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Learning To Live With MyFitnessPal!

myfitnesspal

I have known that I needed to lose weight for quite some time, but I never had the motivation to do it until I needed to drop a few pounds to go Zip Lining in Kauai.  I thought about what diets I might try, but I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on classes and books, I just wanted to control my eating, so I did what all 21st Century People do, I checked to see if there was an app for that, and low and behold there was.  It was MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal is a website that helps you track your caloric intake, but besides the site they have apps for just about every smart phone type out there.  Say you want to eat a Subway sandwich, you would just type the sub you got in to the search bar, pick the one with options you got, and add it to the meal you are eating it for.  It is that easy, and they have tons of menus and meals in their database, and more people are adding to it all the time, so you can search for just about anything and find it.  Plus they have a barcode scanner, so you can just scan your pack of chips you shouldn’t be eating and it pops right up.

When you first start it asks you for your height, weight, weight goal, age, birthdate, gender, and most importantly how much weight you want to lose per week, so that it can setup calorie limits for you.  If you go over your limit you get to see by how many calories, and it will also yell at you if you have had too few calories as well, so that you are not getting too aggressive on your diet.

It also tracks your other nutrients, so you can make sure that you are not eating to much sodium and bloating away all your weight loss, or to make sure you are still getting your vitamins.  If you really want that ice cream sundae, you can plug in your exercise to add calories to your available daily intake.

MyFitnessPal also has social hooks to make it in to kind of a social network.  For me it is a social network of one.  I let my wife see and that is it, but it is good to have some accountability.

Like all calorie counters it only works if you use it, and sometimes I kind of look like a jerk when I pull out my phone to see if I have enough calories to eat something, but it is for my greater health.  Will it work for you?  Probably, and it has definitely worked for me: I have lost 25lbs and counting.  Not bad for a free app, so I don’t care if they are selling my info it is more than worth it.

 

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Should You Get A Roku?

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My wife and I decided to setup a TV in our bedroom for occasional viewing, and my wife did not want a bunch of cables and boxes lying around, so I used the opportunity to buy a Roku 2 XS.  This used to be Roku’s top of the line streamer, but it was replaced by the Roku 3 this year.  The Roku 2 XS steams in 1080p, has a wired network port to supplement it wireless, and has a motion remote to enable some video games.

What I like about this box is that it is super small, so it doesn’t get in the way, and even though it includes standard definition cables, you would usually set it up with an HDMI cable.  It has most of the streaming channels that you would expect: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crackle, and many more, but it is missing YouTube which is unfortunate.

I was also recently put off by the fact that my HBO Go will not work on the box because Comcast has decided that it will not allow it.  This is hardly Roku’s fault, but I feel that Roku should be leaning on Comcast as much as possible to get this app to work.

The motion controller is passible, and playing Angry Birds on it is pretty much like playing Angry Birds on any other platform, except it is on your TV, so I guess that is cool, but it is not something I would get the Roku for.

If you need a cheap streaming solution, the Roku is perfect for that, and it looks like it is adding new options all the time.  If they could get HBO Go to work on Comcast, and add YouTube it would just about perfect, and since the new Roku 3’s are coming out you can find deals on all the Roku 2’s right now, so it is a good time to pick one up.

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Dredd Day of Action Update!

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Well the Dredd Day of Action has come and gone, and I thought I would give a quick update of what I saw.

Dredd climbed to at least #6 on the Amazon Blu-Ray charts in the USA, and it hit #1 overall in the jolly old UK, and considering how long it has been out, that is quite a feet.

Dredd did not crack the top 100 on DVD in the USA on Amazon’s charts, but it is now on delayed processing and the price has gone up $2, so it must have sold quite a few copies.  It did hit #5 overall in the UK on Amazon’s charts.

It may be a month or two before we find out just how many copies of the movie were sold, but it was enough to at least get the movie visible on the home video store fronts on Amazon for awhile.

Dredd is now one of the most watched movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime, so it looks like people are taking the time to watch it if not own it.

It was fun to see the Brits really get behind one of their major super heroes, and hopefully this Day of Action sold enough copies to get it back in the public eye and given the movie executives enough money to think about Dredd 2.

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Xfinity Is The Worst!

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Comcast Xfinity has been driving me nuts lately.  Well I should say that I have always disliked them, but recently they have been doing their best to get on my nerves.  Yesterday gave me not one but two examples of how lame they can be.

My wife and I decided to setup a TV in our bedroom, and since we don’t need a lot as far as programing goes in that room, I decided to pick up a Roku 2 XS which is the previous generation’s top of the line streaming box.  The apps I bought it for are Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Go.  There are other channels and stuff, but I will get in to that when I do my Roku review.

The problem with this plan is that apparently Comcast blocks the HBO Go app on the Roku.  Why? I don’t know, I guess they just hate having happy customers.  They allow it on my Xbox 360, but apparently the Roku box is a bridge too far for them.  Setting up HBO Go is already way to complicated for its own good, but hey, I have done it before, so it not a big deal, but no I can’t.  Blocking it on devices that other cable and satellite companies allow seems horribly dumb, but maybe I don’t see the world through their idiot eyes, and it makes perfect sense to them in their lava filled throne room.

After that disappointment, my wife and I decided to sit down and watch the latest Breaking Bad episode on my Xfinity app on my Xbox 360, but low and behold their license server was acting up, so we couldn’t watch it.  Luckily Amazon came to the rescue and we just bought that episode for a reasonable price, and I am glad we did because it was fantastic.

These are just two of the examples of why I hate Comcast/Xfinity, and if they didn’t have a monopoly in our market, and the only internet company in our market that supplies reasonable internet speeds, I would leave, but as it is now I am stuck.  That does not mean I will not complain about it on the internet because we all know complaining on the internet is how stuff gets changed.  Oh right, nothing happens, and Comcast just keeps on being a jerk.

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Playing Around Like A Godus!

godus

I was kind of torn about whether I should write anything about this game or not because according to the developer 22Cans it is only 40% complete, but they are selling it on Steam Early Access for $19.95 (or if you are like me you got it through Kickstarter), so I figure it is fair game.  The game is being designed by Peter Molyneux, and like I wrote before developed by his new studio 22Cans.  It returns Molyneux to his roots in god games.

What is a god game you ask?  It is a game where you play as a god, and you use your mystical powers to influence a civilization.  As you get more powers, your people get more advanced.  As they get more advanced they give you more praise, and you get cooler mystical powers.  It is a simple yet fun concept, and it is quite addicting.

Godus is billed as the reinvention of the god game, but it still feels like the god games I grew up playing, so I am not sure what the reinvention is, more clicking perhaps?  Maybe that will come in with the next 60% of the game.

The graphics have a fun layered look that almost makes the entire game look like a large paper-craft model, and the buildings and people are reasonably stylized.  The layers are also practical as well since by grabbing them and pulling or pushing you mold the ground.  You will be doing this a lot to either make suitable area for building houses, or looking for resource cards.  Changing the land costs “Praise” that floats in little balls above your peoples houses after awhile.  You can also use the Praise to build totems and statues that further alter your peoples’ abilities and motivations.

If your people are working to slow you can build one that makes them work faster.  Sick of clicking Praise bubbles?  You can build a statue to collect it all in one large bubble.  You can build one that makes people run to it, so you can move them around the map.  Pretty much all the advanced stuff is done with totems.

There are also diamonds that you can spend on upgrades if you do not want to wait for enough Praise.  I think this is where the Free to Play aspect will come in, but I am not sure.

All and all it is a fun god game, and it is a great time sucker.  I always want to flatten a little more land, find just a few more cards, or get a few more advancements, so it is already successful in that regard.  It may not be “done” yet but since there are very few new god games to play (Sand is the only other one I can think of) it is still worth checking out if you like the genre.