From MS Patient to Fitness Junky

January 17, 2012 | No Comments

Goodbye 2011 – hello 2012

2011 was a tough year. Leaving Greece and a lot of friends, learning a new language and getting acquinted are just a few of the challenges I had to face. I won’t list all of them here because they are plenty but the biggest challenge was and still is, finding a new pace for my schedules and day to day plans.

Norway has a completely different rythm, one I have troubles adopting to and finding a good schedule. Specially if you are interested in a lot of things and want to keep working out, planning your time is the most important aspect. With having a much longer day to work, having to start much earlier, much less space to work out and other challenges it has been a bit of a disheartening past few month. I started Asylum in Summer and it went really well, until I got my new job and the days got shorter. I haven’t worked out since then and just now started to get over a really bad infection. This made me realize that I really have to get my act together again when it comes to eating and working out.

Having to get up around 7 (latest) and having school two times per week as well as a lot of other interests I want to persue I find hardly time to really focuse on cooking anymore and do not have the proper space to work out. All of this is true, but all of this are also excuses which I can overcome if I want to. It’s not easy though

I got a nice reminder today when a friend sent me this video link. It reminded me how great I felt when I ate properly and worked out. How much more energy I had and how enthusiastic I was about everything. I am going back there..NOW!

Believe me when I tell you that eating properly is going to change your life. Even though she sounds a bit like an extremist she does have a great point and I think her results speak for themselves. Results I’ve seen work for myself too. However, a healthy lifestyle doesn’t cure MS, it will help live with it though and improve living quality

December 23, 2011 | No Comments

New years push-up challenge!

Bit of a break with hardly any updates (shame on me) but to kick it off with a bang I decided on a New Years challenge!

In order to get ready for my P90X2 round starting in January I want you to challenge, help (or torture depending on if you like or hate me ):

Every retweet my recent push-up challenge tweet in my Twitter gets means one push-up for me! To proof I’ll do all of them I’ll be recording all the attempts and posting it here on my blog (at least if I get more than say..hmm15?)

We’ll see

October 18, 2011 | No Comments

Totally up-do-date

Initially I had a post almost written and ready to go about fun ways to keep up with your workout routines even if you don’t have a lot time.

BUT! I finally had an appointment in the Tønsberg hospital last week and was able to meet with my MS Nurse Anne Bøe.

I have to say that it was quite a bit of a hassle to get into the system here. Things take time but they are done properly and once the initial stress is over (like now) it’s a really nice change from Greece. For one, if you have a prescription for medicine, you can leave it at the pharmacy of your choice and just get back whenever you need said medicine. Much easier for a hare brain like me to not have to deal with finding a safe spot to store all my paperwork..

The actual reason I am writing this post, however, is that I got a super duper advanced new injection device for my tri-weekly Rebif Injection called Rebismart! It’s not only much easier to handle it’s also much more convenient for travelling.
I had no idea that my normal Rebiject pen was something of a totally outdated thing to do. We realized that when we had to apply for a new prescription for the medicine here. Since my diagnosis there were three different type of injection methods introduced and I had no clue -.- If you are like me, go talk to your doctor, nurse, dog or whoever you talk to about your medicine and check that they keep you up-to-date. There was also a new device for single use syringes but it was all look through and stuff. Hell no, I do NOT want to see the syringe and what happens..thank you VERY much. I am scared enough of needles as is..

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: It’s a little device powered by batteries (nope, not THAT one..) that stores information of where and when your last injection was. It also stores up to 10 injection doses so you only have to change the needles and nothing else (that’s the “handy for travelling” part). I always felt pretty awkward explaining to the airport personnel why I am carrying a bag full of syringes while there were tons of people waiting behind me, listening in on our conversation. Bad enough that I always felt like a terrorist trying to smuggle a bomb when I had to open my bags and show the content. I could really do without having the explain my life’s story at an airport x-ray station and convince people that I seriously wasn’t trying to put together a hand made explosive device on the airplane..

Conveniently enough I got an exercise kit with a dummy solution to practice with, since I am using up my old rebiject and its out-dated syringes before I can try my little computerized toy for the first time. I had a lot of fun customizing the injection speed, depth and other nifty new titbits already, though. I also added my name to the display (woooooooo….personalized medicine thingamajig, how advanced!).The injection procedure is all automatic with nice little sound indicators in between whenever a phase is over.

As added bonus I got a totally new much nicer looking travel cooling bag (with smaller ice compartments) and a lot of other little things including a super colorful nice Rebif bag (I am such a sucker for swag bags and goodies!). I also finally have an official MS pass/card which I can show at the aiports by just pulling it out of my wallet. Beats the A4 paper printout that looked like some dodgy backdoor scientist wrote it. Even though it was an official Merck Serono paper..

I LOVE getting new toys – now someone get Merck Serono and Apple to join up and make a Siri enabled Rebif injector – pretty please? That might make for some hilarious distraction..

So, are you guys still using old injection methods? Got newer ones already? Want me to test it and write about it as soon as I started using it? Any funny ideas of what a Siri-injector might talk about?

September 27, 2011 | 2 Comments

Social Media overload

You are doing it wrong..

I find it kind of ironic that lately I miss news and updates on my social channels because there are so many and with added features and fluff and gimmicks, it’s just information overload. Facebook and Google+ are adding more and more feature and give you more and more tools to shape your channel into what you want it to be. Yes, the upcoming features for facebook are going to make it a bit easier to send out targetted messages but frankly. It’s still shouting in on one side and you are listening on the other side without really being able to control what is being shouted at you from a particular source.

What I would wish for is much more control as “receiver/follower/friend” over what content I follow and which updates I get from a source. For example, Google+ just added a new feature to share your circles – yet you cannot reorganize your circles well enough. I realize that the need for this implies that the people I am following might not be using their channels right or I am following people that are not 100% relevant to my interests. However there will always be a grey area when it comes to filtering relevant information. The twitter lists and facebook lists are a good start since it enables me to know what content to expect if I do my list naming correctly and tailored to my interests. However, it takes more and more time to try to stay up-to-date and trying to not miss any relevant information. Wasn’t the idea of google.reader and social media to get to your information faster and more efficient?

Another issue that bugs me, is that social media has become increasingly unsocial. People automate their tweets, is that really what social media was meant for? Obviously for marketing purposes, we will always find ways to bend the intend something was meant for and use it in a way that seems more beneficial for us but in the end you just end up being a number that shouts at someone without really getting anything worthwhile back. It doesn’t justify the point that people are obviously not necessarily interested in dialogs and conversations. It makes social channels just another information website to read.

Definition of social according to Wikipedia:

It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

So, in the wider sense, we are still within that definition but people seem to be social while also being much more detached. Isn’t that a paradoxum per se? A lot of younger people prefer to interact through their many social channels rather then meeting up with friends face to face and that behaviour is also easier to exploit from a marketing point of view. While it has both advantages and disadvantages to be active through social media I think the biggest danger comes by the time you prefer to talk to your best friend through facebook instead of taking time to meet up. Just a little side-note though.

It has never been more important to focus on who to follow and categorize your channels properly if you want to be sure to miss as few important updates as possible. Weed out sources that are just blaring at you with information you are getting from elsewhere as well. What I personally really want is high quality contacts on top of my friends I want to stay on touch with and that is the actual challenge of using social media nowadays: Filtering the high quality contacts from the low quality ones. However, with all the added features to the different channels it seems to be increasingly hard to make this distinction. It doesn’t help that maintaining your channel with all the changes coming so fast and keeping it up to-date and adjust to said changes, takes time. Time we hoped to gain with using social channels..ironic, again.

Don’t get me wrong, this is coming from a gamer and internet addict but I am not sure the whole social media overload is going in the right direction. It still should be about interaction..that’s the fun part about being a human being. In the end it comes down to what you want from your social media experience: Botted information or true feedback and interaction. It seems you can easily get both.

Filtering relevant information and the decision to do so is going to be the key to efficiently use social media and not get overwhelmed and forget to go out and enjoy the sun once in a while

So for me: userfriendliness > features, kthx!

Or am I totally off the road here? I wonder what others think

September 24, 2011 | 1 Comment

Tiiiny Update!

So, just as a small clarification for the ones landing here expecting to see my portfolio:

My Art Site was hacked a little while ago and I just can’t find the time to gather all the content to create a new version. I am working on it though! So until then, you all are forced to look at my sporty blog (sorry!). I promise to get the Portfolio up and running ASAP, specially since I just accepted some more illustration work for FFG. Of course there is always my Deviantart or CGTalk Portfolio to look at instead but those are of course missing all the tutorials :/

On other news, I am more busy then ever and we finally seem to settle down in Norway which includes me going to school and learning Norwegian. That means I have little time for games (HELP!!!) and work outs (sad panda). Someone hand me some more hours/day please with sugar on top?

Speaking of sugar: Got my scheduled MRI and blood tests done and all is fine! The doctor actually mumbled something about super-exceptional awesome cholesterol and blood test values. I guess my Smash addiction hasn’t taken its toll yet..