Me And My Keyboard

Bizarre classes

wingedkami — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:28:50 GMT

I've just been playing with the Basic/Expert D&D random class generator and came up with this one:

Requirements: CON 9, CHA 9
Prime Requisites: CON, CHA
Members of this class must have at least 13 in one or the other prime requisite to get the 5% bonus to experience.
If both prime requisites are at least 13, members of this class will gain a 10% bonus to experience.

Hit Points

Level	Hit Points
1	1d8
2	2d8
3	3d8
4	4d8
5	5d8
6	6d8
7	7d8
8	8d8
9	9d8
10	10d8
11	11d8
12	12d8

Armour
Members of this class may wear leather armour and carry a shield.

Weapons
Members of this class may only use daggers.

Attacking
Members of this class roll to attack as a cleric or thief.

Magic Items
Members of this class may use the following magic items:

weapons	no
armour	no
shields	no
potions/rings	yes
misc. magic	no
wands, staves and rods	yes
protection scrolls	yes
other scrolls	yes

Note that, for magic armour, weapons and shields, characters can only use a magic item if they could use the normal version of that item.

Cleric Spells
Members of this class can cast cleric spells as a cleric of their level.

Flying
At level 7, members of this class gain the ability to fly.

Saves
Members of this class save as a Normal Man, regardless of their level.

Professional Skills
Members of this class have the special skills of an animal trainer (see p48 of Labyrinth Lord).

Advancement

Level	XP required
1	0
2	2340
3	4680
4	9360
5	18720
6	37440
7	78080
8	152500
9	305000
10	457500
11	610000
12	762500

It's clear to me that what I have here is a devout follower of some kind of animal deity. Let's call him a Fauna Fanatic.

The Fauna Fanatic's deity demands that its followers have the same strong constitution and animal magnetism as the animals it favours. They are permitted to wear leather armour to simulate the strong leathery skin of animals and carry a shield to represent the natural carapace of some creatures. The only weapons they are permitted are small daggers, representing animal claws. As a religious devotee, they are granted cleric spells. They are gifted with animal training skills, and eventually the ability to fly like winged creatures. They are forced to retain the saves of a normal human, however, since they will never be true animals.

Historical cookery fail

wingedkami — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:38:34 GMT

For those of you who enjoyed Marc's recently stroganoff fail, here's one of the first meals he ever cooked me.

He said he was making me spaghetti bolognaise. While a spag bol isn't quite as simple as a stroganoff, it is fairly uncomplicated:

Beef mince
Tomatoes (either canned or passata)
Onions
Garlic
Herbs
Spaghetti

For variety, you could add some mushrooms, or swap out the beef mince for lamb, but in general this is the stuff you need. And I admit he did do an immacualate job of cooking the spaghetti, but here's what not to put in a bolognaise sauce:

Beanfeast soya mince that's been lurking in the back of the cupboard for about 10 years
Sweetcorn
Marmite

Marc would like it noted that it was bolognaise flavour beanfeast but given that I find all beanfeast disgusting anyway, I don't think this helps.

I picked up the real ingredients for pork stroganoff on Friday, which Marc then cooked for me, and I can assure you it was lovely.

Cookery fail

wingedkami — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 01:17:33 GMT

In another exciting edition of 'funny things Marc does,' we feature cookery.

Marc is a big fan of what he calls 'bung cookery' and I call 'shoving stuff in a pan and seeing if the end result is edible'. Usually it is. However...

I love pork stroganoff. I love how such a simple dish can be so perfectly constructed. My recipe for pork stroganoff has only four ingredients: diced pork loin, mushrooms, sour cream and rice. I've taught Marc how to make it, and after repeated reassurances that no matter what the stuff they serve in the canteen looks like, no other ingredients are required, Marc can now make an excellent stroganoff.

The other day Marc wanted to make a stroganoff, but couldn't find all the ingredients in Tesco. So he decided to substitute things.

Now a certain amount of substitution is possible in a stroganoff. For example, you can use stir fry beef or chicken instead of the pork loin. And you could serve it the Russian way with fried potato sticks instead of the rice. What you can't do is swap out everything except the mushrooms, and expect the end result to in any way resemble a stroganoff. Or, indeed, food...

What Marc actually cooked was:
Mushrooms
Noodles
Goat's cheese
Chopped up gammon steaks

Seriously, never cook this.

A surprise story

wingedkami — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 22:28:27 GMT

While browsing Techtales I found a story from 2003:
http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.php?m=200309

“I work in the IT dept of a medium-sized company. We'd just taken on a few new staff, and I didn't really know much about them. Most of our staff are fairly clueful and tend to leave us alone. One lunch time I got a call from the new girl in the testing department, asking for help plugging in a network cable and configuring a machine in their server room upstairs, because, as she put it 'the rest of my department are at lunch.'

“Now, I didn't know much about her apart from the fact that she'd enjoyed helpdesk (and so is clearly a few pins short of a DIMM) and had aced the first semester of CCNA before her previous company had realised everyone who got one would leave for a better job and stopped paying for it. It was hardly a task that should have been beyond her, and in that department, one she *should* have done several times before.

“I realised the problem straight away when I got up there - she couldn't actually get behind the servers to reach the cable that needed connecting, and she couldn't reach the machine's keyboard at the front of the cabinets. I'd forgotten that a lot of people were dressing up for charity as it was Red Nose Day. She was wearing a victorian ball gown with a huge crinoline, and the off-the-shoulder bodice didn't let her move her upper arms - which probably explains why Victorian women were apparently so useless at everything.

“Considering that she apparently made the thing herself in four evenings, I think she missed her calling. Once I'd set up the network for her she got on with her testing using remote desktop.”

Now there can’t be that many women with both the technical knowledge to do that kind of job and the ability to make their own Victorian ballgown to wear for Red Nose Day, so I’m confident this can only have been random_c. I saw the photos, and I can vouch for her looking amazing.

You what now?

wingedkami — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 07:47:08 GMT

My sympathies to my Australian friends who have to share a country with this moron.

'Ireland a joke for not joining Team GB in Olympic'’

Faraday cages. Never forget.

wingedkami — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:23:47 GMT

A while ago I discussed the importance of shielding your electronics in the future in the context of Terra Nova. Having recently watched The Matrix, I was reminded that despite being one of the most awesome films of the 1990s (and incidentally one of the greenest films ever made), it also suffered from a serious lack of electronic shielding. The ridiculous scene where Neo is stuck in the Matrix and the squiddies are attacking could have been avoided completely with an appropriately positioned faraday cage.

I promise right now that should I ever write a sci-fi novel, at no point will anyone fail to shield their electronics.

Abortion in popular culture (for which read TV that I've seen recently.)

wingedkami — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:02:55 GMT

I've been watching Bedlam series 2 on Sky Living, and to be honest, it's not that good. When you've only got six episodes in your series, you need to make every one count. This series has had five episodes so far (I haven't watched the finale yet) and only two of them really felt worth the effort.

The main reason I've kept watching is the Bedlamwatch blog. It's made me way more invested in the character of Max than I would have been just watching the show.

But I read some reviews of various episodes, and seen something interesting. At least two reviews have complained that the 'Ellie's pregnancy and abortion' storyline doesn't seem to have been given enough attention or played up enough. I disagree. I think they did it exactly right.

It basically went like this:

Ellie, feeling sad and scared, sleeps with Dan.
Ellie finds out she's pregnant, tells Max.
Max asks if she's told Dan.
Ellie says no, and she's not sure she's going to keep it.
Max, at a later date, asks Ellie if she's told Dan yet.
Ellie tells Max that she's had an abortion.

And that's it. No shaming of Ellie, either for getting pregnant by accident, or for deciding to abort. Nobody making a big deal out of it. Nobody trying to tell her what to do. Nobody suggesting that anyone except her deserves a say in it. No angsting from Ellie about whether it's the right thing to do, either before or afterwards. Just one woman, making her own decision and acting on it.

In short, possibly the best depiction of abortion I've ever seen on TV. I hope they don't muck it up in the last episode.

I've also been watching Murdoch Mysteries, currently showing at random times and in a seemingly random order on Alibi. And one of the recent episodes was 'Shades of Grey'. Nothing to do with that ridiculous book, thankfully, this one was about abortion. Specifically, abortion in Canada in the late 19th century, when abortion was illegal.

This episode graphically shows that the alternative to legal abortions isn't no abortions, it's illegal abortions. And that the consequences of illegal abortions can be horrific. In the case of the victim of the week, it's death from pennyroyal poisoning. In the case of another character, it's sterility. And yet women are so desperate that they're willing to take that risk. And herbal remedy sellers and back street physicians and even reputable doctors are willing to break the law to help them get what they need and have a chance of survival.

Bedlam demonstrated the way things should be. Murdoch Mysteries reminded us what the alternative is.

Damn you, Etsy!

wingedkami — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:59:30 GMT

I want ALL THE THINGS.

Hellraiser, as watched in 2012

wingedkami — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 12:07:18 GMT

The trouble with 80s movies is that no matter how much of a classic they might have at the time, when I watch them now all I can think is "So much synth!" or "Mullets mullets mullets!" which is really quite distracting. Terminator was an excellent film, but it was difficult to be scared of the clunky stop-motion animation while everyone ran around with perms and godawful synth music played in the background.

Apart from the prospect of synth and mullets, Hellraiser is one of those films I've always pictured as massively scary and horrific, and since gorn is not really my thing, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Someone took the sensible decision not to use the new and exciting synthesizers, and stick with a plain old string quartet, so the soundtrack is unobtrusive and not particularly dated.

The cast is sufficiently small that once I'd finished laughing at the wife's shoulder pads, I was pretty much done with fashion comedy and could get back to the plot.

There is a bit of clunky stop-motion, but it happens fairly early on so not too much of a distraction.

As as for the aforementioned horror and gore...well, there's been 25 years of TV crime drama since then, and I have honestly seen much worse things just watching Bones.

In fact it only really went wrong near the end where Thingy was using the McGuffin to defeat the bad guys and suddenly everything went a bit 8bit and wireframe and #FFFF00 yellow. What on earth was that all about?

Reading up on later movies in the Hellraiser franchise, it appears that as time goes by, the cenobites get less and less interesting, and more and more stupid. They start out as a thing in their own right and their realm only appears to be hell from a human perspective. Later on they're just plain old demons, and their ranks have been swolen by such ridiculous creations as Camerahead and CD, who are just too damn silly to be scary. Like Highlander and The Matrix, I'm just going to pretend that there were no sequels.

I understand there's a remake in the works, but they haven't asked Doug Bradley to play Pinhead. I can't really imagine anyone else playing him.

Anyway. Hellraiser: nowhere near as shocking as it was in 1987, and well worth a look, having aged better than most 80s movies.

Fetch the scorpion pit, or, in which my beloved fails at communication

wingedkami — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:51:08 GMT

Another item in the growing list of funny things Marc does: attempt to communicate through mime. I have no idea why. As far as I know, he has no formal theatrical training. He's not Italian, or related to my paternal grandfather (a man who I suspect could be rendered mute with a set of handcuffs). He just periodically abandons spoken language in favour of dramatic gestures.

It's not that the mime is completely incomprehensible (although I maintain there is no possible way to distinguish 'masturbation' from 'shake-weight') but even when I get the basic gist, I still lack context. After all, I can figure out that finger and thumb pinched together near his mouth accompanied by strange sucking motions is probably something to do with a cigarette, but whether this refers to a tobacco cigarette or something less legal, or to a smoker/stoner, or indeed to the act of smoking itself, is as impossible to determine as the difference between 'masturbation' and 'shake-weight'.

Each time Marc does this I remind him that I don't understand Marc-mime, and ask if we could have that in English please, but that doesn't stop him trying. Clearly the message isn't getting through. Perhaps I should try a different approach? How exactly does one say 'your gestures are imprecise and lack context' in mime?

Ouch

wingedkami — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:51:32 GMT

Dear self,
Next time Marc assures you, with utter conviction, that of course you'll be able to lift $heavy_object, even if said $heavy_object is in fact Marc...

Please remember that he's a moron.

Ow.

No love,
Me

He was very apologetic afterwards, and supplied the necessary massage and hot water bottle, while I pointed out all the blatently obvious things I should have remembered myself before attempting to pick up something three times as heavy as my current deadlift weight. In my defense, I never thought he'd actually come off the floor and put any weight on me.

Catching up on goals

wingedkami — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:23:34 GMT

I've made progress on my list of quests to do - I've done the intermediate widowmaker. 20 squats at half my bodyweight. The next widowmaker goal is 20 squats at my bodyweight, so that one might have to wait a while. Instead I will be aiming for the 'Get Low' achievement - 1 squat at 80% bodyweight. Since I can already do 10 squats at 60% bodyweight, I'm well on my way to that one.

Seriously, my legs rock. And also wobble like crazy after I put the bar down.

In The Beauty of Strength quest, I still have a way to go. My deadlift is up to 35kg but it's a struggle and I'm reluctant to add more weight at the moment. My bench press is still at 20kg, although I'm finding it easier, with less arm wobble, so there's potential there if I work at it (and keep doing push-ups at home). My squat though... 3 reps at 43.1kg? I can totally do that.

Century push...well, that's an ongoing thing.

In general gym news, I once again had the weight machines all to myself in the lady gym, and I've found person #3 who actually uses the squat rack. Unlike Megasquat Dude from the previous trip, this guy didn't spend all day on there, and actually unloaded his plates afterwards. Less conveniently, he them took the bar off as well to go and do deadlifts, and the free one on the bench was loaded with 20kg plates, so I grabbed the small bar from behind the bench. I was attempting to do overhead presses with it earlier, and totally failing, until a guy told me it was the 15kg bar, and not the 10kg bar I thought it was. Which was quite a relief.

Seriously, Wisconsin?

wingedkami — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:12:19 GMT

Wisconsin have repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

No, really.

Really really.

Well I guess that about wraps it up for America.

I went to the gym, episode IV: Return of the Lady Gym

wingedkami — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:25:15 GMT

The gym was surprisingly full today, and someone else was using the elliptical. So I got on with the weight machines.

There was someone else in the gym actually lifting weights today, as well as the usual people doing bizarre stretches, step-ups and weird things involving gym balls. So rather than running off to the Man Gym once I'd finished with the machines I stuck around to do the free weight stuff I can do with the few small weights available in the lady gym. The dumbbells actually aren't bad, despite being feminine silver chrome rather than manly black iron. Seeing two women actually lifting weights might help encourage the other ladies to give it a go.

The weight room was rather full when I got in, with all the benches in use, and amazingly, the squat rack as well. I was starting to wonder if I was the only person who used it. So I began with deadlifts. I went for the 30kg barbell this time, mostly because it was on a lower bit of the rack, and I figured I could probably deadlift it right off the rack rather than having the struggle I had with the smaller bar last week. It worked, and I also managed to stick another 5kg on it and lift that too.

One of the benches had freed up by the time I was done, so I went over and totally failed at the bench press. Fortunately there was an instructor in the room who came and lifted the bar off me, then swapped it for a 10kg bar. I determined to come back later.

Squat rack guy was unloading the bar...no, he was just changing the weights. Arse. I went back to the lady gym.

I decided to do some wide grip pull-ups, in order to complete a Fitocracy quest, and much to my amazement, discovered someone else had used the assisted pull-up machine, because the counterweight had been changed! Brilliant!

I wasn't going to bother with the leg press this week, but when I went back to the weight room, squat guy was still squatting. What on earth was he doing in there? Unsure if I'd ever get to squat today, I went to the man gym to do the leg press. This time the machine was behaving and I managed a decent set. Back to the weight room. The rack was free! At bloody last!

...Of course the bastard hadn't unloaded his plates. And he had 100kg on that bar. It's a good thing the gym doesn't have any plates bigger than 20kg. And today's gym-goers weren't nearly as nice as last week's, as none of them offered to help me out as I struggled to drag the plates off the bar (which was at about face-height, naturally).

Anyway, I finally got all the plates off the bar, moved it down a few notches, and loaded it up again to the 30kg I felt confident about actually lifting. And once I'd moved the safety bars to a useful height I was finally able to start squatting. About five squats in I realised I was going to be able to do a widowmaker.

Given that 30kg is nearly half my bodyweight, I'm pretty damn sure I'll be completing that intermediate widowmaker quest pretty damn soon. Getting more weight on the bar is going to be challenging as I've got to support it across my shoulders, but my legs are pretty damn awesome.

(Oh, and I did finally get back on the bench and do my proper set with the 20kg bar.)

Fitness goals

wingedkami — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:55:31 GMT

I want to set some fitness goals, and the Fitocracy quest list seems like a good place to start. So here are some quests I intend to achieve:

Not Very Dumb at All
Try out three different Dumbbell exercises within 7 days.

Perform the One-Arm Dumbbell Row at least one time within 7 days.
Perform the Dumbbell Bicep Curl at least one time within 7 days.
Perform the Dumbbell Fly at least one time within 7 days.

Should be doable at home. I normally do barbell bicep curls but there's no reason I shouldn't use dumbbells for a change.

Intermediate Widowmaker
Now that you've gotten past baby and beginner levels, the real fun begins.

Perform Widowmaker (20-rep squat) at 0.5x your bodyweight

This means adding another 10 kg or so to the squat (plus doing it 20 times) but I see no reason I shouldn't achieve this soonish given how much I enjoy doing squats.

The Beauty of Strength.
Moving on up! Find the beauty in the iron. Complete in one workout.

Deadlift 115 lb (52.2 kg) for at least 3 reps in one set.
Barbell Bench Press 65 lb (29.5 kg) for at least 3 reps in one set.
Barbell Squat 95 lb (43.1 kg) for at least 3 reps in one set.

This means adding approximately 20kg to the deadlift, 10kg to the bench press and 20kg to the squat. I will do this, oh yes.

Century Push
Perform 100 push ups in as few sets as possible. Complete this in one workout.

Perform 100 push ups in as few sets as possible.

A long-term plan, since currently I can do 7 push ups, but I fully intend to get there.

Well, that should do for now.

I went to the gym, episode III: The Lady Gym

wingedkami — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:50:18 GMT

I was on my own for yesterday's gym visit, so decided this was the perfect opportunity to investigate the Lady Gym. It was indeed, a Lady Gym for Ladylike Ladies, although not as badly as I anticipated.

It wasn't actually pink. That said, it was red and white, which is only one unfortunate paint-mixing accident away from pink. There were a lot of cardio machines - several of each of bikes, treadmills, rowing machines and steppers. Only one elliptical though, and oddly enough a rather better one than the ones in the man gym. I climbed aboard.

Onto the weight machines. The Lady Gym didn't have all the machines that the Man Gym has, but since I don't use all of them, the only one that I was actually missing was the leg press. The other benefit of the lady gym is that nobody else was actually using the weight machines so I could do them in whatever order I chose rather than when they became free.

While on the lat pulldown machine I noticed that there was a barbell and some weights lying neglected in the corner. I considered doing my deadlifts in here instead of the free weight room. But when I looked closer, there were only a few 5kg weights and smaller ones, so I decided to go with the free weights for that.

Other things available in the Lady Gym were a selection of ab rollers, plus floor mats to use them on, gym balls, and little shiny silver dumbbells - a marked contrast to the manly black iron dumbbells in the Man Gym. There were also a few machines I hadn't seen in the Man Gym - some kind of ab machine, a torso rotation thing, some baffling device for the glutes, and a couple of thigh abductor machines. I declined to have a go on any of them. Rather bafflingly, there was also a pec deck, but Marc pointed out that people might think it makes your boobs bigger.

As to what other women do in the lady gym, I saw people use the treadmills and the bikes, and a lot of variations on the theme of crunches (seriously, people actually use ab rollers?), plus one woman with a dumbell in each hand leaning from side to side.

As I left the Lady Gym, two women were being shown around for the first time. I kind of wanted to stick around to show them that people do actually use the weights, but I had an appointment with the leg press machine in the Man Gym.

Regular readers may recall I had some trouble with this machine last time. This time I had an entirely different sort of trouble. The pin is quite stiff on this one, and while it went easily enough into the 110kg hole, it would not go into the 120kg hole. Lacking Marc's strength to ram the thing in, I was stuck at 110kg, which was very annoying. Still, I did my presses and moved on to the free weight room.

I decided to start with deadlifts this time, and rather than try to find an unoccupied olympic bar, I decided to use one of the pre-set barbells. I couldn't find a 30kg one though. I did find a 25 - and here I found a problem. I'm perfectly capable of deadlifting a 30kg bar, possibly even a 35kg. What I can't do is get the damned things off the barbell rack. Even with the 25kg bar, someone had to help me when the end of the bar got stuck on the rack.

Next time I'll get Marc to help if he's there, or else stick with the olympic bar.

On to squats, and once again I seem to be the only person who uses the squat rack. I reset the safety bars to an appropriate height, and then attempted to get the bar onto the rack. Damnit, not again! The day I can get that 20kg bar to shoulder height will be a good one. Fortunately someone helped me out again. I did a few with just the bar, then started upping the weight. I got up to 25kg with no trouble so I'll try 30kg next time.

Then I wanted to bench press, but while I was squatting, the benches had rather filled up. I did a few dumbell and barbell exercises while I waited, and at last one was free. Unfortunately the person before me had been bench pressing 100kg and hadn't unloaded the bar. Fortunately, he had two 20kg plates on each end and not one 40kg plate, so I was able to unload it. More fortunately, someone spotted that even the 20kg plates were a struggle for me and unloaded the other end for me so I was finally able to do my bench press with the empty bar.

I don't think Fitocracy has 'unloading someone else's plates' as an exercise yet...

So that was the Lady Gym, plus going solo in the Man Gym. And it was pretty awesome. While it's nice to have Marc there so I don't have to worry about getting the bar onto the squat rack or unloading big plates, it's also nice to know that the denizens of the free weight room are kind enough to help me out when I need it.

In which I compare Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, years after everybody else stopped doing that

wingedkami — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:42:20 GMT

I've been pondering the character classes in World of Warcraft and in Guild Wars. Some have a direct parallel in the other game. Others are more complicated...

GW Warrior = WoW Warrior
As you'd expect, thumpy tanking machine.

GW Ranger = WoW Hunter
Different names, but basically the same bow-shooting, trap-setting, beast-taming type.

GW Monk = WoW Priest
Both healers with a bit of optional smiting.

GW Elementalist = WoW Mage
Big blammy spells

GW Assassin = WoW Rogue
Stabby combo attacks

So all clear so far. However, GW has the following other classes:

Mesmer
Necromancer
Ritualist
Paragon
Dervish

And WoW has these:

Druid
Paladin
Shaman
Warlock
Death Knight

Well, I can see a certain parallel between the death knight and the necromancer, but some differences as well. Death knights make decent tanks, and while necros were tougher most GW classes, they certainly weren't tanks. And then there's raising the dead as minions. I know death knights can do this, but it doesn't seem to be on anything like the same scale as a minion master specced necro who would usually run around with their own personal army of oozy bone monsters. The nearest parallel would be a GW warrior with necromancer as their secondary profession.

(The necromancer spec I really miss in WoW is the battery necro. Batteries had one basic role in a party - to recharge the spellcasters. Through creative use of corpses and self-harm, a battery could keep the elementalist nuking and the monk healing even when their energy was running low. I don't currently know of anything in WoW that replicates that.)

The shaman and the ritualist are a reasonable match. The shaman's totems and the ritualist's summoned spirits may look different, but the basic principle is the same. Both of them are able to spec as restoration to back up the healer and both can fling lightning about. They have a slightly different focus though - while you could play a ritualist without any spirits at all, more often they were played as spirit spammer, with spirits being far more important to the fight than totems usually are.

I guess the paragon and paladin are probably the best fit for each other, although that's mostly thematic - they're both holy warriors. The spear-throwing midriff-baring paragon doesn't bear that much resemblance to the heavily armoured paladin. I guess again that the best match for a paladin is a warrior with paragon as a secondary.

That leaves druids and warlocks for WoW and dervishes and mesmers for GW. I guess there's a little similarity between warlocks and mesmers, given that both are big on damage over time and hex-type spells, and you could compare the druid's shapeshifting ability with the dervish's avatars, but by this stage it's all a bit of a stretch.

So why did I write this article? Because there are bits of Guild Wars that I really miss when playing WoW, and this is useful for helping me find what's missing. Not that I'll be abandoning Tlazolteotl, Macha or Palixa the adorable any time soon, but it's nice to know I can create something similar to my little blood necro by making a death knight.

I went to the gym, episode II: The Leg Press Strikes Back

wingedkami — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:22:03 GMT

Based on my last gym experience, I decided to wear a black vest instead of purple, and felt far less conspicuous.

Marc, having previously expressed no interest in any of the cardio machines except the elliptical, suddenly came over mad keen on exercise bikes, but I did convince him to start off on the elliptical with me. This time I managed the full five minutes on level 5, although I felt useless all over afterwards.

The leg press clearly had it in for me after last time, as I had to put it down to 120kg. Still pretty good though. We also added leg curls and leg extensions to the set (I needed to give my arms a rest.)

I took 5kg off the counterweight for doing chin-ups, which made it bloody hard, but I did it. It's the best machine ever!

Marc once again started heading for the exercise bikes, and eventually talked me into having a go on a hand cycle. He assured me that this was very good for the back and shoulders. Unfortunately I found it unspeakably tedious, and after a couple of minutes I gave it up and went back to the assisted pull-up machine. I don't care how good it is for my shoulders. It's no fun at all.

Having run out of machines we headed for the free weight room, which was a lot tidier this week (apart from the dumbbells, which for some reason littered the squat cage). I'd remembered to bring a hair clip this time, so I pinned up my hair and got under the bar. Despite my earlier issues with the leg press, I had no trouble doing 20 squats with the empty bar, so next time I'll get one step closer to ALL THE PLATES.

With the tidier weight room, bench pressing was a realistic possibility. Marc loaded it up to the point where I suggested that I could just practice planks while he bench pressed me. Then it was my turn.

There are two sets of pins on the benches, conveniently positioned at 'too high' and 'too low'. We decided on the latter, given my inability to levitate. Marc initially added 5kg to the 20kg bar but that was too much so I was left with the empty bar again. For some reason I feel less silly lifting an empty bar than a bar with the tiny 2.5kg plates on it.

I finished off with a few 30kg dead lifts, although I think I might just manage 35kg next time.

I did go looking for the Lady Gym while I was there, but didn't track it down until right at the end when I was dressed and ready to go, and would have felt silly going into a gym. So I haven't actually seen it yet. You have to go through the ladies' changing room to get to it, which is why I couldn't find it before - I wasn't expecting to find anything beyond the sunbeds and sauna room. Someone came out of the gym while I was nosing around though, and she was followed by a curious aura of pinkness...

To Be Continued.

Whatever a widowmaker is

wingedkami — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:17:17 GMT

I decided to add some squats to my normal home weights workout, and having upped my overhead press to 13.6kg, this seemed a reasonable weight to work with. (Without the squat cage to catch the thing in case of emergencies, I need a weight I can lift above my head without too much difficulty.)

So I did what Fitocracy, for reasons I don't entirely follow, calls a 'widowmaker' - a set of 20 squats. Oddly enough, while I was doing them, I didn't feel like I was working particularly hard and it seemed pretty easy. It was only after I stopped and put the bar down that my legs filed for divorce.

I also did some deadlifts, using the 29kg bar Marc uses for overhead presses, and got on a lot better than at the gym - the barbell I used there was clearly too heavy for me.

I may have to switch around the order a bit. Doing deadlifts right after the squats probably wasn't the best idea. If I put the leg exercises in between a bunch of upper body stuff, I might get on better.

I've concluded that if I'm going to the gym on a Monday night I need to go straight away after work and not sit at home drinking tea first or I just won't go. (Which is why I did the home weights.) But I plan to go back in a couple of weeks. For one thing I've remembered that in addition to the Man Gym for Manly Men, this gym also has a Lady Gym (possibly for Ladylike Ladies), and I want to know if it's full of pastels and yoga mats or if it actually has equipment I'll want to use.

In other news, what kind of idiot thought it was a good idea to put subwoofers in headphones? Marc was doing revision last night while I played WoW so he asked me to wear the headphones. Now I understand why his kid keeps taking them off and hanging them around his neck while turning the sound up. Not only are they big and heavy, they rattled my ears every time my flying mount flapped its wings.

After wearing these things for a while, my head was hurting so much that I took them off and decided I'd rather play without sound than endure any more thumping and shaking.

I'm now trying to imagine what dubstep would sound like played through them. Possibly an effective form of torture.

I went to the gym

wingedkami — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:09:17 GMT

Most of my strength training is done at home with a set of adjustable dumbells and barbells, but yesterday I went to the gym for the first time. I took Marc with me and I was glad I did.

tithenai described the bizarre gender divide in her gym, with one half full of pastel vinyl weights and gym balls and the other full of black weights and serious machines for men. This was not the case at the Derngate gym, not least because there's no room. From the moment I walked in it was clear that I was in a Man gym for Manly Men. Hence being glad I'd brought one with me.

I thought black leggings and a purple vest would be fairly inconspicuous gym wear, compared to my preferred home lifting outfit of pyjamas and bare feet. But not in the Man gym where everything was black and white, including everybody's clothes. The only splash of colour was a blue floor mat shoved in one corner with a gym ball. I have no idea what they were doing there. Nobody seemed interested in them.

We had an instructor to give us a brief introduction to the machines. He was mostly keen to tell us about the cardio machines, and seemed a little surprised that we were interested in weights too, which would have been understandable if it was just me, given my very purple appearance, but less so with the decidedly more hulking Marc at my side. Once he knew we were interested though, he did introduce us to most of the machines.

We had a quick go on the cross trainers, which Marc said weren't very good, although they seemed alright to me. As a low impact full body workout, they ran rings around the bikes, rowing machines, steppers and treadmills. But really I was there for the weights.

We began with the leg press machine. I like the leg press for one simple reason: while, like most women, I don't have a lot of upper body strength, my legs are actually pretty damn good. I could do the leg press with 140kg, which is more than double my own weight, and that felt pretty awesome.

Next was the lat pulldown machine, where annoyingly I can't remember what weight I used. (Note to self, take a pen and paper next time.) I was quite keen to try this, as there isn't really an equivalent exercise you can do with dumbells (unless you happen to have a trapeze you can hang upside from, I suppose.) It's also a step along the way to doing chin-ups. The best thing about this machine was the big mirror right behind it, so I could watch my arms working. I hope I'm not catching a case of posing from Marc.

Then there was a curling machine, which is probably the worst exercise machine I've ever attempted to use. It took me about five seconds to say 'sod this thing' and vow to stick with barbell curls. I suspect this is a woman thing; Marc's elbows don't hyper-extend the way mine do, and he seemed to quite like it.

At this point the pec deck had become free, so I gave it a go. I'm not totally convinced on this one. I'm sure there must be something better for my pecs, as it really felt quite strange, and I need to look after those muscles as they're the ones I use for shoulder shimmies.

We ignored the verticle row and the shoulder press machine (I can do rows and shoulder presses perfectly well with the free weights at home) and moved onto the machine I was most excited about: the assisted pull-up machine.

Marc initially set the counterweight to 50kg, which was really rather a lot and the platform moved down veeery slowly when I stepped on it. (It occurred to me that you could use this machine as a scale, albeit a rather imprecise one.) He took it down to 30kg, and now I could actually practice chin-ups! And I can reduce the counterweight when I start getting better at them. I love this machine!

We'd run out of machines at this point, and I wanted a look in the free weight room.

Once again I was reminded that this was a Man gym for Manly Men. Once again everything was black and white, including all the weights. It was also a mess - weights everywhere. I think I'm much better off doing my free weights at home, where I don't have to hunt through rows of cast iron dumbells looking for one small enough for me, or take somebody else's 20kg plates off a barbell before I can use it.

However, the room did have two pieces of equipment that I don't have at home, and I was determined to make use of them: a squat rack and a lifting platform. So after reminding Marc once more that there is no way on this earth that I am getting into the ergonomic abomination that is the Smith Machine, I prepared to squat.

I was somewhat hampered by the availability of weights. The first barbell we found turned out to have a pre-set weight which couldn't be adjusted, and it was far too heavy for me. So we took the plates off the olympic bar on the lifting platform and used that.

The olympic bar weighs 45lb (20kg) all by itself, so just getting the thing comfortably onto my back was quite a challenge. (Note to self: next time, bring hair clips.) My first attempt failed - I got to the bottom, my heels came up and I was stuck. Fortunately, with Marc standing behind me I didn't have to dump the thing onto the rack (although I'm glad it was there). Next time I didn't go quite as far down, and this time I managed to get up again as well. At last! Real squats! To be honest, I could probably have handled quite a bit more weight, but this exercise is so challenging and so important to get right, I think I'm find with just the bar for now.

And finally, to the lifting platform to try out a deadlift. While technically I could probably do these at home, given the relatively small weights I'm using, I'm a little concerned about damaging the floorboards if I drop the weight.

Consulting those pictures on Stumptuous, I thing what I actually did was a stiff-legged deadlift. I think the barbell was simply too heavy for me. (It was the same one that was too big for squats.) If I try deadlifts again, it will be with a lighter bar, and I'll try it at home first.

Marc did have a quick go at a bench press, but with the untidy room, finding appropriate weights was somewhat challenging. I didn't even bother. Now I just have more motivation to get the spare room into a state where I can actually get the folding bench down and do it at home.

I left the gym with every limb feeling like it was made of jelly. It's a good thing Marc was driving.

So that was my first trip to the gym. And here's one thing that struck me: while it was very much a Man gym for Manly Men (literally, I saw one other woman there who wasn't only there for the Zumba class and she was just on the cardio machines), while I stuck out horrendously in my purple vest and long hair, it was all OK. There were no funny looks. Everyone just did their thing. The only time anyone spoke to me was to politely ask me to move so he could get to a machine behind me. Sure, I'd brought my own muscly guy with me, but I don't think it would have been much different if I hadn't.

Next Monday we're off to see Derren Brown, but the week after that we're going to try out another gym.

So my advice to fellow female gym-goers based on this visit: don't fear the Man gym. Go and try out the assisted pull-up machine and the leg press because they're great fun. Stay the hell away from that awful curl machine. And try not to be the one driving home.

Push-ups

wingedkami — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:57:52 GMT

Two push-ups.

TWO push-ups.

TWO WHOLE PUSH-UPS.

I are strng grrl

I lift things

wingedkami — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:33:07 GMT

Inspired by the wonderful tithenai, here's the exercises I do.

Overhead press. Currently using 11.2kg, although I hope to add more weight soon as I can nearly do 10.

Bicep curls. With an 11.2kg barbell - another one to add to soon.

Dumbell rows. 6.6kg, although since I can do 15 of them I'll up that again next time.

Lateral raises. 4.6kg. These things are seriously hard.

Tricep press. 3.4kg, but I managed 10 on each side last night, so I'll try upping the weight next time.

Lying wave, aka the exercise for which Fitocracy has no name. You lie on your back with your arms stretched out, then bring the dumbell up in an arc over your head until it reaches your thighs, and then move it back again. 5.7kg and I just increased this one.

Also I'm doing the hundred push-up challenge. Currently I can do no push-ups, but I'm doing incline push-ups until I'm strong enough to do a real one.

What I'm not doing is crunches, having realised that thanks to belly dancing I already work my abs pretty hard and crunches make my back hurt way before my abs start to complain.

Underworld: Awakening - a review

wingedkami — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:34:59 GMT

Underworld: Awakening is the fourth movie in the Underworld franchise, which, in accordance with the rules of movie quality for films not based on a popular series of books, means it should be utter dreck from start to finish.

However, there is, and has ever been, only one real reason to watch an Underworld movie, and that's to watch Kate Beckinsale kick arse in tight trousers. (Which is why I didn't see the prequel.) Apparently the filmmakers are aware of this, because Awakening is practically one long action sequence from start to finish, with barely room to squeeze the plot in. Things explode, elevators plummit, cars crash, bullets fly and people fall off tall buildings, and in the middle of it all is the lovely Selene in a skin tight catsuit and leather corset, doing what she does best.

But they did manage to squeeze the plot in, and it's actually not too bad, abandoning all the old mythology in favour of a more futuristic approach. Humans have found out about vampires and werewolves, and are attempting to exterminate them. While attempting to escape with Michael, Selene gets captured and spends the next twelve years in a cryo chamber until something - or someone - wakes her up.

So we're not talking a cinematic great here, but we are talking an entertaining supernatural action movie with an appealing lead character and a plot that follows on from the preceeding movies without rehashing the same old thing again. In short, I enjoyed it, and based on that huge flashing neon sign at the end saying 'warning: fast sequel' approaching, there may be more to come.

Since this isn't the only popular vampire/werewolf franchise to have recently released a fourth installment, I thought I'd make a few comparisons.

Things Selene does:
Wear leather
Shoot two automatic pistols at once
Slice people up with blades
Look dramatic in a billowly long coat
Run up walls to do somersaults
Blow things up
Generally kick arse

Things Selene doesn't do:
Angst
Play baseball
Moon over drippy humans
Sparkle

Fitocracy again

wingedkami — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:45:22 GMT

Annoyingly, my weightlifting set gets me less than half the Fitocracy XP that an hour of playing Dance Central does. I suspect the weights section has been set up with men in mind. The achievements also suggest this. There is an achievement for doing an overhead barbell press with 0.4 times your bodyweight. Right now I'm pressing less than 0.2 times my bodyweight. This may take some time...

Still, got to level 3. :)

Resoultions

wingedkami — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:21:06 GMT

In 2012, wingedkami resolves to...

Give some bagpipes to charity.
Eat more shiny things.
Give up books.
Find a new chocolate.
Backup my apocalyptica regularly.
Spend more time with my masks.

I can tell you here and now that I will not be giving up books. :)