7/52 — Week 6

Most of my photos for this week were taken while I tested out my tripod, inverting the center column and then attaching my camera upside down to shoot pics of whatever I placed underneath it. I was hoping to find some interesting things to shoot with my macro, but ended up not taking as many with it.

But first...

Tuesday, February 8th was Do It For Daron day. I wore purple to help raise awarenes for the cause.

This one is my favourite for the week and is one of my DailyShoot photos. It's looking side my drink bottle, which was pressed up against the end of my 100mm lens.

The first of my test shots. It's a Canadian Dollar (aka Loonie), with the Ottawa Senators logo on it.

Looking into my 18-200mm lens using my 100mm lens.

I have a canvas print hanging on the wall behind our bar in the basement. I didn't make it, but I got it from work years ago when they were getting rid of a whole bunch of them. It's a 3D rendered scene of a game of chess — a checkmate — but there's a sword laying on the board beside the fallen king. It's kinda cool. The print isn't the best quality though, as you'll see in this next shot where you can see the half-tone dots. :)

And this is the same picture, panned back a little.

The last shot — the underside of a glass. All that black is the reflection of the camera I guess. It's pretty cool though.

 

20K - Week 13 progress

I broke 20,000 calories mark in Your Shape Fitness Evolved.

This put me at 30th place on the Worldwide Leadboard and 3rd place on the Canada Leaderboard. Unfortunately, their leaderboard is buggy and it's displaying the wrong name beside the score. You can see in both pics that my score is 20315, which happens to be the 3rd place on the Canada leaderboard.

Wordwide Leaderboard:

Canada Leaderboard:

Sucks. I reported it in their forums, but like many of the bugs being reported, nothing seems to be done about it. Not even an official acknowledgement of them. Anyway, that's another story.

7/52 - Week 5

Had to play some catch-up today to get seven. Why do I do this to myself.... anyway, on with it.

My desk phone at work. This turned out better than I thought it would.

One of my cat's rear feet. I had initially planned on taking a shot of her face, but she wouldn't stop moving. Then I noticed her fuzzy feet and fired off a few shots. I like it.

This was supposed to be an artistic shot of a plug for the DailyShoot. The only artistic-ness I could think of was to apply a colour filter to image. Yeh, not so artistic.

A mirror tile with mirrored glasses sitting on it, each containing a candle. My wife put this out at Christmas, on a table in the basement, and for some reason decided to keep it out after Christmas. I kinda liked the way the reflections all bounce off each other. I should light them one day and try the same shot.

A couple of light hand weights that my wife got me for Christmas to use with my workouts. They work well.

About ½ a cup of corn chips that I munched on for a snack, after using the items in the previous picture this evening. :)

One of two large baskets that sit on our hall closet shelf, each containing mittens, or toques.

That's it for this week.

Back on track? — Week 12 progress

I'm not entirely sure whether eating a little more more or changing my workout fixed it, but I did manage to get back to losing this week. Not much mind you, but it's not a gain.

And then on Saturday, out of curiosity, I stepped on the scale and noticed I had lost a bit more. As of this morning, I was down to 248lbs. Keeping my fingers crossed for this week.

7/52 - Week 4

Not a very exciting week on the photo front, but here we go...

The first was shot for a DailyShoot and turned out pretty good. I have a tube of rare earth magnets that doesn't have much purpose, so I put a couple of them to use. This was a tricky shot, even with using a tripod. I had to hold my hand out in front of the camera pretty far and it wasn't easy to hold my hand still. I had to rest my arm on a chair to get it steady enough for the shot. The magnets really are holding themselves on my finger — they're that strong.

Another DailyShoot shot. This is one of our many TV/device remotes that reside in our living room. Exciting, eh? :)

I've shot this next one before, in B&W. I can't remember if I ever posted it anywhere. We have three of these hanging on the wall in our dining area. For this particular shot, I enhanced the color a little using one of many picture styles for Canon's Digital Photo Professional that I downloaded from the web. I really like it. I took quite a few shots of this, and had a difficult time trying to decide which one I would use for the DailyShoot that day.

This is one of my DailyShoot rejects for the same assignment as the last photo. I couldn't seem to get the lighting the way I wanted. I like the colour though.

This is an origami star(?) that one of my daughter's classmates made for her. She said she makes them for anyone who asks. I shot it for a DailyShoot and never used it.

Another DailyShoot reject. A wooden coaster. I thought it would be cool, until I saw how much my macro lens exposes and didn't like it.

I shot this one moments ago to round off my seven photos for this week. These are books that I have read or am in the process of reading. Talk about diversity. :)

 

Plateau — Week 11 progress

A not-so-happy weigh-in this morning.

I was good with keeping the calorie intake low this week — better than in previous weeks — and yet, there was no loss this week. In fact, there was about a 1 lb gain.

That brings up two possibilities.

The first is that I have officially hit a plateau.

The second possibility that crossed my mind, one that my wife also mentioned, is that maybe I haven't eaten enough and my body is going into storage mode. It makes sense. In past weeks, I would occasionally slip and consume more than I should on a day or two, or get pretty close to my max, and despite that I was still able to lose. My max calculated intaje is supposed to be around 2100-2200. In the last seven days, I was over 1500 calories once, and the rest were in the 1200-1300 range, after subtracting workout calorie burn. Maybe there is some logic to that.

I guess I'll focus on eating a but more for this week. I'm also going to change my usual workout program in YSFE to something with a little more cardio and see how that pans out.

Nicotine is a bitch, and I owned it

Today marks my 2-year anniversary of beating nicotine addiction.

Alan Carr's "Easyway to Stop Smoking" was the best $20 that I've ever spent on a book. It's better than the patch, better than the gum, better than the pills, and better than cold turkey. Smoking isn't just a physical addiction, it's also a psychological one. If you don't beat both, you'll always crave it.

My wife read the book a year later and will be a year quit in March.

I get nothing in return for plugging the book, other than a good feeling knowing that it might help someone else. If you'd like to read some old blog posts about it, check these out.

In celebration of my amazing achievment, who wants to be the first to sponsor me for the 2011 Canadian Cancer Society Relay for Life? :)

http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/paterson