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<p>That’s a good thing. I think that, generally, the better your cardiovascular capacity, the smaller the swings you’ll see on a heart rate monitor. There is also a time component to it. I find that, typically, my baseline heart rate slowly increases the longer I’m walking or working out, even at a fixed intensity level.</p>
<p>One tip: If you have the option of displaying your heart rate as a percentage of your estimated max instead of beats per minute, it simplies the mental processing of glancing at your watch monitor. You quickly get used to knowing what it feels like to be in the 60% range, the 70% range, the 80% range, and above 90% – without having to do any mental calucations.</p>
<p>Which one did you get mathmom? I’d like to get one in the future, they all look kind of complicated to me.</p>
Ish…insomnia again! H better get home soon so I can sleep!
<p>Went to weigh in. My scale says I lost 20 undressed, theirs is 18 dressed. Pretty close! The trainers want me to start on vitamins, fish oil and the whey protein powder. Said the fish oil and protein will rev up my metabolism even more. Not sure but will think about it. Also want me to do more weights as my cardio is good. Interesting morning.</p>
<p>Congratulations! 18 pounds. 20 pounds. That’s fantastic North Minn. You deserve it. You’ve been (literally) working your ass off!</p>
<p>I’ll leave all the fancy diet stuff to others. All I know is that, if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight and, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight! If I had just lost 20 pounds, I would strongly consider just keep doing what your doing! Rather than fish oil, why not just eat salmon once a week? Rather than protein powder, why not a bigger piece of chicken? Or a pork chop! You get lots of protein don’t you? My attitude is: if I only get to eat 1800 calories a day, I wan’t every dad-gum one of those calories to be a piece of food that I really enjoy eating, not in some nasty supplement!</p>
<p>As for more weight lifting, here’s a really good article from Alwyn Cosgrove that lays out the entire blueprint for losing weight: prioritizing diet and the various types of exercise. This is a terrific primer for anyone here looking to start or continue losing weight.</p>
<p>[Hierarchy</a> Of Fat Loss | Alwyn Cosgrove](<a href=“AlwynCosgrove.com”>AlwynCosgrove.com)</p>
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<p>I struck iPod gold today on the homeward leg of my 4.3 mile hike. I was coming down the hill, crossing the footbridge at the old mill, and about to start up the long hill home when what do I get? Only the best cowbell song in the history of rock n’ roll: Leslie West and Mountain’s Mississippi Queen. That enough to put a little spring in your step!</p>
<p>Oh, and Lance Armstrong must live in my iPod with that nice exercise lady. At the end of my walk, he came on the headphones and congratulated me on my longest run yet! Is this a great country or what?</p>
<p>I’m just going to buy myself the new shuffle. There’s too much great music that I miss out on, and I know it would keep me going…</p>
<p>The Shuffle only holds 2 GB or about 500 songs so the Nano would be a better choice if you want to carry a lot of music with you. If you have more than 2 GB of music, iTunes will pick a random selection for you.</p>
<p>The way to load a Shuffle is to create a smart playlist that picks a random selection of all your five star rated songs. If it’s only good songs, that’s a lot of music, considering that you would get a new batch every time you connect to iTunes. I have not found a 2 gig nano to be a problem at all for music. You just mentally think of iTunes as your big library and the iPod is just a constantly rotating subset of that library.</p>
<p>I generally leave my iPod Nano in my gym bag and seldom sync it. I connect it to the computer that I have iTunes on only when I’m adding songs.</p>
<p>I charge it off the iPad charger (10 Watt charger charges it really fast) or at the office hooked up to a non-iTunes computer.</p>
<p>I normally listen to about 100 songs a week (running and other stuff). I’ve found that the repetition drops off quite a bit when you get up to about 1,000 songs or right about the limit of a 4 GB Nano.</p>
<p>I’ve now got 12 gig of five-star rated songs on my iPod – about 1800 songs because I rip them big for max fidelity. However, I’ve set up a smart playlist that picks a dozen songs at random from those songs that haven’t been played in the last 12 months. The playlist updates live, so as soon as one song is played, it drops off and is replaced by another. That way I never hear songs that I’ve heard lately and I never hear the same song more than once. I can adjust the number of months as necessary.</p>
<p>There are variations on this kind of smart playlist approach that could be used to cut down on repition on a 2 gig iPod using the last played date or the number of times played data.</p>
<p>I had a look at smart playlists on the web and it looks like there’s a quasi-programmatic way to play music. It also appears that it’s broken on the fifth-generation Nanos. I assume that they fixed it for sixth-generation Nanos. Not sure what the status is on Shuffles.</p>
<p>I’ve used computers since 1974 and a recurring theme about using them is that there is never enough space. I’m looking at upgrading my desktop by replacing one of the 320 GB disks with a 2 TB disk and using my external 1 TB disk elsewhere. I’m downloading the organic chemistry course from Yale right now and each one-hour lecture is 700 MB. I should just replace my home desktop (now six-years-old) with a new desktop and slap in 4 TB of internal hard drive space but the old computer works well enough. Especially when supplemented with my MacBook Pro.</p>
<p>I find that things are just more convenient having everything on the device itself. There are other reasons unrelated to music such as putting pictures, videos, notes or files that you need to move from one computer to another.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure how one would go about telling the difference between Apple software that is broken and Apple software that is working the way the designers intended. :)</p>
<p>Using any Apple software is an exercise in finding workarounds!</p>
<p>I looked at a long thread on them working in generations 1 through 4 and not working on generation 5. The thread was before the sixth came out so I don’t know if it was fixed.</p>
<p>I just assume that all Apple software will be buggy and broken. I believe that I encounterd the Smart Playlist bug on my first shot at a playlist of all songs that haven’t been played in the last 12 months. It originally listed several hundred songs, but played them in alphabetical order by artist, always starting with the As, and wouldn’t shuffle. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted it to play in random shuffle order.</p>
<p>The work around was the define the playlist as 12 songs selected at random. That gives me a random playlist, regardless of how it is sorted and, because it updates dynamically, each song that is played drops off the list (because it’s now been played in the last 12 months) and is replaced by another random song.</p>
<p>With Apple stuff, you just get used to thinking in workaround terms.</p>
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<p>I’ve used Smart playlists for years. I’ve rated every song in itunes, so most of my playlists are restricted to 5 star songs. I have every song tagged with my name, my wife’s name, or both names. Thus, a playlist can “include <my name=”“>” or “include <wife’s name=”">, thus making it easy to update my iPod or hers. Once you get the hang of it, Smart playlists can do just about anything.</wife’s></my></p>
<p>Or I have a Gram Parsons playlist that includes songs that match any rule:</p>
<p>ARTIST contains Gram Parsons
ARTIST contains Flying Burrito Brother
ARTIST contains Incredible Submarine Band
ALBUM is Sweetheart of the Rodeo
ALBUM is Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons</p>
<p>LIMIT playlist to 50 songs, selected by highest rating</p>
<p>This gives me 50 five star songs written by or performed by Gram Parsons.</p>
<p>Biking partner fell off his recumbent bike today. He has going down a slight slope, pavement is slimey with moss/algae, riding with one hand, and using the cell phone. Fractured his ankle and skinned is knee and elbow. </p>
<p>Lesson: Never use the cell when riding a bike, steering, braking, and pedaling at the same time.</p>
<p>Ouch. Broken ankle is a pretty serious boo-boo. Surgery and pins? I hope the healing goes smoothly.</p>
<p>I did a nice 4.3 mile hike to the state park and back – my long scenic route where I usually twist an ankle. Today, on every rocky downhill bit, I consciously told myself to “pay attention”. </p>
<p>I kept a pretty steady pace and averaged a little quicker speed overall than I did on my 2.5 mile walk on the running track the other day. Not bad considering the hills and the dirt:</p>
<p>[SlowGeek</a>! Runs for hwc1954](<a href=“http://slowgeek.com/ru/hwc1954/700368093?unit=mi]SlowGeek”>http://slowgeek.com/ru/hwc1954/700368093?unit=mi)</p>