3 More Courses Down

I've recently completed 3 more short courses on +Coursera, well really these were completed over the past month but I've just finalised them.

Epidemics - the Dynamics of Infectious Diseases: Good course material covering all kinds of diseases, how they spread, frequency, how the original cure or vaccination were created, why vaccinations are important based on how they work, etc. And the course staff took the time every week to create AUA (Ask Us Anything) videos based on the questions the students were asking in the forum. Overall a fantastic course.

Understanding Video Games: The course title is kind of misleading, it had nothing to do understanding video games from a playing perspective, more of a critical analysis of video games, similar to how you would critic a movie, tv show, or other form of entertainment. Far and away the best and most information course videos I've seen, they went beyond a simple instructional video and were enjoyable to watch while you learn. If you're interested in video games then I would recommend this course.

Usable Security: After those course recommendations, here comes the downer. Don't get me wrong, this course is something you can walk away having learned something, it's problem was in that what was required for grading was unclear, there was no feedback on any of the tests, and in the final test most of the questions were completely ambiguous and relying on guesswork. I'm hoping that since this is the first iteration of this course it may just be a simple issue with getting the bugs out, but if this type of course is of any interest to you I would strongly recommend taking a look before paying to do the Coursera Signature Track (which you need to do if you want to complete the overall Cybersecurity Specialisation).

Not a Fan of Early Starts

I'm not a fan of early starts, not at all, I'm not a morning person and crawling out of bed at 5am doesn't do me any favours, this week has been hard.

Tuesday completed Level 1 of Day 8 of 90 days of Action, that was pretty much all I had time for.

Wednesday, took the night off after a run of early starts and did some course work instead, watched the 2nd last week of the course videos for Epidemics and completed the test with an 8 out of 10, I'll get back to it over the weekend and claim the missing 2 marks when I redo the test.

Today, well no "official" exercise, but I was doing some woodworking out in the shed so that counts as manual labour, and arguably that's better for you that an exercise routine or the gym is anyway.

On the brain side though, I'm making a commitment now to return to using +Lumosity on a daily basis, I've slacked off far too much with that site and I have a paid subscription, it's time to get my moneys worth from it, especially since it only takes 10-15 minutes per day.

Busy Busy Busy

Busy busy Sunday yesterday looking after the boys, it's good to spend time with them but if you need to get anything done you may as well write it off because it's never going to happen. So in the end I gave up trying to do Day 8 of 90 Days of Action and did a 10min spin on the exercise bike instead, still got the blood bumping which was the main objective.

Also early starts at work this week add to the problem as they mean less sleep, so no "official" routine for today, instead I've quickly done 2 sets of 10x pushups, 10x situps, 10x squats, and a 30 second plank just to make sure I don't finish the day empty handed.

Will be back on track with 90 Days tomorrow night and will be hitting the gym on Thursday, so all is good, as long as you sweat a little bit each day it's progress in my book.

Cinema Sins

We went and saw Planes: Fire & Rescue today, movie was ok, nothing unexpected given it's coming from the Cars/Plane universe, but what really got me was that the movie was as per listing due to start at 10:30, but before it started there would have been 15-20 minutes of adverts, previews for other films, self promoting of the cinema, etc.

How can the movie industry complain that people are not paying to go see movies at the cinema while simultaneously forcing them to site through a barge of irrelevant rubbish before seeing the movie? Sure you could turn up 15 minutes late, but what if they put less crap on first and it started 10 minutes after advertised starting time and you missed the beginning?

This is why I like having a 55" TV at home, means I can watch movies on a large screen whenever I want, can pause it and go to the bathroom whenever I want, the kids can go for a run around if they feel the need to, etc, this is why the cinema industry is seeing less people, it's just more comfortable to watch movies at home.

But anyway, yesterday's fitness challenge (Day 6 of 90 Days of Action) was completed successfully, albeit due to work I didn't start the squats until well into the evening, and I did 50 back to back as my opening and I could feel that later on.

Today's Day 7 was a Cardio HIIT and good to get the blood pumping, all 15 rounds completed successfully.

FTTN, Yesterday's Technology, Tomorrow

Good day at work, the project concept I forwarded earlier this year has now been enveloped into a much larger project, and in turn that may be enveloped into another project much larger than it, and I'm coming along for the ride, cheers to the future at work :)

Day 5 of 90 Days of Action, as it is with every 5th day, was a stretch day, so nice and easy.

And finally +NBNCo have announced who will be getting FTTN (Fibre to the Node), or in another words a subpar service to the original FTTH (Fibre to the Home) broadband rollout that includes the added bonus of having large, and I mean large, cabinets all over your suburb.

New technology speeds up NBN Rollout

I've had the crews out pulling and splicing fibre cables around my area for the past few weeks and I've been in a build zone for over 12 months, and I'm not in the suburbs listed in this link, so fingers crossed I still get my FTTN.

Monster Egg

This morning while walking around the house I couldn't help but hear the chickens doing their usual "I'm laying an egg" clucking, but this time one of them seemed a little bit more aggressive than usual, a quick check of the eggs later in the day it was quite obvious as to why.

The egg on the left would have come from our youngest chicken who would be about 4-5 months old, that one is 52g. The one in the middle is your stock standard store egg size at 65g, but the one on the right, that monster of an egg, comes in at a massive 91g. That's roughly 50% more than a store bought egg, and too big to fit properly into an egg box. I pity the poor chicken that pushed that one out.

But anyways, on a more serious note, Level 3 of Day 4 of 90 Days of Action completed successfully, the first few steps onto the hard road are done and now it's just a matter of maintaining momentum.

All Over Soreness

Legs still a bit sore so decided to concentrate on the upper body today at the gym, and as per an article I read yesterday have noted down how much weight I used on each of the machines (I was keeping a mental track, now it's actually written down), the goal is to ever so slowly increase those values.

Also completed Day 3 of 90 Days of Action, thankfully this was abdominal work which was the only part of my body that wasn't sore to degree prior to starting, managed to get all the way to Level 3 again, now I guess you could say I have the all over soreness that comes with feeling good to get back into the game :)

To finish off the day and keeping up with the educational facet I've taken another shot at the first test for Developing Innovative Ideas, achieved 7.04/10 for my first attempt (you get 3 attempts, overall score provided each time but individual question markings not provided until after the test closes, highest score counts towards the grade), second attempt managed to get the full 10 out of 10, so good overall start to the course and a good way to finish off the day.

And We're Off and Running.

Completed Day 1 of the 90 Days of Action not long after making the first blog post, and I can solemnly say that even though it wasn't like I've been slacking off and have been doing sporadic exercise and getting to the gym at least once per week or so for the past couple of months, doing it on Level 2 was a killer. It's makes you regret doing it after realising you have 2 floors in your house and you've got a few things to do that involve walking up and down the stairs and your legs are aching, oh well, at least it's a good ache :)

Day 2 is now also completed as of tonight, but due to the soreness of yesterday's getting back into I only managed Level 1, but then I took a look online and realised I was working off a previous edition of the 90 Days of Action program, and this new one has thankfully has a reduction in reps.

Looking at the below sets it's 4/4/10/10/4/4/10/10/4/4 or 32 of each exercise on the way though, the old version had 10/10/20/20/30/30/20/20/10/10 or 90 of each exercise. So really my 3 rounds of the old is equivalent to nearly 8.5 rounds of the new, so success, that's actually a Level 3 with bonuses :)

Guess I'm going to have get a copy of the new version and update myself.

I suppose now would be a good time to put my weight down as a starting point, well according to my scales I currently weigh 83kg, and have a fat percentage of 19.2%, and for reference I'm 178cm tall. It wasn't that long ago I did a health assessment at work, according to that my height/weight ratio is pretty well spot on, and the test showed me as having a body age of 39 years, which wasn't too bad considering I'd actually turned 38 the day before. Really my goal is to reduce that body fat % and increase and tone muscle mass.

And now since it's just as important to exercise the mind as it is the body, time to work my way through the course videos for Developing Innovative Ideas again and maybe a bit of Epidemics.

Back in the blogosphere.

Here I start again, I've had a blog before but really it had no purpose and as such it died a slow and painful death, this time around however, it does. This time around I've got quite a few more things going on, whether it be educational studies or health and fitness or just general interest, so I've got some more things to rant on about.

Starting today I'm going to kick back into +Neila Rey's 90 Days of Action program, I've done it before in the past but due to going on holidays I kind of slacked off and when we returned I never really got back into it again, but even though I only did it for roughly half the program I still lost about 5-6kgs and was clearly looking much better physically.

So keeping track here will be my motivator, I may not do the days 1:1 as per the program, but that's only because I also go to the gym and because shift work can get in the way sometimes, but anyways, onward and upward for the next 90+ days. Here is Day 1.