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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

In Sports: The Impossible Training for Climbing

I think that I tend to make choices on the basis of past learned behaviour. Perhaps many people do, perhaps only a few, I do not know, but I do know that this behaviour limits the scope. In my case, I've started my exercise trajectory with lifting weights and I generally tend to come back to it when I train for other sports. After weights, I did kickboxing, salsa, and competitive running for significant amounts of time. And since 2007, I discovered climbing. It's a sport that I love and hate for a multitude of mental, social, physical, and emotional reasons.

The mental...
Climbing is about planning ahead, it's about looking at a route (a series of grips and steps) and imagining yourself climbing through those, after which you hopefully manage to. The way it has transformed my life is that I have learned to see plenty through a similar lens. If you envision the steps that you take to reach a goal, you will reach it or get closer to it than if you don't. And (hopefully) nothing is impossible.

The social...
I've made tremendous friends since I started climbing, but I tend to make tremendous friends during many activities. The difference here is that you are literarily entrusting your life onto others, which is a bond that is as strong as family nearly. Because of this, I've also lost some friends, because the trust was not earned. But you tend to look at people in the same way in other areas of life as well. Is this a person that will hang on to me if I fall?

The physical...
I am not typically built for climbing, but I can say the same for running as well. Then again, every sport has sub-sports. In running, I was always better at sprinting because of the explosive nature of it and the way my body works. In climbing, your greatest advantage is not just strength or endurance, but also weight. And I tend to be a tall, rather heavy person. This is a battle I fight with every time I climb, particularly in areas where upper body strength (which is equally affected by body weight and technique) is required. Therefore my route of choice tends to be flatter, though there I like to do difficult flat ones as well, because they are more about puzzling and technique.

The emotional...
The hardest saved for last. What does it do to a man or woman to not win? What does it do to get older and see all the young ones passing you by? What does it do to be too thin & frail, too fat, too injured, or in some way incompatible, at least in your mind? And, what does it do to be afraid of heights or to do something that you never succeeded at before? It's a tremendous experience, climbing, and mainly because you have to face demons every time you do it. If you look at beginners or pros, there is always that new challenge, that unclumb route, that move that your body just doesn't seem designed for. You learn, tremendously, by experiencing, step by step, how to accomplish something. Your fingers hurt, your feet and knees can hurt, your core, your back... a lot of pain is the natural companion of sport, but the learning that you do is what keeps you going.

In my case, I mentioned my physical ability and how it affects my actions. But there is also the emotional part, the mental endurance and the fear of heights, both of which seem nearly impossible to train, but in fact just require trying and trying again in different ways.

The Impossible Training
Sometimes it seems like there is no way to train for climbing except by climbing. Here are the focal points:

  • Get your strength to weight ratio right, meaning you need to have strength but keeping your weight low. The top-performers have lower than 5% body fat (source), but that's certainly not for the food lovers amongst us... In my view then, the only option is aerobic exercise to compensate for the increased caloric intake. 
  • The type of strength is hard(er) to train for: grip strength, static (isometric) strength, core strength, and other muscles contribute to performance, but typically the more you train outside of a climbing environment, the more you build unnecessary bulk. 
  • The mental and emotional strength is nearly impossible to train for outside of a climbing environment, just because much of it depends on exposing yourself to difficult conditions, that are not easy to replicate elsewhere. But you do need to train these, as much as everything else. 
So here a brief insight of what I spend much of my free time with. Hope to see you on the rocks soon :)


Thursday, November 21, 2013

In Movies: Blade Runner - The Aquarelle Edition

Mesmerising. "This animation consists of 12 597 handmade aquarelle paintings, each painting is approximately 1,5*3cm in size. Together they form my [Anders Ramsell's] 35 minute long paraphrase on the motion picture Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott."


Via Coudal Partners.

Friday, November 8, 2013

In Movies: 'Cool Runnings' and the celebration of Failure

AVClub.com, one of my regular reads for mostly TV reviews, has an interesting article on 'Cool Running,' which was, incidentally, John Candy's last movie and one of Disney's most successful at that time (1993). From the article, what makes the movie so unique:
Cool Runnings employs failure not as a plot device, but as an ethos. The main character is Derice Bannock (Leon), a sprinter whose dreams of Olympic gold are shattered during the qualifying race when another competitor, Junior Bevil (Rawle D. Lewis), falls off the starting block, tripping Bannock and a third runner, the inexplicably named Yul Brenner (Malik Yoba). That’s right: Cool Runnings literally opens with the protagonist falling on his face. And the moment is played completely straight, not for laughs.
I imagine that most people have seen this by now, but if you want a feelgood movie that doesn't feel empty in point either, check out Cool Runnings

Thursday, November 7, 2013

In Web: Beforethey.com (pass away)

Takes pictures of tribes that are sure not to be around if you believe in history believing itself. Currently, you can see galleries of tribe members in Ethiopia, Indonesia + Papua New Guinea, Kenya + Tanzania, New Zealand, Mongolia, Siberia - Yamal, Nepal, China, Vanuatu, Argentina + Ecuador, Namibia, India, and Siberia - Chukotka.

Click on the title or the link to see the site.


In Movies: Thor 2 - The Dark World, light-weight fantasy scifi 3D bashfest

Prior to continuing, I should mention that I "typed" the first draft of this using the dictation feature on my new iPhone 5s. Very, very impressed!

Movies are funny, because when you're in the moment or perhaps just out of it, you can feel drastically different to after a few hours later or after a rewatch. Thor 2 - The Dark World is that kind of movie. I loved watching it and was excited after watching it too. But after reflection, I don't actually like it because I felt cheated somewhat.

What are the basic observations? The action flow does really well. The script felt quite light. The acting was okay in parts. It was an interesting mix between Science Fiction (space ships and lasers) and Fantasy (Lord of the Rings elves and magic), which didn't really work, but isn't advanced technology like a kind of magic? There were also plenty of humorous parts, which carries a lot of the Marvel franchise.


So how did it cheat? Primarily, by making impossible or hard to explain things just work. Thor has impossible feelings for an earthling, but that pain is not really explored (thank god, millions of comic book movies sigh). Thor fights on a planet that looks like Dune and falls into a wormhole that allows him to continue the fight on Earth, with more stakes. Those kind of 'short-cuts' allow for the action to move fast and for the viewer to feel like they're on the Thor-ride.

The whole movie was a trade-off between depth and flow, constantly balancing on the edge of story logic. It was logical only to the extent needed to make us believe that up was up and down was down, and in many cases why down was up and vice versa. I know that sounds annoyingly cryptic, but the laws of physics are constantly defied in this movie and I just don't want to say how.

Bottom line: if you want non-stop action this movie is for you. And I imagine that's why most people went. If you want more mythology and depth, you'll be disappointed, though the movie compensates for that plenty with comedy.

In Hardware: the iPhone 5s, a future-proof computer and camera in my pocket

First, some bullet-point format observations:

Finger print sensor: I like it, primarily because it saves time over the code I would usually enter to unlock it, not to mention my Apple ID in the App Store. During the unlocking, I don't like that it immediately requires the fingerprint when I lock the phone, because I had it previously set for a few minutes after closing, which is not an option now. I do hope that changes, because it's still slower to unlock the phone then. 

The camera: haven't tested it extensively, but like the nighttime performance, the intelligent flash function, the launch speed of the photo apps I use, the picture burst mode, and the slo-mo, although filming is definitely not my métier. It's clearly better than the iPhone 4 camera, which is what I wanted. 

The M7 sensor: I'm excited about it, but haven't used it in an app yet. I hope Moves, which I recommended before, integrates it soon, providing that Nike Move doesn't sue it out of the water. 

The look & feel: it doesn't feel oversized and it's super light, but I found the iPhone 4 light enough. I did notice that the White iPhone collects dirt at the bottom edge, which annoys me to no end. 

The battery life: Houston do we have a problem? This battery does not last long, maybe 10 hours on light use, and I'm wondering if it's to do with that I'm still on 3G (T-mobile NL is supposedly switching to 4G in a few weeks) or because of the battery bug that I hear about. Or, because of some kind of software or background process problem. Frustrated about it. 

The apps: I started using Pages for writing, because it syncs so easily with my Mac and with Pages in iCloud (useful for Windows PCs). Not really using other apps, or not noticing big changes. I do enjoy making bad music with Garage Band though...

Other: light sensor is much better and I really enjoy using the phone in inverted colour mode (the contrast is much better now!). Siri works well for me, as does dictation (typed a blog post with it yesterday). 

CONCLUSION
The frustrating and good thing about Apple devices is that they are of such good build quality that if you already have an iPhone (4 in my case) and were already able to put iOS 7 on it, the iPhone 5s does not feel that new. My old phone is 3 years old. About 3 months ago, the mute switch and top volume button stopped functioning (I did drop it a lot), but other than being slower, which you get used to, the only reason I needed to upgrade was because it made financial sense with my provider. I'll probably get the iPhone 8 and 11 for that reason as well, because I'm actually buying something that works durably. With other brands, I never know if the build quality is good, if the software continues to work well, and if the apps are available. So, it's a pragmatic choice.

It's frustrating to no longer have that pink cloud feeling about Apple gadgets, but at the same time there are so many easter eggs contained within the software and features that I'm sure to enjoy discovering over the next 3-6 months, after which it will become a good companion.

If you care to support this Website, feel free to order an iPhone 5s on Amazon and give us a kick back!

Why not choose an iPhone 5c?
The simple answer is future-proofing. The iPhone 5 was a perfectly good phone (apart from some battery life issues on 3G) and the iPhone 5c is essentially the same one, with some improvements in the camera and elsewhere. Another reason for not upgrading to it is the plastic, which I feel is a bit of a downgrade from the Braun-inspired design quality of the iPhone 4.


The iPhone 5s feels more like it's designed for, well, a lot of interesting things to come. Apart from the camera, which is state of the art for a mobile phone (see a comparison with the new Nokia Lumia 1020 here), the fingerprint sensor seems like a step towards a lot of opportunity, and I'm really excited about the M7 sensor, as I exercise a lot and care about having good performance data.

P.S. I do believe something is wrong with both software and hardware aspects right now (particularly the battery life), which I will try to fix with their help over the coming weeks. 

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

In Food: Try this gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cake

I came across this in the Evernote Food app, which lead me to this site with the recipe, and also to a book that this was sourced from.

First of all, easy-peasy to make, it took just about 20 minutes + time in the fridge (accelerate it by putting it in the freezer for an hour).

Second of all, delicious, very similar to mousse au chocolat, but without eggs.

Third of all, healthy, as there's no dough involved and good for the lactose-intolerant among us. It mentions Graham crackers, but the method does not actually involve them, rather it reproduces a similar effect.

I didn't change the recipe on the site, but would suggest losing very little salt as it quickly turns too salty. It does bring out the flavours however.

Check out the book here:
The Paleo Chocolate Lovers' Cookbook: 80 Gluten-Free Treats for Breakfast & Dessert




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