Wii Fit

Last Monday my family got the game Wii Fit. When you first get it, you have to make a profile. First, you have to tell it when you were born and how old you are. After that, you stand on the balance board with your feet spread apart equally. It will then measure you for approximately two seconds. After it measures you, it shows you your center of balance during that time. Then you can look at your BMI and your weight. Last, you do two balance tests, which can be anything from walking in place to staying as still as you can. After all this, the game presents you with your Wii Fit Age. It uses your real age, your BMI, and how you did on the tests to calculate your Wii Fit age. After you complete your first body test, you can go on to play some games, or do exercises.

The games and exercises are divided into four categories: Yoga, Strength, Aerobics, and Balance. In yoga, you have a trainer demonstrate how to do a pose, and then you do it. You get points for how still you keep during the pose in yoga. In strength, you do various strength-based workouts such as lunges or pushups. In strength, you are ranked on how your center of balance shifts, and timing. Done correctly, the workouts in strength can actually be difficult. Aerobics gets you moving more than any of the other categories, but there is only so much moving you can do with a video game. Aerobics contains activities like Hula-Hoop and running in place. The last category, balance, is filled with games that require you to be able to control your balance, such as skiing and tightrope walking.

Overall, Wii Fit is fun. It provides a Top 10 high score list for each game, so you can compete against your friends or family members. You can do the body test each day, and it will track your change in BMI and weight. I am glad to have Wii Fit; I was just surprised at how hard it is to get it in the US.

Firefox Download Day: Today

Today is the download day for Firefox that I mentioned in an earlier post. So go download.

Camp Orr

I got back from Camp Orr last night. It was a lot of fun, as I ended up doing a BSA lifeguard certification course. I swam one mile two days in a row, and got to jump off a cliff.

I planned on going to camp to get Merit Badges; I was doing four badges with one free period during the day. Only one of my Merit Badges was Eagle required, and the other three were somewhat boring, so during my free period I went down to the waterfront to see what it took to be a BSA lifeguard. I got signed up without ever saying I wanted to be, but it all worked out nicely.

During lunch, I found all of the staff teaching my different classes and told them I would no longer be attending. Then I got on to lifeguarding. I knew most of what I had to do and know from Lifesaving, but some was new. It was very enjoyable, and the Staff Members were awesome. During the second half of the week, my days mostly consisted of helping teach some very big classes at the waterfront. On Friday, I had to take a test, which I passed, and from then on, I have been a BSA lifeguard. The requirements for BSA are about the same as Red Cross, I just have to know stuff about Safe Swim Defense and Safety Afloat.

Overall, I had a ton of fun at camp. The food was good, the Staff was awesome, and I had fun with my troop. However, it is nice to be back home.

Cell Phones CAN Swim

Turns out, I was wrong about cell phones and swimming. They can swim, they just cannot do it for very long, and they have to rest when they are done.

About an hour ago, I went back to my phone and figured I would try it once more before I left for Arkansas. I put the battery in, and it did not vibrate, which was either a good or a bad sign. It could mean that there was less water, thus causing it to stop vibrating. It could also mean it was so messed up, it could not even vibrate. I hoped it was a good sign, and I left to try again in about an hour.

I came back in an hour, and put the battery in. It did not vibrate, so I figured nothing had changed. However, just in case something had, I tried to turn it on. To my great surprise, it turned on. I was so happy I was jumping and running around. This was a huge load off my back, because I did not lose any phone numbers, or pictures, and phones without plans are very expensive. I had to put the SIM card in before I could test if everything still worked. It all worked as if nothing had happened, except my speaker. It is now quieter, and has somewhat of a tinny sound, but it is still damp. I am hoping sound quality will improve as the speaker dries out.

On a side note, my phone is tougher than I thought. It's been dropped to the concrete over six times, fallen in a ditch full of water, and gone swimming for twenty seconds, yet it still works.

No Sleep Tonight for Me; Lots for My Phone

I am leaving for Arkansas tomorrow at 3 in the morning, and I'll be gone for a week. I am not going to have access to a computer, so I am not going to be posting anything. Since I am leaving at 3, I plan on just staying up all night and sleeping in the car.

My phone is still broken. I talked to Samsung about it, and they are going to see if they can repair it. It is still under warranty, so I think they might do it free, even though it is my fault. I am shipping it off tonight, and I will see what happens when they get it.

Cell Phones Can’t Swim

I spent the majority of the day at my neighborhood pool doing swim team and just swimming with friends. I went home for lunch, and then again in the afternoon to do some chores. I came back sometime in the evening, because many of my friends were there and the pool was going to be open until 10.

When I came back in the evening, everyone had been out of the pool for a while, so we decided to go swim some more. I had not worn a shirt, because I forgot it with my friend, and my goggles were around my neck so I figured I was ready to swim as is. I dove in, and in about twenty seconds, my pocket started vibrating. I thought, "O, I've got a call...in the pool…" Luckily, I was right next to the edge, so I hurriedly climbed out of the pool and took my phone's battery out. I put it in my friend's backpack and it sat there for the next two hours. I put the battery back in when I got home, and as soon as it was in, my phone started vibrating again. So I quickly took the battery back out. It is currently sitting on my counter, open and with the battery and SIM card removed, waiting for revival in the morning.

Swim Meet #1

I am on a swim team, it is somewhat uncompetitive and small, but it is still fun. Today we had our first swim meet. It was my team and two other teams. We were at one of our competitors pools, but there is not much of a home team advantage in our league of swimming. Warm-ups started around 8:30 in the morning. I worked mostly on flip-turns, as I had not worked on them much during our previous week of practice. I was not paying any attention to time, but I think events started at 9:00. All events are done in order of age. Youngest, 6 years & younger first, and oldest, 15-16, last.

Our meets start with Freestyle Relay, where teams of four all swim Freestyle one length of the pool. My relay only had three people, because one of our teammates was absent. Therefore, we had to get someone from a younger age group to swim up. However, each person can only swim four events, two individual, and two relays. Turns out it is very hard to find someone not swimming four events in the older age groups. The age group below mine already had one kid in their relay that was swimming up. My teammates and I went searching around for someone to swim up for us, which took quite a while. Finally, we devised a plan, we would get a kid from two age groups younger than us to swim up into the age group below us, and take one kid from their relay to swim up for us. We ended up putting this together about 5 minutes before our relay, so we were a little tense.

After the Freestyle Relays were over with, the meet moved on to Freestyle. In swimming, it seems that the older an age group is the less kids are in it. Due to this, there are tons of kids in the youngest age groups, so they take the longest to do their events. I think 6 & under, 7-8, and 9-10 take up 80% of individual event time, if not more. So anyway, after we did freestyle relay, we had a long time to wait before any of my friends and I got to swim again. I was swimming Freestyle, and by the time I was up to swim, it was as if I had not warmed up at all. That does not matter that much though, since our races are only two lengths of the pool. When I swam, I found everything acceptable except my flip turn. I ended up flipping too much, and my feet almost hit the bottom of the pool. This caused me to have no time to streamline or twist back on to my chest. Therefore, I had to twist onto my chest as I pushed off the wall, so I pushed off towards the lane rope and almost hit it. My competitors' turns were much faster than mine were. I had to try and make up time in the last length, which did not work. I ended up losing my race, and being unpleased with it. Freestyle did not work out well for me.

Backstroke starts after the finish of Freestyle, I was also doing backstroke. I was hoping to do well in this race, as I think backstroke is my best stroke, and I did backstroke flip turns during warm ups and did very well with them. However, I had not counted my stokes from a flag marking to the wall, so I was not sure how well I would time twisting onto my chest. When it was time for me to race I was excited, I always get excited right before a race. I swam very well for me and stayed straight for the most part. I ended up twisting unto my chest a little early for my flip turn which slowed me down a little. My flip turn was fast and smooth, although I did swallow a lot of water. The rest of the race went fine, and I forgot what place I came in.

Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Individual Medley succeeded Backstroke respectively. I did not swim in any of these, since I had already swam in 2 individual events. During these events, I just sat under a generic EZ-UP and hung out with my teammates, some of whom were doing these events.

The last event in our meets is the Medley Relay. It's a relay made up of teams of four. Each person swims one stroke in the order of Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Freestyle. Again, my relay team did not have enough people, so we had to go on another search for a fourth swimmer. Luckily, someone from one age group younger had arrived during the meet. He was not at the meet for Freestyle relay so he did not do it. Because of that, he was only doing one relay, so he ended up being our fourth. I was starting our relay swimming Backstroke. I was neck-and-neck with my opponent, but he finished a little ahead of me. Our relay went downhill from there, and we ended up coming in second out of two.

The meet lasted a total of five hours, and I had fun. I got to swim and hang out with my friends. We have another meet next week on Wednesday, but I will not be attending it, as I will be at Summer Camp. Our team came in second, which is decent. At least we did not come in last.

Download Day 2008

Firefox is trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox 3. Currently 687,307 have pledged to download it. Firefox is a good browser; it is faster than IE and uses less RAM. If you do not currently use it, go pledge to download it. If you use Firefox 2, then get ready for a great update. I use Firefox 3 RC1, and it is much better than Firefox 2.

Hackers and DD-WRT

I figure everyone has heard of hackers and what they do. Most people see a hacker as someone who tries to break into a computer system to steal valuable information. However, there are hackers who many people do not hear about. These hackers have a beneficial motive, usually increasing functionality and/or freedom with an electronic device. Such as those who have designed the custom router firmware DD-WRT.

I have known about DD-WRT for a few months now, and I have always wanted to install it on my wireless router. Mainly because it has a ton of features and is very customizable. I have not been able to install it until recently, since my old router, a USR8054, was not compatible with DD-WRT. However, I bought a WRT54GL wireless router from Linksys, which is supported by DD-WRT, and has sufficient memory to host the standard version of DD-WRT. It arrived about 4 days ago. When it came, I set it up and got it running. I was content with the Linksys firmware for about 2 hours.

The more I read about DD-WRT the more I wanted to install it. Now, as far as I know, DD-WRT is not officially supported by Linksys, and there is a chance of bricking one's router when installing it. Therefore, I was a little unsure on whether or not to install DD-WRT. My $60 router was brand new, and I did not want to ruin it and go back to my old USR8054, which dropped wireless connections a lot. However, the curiosity in me wanted to see what DD-WRT contained, so I decided I would install it. I started working my way through the install guide, reset my router, and downloaded the firmware version I needed. After I saved all the pages I would need to view if something went wrong, I went to my desktop computer and started installing the firmware. I had to wait 5 minutes to make sure the install finished, and I was a little tense during those few minutes. After the install said I could restart my router, I did so. I unplugged my router, plugged it back in, and waited about 30 seconds for everything to start up. After 30 seconds, the indication lights on the front did not look like they were doing what they should. I tried to connect to the router's interface, and could not. I was not sure what to do here, and decided I would restart my router again before doing any of the brick restoration techniques. This time it looked like it was working, I tried to access the interface again, and successfully got to the first page. I spent the next 10 minutes configuring everything that needed to be initially setup.

Now that my router was all ready, I went back to my laptop and successfully connected. I went to my router's interface, and started looking at all the extra settings. I was not sure where to start, so I just worked my way through every page looking at everything. Every time I found something I could use, I enabled it and set it up. This went on for about 30-45 minutes, as QoS took a while to set up. Now that I have set everything up, I must say I am very happy with DD-WRT. It has everything and more a computer freak could want in their router. I did not even know you could do a lot of this with your router. I am glad I chose to install it.

Origin

 

Well, I have decided to get a blog. I do not have any particular reason to do so, but I also do not have any reason not to get one. I just figured it would be a way I could get my opinions out on certain matters. Posts based around that may end up turning into angry tirades. Chances are that many of my posts will center upon computer-related subjects, as a large portion of my life deals with computers.

So sometime soon, I will write an article that has an actual topic.