My Friends, It’s Been A While…

….since I last posted. This act of balancing things can be tricky and as life passes by, It’s hard to keep up with everything. So I guess I’ll share what’s new in my life since my last post in June. Where do I start? Well, This summer has been a roller coaster in so many ways. In June & July, I prepared for participating in a protest in China for human rights. My pastor planned a very controversial protest which found him painting anti-oppression slogans on upscale hotel walls. My part was to get this video out and release it onto the internet. Well it worked, and amid much criticism, The Gadfly Project, was off the ground and gained wordwide exposure. Just about every news source covered our story and just about every news anchor came out to my church for interviews. I also produced about 30+ videos during the month of August to keep the project going and I maintained our website called Exodus8one.org. For what it’s worth, this was one of the boldest things I’ve ever done. In hindsight, it was worth it all the while.

The problem with these types of things is that no one ever speaks up. The injustices in China and around the world get overlooked or ignored. We had this opportunity to do something so we did. It was amazing because the essentials of our plans were succesfully executed. Well, it’s now said and done and the olympics are finished. My involvement with this project is being furthered. I’m now in the middle of producing a full length documentary film for The Gadfly Project. This means I might make my way back to Europe to film all over again. I’ll keep you posted with the developments! Ask me about if you ever get a chance because there’s too much to put in this post!

Another thing I’ve been working on is revamping my company. I now have a brand new website for Moving Pixel Films and fresh new content. It’s made also in the form of a blog as I’m publicly sharing my work as it comes. You can now view my videos in a nice big player. If you get a chance, check it out and send people my way. I’m going to take the wedding market by storm next year!

On a side note, sadly, I’ve neglected my other project is called This is NOT a diet. Because some really serious projects demanded my attention, it fell to the wayside. I will however be back to blogging about my health very soon. As I said, balancing is hard but I can say that the essentials of my life are in balance and my company is growing! I haven’t been writing any new music lately. I wish I could just dedicate another month to doing this but that’s not reality. I do however, want to start writing music for some of the film projects I have coming up so I might just pull out the GuitFiddle sometime soon!

New Website: http://MovingPixelFilms.com
The Gadfly Project: http://Exodus8one.org

An Online Pedometer, No Joke!!!!!

I found a wonderful little online tool for calculating distance and calories burned for your local walks or runs. It’s basically a free online Pedometer put out by Google! It’s called Gmaps-Pedometer. The way it works is you enter an address for a start location and when you’re ready to start making your route, you hit the record button and double click on the map to plot you’re first point. Next, you can drag the map and plot as many points as you want thereafter. Here’s where it gets cool…well kind of. Once you’ve plotted all of your points, the Gmaps Pedometer places little red balloons to mark each mile along the way and also, the feature you’d be most interested in, is that it calculates the amount of calories you’ve burned on your trip! Of course these calories are only burned if you do this trip by foot and not by car! You could even complete the trip by calculating the stats for a round trip. Also, you could save your map for future viewing or print out the map to take with you if you’ve got a long trip ahead of you. Later this year, I plan on walking for an entire day, so this tool will come in handy. I’m a big geek so this online application scores some nifty “cool” points with me!

So, next time you want to take that daily walk around your neighborhood, visit Gmaps-Pedometer to get an accurate distance calculation and measure those calories burned! Of course this doesn’t have all of the features of a top notch Pedometer but it should do just fine for the basics! We’ll make sure to write a post that reviews quality Pedometers in the near future and we’ll do some comparison tests with this site and the real thing.

Visit the website at: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/

Make it a great day,

Jacob
————————————————————–
“Making Diet History by Making Diet’s History”
http://thisisnotadiet.org

Good Morning Starshine, the Earth Says Hello!

(Ok, Ok, don’t laugh, this was #10 on Billboard in ’69. Seriously. I’m going to do some major vegetable planting to this very song.)

“Gardening requires lots of water — most of it in the form of perspiration.”

Good morning starlets & sunbeams,

Today is earth day and in honor of earth day, I’m making plans to make a vegetable garden in my backyard. I made a garden 3 years ago (below photos, 2005) and have decided to start one again. My small garden was no easy feat though. As the above quote says, it took lots of perspiration. By the end of the summer though, we had lots of tomatoes and bell peppers! This time around, I want to have at least 5 different vegetables. I will try to be water wise and will also make sure its an organic garden which means that it’ll be good for the environment and safe for us to eat. I won’t be using any pesticides or chemically enhanced compost. I’ll also be using some of our food waste for the compost which is a great way of recycling! Making your own vegetable garden is a great way to learn about healthy eating and it’s fun as well.

My small garden from 2005:

The tomatoe plant:

As soon as it’s up, I’ll post photos and will keep you in the loop with updates of my garden. I hope I yield a big crop so we could enjoy some good organic vegetables and cut back on spending.

Catch you later “This is NOT a Diet” friends & family,

-Jacob
————————————————————–
“Making Diet History by Making Diet’s History”
http://thisisnotadiet.org

Hiking and History, Reasons I love L.A. (Part 2)

Where there’s a hill, there’s a way

If you have trouble watching the video, view it on YouTube here:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omJbztnNsnk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8XPcNJxPBY
Download this video here.

As you can see from the video, we made it back to the Sam Merrill trail on the Mount Lowe Summit in Altadena, Ca this past Monday. We 1st went up last Monday but turned around. I’M HAPPY TO REPORT THAT WE MADE IT!!!!! Remember, I’m still 245 lbs. so this wasn’t an easy feat for me. This was by far the most rewarding hike I’ve ever been on and the most challenging. You can’t tell from the video but this hike, drained me so much that I had my brother do the closing because I had no energy left and was beyond thirsty. While there, we met some wonderful people who encouraged us on our journey to the high places. Thank you Kathleen and the group of 3 ladies we met, your words helped us up!

With most things of this nature, it becomes a test of the will and we were tested. From the trail head to the top, lies a trail that whips back and forth up the mountain for 2.5 miles. As Israel said, we overshot the trail. What happened was we took a wee little shortcut through the trail and that shortcut cost us about an hour of time and we also ran out of water. This was about half an hour past our destination so I’m glad we inadvertently broke our goal!! I felt like giving up at least 4 different times but some much needed support came by way of other hikers that were there. As I mentioned in the video, the trip up is slightly strenuous but eventually pays off by the gorgeous views and sights up at the top.

The biggest lesson we got out of our hike was that if it’s going to be hot, leave early, say around 7am, and always bring lots of water. For us, we were so thirsty at the top and coming down was a struggle because we started feeling a bit weak in the legs and dizzy from the heat. We’re definitely going to make it back but further next time. We’ll make sure to be well prepared.

The trail we took can be reached by driving up the 210 FWY to Lake Ave. exit heading north toward the mountains. Drive up Lake Ave. until you reach a dead end and park and enter the gates of the old Cobb estate.

Besides not being able to walk the next day because of soreness, everything went well and I’m excited to be doing a variety of things to raise my fitness level and become more healthy in the process. It truly feels like I am NOT on a diet and I’m having fun doing it!

Read the post about our 1st attempt here.

Also check out some of the photos we took while there:

Visit: http://mountlowe.org to learn the complete history!
If you have other great hikes, drop us a line. Maybe we’ll
go film it as well.

-Jacob
—————————————————————–
“Making Diet History by Making Diet’s History”
http://thisisnotadiet.org

Back on the beaten path – My 1st exercise since I started “Not Dieting”

  

 

Press to play: http://www.utterz.com/utts/db/dbd673c211aefca4338ea5e09982b88b.mp3″

Hey guys,

As you heard from the audio file above, today was my first day out to start in on my fitness regime. It was beautiful and I’m glad I chose the trail instead of the track. It’s a great way to mix things up. I’ll also be going on long hikes once a month with Israel M. If you get a chance, click on the photos above to see their full size. I also have my stats posted below to see how I did. I grabbed them from my sisters phone. It’s pretty cool. Not bad for a first day.

Distance walked: 3.3 Miles
Steps: 6,501
Sweat drops dropped: 5
Tears Cried: 0.5

Catch you later,

-Jacob
—————————————————————–
“Making Diet History by Making Diet’s History”