Around a middle of January, I though, “The sun will be out soon, time to get into shape and lose the Christmas gut”. I attempted to go running, and ended up getting 2 colds in a row (probably down to the running in snow), so decided to start working out inside.
I’ve seen multiple “Get Fit” type games for the Wii, and decided to give them a try. I initally started with “Wii Fit Plus“, which to be honest I didn’t feel like I was getting a decent workout, it seemed really good for slower excersies, but after an hour and a half of running through every activity I could, I still hadn’t worked up a sweat.
The next one I tried was “The Biggest Loser“, which to be honest was a little too much, especially when over the Christmas period I’d done nothing but sit on my butt, play on the games consoles, drink beer, and eat loads. It was a very good work out, and one I’ll probably work up to, but as a “sofa to get fit”, it was a little too much.
I then tried EA Sports Active, and I was quite impressed. In the box you don’t only get the Wii game, but you get a leg strap for you nunchuck, and a training band. I tried it for a couple of days, just picking random workouts, and it seemed to work very well. You get an option of Low, Medium or High intensity workout for each session, a choice of genre of soundtracks, and with or without Wii Balance Board support.
Towards the end of January I decided this was the one, and started the 30 day training program, and this morning was my last seasion.
So how was it you may ask ?….Well suprising good !
I ran through the 30 day program of Medium intensity, with the Electronica soundtrack, set my goals, created my avatar, and away I went. Basically the 30 day program consists of 2 days on, 1 day off. Each workout can take from 20 minutes to 35 minutes on medium, and it seems if you select the high intensity this adds around 10 minutes as it just increases the number of reps.
The excersises run from, running/walking on the spot, to more upper body such as upright row with tricep kickback. The workouts seem to try and keep each days workout unique, and seems to exerise different muscles
Before each workout, it gave you a list of the planned exercises it had for you, an estimated time and calories burnt. During the workout you have a running counter in the top left of the screen, informing you of current calories burnt. Each workout seems to burn off an adverage of 160 calories, which for a 20 minutes workout isn’t bad at all.
During all the workouts, you have you created avatar mirroring your movements to show you what you should be doing, and highlights anything your not doing correctly. You also have the trainer on screen, again pointing out anything you may be doing wrong.
Overall thoughts
As I needed something to get my butt off the sofa, this worked really well, because the exersised were mixed up enough, and it attempted to intergrate games into this, the result was, it felt more like playing a game than doing a workout. I think EA have tried to make this fun by adding a few “game type” workouts, eg Baseball, Basketball, Inline Skating, Boxing, Tennis and Volleyball. These however for me were the worst part of the workouts, I didn’t feel the Wii was quick enough to match my movements. An example of this was the Volleyball, basically it would say “Lunge Left” or “Lunge Right”, and then for you to do the Volleyball actions, this however seems to be a little slow, and by the time that it had recogined that I had stepped off the Balance Board to the Left, it then didn’t register my Volleyball movements in times and suggested I missed the ball. The same annoyance was with the tennis, whereby if I moved the Wiimote even slightly, it would take a swing, which would lead to me missing the ball.
A couple of other things, using the Wii to work out is a great idea, however I nearly got tangled up a few time in the cable between the nunchuck and the Wiimote, making some of the excersises quite annoying, however I fixed this by buying a wireless nunchuck, which was such an improvement. I also felt with the bands I wasn’t getting enough resistance, I did attempt to make them shorter, however they just ended up snapping on me. I then attempted to use some pre-made Reebok bands which did work, however the large sponge handles made it quite hard to hold these , the controller and nunchuck. In the end I bought just a resistance band in the Reebok Fitness Travel Gym Set with no handles, then tied this to the EA Sports Active supplied handles and this worked a treat. Finally, the excersised seemed to concentrate on upperbody, lowerbody, and only very few core exersises, which was fine, however I would have prefered a little more core.
Final thoughts
If I can forgive the fact that there was limited core exersises, the sometimes oversensitive motion control and the bands sent weren’t resistant enough for me, this is a decent workout, and over the 30 day program I’ve become pretty tones and lost 13lbs which really isn’t too bad. My next mission is to go for the EA Sports Active : More Workouts, as this is meant to improve the sensitivity issues as well as consentrating a little more on the core.
Ok, just a quick blog post, but some people may find this useful . If you are like me and have a number of friends of facebook that play a lot of the facebook apps such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World, etc and tend to hit the publish button every time they fire up the game, or what seems like every 30 seconds, your Facebook news feed, like mine can get a little crowded.
You could un-friend them, but that’s not very friendly, and if they enjoy playing the games, and I’m sure they have other friends that may finds the post of interest (eg, if they are playing the same game), but for me, it just makes my News Feed unreadable.
The solution is simpler than you think !, when you see one of the offending posts, just mouse over the top right hand corner, and click the hide button. This will hide this post, and give you the option to hide notifications from just this app, or from this user. Hiding the app, will hide all posts from this application.
I spent 5 minutes running through my news feed, hiding all the apps, and now my feed just has relevant information to me, it’s like the good old days of Facebook again.
edit : Just has a message from Chris, and apparently if you just use Lite version of Facebook, you don’t get any apps showing.
Well, I’m honored to say, that I have finally seen the one of my most anticipated films of this year. This film is brought to you by the guys over at the Suckcast podcast. Just a little history before we start on the film, I was made aware of the Suckcast podcast when they tweeted the RedDwarfForum twitter account saying they were liking the ScutterCast podcast, back then we were getting quite a lot of flak due to poor editing, poor preparation, and just generally doing a poor podcast. I initially assumed that it was somebody else taking the piss out of us, especially with the name of Suckcast, and our podcast being called Scuttercast (there was method in my madness).
After doing a little bit of googling, I found that they also did a podcast, named “The Suckcast“, and decided to give it a listen, What a podcast !….I’ve downloaded every episode since and each episode makes me laugh out loud, a number of times.
The podcasts hosts are Man Guy (Dan Guy), The Herman (William Stendeback) and Cory (Cory Eskkridge Okouchi), each week they discuss their week, and discuss a movie they have watched that week and just generally have a laugh while doing it, you can tell by their synergy, they enjoy each others company, and enjoy doing the podcast.
At the beginning and end of each podcast they mention their sponsors, Ninjas Vs Zombies. Again after a little googling, I found that the movie is their own baby ! How awesome !, unfortunately they are still waiting for a publisher to take them on, so the chances of me ever getting to see their creation was starting to look bleak. Out of the blue a couple of episodes ago, Cory said that if anybody wanted a copy of the movie, to email in and he’s try to sort something out, so obviously I emailed in.
Anyway that’s the back story out of the way, now lets get to the film itself !
Is this film going to win any Oscars ? Nope.
Does this film have mindblowing visuals that make Avatar look like the first episode of the Simpsons ? Nope.
Does this film have martial arts that would show Bruce Lee a thing or two ? Nope.
Is this a fun, easy watching, laddish film ? Hell Yeah !!!
How do I know ? Because my other half sat playing on her Blackberry all the way through it, asking how long it had left, because she was bored
The basic movie plot is that Randall (Dan Guy), is interrupted while attempting to bring his brother Eric (PJ Megaw) back from the dead by Herman (William Stendeback), who is banging on the comic book stores (assume that Randall works their), as he’s want to play their weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons. This results in a botched resurrection that does brings back his brother, however he suck the souls of the living to survive. Each person he sucks a soul from, turns into a flesh eating zombie.
As the film goes on, Eric gets a taste for the soul sucking, hence resulting in an army of flesh eating zombie terrorizing the neighbourhood. With no way, and no hope of defeating Eric and the zombies, Cole (Cory Eskridge Okouchi), Kyle (Daniel Ross), Fitz (Daniel Mascarello), and Randell are granted super ninja powers to help defeat Eric, and rid the world of the zombies.
From this point on, (and without spoiling the film for anyone) it’s essentially a fight between Ninjas and Zombie !
So how was it ?…well it was a fun movie, when I initially saw the trailer, the first thing that came to my head was one of Peter Jacksons first films “Bad Taste“, an overly gory film with just so much heart and soul, it’s one of those films you just don’t get bored of. I’m glad to say that Ninjas Vs Zombies didn’t disappoint, the film had a decent story, decent acting, and to be honest really good special effects as this seems to have been made on a shoe string budget. The “soul sucking” scenes, and the fireballs that Randell can conjure really wouldn’t look out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster !
Was the film predictable ?…well it was a good guys vs bad guy film, and there are very few where the good guys lose
I have to say, the homages to the great films out there were amazing, it felt like a little game after a while, every few minutes I was turning to the missus and saying “ooooo, look, that’s the Turtles”, or one of the other films they paid homage too. I’m not 100%, but I seem to remember thinking a lot of the fighting moves were either from Mortal Kombat, or Street Fighter…I may be totally wrong, but that what they reminded me of.
Did it have any nudity ?…Yeah, but only for a split second, if anybody has listened to the Suckcast, you’ll know why I was a little shocked to only see a split second of nudity
Would I watch it again ? Already have, and it gets more enjoyable with each watch, it’s going to be one of “those films” I think ?
Would I have changed anything ? No, not really, there were a few points in the film where the comedy timing was a little out, apart from that much fighting, much gore, loved it.
All in all a great movie, if your looking for Hollywood blockbuster, with great depth and millions of pounds of special effects, then this movie isn’t for you, if you are looking for a low budget, gory, fun moving, then this is the film for you.
I think the current score on IMDB of 6.7/10 is totally justified, I just hope a publisher takes them on, so the rest of the world can see this great movie.
into shape and lose the Christmas gut”. I attempted to go running, and ended up getting 2 colds in a row (probably down to the running in snow), so decided to start working out inside.
