Merry Christmas

Are Your Facebook Friends Worth A Dollar?

The other day I was washing the dishes and I was thinking about all the Facebook Friends I have who I rarely interact with: The people I sat across from during senior year Chemistry, the people I did a presentation with for one subject at University, that guy I worked with for six months in a warehouse or that girl who used to date my ex-housemate.

Midway through a dreaded cutlery, I had an interesting thought: What would happen if everyone on Facebook had to pay one dollar once a week for every friend they had. Clearly, it would never work. The e-Public would never allow such a travesty! However, it's interesting food for thought and it got me thinking about who I would pay a dollar to stay connected with. Obviously my family and close friends would come first, important people who I could contact for any questions about work and/or study would come second, but anyone more than that and I probably wouldn't be willing to hand over the cash. I went through my friends list and came up with roughly 50-55 people I would definitely be willing to pay $1.00 to have on my list but that was the extent of it.

So I am happy to pay $55.00 a week. That would cut my fairly conservative list of friends down by about 4/5ths, which actually really surprised me. Why? Because I'm pretty stingy about my Facebook anyway. I don't add people I haven't met and I routinely remove people I haven't spoken with in a long time. Some people might consider that rude, or somehow elitist- but really, if I'm not interested in that persons daily activities and they are not interested in mind, then I'm doing both of us a favour by cutting the connection.

So to discover that even with my specially selected and carefully maintained friend list, that 80% of them aren't worth more than a cheeseburger at happy hour to me, I was rather surprised. Imagine then the accounts of the 'e-social butterfly' with friends in the thousands of whom they have met less then half. Are those people really going to spend thousands of dollars each week for the sake of strangers? Doubtful.

It also brings an interesting question to mind about the quality of posts. If you knew people were paying their hard earned money for your updates, would you put a little more effort into them? Would you consider it well worth their while to pay for photos of your lunch? Or would you start having real opinions? Real observations? A dash of dry humour and wit in your occasional status update?

I know I probably would- after all- you get what you pay for!

So food for thought, comment if you feel inspired!

The Final Delightful Product

As promised here is our finished Gingerbread house. Completed lovingly to the 2009 Disney take on Charles Dickens classic 'A Christmas Carol' and the final forty minutes of Home Alone 2 (which we failed to finish the other night).

With a roof of chocolate wafer sticks, a chocolate freckle chimney and walls covered in soft lollies and candy-canes, it's a palace of palatability. I can't wait to devour it later tonight!!

Merry second day of December everyone!!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I love Christmas! Not as much as my wife, but still plenty enough to always be looking forward to celebrating the Saviours birth! As this is our first year as a married couple, I figured it would be fun to really ramp it up with some fun activities to indulge in while some of our favourite Christmas movies play along in the background.

We started on Sunday by putting up our teeny-tiny Christmas tree, covering it in gold and red baubles and then setting up our little ornament table (consisting of a couple of bits and pieces we bought on sale last year when we were engaged and some recent acquisitions) and finally finishing but putting decorations [essentially] anywhere we could fit them in our tiny two-person flat. We even hung up our stockings and a fabulously awesome advent calendar mother dearest bought for us during a recent visit. It was a blast! A blast containing more holiday cheer than you could poke a stick at!

Then on Wednesday, we went about making us some gingerbread dough for- yep, you guessed it- a gingerbread house! We watched Christmas with the Kranks for that one and it rocked!

However, the big challenge came last night- putting together our house. I'm not going to lie, I didn't think it would work. I had a gut feeling the roof would cave in with Home Alone blasting in the background. For starters, we were using a dough recipe from one book and then a house template from another one. At first it looked like the two wouldn't match and we would run out of dough. Instead, we just rolled our dough thinner and hoped it would have the strength to bear weight. On top of that, nobody I spoke to seemed to have ever made one that stood of its own accord. It seemed a deliciously doomed enterprise.

However, nobody else I discussed this Christmas adventure with had my wife, and my wife is magic! She rolled the dough to perfection, cut it all our with the precision of some alien robot and sluced thick royal icing over the back of the thin walls as reinforcement for additional supporting power.

All in all, and much to my delight (and surprise), it worked! Mid way through Home Alone 2 we successfully fixed our roof and chimney to our scrumptious walls.

Lo and behold our first Gingerbread House:

So now we wait until tomorrow to decorate our delicious dwelling! Will it stand under the weight of countless candies? Will the roof stay up another night? Find out in the next update of Nate Radio!!

In the mean time, talk about Christmas and how awesome it is!

Magical What?

I was (as I often do) browsing NBA.com yesterday when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted this amusing headline:



Unfortunately, I then realised that the story was only talking about a cheerleader who works (or cheers...) for the team Orlando Magic, and that a cheerleader who can perform magic was not actually involved.

Then again, I guess if it was REALLY a magical cheerleader, surviving a fall wouldn't be such a big deal thanks to her supernatural powers and therefore probably wouldn't have made news anyway.

So I figured I'd call it a tie.

Milestone!!

Nate-Radio reached 5,000 page views today. Which isn't many in the scheme of things- especially on the internet- but it is a solid number followed completely by 0's which I thought was rather impressive.

Now if only Halo 4 would arrive in the mail and Miami would beat Brooklyn, my day would be complete!

Hashtags on Facebook

Recently, I have noticed a trend of people ending their status updates with hashtags and I can't help but feel a little sorry for them. More on that later though, first, lets address exactly what a hashtag is.

The hashtag, is simply  a hash symbol (#) followed by a word or phrase combined without spaces or, in some cases, separated by full stops (e.g. #yolo, #iamswaggy, #hashtagging.is.hip). Hashtags were initially used in Internet Relay Chat as a way to categorize phrases for ease of use later when searching for that particular phrase.

The hashtag made its way to Twitter as a simple hack to group together posts under one phrase or topic until company heads noticed it catching on and wrote a nifty little software script that would recognize any time someone tweeted a phrase starting with a “#” and turn it into a link that would direct whoever clicked on it to  every other post out there containing that same hashtag. Suddenly, if you were #havingagreattime, you could click on your own hashtag link to see who else in the world was also #havingagreattime.

At its most basic level, a hashtag is simply a search- a label for a topic or a filter for a discussion.

Twitter isn’t the only site that uses hashtags though, additionally, hashtags are functional on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ as well as few other lesser known social websites.

You know who doesn’t use hashtags? Facebook.

And that is exactly where my sympathy for the poor souls hashtagging on Facebook lies. The poor folks who don’t understand what they are doing or why they are doing it. The poor kids that think it looks cool to fail at technology. It’s like watching your parents type “h-t-t-p-:-/-/-w-w-w-.” before every url. Watching the technologically challenged try to post status updates from their email. Listening to hipsters complain why they can’t have a profile song on their instagram account.

Basically, it represents a failure to understand technology- which wouldn’t be so bad if it was kept private, but the fact that these people are broadcasting their ignorance to everyone online….

...Well, that makes me sad.

Bad Luck Brian

On the subject of memes... I totally forgot about this one:

Memes Are Fun

When most people hear the word 'Meme', the think of a funny picture with a hilarious joke- the set up on the top of the image followed by a hilarious punchline along the bottom. Memes are the things your friends text you so that you can have a laugh in the middle of work hours, the things you 'Like' on Facebook but don't actually comment on. Memes are the profile pictures of people that love to share hilarity.




However, memes are actually much older than the age of digital sharing. In fact, they are older than the Internet itself.

A little history: The phrase 'Meme' was coined in 1976 (a good thirty six years back) by Richard Dawkins as he described evolution. Dawkins concluded that evolution doesn't simply operate on a chemical level, it it also required some self replicating form of communication. In the chemical world, a gene is self replicating, it duplicates on and on and on and on. It's the reason a baby goes from a tiny thumbnail sized ball of tissue to a 6'11 NBA center. However, outside the chemical world, there are ideas or information that do the same thing. They duplicate and travel through society the way small pox travelled through the newly discovered Americas. These information packets, self replicating units of transmission, are memes.

Enter the Internet Meme we all recognise so easily. These are information packets- whether it be something as simple as using the word 'teh' instead of 'the', or 'moar' instead of 'more', these are all little packets of information that travel through huge amounts of people at incredible speed. They evolve and adapt as some genes do too- what is funny one day is parodied the next. Companies are spending thousands of dollars daily to analyse what makes them funny and what makes them spread, they are an advertisers holy grail.

And occasionally they are pretty funny.

Much funnier than genes.

Interesting and Funny

I think we could all do with a rehash here:

Interesting (Adjective)
Arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching the attention.
It will be very interesting to see what they come up with.

Funny  (Adjective)
Causing laughter or amusement; humorous.
The play is hilariously funny.

Kryptonite!!

A few days ago I was driving home with my wonderful wife and we started talking about how ridiculous it is that EVERY single villain in the DC Universe seems to have an unlimited supply of Kryptonite.

I mean seriously, kryptonite is, by definition, the meteor remains of the planet  Krypton, which is generally stated to be 50 light years  (or 473,026,420,000,000kms) from Earth. How many people do you know that own a single rock from that far away- let alone a whole arsenal of meteor infused weaponry. For me, that number is zero. I know zero people that own rocks from 50 light years away.

It’s ridiculous. My wife agrees, so that’s where that ended. Yet the curiosity center in my head got a hold of the whole ‘kryptonite’ thing and I ended up looking it up. Online.

It turns out there are quite a few types of kryptonite. The run of the mill green stuff that makes Superman weak is the most commonly known one of course, but then there’s the red rock that alters his mind so he can do whatever he wants. 

There’s gold kryptonite that takes away his powers and blue kryptonite that heals and strengthens him. Superman can develop split personalities when influenced by black kryptonite and grows paranoid when under the effects of the silver stuff.

My two favourites however for there complete and utter nonsensical nature is white kryptonite- which kills plants (Awesome!) and pink kryptonite- which (you guessed it) makes Superman develop some quite fruity tendencies… Hilarious…

Too much information to remember? Fear not, the caped crusader is here to rescue you once again... And he apologises for the typo (see if you can find it):

De-Sex Your Cat!!

Today, while digging up a giant lavender bush (seriously- huge). I found a teeny tiny litter of kittens. They were so small and cute! So cuddly and soft! Absolutely adorable. The only problem was that by taking out the bush, I had now deprived them of their shaded cat-pad. So, I did what I could, I put them in a cardboard box with a soft towel and dropped them in to the vet.

Here's where the trouble starts. The vet informed me that spring is generally kitten season. Lots of abandoned kittens are brought in and the only humane thing they can do is euthanise the itty bitty kitties- which basically breaks that part of my heart that loves adorable things with tiny paws and big eyes.


What could I do? They need their mother- so I went looking for her. I asked the neighbours all around if they own a cat, I checked where I found them in search of clues, I did what I could but there wasn't much hope. The vet had told me that these kittens weren't in the best condition and were likely victims of being dumped by some careless punks or abandoned by their mother. Due to the fact they were right under an overgrown lavender bush, chances are it was the latter.

Sadly, I left them with the vet. Chances are they might have been put to sleep already. I guess it's better then slowly dehydrating and starving to death out in the cold but it's so sad. I feel responsible for those little monsters and there's nothing I can do for them. They're too young to live without their mothers milk and they wont last the night without it.

Instead, I wish the owners of their mother had been smart enough to have their cat de-sexed. Forty dollars is all it takes. That way, innocent kittens wouldn't have to pay for their irresponsible behaviour and I wouldn't feel so bad.

Overreact Much?

I often overreact and I shouldn't. It's one of those things where something really irks you at the time and when you look back on it you see just how small and petty it really is.


Recently, I figured I'd try this instead: As soon as something annoys me to a point where I might transform it from a molehill into a towering mountain, I'd jump the whole 'looking in hindsight' thing and go straight to figuring out how much of an effect that one, little, teeny, tiny thing, conversation, person or opinion had on my life. It worked wonders.

For example, Bob comes into the gym and bench presses with miserable form. He packs on a lot of weight and then performs the shallowest of reps, barely bending his elbows at all. I've told Bob a thousand times to go deeper and do a full rep through a full range of motion so that he will have healthy joints that are balanced and strong and he will live a life free of injury. However, Bob has probably realised that if he does this, he wont be able to lift as much weight. If he can't lift as much weight, he wont be getting the self-esteem hit he normally does, or he wont be impressing the girls he normally does, or something else- so he doesn't do it.

For a while, this really bothered me. I'm of the philosophy (or at least I like to think I am, I'm probably not, we're all imperfect) that if you're going to do something you should do it properly. Why would Bob continue to do something counterproductive to his goals?

Then I realised. Bob will do what Bob wants and I don't need to overreact to that. In fact, I don't need to react at all. There's a wise old quote that is simple and eloquent: "Act, don't react." 

Bob still comes in to bench press and still does the same thing, now I just smile and get back to my own thing. I act on my goals and it's made me a much happier gym patron.

Act. Don't react.

Embrace Your Weirdness

Some of the most wonderful and entertaining people out there are the weird ones. It's always refreshing to find someone who doesn't act the way the programmed masses do. Everyone has the capacity to be a little weird, to wear odd socks or sing in the shower in a really high pitch voice- but the truly weird ones are the ones people are drawn too.

Even if for the only reason of seeing what it's like on the other side of normalcy. 

Embrace what makes you different. If nothing makes you different, then do something out of character- if you do, even for a moment, you'll be something unique, something new, something awesome.

Something weird.

Don't Be Creepy

Due to the fact that I am amazing (slightly exaggerated) and married to a beautiful woman (entirely true) I am constantly (another slight exaggeration) being asked about the secrets to building an awesome relationship.

Now, as we all know, relationships are somewhat like snowflakes in the way that no two are a like, therefore, I wont dabble in specifics but more in general common sense, which contrary to its name seems to be quite rare in an age where information in all shapes and forms rests at our fingertips.

So here we are, my top five tips on how not to be creepy when chasing that special someone:

Be The Right Age
Age is huge when it comes to creepiness. Nobody wants to see couples using their lips to bridge generation gaps- that’s just nasty! Sure, there are exceptions (many of which are highly paid exceptions known as ‘celebrities’) but for the most part, you should obey the golden rule. [(Age/2)+7]. If you don’t, you’re putting yourself at risk of putting people in the uncomfortable position of not being sure if you’re her boyfriend or creepy uncle.

Open with Direct Conversation
There is a direct correlation between how often you talk to someone and how attractive they find you. Think of it like beer goggles- if you are unfortunate enough to be granted with any measure of attractiveness whatsoever, a few good conversations can easily bring your mug up to the national average. This relationship between beauty and communication, however, only extends to REAL conversation. That excludes text messaging, Facebook chat, emails and epistles carried by messengers- those are all great ways to communicate once you’ve built a relationship on REAL face to face, but using them as your sole form of contact will quickly put you in the creepy bin.

Eyes On The Prize
Nobody likes walking around with a head on a swivel the same way nobody wants to cook for a fussy eater. It’s demeaning and embarrassing. Plus, if you’re checking out everything with a pulse that passes when you’re with your special someone, you’ll quickly find they might do the same- and replace you, because lets face it, that’s creepy.

Be Realistic
Face it. At first, nobody wants to spend all their time with you. You may be mighty, bold, beautiful and resplendent, but people need time to recharge their “social batteries” and chances are you might not be as resplendent as you might think. Give the other person some time to miss you and catch up on their lives outside of you. There’s nothing creepier than a human magnet.

And While You’re At It…
If you’re spending a realistic amount of time with a special someone, don’t go backwards on the creepy scale by bombarding them with text message while you’re a part. That’s not to say you need to sever lines of communication completely but there’s a big difference between a few genuinely friendly texts throughout the day and trying to match the word count of the entire works of T.S Elliot in a single twenty-four hour gap. One of those is creepy and one of those isn’t. I’ll let you pick which is which.

And if you are ever unsure about your course of action and how it might come off, you can always ask yourself this simple question: "Would a creep do this?", and if they would- then pick another course of action. I couldn't put it any simpler than that.

An Australian US Presidential Election?

For months on end, my Facebook feed has been battered by arguments, glowing support and slanderous comments directed towards Mitt Romney or Barrack Obama. No biggie right? Most of you reading this are likely in the same boat. The problem is this though: All these political posts are coming form Australians.

Australians. People in a country far from the jurisdiction of the US President. A country with a whole handful of its own political problems. A country that really doesn't need its citizens focusing so intently on something that 1. Doesn't have any affect on them and 2. They don't even have a say in. Aussies don't vote in international elections.

It reminds me of another raucous debate my Facebook endured months ago. Team Edward or Team Jacob. Clearly Edward was the protagonist of the entire Twilight series so he had dibs, right? No, no, no, he bailed in the second book and forfeited that right... Sound stupid? Well now you're beginning to see just how ridiculous this is.


Yet still people do it. They are passionate about it and will continue regardless of how often I link them to this very post in the available comments section. Meanwhile, Australia has a Prime Minister doing her very best to be worse than useless and naming her opposition a "misogynist" for calling her out on it, which is ridiculous: Being a woman doesn't make you a crap politician; being a crap politician is what makes you a crap politician. 

It doesn't help that we, as a country, elected someone who closely resembles the villain in the Disney movie The Rescuers.


Alas, that is the boat we are in. So I shall endure the pointless political posts with a smile. I've had my rant and ranting is always strangely therapeutical in one way or another. Yet that is my stance- what side of the fence am I on?

The Australian side.

As for you, where do you stand in the current Political maelstrom?

Zombie Apocalypse, The Epic Conclusion.

Nate-Radio Presents:

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE Part IV

Needless to say, the Zombie-Infection slowly spreads until Will Smith sacrifices himself to save a vial of blood that holds the key to curing the infection. The infection escapes the terrifying reach of the Zombie-Apocalypse long enough to reach scientists who create a vaccine capable of mass production.

The world is saved. (Dramatic Pause) Alas, too late for the stick-men at Nate-Radio.

Zombie Apocalypse Part III.

Nate-Radio Presents:

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE Part III

To Be Concluded

Zombie Apocalypse Part II.

Nate-Radio Presents:

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE Part II

To Be Continued

The Zombie Apocalypse has captured the imagination of artists all over the world. From filmmakers to musicians to photographers to garden enthusiasts. In fact, Zombies are such a cultural phenomenon that should you become victim to their relentless bloodlust, you can still proudly tell the world just how many little Zomblings you must pay to feed and clothe.

So, keeping that in mind, it makes sense for Nate-Radio to take on a Zombie Apocalypse and see just how long they make it. Of course they're not the most clever stick-figures on the block (this isn't XKCD) but perhaps there's more to them than meets the eye. Like a transformer. Or something, I don't know.

Nate-Radio Presents:

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE 

To Be Continued

Inscribblespiration

Scribbling mindlessly on Post-Its sometimes leads to wacky ideas! They might not always make sense or anything but in this case they provided the Interweb with a Thursday Comic. Enjoy!

Have you ever scribbled yourself into action or gotten a great idea from some wayward lines?

Nate-Radio (Origins Edition)

I was going through some of my old stuff yesterday when I discovered an old 178x222m notebook buried amongst some old Wheel of Time books. On the inside cover read the following:

All text, lyrics, poems in this booklet are copyright to me

© 2006

I had no recollection of ever writing such a thing or having such a book, so with some degree of curiosity I opened it up. It was mostly empty except for the first few pages of which I had drawn some crude stick figure comics very similar to the ones I occasionally post here. One in particular I found so fundamentally stupid that I actually laughed. Out loud. That's a genuine 'LOL' there.

The Original (enhanced slightly in photoshop)

So, being the cool cat I am, I decided to pay tribute to my 2006 self and recreate this comic digitally in vintage Nate-Radio style!

Nate Radio Anniversary Edition

Six years in a dusty box, finally digitally remastered. If paper had feelings I'm sure this notebook would be pretty pleased with the outcome of more than half a decade of patience.

Be The Change You Want To See

We live in an imperfect world full of flawed characters. None of us are perfect, neither are our parents, neither are our teachers. Those people this substandard world idolise are definitely not perfect. Yet we all have good within us. Light to cover the dark. I love the old Cherokee story of the Two Wolves:

One evening an old Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

How true that is. We are all the sum of our decisions. At the end of a tumultuous first year, Harry Potter lies in the hospital wing and listens to Dumbledore say "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." How do you define yourself? What actions are you taking to make that definition accurate? Everyone is blessed with talents and abilities- what is yours? Are you using it for good? Which wolf are you feeding?

I am lucky to live in a free country with an amazing wife and a wonderful family. I am passionate about sport, health and fitness. There is a change that I want to make and I am striving to live it myself. I want to start a revolution.

 Specifically, a revolution in how we see ourselves and how we approach personal health. The fitness industry is rampant with faceless cashpires (vampires that suck money). The media bombards us with thousands of articles every day on how to "lose 20kg" or "get slim for bikini season". On the other side of the spectrum, plus size models advertise feel good messages of "it's okay to be big if you're happy".

This has to stop!

Adult obesity rose from 49.85% to 55.2% between the years of 2001 to 2008 and it has had no reason to slow down since. Obesity is a disease, there is no sugar coating that. It is a gateway disease that leads to diabetes, binary calculus's, respiratory insufficiency, nocturnal apnoea, cardiovascular diseases, arterial hypertension, arthritis of backbone and lower limbs, infertility and cancer. Remove obesity and you severely cut the likelihood of all those disease. Remove obesity and you cut a huge personnel and economic burden free of the hospital system. Money better spent on the education system or on medical research. Plus size models can be as confident as they want but that won't make them healthy. That won't shorten the laundry list of risks they expose themselves to and it won't relieve the pressure on an overburdened healthcare system.

How do we stop obesity? It's simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. We take the onus off weight and we put it on performance. I cannot stress the importance of that statement so I will repeat it in big bold letters:

We take the onus off weight and we put it on performance.

This is the central premise behind this fitness revolution. This is the latchkey idea that the world needs to swallow, consider and apply. 

For too long the world of health and fitness has been devoted entirely to how much an individual weighs. Big Bang Theory character Sheldon Cooper says it best with the question: "Is your body mass somehow tied in with your self worth?", and it's true. For a lot of people, health starts and stops with the number on the scale.

However, weight is a tricky thing. People can get to what they think is a healthy weight and be falling apart on the inside. Weight is not an accurate indicator of health. What is? Performance. If you can run a mile under four minutes, lift your body weight effortlessly or sprint one hundred meters in under twelve seconds, chances are your not going to be obese or underweight. Unhealthy people simply cannot do those things. 

The motivational mental aspect is much better with performance too. Weight comes off slowly and we live in an impatient society. A one hundred and twenty kilogram woman aiming to lose forty kilos has a yard stick of forty notches to measure her progress. Losing forty kilograms in a healthy way would take at least eighty weeks. That's eighteen months, of waiting on progress with the only evidence that she's improving coming once a fortnight. How long would any of us last with a goal that progresses so slowly?

Performance on the other hand gives a much longer yard stick, a much more motivating progression of improvement. That same one hundred and twenty kilogram woman might walk a mile in thirty minutes. The next day she might be able to do it ten seconds faster, a week later she's knocked off a full minute. If she's using a stopwatch and counting to the seconds, trying to get that mile run down from thirty minutes to ten than she has now built a yardstick with twelve hundred notches.

I spent the best part of three years in a gym trying to get muscles that would impress. Now, I just want to get strong. My goals are all strength related. I build to them slowly and see progress each and every week and I've never been more motivated. I want to share this motivation, not just with you but with everyone. 

If you agree and if you have time to share, I ask that you spread this article on. Together we can start the revolution. The wolves rage on, which one will you feed?

So you're fit... But are you POKEMON FIT?

Gym leaders never made sense to me as a child. In fact, even today as 
an adult they still seem to be fundamentally flawed in their approach to battle. I remember my first visit to Pewter City, nervously walking through the enormous gym and battling its leader, Brock, for my very first badge.

I didn't think I was ready, I had barely done my due diligence to my newly acquired Squirtle, but I was impatient so I went ahead regardless.

And I won. Easily.

Brock's stone-type Pokemon collapsed like a sand pillar under the wave of my level fourteen water-type turtle. I took the Boulder Badge and a complimentary TM and was on my way.

The next time I stepped into a gym was in Cerulean City. I was weary from run ins with a seemingly infinite parade of Geodudes and Zubats but I was chomping at the bit for another badge. Misty, the Cerulean Gym leader, however, would not hand over her badge without a fight.

Her Pokemon were Water-Type. Same as mine, neither were especially effective against one another but hers were stronger and they quickly bullied me into defeat. Embarrassed I left the Pokemon Center in search of an answer. An answer that would soon show up in some long grass in the form of a Bellsprout. A grass type Pokemon with a razor leaf that would cut Misty's watery whelps to pieces.

I claimed Misty's Cascade Badge that day, but more importantly I learned some lessons that would eventually lead to past the Elite Four (and my childhood rival 'Buttdude') to claim the title of Pokemon Champion.

Not only that, but as a bonus feature I discovered I could apply these important lessons learned in the gyms of Johto to my own gym outside my lime green game boy color. What follows is the details of just how I did it.

Variety Is The Key

The world of Pokemon is home to hundreds of Pokemon, all with unique skills and abilities. Similarly, the world of Resistance Training otherwise known as 'weights' contains hundreds, even thousands, of different movements to target muscles of all shapes and sizes.

Three days a week at the gym where I work, a group of young guys come in and do a work out. The work out is always  exactly the same. Always the same exercises. Always the same amount of weight. Always the same amount of reps. Always the same amount of sets. The worst part, however, is that every work out is for the exact same muscle group- their chest. They have skinny legs and slight hunches from tight chests and weak backs- not what anyone would call a picture of strength.

A strong Pokemon team contains six Pokemon with a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. A strong body performs a program that require a wide range of muscles to contract and relax so that it is ready to perform in any situation.

A program built entirely on pushups and bench presses is as defeatable as Misty's parade of water Pokemon.

Balance Wins Battles

I remember once trying to use a level 12 Growlithe against a level 35 Victreebell. My other Pokemon lacked type advantages and I was convinced that my weak fire pokemon had the advantage. Oh how wrong I was. Despite my ember attack being super effective I was quickly crushed and had to dash back to the Pokemon center.

In exactly the same way, training legs once a month is no way to be a champion. Exercises like squats and deadlifts are excellent because they train multiple muscles in the same lift, ensuring balance is maintained. When I see BROrilla’s in the gym with spaghetti legs, I cannot help but cringe. They would surely be the first to go if a stampede of Tauros got let loose through the gym doors.

Avoid Rare Candy

My brother and I both played through Pokemon Red and Blue around the same time. I raised my Pokemon slowly, leveling them up in battle against trainers and in the wild. My brother on the other hand took a short cut and fed his Pokemon nothing but Rare Candy. Not only were their teeth probably rotten but when we finally hooked our Gameboys up via Link-Cable, my team came out victorious- despite being of a similar level and type.

There is nothing more important to your body than good nutrition. Food can be the most powerful medicine or the most repulsive poison you put in your body so make sure that, if nothing else, you’re eating well- you can’t run a car on mud.

Believe

Every single person who has ever lived has had moments when it is easier to give in than go on. Professor Oak (or was it Dumbledore?) said it best with: “there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.”

We all have our Team Rockets. Our Dark Caves. Our missed workouts. There are moments where you think you’ve won and Lance the Dragon Trainer uses a full restore. Some times you get through, other times you have to start again. It doesn’t matter. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Believe.

“I see now that the circumstances of ones birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with that gift of life that determines who you are” - Mewtwo

That's Awkward

To my loyal fans and followers (all three of you*),
       You may have noticed recently this blog has started to head in a health & fitness sort of direction. This isn't so much because I desire to turn this blog into a FitBlog, but more because thats where my passion currently is at this moment in time.

So if you love pizza dipped in chocolate batter, deep fried and then covered in another chocolate coating, fear not, this is Nate-Radio, it defies categorisation the way cats defy being treated as inferiors!

Over and out Radio Fans!

Functionality Rant

The fitness industry is a flawed industry. Walk into any commercial gym in the world and you will find people working hard and not getting results, people not working hard and expecting results, people spending money for results they won't get and people getting results that aren't what they need.

This is not the fault of the paying customers. Everyone in those gyms deserves the results they want, or at least the results they are willing to work for. However, the notions of what is healthy, what is desirable and what is good for us has been skewered beyond all recognition for a reason as simple as this: $$$.

Fitness is not about: being skinny, having big muscles, benching big numbers or looking awesome in your matching Nike dry-fit compression gear. It's about being fit to function. Being able to control your body efficiently under a range of different circumstances, whether that's climbing a ledge, pushing your malfunctioning car or running from zombies.

Sure, lifting the entire weight rack on the Lat Pulldown is impressive, but it's not functional. Leg Pressing a thousand pounds impresses your friends but it doesn't impress the joints in your lower body. The same goes for cardio equipment, treadmills are designed to simulate running, but running on a machine is not the same as functional running. The flat belt does not account for the ever-changing terrain of the outside world. Air conditioned rooms cannot replace the wind resistance of the great outdoors. These differences may seem small but they make a difference. Running five miles on a treadmill is much easier than running five miles on a dirt track, if you find that hard to believe, try it for yourself.

When it comes down to it, the one and only thing I want you to gain from this post is that fitness is about being able to use what you've got. Train for the right reasons. There are a lot of things out there telling you the opposite- don't listen to them, ask yourself: How is this making me a more effective machine?

If the answer is: "It's not", then find something that will.

And thank me when you're not a zombie =) 

Push Ups Rock!!

The push up (or press up for those of you from British backgrounds) is perhaps the most easily identifiable resistance movement in the world. It is accessible (all you really need is a working body and a floor), it is simple and it is loaded with benefits.

The raw power behind any push up comes from the pectorals (your chest) and the triceps (the back, or posterior, side of your upper arms) much in the way your typical bench press would. For this reason, a lot of people who enjoy resistance training assume that the push up can be replaced and even improved by substituting it for the bench press.

This is not the case. In fact, it is quite far from the truth. On the bench press, the body is sandwiched firmly in place between a bench and gravity. There is little core stimulation, for the most part your body is held in place and your arms and chest do the work.

The pushup however, is performed with your body in the air, all those muscles must contract and stay tight, after all, a rigid structure is much easier to move than something that flops all over the place. Someone once said it to me like this: "You know those planks we do, where we're forced to hold ourselves off the ground, tighten our stomach and just wait for the pain to overwhelm us? Well, a pushup is basically a plank where you go up and down."

It's like doing two extremely effective exercises in one hit. Killing two birds with one stone (not possible), etc, etc.

On average, a standard pushup moves about 70% of your weight. This changes based on where your weight is located, your unique body proportions and whichever fitness magazine you believe, but 70% is a fair estimate. The problem with this is that for some people, 70% is too much and for others that weight is far too little.

Never fear, this is where progressions and regressions come to the rescue!

Progressions and regressions are simply fancy gym jargon for tweaks and techniques that make certain exercises easier or harder depending on your individual needs. Progressions are more difficult and regressions are slightly easier. Some people, especially (in my experience) young men, shun the idea of a regression and will simply push and push and push themselves with an exercise that is too hard until they either get discouraged and quit (or proudly go about it with poor form). Others will see a progression and impatiently try it, disregarding the proper technique needed to do it properly in the process. Keeping that in mind, I beg that you would heed this one piece of advice with an understanding and open mind.

Proper Form Is King.

What I mean by that is that if you can't do something with good form, no matter what it is, you should be meek and lowly of heart and humble yourself down to something that you can perform properly. Poor form robs you of the true benefits of exercise and can lead to disasters later down the track (chronic back pain, anyone?).

So, for the pushup, here is a 5 step regression to progression standard:

1. Wall Pushup: Perform your pushup with your hands against a wall, keep your feet together a step away from the wall. Inhale as you lower yourself forwards and exhale as you push back.

2. Incline Pushup: Use a chair, bench, table or anything else that is sturdy and matches your level of strength. Put your hands on your surface of choice and perform your pushups inhaling and exhaling as you did on the wall pushup. Remember, the lower your surface, the more difficult the pushup.

3. Kneeling Pushup: Perform a standard pushup from a kneeling position. Be sure to keep your weight forward and your palms a little wider than shoulder width. Keep your weight forward and push through the ground, exhaling as you come up. You want the emphasis to be on your upper body so avoid using your legs and back to assist you.

4. Pushup: Congratulations, you've built up a to a proper pushup, now do them until their easy! Remember to keep your body in a straight line, nice, tight and rigid like a solid beam of concrete.

5. Diamond Pushup: Form a triangle below your chest with your thumb and pointer fingers. This puts a great deal more weight on your triceps and you will certainly feel it!

From there, you can progress further to assisted one armed pushups, single arm pushups and even bar pushups (where you are performing pushups from the top of an elevated bar), however, we won't go into that, as frankly, those movements are crazy enough to warrant a post of their own.

Starting with the wall pushup, which 99% of people should be able to do right through to a standard pushup, all these movements are attainable to you regardless of your age, gender or strength. When you can perform two sets of twenty repetitions (twenty straight wall/incline/kneeling etc pushups) move on to the next progression. Give yourself time and be patient. Don't try again until the soreness from your last attempt abates. Keep a sheet of paper (or a note on your phone) and track your progress. The pushup is a fantastic exercise that really does benefit your entire body. I strongly urge anyone and everyone to try it out.

All you need is a floor.

Run Free, Young Grasshopper!

 Running is the original mode of fast human transportation, we have been doing it for many thousands of years. Our ancestors ran for food and for pleasure, it is built into the very cells of our bodies as part of a 'fight or flight' reaction. When things were dangerous, those who came before us fought. When it was too dangerous, they ran. The only reason that you are able to read this today is because all of your predecessors were better runners than those who weren't so lucky.

As far as I know, most of us are not in any danger of being chased away by lions, tigers and bears (oh my!), so lets drop that side of the coin and talk about running for pleasure. As far as we know, the earliest competitive races were run in Ireland in the Tailteann Games in a 1829 BC, a good thousand years before the first recorded Olympics. Running back then was surely different from what running is now. For starters, nobody had iPods, Nikes, heart-beat monitors or TV screens in front of a moving conveyer belt, they had the cold (it was Ireland, after all) wind in their hair, the ground beneath their feet and the world of the track before them. Nobody cared about reaching the 60%-80% fat burn zone and nobody checked their scales when they got home. Why? Because running is fun.

In our current superficial day and age everybody wants payment for their efforts. If you do something, you get something, it is not a courtesy but an expectation. In the corporate marketplace, that is a fair philosophy, but when it comes to fitness, well being, health and happiness, that is not the way the world works. If you are running to fit into some smaller jeans, to develop a ripped six pack or for any number of other self serving reasons, chances are you're going to hate what you're doing and give up quickly. However, if you love running for the pure sake of being outside, moving over the earth the way you were designed to do, feeling in touch with your movement and surroundings, you will reap rewards you never even knew you needed.

HOW?
Have you ever seen anyone pick up a golf club for the first time and nail a hole-in-one? How about a bullseye on their very first dart? Chances are you have not and will not. Golf and darts are technical skills that rely on flawless technique- you need years of training from professionals who have learned themselves over many years just what to say and do for you to improve. Same with any sport, swimming, basketball, tennis. Poor technique leads to poor performance and injury.

And it's the same with running.

Just because the ability to run is naturally hardwired into our system doesn't mean we know how to utilise that ability. Yet, how many people run without ever hearing a single word about 'proper form'? People get up and they run. They don't go very far and pretty soon they start to hurt. This isn't because running is evil and a waste of time, it is because they are not doing it the way it should be done. If you tried to play golf holding the club upside down, chances are you wouldn't enjoy that much either.

So here's the lesson that you should take from this post and apply to your lives:
In order to run free and be free to run, these are the cues you should repeat in your head every time you hit the track- these are taken from Christopher McDougalls excellent book Born To Run, for the simple reason that it is brilliant, straightforward and easy to apply.

1. Easy: Make your steps nice and easy, don't force it. Don't take long strides, just nice, short, easy strides at a pace that is comfortable for you.

2. Light: Once you've mastered easy, focus on making yourself weightless. Picture your feet barely sweeping the ground as you float along the track.

3. Smooth: When you're easy and light, make it flow like a smooth rolling river. Think of yourself as a tide rolling down the track.

4. Fast: If you master easy, light and smooth you'll already be fast.

The biggest mistake people make when they run is pushing themselves too much too soon. You don't jump straight into a hot bath and running is the same, you must ease into it. Start slow, build up from there, push yourself if you feel like a challenge, ease off if you don't. Do it for the right reasons and let yourself enjoy it.

And don't forget to smile, after all, running is fun.

Paronomasia

The humble pun (or paronomasia for sophisticated snobs) has been present as long as the written word itself. They have been found amongst the Egyptians, the Mayans, even in Ancient Iraq. Puns are hilarious and awesome, like alligators, they have used their awesome-osity to withstand the ravages of time.

There are six types of pun: Compound puns, graphological puns, homographic puns, homonymic puns, morphological puns and recursive puns. Of course you will never come upon any circumstance in life where you will need to know the specifics of each definition so I won't bother to explain them. Just remember that there are six.

Of all these six, my favourite would have to be the morphological pun, also known as a 'portmanteau'(pronounced: Port-Man-Toe), because of how applicable it is to 90% of real life situations. You see, a morphological pun is simply combining- or morphing- two words together to make one more suitable and therefore better word.

Examples include combining 'true' and 'touché' to make the 'truché', or 'angry' and 'hungry' to become 'hungry'. The morphological pun is limited only be your imagination and the combinability of the words in your vocabulary.

What are examples of common portmanteau's in your literary arsenal?

Griper, No Griping!

Lessons Learned From Old Phone Photos

Do you ever get bored, grab your phone, go to its photo gallery and flick back through old pictures? If you do, you are not alone. If you don't, perhaps you should try it- there are many great lessons to learn from photographic evidence you have taken yourself- and best of all, since you are the one who did it, the age old excuse of "yeah, they can do it, but that doesn't mean I can" doesn't apply.

In todays blog I'm going to provide three examples of lessons learned from my own nostalgia.

Lesson #1: Save Your Coins

If you are somewhat well off and living in a country with a reasonable economy, coins are often seen as an inconvenience. Charities take great advantage of this by placing 'coin tins' at almost every cash register in the world. That's because they know what everyone knows but lacks the patience to realise.

Coins add up.

One of the best investments anyone short of cash can make is a $3 money tin. One that is solid and can only be opened once. I used to hate these tins as a kid- I would buy them, spend a day looking for coins in couches, laundry and the car ash-tray, and then deposit them into my brand new tin. The next day I would need a dollar for chocolate and bam- a three dollar investment is wasted for 1/3rd of its value.

But last year I bought a large one, I put it somewhere out of sight and was diligent in depositing my small change whenever I felt my wallet getting unnaturally lumpy and heavy (a rare occurrence, mind you). Twelve months later, I opened the sucker up, expecting a modest $400-$500. As you can see in the photo, I was pleasantly surprised with that actual result.

The moral of the story? Save your coins.

Lesson #2: Don't Spend Money on Costumes
I love dressing up. Not in a weird way, but whenever there are themed costume parties, no matter what the theme, I will always make an effort to look awesome. Why? Because awesome costumes always make for a hilariously fun time and great photos to look back on.

Unfortunately, even cheap dress ups cost money. I went as a giant ghoul monster to a Halloween party and shopped exclusively at the cheap-budget stores, it still cost me the same amount it probably would have to rent a costume. I went as a black haired emo-kid to an emo themed party but I still had to pay for hair dye and fake jewellery.

But it doesn't have to be that way, after my brother-in-laws surprise 'Spongebob' Party, I realised that costumes are all around us. Old rags, empty bottles, unused boxes can all be utilised in awesome and often hilarious ways.

So next time you have an excuse to dress up for something, remember: Every move you make, every step you take, awesome costumes will be watching you.

Lesson #3: You can have an endless amount of fun with a piece of paper, a lead pencil and your lunch. 

I do this whenever I get bored (mainly when I'm studying). It's a great way to exercise creativity and entertain yourself, even when nobody else finds it funny except for you.





I mean, who needs an iPhone with that type of improv? Talking nuts! Hilarious!

Love it.


But the biggest lesson of all is that we all have silly, creative and the occasionally remarkable ideas hidden away in our own lives. They might be in your phone gallery, on a sheet of paper in the back of an old school book or just hiding in plain sight.

Go and find them!

The Spark

Not long ago, a friend of mine was concerned about the romantic potential of his future. Everything seemed fantastic with his lady friend but danger loomed on the horizon, like a towering cumulonimbus filled with erratic, high voltage lightning.

The cause of this metaphorical mayhem?

The ever ominous "spark".

What exactly is the spark? A feeling? A crystallising moment of clarity?

Technically, a spark is an electrostatic discharge. Electricity building up somewhere and jumping to something that is grounded. Often dangerous, sometimes fatal, sparks are not always something you want as a part of your relationship.

Of course that is a physical spark, the spark to which I refer is of a more metaphorical nature. Metaphorical because it doesn't exist. It is a Hollywood invention. An idea created to justify terminating a good relationship for no apparent reason, or for continuing a terrible relationship despite the pile of evidence stacked against it.

So here is my advice when it comes to "The Spark":

There is no spark. If you find someone that makes you happy and makes you want to be better, and you do the same for them, then do whatever you can to keep them in your life.

Spark shmark.

TREP: Eating Healthy

FYI: TREP stands for "That Random Educational Post", for the odd occasion when I'm in the mood to drop some phat knowledge on y'all.

So recently I've been on a bit of a rampage as far as health and nutrition goes. I kept a food diary for a few weeks and was startled to find how much rubbish I was consuming for no reason except for the fact that the food and I were occupying the same room. There's probably a lot everyone in the world could learn from a food diary. If your overweight you might eat less simply so you didn't have to write so much (if your food diary is making your wrist hurt the same way a high school essay would then you are eating too much), anorexic people would learn that they cannot enjoy the glory of keeping a food diary with an empty book... The benefits are simply limitless.

However, I am not here to encourage you to keep a food diary, for you are busy. Busy busy busy and you don't have enough time to read this blog AND keep a food diary. In fact, if that is true, I would encourage the opposite for obviously selfish reasons.

What I am writing this blog about is something simple. Painfully simple. So simple that it is often overlooked (much like we overlook the fact that the 'ABC' song is sung to the same melody as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"), and like all good and simple ideas, I will start with a quote:

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison"

Which is more or less dead right. I cannot help but laugh to myself at fuel stations when I see people putting expensive, clean burning, high octane fuel into their cars to preserve its engine while chowing down on a Big Mac (or something similar). The food you eat is the fuel your body runs on.

That's my marvellously simple statement, which I am going to type again. In fact, as it is the entire topic of this blog I'm even going to make it bold.

And underlined.

With a cool slant....

The food you eat is the fuel your body runs on.

Think about it, if the simple brilliance of it doesn't hit you, think a little harder.

Imagine someone bought you a shiny brand new super fast megamercedes 500000 (and that kind of car exists) and then asked you if you would fill the tank with fries. Would you? Of course not! That's crazy.

Well let me tell you, you ARE a super fast megamercedes 500000. Your body is crazy! It does such cool stuff, cut your finger on a sharp edge, cover it with a bandaid and a few days later the cut is gone! 

I bet you wish your car could do that, I sure do, car part costs are killing me.

So next time you eat something, remember, your putting fuel into the most advanced piece of machinery you will ever own.

Yourself!