2024-11-17 08:00:00
One of the greatest challenges of losing large amounts of weight is that it takes a large amount of time. Living with this requires an extreme level of focus, patience, and dedication. Small achievable milestones are something that has absolutely helped me stay sane during an otherwise immensely challenging last few months. In hindsight, I could have lost weight consistently by counting calories and just playing Star Citizen, but I think I would be going completely insane. Exercise has been a non-negotiable part of changing even if for only the sanity benefits. I truly can’t express how gratifying it
Before I started working with a trainer, I definitely didn’t understand progression. I didn’t understand how to meet myself where I was and gradually increase the effort to get more out of the same time spent exercising. While I was working to improve, I didn’t have much thought put into it. I’ve learned that when one puts some planning and thought into their exercise, even a beginner can get a lot more out of every workout.
Everyone has many days where you don’t feel like doing the right thing. That’s where growth occurs. In those days, in those moments that’s where it’s important to do the right thing. You’re pushing back against your impulses and whims. That is where true growth occurs in the long run. On the days when you do not want to do the right thing.
Growth occurs when you push back when you don’t want to do something.
Steve Shaw Massive Iron Q&A November 15th, 2024
Recently, I’ve started applying this to my swimming trips. I’m on my own, so I have to ensure I’m pushing myself. Originally, I just set goals that seemed achievable, such as working towards doing 10 laps of the (reasonably sized) pool at a time. That took a bit to get to, but eventually I got there. Now I’m planning on increasing the amount of laps per visit. Today I went swimming and did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 20! I’ve decided now is the time to start recording my sets and total laps in my weight loss spreadsheet.
I find the best friend of progression is objectivity. That’s why weights have numbers and not feelings on them. I find it especially easy to underestimate what I am able to do, and so sticking to moving numbers higher (within reason) allows me to ensure I’m improving over time. I previously wrote that you can look up how to progress to basic body-weight exercises:
Don’t be afraid to modify!
Bodyweight exercises are incredible ways to get stronger quickly when starting out. A significantly heavy person may not be capable of performing particular exercises. A tip I stumbled on recently is that you can search for whatever exercise with the word “progression” and you’ll find ways to gradually work up to a particular exercise. It’s important not to feel guilty making modifications, as an obese person one is behind the starting line! Constant effort and gradual step-by-step modifications can make improvements way faster than one would think possible.
I think that’s the really important take-away. Doing anything you can to start small, and then figuring out how you’re going to take on more and more. With the right level of patience, effort, and consistency you would be astounded at how quickly you can make radical changes. One of my major goals this Winter is to increase the amount of laps I do per visit. I’m going to try to spend more time at the pool to make this happen too.
That’s me, I’m mfs.
I’ve really found that scheduling workouts on my calendar instead of “aiming for once every x days” has made a huge difference. Properly dedicating the time has helped me a lot. Sadly as it’s getting colder, I’ve been noticing myself struggle to stick with it. The painful progression for me at this rate is going to be being outside at all during winter. The more I can stick to my exercise schedule the better. I’ve bought some warmer clothes, in hopes that it will get me through the fall, but I am incredibly nervous.
If everything goes well, and I keep up the pace I can be below 400 by springtime. It’s a pretty ambitious target, but I’m cautiously optimistic. If I can really push through this Winter I’ll be able to bike again when the snow disappears. That will be so encouraging, I’m tearing up writing this. I’ve missed biking so much, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. If I succeed, I’ll have already mitigated many years worth of damage in under a year, which I’ll consider it’s own massive victory. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m trying to keep it together until the next major victory (hoping to be under 500lbs soon).
Thanks for reading. Many more people are following these updates than I have expected. I’m hoping to introduce more audio-visual content for this. I’ve more or less neglected video/audio updates but I have taken a lot of photos that I’m in no rush to share. I’m expecting to have a lot more to say as I continue to make significant progress. Thank you for helping keep me accountable! My hope is that my updates either encourage you or somebody you know!
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2024-11-12 08:00:00
I’m almost down 70lbs, but I still have a long way to go! Not only am I excited to regain mobility that I had lost in gaining all the weight, but there’s a great deal of new experiences I hope to take on. I am really looking forward to opportunities that open up once I’m a healthy weight again.
Here’s what I’m most looking forward to at the moment:
One of the more surprising achievements recently has been starting to do sit-ups with a bit of momentum. This is something I hope to get much better at as time continues to move on by.
📉 Weight Tracker | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Weight | Current Weight | Weight Lost | Goal Weight |
| 574 | 505.6 | 68.4 lbs | < 225 |
| Last updated: 2024-11-12 | |||
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2024-11-09 08:00:00
This project was created by Hazlin who generously asked me to host it. I’ve always struggled to learn resistor values, and I think this is a great way to get your mind wrapped around ’em. It’s been a joy to see the updates as this was built in C++, Ruby and now HTML5 canvas! See the announcement post.
Inscribed in the source for the game:
I hope you enjoy the game!
Remember friend, Jesus loves you, and loves hearing from you.
If you have any feedback, I’d be thrilled to pass it along!
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2024-11-09 08:00:00
Star Citizen is supposed to be two very ambitious games in one. There’s a single-player mode in development called Squadron42 in development, and the MMO has been in alpha for about a decade. Since I backed the game since around 2015, I check in occasionally to see how the game has progressed. While I usually come back disappointed, at least this time I can say I’ve been less disappointed than usual.
Many basic things still don’t work the way one would expect, but there’s always more things added to take screenshots of. I can admit that as somebody who’s seen the game grow over the years that there has been some good progress, but it’s still quite far from what a normal person could consider a “playable” game. One of the biggest mistakes Star Citizens make is playing the game as they would like it to be rather than how it actually is.
In my opinion, no other game has such a huge disconnect between what the players think it will be, and where it’s actually going. Star Citizen is to many of the backers their perfect space “forever game”, but many of these dreams are incompatible. At least a majority of them are going to be disappointed. Cloud Imperium Games, has a tendency to vastly over-promise and vastly under-deliver. Yet, it is the very dreams themselves that have allowed the game to raise the larger half of a billion dollars to support development.
The MMO portion of Star Citizen is known in alpha as the “Persistent Universe”. This is where players will be able to progress their character in a dynamic environment like EVE Online. This portion definitely fuels the lion’s share of excitement. The idea of a first-person EVE-like game with advanced combat mechanics is something that even I would find incredibly enticing.
The trouble is, Star Citizen as it exists is currently very far from being charitably called an MMO. Not many players can be on the same server for long, and all kinds of bugs and problems grind the servers to a halt after a certain amount of time. The few “gameplay loops” that actually are implemented in game, have many problems that make immensely challenging to even attempt them.
4.0
The next major content patch had a great deal of gameplay features gutted from it. This has lead to a fair amount of controversy within the community, but apparently the most important feature is still on track to being delivered. That feature is “server meshing” which is very much required to making this game ever qualify as an MMO. According to CIG they want to be able to seamlessly manage players between servers in the same game environment. Presumably those further away from each other will be in their own servers, and those together will share a shard.
If server meshing is as described, I can definitely see why it would make a massive difference in the short and long term. Many basic things in game become completely unusable when the servers slow to a crawl. If server meshing successfully distributes the load that allows for over 100 players to be in-game without experiencing the horrible glitches related to server lag, that would be a huge change in how playable the game is.
I’m still pretty skeptical however. It seems that by design, far too much depends on the server-side. A player can’t even interact with a ladder or open doors without the servers to be functioning optimally. This leads to all kinds of frustrating experiences where in the process of “playing” the most basic of tedium only works 15-30% of the time. Even presuming that server meshing works great, how many players will be able to exist in the same location without running into the same problems. It’s possible they’ll layer shards over each other, like I believe World of Warcraft does, but that may have its own consequences.
Despite allegedly being almost ready 6 years ago, it is still two years away. Despite the “playable” persistent universe being something that earns CIG a lot of good will, SQ42 is effectively a stain on their record of delivering actual progress. I know many look forward to eventually playing the campaign, but for now it’s just a demo and far from being released. A lot of features claimed to be “almost ready” yet undelivered for years has lead me to suspect that much of what’s shown off by the developers are highly “scripted” demos rather than actual in-development features. This was effectively confirmed to me when it leaked out that CIG made their employees work a crazy crunch to deliver for this year’s “Citizencon”.
Initially, I had hoped that Squadron42 would be where CIG would work on getting the basics of the game working, and the MMO would be based on those systems. It seems in hindsight that SQ42 and the MMO share very little beyond art assets and UI. It is a shame, a lot was paid for high-quality motion capture and even celebrity casting. And we have no idea if the story itself is actually thrilling or entertaining yet, but hopefully that’s the easiest part for CIG.
Every couple of years, I actually install the existing version of the game and see what it’s actually like. I decided to learn how mining worked and figure out how to do some of the hauling. I didn’t bother with combat because it appears unchanged from last time I tried things, and it seems still horribly unbalanced. The ground combat missions looked neat, but those also seemed riddled with bugs and problems. For a space MMO, hauling and mining should be very straightforward.
You have to play the game as it is, not how it should work. This has a lot of knock-on consequences that very often aren’t explained by the “influencers” who talk about Star Citizen. They basically gloss over many of the current state of the game to get people excited about the future, which doesn’t help somebody who doesn’t understand why doors don’t open.
Basic things not working
I was unable to carry a mission crate to my ship in a delivery mission.
As a returning player it wasn’t clear that the “carry” mechanic just simply wouldn’t work and I should have acquired a multi-tool & tractor beam attachment beforehand.
Various mining glitches
When you come up to a rock, even one you should be able to mine the mining UI just simply fails
Sometimes your mining bags on your ship glitch out with 0 capacity.
If you don’t catch this before you leave you can waste a lot of time.
Sometimes your mining laser will inexplicably never fire.
Glitches & Bugs
Strange (unexplainable) deaths
Bizarre ship damage, that can be only be repaired by “resetting the ship”
This is a lot of work, you effectively have to land the ship elsewhere, respawn (backspace) and then “claim” a new one. All these actions take a bit of time away from what you’re trying to do.
Server Crashes
Some crashes are recoverable. It seems like CIG invested the effort in building a system to have players moved to a new server when one crashes. It’s a bit of a disruption, but at least people can keep the little progress they were able to get up to that moment.
Fleet Manager
Storing and calling ships glitches out occasionally, this can outright destroy ships or cause unintuitive bugs.
Hauling is usually done through missions and the “freight elevator” which is a new addition to me. Seems like a great idea for a system and “cargo grids” are pretty useful as well. In practice both are quite buggy. Apparently the freight elevator currently eats mining pods, and the tractor beam can leave cargo crates in a state that makes them sometimes unrecoverable, thus failing whatever hauling mission you’re on and losing reputation. Allegedly they’re going to be temporarily removing the reputation hit soon.
While space trucking is pretty fun, it still has a long way to go to be a reliable way to experience the ‘verse. In many ways, space trucking relies on other gameplay loops being interesting and valuable. For now, it seems to be a good pair with mining. It’s very profitable to mine the best ores you can, refine them, then spend the time hauling them to a main city yourself for a big chunk of change.
Despite everything, I’ll say I find mining pretty fun in this game. The ARGO MOLE is a multi-crew mining ship, but the single-seater prospector is probably more worth using for the time being. I quite enjoy how in-depth the mining mechanics are. The overcharge mechanic is pretty neat, and I really like being able to choose what sub-fragments are worth grabbing. If every gameplay loop ends up as good as mining with less glitches, I actually think Star Citizen might be a pretty fun game.
Star Citizen youtubers generally say you don’t have to be picky while mining but I definitely disagree. If one is bothering to mine despite glitches, and then still choosing to sell the ore, every SCU (Standard cargo unit) should be maximized for profit, not time mining. Refining takes quite a bit of time, so you want to make sure you’re only refining what’s truly valuable. To reduce hauling trips, being a picky miner helps some resources are a lot more valuable than others, so its worth always mining the best you can. This is particularly important when you don’t have a bigger ship to haul with.
This system is very important. The in-game rental system works surprisingly well and is priced quite fairly. You can rent a Prospector and make the money back very quickly. What I would recommend for mining and hauling is grinding out missions until you can rent a Prospector. Once you have your Prospector you can start mining like crazy. First you just want to sell the ore directly until you have enough to cover refining costs & a Constellation rental. Then you do more mining trips to refine the best of the best. Once all your refining jobs are done you can rent the Constellation to sell all your ore for a very nice profit.
That would give your character quite a lot of UEC in a relatively short amount of time even in the game today. I am skeptical that renting combat ships would give one the same ROI. But it’s very nice that with a bit of grinding you can try out so many of the flyable ships. I think the rental system is a bit harsh in some ways, because your rental is for calendar days and multiple days adds up quite a bit. If I were CIG I would set it to 24hours of playtime not 24 hours on the calendar.
Many of the newer locations are quite beatiful. New Babbage may be my new favorite place in game. I’ve been quite impressed with how CIG continually increases the quality and look of what they deliver. This does have a downside where it feels they rarely update old assets up to par. The Constellation interior is very dated and some locations look out of place for similar reasons.
The frustrating part about many locations these days is just the travel time to accomplish things. Once you land at a station, you have to go through multiple elevators just to begin making your way around the station. Often times it’s faster to “Exit to menu” so your character is placed in the temporary living quarters instead of fighting with laggy elevators. This won’t work forever because eventually they want your character to always remain where you logged out iirc.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend putting a lot of time into Star Citizen unless one is steeled for many frustrations. I’m curious to see if the 4.0 patch (which allegedly has to drop before the end of the year) will actually make enough of a difference. I’m very skeptical that Squadron42 will even be available in 2026, and it’s worth wondering what will be cut to even attempt to reach the deadline.
When I was trying things out this time around I watched a fair bit of YouTube commentary by new and long-standing channels on the latest developments. I am suspicious that many of them continue (as has been done in previous years) to deceptively misrepresent the likely state of the near future under the guise of being merely optimistic. They seem to be willing to take CIG at every letter of their word, despite having the first-hand experience to know otherwise.
I think this is incredibly misleading. I have not spent a lot of time watching the “in house” commentary from CIG, but I’m not convinced I would learn much more in doing so. Merely letting the years go by and occasionally taking glances is enough to know they consistently fail to deliver on their own promises. If anything, I think far too many people fill up their mental model of the game with promises from the staff, rather than building up their own from observation of results over time.
I think this has to do with many problems, even totally unrelated to gaming. Many people are incapable of questioning even the most basic contradictions between stated reality and actual reality when emotions come into the mix. Much of the sentiment on the internal forums “Spectrum” is overwhelmingly negative, but you wouldn’t know it from the people who represent the game on YouTube.
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2024-11-02 08:00:00
Not only am I over 50lbs down, but I’ve also managed to lose just over 31lbs during October. So I’m still on target with my “1lb per day” goal. It does really seem like I need to “lock in” to stay on track, but I’m optimistic moving forward. I wish I could say it is easy. While logistically, things are simple, the effort required to stay on track feels immense. This entire process is incredibly challenging, and very often I get sore and tired enough that I can no long fight off my fears and doubts. I am afraid of failure, and I still very much doubt I can make it to where I need to be.
It really does take everything in me to keep this going. I’ve more or less put my work for the Libre Solutions Network on a massive slowdown for the time being. This isn’t an easy decision, because it means withdrawing the self-satisfaction from working on what I consider meaningful. Very often when I’m in pain my mental attitude resets back to “I’m useless and worthless.
I’m incredibly nervous about Winter, mostly being able to stay active during it. While recent progress has been great, I want to ensure I’m in the best possible situation to “hit the ground running” (figuratively) once springtime begins. I miss biking, but I’m not sure if I’ll be light enough to consider it once the snow melts. Optimistically I’ll be able to get on my bike in the fall.
As yet another way of keeping me accountable, I’ve joined the Fatty Contest weekly weigh-ins. I’m entered in as “Healthy2026”. This is because I believe if I stay consistent until then, I should be approaching a reasonable weight sometime in 2026. It’s an ambitious target, and a lot of it has to do with how quickly it takes me to leave the 400+ range. It’s natural for progress to slow as one approaches a healthy weight, so I’m just hoping to do the best I can by the end of 2026.
📉 Weight Tracker | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Weight | Current Weight | Weight Lost | Goal Weight |
| 574 | 505.6 | 68.4 lbs | < 225 |
| Last updated: 2024-11-12 | |||
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