2011 Weight Loss Recap

Quick weight recap.  As some of you know I note my weight more or less every morning and I crunch this data in Libra, a very nice Android app.  Every year I do a recap.  This year I've included all three years in the chart, with little green dots when something significantly positive (for my weight loss) takes place and a red dot for something negative.  I'll write this year's main events after the break.

This year hasn't gone as planned.  In fact, for a while it looked like I was going to go off tracks completely.  But I steered back at the last minute, and ended up with a glorious 1lb loss for 2011.

2011 started well enough.  Despite the expected holiday bump, I kept the course and kept losing the weight.  Then in late February I made a fateful decision.  My game development schedule was beginning to slide, my motivation to complete it and the growing competition on Android meant I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible.  For that I needed more time.  And working out takes time.  So I took a break from exercising to crunch for the game.  Turned out not to be a great decision.  If we isolate the crunch time alone it's not so bad, but going off course for so long meant it would be that much harder to get back on it.

When the game was released I did my best to get back on track, and succeeded in a way.  But a few moments later I went to Disney World for a vacation, and when I returned I completely failed to return to my good habits.

For the next few months I would take it really easy.  Step on the bike only once in a while, eat like crap and overall returning to a lifestyle that had made me into the near-300 lbs man I hated.  But the slide was so slow that I always believed (correctly it turned out) I could steer it back.  In November I saw my trend going up, and decided it would not be acceptable to finish 2011 with a higher trend than I began.  So I cut back on desserts, returned to the bike on a regular basis and restarted Dance Central, now Dance Central 2, with increased dedication.

And so I end 2011 with 1 lost pound over 2010.  Considering I was aiming at losing 40, it's a rather colossal failure.  But considering I'm still going "the right way", I dare say it could've been worst.  Now aiming for a 30 pounds loss for 2012.  I think it's reasonable, or to put it in a way more fitting for 2012, it's not the end of the world.

2011 Personal Twitter Hall of Fame Inductees

I consider twitter my hive-mind.  Basically, if I need to know something, odds are it will show up on my twitter feed.  If not, either I didn't need to know, or my twitter feed is broken and I need to add people.

This year I decided to give a special mention to those twitter peeps who keep me well informed, who give good insight and provide me with such a great twitter experience.  I've made 2 Top Fives, one Anglo and one Franco, plus a Top Three read-only feeds.  Here we go:

Top 5 Anglo contacts:  These are awesome people I follow, and I'm quite honoured that they follow me back.  I put them in alphabetical order because I don't want to have to sort them out.

EmilyClaireAfan: I was lucky enough to meet with her at this year's MIGS. Recently became director of development and communications for the Canadian Interactive Alliance. Go Emily and looking forward to meeting you again at the 2012 GDC.

mike_acton: When I went to the GDC of 2008, I hadn't heard of Mike Acton.  I left his speak as his new biggest fan.  It's hard to hold a certain belief and be convinced that you're pretty much alone, and then see someone like Mike Acton confidently tell it like it is in front of an audience that's probably (maybe) going full steam against that, or at least has always been told things should be completely opposite.  Since then I've been following his tweets, his speeches and his awesome http://altdevblogaday.com/ initiative.

psychicparrot: My #1 twitter pal, cool dude and maker of all http://psychicparrotgames.com/. Embodies the enthusiastic spirit of indie dev! Continued success through 2012 mate, looking forward reading your tweets.

stevestreeting: The mastermind behind Ogre for 10 years, Steve has positively influence so many people, free of charge, that it's hard to imagine him not deserving whatever good he gets.  Dissecting the Ogre source code is probably the single most important factor in me properly learning OOP, which is critical to understand in today's world.  His insight on technology, business and politics are generally spot-on.

VillageGamer: Deeply connected to two of the most awesome things there ever was: Canada and Technology.  Tami of Village Gamer has been nothing but great towards me and I look forward to seeing more Canada-centric tech articles from her!  Thank you for your coverage of Heroes of Zulula, Con Sonar! and Slash!

Honourable mentions (hope to hear more, see more, and maybe work with you in 2012) : SamColes, MasterBlud and stevewhitemusic

Top 3 Read-only feeds: They don't follow me back, but they provide me with great information, and you might not know about them.

MobileSyrup - If you're interested in the mobile industry, and are Canadian, Mobile Syrup can be your first and last stop.

theMapleTap - Canadian history factoids, because you can never know enough, eh?

RealTimeWWII - Interesting concept, RealTimeWWII is a twitter feed broadcasting from 72 years into the past.  You can relive World War II through

Top 5 Franco:  Mon top 5 franco pour les gens familiers avec la langue de molière.

MarieLuneHB - C'est difficile de pas vouloir suivre Marie-Lune, une geek totale qui s'assume et qui tweet plein de tranches de vie de manière directe et franchement pissante.  À noter qu'elle tire comme un Stormtrooper.  C'est à considérer avant de l'ajouter à votre squad d'Halo.

mcbernard - Impératrice du MIGS et connectée comme peu sur l'industrie du jeu vidéo à Montréal.  Je l'ai croisé au MIGS et je peux dire qu'elle est totalement awesome!  Elle tweet dans les 2 langues.

BenDaGeek - Collaborateur à M. Net 

MelBChartier - Podcasteuse sur les jeux vidéos.  Habite ma région natale et partage mon nom de famille.  Suivez-la.

Zomby2D - Vieux pote du secondaire.  Fan d'Android.  C'est déja bein en masse!

Mentions honorables (à suivre pour 2012) :

Kamelot78, Scalazormo

Velvet Assassin Review

I'm done with Velvet Assassin, which contrary to what that usually entails, doesn't mean I've finished it.  A bit of context: I bought it off Steam for 5$ a few weeks back.  I had usually heard not-so-good things about it but I decided to give it a go.  I fell in love with the story of the real character that inspired this game, so I started with a positive predisposition.

Took me a while to get used to it.  Although the concept of crawling in the shadows and stabbing an unsuspecting Nazi in the spleen is oddly satisfying, the game completely collapses onto itself as soon as you are spotted and suddenly need to be a competent fighter.

As such, the game suffers from three major flaws:

First, the "slit a dude's major artery" button is the "A" button.  Whenever you're close enough to a bad guy who hasn't seen you, pressing "A" instant-kills the bastard, one-shot.  But what does the "A" button does if you've been spotted?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing at all.  So if you're a fraction of a second away from bringing down a Nazi, and you're spotted, "A" will not do pull out your knife and at least attempt a slash, it'll do nothing.  To use a brain-wiring analogy, it would be as though you were an expert knife fighter, but only with your right hand, and if you wanted to assassinate someone, you had to do it with your left hand.  Makes no sense.  This is made even worst by the fact that what triggers the shutdown of the "A" button is the beginning of the enemy's surprise.  So you can be one centimeter away from his throat, and 1/100th of a second away from ending his life, suddenly your attack button does nothing.  In real life, the dude would still die, he would just die a bit more surprised.

Second, once surprise is gone, you have to activate the horribly clunky trigger-based fighting controls.  This joke-of-a-system turns your expert assassin into a bumbling, drunken, marksmanship-deprived idiot.  Throughout their evolution console-based shooters have evolved several compensation mechanisms to counter the fact that controllers are awful when it comes to precision and aiming.  Velvet Assassin ignores all of that and gives you raw unassisted aiming.  The argument for making manual aiming/fighting clunky and bad in stealth action games is generally based upon the fact that if you play your game well, you're never supposed to resort to that.  You're an expert stealth killer, not front line grunt.  In a way I could forgive this if not for the third and final flaw : no stealth in the final battle.

For the final battle, the designers decided to throw out everything that was good in their game and focus exclusively on what sucked: the no-stealth battles.  Made artificially difficult, not by its design but by the horridness of the controls, the final waves of enemies produce an endless exercise in frustration.  Oh and you can't go back and grind to level up your stats.

Velvet Assassin isn't such a bad game, and I would've left with a better experience had the ending just been sneaking up to a dude and slitting his throat, one-shot, rather than this.  It's so annoying to give up on a game at the end.  I find myself doing that more and more.  But that's going to be part of an upcoming rant entitled "Games are too long".

Until then, rant-off.

2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss - Quarter 4: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

If there was one way to describe my behaviour in the third quarter, it would be this: Asleep at the wheel. I failed to recognize the changing landscape and I just kept on course, even though that course was headed straight for a cliff. Fortunately, I woke up and managed to steer clear of the abyss.

October started with the progressive implementation of two new rules that would set myself up to reach my first major milestone. The first one, which was implemented on day 1, was to go up the stairs, 20 floors, four times a week. I was extremely lucky for this one, because a group of cool motivated people at work were already doing this on a daily basis. All I had to do is attach myself to that group. Motivation is always easier in a group. And it's also much more interesting to talk your way up, than to do it alone, in silence.

The second one was the complete boycott of everything related to bloody machine. This means the machine itself, the coffee machine next to it (instant ain't so bad) and any activity benefiting from the revenues of either. I cannot force them to fix the problem, but I can make bloody sure I don't support them until they do. But control is a hard thing, when faced with these options everyday. So I applied control where I could: No change. I empty my pockets of loose change every morning. And I try to never create a situation where I will have spare change in my pocket.

A very wise friend once said to me: The best way to win in life is to pit your weaknesses against one-another. Instead of trying to fix your weaknesses, find out if another one of your weakness would be able to deal with this one. The original weakness being gluttony, the ones used against it would be sloth and pride.

Sure every time I go for a glass of water in the kitchen I am stared down at by the machine and its contents. But will I step on my pride and ask for change? Not really. Will I break a 20 by making the effort of going down the elevator to buy some from the dépanneur? Meh. Maybe I don't want this crap so much, now.

The results of these two rather draconian measures was instantaneously felt, and my weight started to drop rapidly and consistently. I lost a bit more than 2lbs, and reached a huge milestone (marked with A).

What's that? A rapid climb? A giant bump on the road? Are my new measures failing. No they are not. The point marked A in October signalled my passing from a Class II Obese BMI-rated person to a Class I. Huzzah! And as it was planned since the beginning, this called for a week-long binge and a break from any and all exercise.

Considering the circumstances leading up to the achievement, I could've decided to postpone the binge. But what good is a reward system if you deprive yourself of it when the time comes?

So I crossed the line back up again, but rapidly crossed it a third time. This time, hopefully, for good.

November was a great month. It saw the arrival of a new and important piece in the puzzle: The Kinect. Just as Dance Dance Revolution helped me in the past, Microsoft's motion-detecting gizmo would play a huge role in the upcoming month.

There are two ways to look at November. One could say I lost only three pounds in a full month. I prefer to consider I lost four pounds in under three weeks. December would show that the second way to look at it was a better indication of the future.

With a winning combination of the morning bike routine, the almost daily 20 floors stair climb, Kinect Dance Central, and the boycott of the machine, December became my best month on the record. With close to seven pounds lost and almost an 100% trend dropping metrics. There was one exception, marked A, when a convergence of Christmas and Birthday-related obligations led to four restaurant meals in a row, and a very tiny bump. But other than that, even the Christmas Eve party (marked B) didn't managed to bump my actual weight above my trend line.

An so my 2010 Odyssey in Weight Loss ends on an very positive note. Although the road through it was bumpy, inconsistent and often doubtful, I managed, at the very last moment, to get back on track and deliver acceptable results.

Lesson learned: Find weaknesses to deal with your other weaknesses. Apply control where it is easiest.

I would conclude with this bit of advice: Find the proper tools to help you. You can succeed with willpower alone, but if you have proper tools you'll have an easier time, and a lower chance of failing. Who knows what these are in your case, but in my case, those were:

1. Prioritisation. Your weight-loss process must be #1 or close to #1 in your order of priority. In my case it started to work when I replaced my game development project (which can be an endless time sink) with this as a top priority in my life. Of course, people with families might not be able to bring this to #1, but keep it as high as possible.
2. My strategically positioned stationary bike along with an endless array of 30-minutes TV shows to watch on it.
3. The "Libra" app on Android.
4. Proper Metrics. I can't stress this enough. Being able to properly quantify the consequences of your actions is an absolute key.
5. The stair-climbing posse (Michelle, Carole and Françoise).
6. Pride (Trumps Sloth and Gluttony).
7. Coffee (haven't mentioned that, but it helped a lot. I used to not drink coffee at all. Now I have 1 coffee after lunch and it does wonder to eliminate the need for a mid-afternoon snack).
8. Sloth (Trumps Gluttony).
9. Kinect Dance Central (with special thanks to Nelly Furtado, Lady Gaga, Cascada and the Quad City DJ's, all of whose music I would never listen to in any other circumstances).

Considering my current trend, I have every reason to believe 2011 will see my ongoing weight problem as something of the past. I'll come back to this blog in a year, and tell you all about it. Happy New Year!