The Blog of G

Hi all, week 2 and I’m still going this week and next weeks reviews are actually fairly closly related. While MP3 players and Heart monitors seem fairly diverse gadgets I use both only in one place… The gym!

I know some of my readers may be surprised to learn that I have a weight problem! It’s true, It’s getting to be less of a problem everyday though and part of the success I’m having on this is down to these 2 gadgets.

I’ll start with the less interesting of the 2 gadgets, my Heart Monitor. The vital details first of all It’s the most basic “Polar” model available the F2, there are 2 elements a “wrist watch” type device and the sensor unit that straps to my chest.

While this is a basic model it does everything I need and has an unadvertised “Bonus features” that I really like but more on that later.

This unit does everthing I need, it tells me my current heart rate, it times my workout and when I’m finished it tells me my average heart rate for the duration of my workout.

There are other models on the range that give alarms when your heart rate is getting out of the range that you set but what’s wrong with just looking at your wrist? Or for that matter leaving the “watch” in an easily viewable spot while working out.

As for the unadvertised “bonus feature” I mentioned well my local gym uses Procor equipment that has heart monitor handles builty-in. The chest sensor for my Heart monitor is picked up by this kit so while I’m on one of these machines I have a full read out with target workout zones the whole lot, very handy

Why would you use a heart monitor? well for a start so far in the 3 months of my excercise regime I have paid out more than €500.00! A heart monitor is a small aditional cost that insures I get the most out of my exorcise program and optimise my limited time that I can afford to speng in the gym. Plus it’s interesting to see the difference in your heart rate for different activities.

Hi all and welcome to the first installment of Musical Monday, before we get into the meat of this weeks article I just wanted to let you all know what I’m listening too as I type. Well, I have Pandora playing “Swinging Cheese radio” for those of you who aren’t familiar with Pandora, give this a read

Anywho onto this weeks feature. Turn that S**t off!I saw this story a while back and I’ve been meaning to post about it since so I think there is no better way to start a weekly music feature than reminding people that in order to enjoy music fully you need to be able to hear it fully. This is something I can speak with some authority on, in the past I worked in the music industry and having stood in front of a 6500 watt+ PA for 5 or more nights a week for almost 3 years I can say that I am very lucky not to have severe hearing damage, but in reality luck had very little to do with it and ear plugs had everything to do with it.

Unfortunately, I do suffer from some minor tinnitus which has over the last 10 years gotten slightly better, however does tend to leave me with sleepless nights if I go to a Gig or concert.

My case is a little extreme in that I was in front of a PA almost every night for 2-3 hours minimum. I should be far worse off but I was lucky enough to have been warned of the dangers by a rather kindly middle aged drummer, he explained it rather well. It’s not so much really loud noises that do the damage as those that are higher pitched and close by.

If you go to gigs you may have already noticed this but in general the older a drummer gets the further away their cymbals get from there head, this is because they have recognised that high pitched noises (like cymbals in particular) tend to do more damage than say a more bass sound.

Now before we (the human race) discovered amplification and industrialisation of the world, hearing problems were far less common than they are today, unfortunately our modern world gives us plenty of opportunities to damage our hearing without us doing it deliberately.

Where that BBC article goes wrong, imho, is that it focuses on MP3 players as being the evil ear damaging device. This is not entirely true, yes they provide the sounds but it is the headphones that deliver this sound to you. By and large most headphones that are sold with MP3 players are small and do not block much ambient noise out, as a result the wearer ends up turning the volume up to block out the other noise so they can hear their music choice clearly, the irony being that this behavior will lead to hearing loss. In fact I challenge anyone to sit in a quiet room and not hear a buzzing sound at some level when the room is in fact silent. That buzzing sound is damaged hearing. It is almost impossible to avoid in our modern society but there are a few simple things that you can do to avoid unnecessary damage.

Not around here ye won’t What an afternoon, I did some D.I.Y. as the collection of pans on the cooker top had finally gotten to much for me. so some hooks were purchased and the 3 pans and our hand blender yokkie now live on the back of the pantry door. Wheter or not they stay there or not remains to be seen.

I also made 3 Litres of fantastic Tomato & Basil sauce for pasta (that’s the red stuff in the jug & pots ready for the freezer) I’m even thinking that I might add some cream to some of it and call it “Cream of Tomato and Basil Soup” It’s soooo nice. Yum

The 2 trays of round things are my sweeties Peanut cookies just ready for the oven and being as I am a fan of Sesame Street and this guy in particular, I’m looking forward to them getting out of the oven

The dish on the right of the picture has still to be filled with one of my sweeties Pumpkin pies *drools* and I have to make some of my famous meatballs, and Elly has a beef stew to make and some other bits and pieces to finish off, It’s not just the squirrels that are stockpiling food at this time of year I guess

Anyway, I better get back and do the dishes so we have space to complete our vast amount of tasks. Still it’ll be worth it when it’s all done and we can tuck into some stew and spuds with the Dukes of Hazard movie for this evening’s entertainment.

OK, so I’m looking through my Google analytics for my blog this morning. I find it really interesting to see where all my readers are coming from and how many are returning visitors. I prolly should take some time out to learn a bit more about it other than the whole pretty pictures aspects but time is a valuable thing and I am not a rich man

Anyway, I was looking at my “geo map overlay” (For those of you not familiar with google analytics it shows an approximate location of a site viewer based on there IP Address) and since I started this blog I have seen locations light up all over the world, much to my surprise, I might add. I’m really not that interesting

It somehow makes me feel more confident to know that people in Australia, New Zealeand, Japan, China, continental europe, the USA, Canada and Peru read my blog, some more regularly than others, but it’s a real ego boost to know it’s not just my friends and family that are reading.

This is how Analytics educated me this morning…

1. I have had a page view from South Africa on wednesday 20/9/2006
2. There is an Athlone South Africa

Needless to say I was a bit surprised by no. 2, I was wondering was analytics telling me porkies, so a spot of googling was done to confirm

So now I guess, I just need to get a viewer from the antartic to give me a surf-by and I’ll have to start checking for all the countries in the world instead of continents

Wow! ebay has got everything, I mean that’s where My newsed laptop came from, it is where the replacement battery is coming from for “the old girl” you can buy other people’s rubbish/treasure new and old although it does lack some of the “grunge” of a good old fashioned yard auction but there’s so much there and now it seems you can even buy companies on ebay.

pssst it’s not a bad calendar app either ;D