Hooked on silly video games

For the first time ever, every single person in this house is now hooked on a video game.

Thorin and I have been playing PixelJunk games on the new PS3 (Monsters for him, Eden for me).

And Richard, bless his heart, is addicted to Angry Birds on his new iPad. It's his first video game addiction. Awww, so cute.

CD Exchange? Workout Mix

I have a brand-new CD-length Classic Rock exercise mix available for trade. It has been extensively researched with BPM calculations and lots of play testing in a real live gym. I put this particular collection together for my sister-in-law Marlene after chatting with her at the annual Christmas gathering. I didn't have much to go on other than: 1) Her usual workout is slow jogging, at about 4mph 2) She likes classic rock, which she defines as "50's, 60's and 70's music - you know, like Simon and Garfunkel." Now, you might think that Simon & Garfunkel did not write good exercise music, but you'd be wrong. See playlist behind cut for examples.

The difficulty in making a playlist for someone else is not knowing what speeds will work for them. After much fieldwork (okay, in the gym, not a field), I have determined that 140 BPM is perfect for getting me to WALK at 4.0 mph, but I don't know if jogging at the same speed would be the same number of footfalls even for me, much less for somebody else. Online guidelines that I found for running music suggest 140-190 bpm for running music, so maybe 140 is about right for jogging.

In the end I put together a playlist that works for me at the gym. I start by warming up on the treadmill for 5 minutes at a comfortable walking pace (3.2-3.4 mph). Historically, I am so bored by the end of 5 minutes that I hop off the treadmill and start roaming around looking for something more interesting to do. But once I started focusing on matching my footsteps to the music it became so much more interesting that the treadmill is often the majority of my workout time these days. Once I'm warmed up I sometimes get into interval training by alternating fast songs (130-150bpm) with slower ones (120-125). That's pretty much what happens in the middle of this playlist. Since I was supposedly making this mix for a jogger, I pushed it up to 160 bpm at the peak. This is too fast for me to walk, but perfect for other activities like the exercycle and, counterintuitively, the rowing machine.

The last 3 are cooldown songs at successively slower speeds. The idea is not to go through all of them, but to pick the one that feels right.

( Playlist behind cut )