Wii Fit “is a very, very mild workout”

This is really no surprise to me, but an American Council of Exercise study on the effectiveness of Wii Fit determined it to be “underwhelming” (found via Joystiq).

I’ve always said it was a combination of Wii Fit and changing my eating habits that made it possible for me to drop 40lbs. Just playing Wii Fit alone wouldn’t have really done much, but it was responsible for getting me into a habit of an (almost) daily exercise routine … and it’s fun. Going running outside for 20 minutes does not sound like fun to me, but I can do that easily in front of the TV with Wii Fit. I think everyone agrees that fun exercises will keep you coming back and those that aren’t fun turn into the dusty, unused Soloflex sitting in the corner of your den. 😀

The article does concede that some exercise is better than none, and that Wii Fit Plus might be better due to the customization of routines with less lag time in between (which I agree with). It’s an interesting read.

Now on my iPod: Nerdcore hip hop

Ever since I started playing Kingdom of Loathing a few months ago, I’ve been listening to the “120 Minutes of Jick and Mr. Skullhead” podcast/radio show. Through them, I was introduced to Nerdcore hip hop since the Asymmetic crew are friends with MC Frontalot, the artist who coined the term.

I’m not actually new to Geeksta rap … I’ve had MC Hawking and Minibosses tracks in my collection since at least 1998 (and of course a few specific songs by “Weird Al” Yankovic like “It’s All About the Pentiums“).  This is first time I’ve heard it categorized into a specific genre (other than parody), however. Now I’ve been listening to new (to me) stuff by groups like Optimus Rhyme.

Want a quick introduction to nerdcore hip hop? Check out the NerdcoreNow compilations.

If you already own Wii Fit, get Wii Fit Plus

While I continue to wait for the delivery of my FitBit I picked up Wii Fit Plus last weekend.

Wii Fit Plus is basically an upgrade to the original Wii Fit that came with the balance board: it contains all of the original games and activities, then adds a bunch of new games (Training Plus) and features. It will automatically import all of your data from Wii Fit so you won’t even need your old disc anymore. So, what’s new and cool?

First off, you can now create profiles for babies and pets. Why? Well, I guess if you want to be able to track the weight of those smaller members of your household it can come in handy. Like in Wii Fit, the balance board weighs you first, and then you holding your dog, cat, or baby to calculate the difference. It’s kinda cute to see our dogs in the Wii Fit Plaza.

A new “multi-player” feature is available from the Wii Fit Plaza which allows a bunch of people to alternate playing the mini-games, but none of it counts towards Wii Fit credits. I guess it’s just a way to allow your guests to try out the games without needing to create a profile, get weighed in, etc.

One new feature I was looking forward to was the addition of routines, basically “playlists” of activities that was supposed to streamline performing multiple exercises in a row without all of the pausing and clicking. Unfortunately, you can only add Strength Training and Yoga activities to a routine, not any of the Aerobics or Balance activities. Also, you’re limited to a certain number of reps. For example, instead of having the option to add 5, 10, or 20 push-up and side-plank reps, you can only choose 6 at a time. To work around this you’d have to add multiples of the 6-rep activities in a row:

Once you do have the routine set up, though, it definitely makes performing multiple activities more efficient. You don’t need to keep clicking the A button a bunch of times to move on, you just see a brief checklist and then the next activity starts.

Wii Fit Plus also assigns METs (Metabolic Equivalents) to activities so in addition to showing you the number of minutes you’ve exercised (Wii Fit credits) it will also calculate the number of calories you’ve burned. New options in the Activity Log also let you track your waist size and the number of steps you’ve taken during the day (assuming you have a pedometer to track that data for you … this is where my FitBit will eventually come into play).

The new Training Plus games are a lot of fun too! Cycling, Segway riding, snowball fights, the obstacle course, and many more new additions can really get you back into Wii Fit if you’ve been getting bored with the old activities.

So, if you bought Wii Fit give Wii Fit Plus a try … it’s definitely worth the $20 (or less, if you shop around).

Kickstarting the Karmic Koala

Last week, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) was officially released so over this past weekend I went ahead and upgraded my server to the new version. As with my prior upgrades, I ran the process remotely over SSH (my server is a headless box sitting in a closet) and it was very smooth. The only minor problem I had was the initial download of the required packages failed, but I suspect that was because the Ubuntu site was being slammed with everyone downloading the new software. I restarted the upgrade several hours later, the downloads completed and the upgrade proceeded. After the release upgrade was done, I only had to put back a few minor tweaks and customizations (such as disabling IPv6), do a quick reboot, and the box was back in business.

I also grabbed the release version of the Netbook Remix since I had installed the beta on my EeePC earlier last month. I wasn’t able to get it to install, however: the system booted just fine from the USB drive where I extracted the ISO, but the installer would crash almost immediately with the following error: “Cannot mount /dev/loop1 on /cow.” I found this thread on the EeeUser Forums that seemed to think it was a problem using Ubuntu’s own USB creator utility to “burn” the image onto the thumb drive. So I used unetbootin to re-image the drive and that fixed the problem! Strange that Ubuntu’s own utility would have a problem like that.

Binary birthdays

My little sister will turn 30 next year on 10/10/10, which is pretty cool on a number (no pun intended) of levels, mainly 10 + 10 + 10 = 30. This got me to thinking that being born on the first day of October, I’ve never really had one of those cool birthdays like 01/02/03, 07/07/07, etc. When the first two numbers you have to work with are 10/01, what cool thing can you possibly come up with?

Being a programmer, the first thing that struck me is that my birthday is all binary digits (1001). I already missed 10/01/01 so looking ahead I determined I’ve got two more binaries birthdays coming up in 2010 and 2011. Check this out … I’m 37 now, so that means on my next two birthdays, the 8-bit binary representation of my birthday will match my age!

10/01/2010 = 00100110 = 38

10/01/2011 = 00100111 = 39

That’s some serious geek cred right there. 😀

What’s your favorite Wii game? Here’s how to check …

Hey kids, don’t show your parents this one! 😉

I came across this post on Kotaku that describes how to find your play/usage statistics on the Wii through the Nintendo Channel. Curious, I of course had to check my own:

Yikes! I think we may have left the Wii on accidentally a few times, which may account for that incredibly high usage time for Wii Fit. 😀 I noticed that not every game seems to be listed (but even virtual console games are channels present), but the top 10 seems to be accurate. It’s not surprising that Wii Sports is up there since it’s the number one selling video game of all time and still one of our multi-player family favorites.

WIJFR: Wizard’s Bane

It all began when the wizards of the White League were under attack by their opponents of the Black League and one of their most powerful members cast a spell to bring forth a mighty wizard to aid their cause. What the spell delivers is master hacker Walter “Wiz” Zumwalt. With the wizard who cast the spell dead, nobody can figure out what the shanghaied computer nerd is good for — because spells are not like computer programs.

“Wizard’s Bane” by Rick Cook was my latest iSilo/Treo e-read, which I downloaded for free from the Baen Library.

Computer programmer Walter “Wiz” Zimwalt is mysteriously transported from his job in California to a different world, summoned by a powerful spell cast by the wizard Patrius with the assistance of Moira the hedge witch. Patrius is killed during the summoning so no one knows why Wiz was chosen by Patrius. Stuck on a world with no computers, no technology, no pizza, caffeinated sodas, or even coffee, Wiz is completely out of his element. But the dark wizards of the South don’t realize Wiz is powerless and will stop at nothing to capture him and prevent him from helping out the League of the North.

As the story progresses, Wiz begins to learn that magic is similar to coding: anyone can really do it, but without proper training it can cause serious problems (or, in the case of a miscast spell, be deadly). Using his analytical and programming skills, Wiz begins to build a framework for writing spells as if he were writing code … a programming language for magic! Can he really use his spell-casting programs to take on the dark League? Or is he putting everyone, even the whole world, in danger by messing with a power he doesn’t completely understand?

Being a programmer myself, this book was a fun “fish out of water” story. I could relate to Wiz’s situation (what would I do if there were no computers?) and the programming, coding, and development references were cool. It’s not exactly Tolkien-level fantasy, but a good leisurely read.

Sports depression

It’s early October, that wonderful time of year when temperatures (supposedly) get cooler and we have that wonderful confluence of the baseball, football, basketball, and hockey seasons. Well, it’s usually wonderful, except:

I got a pair of free tickets to the Lightning home opener tonight so I took my daughter, hoping to get a lift from a hockey home ice win. The appearance Dwight Howard dropping the ceremonial puck was a not-so-nice reminder of how the Orlando Magic knocked the Cavs out of the playoffs last spring. 🙁

We left at 6 minutes to go in the third period with the Bolts holding the lead over the New Jersey Devils 3-2 (thanks to 2 goals in the first 5 minutes of the period). As we listened to the last minute of the game on the radio driving out of downtown Tampa, we couldn’t believe our ears as the Devils tied the game with 0.3 seconds to go! The Lightning ended up losing the shootout, which gives them a disappointing 0-1-2 start. sigh

Maybe Lebron and Shaq will give me something to believe in …

P.S. Props to my new sister-in-law for pointing me to waitingfornextyear.com!

Toy Story double feature

What could be better on a Saturday afternoon than a family trip to the movie theater for the Toy Story double feature? Seeing these classic Pixar films on the big screen again (and in 3D!) was great. It was also a fun first-time experience for my daughter who wasn’t even born when the movies were originally released.

You get the same pair of polarized 3D glasses Disney used for “Up,” which got a little annoying after almost three hours, but the resulting visuals were great. Since the original films weren’t animated with 3D in mind, there are no in-your-face-make-you-jump-out-of-your-seat gimmicks, just enhancements to the original film which make it a joy to watch.

In between the two films there’s a 10 minute intermission during which they show some Toy Story trivia. A clock in the corner counts down the minutes so you know exactly how much time you have to go to the bathroom, grab some new refreshments, etc.

The one thing that surprised me was the lack of a new trailer for “Toy Story 3.” I had read that a new trailer would be shown in theaters only, but the place we went to only showed the teaser trailer we had already seen before “Up.” 🙁

If you get the chance in the next two weeks to see the double feature, do it! Both movies for the price of one? It’s a no-brainer.