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Pledge Drive: Fluffy Cat Rolling In Money Edition!

catmakeitrain
Making it rain

Welcome to the First Quarter Man Boobz Pledge Drive 2014: Fluffy Cat Rolling In Money Edition!

To repeat my simple pitch from my previous pledge drives: If you enjoy this blog, and can afford it, please click on the “donate” button below and send a few bucks my way. Or, if you’d prefer, a lot of bucks. You don’t need a PayPal account to donate; you can use a credit card, and there are other options as well. If you’re outside the US, PayPal should be able to handle your weird foreign money.

I appreciate any and all contributions. Of course, if you’re broke and can’t swing a contribution now, I understand. Really.

Your donations — and other forms of support –keep this blog going, by keeping me going. (Yes, the money goes to me. And my cats.)

Enormous thanls to everyone who donated during the last pledge drive. (I know I didn’t get back to everyone personally, and I apologize.) Thanks as well to those who’ve donated since the last pledge drive, and extra special thanks to those who’ve made a point of donating on a regular basis.

Man Boobz has now received more than 13 million page views since its inception on Blogger in 2010. Even more impressive: you all have posted close to 400,000 comments. The community that’s grown up around this blog is, as always, amazing to me. I couldn’t do it without you.

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opheliamonarch
10 years ago

Definately counts, in Yoga that’s called ‘The upward lifting cat’. 🙂

opheliamonarch
10 years ago

‘Definitely’ even, spell it wrong once, iOS 7 replaces it with the WRONG spelling every time. I hate Apple!

pecunium
10 years ago

Pete Seeger died: Himself to the last, here is is at OWS, This little light of mine

Fibinachi
10 years ago

The essential problem with some cardio exercise is that, say, you might do something for 20 minutes and burn 126 calories and think, “eh, all right” (or an hour and do 400)

The problem is that the human body has a basal metabolic rate (that varies tremendously, mind) that can be short-handed to about half a calorie per pound of body weight an hour (eg, me? 142 pounds ends at 71, near abouts but is probably higher). So if you don’t do more than that within the span of an hour, well, you’re just kind of treading water. 126 ends up at 55, with another 40 minutes to go, which is in fact great, because I desperately want to gain more weight but I digress.

Cardio is a great great thing to do, but you just need to do a whole bloody lot of it, while with weight training, you get slightly more muscles which end up burning off more stuff every hour of every day because your basal metabolic rate goes way up (another 10 pounds is an extra 96 cals a day, so a free hour over 140, using my math)

It screws a bit with your perceptions, because you suddenly need to do a lot more once you realize that to get the “same result” – that’s why people do that “To burn off ONE MARSBAR, you will have to RUN FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER!” to try and get people motivated. Or something, because all it ever does is make me want more mars bars.

I am not a dedicated dietist.

My recommendation is to do things you find enjoyable and which, in some part, help you get to where you feel you want to be. Whether that’s military standard pushups (Where Pecunium is once again awesomely right, proper pushups are the devil) or something else. If you want a burning sensation of death that doesn’t actually push more muscles into you, as such, I’d recommend jump squats or kettle bell swings. I do 24 kg / 75-125 times and then I weep bitter tears and can’t walk (But my fat percentage is now so low that I hate the sudden winter, because I am bloody well freezing, ack)

Weight training can be fun, but an often overlooked other way of exercise is just doing stuff with your own body weight. Pushups, after all, is you lifting hundred pounds and more. Standard squats done 60 times in sets of 3 are great, takes a couple of minutes and produces a lovely result (eg: you can’t walk)

I think I’ve said it before, but the best book I found on progressive body weight training was convict conditioning… where you just filter away all the *everything* but the pictures and guides on proper form.

Having rambled on about things I know, I want to ask a question!

I need to learn to code, and preferably quickly. I have no experience in these matters, but as per yesterday, I am in a web programming related education, and figure having extra curricular material to expand knowledge with is a good idea.

Any tips / books / things I should acquire?

opheliamonarch
10 years ago

Thanks for that Fibinachi, Mr M was talking about some of that the other day. He says he has to vary the speed he runs at during each run to get max benefit, because running at the same speed each day for a set amount of time will just be treading water.

I conclude I’ll never really understand it, and that this might be the one area Mr M gets to tell me what to do. Although he also says sprouts and beetroot juice are really good for you so I’m starting to think Kitteh’s right about his sadistic side. 😉

On the programming stuff, Mr M just left for work but he’s a software engineer so I’ll ask him for some tips tonight and get back to you, if you like.

I’ve not been to bed, so I hope that makes sense, I really need to get some sleep.

Ally S
Ally S
10 years ago

@Fibinachi

There are many sources (including some PDFs that I can email you if you want), but a really awesome place to start is Derek Banas’ YouTube channel. He teaches programming, web development, etc. really well. I recommend you start with his playlists on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and then if you’re ambitious his videos on PHP and MySQL. (I think he also has videos on jQuery and Ajax and if so you should check those out as well after his stuff on JavaScript.)

Also, W3Schools.com is a great resource for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and will come in handy very often if you’re like me and forget the little rules all the time.

Kim
Kim
10 years ago

@Fibinachi

I bought a book back in the day from the called “Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL” by Kevin Yank. It’s 10 years old now, but it’s awesome because it takes you through PHP in the order you need to actually build a site, rather than from simplest to hardest like most books. He seems to have it free as articles online – http://www.sitepoint.com/php-amp-mysql-1-installation/

Definitely look into jQuery and AJAX if you get a chance, they are awesome. Also, once you’re into CSS, look at LESS or SASS too. They make CSS more fun. And if you want to use custom fonts in you sites, check out http://www.google.com/fonts/

@Ally – have you tried doing any javascript web apps? A firnd of mine recommended learning Dart, which looks like fun. Plus a lot of job ads I’m seeing are asking for backbone.js or similar.

Ally S
Ally S
10 years ago

@Kim

I’ve looked into Dart a little bit. It looks awesome. Right now though I’m mostly focusing on JavaScript, jQuery and Ajax, though – those are essential and I need a good foundation for web development. And thanks for reminding me of backbone.js; I’ve heard that it’s pretty useful, although I haven’t really looked into what it actually is.

@auggz

Awesome! I wish I could meet Angela Davis here – she actually used to be a part of the UCSC faculty.

Fibinachi
10 years ago

That’s beautiful, thank you all. I would love anything Mr. M has to say, Mrs M – and also pdfs pdfs pdfs. I might not be able to code, but I can read like no one’s business.

I believe you have my email already, Ally? If not, it’s still Fibinaut at g of mail.

(Everyone is more or less welcome to use that if they want to reach me, for whatever reason you could even want to do that)

I’ll do some youtubing, and see if I can acquire that book Kim. It sounds remarkably brilliant ,because functional approaches of “We’re building this” rather than difficulty based steps tend to make things way easier for my mind to grasp.

You people are great, thanks 🙂

kittehserf
10 years ago

Although he also says sprouts and beetroot juice are really good for you so I’m starting to think Kitteh’s right about his sadistic side. 😉

See? See? That’s proof, that is!

leftwingfox
10 years ago

Interesting timing. I’ve been thinking of investing in an elliptical (As in, going to buy one after work today.)

At my last job, I had two strictly enforced 15 minute breaks in a work day. I’d spend the time walking around the old school across the parking lot for the entire time. By the end of four months I’d dropped about 2 inches from my waistline. The only other diet change was changing the afternoon donut to an apple.

Self-image issues (and difficulty in establishing good habits) make gyms a losing proposition for me, so I’m hoping this will allow me to get into an increasing workout. Any thoughts?

leftwingfox
10 years ago

PS, I realize this is very late in the thread for this, but I’m trying to get better at this sort of thing. MEZ, I’m very sorry to hear about your mother, and for missing it when I made my original post of condolences to cloudiah.

opheliamonarch
10 years ago

@Auggziliary, meant to say this morning (was very tired) your explanation was really interesting/informative too.

@Fibinachi (sorry, called you Fibi in your email.). Mr M emailed you with some info, hope it helps.

kittehserf
10 years ago

Elbow planking?

Sounds like a cousin of kneecapping. D:

kittehserf
10 years ago

I think gravity would win that one! 😀

pecunium
10 years ago

BTW, push ups (done right) are much better for ab/core strength than sit ups or crunches.

But they hurt. I had a great book by Mitch Gaylord (US Men’s Gymnastics Team member) about doing workouts with just the body; had a whole lot of different push-ups, so isolate different parts of the body.

Kiwi girl
Kiwi girl
10 years ago

@ophelia, ty for the compliments. The poncho was quite easy, just crocheting motifs together as you go, but it’s the first time I have done motifs.

David – small amount of $$$ your way. I shall try to do a donation every drive.

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