Kettlebells have been around for a long time. They originated in Russian sometime in the 1700s. More recently there seems to be a bit of a “craze” going on right now.

Using Kettlebells seems to be quite a full body workout, but in particular it strengthens your core back and legs.
I’ve also read a few articles claiming that it can be very beneficial for cyclists! I even saw a picture of Lance Armstrong with one.

So anyway, I took the plunge and bought a 20lb kettlebell from Target. It was supposed to come with a DVD but mine didn’t have it, so I’ll have to go return it or get a DVD or something before I can check that out.
I did a quick and simple work out; 3×20 reps of two arm swing and just 1×20 of one arm swings (one set each arm). Even after that I could feel my legs tiring. My heart rate was up and my cardio too.

I will try to list some of them below for my own reference as much as for anybody else.

Here is an article about the Kettlebell swing, along with a video posted by someone.

Here is a video with some basic exercises.

Here is a video with some more advanced Kettlebell exercises.

Update:

Here is all of” Average To Elite” Kettlebell corrections by Jordan Vezina (+ other exercises also).

I have had a few days to play with my NuForce uDAC-2. I tested with both my Grado SR80i and Ultrasone HFI-580 headphones. I must say I was impressed with both! I first connected the uDAC-2 to my Dell Windows 7 Enterprise laptop. It found it and installed the drivers immediately. I fired up Winamp and played some tracks. Everything sounded perfectly clear and detailed, much more than I’ve heard from my headphones before. I could hear a lot more bass coming out of both sets of headphones than when they were connected just to the regular headphone out on the laptop.
Also, this thing is small. Like, actually quite cute. Build quality seems excellent. It feels solid, the volume knob is sturdy.
Worth $129? Hard to say. Only worth it if you have a decent pair of headphones I reckon.
I know for sure that I’m going to get a lot of use out of them, so it is worth it for me at least.
5/5

All in all I’m pretty happy for the price and the portability. They will also need a bit of time to break in so my opinion of them may change over time.

I rode over some piece of metal that I did kinda see, and it made this clanging noise and the whoosh and I was like “Fuck”. Of course neither of us had a pump for some reason so I walked it to the petrol station which wasn’t that far away luckily. Put a patch on the tyre which didn’t seem to help much, so I put some paper I found lying by the pump (apparently a $1 bill is good, but didn’t have one). As you can see it is bulging out but it got me back to the car a few k’s away.

I don’t blame the tyre, but I’m sure if it was tougher it might have been OK, not sure.

Also, I think that little Michelin man on the tyre is laughing at me. Hah.

Also, just went for a MTB ride and one of the 4 pieces  of the egg beater of my right pedal broke off so now I need another set of pedals. Doh.

Expensive weekend.

Stupid bikes.

So after reading a bunch of stuff on forums and discussion things, I figure it has to be the motherboard. Unfortunately Dell don’t make it easy to replace something like that. Firstly, the computer is out of warranty. Damn. Next they don’t show parts like that on their little store (but I’ve heard it said that it could cost up to $400 to get a new one from them). Next they use BTX form factor motherboards so that makes it almost impossible to find one anywhere except Dell. Also if you try call them for some help they say it is out of warranty (fair enough) and it will be $50 to talk to someone. But I really can’t imagine them saying anything other than “Your MB is busted mate, I can send you one for $4500, thanks for the $50″. If I was a computer noob this would probably be my only course of action. Good thing I’m not a noob… Right?

Anyway, bottom line is I’m going to get a new PSU, case, CPU fan and motherboard for probably about $250-$260. Not exactly cheap, but will be either either the same or much cheaper than trying to get a new BTX motherboard (only one I can find is on ebay for $282). If we’re lucky we can try sell the old case/PSU to try offset the cost a little.

So far I have the following tea sites to look at:

• http://www.oceanoftea.com/
• http://www.uptontea.com/
• http://www.teatrekker.com/
• http://www.specialteas.com/
• http://samovarlife.com/
• http://www.silkroadteas.com/
• http://www.teavana.com/

There is a type of tea I’ve never tried called “Pu-erh” tea that I really want to try now.

I’ve also been watching some informative videos about tea from Kevin Rose.

This one is at the Samovar tea website, the video talks about the three teas and how to prepare them that come with the “Kevin Rose Tea Starter Kit” at Samovar. I’m going to order one of these because it seems like a pretty good deal and a good way to try some different teas. It comes with an infusing basket too. $25.

There are several videos about tea by Kevin Rose here.

Also, if you want to join up to his facebook page dedicated to tea, it is here! It has a couple more interesting videos.

Next I will have to move it to the Dell I mentioned at the begining. I get to make use of having a gigabit network (between those two computers at least) and move the VM over. Should be pretty easy to load up on the other machine.