My Current Workout Regiment

Posted on March 5, 2013 by artarmstrong — No Comments ↓

Recently my fiancé and I decided that we wanted to join a gym so that she had a place to be able to take classes, such as yoga, and I had a place I could use some more weights and some classes. Right now we are about one month into the membership and I have to say it has been going really well. I have adjusted my sleeping schedule and my pre and post workouts to help maximize the results.

Workouts!

Heres how my week currently looks like:

  • Monday – Hot Yoga @ 9:30am
  • Tuesday – BodyPump @ 8:30am
  • Wednesday – Kickboxing @ 6:15pm
  • Thursday – BodyPump @ 8:30am
  • Friday – Rest day or cardio if im up for it
  • Saturday – BodyPump @ 9:30am
  • Sunday – Soccer Game w/ ECS league

Heres a quick explanation of some of the classes that I do:

  • Hot Yoga – This is a class offered at Golds Gym which I do with my fiance. It helps stretch me out a bit after a rough week and gets a good workout at the same time.
  • BodyPump – This is a Les Mills class offered at Golds Gym which uses a barbell to work every muscle in your body. This includes squats, lunges, triceps, biceps, shoulders, back and abs. Its a great class to get an overall workout in about an hour.
  • Kickboxing – I got a groupon for this at a local place. This is an amazing workout if you have somewhere you can go to do this. I would do this more than once a week if it was cost effective for me but since I am part of Golds I cant afford another membership.
  • Soccer – I am part of the Emerald City Supporters Football Club soccer team which plays in the GSSL league around Seattle area. This is as always a good workout since your running around with lots of quick movements. I played in high school and before so I try to keep it up.

Food Tracking!

Going to the gym and keeping a regular schedule has definitely made a huge improvement on my weight and my muscle but I have also started using some other tools to help me keep my eating and regular day activities at their best. To track my food I use a free service called “MyFitnessPal”. They have an app on my iPhone and also a web interface to track your food and workouts. Along with this I also have a FitBit which tracks my daily steps to see how I am doing just while working during the day. I dont use my FitBit for my workouts since it only tracks steps and I can get a calorie range from the classes and machines I use. But the huge advantage is that MyFitnessPal actually pulls in the data from the FitBit when they are connected.

Supplements & More!

The last step to my change was with the supplements and pre/post workout drinks I have been using. These just help me along the way so I can have energy for a workout, help rebuild my muscles and get all my vitamins.

For my pre-workout I have been using either Pump Fuel Insanity V2 when I am doing more muscle based workouts like the BodyPump or Cardio Cuts when I am doing a cardio workout like running or soccer.

For my post-workout I use Amplify XL Protein Powder. This just helps to rebuild my muscles after I have been working out. From what I have been told (correct me if im wrong) your body craves nutrients within 30 minutes of finishing a workout so I have been using this right after I finish at the gym.

Finally for my supplements I have been using a multivitamin called Mega Men Sport just to help get some of the extra vitamins that I dont get from everyday food. The other thing I have been taking is Censor Body Toner. This helps with your joints and is supposed to help to target the fat around your stomach and love handles. I am not sure if it is working or if my workouts are doing it but I have noticed less fat around my stomach and more definition.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to hit me up! Thanks!

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Posted in Exercise, Nutrition

The Best WordPress Security Plugins

Posted on December 30, 2011 by artarmstrong — No Comments ↓

Security is becoming a more increasing issue everyday as there are younger and smarter people who are becoming interested in the technology era. WordPress is one of the most widely used blogging platforms on the web and in its current version its in the upwards area of 9,455,344 downloads (probably higher now) and increasing potentially. This means that securing WordPress is more important than ever to keep your website safe so here are a few of my favorite and most used plugins to help secure your installation.

Here are a few that I try to include in every installation of WordPress that I do to help secure the website a little bit better:

Wordfence
This is one of the better security plugins that I will try to get up and running as soon as possible. It has a great option to scan all the files and find any differences in core files from what they should be. It also has a login limiter built in and a firewall in which you can set certain rules. A definite must try for helping to secure WordPress. If you are looking for a simple, one plugin setup for security needs this is definitely one of the better options as it eliminates the need for a secondary login limiter like the one I mention below.

Secure WordPress
This is usually another security option I will install on my site just because it can clear out some of the initial things that are worrisome like how the WordPress versions are displayed in multiple areas.

Limit Login Attempts
Login Lockdown is a great addition to a WordPress installation because it gives the administrator some basic options to limit the amount of times that a user can try to login with incorrect information. After that it will lock out that ip for a set amount of time. The ip of the user trying to login so you can keep track of that user for future references. This is a great way to stop brute force attacks of your site which is a large issue because the common use of the administrator username “admin”. If you are using “admin” as your default administrator username see my article titled “Change Your Default WordPress Admin Username For Safety” (coming soon!).

I hope this gives you some basic ideas of how you can help secure your WordPress installation to keep all those troublesome people out of your website. If you have any other plugins that you think I would like or would like to review please send me an email!

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Posted in Hacking, Php, Web Development, Wordpress

Exercises with the Black Diamond Forearm Trainer

Posted on December 29, 2011 by artarmstrong — 1 Comment ↓
Black Diamond Forearm Trainer
Black Diamond Forearm Trainer

Black Diamond Forearm Trainer

So one of my new fascinations lately has definitely been rock climbing, and primarily bouldering. As some of you may know I work from home at my computer almost all day long so it can be hard for me to get out and exercise much. I wont say that this is any extreme workout but it definitely helps to get a little grip training while im at my desk thinking or trying to relieve some stress. There are a few ways I have found that work pretty well on holding the trainer like you would normally grip a hold so hopefully it helps in the long run. Anyway thats enough about me so lets get to a few of the exercises I do with the Black Diamond Forearm Trainer I picked up from REI.

 

Palm Squeeze Exercise

Palm Squeeze Exercise

Exercise 1 – Palm Squeeze
This is the most simple exercise that I expect just about everyone does when they first pick this up and try it out. This is done when you rest the trainer in the bottom palm near your thumb and then wrap your fingers around the top and just squeeze. This can also be done using only a few fingers instead of all four fingers like show in the picture to the right. There is a variation I have done with this squeeze that just involves squeezing the trainer ring closer to one side to pinch it so it almost forms an egg shape in the inside of the ring.

 

Thumb Squeeze Exercise

Thumb Squeeze Exercise

Exercise 2 – Thumb Squeeze
This is almost identical to the ‘Palm Squeeze’ except for the fact you use your thumb instead of your palm to squeeze against the trainer ring. Again this can be done with less fingers to improve your grip with limited finger capability. There is a similar variation to the ‘Palm Squeeze’ in that you can also do the same squeeze but closer to the side so its a different angled pinch on the trainer ring. This will do more work than the ‘Palm Squeeze’ and I have found to be a better variation.

 

Table Squeeze Exercise

Table Squeeze Exercise

Exercise 3 – Table Squeeze
Same idea as the other holds except you rest the trainer ring against the edge of a table or desk and can push down on it with your fingers. This can have a couple variations depending on the table you use. With my desk I can place my thumb underneath the lip to do it a bit differently. Be careful with this one just because the trainer ring can slip out but I havent had any major accidents with it yet.

 

Variations
Heres a few of the variations I mentioned for the different type of squeezes. I am more of a fan of the ‘Thumb Squeeze’ variation as it tends to be something you would be more likely to do at the gym when your pinching a hold.

Palm Squeeze Variation

Palm Squeeze Variation

Thumb Squeeze Variation

Thumb Squeeze Variation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well thats it, if you guys have any other ideas for exercises feel free to shoot me a message or comment on the post. I am always open to more ideas and I will update the post with anything I receive. Thanks!

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Posted in Bouldering, Climbing

How To Modify “the_excerpt” in WordPress

Posted on January 2, 2011 by artarmstrong — 2 Comments ↓

These are a few pretty simple tricks that can actually be found if you go to WordPress and look in the reference for the_excerpt() function but I figured I would show you how I have customized it for my own installation.

The first two, in my opinion, work hand in hand because they actually modify the length and the “Read More” options of the_excerpt. These are typically the more two requested features that people like to change. For these just take the code below and drop it in your “functions.php” file located in your wp-content/themes/your-theme/ folder where “your-theme” is whatever theme you would like to have this work with.

Heres the code:

What this code is doing is created two new functions that will return a value to the_excerpt function when the filters are applied.

The first function if you haven’t guessed changes the length of the_excerpt so that it can show more than its default of 55 words.

The second is actually setup to take the default link that will send the user to the page with a “Read More” style link and allow the developer to change it. With the case of WordPress 3 they changed the end of the excerpt to say “Continue reading →” which we want to modify. As this changes you will just have to inspect the html of the page to find the current use and change the function replacing variables.

The other option that is available to change the_excerpt in a bigger way is to just create your own the_excerpt type of function within your “functions.php” folder. With the abilities of filters and other things its not typically as necessary.

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Posted in General, Php, Web Development, Wordpress

New Year Resolution for Web Developers

Posted on January 1, 2011 by artarmstrong — 1 Comment ↓

With another year gone comes another chance to take advantage of what we missed. Heres a quick list of some New Years resolutions that I will be partaking in and some of you may be interested in also…

#1 Get Smarter

This can be as easy as getting a new html/css book or learning about new standards on the web. If your anything like me though you want to try and take it up a notch and do something like learn a new language. On my list to learn this year is Ruby on Rails. I have wanted to learn this language for quite a while now but as with life it gets pushed aside when its not important. However you do it just learn something new.

#2 Get Outside

Go outside and be active. Join a local intramural sports team, go to the gym, go for a run, or hell, just leave the cave where your computer resides and go for a walk. Getting exercise and change from the normal day to day activities can make a huge difference. Since I work from home it can be really hard to get up and leave my computer which is why its important to have some activities planned that make me get out and stay fit.

#3 Get Organized

Everyone has issues with keeping things organized, whether its work meetings, project due dates, appointments, or just the casual hang out with a friend. Finding a way to stay on top of it can be a hassle but it definitely will make life much easier and less stressful. For work organization we at Avelient use a variety of tools to keep on task with projects but our biggest asset is definitely the37signals suite of products. If you haven’t heard of them, definitely check them out. It will make your life easier.

#4 Get Creative

Find a side project to get your creative juices flowing. Monotony will kill the joy that you have for the work that you do. You gotta switch it up and keep your mind working so that you can create better and unique products. Why not tie a new project with the idea from the “Get Smarter” section and create something different while learning a new language. Or another option could be to create something using your current toolset in a different way. As an example if you know JQuery, use JQuery Mobile to setup a new mobile site for your current website and test some of its new features. Just keep that passion that you have for whatever you do.

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Posted in CSS, General, HTML, Javascript, Web Development

How to Customize WordPress Page List Output

Posted on December 5, 2009 by artarmstrong — No Comments ↓

UPDATE: I uploaded a newer version of the function after a few tweaks that I made recently. Same functionality, just fixing issues.

When you have to customize a WordPress theme typically as a developer you are left with the options that the default WordPress functions give you. As I have found after customizing multiple themes to fit a users website design being able to create some different output can help significantly. Now this can take multiple functions but if you start to save them they can come it handy.

This is meant to be a replacement for the wp_list_pages() function that is used in WordPress currently. The documentation for this can be found at: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_pages

The function that I have just developed should help to customize page output of the navigation for any theme. I personally have used this to create custom output for the top level navigation and bottom level navigation. I have included the documentation in the function declaration. Please feel free to copy and use this as necessary. I would greatly appreciate it if you could leave my information in the comments.

To implement this function all that a user must do is copy the function below and paste it into the bottom of the functions.php file found in the theme directory that the current WordPress installation is using. This is a generalized installation method so be careful to backup that file before changing it. If it is not an extremely customized theme the function should be able to be pasted at the bottom of the functions.php page and used thereafter.

As a side note, this has not been developed to deal with the “depth” option for the wp_list_pages() function. As it is it will most likely replace all the <li> and </li> but leave the surrounding <ul> and </ul>.

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Posted in Php, Web Development

WordPress Custom Comment Display

Posted on March 9, 2009 by artarmstrong — 10 Comments ↓

WordPress and I have become very good friends lately being that it is very versatile and a great open source blogging tool. One of the things that I find needs to be changed quite a bit for clients is how the comments are displayed once the new blog/news/information section of their website has been set up. The basics of it can be found here on the WordPress website and I am really just repeating what they already have but its something that I use enough I want to help others find it easier.

The first step is to go into the theme folder for whatever theme it is that you would like to customize. This is usually located in ~/wp-content/themes/theme-to-edit/ . Once you have found this folder you will want to open up the comments.php file and find the section that uses the wp_list_comments() function. Once you have found this you may see that it is encapsulated by <ol> or maybe <ul> tags. If the new way you would like to display the comments doesnt use these, get rid of them. Then you want to add ‘type=comment&callback=mytheme_comment’ into the function call so it should look like:

Just change “mytheme_comment” to whatever you want to call your new function. Now comes the fun part, open the functions.php file that is located in the same theme folder and open it. Once it is open you just add a new function to the list, its probably best to put it after the opening “if” statement in the file. The basic function that WordPress provides is this:

Now personally, I think this looks like garbage so I usually change it to use some

or some background colors that alternate but you can do almost anything with it. As you will probably guess this function runs in a loop displaying the information it finds to be true in the statement. If you want you can use a counter to find even or odd comments and change the display or anything. Luckily when using this wordpress function you have a lot of freedom and can change anything you want, unlike some of the others. Here is a quick example of a function that I made in about 5 minutes to give you an example of things to eliminate and condense.

 

When I have some time I will put in an example of something with a counter for even and odd comments but otherwise go ahead and mess around, and good luck.

UPDATE!

Here is some basic code I just made up in about 5 minutes to show an example of some interval comments that could be used for some different backgrounds and such.

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Posted in Web Development