Rick’s Rants and Raves

Here’s my latest little photographic experiment–subject on black background intentionally. I was inspired by this posting, and by these pictures, to try my own hand at it.

The evolution of this picture starts on Valentines day. No wait, back up a bit. Weeks before Valentines day, I procrastinated planning for Valentines day. Anne and I talked about plans, but I never acted on them. I waited. Several days (maybe 10?) prior to Valentines day I called a restaurant that we had talked about to make reservations. Ah, no. So Sorry, McFly, shoulda called earlier. So my procrastination continued right up to the point that my mom came to watch our son for the evening. We went to one restaurant and were told, no surprise here, that it would be a 2 hour wait. Our next stop, Cuisine of India, told us it would be a 20 minute wait, but it turned out to be more like 5. We had a fabulous meal, a bottle of wine, and it turned out to be an excellent recovery from my earlier bad-husbandry. When they brought the bill, they included a rose. I, of course, presented it to Anne. We returned home, put it in a vase, and the cats immediately started trying to eat it. I put the rose, in the vase, on top of the refrigerator.

Twelve days later, the rose is fading, to say the least. But I thought it would be the perfect first subject to play with a blackened background effect that had inspired me.

The vase is sitting on my dining room table, with darkness all around, except for a flashlight on the rose. The camera was set to automatic, flash disabled. No additional processing.

This past weekend, my son really wanted to build an airplane. Not a real fly-in-the-backyard airplane–just a toy. Initially he wanted to build one that a stuffed animal could ride in. Eventually it morphed into a plane that a Playmobile person could sit in.

I don’t particularly like building stuff. I know how to use most hand tools, and a fair number of power tools, but I’m not good with them. So, as the boy kept begging to build an airplane, I just kept thinking of my own limitations. At one point during his pleading, he confided “I just want to spend time with you.” Oh boy. So I sucked it up, faced my limitations, and agreed to work on the airplane.

I began with a ready-made fusilage-the “Blockhead” car from our recent pinewood derby. He insisted on a bi-wing, so we cut some dowels for the supports, and cut a couple of pieces of plywood from some scrap for wings. The same plywood served for the tail fin and wings. The front wheels came with the car, and we glued a small piece of dowel for a rear wheel. We cut down a pair of popsicle sticks for the propeller, and put a screw through a hole so that they could spin. The finishing touch was the steering wheel, which was another scrap of dowel.

As the pieces started to come together, he exclaimed “this is gonna be great!”. As soon as it was done, he rushed upstairs to show his mother and older sister. Then then reappeared in the basement and said “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Thank you very much!” He’s very proud of his plane.

Now he wants to build a garage for it…

I’ve been exercising, with a focus on weight training, for about a year. I feel myself getting stronger. I can tell by looking at my workout logs that I’m definitely stronger. But am I strong enough? How strong am I in comparison to the rest of the population? I can see folks both stronger and weaker than me at the Y. I know I’m not the strongest guy in the gym, and I wouldn’t expect to be after only a year of lifting. But its always one of those questions–how strong am I?

Last week, the whole family went to the Y, and I showed the kids how to use a few of the machines. They were able to do 30-40 pounds on the leg press for a set of 10. Their jaws hit the floor when they saw me move 320 pounds of plates. But they are easily impressed.

I recently watched a really skinny, nerdy-looking guy (No, I wasn’t looking in the mirror, smart ass!) do bench presses on the Hammer Strength machine. I’d never used the machine before, and the weight he was using looked impressive–more than I could do on a standard bench press. So at the end of my workout, I tried the weight he was using on the HS bench. I was able to complete as many reps as he did, but not a single extra. Now, comparisons like this are problematic at best. I don’t know what his routine was like (having watched just that one exercise), nor how fatigued he was when he got to that exercise. I was definitely fatigued, since I’d already done three sets of eight on the regular bench press, and three sets of eight dips.

So, contemplating this at home I felt slightly embarassed for doing that kind of superiority-complex-comparison. But I was still wondering, Am I strong?

I recently stumbled on an article that can help me answer that question. First, lets be sure to take into account the author’s perspective–he is a professional trainer and writer for a strength-focused website and magazine.  His standard of strength is probably a wee bit higher than the average population. But still, since I’ve kindof immersed my self in this strength-training atmosphere, his perspective is valuable to me.

So, how did I do? Um, erm, just barely “Decent”. He clarifies how he thinks of “Decent Strength”: “My guess is that most people would achieve this level after 6-12 months of training.” Well, I suppose I’m on target then. So, here’s the detail of what I can do right now.

• Squat: I’m not currently doing squats, so I don’t know. I keep saying I want to start, but I keep not starting. Hrm.
• Bench Press: My estimated (see note below) 1 rep max is 197. The standard for “decent” is 225. I’ve got work to do.
• Deadlift: I’m not currently doing deadlifts.
• Standing Military Press: I’m currently doing seated dumbell military presses, and have an estimated 1RM at 110. Dumbbells are generally considered harder than barbells, but seated is a little easier than standing, so those probably off-set. The standard for “decent” is 105. Phew, just barely made it.
• Leg Press: My estimated 1RM is 420. The standard for “decent” is 410. Just barely made it.
• 45 degree 1/4 bent over row: I don’t do this exercise.
• Pushups: The last time I tried to do as many push ups as possible I think I was able to do 30. The standard for “decent” is 30. Phew.
• Dips: The standard for dips is 20 in one set with no added weight. I don’t ever do more than 12, but I can do that with 30 pounds addded on. I’ll try going for as many as possible some time–I might just make it.
• Pull Ups: I can do 10 pull ups in a set. The standard for “decent” is 10. Phew.
• EZ Bar bicep curl: I don’t do this exercise
• Skull Crusher: I don’t do this exercise
• Elbow Plank: I don’t normally do this exercise, but it seemed easy enough to try last night. Had I not been shooting for the “decent” goal of 90 seconds, I probably would have stopped at 60. But I was able to make it to 90 seconds since I had that added goal.

So, I just barely made the “decent” grade on all but one of the exercises I’m currently doing. Now my goal is a) improve on bench press to “decent” within 6 months, and b) get to “good” on several exercises in another year. I think the most attainable are pull-ups, dips, push ups, and standing military press.

Note on estimating 1 rep max: most articles I’ve read have discouraged actually testing for a 1 rep max (the most weight that could be lifted in that exercise just one time) due to the risk of injury. So I’ve used a 1RM Calculator to take my actual results in a workout to estimate the 1RM. Also of note is that these are during the course of a workout, where I don’t always go to “failure” on a set. These numbers might be a low estimate, but only by a little bit.

My daughter has been expressing interest in learning “how to program” for a couple of weeks now. I’ve attempted to narrow down a little bit what that means to her: Windows programs? Web Programs? Web Pages? Flash games? The computer technology world seems endless at this point–and that’s coming from someone who earns his living in the industry. Perhaps that’s a little bit of my problem–I see too much possibility in the request to learn “how to program”. She really wasn’t able to narrow it down much at all because she is at that age where she is interested in a great many things. And she’s bright enough to grasp real programming concepts, and as a result, the technology world really is wide open to her.

A couple of weeks ago, I went looking for resources to help teach a kid about real programming. I decided to start where I started–BASIC. I learned to program in basica back in the early 80s. I figured VisualBasic would be a good place for her to start. Fortunately, Microsoft makes VisualBasic Express available for free and even has an e-book VB for Very Bright Kids.

Today we started working through the first couple of chapters. The look on my daughter’s face when she ran her first program–the modern equivalent to “Hello World”, “PleaseSayYo”–was priceless. Here, for posterity, is her first program:

Imports System

Class PleaseSayYo
Shared Sub Main()
Console.WriteLine(”Yo!”)
Console.ReadLine()
Console.WriteLine(”Barack Obama is Prezident!”)
Console.ReadLine()
Console.WriteLine(”I didn’t Like McCain.”)
Console.ReadLine()
Console.WriteLine(”Got to go. Bye!”)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
End Class

We’re continuing to work through the topics, covering classes, objects, properties, methods, and even subroutines. To help explain subroutines and parameters, I helped her re-write the above using a subroutine:

Module Module1
Sub Writeandread(ByVal message As String)
Console.WriteLine(message)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
Sub Main()
Writeandread(”Yo!”)
Writeandread(”Barack is President!”)
Writeandread(”I didn’t like McCain.”)
Writeandread(”Got to go. Bye!”)
End Sub
End Module

She’s very excited–much more so than I would have thought she would be. I thought she would get frustrated at not writing a new Club Penguin in 1 hour or less. But she is, for now at least, completely immersed.