Losing weight and playing video games have always seemed like the perfect combination.
I’ve been mixing the two since I was in my early 20’s. Counter Strike Source was released in 2004 and I was hooked. I remember the first time I played and died almost immediately. The way Counter Strike works is that once you die you wait until the round ends and then play again. Because I was terrible I would often have to wait for a minute to a minute and half before I could play again. I used this opportunity to start working out and get some extra exercise. I would do pushups, pullups, situps, etc in between rounds. I did this for about a year before I started to actually get good at Counter Strike and stopped dying within 20 seconds.
Since Counter Strike released I really have not found a good replacement. Most shooters, especially since the introduction of Call of Duty, have focused on deathmatch type modes where you respawn as soon as you die. More minutes of playing per game time.
Around the new year I decided to pick up hearthstone, a card game made by Blizzard. I found their ‘classic’ game mode of playing against others pretty boring however I have come to really enjoy a mode they call battlegrounds. For some context, the battlegrounds mode has you picking random heros and random cards from a set pool in order to build combos against 8 other opponents. Your ranking increases if you finish in the top 4 against your opponents and drops if you finish in the bottom 4. Each turn, before you face an opponent, you could have up to 75 seconds to pick some new cards. I have found that more often that not I could do this in 5-10 seconds, especially if I already have a good strategy. As I started to play I realized I was in the same scenario I was in with Counter Strike. 10-20 seconds of gaming and 30-60 seconds of waiting.
Here is a good video explaining on it works
With all this time in between rounds I started going back into my routine. Every round I would try to do something different and I tried to push myself as hard as possible during that time akin to HIIT (high intensity interval training). Also depending on the exercise I would stop when I can’t select any more minions or until the round itself restarts. For instance I can do a lot of pushups without issue so if I was doing pushups I would do them until I can start picking minions again. But, burpees tire me out so I would do them after I picked my minions and then would stop so I could watch the round play out. Exercises that I found that work well are: Burpees, pushups, jumping squats, pullups.
And it looks like it worked!
In about a month I lost roughly 10lbs!
Starting
Ending
I highly suggest for anyone who is looking to be healthier to try and incorporate some light exercise when you can.
Below are some other random thoughts I had:
For the most part, commercial products that seem to be blend fitness and gaming started around the introduction of the Wii in 2006 (DDR excluded). Games like Wii Fit& Wii Sports being the obvious examples and even most recently games like Ring Fit Adventure have found a new audience. Just take a look at T-Pain streaming using the Ring Fit
Another avenue that is starting to be popular for the combination fitness/video game market are VR games. Logically it makes sense. You almost always are standing up and moving around when playing a VR game. If your able to use something like this then the possibilities are endless.
Outside of commercial products hackers have been trying to combine the two for a while now.
Back in the heyday of World of Warcraft a user would use her stationary bike while playing on her laptop. Not the most complex setup Burning Calories while playing
Another variation is the standing desk with treadmill underneath it Treadmill
While this is neat it would be even cooler if your character speed depended on how fast you moved on the treadmill. Back in 2008 this was achieved by connecting a treadmill to some tires and mouse sensors Cooler Treadmill
Going back to VR we have a really cool combination of a treadmill, VR headset and world of warcraft:
This guy takes it to the next level combining VR, the omnidirectional treadmill and World of Warcraft:
Since moving into my home 2 months ago I have felt that the biggest thing missing was a desktop computer. With computer parts prices being ridiculously high I came up with an alternate solution that has so far worked pretty well.
My current laptop is a 2016 Macbook pro with 16gb ram, 256 ssd, built in gpu and connected to ultrawide 32 inch LG. No issues even with the 4 year old Intel CPU except for the fact that any sort of intense video processing or playing games is impossible. Rather than building an entire desktop for my new place I figured why not tack on a GPU to my laptop and that should handle everything I need at least for the next year or two.
A great resource for this is https://egpu.io They have a lot of handy guides for specific builds. To my dismay, a lot of guides involve things like a Mantiz (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0745GHN53/) or the Razer Core X (https://www.amazon.com/Razer-Chroma-Aluminum-External-Enclosure/dp/B07Q78VMPW/ref=sr_1_1_sspa) which seem to run around 300-400$ at minimum. Even more expensive options are buying an enclosure that comes with a GPU. While not a bad solution these seemed overpriced considering I already had a spare PSU and GPU (GTX2070). Also my GPU would be high on a shelf and I didn’t need the protection of an enclosure.
That’s when I stumbled upon the ADT-link R43SG-TB3. A no frills thunderbolt 3 adapter where you supply your own GPU and PSU. At a fraction of the cost of other solutions on Ali-express (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001134268895.html) this seemed like the perfect fit. I’d be lying if I didn’t have my hesitations about this working but I went ahead and ordered one. Getting it connected was a little bit weird so I followed this image:
After getting it setup you’ll have to follow some specific instructions as to what windows version you can use and driver specific things which you can find on egpu.io. After I had done that I haven’t had much of an issue. Running RPSC3 is a challenge but the bottleneck is my CPU. I was capable of setting up the index and playing Half Life Alyx without any issue.
If you decide to do something similar to this, my only suggestion would be is to get an AMDGPU instead of NVIDIA as it makes switching between OSX and Bootcamp easier and you can use the AMDGPU natively on OSX.
Trying to find a replacement for an Icemat mouse pad?
Back in 2001 SteelSeries (then known as icemat) released a glass mousepad.
It wasn’t a perfect product. There were a lot of downsides in all honesty. It easily attracted dirt & food stains, destroyed mouse skates and sometimes wouldn’t even work with some mice. But wow did that acid treated glass make it silky smooth to move your mouse on. I bought mine in 2008 and they had stopped making them at that point but you still could find them on eBay and Amazon. It was weird using it a first and the noise of bad skates scratching against the glass is not something you easily forget. I didn’t come to appreciate the mouse pad until I had gone over to friends houses and used their cloth mouse pads and realized how difficult it was to move the mouse. After that, I was hooked and pretty much set. One big advantage with glass over cloth is that cloth wears out over time whereas the glass should last a life time. Well theoretically at least.
The one thing that can ruin a glass mouse pad is it if it breaks. As mine did
Having not looked into mousepads for more than a decade I was dismayed as I could not find an Icemat anywhere. Not only on big retailers but also on eBay and Amazon.
It seemed that glass mousepads have fallen out of favor. The price, the constant need to replace mouse skates, lack of portability and just the ease of using cloth mousepads are my biggest guesses as to why.
It seemed to be a pretty accurate list compiled by a redditor. I first tried out the skypad https://skypad-gaming.com/ which I can say with 100% certainity is not as good as the ice mat.
I’m now using one a Artisian Shidenkai from Japan https://www.amazon.com/ARTISAN-SHIDENKAI-White-FX-SK-MD-XL-W-Japan/dp/B07F5TJQ37/ref=sr_1_1 From what I understand it is some sort of combination cloth/glass mousepad with glass beads embedded in the cloth. Honestly it works pretty good. Reading some reviews it sounds like these do not last so we’ll see. I’m hoping that this works out good just long enough for another icemat to show up on eBay or something.
How to get internet for free aka borrow your neighbors xfinity internet
As a person who leans towards frugality, when I purchased a new place, the first thing I thought was how am I going to handle the internet.
Trying to figure out a way to not pay, I setup a way of ‘copying’ the comcast/xfinity signal that is broadcast throughout my complex. You might be asking why go to the trouble of making your own hotspot if I’m just using the xfinity hotspot? The reason is if you have electronics like a TV or Nest, you are going to want more control over what they are connected to. The best way of doing that is to have an in-home wifi that all the devices can connect to.
Make sure the router is switched off and then connect the router’s power supply.
Disconnect all Ethernet cables, except for one, which should connect your computer to LAN port 1 on the router. If you have anything connected to the USB ports, it would be a good idea to disconnect those as well.
Assign a static IP of 192.168.1.10 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 to your computer.
Next step was to put the router into rescue mode
With the router powered off, depress and hold the reset switch on the back of the router with your pencil eraser.
While continuing to depress the reset switch, power on the router.
Continue to hold the reset switch until the power LED begins to blink slowly.
Release reset switch, the router is now in rescue mode.
Click the Browse… button and select your AdvancedTomato firmware .trx file then click the Upload button to begin transferring the firmware. This could take a while, just be patient. Wait at least 10 minutes before giving up.
Once the transfer is complete you’ll see the “Upload completed” page. Click the Continue link and the router will reboot. Go ahead and wait until the router completes its reboot. This might take a while, maybe as long as 5 minutes. When the wireless LEDs light up steadily the router should be booted up.
Optional Refer to [3] for instructions on clearing the NVRam. I did not have to do this.
Configure your router Point your browser to http://192.168.1.1 and login:
Username: root
Password: admin
After you login change your password
Now setup xfinity borrowing
Grab another laptop, iphone, etc and connect to xfinity. Make sure your connecting to the 5ghz band. Take note of this products MAC address
On your router go to BASIC : NETWORK : WIRELESS, Set the 5Ghz Wireless Mode to ‘Wireless Client’ and set the SSID to the name of the 5Ghz xfinity hotspot you identified (probably xfinitywifi). Leave the other settings to ‘Auto’ or the defaults and leave the security disabled. This is your router’s uplink to the hotspot.Click on “MAC Address” and change it to the MAC address from step 1. Save the setting.
Under BASIC : NETWORK : WIRELESS, Set the 2.4 Ghz Wireless Mode to ‘Access Point’ and set the SSID to your proffered WiFi name (https://athlonsports.com/funny-wifi-names). This will be your connection for ALL your devices without having to sign-in to Comcast. Save the setting.
Under BASIC : NETWORK : WAN, Set the type to ‘DHCP’ and Wireless Client Mode to ‘5Ghz’. Save the setting. It may take a minute, but your Router should now link to the hotspot as it’s WAN port over 5Ghz and function as your own WiFi over 2.4 Ghz.
Check the uplink under STATUS : OVERVIEW : WAN. This should have information about the IP#, Subnet, Gateway, DNS #’s that the Xfinity hotspot is providing to your Router.
Been using this for 6 months. Upfront costs: 2 hours and 100$. Money saved per month = 65$
