This is like a scoreboard for a Digg story complete with sounds to jolt you out of your seat and cheer. From the story…

“This simple Flash app is designed to run in the background and monitor a Digg story of your choice. It will alert you with sound upon receiving new diggs, new comments, and becoming popular.”

Well I managed to get my weight down to the lowest it has ever been since I have been tracking it, 210.8 pounds! This comes after a weekend full of food and chocolate chip cookies though I did play some volleyball and jump around in a moon bounce. Shivering in the rain all day in the rain today probably helped a little too. Read about the rest of my weekend…

Tomorrow I look forward to picking up where I left off on my exercise bike as I head into my first 5-day work week in nearly two weeks.

How has your weekend been?

This weekend was full of good parties and fun. On Saturday, June 2nd, I went to the graduation party of my long-time childhood friend Pammy Smith. She offered hot dogs and hamburgers as well as a decadent dessert tray. I must have had about 10 homemade chocolate chip cookies which were my down fall of the entire weekend. There was also a volleyball net and, get this, she rented a moon bounce!

Moon bounces are a lot harder as an adult then when you were a kid. For one thing, I quickly found my self out of breath and jumping around seemed a lot harder than it used to be. Part of this may be due to my lack of physical activity in recent years but also the general rule of thumb that little kids have more energy than adults. Besides my reality-check with moon bounces I learned how much fun volleyball is. I can’t wait to play it on the beach in Ocean City this coming July.

After Pammy’s party, Kristina and I made our way to her roommate’s 20th Birthday party. There was no moon bounce at this one but there was karaoke. I’m not much of a singer so I just watched others make fools out of themselves though Kristina’s roommate is quite a good singer.

Sunday I spent most of the morning and afternoon standing in the rain at the Washington, D.C., Philippines Festival in support of the Filipino Cultural Association of University of Maryland, College Park. Kristina was part of a group who performed a dance on stage as well as taking part in a parade. I was hoping to take pictures but it was just too soggy and wet out for me to risk my precious camera. Coming home soaking wet wasn’t in vain as the event was for a good cause, so it was well worth the soggy jeans and damp poncho.

Veer has introduced a zip-up fleece jacket with their falling diamond pattern on the back. I love the desktop wallpaper version but $70!?! Plus it is brown, bleh. Why can’t they offer different colors?

Him: hey, my class had to read an article you wrote
Him: it was a blog about typography you did
Me: a blog about typography?
Him: yeah
Him: dvguru was the website
Me: o gotcha
Me: do you have the url?
Him: let me get it
Him: Fonts and resources to spruce up your film or DVD

Wow, I’m flattered. Who ever thought something I wrote would become required reading? All I can say is the good folks in the interactive multimedia program at Ohio University sure have a good taste in material.

Thanks Brett Phillips!

Today’s workout was a little easier. Unfortunately I won’t have another chance to exercise until at least Sunday night. Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things next week.

It seems the results of my small bursts of exercise aren’t reflecting on the scale. I seem to be gaining weight as I exercise though this trend seems normal during the week according to my SkinnyR graph:

Former Weblogs Inc. CEO Jason Calacanis unveiled Mahalo.com, previously referred by Jason as Project X, at the D Conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal today. Mahalo dubs itself as “the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible.”

My immediate reaction of the new site was “isn’t this a lot like Wikipedia or Yahoo from 1996?” But after taking it in for a couple of minutes I realized Mahalo isn’t trying to out-do Google but rather climb to the top of selected search terms. Mahalo wants to be a one stop site for very specific, though popular, search terms making it a valuable resource to link to or cite throughout the web. While most people may not be swayed to jump straight to Mahalo for their questions, they will learn to trust the source when it appears near the top of their search result.

ChaCha.com, another human powered search engine, hasn’t gotten much traction even though it has been at the search game since late 2006. I imagine Mahalo will have a tough time finding it’s niche since against the likes of Wikipedia. Unlike the open-system of Wikipedia that anyone can contribute to, Mahalo is a controlled by a select few and the general public can merely suggest links to be included in the topic pages.

I imagine Mr. Calacanis has something else up his sleeve and, to be fair, Mahalo is in Alpha (whatever that means). Hopefully this By Humans For Humans approach will prod the other search engines in to improving their offerings but, in the long run, Mahalo will only rise to the like of About.com.

PROS
-Human moderated so there will be no Spam.
-Quality links and information organized in one place.
-Focused results for very specific topics.

CONS
-Not an open system like Wikipedia
-Small selection of search terms compared to the rest of the Internet.
-Human powered = Labor intensive.

Conclusion: Google and Wikipedia work for me until Mahalo offers something more compelling.

The New York Times has an ‘interactive graphic‘ to help you figure out where you stand in regards to the rest of the population when it comes to your socio-economic status.

The interactive graphic allows you to enter information about your financial status, and then it displays a graph indicating where these factors place you on the socio-economic scale.

I find it astounding that if you have a undergraduate degree you are in the 91st percentile! In other words, only 9% of the population has a higher degree than you.

(via Get Rich Slowly)

Yesterday I wrote about SkinnyR and my new exercise bike. Today I got to put the pedal to the metal as I put in a good 15 minute session. Afterwards my legs were wobbly but it felt really good to work out my body. I can’t even remember the last time I was this active.

Above is my SkinnyR graph which helps me keep track of my weight through all of the ups and downs. Seeing my weight flucuate really helps put things into perspective. When I started tracking my weight at the end of April my goal was to lose a pound a week. As you can see from the data above, I was getting some wild results. That is why I decided I needed some regular exercise in my routine to help me reach my goal. Hopefully tomorrow’s workout will be a little easier.

For the past month I have been tracking my weight with help from SkinnyR. Ever since my 22nd birthday I have been unhappy with how round my tummy has been and immediately set out to get my weight under control. I realize that I am now at a point in my life where I simply can’t eat anything I want and my lack of exercise isn’t helping my situation. I have been playing Wii Sports a little bit which has gotten my butt off the couch but I needed something else to help me get a good cardio workout in.

That is why I picked up this lovely beast…

The Voit Pro Series 5000! Now I can keep active while watching some TV. I hope to do 15-25 minutes a night and the best part is this exercise bike only cost me $7.42!

Thrift stores can be the source of some good deals and because today was Memorial Day, Value Village marked everything 50% off. The bike was originally $14.14, a modest deal if you ask me. But at the counter to my surprise the bike came out to $7.42 after tax. Now I won’t feel that bad if I decide an exercise bike isn’t right for me or if this exercise bike is really doing the trick I might step up and put down the money for a good quality bike. I’m hoping for the latter but we will just wait and see what happens.

How did I think to go to the thrift store? Simple. Six months ago I was trying to get rid of an old strength training machine and thought it would be good to give away to Good Will. I drove up to the donation lot and they refused to take it because they already had too much exercise equipment. Makes sense to me since a lot of people buy a crap-load of new fangled devices they see on TV only to rapidly lose interest after starting.

P .S. They also had an Ab Doer Extreme (pictured below) that looked brand new. I didn’t see the price but I guarantee you it was less than $80 that it is going for online. You just never know what you might find at a second hand shop.