I've been doing well on "Wii Fit Plus" so far. I've done some exercises every day for two weeks except one day. My goal has been to aim for thirty minutes a day and some days I do more and some days I do less. It's funny that some of the activities don't seem very ambitious, but once you've been at them for 20-30 minutes you realize you really are getting quite a work-out!

Here's some of my favorite activities so far (some of them I know are only in the updated "Wii Fit Plus"):

Bicycling: Probably my favorite Wii Fit activity. You hold the remote in front of you to control left and right and you have to keep your feet going to keep your bicycle on the screen moving. There's a series of markers you have to find and bike through to win the round- 13 in the beginner round, 20+ in the later rounds. I find in the later rounds I don't tend to win the game, but I have fun just biking around the island and exploring until I get tired enough to stop. This game could have great add-on potential, too. It would be cool to be able to bike through a famous city like London or Paris or bike through the attractions in a National Park. Or bike through Middle-earth!

Rythmic Kung Fu: Way fun. You hold the remote and the Wii nunchuk in your hands and mimic the Kung Fu moves of the other Miis on the screen. The game tells you if your moves are "perfect", "OK" or a "miss" and you rack up points accordingly. My biggest problem with this game right now is that you have to move your arms sharply and decisively to get "perfect" and it's still rather hard on my wrist. John's quite good at this game, though.

Rythmic Marching: You're part of a marching band and you have to march in rhythm as well as moving your hands forward to "catch" objects as they fall down the screen. Again, your hand movements are scored as "perfect", "OK" or a "miss". I find the hardest thing about this game is keeping with the rhythm of the game. I mean, my sense of rhythm is good, but if you don't step -exactly- as the machine wants you to you can't score more than a "OK" on the hand moves, even if your hand move is perfect.

Obstacle Course: I really like this one, too :). It's kind of like a Super Mario game, but you are Mario. Your Mii runs along a course (as you run on the board), outruns wrecking balls, jumps over crevices and logs (while you do knee bends on the balance board), makes her way over moving sidewalks and your progress is measured and timed for points. I've gotten through three obstacle courses so far, but keep getting knocked off the fourth one!

Running: Haven't done much of this yet beyond the beginner level, but I like it. You run in place with the Wii remote in your pocket and your Mii runs on the screen, keeping pace behind another runner or a running dog. As you run you have to keep looking at the course around you, too, because you're given an observation quiz at the end worth extra points. (how many cats did you see? what colour was the lighthouse?)

Hula Hooping: Just what it says. You have to move your hips in a circle while your Mii on screen twirls a hula hoop. The faster and more accurately you move the more spin points you rack up. Occasionally another hula hoop is throw at you and you have to shift your balance to catch it over your Mii's head to spin multiple hula hoops.

Ski Slalom: One of a series of balance activities in the Wii Fit. Your Mii starts at the top of a ski hill and skis through a series of slalom hills as she heads downhill. You shift your balance back and forth on the Wii board to go through the flags, leaning forward for extra speed. You get points with speed and accuracy.

Ski Jumping: Another balance game. You bend your knees and lean forward as your Mii starts down the ski jump and at the right moment you have to straighten your knees and keep your balance as still as possible while leaning forward to get the best distance down the course. Speed and accuracy are everything in getting good jumps. If you misjudge the end of the ski jump your Mii takes a dramatic tumble in "agony of defeat" style :).

Still haven't tried many of the Yoga or Strength activities yet, but I plan to get to the Yoga before too long (the strength activities are still tough on my wrist and I'm doing plenty of strength exercises in physio right now).

QUESTION:

Those of you who have or have tried the Wii Fit (and Wii Fit Plus), which activities are your favorite?

Went out and bought Wii Fit Plus yesterday, as the whole point of us buying a Wii system is to use it for exercise. Started playing around with it and it is a lot of fun. I like how it keeps track of the minutes you are exercising, gives you beginner and beyond levels for every activity/game. It allows John and me to use the Miis of ourselves we created in the Wii system to do the exercises on screen. And, of course, it keeps track of your weight and BMI, your scores in balance and agility warm-ups and how often you exercise. You can also select what health issues/body issues you're trying to target and the program will custom-design a work-out program for you.

The balance board you stand on is used in a number of interesting ways. You can bend your knees to jump in ski jumping and tightrope walking activities. You stand on it to mimic yoga positions you see on the screen and the screen let's you know if you put your foot down too soon :). You can do stepping activities on it, down and up on all sides of the board. You can use it as a skateboard by pushing your foot to the side to make you go faster in the game. You can walk on it to make a bicycle move around the trails of an island. There are even jogging routines where you step off the board and run on the floor while following a route on the screen with an observation game at the end of what you saw during your run. It's all pretty cool.

There is one addition to the "plus" upgrade that is cute. It also allows you to make Miis of your pets and you can keep track of their weight by holding them and then stepping on the balance board. The program subtracts your weight and tells you the weight of your cat. One thing that's fun about the Wii is that you can create as many characters as you like and those characters show up in the games and exercises along with your personal Mii. We noticed yesterday during running and biking exercises that a little dog runs along with you and we were curious if we made Miis of Edward and Kara if we'd have little cats running with us, instead. Sure enough, as soon as we entered them in the system we now have a black cat and a gray cat who run with us during those exercises instead of a dog :).

The program seems to have great potential for motivation. I'm doing thirty minutes of exercises each day right now (as well as my physio exercises), but I hope to move up to sixty minutes of exercises. I also find it does encourage you to want to eat better and lose weight, something I've been slacking on terribly since hurting my wrist, so as of tomorrow I'm back at Weight Watchers on-line. It seems foolish to be faithful to the Wii exercises and not making a better effort with healthy eating again, too.

Has anyone checked out the computer game Spore yet? I don't tend to be much of a gamer, but I've read several articles about it this weekend and it looks interesting. Plus, "The Sims" is one of the computer games I fell for hard, so I'm curious about this new game put out by the same person.

I'd be interested in anyone's observations or critiques. I'm seriously debating whether or not I want to buy it. I was disappointed to find there isn't a free demo to try on-line or anything. I'm worried I'm not quite as interested as I think I am right now :).

I was very pleased last week to get a letter from a representative of Scholastic Canada (a major educational publishing company) asking if they could pay me to use the photo here of Wye Marsh with the Martyr's Shrine in the background in an upcoming book in their Gr. 5 literacy program called "Water".

Seems they found the photo over on my Flickr page and it's utterly coincidental that as a Gr. 5 teacher my first published and paid-for photograph will be featured in a Gr. 5 literacy book :) :). I am very tickled about this random fact :).

Being that I've never been paid for a photograph before, I was also surprised to see the nice cheque I will receive for the privilege, too! Yay for that! They are also going to send me two copies of the published book, which, as a Gr. 5 teacher -and- paid-for photographer, will make me proud, indeed :).

There are too many emoticons in this post, but I just can't help it. In a -very- stressful month of report cards and house hunting this acheivement has made me very happy :).

As ohiblather mentioned this morning, Urban Tapestry has a "second week encouragement" song for the novel writers of NaNoWriMo up on their official website today. Deb wrote the song and recorded it in her office with Jodi and me singing and Scott Snyder (bardiclug) providing musical accompaniment.

You can find it by going to http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and clicking on the "WrimoRadio-Episode 3" link in the upper right corner of the page. Our song is near the end of the broadcast, about 17:30 into the 21:17 minute broadcast. You can also find the lyrics here.

And if you're new to the NaNoWriMo page do check out Deb's comic feature called "1000 Words" right under the WrimoRadio.

And, of course, do check out Deb's comic strip for writers, Will Write For Chocolate.

Thanks for the fun song and recording experience, Deb! It's fun to hear the song over on the NaNoWriMo site.

Another link that made me smile this week- the owner of the embroidery website "My Aunt's Attic" (the woman is digitizing dozens of old hand-drawn cross-stitch patterns she found in her aunt's attic from an old embroidery store and making them available on-line for free) really likes getting photos of the pieces stitchers make with her designs and she has posted my photos of the shirt with the circular bat design this week. There is also a photo of a project another stitcher made with the bat design. Interesting to see what people come up with using the same pattern! When you click on the link scroll down to the second journal entry.

Bats in the Attic

So, on the weekend I get a short note from cadhla asking me to send her a short bio. Of course, I'm all full of "???", but it's cadhla, so mine was not to question why, mine was to zip her off a eight line biography, figuring all would become clear in time.

And in this dreary, stressful November week she makes me smile by sending me back this link today: Pretty Little Dead Girl: Behind The Curtain, where Seanan is keeping a bio list of people who didn't actually participate on that live concert/CD from OVFF in 2005, but who helped influence her thoughts and year at the time. The new bio she's added for me is the second one down. And check out the cool drawing she did of me! Love it!

Also note that cadhla is the only one I allow to tease me about my Tolkien obsession, because she has a tendency to make fun of me about hobbits and then she sends me Tolkien-inspired poetry and drawings like the LJ icon I'm using here when I finished the 'Walk to Rivendell' and she writes glorious songs about Galadriel when she's -never read "Lord of The Rings"-. Those are the kind of non-Tolkien fans the world needs.

She's also just won the Pegasus Award for Best Filk Performer in 2007, though to my ever-lasting sorrow I have never been at the right con to actually see Seanan give a concert. I've seen her perform in the Pegasus Nominee Concert at OVFF and I've heard her in open filk, but being that her concerts are becoming events of filk legend I hope it won't be long before I see a full Seanan concert!

Besides her live CD, Pretty Little Dead Girl (scroll down that link page for song samples), Seanan also has a terrific new studio CD called Stars Fall Home. It's been on my iPod since I got it, as all things Seanan should be. Was also impressed last week, too, to see John had added some songs from Seanan's CD to his MP3 player. John -never- listens to filk. When I commented on it he shrugged and said, "I like her voice and I like her wit.". Score- filk I can now play in the van.

I think Seanan should come to FilKONtario this year so she can sing and hang out with her good buddies and sometimes singing partners Vixy and Tony, who are FKO's Guest of Honour for this year. Oh, yes, I do. And then the three of them can sing me Firefly songs. 'Cause I'm just selfish that way.

(Photo: Debbie and Seanan share a meaningful moment at OVFF 2006.)

Here's a fun Halloween project that made my day :).

About ten days back mollyringle launched the idea of preparing a LJ group reading of a scene from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" to be posted on Halloween. She invited everyone reading her journal to volunteer to be involved and when we did she sent us each two or three lines of the story to record onto an MP3 and mail to her so she could edit them together into a single file to be posted today. I just finished listening to the end result :).

Naturally the sound engineering is wildly varied- for my part I just used my small Sony IC recorder- but the end result is utterly charming, with both children and adults, women and men participating. You can hear babies burbling as mothers read their lines, people giggling as narrators make dramatic pauses, you can tell everyone involved had a lot of fun doing it. mollyringle did an admirable job of editing the whole piece into one three minute narrative with appropriately spooky music to set off the voices.

A transcript of the story, plus who is reading each part, can be found on mollyringle's journal here.

The MP3 of the finished story is here: Operation Ichabod (be patient- it does take the MP3 about a minute to load)

Thanks to mollyringle for allowing me to participate! My narration is the second last person from the end of the MP3.

Whooo and Happy Halloween!

Ooo, I love playing with new Flickr toys. It brings out both the photographer and the craft addict in me. I found these new photo cubes lots of fun. I built a handful of them last night and today. I just used plain white letter paper, but it would be interesting to try them with photo paper, too, to get something more substantial and with better photo quality.

( Building a photo cube.Collapse )

I hadn't used my new laptop a great deal during the summer, except to experiment a bit with downloading photos on our trip to Kitchener, but now that I'm within ten days of the start of the new school year I've started to ramp up exploring its possibilities and figuring out how I'm going to use it in this next teaching year.

I'm already madly in love with the possibilities.

First off I'm going to pretty much do all planning and marking I would normally record on paper on the laptop this year- day plans, long range plans, marks, anecdotals, etc.. I sat down with a laptop-experienced teacher this week and got her to show me how she uses Excel to record and keep track of all her marks. Her method is much simpler than I feared it would be! Simple enough that I should be able to handle it right from September. For my long range and day sheet planning I'd really like to figure out how to make templates in Microsoft Word, which hopefully I can figure out with a little bit of exploring.

I pretty much gave up school photography last year because it depressed me that such an important part of my photography hobby can only be shared with such a small group of people! (not being able to put school photos on-line, etc.) Also, for me, at least, it was very work-intensive to save up the photos on my home computer, make PowerPoint shows, transfer them to a school laptop to project them in class or during parent presentations, so after two years I stopped doing it. With the new laptop, though, I figure this year I can take school photos, download them into the laptop and make PowerPoint shows right in the classroom and even show them on the laptop as part of my displays during parent nights, classroom lessons, etc.

I've also asked the board computer expert for our school if she can set up a third Internet outlet for me (besides the two I have for my classroom computers) so I have ready Internet access for the laptop when I want it. Need to get myself an ether cable, though (is that how you spell it?). And, of course, I'm training myself well in security for the laptop and how to back-up everything constantly if I'm going to be using the laptop for compiling marks and planning. I know it's child's play for most of you, but I've never really had any reason for using thumb drives, etc., on a regular basis. I'm going to have to get really good at that really quickly.

Funny how having a laptop even affects classroom set-up. My desk has been set up across the room from my computer centre for several years now, but this week I dragged it over to the other side of the room so I have easier access to working on the laptop on my desk and being able to connect to the Internet, etc., too. It's all good- having a different perpective on the classroom from year to year keeps things fresh :). It means I no longer have an administrative bulletin board behind my desk, though (oops), but it'll all work out, I'm sure. Got to give thought to logistics, too, as to where to -keep- the laptop during the school day, so I'm using keys on my classroom cupboards for the first time in forever, since I can't lug the laptop around all the time. Need to find a locked place it can stay except when I need it.

And I've bought a special knapsack to make the laptop easier to carry around or carry home. And I've bought a mini-mouse to use since the mouse pad on the laptop was already driving me crazy. Still need to buy an Internet cable and a photo cable to keep in my knapsack. Still need to see if the thumb drive I bought two years back (and rarely used) still works or whether it's completely obsolete now. Debating whether I need to buy a second laptop battery.

Eeee, welcome to the 21st century, Mrs. Durno.

QUESTION: How many of you use a laptop computer as an integrated part of your job (or schooling)? Do you find yourself switching back and forth between your laptop and your desktop computer depending on where you are or what you're doing? Do you use a laptop now for everything or just when you need something portable or when you're travelling? If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting to integrate a laptop into their life for the first time what would it be?