My Fitness Goals

"I know if I missed a day and nothing happened, then it would be much easier to miss another day. Pretty soon I wouldn’t have much of a schedule, and then I’d have less motivation. It’s a downward spiral that I want to avoid, so I keep the schedule sacred." - Chris Guillebeau

Back in November after watching my wife’s favorite movie series Twilight New Moon, I was shocked and inspired by a physical transformation of an actor Taylor Lautner. The guy gained over 30 pounds of lean muscle in less than a year. He went from being a scrawny teen in the first episode of the movie to a muscular man/werewolf in the second episode (google it). In fact he did so well that Men's Health asked him to be on the cover of the magazine in December 2009 and share his story. In case anyone is interested, here is the article

Now I consider myself physically fit, 5 years of wrestling and casual soccer and various other martial arts training kind of helped. However weighting 150 lbs @ 5ft 11" I looked nowhere near like those buffed gym rats :) Taylor Lautner changed my attitude towards fitness. I thought to myself if he can do it, why can't I? So the quest begins...

I did my calculations, signed up @ Gold's Gym, & wrote my action plan. To reach my fitness goals I would have to gain about 33 pounds of lean muscle. To do that I will need to train at least 3 times a week and consume 2430 reasonably healthy calories a day (including 180 grams of protein, 90 grams of fat, 225 grams of carbs in 3 meals + snacks).

I have to admit, until recently I did not track my progress which is a big NO-NO with these types of goals (or any other goal that a person wants to achieve really). Below are my projected weights that I want to hit every 2 weeks. When I started training I weighted 151lbs right now I'm sitting at about 160, which is about where I should be at this point. I'm content with the progress so far just have to make sure not to get sidetracked.

Downloadhelper and Xmarks Topnotch Browser Add-ons

If you love to browse through creative content online (youtube vids/flikr pics etc) and would like the ability to store it locally in your hard-drive there is an amazing little Firefox add-on "downloadhelper" that allows you to do just that. I just hope by now you have Firefox browser installed on your machine, there is absolutely no reason not to have it. Even though its a bit slower than Google's Chrome, FF is a lot better than most other browsers in terms of security, speed and level of customization.

In addition to capturing videos & images from your favorite website, downloadhelper also allows you to automatically convert those files into most commonly used extensions like WMV & mp3.

You can download the add-on here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

P.S.
There is also a great add-on for Chrome, FF, IE, & Safari called Xmarks. It allows you to save your webpage bookmarks in the cloud and sync them across all of your computers.

Evolution of In-Store Advertising at the Point of Sale

It’s a researched fact that about 70% of customer decisions in retail are made at the point of sale and not because of some interrupting commercial you saw on TV. Due to this, retailers are trying really hard to advertise and convey as much information as they possibly can in as little space as possible in-store. Some do it well like Wal-Mart, Apple, & MSFT retail stores, others not so much.

Back in the 80s it used to be just posters and handmade signs. In 90s it was customized color printed banners. In early 2000s TVs installed 12 feet high with unrelated infomercials that nobody cared to raise their head to look at. Now it’s digital signs and interactive solutions that inform a target audience about a specific product of interest at the right time and in front of their eyeballs (and not up in the no-attention zone). Generally that information is relevant, and if its interactive, engaging and permission based its a WIN and I love it!

Case in point a recent project that our team worked on here at Nanonation: http://www.nanonation.net/casestudies/quickglance/room_and_board.html

There are many other REALLY cool & impactful projects that Nano team is working on. Like heuristic product finder kiosk or iPad related solution that I unfortunately can’t share :/

Nargis Bandishoeva An Unbloomed Flower

I was listening to some traditional Tajik music (via last.fm) while testing our new software app. After about 8 tracks this beautiful song started playing by Nargis Bandishoeva. I immediately tagged the track "Navoi Dilam", added to favorites and searched for more of her songs. Unfortunately I only found 3 :( Those 3 were probably one of the best songs I've ever heard. I can't get enough of them really.

Later today searching for more songs and wondering why there are so few them I came across an article written by Eldar Galiev & Ramziya Mirzobekova called "Unbloomed Flower". According to the article Nargis Bandishoeva was in a bizarre fatal accident that happened in 1991 soon after her wining the "Voice of Asia" (most prestigious award for the best singer in former USSR/Asia). The weird thing is the bus that hit Nargis's car had plenty of open road to navigate around and the road conditions were as good as they can be back then. Apparently all the injured passengers were taken to the hospital immediately but Nargis. She was left on the pavement (alive) to be later picked up by some truck and died without any visible serious physical injuries. Worst of all the authorities refused to investigate the matter. Really fishy.

Nonetheless, Nargis had a chance to leave a legacy behind her. Her songs and performance at 20 something were praised very highly. She won the "Golos Asii" award beating superstars like Daler Nazarov, Yudluz Usmonova, Karamatullo Kurbanov and Oleg Fezov to name a few. According to the article with her stunning voice she charmed everyone even Thomas Anders (lead singer from Modern Talking) who was in love with her voice and personality (if I had to guess he was probably in love with her and I don't blame him). Such a shame this gorgeous and amazing artist left this world too soon...

Awesome Animated Story of Google

Jamie Oliver's Insipirational & Educational TED Talk

Facts don't lie and the facts that Jamie Oliver shares are scary. Until today I didn't even know who Jamie Oliver was (he is a famous chef btw). That all changed for me, and I would imagine for 100s if not 1000s of people that watched his award wining presentation about the importance of teaching every child about food.

Watch, share, discuss, and fight the ignorance:

Super Bowl Commercials 2010 - My Top 3 Picks

Overall these years Super Bowl commercials weren't that great. However, there were a few very creative ones among which these 3 were the best imho.

# 1 Google Parisian Love

This was by far the most original ad that tells a story of one man in 1 minute. Beautiful!


#2 Doritos Weight Room
If i had to pick the funniest one it would be this one, you just got to watch it to believe it:


#3 Kia Sorento Joy Ride
At first I was like hmm this looks interesting, then it was kind of funny but the ending made it epic.