Weekly Recap

And yet another workweek is over, actually January too, I can’t believe how fast this went by.

Fitness

I cut back on the workouts this week from 4 to 3 to take some evenings off and relax for a change. It felt so strange to come home around 18-19 o’clock and just sit around.

Nevertheless I could squeeze in two weight training sessions and I am happy to report that I increased the weights for most of the machines. I have a couching appointment with my trainer next week to discuss the current training plan and see where we can tweak, I will also suggest to include some chest and arm exercises too in order to have a complete body workout plan. I can’t see any changes yet body-wise but I am hopeful that it will slowly come.

I went to Pilates last night as planned but almost didn’t, I had all my gym equipment with me but a meeting ran late and I almost didn’t catch the train to make it on time, but then the Train was also late so it was like fate was telling me that it’s not supposed to happen. I was still thinking whether to go in the train but then spontaneously decided to stick to the plan and I am very happy that I did.

I will skip Yoga today and this week altogether, instead I will take 3 rest days to recover physically and mentally. I’ve been feeling tired lately and this cold weather is really getting to me, I have been fighting with a small cold lately which I will hopefully cure this weekend.

The bad news is that I quit the 5K training plan. It’s hard to do it on a treadmill and it’s still too cold and icy to run outside so I will just alternate between stationary bike, elliptical trainer and the treadmill for cardio for now.

Quitting the 5K plan means also that I don’t have to carry my iPhone in the gym around (I’ve been playing it in the Endomondo app), there is plenty of good music running in the speakers.

I’ve also started wearing my weight lifting gloves again to avoid injuries and it has been going great so far.

A nice website I heard about recently is The Weightless Project at https://www.weightlessproject.org/ and all you have to do is log your exercises and that will be used for charity. I encourage you to check it out, I will too!

Gadgets

I have been again neglecting my Garmin Swim and I hope that I will somehow manage to include a swimming session soon but I have rigurously been wearing my FitBit and my new Polar FT 7 and enjoying it tremendously.

If you are looking for a HIIT timer I highly recommend GymBoss. It is available as app for iOS and Android but also as a separate gadget, if you prefer thT.

Food

This week has been a catastrophe nutrition-wise, I’ve been craving sweets a lot and overeating at lunch on days where I had no/small breakfast. This is definitely one area where I have to improve and wuickly but I am slowly getting tired of chicken breast all the time so I need new ideas!!!

I am even going as far as not to do my weekly weigh-in and measurements on Saturday and wait one more week till I clean up my diet.

Geek

I checked out GIT and GitCola last week so this week was SVN’s turn. I like both but I need to try a better GUI client for GIT and also play with the commands too.

I would like to improve my presentation skills so I volunteered to do a technical presentation (the second I did so far) a week ago and it was today. I prepared and made a plan in which order I will talk about the topics but I was so nervous, I was interrupted a few times with questions and new ideas came into my mind during the presentation so I kind of lost the order of my thoughts and I think I was overall too fast and jumped from one topic to another too quickly. Nevertheless the participants were happy and understood most of it so I guess I will take this as a partial success. I’m considering to rewatch the recording and take some notes to learn what I can do better next time.

I have been asked at work several weeks ago to mentor a new girl colleague joining us in April for 6 months to do her bachelor diploma and this week I have agreed to do it. I still have to figure out how this will fit into my already full schedule but I am excited to help and teach when and where I can so we’ll somehow figure out a plan which works for all of us.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I’m listening to podcasts wuite often on the train to work and this week I have been catching on with Hanselminutes and found these episodes particularly interesting:

• Virtual Reality, the Oculus Rift and Unity 3D with Rift Chopper author James Andrew
• iOS Developer and Professional Model Lyndsey Scott
• Are we as Software Engineers focused on the right social priorities? A discussion with Hadi Hariri
• Learning Code The Hard Way with Zed Shaw
• Geek Relationships 2013 with Scott’s Wife Mo

Also I saved this link recently, this page contains all kinds of Microsoft Press ebooks, I will definitely check it out and you should too:

Free ebooks from Microsoft Press

Media

We watched The Internship with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, two old-fashioned salesmen working at a company that closes and they are forced to find new jobs. They start as interns at Google and, although the movie seems like a long ad for Google, it is very funny nevertheless and worth to watch.

City Of Bones on the other hand was dreadful. It wasn’t my choice but my bf regreted it eventually too because it is just a bad version of Twilight. I heard about the books as well but it is just not my style.

Music-wise I’ve been listening to Pink this week at work during coding and enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s been a good change from the usual stuff which I’ve been listening to during the last few weeks.

I haven’t watched many series this week but I did however finish season 3 and started season 4 of Mad Men, I’ve been watching it on and off when all my favorite tv shows were on break.

Gaming

The start of the weekend is always so exciting and I mentally make so many lists and plans every time but I usually can’t manage even half of it. Well, the plan for this weekend definitely includes some gaming on the Xbox One!

Otherwise I have been playing Candy Crush in the evenings but I am stuck at level 72 for over a week now and it’s getting seriously annoying! You know what else is annoying? I started playing on the iPad but the progress can’t be shared with the iPhone!

I use Flipboard to keep up with news about technology and read about fitness and gaming so I created a Flipboard Magazine this week where I save all the articles I find interesting, you can check it out here: http://flip.it/K0xj9