Fitocracy and My Lifestyle Change

So I joined this site in September of last year thanks to The 404 Show. In the past eight months, Fitocracy has successfully trained me to take the stairs in my office building, so much that I am actually starting to feel guilty about the six to twelve points per day.

This is how I know that the site works: Fitocracy has helped me develop one healthy habit to the point that I no longer think of "walking up the stairs in lieu of the elevator" as a workout or even a habit; now it's just part of going to work.

Fitocracy served as my springboard into healthy living. First it was just noticing what I am doing and what I am not doing. Eight hours a day on my butt in front of a computer screen. That's my job. Seven hours of sleep. That's so I can function. Total 24 hours in a day, minus 15 hours of combined work and sleep, leaves 9 hours of whatever I want. Most of those 9 hours are spent on my butt in front of a computer screen, playing junk and watching junk. A sedentary lifestyle doesn't quite cut it; I'd go with severely sedentary. Maybe even fatally sedentary. Coming to this realization sparked the need for change.

Sometimes change is difficult and sometimes it's easy.

I wasn't always sedentary, fat, overweight, or obese. The Nintendo Wii Fit calls me obese. I was incredibly active and fit in high school; I played soccer in the fall and ran track in the spring. During the winter months I was lifting in the school weight room and over summer break I was conditioning for soccer. I was an athlete. I was fit, toned, and powerful. And I looked "good" in all the pop culture sense.

While conditioning for soccer in the gawd-awful June heat before my senior year, I questioned all of it. We were running sprints, my body ached and burned. Sweat stung in my eyes as I bolted from goal box to goal box. The moment of clarity: none of it made me happy. There was no joy in my actions. I almost quit, right there. The team mentality kept me for the season, but once soccer was over, I was done. I didn't hit the weights in the winter or run track in spring. I chilled, relaxed, and vegged out. I went from high school to college with the same outlook. Freshman fifteen? I was more of a freshman fifty.

Going from active to sedentary was an easy change for me. Because I'm naturally lazy. I'm the DoNothingMan, remember? Discipline helped me perform in high school, athletically and academically. I threw the athletic discipline out the window my senior year and never looked back. Until now, eight years later.

Making the change from sedentary to active looks to be difficult. I'm not going to post my goals up here, just yet. But I have found a number of awesome tools. Fitocracy is joining LoseIt! and Calorie Counter as my tool set to achieve healthier living. LoseIt! serves as my primary food and weight tracking app; it comes loaded with tons export features, perfect for the data junkie like me. The My Fitness Pal Calorie Counter has a very large food library, much larger than LoseIt! (I hate unnecessary punctuation in titles). This calorie counter will supplement LoseIt! and Fitocracy. I'm not starting all this craziness until May.

Which means I am eating Taco Bell tonight and drinking as much Baja Blast Mountain Dew as I can handle until they kick me out.

The Future of Video Games?

I guess I understand the precautions and the security that are seemingly imminent in the next generation of video game consoles.
I don't like it.

Consider the PSP. I believe that there were two types of people excited to hold the portable powerhouse of 2004/2005. The first type (this was me back then) plucked the PSP from its packaging and said: This amazing little machine can do so much!

The second type saw the potential of the PSP and said:
This amazing little machine can do so much more!

Sony already knew this (or realized it shortly after) because newer iterations of the PSP unloaded features and updates left and right. Still, we wanted more out of the PSP and people hacked it up, adding even more features to the amazing machine. Of course, hacking led to stolen games, which Sony claims is the reason for locking the PS Vita down.

I slowly grew into the second type of PSP owner. Unfortunately, Sony won't acknowledge the hacker ingenuity and creativity that grew out of the PSP. For example, you can use a hacked PSP for a USB monitor now. That's crazy. And amazing. And awesome.

My point here, when it comes to video games, give us Isla Sorna instead of Isla Nublar. Set the limits: it's an island. If you want to play with this video game console, you're going to have to stay within these boundaries or you'll drown. However, imposing too many limitations and needless security is going to cause problems, just like it did on Isla Nublar. With Samuel L. Jackson dying.

Sony needs to make something awesome, then sell that awesome thing and its island to the consumers, saying: here's the PS4 and here's the PS4's island, now make this awesome thing better.

Resident Evil Rising

Ug. Two posts about pokemon. How lame. Let's talk about zombies.

Resident Evil 6 was recently announced. I'm curious. That's about all I can say about a game series that I used to love. Don't get me wrong, I still love Resident Evil (1, 2, 3, Code Veronica, and 4). I guess there's even a trading card game. Nuts.

Right now there are three Resident Evil games out in limbo for me. One is out and two are about to be released in the next two months. I'm talking about Mercenaries, Revelations, and Operation Raccoon City. Two of these outliers are for the Nintendo 3DS. That instantly makes me cringe. But let's break these down.

Starting with Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, this little guy came out over the summer and tripped tons of used game land mines with the controversial save feature. I don't care about that. What really pissed me off about this was Mercenaries started as the mini game at the end of RE3 and was further hashed out at the end of RE4. I really find it hard to believe that this title can stand alone as its own game without a story arc laying the foundation. When this came out for the 3Ds, it didn't make me want to buy a 3Ds. On the contrary, it made me go back to RE3 and RE4 and play the Mercenaries mode.

Over the years, Resident Evil has definitely shifted from the actual survival horror genre into the action survival horror space. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is meant to satisfy that action survival horror audience. I can't complain too much about the third person over-the-shoulder shooter style (because I liked it in RE4), but I did get tired of it in RE5. However the action-oriented game play makes for great co-op. The setting, story, inventory, and lack of zombies in RE5 bothered me, but I loved playing it co-op with my best friend (and fellow Resident Evil fan); I hope Operation Raccoon City will offer a similar experience. Additionally, it takes place around RE2 and RE3 (two of my favorites) and has zombies. And then there's the pre-order swag. Look at all this RE bling.

My only worry, stemming from playing as Jack Krauser in the RE4 Mercenaries, is that all these super-powered Umbrella spec-ops characters are going to have clunky controls to execute their special abilities. I don't want to play with six different Krausers.

Last is the upcoming 3Ds title: Resident Evil: Revelations, this game makes me extremely nervous. Here's why:

I don't always use twitter for this kind of thing, but when I do, I'm never afraid to ask the guys of the 404. Revelations claims to return to RE's roots while keeping the over-the-shoulder visual style. I don't think the zombies are coming back, but this game does take place on a cruise ship, which reminds me of past games. But it also reminds me of Deep Rising. What a horribly hilarious movie! Which also sounds like Dead Rising, another zombie game. Shit is getting weird. I better call it a day.

Will Resident Evil: Revelations force me to shell out the cash for a Nintendo 3Ds? We'll see.