Status: “time out”

Since I’m travelling and can’t control a lot of what I eat I’ve taken a time out in reporting. I’ll be back next monday and hopefully not gained too much. But suffice to say it’s a bit hard to not gain when you’ve requested “gluten free meal” on airplanes and they stack them full of starch.. *gah*. Oh well.. figured it’d be a bit of a problem but we’ll see what happens

Streaming Media East

New blogpost on http://geekteq.com/blogged/streamingmediaeast/1652

Streaming Media East

For once you’ll be getting some updates more regular to the blog here on Geekteq the coming week. This is mainly due to the fact that I’m heading to New York City next week to visit Streaming Media East. I’ll be posting, hopefully, on a daily basis with some news and reviews on what I’ve heard during the day.

My plan right now is to join these two pre-conference sessions – which I find most interesting of the four I can choose from:

Encoding for Multiscreen Delivery

Learn how to create a set of video files that will play on all devices, from smartphones to computers and OTT devices. The class starts by exploring key concepts like protocol and container format and technologies like HTTP Live Streaming, DASH, and Dynamic Streaming. Then it moves to a technical overview of the H.264 specification to identify those configuration parameters that impact quality and those that don’t, and how they affect playback compatibility. Then we’ll review the technical requirements for single and multiple file delivery to Flash, HTML5, iOS, Android, Windows Phones, Windows 8, and the Apple TV, Boxee, Roku, and other OTT devices. Along the way, you’ll learn the current encoding and delivery practices used by high-profile broadcast and corporate sites to help refine your technology decisions. You’ll walk way knowing the technical requirements for delivering to all key platforms and an understanding how to do so.

and then in the afternoon it’s time for (I’m using Wowza intensively in my projects so it fits rather good wouldn’t you say?)

Wowza Media Server and End-to-End Workflows

There is a confusing array of products and solutions for streaming video to end users, but few that simply deliver your content to any device. If you’re serious about video, you’ve been seeing and hearing more references to Wowza Media Server. In this session, you will learn about the end-to-end deployment workflows that you can build using this unified streaming media server software. You’ll see live demos and find out about the newest Wowza functionality. Discover how Wowza works with cloud delivery and stacks up against other media delivery options. Finally, gain insights about emerging technologies (such as MPEG-DASH, H.265, and HTML5) and how to future-proof your streaming media deployment.

For the actual conference sessions during tuesday and wednesday I haven’t set anything in stone – there are some of them that sort of clashes – I’d like to see both but can only choose one… *bummer*

But.. in short – I think it will be these:

Tuesday

Encoding Video for iDevices

This session starts by detailing the playback specs for all iDevices, old and new. Then you’ll learn the strategies used by prominent iTunes publishers to serve the complete range of installed iDevices. Next, the seminar switches to cellular wireless delivery, with a technical description of Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), including recommendations for the number of streams and Apple’s encoding parameters. You’ll walk away knowing how to encode for both iTunes and mobile delivery to iOS and compatible devices.

It’s not as if I don’t already know about how do to do this, but I might have missed something. This is one of the sessions I might change because it clashes with another one :) The three sessions below is a must for me..

Content Preparation And Transcoding For Multiscreen Delivery

With the introduction of adaptive streaming formats, a growing number of IP-enabled streaming boxes, and the proliferation of handheld devices, content owners face increasing challenges for multi-screen content preparation. A key part of that content preparation is the encoding of content for each device, the algorithm choices/trade-offs, codec settings, and the particular requirements of various distribution platforms. This session will analyze the key components of file-based transcoding and will talk practically about converting content for multi-screen delivery.

Understanding the Significance of HEVC/H.265

The most recent video compression standard, HEVC / H.265, was placed into final draft for ratification earlier this year and is expected to become the video standard of choice over the next decade. As with each generation of video compression technology before it, H.265 promises to reduce the overall cost of delivering and storing video assets while maintaining or increasing the quality of experience delivered to the viewer. This session will address what H.265 is, how it differs from previous generations of compression technology including H.264, key barriers to widespread adoption, and thoughts on when H.265 is likely to be implemented.

MPEG-DASH: The Next Steps Towards Broad Adoption

Members of the DASH Industry Forum will discuss what concrete steps have been taken in order to foster fast adoption of the new industry standard for adaptive streaming over HTTP. The session will discuss the recently published DASH264 Implementation Guidelines that cover both live and on-demand services, MPEG-DASH profiles, audio and video codecs, closed-caption formatting and common encryption constants. The panel will consist of representatives from all relevant parts of the ecosystem and will address the practical matters and relevance of MPEG-DASH based service roll-outs for streaming and hybrid broadcast applications.

Then we end the day with a battle again. It would either be…

Evaluating the Effectiveness Of Your H.264 Encoder

Not all video encoders are created equal. In this session, the real-world video outputs of top commercial H.264 encoders are compared, including those from Telestream, Harmonic, Sorenson, and Adobe, as well as open-source options such as FFmpeg and x264. Learn what features you should have available in an encoding tool before you invest your organization’s budget in a solution.

or…

Battle Of The $99 Streaming Boxes

With so many streaming devices in the market, trying to determine what each one offers in the way of streaming quality and content inventory can be quite confusing. In this special session, Dan Rayburn will present hands-on demos showcasing the leading streaming devices, including those from Apple, Roku, Boxee, Western Digital, Sony, Vizio and Netgear. Attendees will see these devices in action, learn which content platforms they run, and have a chance to ask questions.

I’m sort off leaning towards the latter since I can, mostly, decide which H.264 encoders that works better or worse already – but I might learn something new. When it comes to streaming boxes I’m a bit blind (there are too many) and it could be good to see some of them.

Wednesday

The first session is a no-brainer for me…

Building a DASH264 Client

With all the device fragmentation in the market, it is getting increasingly difficult to provide content to all of them equally. The MPEG-DASH specification promises to unify the field and provide a ubiquitous format that can be used by most devices. This technical session explores how to build a DASH264 player. We will explore a few different players, including one built-in JavaScript using the MediaSource APIs to run natively in some browsers, and another using OSMF and ActionScript that can run in any browser with a Flash player.

This one is sort off a best of the worst at the time – I’ve done so many livestreaming cases that I could probably host it myself (kidding) but it’s always good to get new input from others as well.

Best Practices For Live Streaming Delivery

This session provides best practices, lessons learned, and a general overview of the technical set-up for a professional live streaming production. Learn about transmission methods (IP, cellular, fiber, satellite), encoding on site or off, picking the proper encoder for the job (software vs. hardware), maximizing encoder & CDN efficiency, and delivering adaptive HD streaming to the desktop, mobile, and OTT boxes. Come learn how to improve your next live event.

Following that I’m thinking this could be interesting to hear, since I’ve got partners who was involved in that particular case..

How The BBC Ensured Live Streaming Resilience For The Olympics

Live video streams were key to the ambitious online user proposition for the London 2012 Olympics, and that coverage had to mirror the very high traditional broadcast standards of resilience and quality. Hear the challenges the BBC faced when designing a resilient HTTP streaming infrastructure that was designed to cope with huge volumes. Learn about the solution the BBC used during the games and hear what changes to their methodology was required to build resilience into a cloud-based infrastructure.

The last part of the conference seems to be winding down sessions and I can’t for the life of me select which of them to go at this moment. None of them interest me more than the other. We’ll see where I end up.

Stay tuned – more to come as the conference progresses.

Never, never, never, never give up.

I’ve, sort of, fallen off the wagon a bit and gained weight. Not just a little bit bummed but - all things considered I did lose weight during the last week - since the ‘excessive cheatday(s)’. So I’m on the right track but was moving a bit too slow due to a little much eating of dominofoods and other ‘junk’.

So.. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it was planned or anything like that - I just ended up in a rot and felt like I should be able to eat a few things that I shouldn’t have and ended up screwing up.

So, now it’s back on the wagon for about a week at least. Huh?

Well.. Let me put it in writing :) 

This week will be “DietBet”-mode until saturday afternoon. DietBet-mode means clean living and friday evening to saturday afternoon will be intermittent fasting. Saturday evening we have a dinnerparty with wine, tapas & cheeses. So my “weekly” weigh-in for next week will actually be on saturday morning this week.. 

This is due to me leaving Sweden and heading to New York for a few days to go conferencing. Although my aim is to be as ‘clean’ as I can when in NYC I guessing the airline-food and some excesses will be unavoidable - and you can’t, at least I can’t, go to New York and not experience a few of the most amazing restaurants and chefs in the world. So I’m betting that I will gain when I’m in USA - but I’ll try to keep it to a ‘minimum’ by choosing side orders and stuff that are ok for me but I’m not going to make the chefs go bananas over me ordering stuff away - I’ll just not eat stuff that I can’t eat instead.

The worst thing I know will happen is that the hotel breakfast (included in the conference package is whats called a continental breakfast) which consist of crap, crap and more crap. So I’m skipping that and heading out for breakfast - shouldn’t be to hard to find a place that can give me a few eggs and some strips of bacon and probably at a lot more reasonable prices than the hotel give you for the ‘added’ bacon & eggs.

When I get home - me and my wife have decided to do ‘DietBet’-mode until we hit vacation-time (late june) - meaning we’ll do everything by the book and add some, cheatdays will become cheatmeals, non-work saturdays and sundays will become intermittent fasting-days as well. 

The major downside to me f***ing up is that I won’t hit my goal in time for my one year mark of doing #4HB (at least it’s very doubtful due to the US trip). But I’m not giving up, no way in hell, still hoping to be at 90 kilos before vacation - on which I will gain, guesstimate, around 3-5 kilos which I then will DietBet off during august.

So… 

Status: 94,4 kilos (207,7 lb) and -86,5 cm (-33,7 IN)

That’s up 2 kilos from “all-time-low” at end of the DietBet in april.. Good thing about that is that I know exactly why it’s up so - it doesn’t take much to make me go from fat-loss to fat-gain and that I’ve learned the hard way :) 

I know that when I reach my goal I’m going to be adjusting my diet a bit and perhaps do a cheatmeal more per week (not a cheatday mind you).  Me and my wife are planning to head into Paleo by end of our dietbet in august to try that as a weightloss/maintenance mode - if it doesn’t work as intended we’ll go back to 4HB. Yes, we’re not talking fab diets here - we’re talking change of diet on a permanent basis (apart from #cheatmeals).

Wish me luck!

No report this week…

… due to excessive cheating.

Planned, excessive, cheatday has been executed and thus I won’t be divulging much more than that I’ve gained and I’ll get back to you next week on the progress :)

This one step – choosing a goal and sticking to it – changes everything. — Scott Reed

This passed week was a bit up and down and annoying to say the least. By tuesday I had gained two kilos and felt not just a little bit bummed. But since both me and my wife had decided to do this week a bit more hardcore than usual we continued onwards.. 

By saturday I had almost lost all the gained weight but since we didn’t have a true cheatday only a, more festive, slow carb meal with a bottle of wine after doing intermittent fasting for 16 hours we felt as if it would work out eventually. The festive slow-carb dinner was pulled pork with almondflour tortillas and some sides to that together with a nice bottle of Girard Old Vine Zinfandel (image).

My wife stepped on the scale sunday morning but I refused waiting for today so as not to be discouraged. Sunday, again, was intermittent fasting - which rendered a rough headache for my wife and quite a rumbling stomach on me. 

Monday morning came. Stepped on the scale and, low and behold, 0.6 kilos lost in a week. But in fact from tuesday to monday it’s 2.6 kilos so I can’t be more happy :) I’ve also climbed over the goal of our DietBet but I won’t slow down until the 4 weeks are over and weigh-in has been done - which will be wednesday or perhaps thursday.. it’s a bit weird when they use pacific timezone or something for these bets and you are in Europe.

Status: 92,4 kilos (203,3 lb) and -86,5 cm (-33,7 in) heading to #90kilos

So.. -0.6 kilos and -2 centimeters feeling confident.

Note: we’re ‘celebrating’ the dietbet being over this coming weekend so I wouldn’t be surprised to see me gain a bit to next weeks report. It’s a planned thing so if it happens I won’t be sad about it. 

Closing in on the primary goal of 90 kilos. Then it’s redirect and set a new goal, which will be ‘normal weight’ - in my case 86 kilos or less.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Almost forgot to make a report since I’m reporting on multiple fronts. Basically last week I was in limbo. Nothing, and I mean Nothing, happend between monday and saturday. Since I’m DietBetting I’ve been standing on the scale on more or less a daily basis which can be severly detrimental to your psychological health when it goes nowhere or only up. 

Oh well.. come saturday I morning it all of a sudden moved down very much instead. So something happend during the night there, that is for sure. 

So.. saturday, we’d discussed being a bit laid back on the #cheatday and that failed miserably. Liquorice-feast, follwed by a home-made spelt-crusted pizza and wine. The spelt actually made me not get “gluten”-sick - so it’s a lot better than regular wheatflour for me at least and it tasted good. But only for #cheatdays. 

Me and the wife decided to go the last 10 days of the DietBet in ‘hard-mode’ so we kicked out the legumes, artificial sweetener in the coffee and  no diet-coke. This coming #cheatday won’t be cheaty at all, besides a bottle of wine for dinner - a dinner that will consist of pulled pork, veggies and some almond flour tortillas. Sunday will be intermittent fasting on top of that. Why? We want to get comfortably below the 4% lost during the DietBet-line and then, perhaps, come wednesday next week do a mid-week #cheatmeal instead - if we made the 4% - otherwise it’s punishment time :-) 

Status then? Well.. here we go..

Status: 93 kilo (204,6 lb) and -84,5 cm (-33 in)

1,4 kilos down in a week. This dietbetting makes this look easy. Aiming for, at least, .2 kilos this week (need to be 92.8 kilos or below to win the dietbet - but that shouldn’t be a problem).

Should fat people pay more?

An article at LinkedIn (from a user I guess) says…

It is fact that people are getting fatter because of over-eating and too little exercise. But should they pay more for things like airline tickets? The plane company Airbus has just announced that it…

Read it here.

I definitely say no to this. But the most annoying part of this ‘article’ is the first sentence ‘it is a fact that people are getting fatter because of over-eating and too little excercise’ which clearly shows me a person that has no idea what he’s talking about in regards to diet & excercise. The comments on this ‘article’ is ranging from, in my not so humble opinion, idiots to people reacting much like I did. 

I actually started off with a rant as a comment to it, deleted it and just pointed the author to three books he should read - those are Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It and Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us - I’d suggest in that order as well. I doubt he has any interest in it since he, I’m guessing, is lean and fit due to ‘not over-eating and excercising’. 

In my own case, thanks to The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman and Tim Ferris, I can clearly state that I haven’t eaten less or felt hungry since I started my 4HB-lifestyle and I definitely do NOT excercise more than I did before. Guess what? I’m losing weight and becoming smaller. Of course, my appetite and the amount of food I can put into myself is getting smaller as my gut is shrinking, but it is more symptomatic of the change in what I eat rather than how much that is having med shed pound after pound.

Don’t get me wrong. To eat ‘normal’ and excercising is good for you. But, as a person who’s been there myself, getting started with eating less, and excercising more when you are obese is really hard. That is basically why I don’t do cardio yet. My plan includes getting fit on whole other level when I’ve reached my first weight-goal and that will most likely include a lot more excercising - not to lose weight or spend calories mind you - but to build ‘stamina’ and ‘muscles’.

There! My rant is over. 

Most people want to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

This week has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Saturday was filled with temptations. A #cheatday meal consisting of ovenbaked salmon, with risotto and a feta-tomato-sallad followed by home-made icecream and then some good cheese and crackers.

Suffice to say, I didn’t lose as much as last week. So I’m a bit bummed, although I know why this happend. So we got off the wagon a bit over the weekend so we are going to give ourselves a punishment this coming saturday. The #cheatmeal will still be there - but no dessert and no ‘after hours’ indulgences on cheese, cheeze doodles or potatochips.

The plan for #cheatmeal dinner is a homemade pizza with nice toppings like cheese and salami/ham and such. Since I’m trying to stay glutenfree for the most - we’re trying to make the pizzacrust using almondflour instead of regular flour - could be interesting to see if we can make it work out (I think it will work fine).

We found this recipe for it and it’ll work - basically you could eat a fully slowcarb-compatible pizza - although the almond flours’ caloric density would probably not be quite acceptable and you’d have to skip cheese since it’s not allowed. That’s why it’s a #cheatday dinner! :)

So.. finally.. status? A bit of a bummer as I said.. hopefully we’ll get lower than this by next week. I still have 16 days to lose 1,7 kilos on the DietBet!

Status: 94,4 kilos (207,7 lb) and -84,5 cm (33 in).

0.8 kilos (1,7 lb) and another centimeter gone.

A total of 24,3 kilos lost on the slow carb diet and almost a meter in circumference (multiple points of course).

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

The DietBet is working out fine for weightloss. It’s easier to keep going when you’re being taunted by losing money.

So the passed week, since tuesday mind you, have been ‘cleaner’ living with less intermittent ‘cheating’. We kept #slowcarbing the whole week with no alcohol, until we had a glass on friday night and then on saturday we had our #cheatmeal with wine and a drink or two afterwards.

Cheatmeal eh? Yeh. Consisted of grilled marinated beef, with whiskeybuttersauce and artichokepuree with some sauteed haricot vertes and mushroom. Dessert was homemade coffee-icecream with chocolate- and liquorice-sauce. The true cheating was bag of cheeze doodles that we shared later. 

Normally my cheatdays make me go from a good weight at start of cheatday to gaining over the weekend. This time not.. I actually lost another 100 grams (I know not much but still) between saturday morning and monday mornings weigh-in.

So status then?

Status: 95,2 kilos (209,4 lb) and -83,5 cm (-32,6 in)

The total score for tuesday -> monday was -1,5 kilos (3,3 lbs) and -1 centimeter.

So, yes I’m satisfied. Will continue our decided regiment apart from that we might be having a glass of wine or two on friday night as well.