Cohost of the TransMissions Podcast. Writer, Blogger, Musician.
My battle with weight continues on. I have had no real issues sticking to this diet. I do get cravings but nothing I can’t control. Knowing that my cheat day is never more than a week away is a big help.
As some of you may know I started participating in the slow carb diet described in The 4-Hour Body book by Timothy Ferriss. Some time a week or so ago I saw a recent video of Timothy Ferriss giving a talk at Google that I want to share with you.
I own a lot of DVDs. We are talking nearly 500 at last count. It’s sick, I know. Sifting through them all to find the one movie I want to watch has become such a chore that I would rather just fire up my Playstation 3 (PS3) to access my Netflix account and stream something then dig for a DVD of a movie I actually want to watch. So, I have decided that the solution to my conundrum is to setup a Media Center PC. More specifically a Mac Mini media center attached to my T.V. with an interface that even my mother could use.
WHAT DO I WANT THE END RESULT TO BE?
RESEARCH
Like any project you should do research into it first. Which is what I did. With google as my guide I sought out other peoples experience with setting up a Mac Media Center. Here are a list of some sites I found that where helpful to me.
I also spoke with friends of mine who had done similar projects. It always helps to read, write, and talk to people about ideas you have. It helps flush out the details of what is trying to be accomplish.
All of these sites listed above where very helpful to me, but none where setup quite the way I wanted. Most of these talked about just using the Mac Mini or the Mac Mini with an external hard drive attached and honestly that probably is the solution for 90% of you out there. But I was looking for a setup with a little bit more free hard drive space for me to use. Particularly because I have several computers in my house and I want them all to be able to back up wirelessly to on location. I also enjoy editing home movies and having a place to store the massive video files I work with is important to me. I think I have come up with a solution that works as you will see.
LOGISTICS
One pressing question I had from the get go is; How much hard drive space am I going to need? 500 DVDs is a lot of movies and T.V. shows. So how can I get an idea of how much hard drive space I am going to need?
Most people building a Media Center PC are doing so to encode their DVDs onto a hard drive. If you where just to copy the DVD over to your hard drive your looking at something that takes up anywhere from 2 to 8 gigs of hard drive space. When you encode a DVD onto your hard drive you have the option of removing all the special features, menus, audio commentary, subtitles, and non-english audio tracks leaving you with just the movie. What this means is no more waiting through previews, FBI Warnings or other types of bullshit that is preventing you from watching the movie you want to watch. You just get the movie and your left with a much more manageable file size.
One free peace of software I read about and that everyone pretty much agreed is the best DVD encoding tool is called HandBrake. Before dropping a single penny on my media center I could preform tests to make sure the video is going to look great and be a manageable file size. I downloaded Handbrake and picked a DVD off my shelf at random and encoded it. Using only HandBrake’s presets I found that encoding under the “High Profile” preset rendered out a 1.5 GB file. Playback of the DVD and the encoded movie showed hardly any noticeable difference. It certainly looked a lot better then any Netflix movie I had streamed in the past. If I take the 1.5 GB as an average and multiply that by 500 (the number of DVDs I own) The end result is 750 GB. A very manageable figure.
It’s a very manageable figure till you miss calculate TV shows like I did.
At the time of this post I have encoded several movies and TV shows using Handbrake. Something I over looked is that the average movie is anywhere from 1 and a half to 2 hours, give or take per DVD. Now lets take E.R. on DVD. The DVD for E.R. holds 4 episodes at about 1 hour each. You have 24 episodes a season and that is roughly 24 hours of video which ends up being a little under 1 gig an episode. It adds up! It was something I over looked when I did my initial estimation of how much hard drive space I would need. Don’t let that catch you off guard like it did me. Do the math right so you know how much hard drive space you are going to need to hold your DVD collection.
On January 10, 2011 I put myself on a diet. I have always struggled with my weight. Eating right and portion control have never been easy for me. Sometimes I blame it on having a lousy metabolism. Other times I blame it on healthy food is not convenient. The reality is I just didn’t want to do what it takes to make a huge life change that is required when you diet.
In the past all my diets have been half though out ideas that were doomed for failure right from the start. For example, at one time in my life I told myself that I would go to the GYM three times a week. Another time I told myself I would only eat dinner and if I ate less I would lose weight. Most recently I tried the Atkins diet which I did not research very well. I just knew that all I could eat was meat. The truth is all of these ideas worked. I did lose weight. On my version of the Atkins diet I went from 225 lbs (the most I have ever weighed) to 165 lbs and I held that for a year until -like all my past attempts- I fell off the wagon and put a lot of that weight right back on.
For the last six months I have desperately wanted to break this depressing cycle going from having cloths that fit to being embarrassed to walk into the office because my cloths where so tight on my body. I made a promise to myself at 2011 would be different. I would attack my weight loss with a solid game plan. One that could not fail. One that would stick with me well after I lost my excess baggage.
Toward the end of 2010 I started reading on the Internet about a book coming out. It was supposed to help you lose weight and keep it off. It would do this by teaching you want you can eat to lose weight and keep you from gaining it all back again. I figured would give it a shot.
So, in December of 2010 when the book was published I bought a copy to read on my Kindle. The book by the author Timothy Ferriss is entitled “The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid-Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman”. I bought the book to learn how to lose weight the right way. The fact that it came with ideas to have incredible Sex and how to become superhuman was all just an extra bonus.
I finished reading the book just days before the new year. At the time I was in Washington State staying with family. I felt it would be rude to invoke a diet half way through a vacation that no one was expecting me to be doing. So, I decided it was best to start the diet upon my return to Juneau on January 9th.
When I got back on the 9th I went to the store and bought all the foods that the book suggested. Things like Chicken, Eggs, Grass fed Beef which I found at Jerry’s Meats. I also picked up several kinds of frozen vegetables, canned beans and salsa.
As you can tell the diet I chose in the 4 Hour Body is a high protein slow carb diet. It’s not the only diet option offered in the book, but it was the one I felt would work best for me. It also allows for one cheat day where you can eat whatever you want and as much as you want! The idea behind that is you need to spike your insulin level once a week to encourage fat loss.
At each of my normal meals I try to include something from each of the three kinds of foods suggested in the book. One protein, one vegetable and one kind of bean. On my cheat day ( I have chosen Saturdays) I can go out and eat whatever I want. For example last week I ate 3 eggs for breakfast, 2 buttermilk Pancakes (from The Sandpiper café), 2 20.oz Pepsi Throwbacks (The Throwbacks are made with real sugar), A Stake Wrap (From The Island Pub), and three slices of artichoke, garlic Pizza (also from The Island Pub).
I started this diet on January 10th. At the time I weighed 195 lbs. Since that date I have steadily lost weight and inches around my body. I have felt really confident about this diet and how it works. So confident in fact that On January 31st I decided to partake in the Juneau Empire’s Lose 2 Win contest.
With the Lose 2 Win contest I had to check in at a local GYM (Pavitt’s Health and Fitness) to get weighed and have my Photo taken. Once a week I will be going in for a weigh in so they can track my weight lost. I have tracked my weight loss since the January 10th, but doing something like this contest is just more motivation for me.
When the contest ends after 13 weeks. Prizes will be handed out to people who have lost so much weight. The biggest weight losers (a man and a women) will each win $1,000.00. I have no dreams of being the biggest weight loser. Just losing enough weight that I can look at myself in the mirror each morning and be happy with what I see.
Today is February 3rd and I weigh 180 lbs. That is a weight loss of 15 lb! I have also been tracking my measurements and have lost nearly 4 inches!
Below is a copy of my weight log.
S0, as you can see things are progressing nicely. I highly recommend reading ‘The 4-Hour Body’. Just remember, before partaking in any diet you should always consult your doctor.
I have plans to set up a HOME THEATER PC for my place and my head has been spinning about the right way to tackle this project. I have been searching blogs and consulting with friends on the best options and setups I could have.
My drive to take on such a project was a result of my mothers last visit to my place. In the evenings she liked to watch movies. That is it’s self is not something hard to do. However, when you have a collection of over 400+ DVDs it can be not only daunting, but intimidating to find a movie and watch it. So I wanted to get all my movies digitized in a way that someone could turn on my TV, scroll through my collection of movies, pick one and play it.
For this I have chosen to go the Apple Mac Mini route. I plan to pick up a Mac Mini and hook it up to my tv and start encoding all my movies.
For someone with 200 movies or so this would be a perfect solution. However I have 400 movies. So I started to look into additional storage options. I believe I am going to go with a NAS storage server setup with enough extra space so I can continue to grow my movie collection, but also allow all the computers in the house to be backed up to the NAS.
I am still working out the details of everything, but when I am done I am planing on having quite the blog post about my setup.
In a previous post I wrote about how I tried out for and joined a local Juneau Celtic rock band calling themselves “Fire on McGinnis”. Since that first post we have been practicing weekly if not more to get current with the groups existing song list. This is something I am having an easier time with then with other bands I have been involved with. Fire on McGinnis has a CD that I am able to listen to. They also go as far as to record almost all of our practices and send out the results as MP3s so you can listen and continue to work on songs on your own time.
I feel lucky that not only have I had a CD to listen to and get up to speed, but the whole group is very professional when it comes to practice time. Very little time is wasted in between songs or working on issues with songs. Everyone gets a chance to give their thoughts on a piece and we work on them till one we all like is agreed upon.
When I moved to Juneau I brought my drum set with me. All my drumming hardware had a few miles on it to begin with and I was hopeful when I moved up here I would find a band right away. Well we all know that did not happen. For the better part of 5 years my drum kit remained untouched and my skills atrophied. I was very close to selling off my drum kit when I did one last search of Craigslist and discovered that Fire on McGinnis was looking for a drummer.
Like I said, time had done a number on my kit. In the first month of practice with the band two cymbal stands and one hi-hat stand broke along with a cymbal. Last week I placed a an order with Guitar Center to replace the stands with new Ludwig stands and one Zildjian Cymbal. The order took one week to get here, but my kit is pretty much back to normal again.
I am really looking forward to play shows and learning the rest of the songs on the bands set list. The few people I have told in town that I was in a band all seemed to have heard of Fire on McGinnis and are really looking forward to the next show we play. I would be lying if I said I was not excited myself.