New blog! Roman is moving on!

That's right! I am now writing on a new blog so follow me over there!

Since I started to write this blog I always had a plan to move away from this Blogger portal. And now it seems like the time has come. Check out the new one in the link below.

Press here to visit my new blog

It is a link to the specific url with my blog.

I would be happy too see you reading my new blog as well. The podcast will also be found at this new place as well.

A perfect morning

This was a perfect morning.

Starts with wife goes "Wow, how much have you been working out recently?!"
Gotta love the thing called "muscle memory". So I am getting fast gains and it is visible to others. Even though my workouts have not been very often or very heavy so far. 

Great start of the day!

Then kids to kindergarden and then straight off to the gym. Today I remembered my caffeine supply! Since I did not workout my back or legs the day before that was the focus today. 

Deadlift, barbell bent-over row, cable pulldowns, cable rear pulldowns and some dumbbell bent-over rows were the exercises I did for my back. 
When it comes to the legs I used mainly the hacksquat but also when straight leg deadlift etc that also hit the legs.

Then after the gym I went to the store and got some nice "supplements" or healthy food products really. I will get into that shit a lot more during the next podcast and write a piece about it. 

And when I got home the sun was shining and I sat down outside and enjoyed the sunshine while eating breakfast. Ain't that a great start for a day?

Hope you guys are having a great day too!

FM, mancold and Darkest Dungeon

Recent days of games, sickness and more games

So I haven't been posting as often as I normally do. I have found the joy of playing Football Manager again. Finally! Everyone that has played it will know the feeling. Sometimes you play it for hours and hours every day and sometimes you don't want to touch it for a month or two.

With Manchester United failing in real life I decided to make sure that the club is treated well in my FM save at least.

So when playing FM I watch some series or movies at the same time. Oliver Stone has a documentary series about the history of the United States that I have been watching. Intresting shit.

I tried a new game the other day, and I will play more of it in the days to come. Darkest Dungeon! I could not imagine how the graphics would look like and the gameplay be like. It is brilliant. "easy" to create since there are not big enviroments or fancy 3D fighting. Instead they created a more chess-like battle system where you take turns with the enemy to strike at each other.

The graphics is cool. Like really awesome drawings with characters that are fucking amazing. The imagination of the developers are great.

And how come I have had the time to play so much video games?!

I have been getting another mancold.

Your body actually needs to relax at times

This sounds ridiculous, telling you guys to relax.

But it is so true and so important for your well being. I suppose there are a lot of different names on what it is called, but conditions like being "burned out" is real.

Let's take an example of a male that is 25 years old. He is working hard on his daily job to be able to provide good results and eventually get rewarded for all of his hard work with higher salary etc. He is so focused on the job that he even thinks about what he will do the next day to perfect his projects. 

When he is not focused at work he is eating healthy, working out and doing all these things that he believes will be great for him. 

It sounds like he has some really nice habits. But if his brain is focused on different stuff like work or how he can eat today to be as perfect as possible - his brain is not allowed to rest.

You should try to find some way to just relax. Disconnect all thoughts on the things you need to do in life, all the pressure needs to be lifted from you shoulders at times. 
If you are reading this blog, there is a chance that you are using video games for that purpose. 
I can take myself as an example of that. I ain't a kid anymore, I got responsibilities in life. But when I sit down and enter the beautiful world of gaming, I can shut all of the responsibilities out and allow myself to enter this virtual reality.

Find your way to relax!

Daily activity is cardio

Used low tech app to count distance I walk at work

Tried a free app to measure the distance I am covering every day at work. I know it is not something that is perfect. Even so, I would say it hints at the real distance I cover every day.

Turns out I have been hitting 15km on both of the days that I have been using it. It is somehow reacting to the movement that occurs when walking. And I double checked the data and for example riding a bike is not giving any readings on it.

No matter how accurate it is, it is still a lot of calories being burned. And when not thinking about it, trying to control a diet is a waste of time.

When I went from being a student to starting this job my weight fucking crashed. Like extremely. Doing this, I can see exactly why. During my shifts there are not a lot of time to get anything to eat either, which makes it even harder to not lose weight.

So if you are trying to control your diet. Don't forget all the extra calories you are burning while at work or similar activities.

Find out who you are

To achieve your goals, you need to know yourself

Most people have goals or dreams. I would say that hopefully these are the same thing. Dreams might seem impossible to achieve. Some are. But by going for it, you will at least get closer to your ultimate dream than you were before.

One major thing that everyone needs to remember is this. You are a unique person and your motivation to achieve something needs to come from within you. 

The method to achieve those great dreams will need to fit your personality. 

Lets take an example. Let's say you'd want to lose some weight. In order to manage to control your diet or make yourself go workout, you need motivation. 

One kind of personality is positively affected by having someone yelling at them, pushing them to work out harder etc. Which make them kind of getting motivation from others. But the initial motivation is coming from themselves. They have found their way of getting extra help.

I would say that there are not a lot of people that would like having someone screaming at them, yelling at them, telling them what to do. The entire universe is all about having an endless amount of options. So a lot of people wants to feel like they can do whatever they like. 

Unfortunately that is affecting things like diets and exercise. If opportunity presents itself, people want to eat desserts etc. And by living in an enviroment like that, a lot of people will struggle trying to keep any kind of diet. They simply want the freedom to eat whatever dessert they want to.
Some would call that weakness, lack of character. Not being able to resist. To the people that have those problems I have something that might set things in motion. Lets try tell such a person this.

Prove me wrong! Show me that it is not lack of character or signs of weakness.

No guarentee that it will work. But some people would react to that and be determined to prove me wrong. However, you better know the person you are telling that, if they are not that person - they will most likely be offended.

The path that most people will have to take is probably the one I will describe below. 

Step by step, little by little...
If we talk about the diet now. People who eat a lot of sugar, might struggle to cut that part of their diet out completely. By quitting straight away, they feel so bad that they simply give it all up. 
If that is the case, there is no point in going all out straight away. Because it will most likely fail this time too. But if they start step by step, they will give their bodies a chance to get used to less and less sugar. 

Drinking soda every day? Start by drinking just one glass, then only drink soda every other day, then next step is weekends only. By doing it like that the body will get used to you lowering the daily amount of sugar.

Find several strong reasons why you want to achieve something
Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to get bigger muscles? Whatever it is that you want deep down. For every reason to do it, there is a bigger chance of you succeeding. But don't get me wrong. It is not like quit eating sugar is going to be easy just because it is important to avoid obesity or diabetes. 
Those are not two valid reasons in this case. The reasons to succeed at something must come from within yourself. Unless you feel that you want to avoid diabetes it does not matter how much people around you keep nagging you about it. It will not help unless you grow those feelings yourself.

Get educated
Some things that you really fancy eating might be low in calories, some things that you hate and eat just because you think it is healty - might actually be pure shit. So by reading up on your favorite dishes, you might get a huge advantage.

Twitter will be fine with 10k Characters

Twitter with 10k Characters will be okay

People are going crazy on forums and other places regarding the news about Twitter implementing 10k character long tweets. 

Is it said that it will be reality? 
I don't think so. But it will probably be implemented in the future. 

Here is the thing though. People actually think that their Twitter feed will be full of 10 000 letter long tweets! Take a look at Facebook or Instagram, is your feed full with long ass texts?

Don't think so! They show you a short preview of the damn text and you have to click it to actually see the entire text. 

So please stop the damn drama. Do you actually think Twitter would be that dumb?

Twitter will keep on being this place where people type short messages but there will be less links to different places since people can actually write the texts in Twitter. Isn't that a good thing?

Music is my meditation

Music is a big part of my life

I am a lot about motivation. And music is a great way for me to find motivation.

I can have a really shitty day and everything is against me. I might have hit my head in the kitchen cabinets, hit my toe when walking past a chair and just random stuff like that making life a little less enjoyable.
Then I have a shift at work starting soon as well.

What do I do?

I start my Mp3-player or use my phone for Spotify and play music that always gets me in a good mood. Below there is a song that always makes me feel good.

"Was it life I betrayed for the shape that I'm in?"

I can often interpret that as all the parties and fun things through life that I have turned down. But now I do have my body and health to be satisfied with. I actually stumbled across that song when watching a video called "Best of Jay Cutler" back in the days. So it has always been an inspirational video to me.

No, I haven't sacrificed even close to what Jay Cutler has. Nor am I near the shape that he is in. But the music puts me in a great mental state. And that is what matters.

For some reason I do enjoy a lot of Marilyn Mansons calm songs. I don't think the message I pick up in them for motivation is the message that was intended. But anything that works for me, right?

Soundtrack when walking around

When walking around with music in my ears I feel like the music is controlling everything around me and I can just float around feeling calm and happy. Nothing matters, everything just is. 
It is actually quite nice and is important for me. 

The times when I often listen to music is on the way to and from work. And when I go to the gym. The gym is not even necessary to mention since it always makes me feel at home. 
But the most intresting upsides is when I go from work with music in my ears. 
When I am not at work, I need to drop everything surrounding it. My mind need to think about other things than what I do think about when I am actually at work. I really love my job but I can't walk around at home thinking about it.

I work within the hospital business and meets a lot of people with sad stories to tell. Taking negative feelings like that with me on my free time, that would hurt me in the long run. And when my shift ends, I put the music in my ears and just goes into a great state of mind. Calm!

This is perhaps my way of finding a calm and peaceful place in this hectic world that we live in.
Have you found yours?

I have a hard time with things like yoga and massages. That is my personal experience though. If that is the answer to some people, I'd say 'good for them'. Everyone needs to find that calmness somewhere.

New years resolutions

Getting a new years resolution?

It is the time of year when we are supposed to set up a goal, make a promise to ourselves. A lot of people sets up way too high goals that they will not even try to achieve when they wake up tomorrow morning and starts to sober up.

What's yours?

Here is mine!

It is very easy to come up with reasons not to go to the gym. If I do have valid reasons for not going, I will perform a workout at home using the weights that I do have available. 

At the same time, another one of my goals for 2016 is to keep bringing you guys content via the podcast and this blog. 

Here is a link to the section of my blog with the podcast episodes The Fit Gamer Podcast 

Thank you all for 2015 and let's make 2016 a great year!

Carpal tunnel syndrome

What is Carpal tunnel syndrome?

This is a name that is thrown around the gaming community at times. My favorite mentioning is on the Southpark episode where they play World of Warcraft non-stop. Kyle gets, what he claims to be, carpal tunnel during a gaming session.

The carpal tunnel syndrome is affecting the wrist. Your hand can feel numb, give you tingling sensations and be painful. It can show itself in different ways. 
One of the things that can cause this is highly repetitive tasks (even if they involve low force motions). Does that not sound like a pro gamer to you?
Or even if you are not a pro gamer but just a regular guy/girl who plays a lot this might be an issue.

The symptoms often occurs at night, so you might not connect the feelings of pain, numbness and tingling to your daily activities.

Besides that, which is the most relevant one in this post, it can be caused by stuff like diabetes, obesity, narrow-diameter carpal tunnel or if you have suffered damage to your wrist that created scarring tissue on the inside.

Normally the fingers that is affected is the thumb, the index finger and the middle finger. It often occurs at night. 
The fact that the symptoms often occurs at night when you basically are just going to sleep is something positive. Since you can use a wrist-aid when sleeping. That allows the wrist to rest and not being bent awkwardly. 

To go deeper on the subject I will add a picture on how the wrist looks like. 

To the right you see the actual tunnel. That Median nerve is trying to share the space with a lot of other things. And it is not hard to imagine that it sometimes becomes too tight. 

If things are not fixed by resting your wrist at night there is surgery to be had to fix the problem. 
It is not usually done until the symptoms are not just occasionally occuring, but constant. When the night-splinting and other such methods are no longer helping enough. 
It is called "carpal tunnel release surgery" and that is basically what it is. They cut the wrist open to remove the pressure on the nerve.

Before doing surgery, there are other treatments besides the splinting methods. And just because you get affected by this and even diagnosed, it is not a sure thing that it will last. It might be hard to continue to play computer games at a really high level without taking a break from it though. 

If it is an inflammation or something causing your problem, it will probably heal if you rest the wrist and maybe get some medicine.

Don't use the information in this post to diagnose yourself with carpal tunnel and start treatment. I would suggest that you go to the doctor to see what can cause your problems. 

To avoid problems there are lots of exercises to do. 

Just by searching google you will find images like this one with examples on movements that might help preventing it. And just by thinking about it, it kind of makes sense. By doing all the same movements for many hours, your wrist will need to do some other movements as well. 

Made up role models

Finding role models from fictional universes

I felt like I had a brilliant idea for an episode of the podcast. It was going to be about this subject. Finding role models that are actually not real people. Role models that exists only in a movie or serie.

Far from everyone can look at their parents and say that they are having the perfect role models when growing up. Or you just might want a role model that are a different kind of person, teaches a different set of rules.

This was my brilliant idea. I was thinking that I would have loads of movies, series etc where there would be characters that would inspire people in their daily lives.

That sounded great in my head. But when I started to list the actual ones, I came up completely empty. How hard can it be?

Very often when I watch a movie I can find myself wanting to work out more and harder because there is a dude in the movie that is big and muscular. 

If I watch a movie where there is a character that is inventing great stuff and creates a company from scratch or something.
I find myself getting motivated to do really productive shit that I probably shouldn't even think about.

I don't have the time or the actual knowledge to start a company within certain industries. But I still find myself thinking about doing it just because I get so damn motivated to do something productive with the little spare time that I have.

The whole thing surrounding this blog, the podcast and the Twitch channel is an attempt to be productive and having a project to do.
This might actually be considered a damn excuse to play games and keep track of the gaming community. But on the other hand, it could also be considered quite a genious way of getting something productive out from my intrest in gaming and working out.

Let's talk diabetes

What the hell is diabetes?

"Don't do that or you might get diabetes". 

In this post I will teach you what it is and what it does to your body.

Like with all of my posts. I am not saying that it is a scientific article. If there are parts of the text that you want to learn more about, go read texts written by doctors. 
I do however know a lot about it and face it basically every day. I believe that the general public are getting a lot of warnings about it, without the information about what it actually is.

Why would you care to avoid something that you don't know what it is? 

I am not intrested in explaining to satisfy doctors. I am just trying to scratch on the surface, creating an intrest for the subject. 
So if you consider some explanations to miss certain things or just not being detailed enough. Go and read on other sites as well. I am translating my thoughts into english which means that I am not fully confident in the language surrounding these medical terms and facts.


This will give you a basic idea about what it is and might give you some motivation to avoid it. Because like with everything in life, to do something - you need the motivation!

What is diabetes?

This is simplified to the point of absurdness because there are so many things on a cellular level at work here. 

Diabetes is a disease that affects your blood and in particular the glucose levels. Your body can't get the glucose out from the bloodstream and into your body. This can lead to serious complications.

  There are two kinds of diabetes. Type 1 and type 2. The type that your lifestyle might give you, is the second one. 

Type 1 is something you will live with forever while the type 2 can be reversed. That is probably why the first part of treatment is to control your diet.

Insulin is the big thing here. Insulin is a hormon that allows the glucose to exit the bloodstream. To simplify it, think of insulin as a key that open the door from the bloodstream.

When having diabetes type 1 you don't have any keys at all. Your body is not producing any insulin.

When having type 2, the keys are working fine at first but as the disease gets worse, the body will need help. At first most people are trying to balance their diet in order to keep the glucose at an okay level.

The next step is to start taking medicine, pills that will help your body produce insulin.

If the disease gets worse, your own production gets too low or even stops completely - you will need to inject insulin.

The people with type 1 diabetes will have to do this from the beginning since they don't produce any of their own.

How to avoid diabetes

Even if you have started to develop type 2 diabetes, you have a chance to get better. When exercising you will help your body to deal with the glucose in your body. 

Obviously the diet is a big part of this. There are a lot of different ideas on this. But according to this official info I am reading right now, these are some of the things that will have a positive impact on your diabetes:

- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Root vegetables
- Fish
- Nuts
- Coffee

Living with diabetes

Since your body won't be able to control your glucose levels - you have to do that manually.

By having routines and be alert on how you feel when high or low in blood sugar, you will be able to live a good life even with diabetes type 1. 

To know your current level of glucose in the blood you will take a drop of blood from the tip of your finger. Then a small machine will measure it, giving you a number.

Then you will decide how much insulin you will need. 

There are many factors weighing in. For example level of activity, diet and what kind of insulin it is. There are some sorts of insuling that is giving a direct effect while some will affect your body over time. 
People that has had diabetes for years are often experts on their own body and how they will handle their insulin.

You will be able to work out and live an active lifestyle with diabetes. You always have to plan ahead though and make sure that you have some candy or such nearby in case you drop too low in blood sugar.
And to know how your body reacts to hard workouts you will need to figure that out - and you will.

You will need to check your blood pressure, take samples of your blood lipids and scan your eyes regurarely to find risk factors that comes with the diabetes.

Consequences of a mistreated diabetes

The fact that you run the risk of getting too low in blood sugar and get unconscious is bad enough. 

If the body has suffered from high glucose levels for a long period of time the veins will get affected. They might get arteriosclerosis, narrower passage for the blood. The things that makes it narrower can also break free and cause a stop in veins causing a stroke (if it is in the brain) or a heart attack.

Since it affects the blood vessels, even the smaller ones are affected and that could lead to these examples:

- Your eyes might get damaged

- Your sensor nerves in the feet and legs might get less effective. So if you have a stone in your shoe and walk around, you might not feel it until you have a big wound. And when having wounds on feet and legs, they will heal really slow since the blood vessels won't transfer blood as efficient. 

It can be bad enough to amputate serious wounds when you have a serious diabetes making healing difficult.

- As a man you might get problems with your erection. Yea guys, the boner is depending on blood flowing to your most precious body part.

- You are getting a higher risk of getting diseases that makes you lose teeth. So make sure to visit the dentist regurarely.

Like with most diseases they are recommending not to smoke. In this case it is because of the increased risk of getting damages on small bloodvessles. And that in turn might cause strokes or heartattacks.

Don't ignore this disease. Life can be unfair and some may not suffer at all by living a crazy lifestyle while some might get it even though they are living a perfectly healthy life.

But give yourself good odds! Even small changes are positive changes, remember that! 

Great motivational movie

Great motivational movie

Great movie. 
Don't "kind of want it", if you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe - you will succeed. 

Most say you want to be successful, but you don't want it more than you want to party. More than you want to sleep! 

Even though it is a bit harsch, there is a lot of truth to it. You need the correct mindset to succeed. You need to be motivated!

Live today but beware of tomorrow

Don't live for tomorrow, but don't ruin the future

This will be a post with the intention of making the people reading this think some things through. I don't say that anything is backed up with specific scientific data. I am simply raising awareness surrounding this.
It might sound like I am some kind of doomsday prophet, saying that life will suck and growing old will make us weak. 
Please read this text with the mindset of how small changes in your everyday life will allow you to avoid these problems.

One thing bothers me. Some people argue saying things like they want to live their life now. Saying that it might end at any time.

Fine. I understand that they don't want to put all their money into their pension and not spend any money at all having fun.

The thing about these people is that they often use these arguments to just eat fast food, party and drink alcohol every weekend and smoking etc while not taking care of their bodies at all.

It will be fine for some time, a few years even. I mean, your body will recover from a lot of abuse. Some people get stuck in that behavior though and still comes with the same arguments. 
And it is not as if I attack their way of living when talking to them. They just defend it spontainously. Like they feel the need to defend their own behavior. 

It is true that you might die at any day. It is pointless to sit around being bored and unhappy in the present. But taking care of your body is not the same thing as living a miserable life.

School is a great example in some ways. When young you don't realize how easy life really is. You basically just have school and you won't lose money over a sick day.
For me, it was like this. I had no motivation to learn certain things. I had not decided what I wanted to do with my grades. I had no dream about what school I wanted to apply to or which job I wanted in the future. 
So my motivation was not there. Motivation is key, and to get that - a goal is great to have. It helps you through meaningless classes since you can see them as a step on the way to your dream. 
To sum the school example up. It can be hard to understand why not to just have fun instead of taking the time to study. Since you don't see the importance of it and rather have fun right now.

What does it mean by living in the now?

Seriously. The simple thing to be able to walk around being at full health is something most of us don't appreciate fully. If breaking both of your legs, being stuck in a wheelchair for weeks. Then people gets that "Wow feeling". They had no idea how great it is to just be normal.

So the people saying that we might die at any time as an excuse, they often forget to value their normal life as something special.

Being forced to wake up at 7 a.m five times a week is a wet dream for a lot of people. People who had accidents and got hurt badly, not being able to work anymore.

Even people that are healthy but unemployed would trade their week days with you without hesitation.

Some part of this is about appreciating life itself. And by appreciating it, you will be more prone to take care of it. Making sure that you will still be healthy like you are now.

You go to work even though you don't feel like it on monday morning. 
Why?
Because you want to preserve your lifestyle. Without the income from work, you would not be able to pay for the fun moments in your life. You have a reason for behaving at work, that motivates you!

By finding what would motivate you to do some exercise or changing your diet - it will be easier to do. Because of motivation!

Do I mean that you have to workout 5 times a week?

No, I certainly do not. I am just saying respect yourself, take care of the things you have!

As we grow older, our body will pay the bar tab we built up over the years. And I know that everything is not because of our choices. There are some luck with the genetic lottery involved as well. 

Everyone with lungcancer has not smoked cigarettes for 20 years.

You can get problems with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases without eating poorly.

There are in fact though people that are old but their biological age is basically 20 years younger. And on the other side, there are people in their mid thirties that are forced to eat more medicine than the average 80-year olds.

In my experience, (not facts I have dug out from statistics or anything, this is just to give you a wake up call) when asked about their activity. The healthy elder people have often been living an active lifestyle. Not necessarily going to the gym. It can be things like other hobbies. 
For example walking a dog, tending the garden a lot and stuff like that.

Having an active lifestyle is always a good investment. You just need to find something that gives you a higher quality of life.

If you hate dogs, I don't think getting a dog will make you feel better and have more fun in everyday life. But something that you enjoy, will make you live in the present and enjoying yourself - while doing something that will benefit you in the long run as well.

Don't you get to eat any foods that you like?

This post will not be a nutritional guide in any way. I am simply saying that by doing it completely wrong you will risk medical conditions like diabetes and cardio vascular diseases. 
Some sort of multivitamin is a good way to start. That will give you a good base to avoid any unbalance in your body.
There is a lot of chemistry in our bodies and most of the time it will take care of it all by itself. But a little help is not a bad idea.

In most cases you will notice if you eat too wrong. You will gain a lot of weight. But not everyone is gaining a lot of weight by eating poorly. That does not mean that their bodies aren't affected by the diet. 
They can still be affected in their veins with plaque and such that will increase the risk of having heart problems in the future. 

And the most obvious reasons is that if you become too heavy your body will have to work hard to complete your daily routines. Walking around is hard on your knees for example. 

And when growing older and become weaker or suffering some kind of injury making you unable to use your legs for example - you will have a hard time moving around if you are not strong in the rest of your body. 
Using crutches is not easy if you lack strength in your upper body for example. And being overweight, that extra weight will have to be carried by your arms.

Growing older should be fantastic. The people now that are 65 are not like 65 year olds were 50 years ago. They tend to be more like 50 year olds were back then, healthier. With our medical advancements and some common sense, we have the potential to be healthy and capable of doing fun stuff a long time after retirement.

I think that most people reading this will already be on a good path in life. And if you read this and feel that you lack knowledge about certain parts. Look it up, it might give you some motivation to easier achieve some ultimate goal you have.

Getting some Vitamins into my system

Vitamins is a good idea

It is something that can be considered quite obvious. But are most people taking supplements to make sure they get all the vitamins the body needs?

Like we spoke about on the latest episode of The Fit Gamer Podcast. During the winter when it is cold and dark we don't get the same amount of vitamin D. And there is something referred to as "winter depression" or something. It is about as scientific as the happy feelings people have when the spring is coming. 

I am expecting a delivery of some nice vitamins any day now. And especially since I have been starting to get bad colds every now and then when the weather turns cold it is a must-have for me. 

In Sweden at least, almost any grocery store is selling some kind of vitamin labeled to suit different persons. Some boxes says women 50+ and such. That is actually great because it helps the general public to purchase vitamins. They don't feel that they have to read and see if it is the vitamins they want. Many people would just have said, "Naaah too much work" and just skipped the vitamins. 

In times where the amount of calories we need is easily covered due to all the fat and glucos in our foods, it is not certain that we get enough of the vitamins and minerals in our regular diet.

When we for example filter away bad shit in our drinking water like medicines and detergents, certain minerals disappear as well. 

Don't be one of them saying vitamins is for weak people. It might help you stay healthy, get better workout results and avoid the feelings of depression during the darker season.

DreamHack Winter 2015

DreamHack Winter 2015 (No Spoilers)

I guess that it is all over this time. The DreamHack Winter 2015 in its original location. Nowadays they are showing up all over Europe. But it is really an old tradition when it comes to the summer and winter DreamHacks here in Sweden.

I am one of all the fans that will watch replays of the games for the weeks to come. I have not been able to watch a lot of the games live. Mainly due to the fact that I did not have any Internet at all during the weekend.

The Counter Strike tournament seemed to have a looot of exciting games. I will not spoil anything at all. But I bet that there will be a  lot of exciting games from the group stage all the way to the final. There were some big stomps as well as really tight matches that you can watch in the replays. I sure will!

As a swede, there will be a lot of games to watch simply because NiP and Fnatic were in the tournament. And they played each other! El Clasico of swedish Counter Strike!

I am really disappointed that there are no League of Legends to speak of. Riot and the LCS is so big that there is really no intrest or possibility for the best teams to enter other tournaments.

There should be playlists on Youtube to allow you to watch all games in the correct order. Because by just searching for games randomly, you will often get the results spoiled by seeing what teams are in the final.

Twitter should have a sign saying spoiler alert

Twitter will spoil any event you don't watch live

I realized last night that Twitter is great at spreading news. However, the times you want to avoid certain results from matches or fights - you better stay away from Twitter!

It is not as easy as it sounds. By default you open the app on your phone just like you always do. And it is always too late before you realize your mistake.

And even though you don't follow people from that certain sport. There are always someone watching the match/fight that is  eager to tell the world about their experience. It could be someone that is usually posting great work out tips and all of a sudden he/she is watching an exciting football match and tweets about the standings.

Racing games affects real life

Our driving is influenced by video games

No I don't mean that people are prone to drive like mad men after playing video games.

I am saying tvat the mechanics in the video games today are so realistic that it helps. Using the correct set of options in some games they become more like racing simulators than just flashy games. 

If you drive in real life and need to take a turn at high speed, having done it in video games gives you an idea on what to do. 

Everyone that have played racing games have been crashing when miscalculating the speed when approaching a turn. 

Doing these mistakes in the video games allows you to test the limits without having to suffer injuries in real life.

Like anything else in life though. You never know how you react in certain situations before you experience them. No matter how much you practice it in a classroom or so, you can never know... But chances are that in the back of your head, your mind makes a connection saying I recognize this situation and is helped by that when making quick decisions.
It could be such a quick process that you are not even aware of it being done.

Sometimes the rules in the traffic says different than your average racing game though. When preparing for a left turn in a game you probably go towards the right side of the road to be able to turn at a higher speed.
In real life that is not quite working since you might fool other people and cause an accident. But I suppose that this example is not viable in terms of comparing driving to video games since it is not the driving but the rules of traffic that it is concerning. 
I did however run into this problem myself when I started to drive. I automatically went a bit to the right when I was going for a left turn. 
There was no need for it, but I had it subconsciously - to make the best turn possible, this is how I do it.

Things like shifting down to get better response in the control over your car is something I have been using a lot over the years when I played video games. I am playing with automatic shifting but when breaking the car automatically gears down and then I can just press the "pedal to the metal" and turn to get a stronger turning motion.

 When going really fast and you are more or less driving on instinct. Your eyes are scanning the enviroment, focusing on any movement or objects that are not suppose to be there. 
I can relate to that. This is the reason why racing games is hard on the eyes. Since you are driving with such speed, you have to focus really hard on the screen to be able to pick up on the details and having the chance to react to them. And watching a screen that intensely is tough.

Driving in the dark when you constantly meet cars from the opposite direction can be tough when you are not used to it. Before your eyes learn how to look not to get too affected by the blinding light. 
It was during one of these drives that the idea to this post struck me. Well that and the fact that I was having a conversation about taking a drivers license. 

So, I figure. Does your kids want to play racing games? Cool. Might be useful. I mean, honestly. Wouldn't you rather have your child play a racing game instead of a game where they are shooting human beings?

Sleep or being productive

Sleep is important

We need sleep to function properly. Our body needs sleep to build muscle, recover from illness and so on and so forth. 

Even our testosterone levels decrease from lack of sleep. And if you are looking to build muscles as a man, you do want your normal levels of testosterone. 

But here is the thing. One day only has 24 hours. If you have a day job to secure your daily life, roof over your head etc, 8 hours are gone there. 
Do you have a family that requires your attention? Kids? Lets say they go to bed at 8 p.m. Your wife/husband might want some attention, I mean bang. 

The amount of time left is not a lot to work on some project. You have work in the morning and have to get up at 6 a.m. To get 8 hours of sleep you would have to be asleep at 10 p.m. 

I am writing this at 1 a.m. That is just proof of my lack of sleep. I won't do this for 60 years though. So different periods in your life will give you different amount of free time to work on projects. 

Feel like it is tough with everything? 
If you are convinced about your project, feel lucky! 
Many people would kill to have a meaningful project that made them feel productive. 

This is a fucked up fact. When you are 60 years old. If you have slept 8 hours each day. You have slept for 20 years! Out of 60! Wow! It is not hard math. But when I heard it put like that. It sounds like a looooot! 

Noone knows our body and the way it works better than us. Do I need a certain amount of sleep each night? Then that is it. You know what you need. 
I am not telling anyone to skip sleep. I am simply saying that, if you feel like sacrificing sleep in order to do something productive - don't feel bad about it. 

There are people out in the fitness world that talks about that sleep is important etc but them themselves admit to not sleeping well due to different stuff they are working on and that consumes a lot of time.
I would feel worse about this post if I wrote in caps lock that you have to sleep and get rest in order to build muscle and function properly! Without saying that I don't follow that strictly myself. Screaming about how you should live your lives without doing that yourself is the biggest kind of bullshit there is.

There are different periods in life and sometimes, when adding all parts of your life together. You might actually feel better as a human when skipping a few hours of sleep, if you are doing something that really developes you as a person and allows you to grow.
Obviously if you feel ill after losing sleep you are not having the positive experience and you should consider trying a different approach on life. Personally I can rest for a few minutes on the couch or something to regain some short term energy and finish the day if I feel too tired. 
And that happends now and then.

Don't limit yourselves. It is important to have those goals and dreams. You might not move closer to them everyday. But allowing yourself to have dreams and going for them will make your life better. 
For example, you can find positives in holding hard onto your money a few months, if you are looking forward to something like a vacation afterwards! 
By having a huge dream and small goals along the way. You get these rewards as you go on the path towards the bigger goal, that huge dream!
In this example, what if you have a dream to visit every country in the entire world. Then that specific trip is one of the goals along the way. And working hard to save money for the trip is later rewarded with the fantastic vacation and one step closer to having visited the entire world.

Actually quite proud of that example. I hope that made it more clear to you guys of what I meant.

Podcast vs Radio

Any difference between podcasts and radio shows?

I mean, I am confused. And I am actually co-hosting a podcast. Since in Sweden, the swedish radio is having an app for their shows. 
And I mean. What is the difference between those episodes and podcasts. They are both found on Podcaster. I even think some begin by saying "hi and welcome to this podcast".

Is the difference that podcasts are just not bound to a radio station or big company?

Nope. That is not it. Since a lot of media groups and companies have podcasts. And they are big brands with a lot of money supporting their podcast.

It feels like in podcasts, people are not as careful with what they say. Since it is "just on the podcast". Am I right?

Like I wrote regarding streaming, this feels like the future. I am not sure how though. Because in some way, when something grows big there will be a lot of laws and rules made up just because of money. And money is power. 

Will we see companies owning the market? Radio should not disappear but on those radio frequencys it might be podcasts broadcasted.  For people commuting there will probably always be some kind of radio available. 
Or will the 4G etc simply be the only thing left?
From 4G you could stream your list of shows you have put together on a tracklist. And the towers made for radio should work for 4G as well?

Now most podcasts are living on sponsor money I'd say. Some are like I said owned by media companies but I mean the majority.

So if the trend of podcasts all of a sudden disappears. I bet there will be a lot of famous podcasters that will be employed by radio stations all over the world. Since they do apparently have the ability to get people intrested in what they are saying.