Christmas is in Full Swing...

...and I've had a top time with the family doing family things, including the After Eight Challenge. Place an After Eight mint on your forehead. Eat it using only your own head. No hands or other devices.

A few celebs have given this a shot already, including Coleen Rooney.

This trend has been around since 2008 at the latest. I only heard about it on Christmas day this year, though.

I also discussed shit TV programmes with Norman D Golden II, the kid from A Cop and a Half.

New Year plans are steadily forming.

Well, my joke made it into celeb / humour gossip rag Popbitch...

 ...again. This time it made the “Old Jokes of the Year”, a round-up of the bulletin's one-liner submissions, in 3^rd position. Can't complain. The joke:

I went out with a cardboard cut-out once. She dumped me though, because I stood her up.

Hmm. That's all I've got for you: I'm still hammering Klavaro in an attempt to up my typing speed and I'm otherwise chilling and enjoying my Christmas. Hope you are too.

Meeting Chris Hadfield

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has released his second book, You Are Here. Today I met him at WHSmiths in Manchester's Arndale today as part of his book signing. He's quite a cool guy, as you'll see in this TED talk where he describes what it's like to go blind in space.

A Month of Using Klavaro Touch Typing Software

I spent a month using a free open-source touch typing package to up my speed and improve my typing skills. Klavaro is a plain, no-nonsense but effective program that allows you to learn to type even if it's your first time using a keyboard. Although over the last month I've seen my typing speed increase, I noticed a few issues along the way.

I'd previously learned the beginnings of typing on a package called Mavis Beacon. This was more visual, designed to look like a classroom, with a female animated teacher talking you through the basic keys. Between the lessons, colourful games required you to hit certain keys within certain times to get points. Mavis Beacon offered a visual representation of your fingers on the keyboard, and showed you where you should move your fingers to. Each key would light up as you hit it.

It was fun, but I didn't commit to it properly at the time. This was 4 years ago, before I swapped from Mac to PC. Mavis Beacon was a paid-for product; Klavaro is free from Sourceforge.

Klavaro is much more curt. There is no speech guidance- only the printed text for instruction. There's also very little indication of which fingers to use for which keys- instructions for the home keys are there, but after that you're guessing. There's no on-screen keyboard during the exercises,

After learning the home keys (asdf jkl;) the lessons move on to the keys above before incorporating the two rows. When using keys like qwer, the temptation is to rest your fingers on that row and not keep them on the home keys and reach up with each one. There's no instruction not to do that, though, nor encouragement to keep the fingers in the proper place.

I found some trouble distinguishing upper-case I from lower-case l, and the number 1. You may want to change the font from the default setting. You can also add bold and italics to some of the fonts, should you desire.

A font change, however, won't necessarily help you find the more obscure keys. When incorporating the symbols, you will eventually be asked to press the vertical bar. It looks like this:

|

Wikipedia says it has something to do with maths. That rules me out of using it for anything other than getting through Klavaro's lessons...

This is also difficult, on-screen, to distinguish between I, l and 1. It took AGES to find. The position, on my keyboard, of the vertical bar is shift and the key directly left of z.

Other problems: The colour scheme is a little hard on the eye, especially for the 1 in 5 of us like myself who are partially colour blind. Yellow-on-green is a strain.

These are nitpicking issues I felt compelled to make a note of for the purpose of blogging later. By the end of the month, I found I could type faster and without constantly looking at every key. I've still got a long way to go, and I'm still making errors, but I type a lot in work so I have plenty of opportunity to see the results of the practice.

I know I said I'd do this for a month, but there's no point stopping now. I'm just getting the knack. I'll sneak a few lessons in over the Christmas period and see what the rest of the package has to offer.

MK pulled

House music producer Mark Kinchen, AKA MK, played in Venus Manchester, Friday 5th April 2013.

I wasn't there, but here's a Facebook video of the man in action.

Also, here's a pic of him from the night, copping off with Manchester-based Playboy model Sarah Longbottom.

Strange stain on the vest there, MK. I won't ask.

Beating Seated Chest Press: Result!

Back at the start of October I decided I was going to lift everything the chest press machine had to offer. 

I was already lifting all 20 plates, and added only the 3 1.25kg discs to the rack. I thought I'd do it in under a month, as that meant only 3.75Kg to add to my personal best. It ended up taking nearly 2 months. During that time, though, I mixed in a few other movements to work the chest muscle set in different ways, and broke this up with stomach exercises.

Horizontal Dumbbell Fly

This is a hard exercise to beat, largely because the free weights are ALWAYS being used. Going in on days off meant I could access these be it early morning, late afternoon, or at midnight, oh it's never too soon.

Cough. KC and the Sunshine Band mode deactivated. At the start of the project, my PB was the 30kg dumbbells. That record had stood since May 2011. Going at quiet times meant I could hammer this movement regularly, and I quickly saw gains. I matched the PB in September not long after starting the project. I beat it in October, which felt great- then the next day I beat that record too. 2 days later I beat it again. I haven't quite got 10 reps on the 36s, though.

Dips

Great for endurance, dips work the same muscle set as bench press with a little more pressure on the shoulders. I added 1 pitiful rep to my PB during the Beating Bench Press project. It's always best to do dips early into the session when you're fresh. Do endurance after strength training and you'll already be fatigued. Dips before dumbells, however, warms up your arms ready for heavier lifting.

Chest Press

On the first session, I performed 100 reps: 10 for each of the first 10 plates. I worked my way up to the 19th and got stuck there for a full month. Today I lifted everything on the seated chest press. Technique? Eat loads of protein and put in the effort, and you see gains.

I quite fancy a well-deserved break from the gym for a couple of days!

Well, I've submitted myself to the UK Blog Awards.

For what it's worth. Think big, etc etc. I submitted Power is a State of Mind to the submissions section of the site  Here it is on the site. I'm going to forget about it, get on with blogging and enjoy my week off work. Boom!