hey guys! What's up? This week has been alright to me, I've been filling an insane amount of applications and forms, you know how it is. I don't mind with every form asking me my general info, but sometimes is too much when you have to dig in really deep in your life to find what they're looking for. Man, I'm telling you, in many cases I don't really know the answers myself (or that in fact there IS an answer), but anyway, after spending most of my week in such a scenario, it's always refreshing to do other stuff.

This couple of days I thought the immutable fact that… 'we all need answers'. I think we do. From the minute you wake up you start thinking how the day will go. When you go to the kitchen wanting some cereal for breakfast you're wondering if there's still some left… what about going out? Well, you might start doing plans regarding the weather. Yep, life is filled with answers we need in order to  enjoy life… right. What about the questions?

Here's when things get interesting, in order to get some answers the correct questions need to be stated, so, let me rephrase: 'We all need questions'. Now we flip the tortilla and we need to start thinking what's the best way to make formulate them. And again, sometimes we simply won't get our questions answered, not because is a non wanted answers, but merely because is not possible.

Sidenote: This is just me, but I'd like to think the words 'not possible' and 'impossible' don't mean the same. 'Impossible' is a step up than 'not possible', which would mean a 'not possible' thing is not quite 'impossible', just extremely difficult but not difficult enough to be called 'impossible', just 'not possible'...

Having defined my personal thoughts about this terminology (that I don't even understand) the idea stroke me… we all want our questions to be answered, right? I mean, it gotta be some sort of necessity, we humans are so compelled to control our lives and in order to do so we gotta anticipate to the happenings and to plan accordingly. The truth is, nobody knows all the answers of life (moreover: OUR life). Sure we can know things about weather, science, how much cereal is left up on the shelf and similar, but what about the really tricky ones?

So I came up with the idea of this exercise… making a list of questions you'd ask God once you're gone (or any superior entity you believe in). I bet there are tons (and literally I mean TONS) of things you want to know about your life, other's lives… life itself. The most popular ones I've found: 'Why are we here?', 'What am I meant to do in life?', 'What's humanity purpose?'. Yet again, more personal questions could be more relevant to you. Or maybe events that happened zillions of years ago, or even the future… any question goes!

Once you have a decent amount (you'll be the judge of that) you can prioritize them so you can know what truly you'd love to know about anything. I bet you'll be amazed with the results. Luckily I'm not the only one with this idea, I've seen some other sites with this on their minds and they've gotten great results. As usual here's a vid with some kids responding to this question… good times! See you all next weekend and now go back to work!

Stress… wearing out?

Howdy! Hope you had a great weekend and have all your batteries recharged, since today is -for many- their return to work/school. Many peeps don't like Mondays, but… what's a Friday without its Monday? I mean, we sort of need to feel tired to really enjoy a couple of days off, right? But then again, we may feel like the world is going to fall on us sometimes and we sense that little something called stress… oh yeah, we've been there and we know exactly what it feels.

More in these days, where we find traffic jams on every corner and our workflow is doing everything but moving right, is quite normal to feel stressed, but what exactly is it, how can we cope with it and in the long run, how to minimize it? Well, look no further, since we're going to explore what can we do to improve our lives and, once we're at it, we might help other as well… shall we?

Ok, first things first, believe it or not, the word 'stress' is a psychological/biological term. The word, first used in the 30's, refers to what happens after we people fail to respond to emotional/physical threats. In fewer words, they are the forces from the outside world affecting us. But how? When we worry about our life, job, home, family, we all have expectations, and when we don't meet them, well… the party starts.

Is it normal to feel like that? Totally. I mean, we are humans, and as such we need to find our place in life, and for all (let me repeat that, for A-L-L) in life we have deadlines. Happily we'll meet many… in other cases, we simply won't be able to. Stress will show not because of the amount of things we haven't done, but because of the amount of things we cope with. And again, there's no solution for not to cope with things, so… are we on a tight corner here? Is there no way to avoid stress at all? Short answer, no. But the good thing is, we can control our response to it and the amount of stress can as well be minimized… but the 64,000 USD question is how? Bear with me, here're the answers to your prayers!

Something has to be said about stress though; having it in small doses helps most peeps to cope with life, they stay alert, respond faster and think better, but when it's simply too much, meltdowns are inevitable.

If things from the outside are messing up with our inside, we gotta enforce our inside, right? A step in the right direction is nutrition. It's been proven when stressed, we produce adrenaline, which raises our blood and cardiac pressure speeding up our breathing, not mentioning our sugar levels go off the roof and fat is freed to our bloodstream. Imagine if you're stressed after a hamburger and fries snack, once a day… it doesn't sound ok to me.

Another thing we can do is exercise, since we have plenty of energy due to our sugar and fat in our bodies, we're simply ready for action, furthermore, to work out functions as a antidepressant. Worst thing to do… being stressed while sitting at your desk… your thighs will be the size of watermelons. Finally, to do as a routine… try meditation! A 20-30 min session a day will do magic on you! With it we can learn to control or blood pressure and heart rate. As a friendly tip, smoking, drinking, drugs (has to be said) won't do us any good.

So, ready to face and look life in the eyes? Do you have the tools to improve your life? Hope you do! Try these tips for a bit and see if you notice any changes (bet you will). For now don't forget to laugh, have a healthy life and have fun with this video… see you all next Thursday!

Internet… everywhere

What's going on guys? Hope you've had a great week so far… things are going sort of great for me at the moment, the only thing is that I had a really bad stomachache the other day, and kinda kept me from doing what I planned for the day… but I'm better now, so let's rock!

Just yesterday I was at home doing my thing when I started watching this sort of lecture about new technology in the coming years, you might heard about the lecturer, Dr. Michio Kaku, he's one of the best physicists today and the best of all, he makes his letters quite entertaining and practical so mere mortals such as yours truly can completely understand.

I might be blogging about different devices I heard of this lecture in coming entries, this time I'll be sharing to you a single thought he mentioned about internet, in the form of such a tiny device with global communication. Can you imagine yourself with today's internet service, but having every single second of the day? Since the moment you wake up, when you want to decide what movie to watch, what book to read and finally when you call it a day. But then again, you can argue by saying you have internet all the time today.

Ok, ok, let me rephrase it then… what if you could 'watch' internet all time without being disconnected from your life? It turns out it will be possible in our lifetime! Wouldn't it be great if you could hold a videoconference with your family living across the country while you have your morning jog? Or what about knowing the weather forecast, your GPS route, traffic conditions and more without taking your eyes off the road? It sounds mind-blowing, but in effect researchers say quite possible!

This sounds just like virtual reality, since you'll be seeing stuff other people won't, like personal holograms, if you will. Expensive? I can imagine it will be in the dawn of its appearance, but since technology gets cheaper and faster every year, it wouldn't surprise me my future kids would have this technology given for their birthdays. How would this work? Well, the best thing of all is that it won't be invasive, I mean, it won't be like your holding a cellphone or being attached to a cable… all this amazing technology will be embedded in a contact lens… YEAH!

Can you picture that? Now we'll feel just like a Terminator having all this statistics and information at our sight (don't worry, we won't be seeing all in red). I can't imagine (Dr. Kaku made this joke) how exams will be done in the future, I mean, how would the dynamics change? I guess the point would be not knowing theoretical stuff anymore, but to understand it and how to apply it in real life (teachers, write some notes on that!).

Needless to say it sounds incredible, the possibilities are endless, what sort of widgets would you like to see? What movies would you watch? Would you embrace this technology or simply ignore it? You know where to leave your comments! Hope to see you next post this weekend, in the meantime… enjoy your life!

Time Travel Proof

Hi everybody! So… for some of you vacations are almost done… sad times! And for the rest of you, you might get another week of fun and excitement… enjoy! If you don't fit any of these categories, then congrats because you belong to unemployment! For today I want to finalize my time travel posts adding a last 3rd entry and making this a time travel trilogy! Yeah! First we found out time travel is indeed possible, no physics law can tell us different, then we found out a real time machine is being built as we speak (ok, ok… as we 'read' each other) by Dr. Ron Mallett. What could possibly top these two topics?

Well, I sadly can't surprise you all since there's a little something in every post called 'The Title' and though it guides you with the general idea of an entry, it simply kills the factor of surprise. A while ago I came across a small video where a person claims to have THE proof that time travel is possible… what? Well, if I had some kind of evidence sure I'd be showing it to the world, but then again, I do not, and as a spectator I'll definitely will give him the benefit of the doubt.

What would you do if you have some sort of evidence regarding time travel? Would you keep it to yourself or share it to the world? And what if you were the one to experience a time travel first hand? I mean, I know we are stepping in the 'if' realm, and though it doesn't exist is a realm that allows us to dream and to wonder things with a different view. If people didn't dream we wouldn't travel in cars, airplanes or even communicate with cellphones… what a shame would that be!

Let's pretend for the sake of argument the proof isn't fake… ok. Then, what is this so called proof made of? Well, it is a video taken from a cellphone, so you can tell the quality is very low-res, and no witnesses, just the guy who filmed it. It turns out this fella met himself (that is, from the future) and got both of them in the video, same outfits, same tattoos, same facial expressions… but same person? I'll let you be the judge of that. 

I'm just going to say one thing and one thing only about the video. From what we learned in the first time travel post, we know (according to physicists) that we cannot alter the past, we can only be viewers. With that argument in mind, it wouldn't be hard for me not to buy this proof. I know is easy to dismiss this video a call it fake, there's a ton of things to criticize about it, but what if this could happen to you?

I'd probably passed out, dismiss it as a weird dream and then move on. It wouldn't be so easy for me to accept such an experience. I know I sound like a soft guy with my response, but the mere fact of truly knowing time travel is possible in my time it'd rock my world so hard! The possibilities would be endless from this point on. Just watching this video and wanting it to be real tells us our wishes to believe in what seems to be impossible and foremost, to believe in miracles.

What do you think about it? Do you dismiss it or do you want to believe  that something else is possible? See you all next post and if you go back to work, do so with a smile!

Time Machine

Hey guys! What's going on? How are vacations treating y'all? Any new place to visit? I've been staying in home most of the week, you know, with ha family and such… good times. Do you remember last weekend post? There we just discovered how come is time travel possible (at least, theoretically) and how people doing their own research have gone to that conclusion… yeah, everything is fancy and all, but, what about a real transport of traveling?

Last entry I said I had a 'shocking' surprise, well, I do have it and, without further introduction, I'll spill it out: There's in the works a time machine that has caught the eyes of the ones who know about it, specially researchers who see no fault in all the theory and science behind it… Emmet Brown, watch out!

The person in charge for this operation… Dr. Ron Mallett, how did everything started for him? A year after his dad passed away, he read a Time Machine comic book and got inspirited and manufactured a plan to see his old man again… nearly 50 years after he thinks he's got his answer right… the creation of a time machine that doesn't challenge the laws of physics, all seems to be real.

How does this machine work? Well, it's based in Einstein's Relativity Theory (big words in there) and a laser ring to twist time… pretty cool huh? Yeah yeah, but how does it actually work? You got me. that's why Dr. Mallett work seems so ingenious, and as a matter of fact, he explains it quite well in the Discovery coverage he was on (a sneak preview below). The only thing is that, though all the theory is there, his latest experiments involve particles, atoms and such (no living beings)… even if that's the case… I can't wait… it sounds awesome!

What do you think about it? Personally I think is one of the most amazing stuff I've heard in a long time, usually time travel is called the Holy Grail of science, so you get this is a pretty huge deal. As we know from the last post time travel is theoretically correct, and this machine is also accurate in theory, so only good things can happen. I know it could pass maybe a hundred of years or more before we can see humans traveling through time, even if that's the case I don't mind waiting (that is, my descendants will wait for me).

Do you like the idea? If you have anything to say 'bout it you know where to leave a comment (scroll down and you're there). If you could do one trip in this machine… who would you go with and when? Past or future? See you this weekend… keep enjoying the week… you deserve it!