As some of you might know, my wife Darci is a Producer over at Camouflaj on the critically acclaimed iOS game Republique.
She's just done her first ever Podcast, so go check it out! It's episode 18. She shows up about 13 minutes in.
(more...)Happy Xbox One, everybody!
Forza 5
Assasin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Dead Rising 3
Fifa 14
NBA 2K14
Madden 25
RYSE: Son of Rome
In case you’re wondering, I’m one of the engineers in the Xbox Advanced Technology Group. We help make games and consoles better – by any means necessary 
As a dancer, I’ve pretty much got two left feet. Always have. (If my DNA source code is anything to believe, it’s partly because I’ve got a slightly worse motor cortex than most, making it harder for me to learn that kind of thing… I’m not sure whether I buy that or not). Although I’ve always had a blast making a fool out of myself on the dance floor, provided I had poured enough alcohol into myself to ignore the jeers, and the fact that I’d never be able to pull based on my “moves”. (Fortunately, my lack of coordination and finesse appears to be relegated only to dancing).
Last week though, I was playing Dance Central 3 with my wonderful wife Darci, and she said one of the most amazing things ever… (in between mocking my lack of skill). This is the one piece of information that totally clued me into what I was missing about dancing, and why she was more easily able to ape the dancers on the screen than I was. It was mind blowing, and has completely gotten me over the hump.
What was it?
So a few months back, I decided to try playing Dance Central to lose weight, and for the first two weeks it worked like a charm! I lost a fair bit of weight (close to 10lbs), and checking on my electronic scale it wasn’t all water weight. Pretty awesome! What’s more, it proved out my theory that if you’ve got a lot of fast-twitch muscle fibers, dancing is a pretty solid way to go to get exercise – about the only thing comparable might be interval training.
Now, I’d be lying if I said I was able to keep it up long term. I got a cold, and unfortunately, after a couple of days out of commission, I just kind of forgot to get back on the horse. Well, now I’m back and dancing again… and it’s time for an update on what I’ve learned in the interim.
So it’s now been a week since I started my little exercise adventure (okay, I posted my first article on Sunday, but I started actually doing it last Wednesday).
When I first posted, my weight was 199lbs. Body fat percentage, according to my handy-dandy scales-cum-tricorder was 28%. I will warn you right now that I’ve discovered that it’s pretty inaccurate unless you weigh yourself a couple of times to see where it lands, and I didn’t know that at the start, so it might be 2-3lbs too high.
