Hi, my name is Terry Smith and I'm a developer and aspiring entrepreneur.

Now that I’m doing Jeremy Wright’s new Twitter organized #10morepounds weight loss challenge, I needed to change the direction of my workout a bit.    I’ve been doing 5 days a week and will continue with that, however, I was previously doing 1/2 resistance and 1/2 cardio each day to both lose weight and try to add a little mass. 

Since my goal for the next 10 weeks has shifted primarily to losing weight, I’ve changed my workout and thought I’d share:

• Day 1: Cardio – 20 minutes treadmill, 20 minutes bike, 10 minutes stairs
• Day 2: Half and Half - Resistance (chest, upper back and shoulders) then cardio (20 minutes treadmill, 20 minutes bike)
• Day 3: Cardio, repeat Day 1
• Day 4: Half and Half – Resistance (biceps, triceps, lower back) then cardio (repeat cardio from Day 2)
• Day 5: Cardio, repeat Day 1

You may notice a few things… first, I’m leaving leg muscles to the cardio since it’s almost always based around legs (I sometimes throw rowing in there instead of one of the exercises).  Second, my cardio levels are almost the same each day.  On cardio days I’m doing a much higher intensity than on half and half days.  Third, I’m not specifying any specific resistance workouts because there are so many of them and you need to find something you’re comfortable with.  There are a ton of good sites out there for resistance training guides and walk-throughs. 

My only suggestion is use free weights over machines.  Machines are very focused, which isn’t really what you want (unless you have an injury).  What you want is to be imperfect because you’re going to work a wider range of muscles burning more fat and getting a better overall workout.

This week, as per Jeremy’s recommendations, I’m also hoping to start eating grapefruit for breakfast and drinking a lot more water instead of iced tea (even if it is 0 calorie).  I’m also going to try to kick my Starbucks habit but that’ll be even harder than losing 10 pounds.

Hope this helps you in your endeavours if you’re following along!

After one hell of a weekend of ups and down, I am pleased to say I am joining JeremyWright’s #10morepounds challenge.  On Sunday I ate quite a bit of junk food, then I punished myself in the gym (which is normally a rest day for me) and as a result I was quite upset with myself and my body image.  So this works out perfectly, since there’s nothing as motivating as a group of people coming together to accomplish a similar goal.

Jeremy has a great post here with a lot of helpful tips and I’ll be posting my few and far between insights on weightlifting.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to post weekly photos of myself starting later this evening.  Here are of my own as well:

1. Don’t get into any habits.  The only way to keep losing weight consistently is to mix it up and shock your body.  Otherwise your body will just get used to your workout and you won’t get anywhere.
2. I agree wholeheartedly with Jeremy’s eat smaller portions remark; the reason to eat many smaller meals throughout the day is to increase your metabolism and gain control over your portion sizes which is a big part of the battle.
3.  It’s all about the cardio… you can choose to do a lot of cardio (anywhere from 30 – 60 minutes) or, you can do resistance training and then do cardio (20 – 30 minutes).  Your resistance training will ensure your energy is burnt and you have nothing left to burn during cardio but fat.
4. If you do resistance training, I always try to work opposite muscle groups and do two exercises per muscle group.  So triceps and biceps and for each one, do two exercises.  This ensures that you are working all of the available muscles to their max.
5. Finally, always listen to your body.  A little pain the next day is fine, but if you really hurt then lay off.  Also on this note, don’t overtrain… your body needs time to recover, with lots of sleep and at least two consecutive days off a week.

Stay tuned (all two of you) to watch the transformation!

So this morning I am being assaulted on Digg and other sites with news that AIG is paying $160 million+ in bonuses.  Congress is clearly pissed, and are all saying “Oh my god, this will never happen again.”  Yeah… right.

These bailouts are turning into on of the greatest catastrophes in North America’s history.  On the part of the auto-makers and their ridiculous unions and executives fighting to protect high costs that are (and I believe will) drive them out of business.  Any so it should be; that’s capitalism, and no business is going to last forever.  But where each of the big 3 fail, 100 others will rise to take their place. 

Reid Hoffman (CEO, LinkedIN) recently wrote in a large number of places that start-ups can bail us out.  Armed with innovation and creativity and the lack of executive red tape that makes implementation possible, most of the suppliers and people in the pipeline would remain in business and in the face of bankruptcy, would almost certainly offer better deals to fresh faces.  And these startups could finally tell the unions to go to hell and renegotiate contracts that will help keep the innovation alive.

But back to the point of this article: on the part of the banks (and in part the automakers), where is the person who will tell the banks that THEY ARE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS?  There must be enough people out there with the experience and determination who can take over as CEOs and make the changes necessary to restore the trust and turn around what has surely become the worst PR disaster in these banks’ history.

The government needs oversight in key sectors like finance in order to keep control over the nation and to prevent capitalism from destroying the entire sector.  What is happening in the banks now should’ve happened long ago.  But the government needs to take it one step further: they need to tell the current executives to fundamentally change and restructure the way things get done.  Cap salaries, no more bonuses, and the list goes on.  And if they can’t perform, then the government needs to go to the shareholders and tell them that they need to fire their disastrous management and bring in people who will make the necessary changes or they will let them sink into insolvency and will pick up the pieces after the fact.

I heard this morning that these bonuses were contractually obligated and that there was no out clause.  First, that was a dumb move.  But more importantly, why are these executives still taking their bonuses??  What we have here is a fundamental difference between start-ups executives and executives brought in specifically to make money for themselves and their shareholders who care nothing for their business.  Any reasonable executive would’ve turned their bonus away, knowing it’s yet another PR disaster that they simply cannot afford and that their business is that much more likely to have to jump through even more hoops if they need more funds in the future.

Where are the people willing to make the necessary changes?  Am I missing something?

Well, it’s been one hell of a last month.  I’ve been working hard on some bbPress and buddyPress stuff, learning their code bases, and learning to write plug-ins to modify and build on their cores.  I’ve developed what we’re thinking of releasing as bbPress Plus version which will come prepackaged with most of the functionality found in other forum software.

I’ve also been working hard to smoothly integrate all of the best features of the two.  Instead of using bbPress’s built in profiles and plug-ins for private messaging, we’re taking that functionality from buddyPress.  It’s challenging because both of them are pre-1.0 packages and neither have seemingly taken the time to play nice with each other (though they both integrate quite nicely with Wordpress MU).

At the same time, I’ve stopped working a “regular” job and have gotten into contracting full-time.  This means instead of working for “the” man, I’m now working for a lot of different ones (and women too!).  Hence, I decided to invest some time and money into a new blog design that would allow me to better sell myself and my services.

So by referral from a friend, I hired James MacDonald from Flockey Web Development and I am quite impressed with the new design.  I didn’t have a lot of requirements, but I really wanted to create an equal focus on the blog and my services.  The blog is a representation of me personally, an outlet for my thoughts and ideas, and since my personality is reflected in all of my work, it’s important for my to find an appropriate balance.

So if you’ve got a bbPress, buddyPress or any other job and are looking for a fun and creative programmer with a (very) tiny flair for design, feel free to contact me!

More to come on my most recent projects in the next couple weeks!