Workout Week 9 and March 2021 Monthly Update

Posted on 8 March 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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And we’re back to the whole “nephew’s spending nights over to do classwork,” otherwise known as “I don’t have access to my game space.” Ah, the occupational hazard that is being in my thirties and still living with my parents. I’m looking forward to his classes being done so he won’t need to keep occupying that space during the only time I have available to use it.

I did manage to get my Wii Fit U fitness test in before he showed up for the week but that’s it as far as recordable content.

 

And as you can see in the preview images, I finally started making thumbnails! A fixed-position image, of course, even on the 360 degree video, but extracting a frame was easier than I expected… I just opened up the 360 degree video within GoPro‘s own proprietary VR view (included with the installation of Fusion Studio), played the video and rotated it to the frame I wanted, and used the app’s own screen grab function to get the image. One of these days I may try to actually make thumbnails, but this works for the time being.

 

Still haven’t done that quick-ish review of Ring Fit Adventure’s profile settings, so there’s something specific for my to-do list.

I also decided that moving forward my workouts are going to be somewhat randomized for the purpose of my channel. While none of the games I play have a tool that actually picks things at random, my current method is to simply list all of the workouts I’ve unlocked within a spreadsheet and then use a random number formula to pick one to record. This means video length may range from only a couple of minutes (case in point a single game on the Stealth fitness board) to my typical 20-ish minutes for a single level in Ring Fit… and given how short some of them are this might also result in choosing to squeeze in the occasional workout on days I work (schedule depending; I still won’t do it before work and I’m not too keen on staying up past midnight on days I’m scheduled late). These random workouts will also include some of the custom modes within the likes of Ring Fit instead of relying entirely on Adventure Mode.

 

As far as weight loss is concerned….

Ick. Still not the drop I’m hoping for. But I continued to cross my fingers.

On the plus side, I did manage to find a way to get a single day’s weight for screenshotting purpose. That method doesn’t seem to exist in FitBit’s actual app (either phone or PC) but rather when logging into my account via the web browser. I’m not sure if this is a new feature or simply one I’ve never noticed due to rarely using the browser, but it’s there on the first page of the dashboard, so all I really need now is to learn to properly crop my screenshots.

If only FitBit didn’t discontinue the scale that measures body fat, then maybe I could at least guess if there’s any difference in that or muscle mass to contribute to the weight change. But I suppose that sort of guessing game is the purpose in taking before-and-after photos….

Once again I’m noticing a difference in how close the phone is to the camera. Oh, well, yet more stuff on the to-fix list. (And is it just me or is the January set at an odd angle? Hmm, could’ve sworn my last monthly update showed the February set with that problem when compared to a completely upright January.)

 

And finally, after too long a hiatus, I have more progress in Zombies Run!

Eh, it isn’t too surprising that my pace slowed a bit after going a month without using the app. I suppose instead I should be surprised that I slowed down by such a small amount; recall when I started that I was ranging from 20 to 24 minutes per mile. Granted, the lack of snow and ice helps, but I’m moderately sure that I’m actually faster than when I began this project.

 

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Mini Rant: Essential Oils vs Perfume

Posted on 5 March 2021 by Side Quest Publications

We interrupt your irregularly scheduled “fitness games” updates (and everything else I need to get back in the habit of) to bring you this mini-rant.

 

I’ve never bought into the notion that “natural” is automatically healthier than “synthetic”–all else being equal, sure, but “all else” means things like being able to absorb vitamin C from an orange better than you can from a vitamin tablet. It does not mean “contains natural ingredients” is good while “manufactured” is bad. Poison ivy is natural, after all, but you’d never use it in a salad… and so many life-saving medicines are man-made.

 

The reverse, though, is also true. Man-made medicines are only preferred because you have better control over elements like dosing and availability, but they are not better than natural options in and of themselves. Holistic healing has enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that so much of it isn’t “tested to work” because it simply isn’t being tested. And there are definitely times when “natural” is automatically better… like when you’re allergic to a synthetic product but don’t want to give up the benefits of that product. Case in point, my love/hate relationship with perfumes and my growing interest in essential oils.

 

Note, I’m not talking about wearing perfume as is. That, unfortunately, is just a chemical smell to me, nothing pleasant about it, one that has a tendency to linger and even grow in intensity as time passes (which is apparently a common problem for people with sensory disorders). No, I’m talking about products that include perfume in them to provide their scent. Scented deodorant, scented shampoo, scented laundry detergent, et cetera. These I actually think smell nice, but I’m allergic to perfume. A mild allergy, to be sure, otherwise I could never have put up with these products for so many years, but I’ve started trying to cut back on perfumed products, which is proving to be easier said than done.

 

I got all excited one day recently when I found out Secret had a line of deodorant that uses essential oils… until I read the ingredients list and saw “fragrance” listed. (Note, I don’t know if there’s an industry standard meaning to this term–I’ve actually tried to look it up but no dice–but in my extremely limited experience it means “perfume” unless the ingredients list specifies otherwise, so I treat it as if it says perfume.)

Gain detergent with essential oils? Ingredients include “fragrance.”

The unscented “for sensitive skin” deodorant I’ve used for years because the scented varieties give me a rash (and with which I am now noticing that I might still be getting a rash)? Fragrance.

Medicated acne wipes, also “for sensitive skin?” Fragrance.

The first two examples are annoying because it’s always more expensive to get a product with essential oils, but near as I can tell they’re not even using the oils for scent, not when they have to add “fragrance” in addition to the oils. (Maybe I’m the oddball here, but I thought “not using synthetic perfume/fragrance” was part of the point of using essential oils?) And the second two examples are just… why? Why, when they’re not even scented products, and they’re intended for sensitive skin, are they adding a scented ingredient that could potentially irritate the user’s skin? Would these products really smell that bad without the added fragrance?

 

Urgh. I never realized just how common added perfume (‘scuse me, fragrance) was as an ingredient until I started actively looking.

 

It’s not all bad, though. There are some products that use essential oils instead of added fragrance (and those that mention “fragrance” on the ingredients list specify that it comes from the oils or other natural ingredients and don’t just leave it at “fragrance” as if that’s all I ever needed to know). I’m trying Seventh Generation for my laundry detergent (first test was on my covid mask), I switched to The Seaweed Company for my shampoo/body wash needs (they have different varieties, but the scent in mine comes from orange oils), and I took a chance with the deodorant Cleo Coco (sadly very expensive) which I’ve found is so dry thanks to the clay that it’s going to take some getting used to. Or some unscented varieties of cheaper brands are genuinely unscented, no added fragrance; it just requires due diligence and a willingness to find out the ingredients before buying.

 

So, who of my readers have switched to products with essential oils? Or genuinely unscented products? Which ones do you like best?

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Workout Week 8–I Can’t Plank!

Posted on 1 March 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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‘Tis the end of February, and I have finished the first world, and first boss fight, in Ring Fit Adventure.

To “celebrate” getting this far, I think the next step should be a quick video on changing your profile settings.

 

In the meantime, I added another workout to my repertoire, Stealth Fitness!

And, well, I really need to learn to do planks.

Hindsight being 20/20, I know I kept saying in the video that I can’t do planks right and had to be on my knees to do them (sort of like how I can’t do pushups without being on my knees), but the day after recording this footage I randomly decided to test that theory… while laying in bed. Full-on traditional plank, not even the forearm variety and definitely not on my knees, and I did fine (ish). Granted, doing it in bed meant the only thing making me move (besides the trembling from holding that pose) was the fact that a memory foam mattress isn’t exactly a solid surface, so I think my belief that I “can’t” do planks had less to do with actually believing at the time that I couldn’t do them and more to do with some instinct that told me to compensate for the fact that I’d be fighting the stealth board to maintain my balance the whole time. Regardless, it’s something I need to work on in order to do workout properly.

I also need to work on not putting so much weight on my elbows. Either that or I need to find a decent set of padded sleeves for the purpose; even with all the padding on the Stealth board, my elbows hurt trying to play this game!

 

Slightly off-topic, but for purely aesthetic reasons I would much prefer the “professional” gym model… I just think the green looks better than the other options.

Instead I wound up buying the yellow basic model (and linking here accordingly) due entirely to the price difference; I just wasn’t up to paying what, at the time, was an extra $100 just to get a color I liked more.

 

And finally, we have what is hopefully the last week of my Zombies Run hiatus. Weather depending, of course.

Speaking of hindsight being 20/20, I really should’ve been spending that hiatus doing the homefront exercises in the main app instead of just… not using the app. If nothing else, I could’ve started deleting them as I go, to clear up what little bit of space on my phone they represent. Perhaps instead I’ll have to persuade myself to do them on days I work, as the only deliberate exercise worth doing after I’ve already spent all day on my feet.

 

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Workout Week 7–RingFit First Battle! That’s going to take some getting used to….

Posted on 24 February 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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I finally, a year-and-then-some after buying Ring Fit Adventure…. moved on to the second stage of the game and my first battle. No button-mashing thumb-centric flexibility to focus on here, instead battles are won and lost entirely by how well I do the exercises. Like the post title says, that is definitely going to take some getting used to.

I did fairly well for a first try (and second and third and however many battles I forget I had in the second stage), but I fully expect them to get harder as I progress in the game no matter what difficulty level I choose.

Though despite having the backlight all the way down, I seem to still have a lighting issue that makes my TV screen look… weird. Not the super glare, but even looking at the preview YouTube provides the colors just look a little off. Might just be a normal product of using the GoPro Fusion–or, indeed, any camera–to record a TV rather than something I can adjust, I don’t know yet. (Looking at my previous videos, it looks like it might just be a product of recording a TV screen.)

 

Weather still interfered with my outdoor walks and Zombies, Run, though I did start experimenting with one of SixToStart’s other games, The Walk.

Technically this should be in my week 8 updates, but I’ll put it here so I don’t forget: Unlike Zombies Run, which has a story that you listen to while exercising, The Walk is designed to let you run the app in the background on your phone, leave it in your pocket or wherever, and go about your day, waiting to check your phone and pick up the story once you’re done and have the free time to simply listen. Keeping that in mind and thinking I might just let it run while I’m at work, but having no idea what kind of drain that might put on my phone’s battery, I first tried out the app one morning when I was out shoveling snow off of my back porch.

My first experiment failed on multiple counts. Oh, the tracking was fine… but you can use any step counter or fitness tracker to estimate how much you’ve exercised for the day. The story element was fine (so I assume, I never actually bothered listening to any story clips before resetting my progress to nil), but that part is also available for free online as a podcast. The game aspect was where things went wrong. See, the game aspect includes a few achievements for, among other things, scanning all landscape features within a given route, but you can only actually scan the features that are close to you. By the time I looked at my phone once I was done shoveling, I had already moved too far away from several of the landscape features and had completely lost the opportunity to scan them without replaying the episode. (I have the exact same problem with FitBit’s challenges.)

But that is not the only problem I had with the app. See, either I had stopped shoveling at exactly the moment that the paths diverged within the episode (another game element: each episode consists of a short route and a longer one, and different landscapes and such are available depending on which one you pick), or it was sitting at the fork in the road waiting for me to check my phone so I could pick a route. Assuming the second theory to be the case, running this at work would not let me finish the story in “no time flat” as I’d originally decided; instead, it would approximately take two hours (clock-in to first break) before I’d even have the opportunity to choose a path, after which point it would take another two hours (lunch break) to actually mark that I’d finished things… for an episode that supposedly takes about half an hour to complete.

And finally there is the matter of some of those landscape features. I’d clicked on a few of them, and only after I’d scanned all of the ones in reach did I realize that some of them were playing sounds–one, for instance, was labelled as a “ringing phone” (I might be misremembering that label) but was actually playing a phone conversation.

Anyway, my point is, The Walk really isn’t a “play in the background” fitness app. To get the most out of the gaming aspect, you either have to be willing to replay episodes multiple times (which you’ll have to do anyway for 100% completion due to the split paths, but not to this extreme), or you’ll have to treat it like a true game and stick to using it when you can actively pay attention to what you’re playing.

 

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Workout Week 6–Workout Swap

Posted on 17 February 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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And once again we have a road covered in snow and ice and all the changes in terrain that implies. Rather than risk another major sciatica flare-up, I elected to put Zombies Run on hiatus and spend that time working on other things, including:

  • checking out my recording options for the Stealth/Plank Board (games are played entirely via a dedicated phone app that is not Chromecast-friendly, but it turns out that both my phone and TV support screen mirroring),
  • continuing to work through my background-noise-friendly workout playlist,
  • and finally–finally–getting an upload-worthy video out of Ring Fit Adventure!

 

The video ended up being quite a bit longer than planned, which of course added significantly to rendering, uploading, and processing-on-YouTube’s-end time.

I elected to play Ring Fit’s intro video “later” with the idea being that I would move right in to showing what the first stage looks like instead of making my viewers sit through or skip past five minutes or so of exposition. Well, “move right in” after the character creation process, of course, in which I list off a few of the settings that users can change after the fact if they choose to do so. (I’m planning a short video–fixed-image only–in which I actually demonstrate the ability to change those settings.) But once the stage was done, I discovered (or perhaps was reminded, since I had played this once back when I bought it in 2019) that “later” meant “at the end of the stage,” not “whenever I feel like it”–the expository scene started playing right as soon as I finished the level, before I was even prompted to start the next level or play a cool-down stretch.

Speaking of the cool-down, anyone who chooses to watch the entire video not only can pick up my random commentary, they can also see me attempt the (optional) stretches at the end… the key word being “attempt.” I’m thinking I’ll probably want to keep doing those on camera as an additional measure of my progress, such that it might be.

 

I also discovered that those pajamas aren’t quite enough to keep the leg strap from sliding down, though unlike my blue jeans which are simply too loose, I think the problem is that the material doesn’t have enough friction for the purpose. Still, they feel like they’ll work until I’m confident enough of the weather to wear shorts, which even with a whole-house heater may not happen until springtime.

 

And of course I encountered another technical… situation. I discovered, while in the process of rendering the videos for upload, that the camera kept panning around the room. Upon doing a quick Google search I discovered this to be tied to the GoPro Fusion’s stabilization function; since I haven’t encountered this problem in my Wii Fit body tests, my guess is that all of that running in place had me pounding the floor hard enough to jostle it. Thankfully, this was a setting I could switch off in the rendering stage and not something that required re-recording, but I will have to remember that for future videos.

 

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Workout Week 5 and Feb 2021 Monthly Update

Posted on 8 February 2021 by Side Quest Publications

Such that it is.

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Photography Practice

The first update would be my monthly “before and after” photos. First there is the beginning of the year, followed, of course, by current photos:

Not a whole lot of difference… yet. Methinks I need to adjust the position of my camera mount, though; February’s photos look oddly angled and zoomed in more than January’s. (And all it takes is jostling it once and I’ll have no easy way of knowing that it’s in a different position until after I snap the photo.)

I had hoped to show either or both group using WordPress’s built-in gallery feature, but I’m still playing around with that to see if there’s a way to eliminate most of the white space between photos.

 

Update: Forgot to include my “weight loss” for the month

I think FitBit needs is a “custom range” option–just today, a full month at a time (not just the rolling 30 days you see here), things like that. I mean, a single day at a time I could do straight from the app’s main page, but it would be nice to have other options on the actual chart….

 

Gaming Footage

I finally got around to recording the character creation for RingFit!

And…. I have to rerecord it because the TV’s backlight was on again. *headdesk* Maybe five minutes after I recorded decent footage for the Wii Fit U body test, at that, so either I got lucky with Wii Fit or the backlight switched itself back on between games and game systems. Hard to say; on the one hand, the idea of the backlight switching itself on just seems weird, but on the other hand, I want to lean towards that theory because the lighting for Wii Fit was much better than it was the first time around.

And since the nephew was over again, naturally on both days I have off, I didn’t get anything recorded until after he left for the night and therefore didn’t discover the error until I had to get ready for bed and the next round of work shifts.

 

On the plus side, I did discover a few things.

One: the leg strap does not work very well with jeans. Their design just makes them too loose, and the strap keeps sliding down my leg no matter how much I tighten it down. It probably won’t work with most of my pajamas either, though I might have one set that’s snug enough (by virtue of it technically being too small) to work. The whole thing is designed to wear with shorts or leggings, but it’s cold enough to make me hesitate on the one and I simply don’t own the other… unless, again, you count the pjs that are “technically too small.”

Two: check the backlight before every recording session; don’t just assume that it’s set to what I want it to. (Bleh.)

Three: I tried a couple of different recording angles including sitting the camera directly in front of the TV instead of to the side. While this position slightly blocks my view of the screen (I may want to drop the tripod a little), I think it makes for better footage. On a similar note, pointing the “camera” at the TV while rendering makes for better 360 footage, as the default position, which is the only position when the viewing device doesn’t support 360 (case in point, my cable box) will actually show something of the game instead of pointing vaguely to the side of the room. I still need to come up with my own thumbnails instead of relying on YouTube to suggest frames for me, but I think the footage looks better than it did the last time.

And once again, the Fitness games playlist if you’d like to keep an eye out for my other videos.

Zombies, Run!

The last two workouts of “week 3” in the couch-to-5K app… and I made it faster than before. Still without any actual running involved, and no major sciatica flare-up this time. Granted, the weather was decent most of the week, and the roads, even mine, had been cleared off before I set out to do my walk, so that made a considerable difference to both my speed and the lack of back pain, but I’m still amazed at those numbers.

Next up is “week 4,” which, for anyone new to the app will require either a paid Abel Runner’s Club membership that syncs with the main app (and which unlocks all missions in The Walk, while you’re at it) or a this-app-only payment to unlock the remaining missions.

Now if only they’d make a monthly version of the VIP so I can get the rest of the virtual races while still automating my Kasasa transactions….

 

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Workout Week 4–Guesting and Testing

Posted on 1 February 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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And one of these days I’ll quit using corny titles for these posts. 😉 Not because I’ll choose to knock it off, but because I won’t be able to come up with one that I like.

Anywho, another week of no new footage. Technically speaking.

This time around, my nephew came over to stay a few nights, and since the spare bedroom was converted to a storage room several months ago, my folks put up a queen-sized airbed for him in the living room, right smack in front of the gaming system. So I had no floor space to speak of without deflating that mattress on a daily basis, and since it takes forever to inflate and doesn’t hold air properly in the first place and… you get the idea. I didn’t use the area so I didn’t play any of those games.

On the plus side, that gave me time for a few other things. For instance, I started work on tweaking my “outdoor workout” playlist–the current list as recognized by the Zombies Run app is full of everything I got from the soundtracks for my assorted indie games, set to shuffle, so naturally I’ll randomly come across a few that just don’t work for me. Case in point, one track that was nothing but talking–not singing, not chanting, talking; a rather unusual track to hear in the middle of what amounts to an audiobook, and I suspect that one was the “narration” track for Dust that is included with the game download rather than something included with any of the official soundtracks.

On a more critical note, it also gave me more time to test an issue I discovered with my available footage. If you saw the note I added to the previous post, or saw the video in question, you’ll notice that the video I recorded and rendered as 360… didn’t show up on YouTube as 360. I was not, at the time, sure why it didn’t show as 360, and to be honest I still don’t know: upon reinstalling all of the relevant software it showed on GoPro’s own “VR” viewer as 360, so I didn’t accidentally upload the wrong video, and two other videos (one on my motorcycle channel and the test video linked below from the gaming channel) both present as 360 without the need to “inject” the file that YouTube offers for the purpose.

Best I can figure is that it just glitched out somewhere along the way.

In that case, this post provides two moments of footage for comparison: the original Hero 5 footage as linked in the previous post and the test footage from the Fusion 360.

Or you can visit the Fitness Games playlist on my channel to keep an eye out for any (fingers crossed) new videos.

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ll need to do something about the ambient lighting and/or editing on the computer’s side of things to make the footage less grainy, not to mention find a better mount for the camera… or just switch to using only the 360 Fusion. I haven’t decided yet but I’m leaning heavily towards the “use only one camera” option.

This one is nothing more than a smaller clip of the footage I’d recorded the first time (thank goodness I still had the original files, usually I delete them to clear up space right after I’m finished editing and rendering… or think I’m finished in this case). At this point I think the plan is to use Wii Fit’s body test mode as another “before and after” thing, done once a month to show if I’ve made any progress and by how much, rather than the weekly thing that I keep not doing with my other workout options.

I might choose to move the camera to the other side of the TV so the lamp doesn’t shine right at it, but the current position was based on finding a spot where it would consistently be out of the way while I exercise. Barring that, there is still the option of skipping the “360 degrees” idea and just editing both sides of the camera into a single still image via the likes of OBS as my only upload options; that would make it easier to grab a frame for a thumbnail, at any rate. I’ll still have to see how that works with my currently available footage before I make any decisions.

 

And finally, there is the Zombies Run! progress.

Monday’s mission was par for the course from previous weeks, which I must confess I found a little surprising: I had two separate delays in the form of A) still being in the house while the intro was playing (I don’t actually know if the app includes that time in my stats but I usually start playing the mission as soon as I’m out the door and ready to start walking), and B) not realizing until I was down to one end of the street that I’d forgotten my reflective vest and having to slow down a little for the purpose of heading inside and putting it on.

But Wednesday’s workout was especially surprising. This one starts the “week 3” round of training, with a considerably longer session once I was done than anything that I’ve done before… and not only did my energy not flag enough to slow down my average pace, I actually went faster than any of my previous sessions. Of course I paid for that the next day, when it took a couple of hours into my shift at work before my sciatica flair-up died down; given that I work a retail position that has me on my feet all day, I doubt that the “walking for 40 plus minutes” is to blame, but a combination of the pace and the way the weather affects the terrain and even how the ice kept trying to convince me to do the splits are all likely major contributors.

(And can I say that sciatica just doesn’t make sense? You wake up in the morning with back pain, that’s your body telling you “I’ve been injured, I need to protect myself,” so you don’t want to move… but moving is exactly what you need to do to help it go away! It’s a complete contradiction of the function pain serves.)

 

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Workout Week 3–Technical Trouble

Posted on 27 January 2021 by Side Quest Publications

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Oh, for the love of…!

No distractions this time around, at least none that are not already part of my routine (e.g. running errands). Instead I had the fun job of dealing with computer problems.

 

Rendering Time

First there is the matter of time to edit and render. Past experience led me to expect this to take a while, but when it takes four hours to render 10 minutes worth of footage (well, 40 minutes worth of footage considering I recorded with two different cameras at what should be 4k quality and got three different angles to choose from out of the 360 degree Fusion model), that means I’m not going to do much recording in only two days off from work. At least not until I’ve cut down on that backlog of other things.

Speaking of which, I’ve uploaded the footage from the Hero 5 to YouTube. That video, merely showing my “first” body test in Wii Fit U, can be found below

or you can check out the Fitness Games playlist directly on my channel.

At the time of this writing this is the only video on that playlist, though the 360 degree version of the same workout is uploading right now and should be visible down below once YouTube has finished processing it

(And speaking of technical trouble, the YouTube version isn’t showing in 360 on my end. I’m trying to determine if A) I accidentally uploaded the wrong file, B) I need to do a bit extra like use the YouTube injector to get it in 360–you wouldn’t think that’d be necessary when the Fusion’s proprietary editor makes it 360 for me, but I digress–or C) I’m still experiencing problems due to whatever glitch led me to factory resetting my computer before I could upload this. Unfortunately the need to reinstall various programs means it might be a while before I’ve finished testing things; I might just be running things through OBS and doing a regular 2D split screen from now on and skipping the 360 degree idea.)

I have to say, given the difference in lighting (not to mention options for recording angles) I’m strongly tempted to quit using the Hero 5 for the purpose and just stick with the Fusion… at least until I can justify the cost of the Max, which might be a titch easier to use by virtue of having an actual preview screen.

Also in progress are the two other copies I got from the Fusion–one video showing the footage from the front of the camera and one from the back. The plan is to combine those into a single video, probably top-and-bottom (technically I’d rather have side-to-side but the dimensions won’t work for that), and probably using software like OBS to put do so. I don’t know if they’ll still be 4K when I’m done because I’ve only used OBS once before. I have not at this time of writing started work on them because of the next technical problem:

Reinstalling

And here we have the bigger problem. See, some time during the week I’d noticed that my computer was experiencing… issues. Issues like the start menu not working, which later led to my discovery that the search bar and activity log weren’t working either. Nor the Microsoft store, nor settings, nor update history.

On Tuesday I tried looking online for a solution (Chrome still worked just fine, thank goodness) and most of the solutions offered said to begin by running a computer scan, using the command prompt with administrator privileges.

Unfortunately, Command prompt with administrator privileges just gave me an error message about some dll not working. (In hindsight, I only know this happened specifically when I tried to open it by right-clicking the start menu, and opening the command prompt from the same location without such privileges gave me the same error. I was able to run it without those privileges if I opened it via the run command or manually locating the executable, but it had not at the time occurred to me to try the same to run it as an admin.)

Back to Google, and solutions for the error message required that I first pay a visit to settings… which was one of the apps that wasn’t working.

Figuring that rolling back to an earlier restore point or, god forbid, a factory reset was in order, I manually backed up my entire user folder (my external hard drive is already set to back things up daily but I didn’t intend to risk that anything was missing) and went to bed, hoping it’d be done copying files by the time I was ready to start my day the next morning.

On Wednesday I finally managed to access my available restore points, and discovering that three of the restore points were all within the three-day period in which I’d noticed the issue and not remembering on exactly which day I’d actually first seen it, I decided to roll back to the somewhat earlier point of Jan 6.

No dice. The computer appeared to successfully roll back to an earlier point but the problems still existed. I decided it was time for the option of last resort, and after the third (third!) attempt at a factory reset the computer was finally back in working order. (The first one only got so far before it gave me the message of “undoing changes,” and the second got stuck in a reboot loop; both went through the built-in recovery system while booting directly from a recovery drive via USB is what finally got things working.)

During that time I was able to use my parents’ computer as a backup option, partly to complete the daily checkins on my video games (ESO being the only one I could not access from my phone) and partly to upload that first video to the playlist, but I did not begin to install any critical programs such as the proprietary GoPro apps or a video editor until I was able to do so from my own computer.

I’m really trying to avoid spending big bucks right now, but I’m thinking that once I find out how much I get as a tax refund it might be worth buying a “cheap” gaming laptop just so I have a better backup option. Not that there’s any guarantee a backup won’t experience the same problems the main had, of course.

 

Other Workouts

It’s not all bad, though. In addition to the one video posted to YouTube, I was still able to get in two more sessions with Zombies, Run.

No icy attempts at doing the splits this time around! My pace seems somewhat on par with the more ideal conditions of the previous weeks with a slight increase in average speed, though it’s hard to tell how much the slight decrease in distance and how long my energy flagged accordingly factors in to this difference.

 

Suggested Products, Amazon Affiliate links included

  • GoPro Hero 5 (the image was much better once I turned down the backlight on the TV, though I could stand to find some better ambient light or edit the video somewhat if I want to make it less grainy)
  • GoPro Fusion 360 degree camera (I found the footage to be a lot brighter on this one than even the Hero… as dim as my actual environment was, it almost looked to me like I was in a brightly-lit room!
  • Wii Fit U plus Fit Meter (of course; can’t play the game if you don’t have it!)
  • Wii Fit U digital version (just the game, no accessories… there are different price points on Amazon but as much as I’d like to support secondary sellers I haven’t decided how I feel about buying a digital copy from them, though there’s always the option of just buying a Nintendo gift card and buying the game straight from the Nintendo shop)
  • Wii Fit Balance Board plus Fit Meter (I own the board from a previous incarnation of Wii Fit, and I bought the Fit Meter separately via a sale at the game’s launch, but this is the bundle to get if you go straight for the digital version without owning hardware from the previous incarnations)
  • Fit Meter (green) or Fit Meter (black) (my parents have the black ones, I have green; which one you choose is solely a matter of personal preference)
  • Full Wii Fit U bundle (game, balance board, fit meter; I had hoped to link to a new version instead of a refurbished one, but the new one is one of the “Amazon Associate’s Excluded Items” and… well, commission-as-ulterior-motive, ya dig? 😉 In any case, I’ve yet to encounter a problem with Amazon renewed products, and this one is less pricey than the new new bundle.)
Posted in Computers, Fitness, Gaming | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Workout Week 2–Visibility

Posted on 18 January 2021 by Side Quest Publications

Well, my gaming channel is still living up to its name: Unfashionably Late.

 

I figured out last week’s issue with the glaring white TV screen:

This is why you test things first!

As it turns out, simply turning the TV’s backlight down solved that problem. No other changes in setting required.

There is still the matter of the room’s ambient lighting (curtains closed for sake of consistent lighting, but with no overhead fixture my only light sources are movable lamps like the one placed behind the camera in the above photo), and I can’t help but wonder if it’d be worth getting a bigger TV for the purpose (which would first require a bigger entertainment center), but the current setup will do while I continue to explore my options.

 

But the lighting is not the reason for the lack of footage this time around. Instead, I was once again distracted by things that shouldn’t have been distracting under the circumstances.

On Monday, I was told to expect my nephew to come over at some unspecified later point so I could help him with his homework. Instead of getting into a workout and risk the occupational hazard that is being interrupted while I’m recording (forgetting, as always, that these workouts are only a few minutes long so that risk is practically non-existent), I watched some movies with my parents while I waited, and waited, and waited some more for him to let us know that he was done with whatever needed doing at home so he could come over.

He never came over.

And on Wednesday, I spent most of my “not sitting on my butt” time running all of the errands I would have done on Monday in between my planned workouts had I not been waiting around for my nephew, in addition to the ones I would normally do on Wednesday.

 

That doesn’t mean I spent all of my free time sitting around, though. While I still need to work on sticking to the plan for my camera-recordable games, I have gone out on each of my days off and walked another session on Zombies, Run, though my walking speed was somewhat dependent on how icy my road was.

The introductory chapter and the next workout were fairly simple, in terms of weather. The roads were clear, very few patches of ice to navigate, things like that, and my pace was typical of what I walk in the summer. The “w1w2” workout required a bit more care as I kept having to backtrack slightly, alternating from presumably clear pavement, to presumably clear patches of ground on the side of the road, to simply walking on top of the piles of snow. The final workout for the week was the worst, as all of the ground, visibly clear or not, was slippery enough to send me sliding a few times before I regained my footing.

For the record I was wearing trail shoes the entire time. I bought them a couple of years ago to keep my feet dry when I go for walks when it’s raining out, but the soles have proven worthwhile for winter walking… as good as my nicer looking boots, anyway.

 

There is one matter of safety that needed addressing, however. Each of these times I was going outside, walking up and down my road, in light that was dim or foggy due not to the time of day but entirely to the weather. There have been some days that are nice and bright out, but for the most part my walks have been in questionable conditions… grey winter skies, grey winter coat, not really the best combination.

So I needed to find a reflective vest of some kind, maybe even lights that I could use for added visibility.

I didn’t want anything super special; a simple reflective vest, large enough that I could throw on no matter what I was wearing, would suffice, but finding something wasn’t as easy as I expected it to be. Nothing in my store’s sporting goods department (they had plenty of hats and sweaters, but no vests), nothing in hardware (not unless I wanted to take a reflective strip meant for mailboxes and attach it to my coat). When I finally found a bandolier-style vest with straps made for attaching lights, I thought it was perfect!

Until I tried it on.

One size fits all… unless you’re wearing a coat.

The worst part wasn’t even the fit. The worst part was that my dad had to attach the velcro fasteners for me because they’re behind me (seriously, why did someone think that was a good idea?) and I couldn’t reach them with the coat on (not sure if I could reach them without the coat on, to be honest), and relying on the elastic to let me take it off without undoing the velcro resulted in the velcro undoing itself without anyone’s help.

I finally located the more traditional variety of safety vest, easy to fasten and more than large enough to fit over my coat, in my store’s apparel department. I may still visit a sporting goods store to look for other options, but that one will do until I find something I like better.

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Workout Week 1–Footage Fail and the Starting Line

Posted on 8 January 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.)

First week in and things are already not going to plan.

First there was the massive migraine I woke up with on Monday. Then I had to help my dad take his recliner to the repair shop one town over. Then I had to take my car in for an oil change, also one town over. While the “few minutes at a time” plan means that I could, realistically, have gotten in a few games between errands, by the time I even thought about trying it was already dinner time, and my brain is programmed to switch to “relax in my pjs” mode afterwards.

Then on Wednesday I had more errands to run, and while I did manage to record the “character creation” in Wii Fit U (I completely reset my progress just to track it better for the purpose of this resolution), the footage… didn’t turn out very well.

Footage Fail

The plan had been to use my GoPro instead of my phone–4K video versus 2K, don’t you know?–but attach it somewhere to the side (here it’s mounted via a flexible tripod to my Gazelle) so that I could pick up both my movements and whatever’s happening on the TV screen, but as you can see the lighting didn’t pan out for that plan. Not sure if that’s something I need to change with the GoPro, the TV, the ambient lighting (note the closed curtains) or any combination thereof, but it will require testing to find a workable solution.

This is why you test things first!

My 360 Fusion, on the tripod sitting almost directly in front of the entertainment center, fared a little better but the TV image was still mostly white with no ability to actually let my viewers decipher what I’m seeing. Even once I find a fix for that dilemma, there will be the matter of A) copying the video files to my computer so I can edit (two memory cards for the Fusion, and the official app doesn’t like to connect to the camera, so until I find a reader that will take both cards at once I’m stuck waiting for one card to copy over before I can move to the next), and editing them into a useful form. I had planned on using the main GoPro for the “fixed” position that shows me and the gameplay footage, and using the Fusion to let my viewers choose which they’d rather see, but now I need to explore other options unless I can find a way to make this one work.

 

Starting Line

But it’s not a total loss. In addition to finding things that need fixing, I managed to get two walks in on Zombies, Run, and I found a workable option for my “before and after” pictures to show my progress… er, to show what I wish to progress from, that is.

First, there is the entirely unconventional “before” picture that showcases why I wish to lose weight.

We all have our reasons, ranging from those of physical health, to finding out that an outfit you like isn’t available in your size, to simply trying to find clothes that fit, to even body-shyness and (sadly) body shaming.

In the case of this photo, those reasons would be body-shyness combined with a sensory disorder.

Here you see me wearing one of the shirts I bought for work. Nice, decorative, far better than wearing a plain pullover five days a week. I’m not one for “dressing up,” but I like the style enough that I went out and bought a whole bunch like it as soon as my place of employment changed their dress code, and I continue to buy new ones of a similar appearance when I see them in different colors.

But even though they’re physically comfortable, I always, always have trouble finding a nice-looking shirt that doesn’t seem to show off my Dolly Parton lookalikes, and this shirt has a problem that most of my work shirts do not: an extra layer of material underneath, stitched together somewhere in the middle. In the first photo, you see me demonstrating where that stitching is located… right at the top of my spare tire. Even though I know the outer layer covers me fully, the position of that stitching, combined with my sensory disorder, makes me feel like I’m walking around showing off my entire belly, a sensation that is made worse by the fact that the inner layer hangs high enough to show off my skin as demonstrated in the second photo.

Here my weight loss goal can be simply put as: lose enough of that belly (and the Dolly Parton lookalikes) that the shirt would lay flatter against my torso. Hopefully I can lose enough to make the shirt “longer,” so that the inner layer extends past my belly and the stitching at least extends past the spare tire.

 

But the work shirt is just a little too baggy to really show off my curves for a proper “before” photo. For that, we have the tank top and shorts combo that I typically wear as pajamas in the summer.

I know, a good “before and after” picture shouldn’t have anything in the background because visual distractions, but my choice of wall decor did serve the unplanned purpose of showing me exactly where to stand for sake of consistency. I plan to move the medal hanger as I slowly declutter, but the other stuff will have to stay put until I can replace my platform bed with a Murphy style.

Both sets of photos were taken with my phone on a Fleximount clip-on smartphone grip and a Bower wireless remote shutter (seen in my left hand). Contrary to the reviews on that link, I found the clip-on grip extremely useful for the purpose–it doesn’t grip the side of my desk quite as well as I’d like, so I have to be careful not to bump it when I’m on that side of the room to, say, make my bed or even sit down or stand up from the computer, but my biggest concern had always been whether or not it would hold the weight of my phone (I have a Note 8 and I used to have a quad-pod that simply toppled over every time I tried to use it), and the neck on this thing is so stiff that there doesn’t seem to be any chance that my phone will weigh it down. The remote… well, it’s easier than using a timer, I think, but I have to remember there’s a slight delay; I had to retake a few photos because the phone didn’t actually snap a picture until after I’d started moving into the next position.

 

And the final starting line is the weight itself.

I had hoped to get a screenshot of just “today” (whether it’s today, today, or Jan 1, I don’t care), but neither the FitBit app nor the website seems to have that option despite “today” literally being listed on the website among the available filters. I guess I’ll just have to keep looking at options.

But in any case, the long stretch of almost no change at all comes from the several years in which I didn’t own a FitBit. My very first one, the clip-on style Ultra, broke about a month after the warranty expired and I didn’t have the money to invest in a new one; I bought the Flex 2 just a few years ago when searching for a tracker I could wear in my Aqua Aerobics class, and figured since I already had an account I might as well try another FitBit.

In addition to the account going unused for so long, I also didn’t get in the habit of weighing myself until I found a FitBit Aria (the first model) on clearance, so I don’t really know what my average weight would be, but note that the lowest point on that graph is about ten pounds lighter than my current weight. So another simple-but-complex weight loss goal is to set a new “lowest point” on the graph.

I have no idea what my body fat percentage is (the Aria 1 measured it until the whole device quit working, but my replacement, the Aria Air, does not, and the handheld scanner I bought as a substitute just says I’m so fat that it can’t read me), so it will be a while yet before I can try adding that as stat I’m (hopefully) progressing in.

 

What about you, my readers? How are your New Year’s Resolutions going for the first week? Hopefully you haven’t hit snags like I have, but if nothing else, it’s a reminder that even in our resolutions it’s always important to remain flexible.

 

Suggested Products

Products I personally used and was able to provide Amazon Affiliate links for (with the potential for a small commission):

Specific products I used but was not able to find on Amazon:

  • Flexible tripod (don’t remember the brand, think I bought it from my place of employment, and I didn’t see one on Amazon that looks quite like mine)
  • Remote shutter (as mentioned in the post, I used a Bower brand, also bought from my place of employment; Amazon has some Bower products but I did not see this particular one on there, nor, remarkably, did I see it on Bower’s own website!)
Posted in Fitness, Gaming | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment