I’m still going strong on the treadmill. It’s been a week since I installed the treadmill and I’m pretty happy with the results. On most days I seem to walk around 4 miles at a pace of 1 mph. I haven’t really noticed any difference in my weight (not that I’m trying to lose any) so it’s not clear what the calorie burn is at this point. But I do notice that I’m more focused on the tasks at hand once I’m on the treadmill. Once I’m on it, I don’t want to stop what I’m doing, which is a good thing. I’ve gotten much more done over the week since I’ve had it.
Walking While Working
I have joined the ranks of the “work walkers” — I now have a treadmill in my office. The walking while working movement was started by Dr. James Levine of the Mayo clinic. His basic premise is that NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis) is more important that regular excercise. One way to trigger NEAT is to walk while you work. More info is also at http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2005-rst/2836.html.
So I acquired a treadmill and built up a desk for myself so that I can walk while working on my computer. With the number of meetings that I have every day, the number of hours I actually spend doing this will vary, but at least I won’t be sitting on my rear end while I’m in my office. FWIW, I am actualy an exercise fiend these days — I work out 5 days a week, including both cardio and weight training. (Today, for example, I did a one hour indoor cycling class.) But I think this will be fun and I’m looking forward to the other benefits of this activity, including better focus and concentration.
This picture is what my office looks like with the treadmill. It’s hard to see the treadmill in this photo because it’s directly behind my desk chair. I built the desk around the treadmill and you can see my computers off to the side.
The next photo has the chair moved out of the way so you can see the treadmill itself.
The next photos are close-ups of my desktop (without the laptop).
And one of me on the treadmill …
Follow Up on the Home Media Network
I finally got everything configured with the Windows Home Server (see this post). My home network now looks something like this:
The Media Center is a pretty old, single core AMD 3200 system, so I’m not getting full 1080p resolution out of the video card because there’s just not enough horsepower in the CPU (I get stuttering at that resolution). So I’m running it at 720p instead for now, which is generally fine because the Media Center is primarily playing DVDs that are stored on the Home Server. I do have a Hauppauge TV card in the media center, but I’m not receiving the HD channels yet since I’m not quite ready to dump my cable box. But I predict in the next 12 months that the cable box will go and I replace the media center computer with a newer system. Why?
Well, first of all cost. Comcast chargest an arm and a leg for the DVR service. And frankly, the capacity of that box kind of stinks. I typically record shows that are not broadcast in HD using the analog channels, but in a year that’s going to go away (thankfully). So I’m going to need much more disk. My media center currently has a 160 GB disk, which means that I can record over 30 hours of HD video, which is about 3x more than what the Comcast DVR will hold. Of course, this is an old computer; a newer media center box will probably have 320 GB or more of disk, which means hours of HD. It’ll be worth the investment to avoid the Comcast charges as well as have better capacity. What do I lose? Comcast’s On-Demand service. I’m not sure I care that much about that — it seems like a service I rarely use. I could easily imagine investing the Comcast savings into Netflix and getting their on-demand video service instead.
Canon EOS 450D
It figures. Shortly after purchasing my 400D, the 450D comes out. It’s got some neat features, but probably not worth getting too excited over yet. There’s one significant missing feature that would hold me back from upgrading — no “custom” settings. I find that this is the most annoying missing feature of the prosumer DSLRs. But it looks pretty cool nonetheless.