I just completed the 2^nd week of the P90X workout. I can’t believe that it has been 14 days already, it feels like I’ve pressed the play button for the first time just yesterday. In week 2 I felt more confident doing the same exercises and it even feels like I ‘m getting better at it (although this might be just in my head). Here is a short summary of the workouts through the days

Day 8 – Chest & Back

I’ve reduced the weights for some of the exercises (from 6kg to 5kg) in order to concentrate a bit more on my form and to avoid pressing the pause button more often then necessary. This time I managed to get an extra rep on each of the pull/chin-up exercises. I’m not sure if it is because I reduced the weight down in the other exercises or if I am just getting stronger. I also changed something about the push-ups (all except the diamond push-up). Now I am using my yoga blocks under my hands as if I am using push-up handles. I feel that my chest gets worked out more, but I can do less repetitions then I could in week 1 and I get strange elbow discomfort. Hopefully this will go away though.

Unfortunately half way through  AbRiper X I had an important call that lasted longer then expected. After the phone call I felt it would be stupid to continue from where I was and didn’t really feel like starting all over again.

Day 9 – Plyometrics

After doing it for the 2^nd time I love this workout even more. This time I didn’t do as many breaks as the first time around. My pulse for most of the time was in the 180-190 range. 

Day 10 – Shoulders & Arms

For some of the exercises I reduced the weight a bit just to concentrate more on my form. I made it through the whole workout but from time to time it was very unpleasant because of some strange pain in my left shoulder. Hopefully it wont happen again next week as I barely managed to do the exercises involving the left hand/shoulder. Doing the exercises with the same weight on the right hand was a breeze and I was even tempted to use heavier weight on the right side but I didn’t. Skipped AbRipper X entirely. 

Day 11 – Yoga X

Yoga X kicked my ass again although it is starting to feel better as I’m getting accustomed to the exercises. At certain times I was sweating as if I’m running on a thread mill and I think I don’t get as sweaty even in the Plyometrics workout. The Warrior 3 and Twisting Half Moon made me feel like I’m made of pudding, but I surprised myself with the Crane position as I managed to do it for 5 seconds (not much, but compared to last weeks 0 seconds, that is infinitely more times )

Day 12 – Legs & Back

I worked out vigorously on this day and I introduced a little something to all the pull/chin up exercises. As I would max out on doing those without any support (usually in the 6-10 range), I would rest for a few seconds and then do a “2nd set” using a chair to put one foot on it. I would do additional 4 reps and my forearms were burning a lot. Hopefully this will equal into more regular reps in the long run. And missed out on AbRipper X again today. I was feeling extremely tired after the Legs/Back workout and lacked the energy to do AbRipper.

Day 13 – Kenpo X

After some tips from reddit (thanks again Jwoey) I had an entirely different KenpoX experience. This time my goal was to move my body as much as I can and only then think of the proper form. And more importantly I wasn’t concentrating that much on the TV screen except for the first few repetitions to make sure that I know what I am doing. As I was not trying to match the others I could follow my own pace (mainly following Tony’s voice) and I am pretty sure that this way I worked out a lot more then the last time. This day my pulse was way up, same as with Plyometrics, in the 180-190 range. I could barely do the moves during the water breaks whereas last time, that was the only way to keep my pulse “in the range”.

Day 14 – Stretch X

Stretching feels so good. I was so tempted to make it just a rest day but I am glad that I opted for stretching. It is a bit of a surprise to me but I even started noticing changes in my flexibility. In the seated 2 leg stretch I manage to hold my thumb toes for few seconds before it becomes too painful, and last week I could not even visualize touching my toes. As a side note, today my calves hurt like crazy from 2 days ago.

All in all, week 2 is behind me and it is amazing feeling. Really looking forward to the next 11 weeks.

Exactly one week ago, I was reading reviews on the 100 pushups challenge, mainly because I wanted to see more opinions and experiences from people that are taking part into this challenge. Probably I should have done that before I started with the challenge, rather than after completing one full month. For the first three weeks I was quite content with the progress, but in week 4 after finishing the 5th set on each of the 3 days, I was feeling as if my triceps were to literally explode even though the push-up is supposed to be mainly targeting the chest muscles (the “pecs”). My progress of the 100 pushups workout is illustrated below. I am amazed as to how much I have progressed, but I still cringe just thinking of the pain I had after the workouts in week 4.

So, as I was reading reviews about the 100 push-ups, I’ve noticed few people mentioning how a more diverse program such as the P90X is a better alternative. At first I was wondering what the hell P90X is, since I’d immediately think of the Sony Ericsson P900mobile that I used to have. But as I read up more about it, I thought to myself “Hey, this looks interesting!”. Fast forward few hours and I was in my shorts in front of the TV ready for my P90X trial.

Day 1 - Chest and Back

I had completely no idea what to expect. Just by looking at the title of the disc “Chest and Back” I thought that it shouldn’t be that hard of an exercise since I’ve been working out my chest extensively for the last month. And man was I wrong! Up to the 20 minutes mark, I could follow the quick pace of switching from one exercise to the other, but then I was completely gasping for air. Since that point I had to hit the pause button after almost every other exercise and make small breaks to calm my pulse down. I wasn’t even pushing myself to the maximum for the various push-ups, but still had periods of feeling nauseous. So with extra breaks I managed to complete every exercise and actually looking back at the log I didn’t do so bad. The most critical area are the pull/chin ups. I managed to do about 7-8 in the first round, and about 5-6 in the second. I am still not sure if I should go for higher numbers doing assisted pull/chin ups or just do as many as I can each time I try.

I didn’t realize that at the end of the disc there is the extra Ab Ripper X workout, so I didn’t do it.

Day 2 – Plyometrics

So day 2 comes and I am still wondering what the hell plyometrics is. I didn’t look it up online, but I quickly went through the disc the day before and I got the basic idea. So I start the work out, and same as the day before, but at about the 30 minute mark this time, I start gasping for air. But still I find it quite nice so with my extra breaks, I manage to make it through the end. Very challenging, but I enjoyed quite a lot.

Day 3 – Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X

The day starts off with pain in the muscles from the Chest and Back workout. I never figured out this about myself, normal people feel sore the next day, and for me it takes two days. But the pain was not that bad, actually it felt quite interesting to feel some muscles that I didn’t know off. So I start off my 3^rd day and I start doing the things that Tony is doing. I am bit surprised that today the exercises go in groups of 3, whereas every group of exercises is repeated twice consecutively. The first day, first I had to complete all the exercises and then start from the top for a second round. Today I am a bit more cautious with the weights, trying not to over do it. I realized that for some exercises I need heavier weights and for other lighter. At this point I’m seriously considering buying 2^nd set of weights since it takes so long to adjust the weight on my current set. Being more cautious with the weights didn’t help much, so half way through I am not able to follow the pace set by the exercise and I am hitting the pause button more often to catch some breath. But I managed through the end, and I even fully completed the bonus round and it just felt great!

This time I did the Ab Ripper X as well. Well at least I tried to do it . For the first two exercises I somehow managed to do the full 25 reps, but after that it all went south. I was struggling to keep proper form and still do as many reps as I can. I would make a break at around the 6th rep, then rest for 6 reps (while the others are doing them) and then do another 4, rest, and do the last 3 with the rest of the group. I went through the whole exercise, but I missed out so many reps and at the end I still felt as if my stomach will shout out “Ouch!”. Laughing was painful, and to make it worse being in pain while laughing was funny as well – vicious circle .

Day 4 – Yoga X

I was so surprised that a program like this has yoga as part of it. To me yoga was something to do if you are flexible and are into meditation. I never thought of it as a sort of a work out. And being very inflexible I thought there is no point of me doing it. I mean, there are flexible people, not-so flexible, inflexible and then there is me. When I bend over to touch my toes, I manage to reach only about 5cm above my ankles. So being skeptical about doing it, I was looking around the Internet for answers and I found this video from Tony on YouTube. He claims that it is very important for the overall success of the program, and plus it is very good for the body so I thought to myself “what the hell, I’ll give it a try”.

Doing this didn’t look pretty. After the gazillionth sun salutation I was not able to even hold my hands up in the Warrior 1 position ( straight arms above the head ). So even today on an exercise that I thought would be easy and boring, I find myself gasping for air. I start doing my extra breaks and somehow manage to make it through the first 45 minutes. After that it was a bit easier as most of the exercises are about balance and are not so physically demanding. There were few positions that killed my abs again but somehow I managed to make it through the end.

Overall, I have to admit that I skipped many positions (twisting half-moon, crane come to mind immediately) and many others I did with terrible form. But overall I am positively surprised with the workout and I hope I’ll get better at it, and that one day I’ll be able to complete all the positions, with a good form and within the 90 minutes.

Day 5 – Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

So day 5 comes and I am surprised that it is about legs. I thought that the legs were covered with the plyometrics day but I was wrong. So half way through the exercise when I was gasping for air again, it became clear to me why there is plyometrics and legs exercises separately. I did most of the exercises with as many repetitions as the others, albeit with no weights for some of the exercises where they did use them. But at least this time I wasn’t hitting the pause button that much. I was so glad when the 60 minutes were up because my legs were burning. 10 minutes after that I could barely remain in a standing position in the shower, I had to sit down.

Today I did the Ab Ripper X before starting the Legs and Back workout. I was even writing down the number of repetitions since I am quite interested in seeing progress here. I managed to do way more reps compared to two days ago, but this time I am more energetic as I am doing it fully rested. However after the first 3 exercises I started lagging behind again and I have to do many breaks while the others are going full steam. Same as 2 days ago, the stomach is trying to say “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” the whole time. Oh, and I think that they should rename the “Pfeiffer Scissors” into it’s real name which is “Torture X” .

Day 6 – Kenpo X

Again an exercise that has me puzzled as to what it is. I quickly scanned through the video and saw many “karate” moves. So I thought that this could be quite enjoyable but it turned out that it was the first exercise that had me disappointed. I don’t know if there was a problem with me on that day, but somehow it seemed very unclear as to what I am supposed to be doing. No proper explanation about the proper form before they start doing it, and as they start exercising the camera jumps off like crazy from one angle to the other. I felt quite frustrated most of the time because I found it quite hard to do it properly and follow the pace of the rest of the group. So many times I was hitting the rewind button just to see what am I supposed to be doing.

And it seems like this is the only exercise that is not so physically demanding. If it wasn’t for the “warm-up” breaks every 10 minutes or so, I doubt that I would even break a sweat. But anyways, I went through the whole video and now I am planning on spending some time on just watching this video again to get an idea of the exercises. Hopefully I will get into it because it is probably a lot more fun to do it when you are not feeling frustrated.

Day 7 – Stretch X

So this day is a recovery day and there is the possibility to either do Stretch X or rest. As I mentioned earlier I am terribly inflexible so of course I opt for the Stretch X. I feel so ridiculous when I see the others bending like gummy bears and then me on the other side bending like the tin man ( Tony’s analogy). It is a good program, not very physically demanding except for few of the stretches. I don’t remember which ones , but I am pretty sure that by Week 3 even those will not be challenging.

So there it is, this is my first week experience. Today is the beginning of the 2nd week and I feel soreness in many muscles. However I am super happy with the program and I am looking forward to the rest of it.

After a while, I’ve finally managed to bring my blog back to life. First I messed the upgrade to BlogEnging 1.6.1 and didn’t really have time to upgrade properly. Then I had the time but somehow I could not access my database host. I’ve contacted them and now finally my little unimportant (for now :)) blog is back to life. Yay!

Today I stumbled across a post called “Random Gradient Wallpaper Generator” by Kirill Osenkov. This reminded me of the past when I used to make such simple yet cool wallpapers quite often. The nostalgia trip sparked my interest to dig into the project and find out more as it is publicly available on CodePlex.

When I saw the the wallpaper generating algorithm I smiled. The code is written very well so it wasn’t a laughter but just a smile. More of a smirk actually and I hope it will become apparent later why. So anyways, the original code looks something like this

   1: public static void GradientRect(Graphics g, Rectangle r, int steps, GradientOptions o)

   2: {

   3:     using (SolidBrush b = new SolidBrush(Color.WhiteSmoke))

   4:     {

   5:         for (int i = 0; i < steps; i++)

   6:         {

   7:             //deprecated for simplicity

   8:             for (int j = 0; j < steps; j++)

   9:             {

  10:                 //deprecated for simplicity 

  11:             }

  12:         }

  13:     }

  14: }

I cut out parts of it for the sake of simplicity so what I wanted to point out is that there is a nested loop to created the wallpaper giving the whole algorithm an 0(N*N) performance. In this case the number of steps is just 256 and actually for the processors of today performing 256² loops is actually a piece of cake. But in any case the perfectionist child in me wanted to simplify things have some fun. More...

Some time ago I was working on a rather complex stored procedure that aggregates data from different databases and presents the summary in a single result set. For a while the stored procedure was working fine but recently the query was getting time-outs. I was sure that something was changed on one of the databases but I wasn’t sure on which one and I didn’t want to go through all of them one by one*. Instead I was measuring the time it took each of the sections in the larger stored procedure to execute. To do that I used a small code snippet that I found on SqlServerCentral.com. The original article can be found here but you need to register for the site to view it. Since I use that web site on occasional basis and I always forget my account name/password I decided to store that code snippet here in my longer term memory.

   1: DECLARE @start_time datetime, @stop_time datetime

   2: SET @start_time = GETDATE() 

   3:  

   4: --some sql code here

   5:  

   6: SET @stop_time = GETDATE()

   7:  

   8: PRINT 'Execution time: ' + 

   9:        CONVERT( varchar(10), DATEDIFF(ms, @start_time, @stop_time) ) + 

  10:        ' ms'

The code is self explanatory I believe. On line 2 the time the query starts is recorded using the GETDATE function, some SQL code is executed and right after that you get another time snapshot. Finally using the DATEDIFF function you calculate the duration between the two dates in milliseconds (ms) and you print the time in the console. So simple yet so powerful :)

This code is tested and works fine in SQL Server 2000 and 2005. Although not tested in other version, I see no reason that it wouldn’t work in earlier or later versions of SQL Server

*As a strong believer in Murphy’s Law, I know that no matter how random the order of choosing a database to test, the slow database would be the last one :)