2013 move over, make way for 2014!

Here we are again. The end of another year.

First off I’ll recap 2013. 2013 was an overall good year. There were some rough patches but what year doesn’t have those? The year started out as many do, Gun-ho about completing everything on my list. Looking back most of the things I posted as my goals last year I did not complete but I did make some serious progress. To start I have yet to finish the games but I am closer to completion. I didn’t pick my guitar back up as I wanted. However I did read a good deal throughout the year! So out of the 3 goals I came in at 1 complete, 2 missed.

Along with a recap on my goals I had a downturn in events regarding my dad. The leukemia came back and this time it was fatal. My dad passed August 11th. It has been pretty hard on all of us in the family but we are slowly picking up the pieces and moving forward. He would of wanted us to keep going and not let this event hold any of us back.

On the work front I took the newly created mobile department head on and developed an app utilizing the Titanium framework. After this was completed we hired on a few more mobile developers and rebuilt the app in native Objective-C and Java. The mobile team is pretty much where I am and I can now put on my resume Objective-C developer along side iOS Developer. This is a huge accomplishment and something I have been working towards for a while now. I still do work with the web team and code in PHP when needed, especially when it comes to the API that the mobile app interacts with.

On the game end of things I recently picked up Unity and am playing around with that. I may release my games utilizing Unity. I’m not 100% sure yet. Only 2014 will tell.

Now lets talk about 2014! This next year I’m going to keep a few old goals and add a few more.

1: Make a game darn it all!!!

For this goal I want to finally complete a game and market it somewhere. Even if it’s an old school arcade style game it will get done. Speaking of old school arcade style games… Maybe one of them could be a collection of these classics all in one… hmmm. That sounds pretty promising 🙂 I also want to make some progress on a platformer style game that I have brewing in my head.

2: Publish at least 2 mobile apps to the app store.

I have a couple plain jane app ideas in the works and one already prototyped. These will most likely be iOS only apps but if I get extra motivated I may release them to the play store as well 🙂

3: Blog more often.

I would like to pick up and finish something i started a while back… Making a weekly blog post about a random programming topic. I did this with a few focused on PHP but I may expand it to Objective-C as well.

4: Loose more weight!

OK OK… This is one of those new years resolutions that everyone and their pets make… As for this past year I actually made some progress. I lost around 20 or so pounds! Not too shabby I think 🙂 I want to step it up for this year with increased exercise and even better eating habits.

5: Organize myself (Attempt 8,643)

Here we go again with another traditional one. I will eventually get this down 🙂

Now to accomplish this I may utilize a service a friend of mine has mentioned a few times, Beeminder. This seems like a cool concept. You basically pledge money to stay on track with a goal. If you fall off track you have to pay the beeminder service your pledge and then the cost goes up. I might give it a go.

Anyways here is my new years resolutions/goals. Now it’s time for me to get on with the night!

Farewell 2013! Hello 2014! Have a happy and safe new years everyone!

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New years… Blarg!

So, here it is… September 19th and I haven’t kept up with any of my resolutions. Is this new? Nope. I think anyone can say that it is sometimes difficult to stick to your resolutions, especially when one of them concerns your weight. I Had such hopes for that one. I was doing very well while going to a personal trainer twice a week. I felt good, I was loosing weight and building some more muscle. Then something came along. I moved!

This is not a bad thing. I am very, very happy with my decision to move as I am now living in a house and not an apartment. But some things came with this that I wanted but kinda hindered the loosing weight a bit more than I wanted. I am now living in a house and working from home. I do not have a car or need one but with this comes the fact that I am always inside. I have also been more busy with work, also a good thing but with all of this combined it has killed my fitness routine. I had plans of walking every morning, using my Wii Fit, the tension cables my trainer gave me before I left and various other fitness activities to keep up with. So far I have done none of them. I am hoping to change that for the next couple months and redeem some of my lost steam before the end of the year.

I just launched a program for a client and the craziness that was that project should now be back to normal and back on some semblance of development cycles from here on out. This will let me manage my time better so I can hopefully squeeze in some walking and Wii Fit. I’ll also be able to manage my other clients better with this projects launch wrapped up.

My other goals I was not very good with either. Shaving everyday? Ha! That didn’t happen long 🙂 Build miahandines.com? I haven’t even had a chance to start that site. To busy with paying clients to get any time to do the site. Web Games? Nothing their either. Same case as with miahandines.com. Wedding goal? The plans have changed once again their. We have decided again to pay off some of our debt before doing the wedding.

So I think the only thing I might be able to salvage is to lose some weight by the end of the year. It won’t be as much as I wanted but some is better than none.Well this wraps up my rant on my New Years resolutions. Till next time!

– Miah

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We’re like super villains” — Jonathan, BTVS Season 6

Week 1 Update

Well the first week is over. It is starting to be a slow start but I have good feelings that things will soon slide into place.

On the food front, it was rough. Wednesday my fiancée got sick and we stayed home. I worked from here but our schedule was thrown off so we didn’t quite eat as much or what we should have. The next few days did get better. Then today we slipped again. I stayed up late last night and woke up late which again threw off the schedule. Things will get back into place 🙂

Friday with the trainer was good. He had us focus on legs and biceps. Surprisingly I could walk this weekend! 🙂 I attribute it to the protein shakes we are taking with the nutrition plan.

Well this is a short update. It’s late and I’ve been working all day and still have a few things to get done before I can call it a night.

– Miah

Updating my Fitness Resolution

OK, I have spoken with my personal trainer (yes I have a personal trainer 🙂 ), and we have adjusted what this goal will be. He doesn’t want me to focus on loosing 100 pounds off the bat. He has bigger and better plans for me 🙂 Also he is right in how people tend to get discouraged if they set such a lofty number. This is why I am changing the weight loss resolution to this:

To stick with a fitness plan and increase my overall health throughout the year.

I may not be loosing 100 pounds but in total more like 50-70 pounds. This is because I am not only doing cardio and weight loss exercising but I will be doing weight training as well to build more muscle. This will allow me to loose the body fat, gain muscle and be in an overall healthier state and since muscle is heavier then body fat this is why it will be more difficult to loose 100 pounds. I’m cool with the plan and am excited to get some results.

The basic plan is this. I am on a nutrition plan that will give me all the nutrients I need to keep up with the plan. I’m taking a series of natural vitamins and making my own protein shakes. I will be eating every 2 1/2 to 3 hours and will be drinking at least 8 glasses (8 oz each) of water a day. I have purchased a food diary so I can mark down what I am eating and the exercise I am doing. This will allow me to make sure I stick with a good diet and not stray and eat fast food or other unhealthy foods as my trainer will be looking each session what i have been eating 🙂

As for the exercise I meet with my trainer twice a week, every Monday and Wednesday morning. At training I will be doing 30-45 min of cardio on the treadmill or elliptical machine then 45 min – 1 hour worth of weight training to tone up and build muscle. In addition to this I will be doing cardio 3 more times a week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings. Either on a treadmill/Elliptical machine or outside on one of the many trails is Sarasota. The other two days, Tuesday and Thursday will be days to rest up and cook meals ahead of time for the next day.

Since I am here I will give a quick update on how this week has gone so far. I will normally give an update each weekend on Saturday or Sunday for the whole week.

Yesterday was the first day back with the trainer after the holidays. I was glad to be back and starting to work on my fitness. Did 25 minutes on the treadmill and 45 minutes of weight training. I’m a little sore today in the shoulders but not too bad. I had expected my legs to feel it more but surprisingly they are fine. As for the meal plan. I took my morning Vitamins but missed out on the afternoon set. I had a good breakfast of Oatmeal and Fruit and my lunch and dinner consisted of 1/2 of a Publix sub each meal. I had some Fiber Selects wheat thins for snacks (garden veggie flavor) and fell victim to two slices of pizza at the end of the night (grrrr) . Not too happy with that but I got home late and needed to eat something. The pizza was left over from the weekend and I would feel bad wasting it. If anyone wants to take it off my hands feel free 🙂 lol.

Come this weekend I’ll give an update of the week. I’m feeling good about this! w00T!

– Miah

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To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” – La Rochefoucauld