For the three of you that have ever landed on this site, I’m going to make some changes. I’ve created another site called fitnessbug.net and I’m going to move all of the fitness oriented stuff over there. (somehow) Then I’m going to make a better effort of posting IT related stuff here. Shoot - I may even attempt to upgrade this cobbled together site to WP2.3 - um - maybe not.

Good news - my back pain is gone. The nutrition changes that I made last week seem to have helped a bit, but I’m still tired in the afternoons. My weight and BF% is holding steady which is a bit discouraging since I am doing way more cardio than ever before. I’m trying to be patient which is not one of my strong points. I’m probably eating too many calories, but I also need energy to keep my cardio efforts strong. Keep reading →

Wow - What a week!! Last week’s workouts went like clockwork. Adding swim practice 2 days a week is forcing me to refine my nutrition program. I’m feeling tired in the afternoon, but it’s not clear at this point if that is due to a lack of sleep or lack of food. I’m increasing my calories a bit for this week and adding in some more carbs to keep my energy levels up. I’m waking up fairly easily at 5AM now. There were a few days last week where I had fairly involved mental arguments with myself; however, the workouts won over more sleep. Keep reading →

My goal is to compete in my first sprint distance triathlon on 6/10/2007 called the Indiana Downs Triathlon (Little Downs) in Shelbyville, IN. The distances go like this - 1/4 mile swim, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run. I feel pretty confident that I will finish so I’m setting my goal to finish in the top half.

Where am I at today? I can easily run 3 miles in 30 minutes. I can ride 25 miles in 1.5hrs. Swimming is the unknown; I haven’t swam laps since high school swim class about 16 years ago. I lift weights 5 days per week training 1 body part each day. I’m about 175Lbs and 20% body fat on my Tanita scale. I really need to get my BF percentage down quite a bit so I’m not carrying around a bunch of dead weight. Keep reading →

If you are looking for decent underwater photography from your snorkeling or diving adventures, take a look at Canon’s line of digital cameras and their underwater cases. I wanted something better than a disposable film camera and considerably less expensive than a pro level, purpose-built underwater camera. I think I found a very good compromise in the Canon SD700IS with Canon’s WP-DC5 underwater housing. The housing was about $160 which seems pretty reasonable considering the cost of underwater camera equipment. Canon has a lot of good info on their site.

There’s not much to the setup. Just follow the simple instructions for installing the o-ring gasket, drop the camera in and close the door. Make sure you know how to use all of the camera’s buttons before putting it in the case. You can’t really see the button labels after the case is on. I set the camera to manual mode and jumped in. The Image Stabilizer (IS) seemed to help out since your always sloshing about in the water. Some of my shots had a bit of motion blur, but most came out better than I expected. The SD700IS has just enough settings in the manual mode to match the conditions. It doesn’t support the RAW format which would make post processing a bit more dynamic. Keep reading →

My wife and I recently vacationed on Providenciales which is the most developed island in the archipelago. TCI is located about 575 miles southeast of Miami; its closest neighbors are Haiti and Cuba. The land itself is primarily flat limestone that resembles a cross between a limestone quarry and a desert.

Sounds attractive - huh? Why did we pick TCI?
1. Grace Bay Beach
2. Awesome water
3. Awesome weather in February
4. Low crowds (for now)
5. Easy flight from Indy

Now that we are back - How did it measure up? Keep reading →

Well I tried and I tried to get Lightbox to integrate with my current site. It worked fine for the images in the sidebar, but I couldn’t get it to work in posts. I tried every suggestion that I could find and finally gave up after several hours. Since my blog was fairly new and I have very little traffic, I decided a reinstall was in order. After all the hacking, I wasn’t sure which part of the site was broken. I installed WordPress to a new folder and reinstalled the WPG plugins. I replaced the wordpressembedded Gallery theme with a fresh copy and pointed WPG to the old gallery. Finally, I followed shinerman’s instructions. Amazingly enough, IT WORKS!!!!

Here’s the current rundown…
CMS: WordPress
Theme: Cutline theme optimized for WPG2 by Alywin
Plugins: WPG2, WP lightbox-js, code markup, subscribe to comments, wp-contact form
Photo Gallery: Gallery2
Theme: wordpressembedded

If you are using WordPress and the Cutline theme, here is how I made a few simple changes. I added a border around the whole page, widened the page to 900px, and changed the background of the page and content. Naturally there are many way of doing the same thing. If you have a better way, please let me know. Keep reading →

I enjoy watching Dolphins perform amazing acrobatic feats at the hands of skilled trainers. They’ll leap through the air as if rocket propelled. Their massive tail can generate enough force to push them through the water at over 20 mph. It’s pretty amazing what a Dolphin will do for a smelly morsel of fish. If you haven’t had the opportunity to observe Dolphins and other sea creatures at a zoo or an aquarium, put it on your to-do list now. Keep reading →

There are very few things that will get me out of bed at 5am on a cold fall morning. Every year, the tributaries of Lake Ontario come alive with an amazing feat of nature known as a Salmon run. Huge King Salmon that have been living in Lake Ontario instinctively swim back to their birthplace fueling the cycle of life. While in the lake, they are focused on one task - eating. They feed with such voracious vigor that they grow to 20+ lbs in 3 years. Their mouths are huge and capable of ingesting vast amounts of rich Omega-3’s in one rush through a bait pod. Keep reading →