The video game/ hula hoop exercise routine

I have been meaning to get more exercise in my life.

Ever since I got myself an office job and stopped partner dancing I have been easily putting on weight. Even though I am only 63kgs with a height of 169cms, I still feel like I could be more fit.

Problem is that most exercise routines are boring.

So I thought about what would motivate me. Firstly, I would like to get better at Starcraft 2. Secondly, I have a hula hoop I have hardly used.

My thought it that if I use hula hooping as punishment for every Starcraft 2 game I lose, then it will motivate me to get better and also have me hula hooping.

The routine below:

1. Play Starcraft 2.

2. Each game lost is 1 minute of hula hooping.

3. If losing games in a row, double amount of hula hooping each time (e.g., lost 2 games in a row, 4 minutes of hula hooping [1 + 1 = 2; 2x2 = 4]; lost 3 games in a row, 10 minutes of hula hooping [ 2 lost games = 4 mins; 4 + 1 = 5; 5 x 2 = 10].

4. Hula hoop non-stop until all time completed.

I was losing a lot of games recently so thought that I would get a lot of hula hooping done because of this. The moment I decided to do this I have been winning my games. I guess this is a win win situation.

Tomato plant transfer 1

About 4 days ago I transferred my sprouting tomato seeds into their own little tub. I was a bit hesitant doing this because I was afraid that I would kill them all.

I didn't, as per below. A photo taken today.

They have started to grow their true leaves. Last year this is the point where I failed. I hardly got any true leaves and the plants just died. This time they seem quite strong.

It seems like I have no room to fail.
As I transferred one of the sprouts, the root completely snapped off. I thought there would be no hope for that sprout, however I still placed it in its own tub out of respect. After awhile it shrivelled up a little bit while the others kept upright. I was sure it was dead. I left it be and visited it the next day to mourn my loss. To my surprise it was no longer shrivelled, but completely upright. The little guy is not doing excellent and looks no different from the rest.

Even with no root, I was able to successfully transfer a sprout. This really boosts my confidence in gardening.

I made sure there was enough feed in their new placement too.
In each tub I added premium soil and soil for seeds and cuttings. In between the two different soils I added a tomato feed, so that when I created the holes to place the sprouts, the roots would have full access to the feed. I am unsure if doing that really helped with the survival or the fact that I have been watering them everyday.

When my other plants died last year I asked for some advice from a person I know. She told me that a wise person once told her that the key to the survival of a plant is:

1. Water it
2. Give it sunshine

At the time I though that it could not be that simple, but really, it is... who knew?

Ending relationships

For my previous post, I had to look through folders of old photos. A lot of these photos featured my ex and I felt a bit awkward going through them.

I have six years worth of photos with my ex. That is a lot of photos. And it also shows signs of the relationship slowly fading, which made me think about it a bit.

It was not obvious back then, but now I can clearly see my disinterest in the photos. I was not happy.

In the first couple of years I can see happiness in the relationship. It was new, it was my first and I was glad I was in it. It was something I thought I needed at the time.

Then, things were not so new any more. We started living together. So many things irritated me about him, but I thought it was just my hormones. In photos I looked glum and even sometimes grumpy. This was during last three years of the relationship.

Why wasn't it obvious during those three years that the relationship just had to end? Why weren't the signs obvious?

Image source here

Now I would think it would be obvious if I did it all again. But as a reminder, I have created the following list.

When you can be sure the relationship has to end:

1. You feel unhappy with your partner at all times.
2. Your partner has a way of irritating you like no other person.
3. You no longer feel physically or mentally attracted to them. In other words, you feel no attraction to them at all.
4. You do not feel any joy seeing them after not seeing them for a period of time.
5. You rather be somewhere else or with someone else when with your partner.
6. You cannot imagine a happy future together.
7. When you do not want to take any time or energy fixing the relationship because you feel like it is unfixable.
8. When you are constantly thinking whether or not it should end. If you are thinking about it, there has to be a reason why.
9. You cannot find any positives or qualities in your partner that are worth tolerating any negative.
10. When you both do not want the same type of live. 

Image source here

Even though all of the above was true, I still kept at it. I knew I wanted out, but didn't know how to do it. I felt insecure about myself. I felt like no one else would want to be with me. I felt like we had gone through too many years to give it all up.

I felt responsible for his happiness. I did not want to crush him. I did not want to make him feel like I took away a lot of his time. I did not want the blame.

In hindsight, the quicker I would end it, the best it would have been for the both of us. Ending it allowed him to get on with his life, and it allowed me to see what I truly wanted. It was like being freed from a ball and chain.

Ending it allowed me to be free to find someone else. Someone who I never thought would enter my life. Someone who I am with now.

Hopefully the same will happen to him, if it hasn't already.

Check out the bathroom

Ever since social media website became popular, I have noticed the different ways people display themselves.

I remember the days when everyone had the self shot from above. It somehow made people look slightly better than head on shots, so I can see why it was done. Below was the best example I could find from my own collection. Surprisingly, I personally do not have many of these kind of shots.

Eighteen... so young... and naive

Then I noticed the self taken photo through a mirror shots. I never went through this phase because I never understood why people do it. Most cameras (and phones) have an option for timer shots. This is what I would use.

The first time I saw the mirror shots I thought people were showing off their cameras. I then realised that that was not the case. They were showing themselves off. As soon as I realised this I created the following photo and posted it on my page.

Thanks for taking the photo Camera Dude!

I had my camera show me off instead by taking the picture. This was only possible because I knew how to use the timer shot function of the camera.

Today, I still see the mirror shot photos. I often think about commenting on the photos complementing the bathroom tiles or the like, but not many people appreciate my sense of humour.

Personally I think bathrooms are an odd place to take a photo. Especially when it is your parent's bathroom, which is something I see a lot. Although you do occasionally find humorous ones on the Internet.

However, I find it even more funny when people are trying to be cool in the bathroom. They do this by showing off abs, holding an alcoholic beverage when they just turned the legal age, or even pouting like a fish. No matter how cool they try to look, it loses the effect because they are standing in a bathroom taking a photo of themselves. 

I respect a bit of creativity. It would be cool if people tried to be a little more creative with their self shots.

One week on - Still alive

Last year I failed miserably at keeping plants alive. I had the idea that I could easily grow edibles from seed or seedling. My experiences showed me that my idea was false.

This year, I want to make that idea true. So I have started anew with a new batch of seeds/seedlings.

I am so determined to keep this bunch alive that I think I am getting paranoid. I have to check the plants at least twice a day. I keep checking if the soil is moist enough. I check every small section to make sure there are no bugs, slugs or other critters wanting to sabotage me. I think about the plants during most of the day at work. If I really think about it, my plants are now my number one thought every day. Unsure how healthy this is mentally, but it seems to be keeping them alive.

My tomato seeds have sprouted.

These little ones are a week old. They already look much healthier than the ones I had last year. Last year I had them indoors without much light so their stems grew way more than they could handle. These ones were outside at half shade with a plastic covering. So far, so good.

I removed the plastic covering yesterday and the little ones seem to be enjoying the sun. It won't be long until I will need to transfer them into separate containers. Hopefully that process won't be the death of them.

My basil seeds are also sprouting.

I honestly did not think anything would sprout from these seeds, mostly because I was unsure if the seeds were ready to be cultivated. Interesting enough, I have found more of these sprouts in my pot where I have my old parsley. Even though I did not plant any seeds in the pot, I am not surprised that the sprouts are there. I had a basil plant in the pot that died, but flowered in its last living months. I guess it left behind some seeds that are now activated from my watering and feeding. Maybe growing basil is not as hard as I thought it would be.

My basil cuttings are still not developing roots. It has only been a week, so it is still early days. If this time next week I still see nothing, then I will accept defeat.

One of the cuttings was losing some of its leaf. I later discovered a small green caterpillar munching on it. Unfortunately I had to execute it. Nothing messes with my plants!  

Below are my garlic after a week of inserting them into the soil.

They are doing extremely well, considering they were left overs from the pantry.

My lettuce is pretty much the same. It has grow a little bit, but nothing too obvious. However I am glad that no snails have managed to munch on them. Sprinkling snail bait around the pots really does work wonders.

Both my chocolate mint and youngberry are doing great. They have both grown a little bit. I am considering transferring the youngberry to a hanging basket, because it seems like the kind of plant that would want to take over everything. It looks quite strong.

My old parsley seems quite sad. It has not grown at all and starting to brown. I think after a year of neglect it got stunted and seems irreversible. Might have to buy more seedlings. Lesson learned though. Do not neglect plants for a whole year. Noted.

Cleverbot

A few days ago I discovered CleverBot.

It is essentially a chat AI that stores all the answers people give it, and then uses those answers in the conversation. This means the answers may seem more human, but at the same time it can make no sense.

I find it more entertaining to chat with than A.L.I.C.E (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity). This is probably because it is impossible to predict what CleverBot will answer, because it takes it from several humans/sources.

Below is a comparison between CleverBot and A.L.I.C.E. I repeated the same question over and over.

CleverBot (Black is me; Blue is CleverBot)	A.L.I.C.E (Andrea is me; ALICE is A.L.I.C.E)
Continuation...	Et cetera, et cetera...

As you can see, there is a clear difference. A.L.I.C.E has the same answer for the same question, which is quite unrealistic in a human to human conversation. CleverBot almost seems to be sarcastic. Just like a human it questions and also reminds you that you have already received an answer to the question. This makes it more believable and entertaining to converse with. I then wondered what a conversation between CleverBot and A.L.I.C.E would be like. I started by saying "Hello." to A.L.I.C.E on CleverBot's behalf. The rest were answers from the AIs. I did it 3 times with the same "Hello" "Hi there" start.

Results below:
Conversation 1.

Conversation 2.

Conversation 3.

My partner told me I need to take up a hobby. I said, "more?!?"

First step - Keeping plants alive

Ever since I was a kid, I always imagined myself having a fruit, herb and vege garden. However, I never thought I would be so bad at keeping plants alive.

Last year I thought it would be a great idea to grow tomatoes from seed. I was able to get passed germination and have two little leaves on each of the fragile stalks. Then I completely forgot to water and look after them.

This was the outcome:

Dirt. Completely dead plants.

Furthermore, at the same time my mother gave me 6 pots with different plants and herbs including rosemary, oregano, mint and lavendar.

Unfortunately this is what has become of them:

After nearly a year of them sitting in the pots, dead, I decided to pull them out so I could start afresh.

It wasn't all gloom. My basil and parsley plants are still alive, even after so much abandon.

This is year I am determined to keep plants alive and have them bloom.

My first step was to cut off all the flowers from the basil plant and snip off bits. From that I was able to collect some seeds and clippings. I am hoping I can grow more basil from both sources. Below are the clippings I have put some water. If all goes well, in 2 weeks I'll have roots.

In my pantry I also found some garlic that were sprouting like crazy. So I decided to put these in soil and see what happens. Hopefully I won't need to buy any more garlic in a few months.

Next I decided to buy a specific container that contains tomato seeds and special soil. It comes with instructions, so I am having a go at growing tomatoes from seed again, with some assistance. I bought liquid feed to help with growth, so hopefully this time something will come out of this.

I found myself on a role, so additionally I bought this dwarf lemon tree:

I managed to re-pot it. Instructions for it let me know that it doesn't need much watering and it likes a lot of sun. Don't see how I will fail with this one.

I also bought different varieties of lettuce and planted them in the pots my other herbs died in. I added premium soil that retains water and has fertiliser in it, so hopefully these ones won't die.

Below you will see my other plants. I bought chocolate mint (top left) and youngberry (top right).
Also in these pots is garlic, lettuce and parsley (the survivor).

I quite like the chocolate mint plant because it gives off a really nice aroma. If I manage to keep it alive I am planning on chopping it up and adding it to my home made chocolate. Hoping this is enough motivation for me to look after it.

I will document my progress in this blog. If I can keep these plants alive, anyone can!

I am quite determined to achieve this. My partner let me know that before I can have children I need to be able to pass 2 steps.

1. Keep plants alive and look after them.
2. Keep pets alive and look after them.

I am still on the plant stage, so hopefully I can pass this first step!