Workout Week 29: These Delays are Getting Ridiculous

Posted on 26 July 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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Yet another new plan.

Instead of randomizing everything, I think I may want to do Ring Fit Adventure’s Adventure mode as my first workout every week (for the purpose of making sure I get another level in–though since these levels tend to last longer than most other workouts that also means making sure I get a workout of a decent length in even if/when my tendency towards procrastination results in doing nothing else)… which means I’ll need to take it off of my randomizer spreadsheet.

I’d still leave other RFA options on the randomizer, Rhythm Mode, mini-games, whatever else happens to exist, and I’d still try to get back into the habit (or start the habit, however the case may be) of the “one workout from every system every week” random element (which means doing those mini-games etc in addition to doing a level of Adventure Mode), this would be the only specifically chosen workout.

Of course, for that change to mean anything, I’ll need to stop procrastinating so I’ll have workouts to record….

 

On the flip side, I tested something with RFA during the week. Now that I finally have enough Joy Cons for every family member to pick a set to use and never need to share, I wanted to find out more about Ring Fit’s Multitask Mode. Specifically, that 500-point-per-day limit.

Either I’ve been using the wrong search terms or that limit doesn’t have a whole lot of detail available online. Is the limit per user account? Per set of Joy Cons? Per copy of the game? If I do my 500 points in a day, will that prevent anyone else from getting multitask points the same day?

The first and most obvious answer is that it will prevent anyone from getting points at the same time as me… no need to test that, you need the actual Ring Con to earn points so short of ordering a knock-off for the purpose the only way for multiple people to earn Multitask points is to pass the Ring around.

Next step was to see if I could get more points on a second set of Joy Cons after earning the full 500 on the first set. Turns out the Ring itself “knows” how many points I’ve earned–once I earn that 500, it refuses to let me earn any more no matter what Joy Cons I insert, until I’ve gotten onto the game to redeem those 500 points. (Also, I could earn those points on one set of Joy Cons, pop in a new set, immediately start up the game, and redeem them; which Joy Con is attached to the Ring makes no difference.) Which means if my parents choose to give the game a try one of us would need to redeem our points before passing around the Ring… but since the Ring retains that information, there is no need to swap out Joy Cons for the purpose unless the particular user wants to.

And finally, since I can get more points than the 500 limit provided I’ve redeemed them before continuing, the next test was to see if I can actually redeem more than that on a single profile. (Not that I planned to do this on the regular–can’t really consider it “cheating” since I still have to do the same exercise to get the points, but since the idea was to see if this would affect my parents’ ability to play it’d be better if I share those points). And that would be a “no.”

The game flags any profile that has earned 500 points in the span of the day as unable to add more, and I don’t have the paid subscription that gives me access to the various online features like the ability to gift them to a distant friend, so the test required me to add them to one of my parents’ profiles… which required convincing my dad to play through a level to create that profile, walking him through it when it looked like he couldn’t figure out what to do (your typical “I’m too old to understand computers even though the instructions are staring me in the face” spiel, despite having the same computer degree as me and having recently retired from a job that required regular computer use and therefore having more such experience than me who grew up on computers) until the game had progressed enough for me to add those points.

 

Now here’s hoping I can convince my parents to do more than “try” the game. The only thing they play on the Wii U is Wii Fit, so while I do have some motorcycle-themed games they might like (Mario Kart, which I bought solely because I can play as Link on a motorcycle, and Trials Rising) I kinda thought they might be interested in Ring Fit if I can persuade them to play anything at all.

 

On a vaguely-related note, Beat Saber has a new DLC pack out, so at some point I’ll need to check out those songs to see if there’s anything my sensory-disordered brain likes enough to pay for…. (I recognize more than few, which has been rare given my limited taste in music, but that never means much from a purchasing perspective.)

 

I did, miraculously, manage to get in missions through Zombies Run and The Walk every day this week, finishing out the Atlantis mission, nearly finishing Negative Space (one running episode to go!) and finding out how well The Walk works as a “exercise right before bed” alternative to all of the Homefront-esque (more formally known as “bodyweight exercise”) missions that I have now completed.

As alluded to in the previous post, I rather expected getting distracted by social media when I got home from work to be the biggest risk of delaying completion of the Negative Space storyline, but it turns out that one of the running missions carried that risk–on Thursday we went for a motorcycle ride and out to dinner during the time when I would normally have done my daily walk, and by the time we got home it was about half an hour away from sunset. Now, I have a reflective vest to make myself more visible for safety reasons, originally bought during the winter when the weather itself would impair that visibility, but I prefer not to go out for walks when the sun is down regardless; while I had time to do another mission, it was a close thing.

Also, I don’t like Negative Space. I still have one episode to go in which it has a chance to redeem itself, but the way episode four ended (I could deal with the first three without outright “not liking” the story) makes that highly unlikely. To avoid further spoilers, I’ll just say you have to play the story (after having gotten invested in Zombies Run itself) to see why…. though the descriptions of each episode kind of give away part of my reason. And I rather suspect there are a few other New Adventures that I might not like for the same reason.

The Walk is… iffy. The original plan, given the slim possibility that that plan would work, was to do an episode every night when I got home from work the way I’d been doing the Homefront workouts, but even starting off I found problems.

For starters, unlike the running missions in Zombies Run (which you can track via distance, step count, or time-based), the literal storyline of The Walk is purely time-based… but it still needs to detect that you are moving. First problem this represents is that I couldn’t simply leave my phone plugged in and charging while I was going through the story; I had to have it on me the entire time.

Second problem is the gameplay element, all of those landmarks to scan as I pass them, provided if I’m within range; if I pass by too far without tapping a relevant spot it disappears and I’ve lost my chance to collect it until I repeat that episode. Which means I need to be able to watch the screen.

For the first episode I dealt with that second problem by alternating between keeping the phone in my pocket and pulling it out to check the screen, mostly relying on the audio clips to judge if I’ve gone far enough to need to look (and occasionally pulling it out between clips when I knew a lot of time would pass between them).

For the second episode I decided to see if it would work on the exercise bike, fitting the phone into the included tablet mount for the purpose so I could watch the screen, knowing full well that the FAQs page says it would be less accurate this way than simply walking. Well, that bike must be too sturdy because I spent several minutes riding and the icon on the screen never budged to show I was moving. So back to pacing in my room it was.

Third problem is the sheer length of the missions. All of the Homefront missions lasted roughly half an hour which, as long as I didn’t get distracted by social media, was a decent amount of time for working out before bed when I don’t get home until nearly midnight (and don’t have to leave again until afternoon). But you can see from those screenshots that it took me nearly an hour to complete each of these two episodes; that’s doing the longer routes for these two, but some of the later episodes last an hour or more for the short routes.

Since this app has different “achievements” pertaining to completing the missions in a given timeframe (one for finishing without more than three hours of inactivity and another for finishing within 24 hours) I kinda thought I might be able to split up the longer missions… do half an hour one night, another half hour the next, and so on until an episode is done (doing the longer routes first so as to collect everything I can the first time around), and then simply do the short version of that same mission sometime while going about my day to get those achievements. But having not tested that yet, I’m not entirely sure that will work. See, when I went to start the second episode it told me a mission was already in progress (even though I’ve completed the first episode and should not have had anything “in progress”); this would seem to imply that splitting it up the way I want is actually an option. But when I tried to exit an in-progress mission, I would get a warning that I would lose my progress, which would clearly imply that splitting up the episodes that way is not an option.

Fourth problem? Unlike Zombies Run, The Walk has no music option. You can play music on another app, but there is no “pause the music when dialogue is playing” feature. If, like me, you prefer to have the audio clips auto-play when you unlock them (something I’m doing the first time I play each episode, but won’t do the second go-around if the previously mentioned plan works as planned because I’ll likely be listening to Zombies Run for part of it) you’ll want to make sure the volume is set so you can hear the story over your music. And if you don’t have music playing in the background… prepare for a lot of silence between audio clips.

Oh, but there is one thing I got wrong in an older post (took a bit of work tracking down which post), something that isn’t the problem I expected it to be: you can choose which route you want at any point before actually reaching the fork in the road, and the app will continue moving along whatever choice you’ve made. It won’t just sit at that fork waiting for you to make that choice, so battery life depending, I could (in theory) start a mission once I clock in for the day at work and expect most of even the longer missions to be done by the time I go to my first break.

 

 

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Workout Week 28: Medical Delays

Posted on 19 July 2021 by Side Quest Publications

(Disclaimer: Amazon Affiliate links included where possible and I deem them relevant. I’ll earn a small commission, as described in my privacy policy from eligible purchases made through these links.)

 

Ah, once more the annoyance of having multiple medical appointments in the same week. I mean, it’s only two appointments, one of which is fairly routine at this point, and I know there are people out there who have worse than that, but with only two days off from work in the first place and a fair bit of commuting to get to the appointments that still means less “me” time.

Thankfully the dental crown has already been paid for (back when I got the temporary three weeks prior) or I’m sure I would’ve choked on the cost again. As it is I’m choking on the credit card statement… really got to watch the non-essential spending or I’ll never build up my bank account enough to be worth switching reward systems. (Kasasa if anyone’s curious about that reward. I’m sure I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but my bank currently has me set up with the “Tunes” account which only rewards me for making so many qualifying transactions on Amazon, Google Play, or iTunes, and it’s a finite $10-per-month reward; my goal is to switch to an interest-bearing account so that all of my monthly subscriptions e.g. Netflix will qualify, but I’d need at least $4000 in checking to make it earn more than the Tunes account. And, well…. given that my savings is the only one earning interest without making that switch, I need to keep that built up for the purpose of bill-paying before I try to drop that much into checking.)

 

Anyway, to make a long story short, due to a combination of lack of time and pure procrastination, I slacked off on doing recordable workouts again. I did, speaking of non-essential spending, manage to get my hands on the new LoZ-themed JoyCons (I discovered purely by chance, and not at all by keeping an eye out for them like I should have been doing, that the store I work at had them in stock so I bought a set on my lunch break), though since my work shifts are as late as they are and the Joy Cons needed to be charged and paired to the Switch before I could use them, I have not yet tried them with the Ring Con in conjunction with any of my Homefront-esque workouts in Zombies Run. But now I have enough controllers to play three-player games with plenty of room to choose a preferred controller style (three sets of Joy Cons, two pro controllers, and a “comfort grip”)… assuming I can convince my parents to join me in any of the few multiplayer games I own.

Disclaimer here: The link to the Joy Cons is included above for the sake of “hey I’d like a commission please” but be warned… the scalpers wasted no time buying out stock and relisting them at ungodly high prices, so you might be able to get a reasonably-priced set through my link or you might be waiting a while or buying elsewhere. I wish you the best of luck.

 

I also acquired a new Wii Remote with Motion Plus built in… though I consider this one vaguely essential as there are some games that I simply won’t be able to play without it; the dance workouts in Wii Fit, for instance, require two such Wiimotes. The not-so-essential part of this is that I chose to buy the Yoshi-themed one (from Mario for those like me who aren’t all that familiar with the characters from Nintendo’s pet series–I literally bought Mario Kart so I could play as Link on a motorcycle, not because it was a Mario game) despite the higher cost than a standard color, because I couldn’t a “standard” green one… I wanted to try to match my green-and-white Fit Meter (the other Fit Meter model is black, as is my older Motion Plus Wiimote).

 

Got a few more Zombies Run workouts in, though as predicted dilly-dallying on social media led to missing a few days and delaying the completion of any stories.

The main mission is fine as far as distractions go–as long as I don’t sit online so long that the sun is near to setting before I go out (and as long as my phone has a decent battery when I do go out), I can get my normal two walks in per week.

It’s the stuff I do when I get home from work that suffers delays… like how I easily had enough time to finish the Atlantis mission and make a single attempt at seeing how well I could manage the must-look-at-my-phone-to-collect-everything app that is The Walk while moving around in the confines of my bedroom… and instead I finished out the week with one more episode of the Atlantis mission to go.

Since I’ve only seen two missions thus far in New Adventures that include Homefront-esque missions, and Atlantis is only of the Homefront type whereas the space mission Negative Space alternates between “running” and Homefront workouts, the plan is to start the space mission instead of returning to the app’s main storyline on my next day off, do the final Atlantis episode and the next space episode on my next workdays (I must get the space episode done one of these two days, otherwise the way the workout types alternate means it’ll take me almost another week to complete), which leaves me the next day off to do the third space episode outside, the next workday to do another space episode, and then…. Well, the final two days of the week (both workdays) depend on whether I’ve stuck to the plan or delayed enough to push Atlantis out a bit further, but that will be when I should try The Walk as my after-work workout.

 

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Workout Week 27: VR Problems

Posted on 12 July 2021 by Side Quest Publications

(Disclaimer: Amazon Affiliate links included where possible and I deem them relevant. I’ll earn a small commission, as described in my privacy policy from eligible purchases made through these links.)

 

No recordable games this time around, though I did get all of the split-screen versions uploaded and in their proper order in my Fitness Games playlist.

I did notice, too late to fix it (having already deleted the raw footage from the camera in preparation to use it again), that in my rush to get all of those videos rendered last time I’d completely forgotten to switch off the auto-stabilization feature… which resulted in the camera panning in some of the videos as my motion caused it to jostle a bit. Thankfully nothing that resulted in the footage panning out of whatever area it was cropped into but I’ll need to remember to keep toggling off that setting in the rendering stage, at least until I find a setting on the camera itself to do it.

And I’m debating on whether I want to continue recording my games in a split-screen mode or if I should edit them into something that resembles the facecam option common to PC games. Mostly for consistency, although it will still be obvious when I’m pointing a camera at a screen instead of using a screen recorder; my cropping skills aren’t that good!

 

Anyhow, the delay:

On Monday I decided to switch to trying out my VR motion trackers alongside the Quest and PC VR games, only to discover belatedly that I hadn’t downloaded any VR games to my computer! And instead of doing something wild and crazy like playing one of my console games while I waited for the download I simply… didn’t. I think I spent that time reading, which still helps tackle a to-do list, just not the right list.

When Skyrim VR finally finished downloading and installing to my computer, I encountered other problems. Problems of the “game won’t load” variety. I got it to load once so I could play the tutorial, but there was no sound when transmitting to my Quest (happened the first time I used the Quest to play any of my Vive Infinity games, too), and I’d forgotten to install the 3dRudder driver needed to use that accessory to control my motion in-game.

Long story short, I spent most of the day troubleshooting instead of playing anything. Steam VR has since been reinstalled (as that seems to be the most common solution to the specific error messages I had been getting), so it’s a matter of just trying it again later.

And Thursday I helped run errands with my nephew.

 

But for non-recordable options, I have other workouts, so to speak, that I’ve been experimenting with.

Case in point, I’ve been looking at catching up on assorted streaming shows while using the exercise bike… but the problem is that the bike is in the living room which is right outside of my parents’ bedroom. Okay during the day, but problematic if I felt like watching an episode or two when I got home from work. I need something that lets me use private listening.

My first attempt was to use the TV’s screen mirroring option–run whatever app I need on my phone, mirror the screen to the TV, connect headphones to the phone and leave the TV muted. That was a no-go; as it turns out, sound only seems to work on the receiving device so with the TV muted I couldn’t hear anything no matter what the phone’s volume was at. (Why?)

Second attempt, stream from the TV (because the cable box has the apps I need on it) to the phone, etc. Only my phone doesn’t recognize the existence of the TV as something to mirror from.

Since I’m trying to avoid plugging in yet more things by using a Chromecast (and can’t guarantee I’d have any better luck with the “headphones to phone, leave TV muted” step than I did with mirroring), I finally caved and, when a Prime Day deal granted me $10 towards any eligible purchase, I bought myself a relatively cheap pair of headphones designed specifically for connecting to TVs. Since the cheap model doesn’t come with a charging stand (we’re talking a difference of about $30 for the brand I got versus over $100 for the one with the stand that I was considering), not to mention the lack of space on the entertainment center, I think I’ll eventually invest in yet another headphone hook so I can hang it up on a nearby bookcase when it’s charging or otherwise not in use.

 

The beauty of the set I bought is that it has several different connection options. So many sets I’ve found seem designed with the assumption that everyone has a headphone port in their TV and unfortunately mine does not. It does have RCA ports so I’ll just use those. Pity the transmitter doesn’t use Bluetooth, otherwise I could connect a speaker, as well… the dining room table is a fair distance from the TV so we typically turn the volume almost all the way up when we’re watching something during dinner, and a soundbar small enough to avoid blocking the screen just doesn’t put out the kind of audio we need.

 

And finally, with that connection, I can start catching up on my shows, maybe enough to eventually cancel my Netflix subscription (already cancelled Apple after I finished watching all of the exclusives I was interested in) and just stick to paying for Disney Plus and Prime TV.

(As per the disclaimer at the top, there is absolutely an ulterior motive included in that link; Prime TV is one of many various services Amazon offers a “bounty” on for Affiliate members and that bounty is currently increased until the beginning of August if anybody signs up for a trial through my link.)

In my case, “catching up” means watching the various shows of the Arrowverse and whatever else caught my fancy on Netflix, watching the Marvel TV shows and newer movies on Disney Plus, and probably buying the likes of Doctor Who (no “free” streaming that I’ve found unless I’m inclined to sign up for yet another service), watching free first seasons of things that look interesting, waiting for the second season of Upload, and watching assorted other free Amazon exclusives via Prime TV. And of course enjoying the other benefits of being a Prime member like the occasional in-game bonus for Twitch Prime, being able to buy something I need without waiting until I have so much stuff in my cart to get free shipping.

 

And… finally, the actual workouts I’ve accomplished, Zombies, Run.

Two missions, of course, for the main storyline.

Four missions to finish out Homefront and save the world from the super-horde

And since I’ve finished Homefront and had one more workday to finish out the week, I chose to move on to one of the “New Adventures” that includes Homefront-esque workouts…. Mystery At 4,000 Fathoms. This mission is five episodes long (all of them of the Homefront variety, due to “Stoker” Five’s position on board a submarine), so as long as I don’t dilly-dally on social media when I’m supposed to be exercising, I’ll be able to move on to yet another mission at the same time next week.

Also, since I’ve finished Homefront, I can relocate those images to clear out my DropBox folder like I did with the 5K training app without having to worry about consistency. I think I’ll also add a page to my site to hold the galleries for all of the run graphics… rather than cluttering up the sidebar to add a new gallery every season or story or whatever.

 

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Workout Week 26 and July Monthly Update

Posted on 5 July 2021 by Side Quest Publications

(Disclaimer: Amazon Affiliate links included where possible and I deem them relevant. I’ll earn a small commission, as described in my privacy policy from eligible purchases made through these links.)

 

The errands I had to run this time around meant I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get any “working out” done on Monday, so instead I shoved all of my gameplay into Thursday. Given that I still had chores in between gaming sessions, the result was recording the final workout at something in the neighborhood of 10 at night and rendering the videos finishing at 3 in the morning.

The further result is that, at the time of posting this blog entry, only the 360 degree versions of the videos are uploaded to YouTube. You can check out the Fitness Games playlist or subscribe to my channel if you’d like to know when the split-screen versions (and one screen-recorded version) are available.

 

And on with the updates!

First we have the inevitable before-and-after photos comparing January to now:

Literally “now” as I’d completely forgotten to take the July photos on my first day off of the month so I took them today.

Oh, and I’m now wearing a 35-waistline in my work pants; previously I couldn’t even fasten up that size (when the 36’s were already loose enough to need a belt or feel like I had to constantly pull them up), even while I was wearing 34’s in casual jeans. Probably should go back to wearing a bra for these photos for consistency’s sake–that would at least tell me if there’s any real change to my Dolly Parton lookalikes–but my spare tire doesn’t look as prominent as it used to be.

 

And of course the “meat” of this series, the actual games:

Given the articles I’ve seen disparaging games like Wii Fit for promoting eating disorders, there is something that I feel bears mentioning, something that I had included in the video description but I had not addressed in the heat of the moment, and that’s that there is far more to “weight loss” when it comes to being healthy than simply losing weight.

Not only does being fit have more requirements than that, but even your actual literal weight doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re unhealthy if you don’t have other details to help interpret that number.

We’re talking:

  • Age (if you’ve played the game before, you might have noticed that the game never gives you a fitness age lower than 20; not only that but I’m moderately sure I remember a warning at the beginning if you attempt to create a profile for someone underage. Basically, this game is not designed to accurately measure a child’s fitness)
  • Bone density
  • Muscle mass (depending on how you exercise, you can theoretically build enough muscle to offset the weight difference of any fat loss, get fitter and lose inches, and still not noticeably lose weight)
  • Fat content (and here we finally have the part that I’m trying to lose)

The Wii Fit Balance board, like any scale that does not measure more than your actual literal weight (such as FitBit’s cheaper Aria Air), can only give you a vague idea as to your BMI which does not take any of these other factors into account. The only reason I continue to rely on these scales is because, even at my theoretical fittest levels, every doctor I’ve spoken to says I should still be about sixty pounds lighter than what I am… at least if I wish to focus on lean muscle instead of body-building; the numbers the Wii Fit gives me can still be used to approximate my progress towards that goal.

And of course there’s the fact that Wii Fit is a game, not a medical diagnosis. It’s meant to be fun, not taken seriously.

 

Next we have another rhythm game in Ring Fit Adventure, this time focusing on Arms and Legs:

I could actually hear the music well enough this time to pick up on the rhythm (TV volume is at the same level as in most of my videos). Not that that prevented me from making mistakes, of course. 😉

 

Then we have the not-a-workout that is skydiving (because brand new save) and Frisbee throwing in Wii Sports Resort:

I was reminded of a few things when making this video:

  • I only have one Wii Remote Plus–I’d thought for sure that I had two, but the white remote must be from the original Wii (not a big deal in this game but I’ll need to acquire a second one or forgo doing any dance games on Wii Fit)
  • Throwing a digital frisbee is really not much of a workout for my purposes (I reserve judgement on making any title-specific playlists outside of the fitness focus, but I anticipate several activities getting removed from my spreadsheet as I go).
  • I’d erased my custom Miis some time ago (all except the one doing the skydiving; no idea where he came from but I’ll want to create a new one for future gameplay)
  • I suck at this game. Even the pup agrees.

 

The first proper attempt at using my 360 camera while streaming VR to my PC… and also the first attempt at Beat Saber’s campaign mode:

I didn’t think I was zoomed out that far when I set this up for rendering, but I might want to zoom in closer to the screen in future videos. The camera is clipped to the edge of my desk via a GoPro clamp so I can’t just set it closer unless I’m willing to rely on a tripod that will need repositioning whenever I need to see the monitor.

 

And the final video from the night, the best themed game to be found on the Stealth Board (I might be a little biased 😉 ), Motor Core:

 

 

While my recordable workouts all got shoved into a single day, I still did my Zombies Run missions all but one day out of the week.

Spoiler alert: I thought the implications of episode 4 were sad. Specifically before listening to the 5K training app.
After, though…? A Lost Child was more along the lines of “heartbreaking.”

To be honest I don’t remember why I didn’t do Homefront on Tuesday, though given my habits I probably got sidetracked by social media (instead of putting more progress into the mountain of books) again.

But I am nearing the end of the Homefront segment, which means I’m nearing the point where I need to decide whether to move straight on to The Walk to account for the “watch the screen” requirement for the game element (even as dead as traffic tends to be on my road, I’m not terribly keen on doing that while walking outside which is probably why I haven’t played Pokemon Go in a long while)… or interrupt the primary story missions to do the handful of “New Adventures” that are a mix of running and “homefront” exercises.

 

And of course, my final monthly update.

I gotta say, I like that average a lot more than the July 1 weight… but I can’t say it’s unexpected, seeing as the beginning of June was still on the tail end of losing weight while I was recovering from a cold.

 

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And in other news, I just replaced my year-old (did I really buy it that recently?) Instant Pot 8 quart Viva with an equally-sized Duo Crisp… tested it out last night with a couple of salmon fillets. Yum! My next cooking experiment will be trying a recipe that turns canned salmon into burgers though I’m pretty sure I’m making those on the stove.

(The Duo Crisp was bought from the thrift store at half the new price. I think I’d prefer the 6 quart model just because it will take up less space in the pantry, but for all the need to declutter I’m not yet desperate enough to buy a third one purely for the sake of downsizing… hindsight being 20/20 I should’ve bought a new 6 quart model in the first place and skipped the thrift store option, but maybe when Black Friday/employee Christmas bonus discount rolls around I’ll have made enough of a dent in my student loans to consider a new one worth the cost. Though I might consider it worth buying right this second if the 3 quart model had a Duo Crisp version….)

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Workout Week 25: Workouts after Tooth-Hurty

Posted on 28 June 2021 by Side Quest Publications

No recordable workouts this time around, I’m afraid.

On Monday there was another battle with procrastination (I lost, of course) followed by a trip to the dentist to get a temporary crown. While my hyperactive gag reflex never appreciates going to the dentist in the first place, honestly my wallet hurts way more than the tooth… and I still have another appointment in a few weeks to get the permanent crown installed.

On Tuesday, while idly browsing the web before I had to leave for work, I discovered that I could use my PC as a wi-fi hotspot, giving me a new thing to test on my next day off… only for Thursday to arrive with lots of nasty weather. Not “I’ll get wet!” nasty (I like the rain and I’m still waiting for a downpour to coincide with when I have the option to go for a walk outdoors so I can test out my trail shoes) but “thunder and lightning” nasty; all of our surge protectors have lifetime warranties, but a hard drive that’s fried is a hard drive that’s fried so everything important data-wise like computers and game systems remained unplugged most of the day.

 

I made another dent in the mountain of books, though, as I spent most of Thursday finishing one book so I could add it to the donation pile and immediately began a new one.

Speaking of reading, whenever Zombies Run Homefront has you do certain exercises like bicep curls, it suggests holding weights or tin cans while you do the exercise. I’ve occasionally used the Ring Con from Ring Fit Adventure in place of any attempt at weight lifting, but….

Here are a couple of my “tin cans”:

Not as heavy as an actual tin can, obviously, but the size makes them relatively easy to grip without my hands cramping up before the workout finishes, and I’m just too lazy to grab actual weights of any kind. I’d consider weighted gloves (gloves, not wrist wraps), but I can’t find any I like that offer sufficient wrist support–I’m honestly visualizing weights that resemble old-fashioned ladies’ gloves, here, with the sleeves that go halfway to the elbow, but I can’t find any evidence that such a glove even exists for the purpose.

I’m currently tackling my read-and-redonate pile in order of the length of the book. Word count would technically be the most accurate way to do that, but I tend to use the app more than the website when choosing my next read and the app bizarrely enough only gives page count as a sorting criteria…. Probably close enough either way, and regardless of which number I sort by, I have fewer than a dozen episodes of Homefront to go and lots more books in that mountain; even if they release more Adventures with Homefront-esque workouts I’m unlikely to need to pick out new “tin cans” for a long time to come.

 

And speaking of Zombies Run, the weather let up in plenty of time to get a walk in.

And nothing but procrastination to interfere with continuing the Homefront, which of course means I didn’t even do half of the week’s missions:

(I see they changed the format of the Homefront graphics. Finally decided there was no “pace” when the phone cannot actually detect your movement?)

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Workout Week 24: Boy are my arms TIRED!

Posted on 21 June 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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Otherwise known as “reasons to make sure the camera is in the correct mode before you start recording.”

My warped sense of humor decided to upload this as an attempt at my first “shorts” on YouTube

For those of you who don’t click to the actual video, what happened is Beat Saber had finally come up on my randomizer, and having determined that Cast-to-PC plus the webcam was my best option so far I recorded the game using that.

But I also set up my GoPro Fusion to see how well that would pick up the game’s audio (given the whole issue with cast-to-PC not actually including the audio for reasons I have yet to solve). Not to upload as yet another test, but mostly for my own curiosity–to delete if it doesn’t do the job well enough, and to upload as a normal “workout video” if it did.

Only… I didn’t realize until after I’d finished “recording” that the Fusion was in photo mode… so I got 400-some-odd photos in burst mode rather than the 4-minutes-and-change video I was expecting. And this is what the camera’s proprietary editor decided to do with all of those photos. I thought it was funny enough to try uploading as a YouTube short, but of course your mileage may vary, and of course I still haven’t found out how well the Fusion picks up the headset’s audio.

On the plus side, I found out that the tripod I normally use to record my console games was safe enough on the floor in front of my computer… at least while playing Beat Saber. I’ll probably still want to look for a suitable desk tripod or clip for more exploration-type games.

 

In the meantime, there are also actual exercise videos to be had this week.

Week 24 marks the start of my attempts to do four workouts per week (two per day off) so as to have one video per week per gaming system… not to mention do more exercise in general since some of these games are extremely short. Depending on how things go with other interruptions, such as an upcoming dental appointment, but in any case, we have:

The Soccer Heading game in Wii Fit U

The Four Masters rhythm game (core/legs version) from Ring Fit Adventure

The actual session with Beat Saber (captured via the screen recorder Bandicam) on the Oculus Quest

And finally another attempt at the Stealth/planking board via the Racquet Ball game

Definitely need to work on my form doing planks. Even going for a minute, it just hurts my neck more than I think it should (which is to say, at all), and while the whole “staring at my phone while planking” could be a contributing factor, I vaguely remember having the same problem doing planks on the Wii Fit.

Might see if doing wall planks/push-ups (when I’m not recording) will help build up the strength I need to do these better….

 

And on to Zombies, Run!

First we have the introduction to the app… technically the same chapter as in the 5K app, but with slightly different dialogue and (as I’m sure you’ve noticed from previous updates) a slightly different graphic. Also the main app involves collecting supplies as the 5K app never did.

I had been commenting on other posts about an issue with my phone going to sleep and effectively killing the app’s ability to update the display… and I had been looking for an easy way to keep the phone awake during an entire session–easier said than done since the most you can delay it by is 10 minutes, the only “disable sleep mode” function unless it’s plugged in and charging (developer options, at that, not even a regular setting), and charging cases in my preferred “folio” style are just not that easy to come by.

But I had since noticed during a Homefront session, entirely by accident (I thought the phone was plugged in but it wasn’t), that the phone’s tendency to kill the app doesn’t seem to affect the main app, just the 5K one. Granted, with Homefront involved there’s no GPS tracking so it could also have been that the app just wasn’t doing enough for there to be a problem. But I am now happy to report that even with GPS tracking involved, the phone going to sleep does not seem to kill the main app. So no need to buy an expensive new phone case just to keep the app running properly

And then there is my progress with Homefront:

Of course I missed a couple of days of working out.

Once was because my mother was having issues with her phone (as it turns out, the battery was shot and needed replacing), and my parents kept me looking up solutions for half an hour when I got home from work instead of getting my phone plugged in to charge right away. The result is that I didn’t get to start my me-time until it was late enough that I needed to go to bed and rest up for the next day of work… and also my phone died before it started charging, which I didn’t realize until the next morning when my parents woke me an hour after my alarm was set to go off.

The other was because the weather was nasty outside, my phone’s battery was low enough that I’d need to charge it while doing Homefront, and I didn’t relish plugging it in (lifetime warranties on surge protectors does not translate to recovered data if the device is completely fried; we unplug all important device during storms no matter what the surge protectors promise.)

 

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BookCrossing: Empty Shelves

Posted on 17 June 2021 by Side Quest Publications

In which I finally (mostly) cleared off two shelves’ worth of books from the get-rid-of pile.

As mentioned elsewhere, I’m going to be backdating a bunch of these posts so I can “upload” them at roughly the same time as when I released the relevant books into the wild–seeing as it didn’t occur to me to start posting about it until a few years after I started on the site–but this would be one of the first that doesn’t need that backdating.

Because the relevant release happened on my previous day off from work.

 

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been gradually reading books from my print collection, replacing them with digital copies (when possible) if I liked them enough to keep in some form and donating the print copies, and just outright donating if I didn’t like them enough to keep.

Naturally I could donate the books faster than I could read them, but when several months ago my parents went through a “spring cleaning” mode and decided to get rid of a bunch of books all at once, the get-rid-of pile increased considerably. So much so that I had to keep a set of bookshelves organized according to Bookcrossing status:

with the upper-most shelf (the open one in this photo) reserved for movies we wished to rehome, the next shelf being those that have been registered to Bookcrossing and labeled (and merely awaiting a time to donate), the next shelf being those registered but not labeled, and the final shelf being those that have not even been registered.

And despite this organization, I still kept ending up with piles of books on the floor in front of the shelf unit; short of keeping the two “registered” shelves packed full, there were simply too many books to fit on the bottom!

(Photo taken after a bunch of books had already been donated en masse.)

 

The problem is that I keep forgetting to register books as I read them, thus needing to constantly find room on the bottom shelf instead of being able to move to the next shelf up as I go. That and my preference for only labeling books ten at a time (so as to use one full sheet at a time) which of course requires space on the “labeled” shelf to move ten books up in the first place.

 

But finally, as of this past Monday, I managed to nearly clear off both the “labeled” shelf and the “unregistered” shelf.

I released the final labeled book, Soup of the Day, to a local outdoor library (the books remaining on that shelf, while also labeled, are not available for wild release; they are instead on reserve and waiting for my parents to pay a visit to the relative who has requested them).

I also made a trip to the local thrift store and donated en masse every mass market book that I have not yet registered, leaving only the oversized paperbacks and hardcovers to occupy space on the bottom shelf and clearing away the pile that had once again built up on the floor.

And after I got home and took this photo, I labeled another group of ten books. But rather than put them immediately on the appropriate shelf, I left them in a pile in the family room, as per my father’s request, so that my parents can grab a few to take on a trip with them and leave in whatever hotels they stay in along the way. Once my parents have made their selections and left for that trip, I can put the remaining labeled books on the shelf and determine if there is space enough to move up another ten books.

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Workout Week 23–One More Recording Test?

Posted on 16 June 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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Once upon a time, I had a single USB hub in my room. This hub had four standard USB ports on it, a mini USB port should I wish to connect it to my computer, and a round power port should I choose instead to connect it to the wall for use as a charger. The USB ports surrounded it in roughly a circle, which given enough space allowed me to spread out the items plugged into it without tangling cords… but lacking that space just made it harder to use all four ports as needed.

That hub is now bagged up and in the pile of things to donate to the local thrift store, and I have four other hubs (three of which can only be used to charge as they each have a permanently-attached wall plug-in) to take its place.

 

Why is this relevant to a fitness series? Because I finally got my “move in the real-world, move in VR” accessories set up and charging so I can start trying them out on my next day off.

The Cybershoes are hanging from a dual-headphone hanger clipped to my computer desk, with the Aftershokz, FitBit, and Cybershoes Quest adapter all charging from the same hub as the shoes, while the WalkOvr and its bizarre collection of USB cords is occupying space on my filing cabinet next to the Oculus Quest itself and waiting for me to track down a VR stand and suitable shelf so I can get that area organized better. (The 3dRudder is designed to connect to the computer while in use and needs no charging.) The third charging-only USB hub is on my dresser for non-fitness things like my GoPro chargers, a mini air purifier, and the Elder Scrolls themed Black Soul Gem light.

 

But speaking of VR, I finally tried using my Aftershokz in conjunction with the VR headset to test for sound quality.

The results were… not what I was hoping.

First there is the matter of my voice quality being questionable-at-best. I love these headphones for use as headphones–with my hearing impairment, the bone conduction is the first time I’ve actually been able to hear enough difference in sound quality as to make it worth buying more than “cheap headphones”–but I’ve never needed to use the microphone before so I had no idea what it would sound like if I did. Granted, who knows how much difference there would be in using these to make phone calls versus pairing to my computer, but I’m hearing an awful lot of audible “glitches” while listening to me speak.

Second is the music. The sound effects leading up to starting the game were fine, the volume roughly on par with the microphone picking up my voice, but once the music starts…. either I’ve overlooked a setting or the Aftershokz ability to filter out background noise (that would be going back to the ability to talk on the phone with them) is too good for my purposes. Not a big deal when the game’s audio is just music, you can still hear it well enough to tell what I’m playing, but what about games that involve dialogue? Will that fall under the category of “background noise” or will it actually pick it up well enough to record?

Linking the webcam test from a few weeks ago for comparison:

While I did solve the issue with Bandicam picking up the webcam (well, sort of; Bandicam works when using “XSplit cam” as a middle-man–without enabling the dynamic background removal, so there’s another thing to test once I start trying mixed reality–but is still super laggy when trying to use the webcam directly), I’m thinking this older video sounds a lot better than the newer one.

Unless I come up with another option worth testing, I’ll just rely on the webcam to pick up the audio and leave the Aftershokz for use with Zombies, Run.

 

My randomizer also told me to give the planking Stealth board another try:

With this video I finally start using my elbow pads to, well, add extra padding; I shake too much when trying to do full-on planks, enough that I don’t think I’d be able to balance trying to do them on this board, but forearm planks always end up hurting my elbows before long. I don’t know how much is improper form (too much weight on the elbows and not enough on the entire forearm, perhaps?) and how much is just me not being accustomed to the exercise, but I bought a pair of padded compression sleeves that I believe are marketed for basketball players to help solve the issue.

Well, I say “pair” but they’re sold singly. Also, if any of my readers/watchers feels the need to use a similar tool, these are sized based on the size of your elbow (or just below) but remember, they are compression sleeves–like me, you may find they fit the elbow perfectly while still finding the bit of fabric that goes on your upper arm being more than a little snug, as evidenced by the fact that I nearly punched myself in the face trying to put one of them on in the video!

 

This was supposed to be the week I started picking up the pace and doing more workouts per week–one from each system, as far as that goes, rigging the randomizer just enough to make sure that happens while still leaving the actual workout as random as an Excel formula can make it–and as such I got two more workouts in on Thursday.

I just… forgot to render and upload them in time. So between that and other reasons, I’ll just count them as part of the next selection of workouts.

I’ll also need to figure out a good rhythm for uploading one of these days. The time-consuming part of the process means the actual uploading part of uploading will (usually) only happen on my days off–especially in longer videos like those from the Adventure Mode of Ring Fit Adventure!–and of course there is the matter of waiting for YouTube to finish processing them, but as far as publishing and making them public? If I do this right I’ll have four videos a week to post (assuming I don’t do more to account for how short some of those workouts are) but I probably shouldn’t be posting a bunch of videos at once….

 

And the final update, Zombies Run, I finished the 5K training app!

There seemed to be an odd glitch with the app’s ability to track my progress. Not the usual “the phone going to sleep kills the app’s ability to update” (which I discovered by accident seems to only be a problem with the 5K app and not the main, though as I still need to use the main on a walk it remains to be seen whether other factors are involved), but rather that the app simply never told me that I’d finished.

Here we have screenshots taken after I’d decided I was done pacing in front of my house waiting for the mission to be “complete”–Maggie/Runner 6 had long since welcomed me to the team which, according to this transcript, was the last audio clip in the episode, and the app was just playing music for a while–and ended the mission despite the app warning me I wasn’t actually done. The time I’d been out extended quite a while past the estimated 51 minutes (the dialogue at the beginning and end always makes it take longer, but it’s never been that long), my distance was further than the 5K I was expected to “run” (despite walking it in the allotted time, go figure)… but the progress report and list of episodes still claim I have that one episode to do. Even after manually synchronizing the app it still tells me I haven’t done that episode.

Zombie Link on the other hand, reported it as done, and that, I think, is the more important part.

So it looks like I can safely remove this app from my phone for what little space it will free up.

In the meantime, the run graphics properly posted:

Now that the training storyline is done, I need to figure out how I’m going to work The Walk into my routine. Given that collecting everything requires me to look at my phone, I think I’m going to try it in place of Homefront once I’ve finished those episodes, but it remains to be seen how that will work out.

And speaking of Homefront, this week’s completed workouts:

Would’ve been one more in the Homefront grouping–should’ve been one more–except I had one night where I stayed up later than I realized browsing social media (not even reading a book, which at least would translate to decluttering as it involves tackling the mountain of books on my dresser, but idly browsing the web instead of exercising first like I’m supposed to do) and decided that going to bed so I could be rested in time for work the next morning was higher priority.

Shame on me, right? 😉

 

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Workout Week 22 and June Monthly Update

Posted on 7 June 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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As predicted, I’m starting to gain weight again following the previous week’s cold and loss of appetite.

Dang. I knew that was too easy; weight loss due to not eating is neither healthy nor particularly effective, but some part of me was hoping….

Oh, well. Even if I had kept it off I’d still have to keep working at losing even more. But on the plus side, I did go and buy those 34-waist jeans (same style, same size) in response to the 35’s sliding down my butt, and the 34’s are, as I’d previously announced the 35’s to be, “snug but wearable.” And yet, I still can’t fasten up the 35-waist firehose I bought for work! (Different style from the 36’s I’ve been wearing, as the odd numbers don’t seem to be available in a flex-style, so maybe 34’s would fit?)

 

But on to the imagery!

 

(Still trying to work out what’s going on with the lighting. It’s been the same camera the whole time but it’s only the last few months–including the ones at the same wall as the January photos–that my photos have getting washed out by my overhead fixture. Need to replace my curtains one of these days, too, but that’s not the source of the light.)

Hmm… maybe a tiny change from January to now? Hard to say if I’m actually getting smaller or if my boobs were just sticking out more in the first photo due to the position of my bra. Though I’m not seeing that weird back bulge in the June photos, so… visual progress?

If only my inner thighs would shrink so easily; if I could choose where to lose weight that’s the first place I’d focus on. I don’t need a visible gap, I just want my thighs to stop rubbing when I walk (not “stop chafing when they inevitably rub,” stop rubbing), but all of my pants are baggy in the crotch area…. and of course I can’t get smaller pairs to eliminate the baggy without first losing enough weight to wear smaller waistlines. I mean, I can understand that with my jeans and work pants, seeing as I buy those in the men’s department, not to mention I prefer relaxed fit… but why in God’s name does my sleepwear, bought in the women’s department, have ball room?

 

Anyway, ranting about clothing aside, on to the purpose of this post, starting with the Wii Fit fitness test:

My weight’s clearly gone down a bit since the last test, but as per the whole “I’ve been getting over a cold” situation, this represents a weight gain compared to what it was at the end of my cold as you’ll see towards the end of the post.

 

With Zombies Run, I’ve done a few more homefront exercises, gotten the full points possible on the Ring Fit’s multitask mode without syncing it over three days, and nearly completed the 5K “training” app.

Actually the points I got on Ring Fit might’ve included four days’ worth of Homefront…. I just don’t remember syncing after Tuesday (episode 14) and I know I didn’t use it on Wednesday due to my wrists being tired from work-related reasons (the monthly-or-so scanning out the entire contents of our value movie bins, and scanning each individual movie to verify if it can go back in the bin or what date it can be sent back to home office involved moving one hand in such a way that I didn’t want to do anything with the ring by the time I got home).

The result, though, was that I got the full 500 points fairly early on Sunday (episode 18) after which point I spent the whole workout just walking back and forth across my room. No “workouts,” not when it was after midnight, my parents were asleep, and Sam’s telling me to clean up the house in place of doing formal exercises, just walking.

 

 

I’m thinking of increasing my workouts to two per day off from work (not counting the Zombies Run evening walks)… and rigging my randomizer to pick a workout from every system I have throughout the week so that part is just a tiny bit less random. I’d just need to figure out a better rhythm for the rendering/editing side of things, since that’s the most time-consuming part of the process.

But “recordable workout” besides the point, I could–and honestly should–just jump on the exercise bike and watch Netflix while my computer is using the camera. Found it said best on FaceBook:

 

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Workout Week 21–Sick Days

Posted on 31 May 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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Nothing serious, just one of those annoying summer colds that are bound to make the rounds again now that so many people are finally getting covid vaccinations so we can go maskless again. (Kinda wonder if everyone had been wearing a mask and practicing social distancing during the pandemic, if the cold virus would have just up and died. Probably not… that would’ve been too convenient.)

But of course even a simple cold does have a way of interfering with plans. Like the fact that the accompanying aches and pains and the cold medicine made me prioritize sleep over getting my workouts done (not that that stopped me from reading late at night), or the loss of appetite (didn’t even realize how much less I’ve been eating until stepping onto the scale) making me nervous about how much weight I’m likely to gain back once my appetite has recovered… starvation mode, don’t ya know? (Or for those who think it’s a myth because they equate the term with literal starvation, “wrecking my metabolism by eating way less than I’m accustomed to, but still eating plenty” mode). On that second note, I can’t help but wonder where the weight is lost from… though I’m sure it’s too much to hope that my body is burning extra fat to fight off illness.

 

I did get some workouts in before I took sick, so on to the visual media!

 

For Monday, the randomizer finally remembered that I have other game systems to choose from, and it selected the Core Crushing mini-game from Ring Fit Adventure.

I confess I’m surprised to have to done that well–the bats’ tendency to immediately return to a “relaxed” state during the tutorial even without me letting go of the Ring threw me off about how hard it would be to get them into position when I needed them, and I expected even the “novice” mode to be harder than it was.

Also, I added a new column to my spreadsheet (well, added it a few weeks ago because of Beat Saber’s leaderboards, this is just the first time I’ve had occasion to use it). See, I don’t know (yet) if the game will show my highest score the way Wii Fit does, and since the mini-games have their own score tiers and difficulty levels I’ll be doing them at a progressive “once I get the highest tier” rate just like I’ll be doing with my other games… which means I need some guaranteed way to track what score I’ve gotten. So the extra column is simply a place to list whatever highest score I’d gotten (“B” in this case), and once I get the highest available score tier (which I believe is “S”) I know I can move on to the next difficulty level. Though who knows? Maybe my score will show when I open the game again and I won’t actually need that column… or maybe my family will finally jump in and give these games a try and I’ll need that column to track my score as distinct from their scores.

 

And I did make a little progress in Zombies Run, the 5K app and Homefront alike.

I had expected to finish ZR5K the week of my birthday, but repeating the previous episode due to phone issues and getting sick this week put a damper on that plan. Oh, well.

 

In other news, I received my Cybershoes Oculus Quest kit on Friday, so as soon as I get that set up that gives me three different “walking in the real world” VR systems to try… the others being the 3dRudder and WalkOvr that I’ve had for maybe a year and never got around to setting up. (This seems to be a thing with me and VR.)

I should probably vacuum my room first; that Cybercarpet is a big rug. (And not a very comfortable one, I’ll want to drag in a yoga mat for any Homefront workouts that require getting on the floor.)

I also caved and bought myself a Polar H10 heart rate monitor, for use with both VRHealth (a phone app) and Yur (calorie tracking etc via Steam); neither app is compatible with FitBit–which isn’t terribly surprising given the device’s lack of real-time updates–else I would’ve just used that for the purpose. At the rate I’m going I’ll need more of those headphone desk clamps just to hang all of this stuff up… trying not to put more holes in the wall but I’ll need somewhere to store this stuff that isn’t the middle of my floor or under the bed while I continue trying to declutter everything else.

 

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