Completed my first Let’s Play!

That’s right people. My First Let’s Play has been completed. It’s of Dead Space. Here’s  a link to the playlist.

The next one I’ll be starting is Mass Effect.

If you like this kind of stuff. Feel free to subscribe to the channel. If at any point I get 50 subscribers, I’ll go ahead and buy the hardware necessary to let me do LP’s of 360, PS3 and Wii games which will allow me to do a lot more stuff.

Oh yea there is going to be a once a week ongoing Minecraft survival map challenge. I forgot to post that… Oops.

Let’s Play Dead Space!

I’ve posted the first video of my Let’s Play Dead Space series. I’m not sure if the longer videos are better, or if I should break them up into 15 minute segments much like Helloween4545′s style. Either way, here is the first video.

Project Fitness – Photo Updates!

So I missed last Wednesday and this Wednesday. But I took the pictures. Here they are

Last Wednesday – Feb 29th, 2012

Yea it’s edited because I made a really bad face. Here’s 2 from today with my face

March 7th, 2012

The biggest news of the week. I benched 255 for 2.5 (I cheated on the third rep and went halfway down and freaked out because I didn’t have a spotter. Lame I know)

Also… I have to stop leaning back. It makes me look bad hah

Pick what game I should play next.

For my LP I’m going to let whoever reads this decide. I don’t think many people do, but whatever.

Project Let’s Play

Hey guys,

I’m still in the process of figuring out what game I want to do a Let’s Play with. In addition I am still getting to know my new Kitten, so that project is on hold for another week.

Project Fitness – Work out 4 – Picture Update

This is my first work-out without N.O. Explode. I wanted to see if the stuff had any real benefits to anything I was doing. Unfortunately I don’t know what happened but I got severely dizzy about 3/4th’s what I wanted to do, so I am going back to the gym today to do the rest of the stuff I wanted to do and maybe a legs work-out but I might leave that for Saturday Morning. I know I should be working my lower body more regularly but I still haven’t decided on what is a good work-out for it. It sounds like a cop-out I know but eh fuck you :-p

Weigh-in: 207 lbs

Bench Press

Reps	Weight
15	135 lbs
10	205 lbs
8	225 lbs
5	225 lbs
5	205 lbs
12	135 lbs

 

I’ve got to say that when I got up to 225lbs today it felt a lot better, a lot more comfortable and a lot more natural. I wish I had someone to spot me so I could try to do more.

Push-Ups – Simple push-ups, arms shoulder with apart and proper form.

20 reps
20 reps
15 reps
10 reps

Sit Ups on Ball – This is where I started to feel dizzy and spacey. I didn’t think anything of it and kept going.

50 reps
40 reps
30 reps
30 reps
23 reps

Laterial Raises

Reps	Weight
15	10 lbs each hand
15	10 lbs each hand
15	10 lbs each hand
10	10 lbs each hand

 

At this point I started to notice that I was having trouble maintaining my balance. This concerned me a little bit and I took a 3-5 minute break trying to get my composure and focus back in the work-out. I then tried to resume my work-out

Bicep – I did two sets of Bicep curls before I started feeling too dizzy to stand. The first one was 15x35lbs and 15x40lbs.

And now for the part I don’t like. I got a new phone which takes better pictures than the last one but I feel I look a lot worse

Project Fitness – Workout 3

Today was the second recorded work-out with N.O. Explode 2.0. I don’t like it. I find that it makes me really tingly and really itchy and it makes me more distracted than focused. I’m going to try to work out on Wednesday without it to see if my performance actually changes significantly because I honestly don’t believe it will. This was a bit of a shorter workout because of the fact that I had to clean my apartment for my new roommate (A Kitten).

Bench Press

Reps	Weight
10	135 lbs
10	205 lbs
8	225 lbs
5	225 lbs
8	205 lbs
11	185 lbs
8	185 lbs
13	135 lbs

 

Chest Flies - These were done using a Life Fitness Cable Motion.

Reps	Weight
20	22.5 lbs each side
13	32.5 lbs each side
9	32.5 lbs each side
13	27.5 lbs each side
10	27.5 lbs each side

 

Preacher Curls - I do these a bit different because of the fact that my gym sucks and doesn’t actually have a preacher curl station. So instead of doing them with a curling bar, I do them with a dumbbell and one arm at a time.

Reps	Weight
10	25 lbs each hand
10	35 lbs each hand
10	35 lbs each hand
10	35 lbs each hand

 

Super Slow Bicep Curls - During this exercise, I basically do a regular bicep curl but as slow as possible on the way down. Essentially fighting gravity to hold the weight as long as possible.

Reps	Weight
5	25 lbs each hand
5	35 lbs each hand
5	25 lbs each hand

 

Triceps - I felt that in my previous workout, I cheated which allowed me to get the high weight I did. So this time I focused on going slow, and being in control and getting a good work out.

Reps	Weight
19	55 lbs
13	67.5 lbs
10	77.5 lbs
13	67.5 lbs
15	40 lbs

Finally for Abs, I did 8 Minute Abs.

Project Programming – Day 1 – Learning C++

Hey People.

So I decided with the influence of one of my developer friends to learn C++. I am going to be following along with the site http://www.learncpp.com/. These posts will describe the sections I’ve covered and also what little mini side projects I’ve been working on. I’m hoping as time progresses I get involved into a much larger project and hopefully GUI based programs, then a simple video game, and then finally a real video game.

Today I covered sections 1.1 to 1.3 at work, which covered the basic structures of a program. The side project I did was a simple console app that presented the user with a simple menu, that they would choose whether they wanted to do Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, or Division. Once they selected which one they wanted, they then could do an unlimited amount of numbers, and when they decided to stop adding numbers by entering 0, the program would report their answer. Here are some screen grabs from the .EXE

So that’s the update on that. If you want the code I used to do it, feel free to leave a comment.

Project Fitness – Day 2 – Legs

So today I did a quick work out of my lower body. It was quick because I either need to really practice my squat form or find an exercise to replace them, because I always am worried about hurting myself when I do squats. Anyways here’s the summary of the five exercises I did today

Squats

Reps	Weight
10	115 lbs
10	115 lbs
9	115 lbs
8	135 lbs
3	135 lbs

On the last set I got too nervous about hurting myself so I stopped.

Calf Raises

Reps	Weight
30	18
25	21 (Machine Max)
25	21
25	21
20	21
34	15

Leg Presses

Reps	Weight
10	15
10	15
10	15
10	13
10	10
20	10

I then attempted to do leg raises but my hip flexors started to feel weird so I stopped. I just finished 8 Minute abs.

Short workout. Once I get more of a routine set for legs it’ll be longer.

Projects

I’ve come up with a schedule or projects that I am going to stick with in order to continue bettering myself. I feel that this is a pretty aggressive schedule but each of them I’ll love doing so I’ll stick with it. Plus each project will give me the motivation to keep writing in this blog.  The updates won’t be so much life updates, more like project updates and each project should be separate entities even though most of them will collide with one another.

So let’s get started. This will be organized by days of the week.

Monday – Guitar

In senior year of high school I took a class called “Intro to Acoustic Guitar.” I loved playing guitar in that class and the songs were primarily lead pieces and very simple rhythm pieces. I fully expected to have the time to continue progressing in my guitar playing throughout college but unfortunately due to sheer fear of being judged by my guitar wielding friends and lack of time to dedicate to practice, I never much improved. However now that I live on my own, I can dedicate a couple hours at least one day a week, maybe more on other days. But the thing is, I’ll be writing a summary of what I have been practicing, what theory I’ve been learning, what songs I’ve been learning and HOPEFULLY a video of me playing a song. The song is going to force me out of my comfort zone because well, I don’t like performing in front of people when I’m nervous. That summary will come out on Monday Night’s.

Tuesday – Let’s Plays

Let’s be honest, I love video games. And I have not one but two computers which are strong enough to play some decent video games. So what I’m going to be doing is restarting my Let’s Play Channel, in which I play a game and give commentary similar to Helloween4545 on YouTube. These videos will be posted on this blog, but will be uploaded to my second YouTube channel (of which you can see the remenants of the first Let’s Play Trial) – http://www.youtube.com/Roymond35

I fully expect that I may do more than one game at a time. I might do a let’s play of Minecraft in addition to a Let’s Play of Skyrim, and I also fully expect that when I get into a game, the videos will come out more often but at the very least it will be once a week.

Wednesday – Work Out Progress

The current plan for this project is to upload a blog post after EVERY workout I do. But on Wednesdays in addition to the normal work out, I’ll post pictures of my progress. The format of the posts will be similar to the one you saw yesterday.

Thursdays – Programming

I’ve always been a sucker for programming. Several times throughout my college career I debated changing majors to computer science just so I could learn programming more. The first language I’m going to learn is C++. I’m going to post weekly updates of the struggles I’m having as well as ZIP files of the little programs I have been working on so that way people can see the progression of my coding confidence.

Saturdays – Foreign Language

I’ve always wanted to learn a foreign language and I’ve decided that I’m going to dedicate at least 2 hours on Saturday to learn and practice it. I know that dedicating such a small amount of time to it will hinder the progress of it, but again, I expect to practice and do little exercises in between. This will start up NEXT Saturday (Feb 25th) because I haven’t completely decided on a language I want to learn yet.

Sundays – Website Design

As you can see from the relative inactivity of Total Recoil, my dad has abandoned that idea. The truth is he’s abandoned the name and instead of Total Recoil, he’s purchased the domain name Blackhawk13.com and tasked me to design the entire website from scratch. So I will be doing most of this on Sundays.

Other Stuff

There is one more thing that I have yet to talk about, but it is going to play a significant role in nearly all my projects. Video Editing. I will still be making videos of my dad and I shooting guns, as well as the videos of me playing guitar, the Let’s Play Videos, and if I decide to do some other videos along the way then I will be posting them here or in the very least on one of my two channels.