I originally was going to do the Grouse Grind today at around 11am, but after looking towards the North Shore and seeing the haze and smog cooking off of the mountains, I decided to wait until later on in the day to try and workout…big mistake, cause when I started working out at 4pm, it was like 33 degrees… – FlashAddict
After the P90X routine, I got into my car and drove to the bottom of Burnaby Mountain and hiked up back to my condo, then jumped on my bike and went down to the base again to pickup my car – dear lord it was hot and muggy coming up the mountain, but I tried my best to come up at a good pace. I also did several 1 minute sprinting intervals at various points of the ascent to work my cardio even further.
Burnaby Mountain Trail Guide
I started off at the Pipeline Trail and then onto the Power Line Trail all the way to the Trans Canada Trail and then coming up appropriately named Cardiac Hill to finish off the hike – I then ran on the SFU perimeter road to my condo building and grabbed my bike so that I could head down and grab my car – from the base of the mountain back to base again gave me the following stats:
Well, Vancouver is in the midst of quite the heat wave – was over 30 degrees both yesterday and today with a projected high of 33 for tomorrow = HEAT WAVE – FlashAddict
Today’s workout of the day was a mashup ofthe CF WOD posted and a few other items I threw in there to mix things up. All told, here’s how things broke down:
Started off with 20 minutes on my recumbent bike – 5 minute warmup – 10 minute high intensity – 5 minute recovery
Then I did 30 Turkish Get Ups (15 lbs weight)- these seriously get your heart pumping fast and hard – along with 30 Burpees.
I then turned on the P90X Ab Ripper X video and blasted through that routine to finish things off and cap an all-body workout.
Here are my stats:
Total time working out: 1 hour and 15 minutes
Total Calories Burned: 935
Average Heart Rate: 133
Max Heart Rate: 167
Also, my girlfriend Raewyn and I went kayaking up Indian Arm again and were severely beat down by the heat, wind and salt water to the point that we were on the water for only an hour and a half. It was so hot out there that we were losing energy to paddle! All in all though, it’s a great place to get out on the water and have fun in the waves, I highly recommend it.
Forgot to put in the fact that I rode my bike from SFU to downtown Vancouver – only one way though, cause I had to then take the bus to Richmond to meet up with my brother to pickup my car – all in all it took me 52 minutes to get there – not too bad… – FlashAddict
I felt ambitious today, so I rode my bike from on top of Burnaby Mountain all the way to the CrossFit Gym near Clark and Terminal in East Vancouver. Once there, I did an hour long workout there that had me doing 3 reps of max back squats + Weighted Pull-Ups and then back on the bike to ride back to Burnaby and up that long a$$ mountain…I R TIRED :S – FlashAddict
Total Time: 3:47:06 – even more impressive was the fact that it only took me 30 minutes flat to get from the bottom of Burnaby Mountain to the peak, especially after 3 hours working out already!
Total Calories Burned: 2756 (Holy Crap that’s a lot!)
I figured that I would give my legs a bit of a break today, seeing as how I biked over 26 km yesterday, so I decided to do the P90X Core Synergistics workout for $hits und giggles – here are my stats:
Google Maps only allows you to select either Car, Transit or Walking as the default modes of transportation, so here is the breakdown if I were to have walked the route from waypoint to waypoint:
Walking directions to 9266 University Crescent, Burnaby, BC, Canada
26.1 km – about 5 hours 32 mins
Suggested routes
9266 University Crescent
Burnaby, BC, Canada
1.
Head south on University Crescent toward E Campus Rd
0.3 km
2.
Turn left at E Campus Rd
13 m
3.
Slight right to stay on E Campus Rd
57 m
4.
At the roundabout, take the 1st exit onto University Dr E
1.5 km
5.
Slight right to stay on University Dr E
0.3 km
6.
Continue on Burnaby Mountain Pkwy
2.0 km
7.
Turn left at Hastings St
12 m
8.
Turn right to stay on Hastings St
0.2 km
9.
Turn left at Duthie Ave
0.3 km
10.
Turn right at Union St
0.9 km
5.5 km – about 57 mins
Grove Ave
Burnaby, BC, Canada
11.
Head north on Grove Ave toward W Georgia St
0.3 km
12.
Turn right at Hastings St
0.4 km
13.
Slight right to stay on Hastings St
0.1 km
14.
Continue on Inlet Dr
1.2 km
15.
Continue on Barnet Hwy
7.4 km
16.
Turn right at St Johns St
Destination will be on the right
0.2 km
9.7 km – about 1 hour 57 mins
2000 St Johns St
Port Moody, BC, Canada
17.
Head west on St Johns St toward Charles St
6 m
18.
Turn left at Charles St
0.1 km
19.
Continue on Clarke Dr
0.3 km
20.
Turn right at Cecile Dr
0.6 km
1.0 km – about 16 mins
Angela Dr
Port Moody, BC, Canada
21.
Head west on Angela Dr toward Tuxedo Dr
0.4 km
22.
Turn left at Glenayre Dr
0.2 km
0.6 km – about 8 mins
Glenayre Dr
Port Moody, BC, Canada
23.
Head south on Glenayre Dr toward Valour Dr
0.3 km
24.
Turn right at Glencoe Dr
Destination will be on the left
1.1 km
1.4 km – about 16 mins
800 Glencoe Dr
Port Moody, BC, Canada
25.
Head southeast on Ailsa Ave toward Fenwick Pl
0.9 km
26.
Turn right at Glenayre Dr
0.1 km
27.
Turn right at Clarke Rd
0.1 km
28.
Turn right at Chapman Ave
0.7 km
1.9 km – about 22 mins
Chapman Ave
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
29.
Head west on Chapman Ave toward Stoney Creek Ct
0.1 km
30.
Turn left at Gilroy Crescent
0.3 km
31.
Turn left at North Rd
0.5 km
32.
Turn right at Broadway
11 m
33.
Slight right to stay on Broadway
0.5 km
34.
Turn right at Gaglardi Way
2.6 km
35.
Slight right to stay on Gaglardi Way
25 m
36.
Slight right toward University Dr E
0.2 km
37.
Slight right at University Dr E
1.5 km
38.
Slight left to stay on University Dr E
23 m
39.
At the roundabout, take the 1st exit onto E Campus Rd
LONDON (AFP) – A British student desperately tried to scrawl the name of his German love rival in his own blood as he was being stabbed to death, a court heard on Tuesday.
Matthew Pyke was knifed more than 80 times by German office worker David Heiss, who had become obsessed with his girlfriend after getting to know the couple through a computer games website, Nottingham Crown Court heard.
Jurors were shown a photograph of Pyke’s computer with the first three letters of Heiss’s first name scrawled in blood on the side in what the prosecution says was an apparent attempt to alert police.
The object of Heiss’s affection was Joanna Witton, 21, who lived with Pyke.
Heiss, also 21, from Limburg near Frankfurt, denies murder. He claimed he stabbed 20-year-old Pyke in self-defence at Pyke’s flat in Nottingham on September 19 last year.
The German said he was fighting Pyke for his knife in the moments before he allegedly murdered him.
“He charged at me. I was trying to push his arms away so they wouldn’t make contact with me. I stumbled back and fell on the table,” Heiss said.
“He lost the knife when it fell to the floor near the table. He tried to crawl towards it but I tried to prevent it by sitting on him. After a few seconds I got hold of it.
“He started kicking me in the back and he was looking at me angrily. I was lucky that I was still alive. I was almost sure that if I had lost the knife it would have been my end.
“I don’t know if it was adrenalin but I managed to get my arm away and then I stabbed him.”
Heiss, who lived with his grandmother, used to spend up to eight hours a day on his computer, the court heard.
He met Pyke and his girlfriend through the warscentral.com website and managed to obtain their address. He visited them several times in England but the couple grew increasingly annoyed by his attentions.
The prosecution says that Heiss eventually flew to Britain and lay in wait outside Pyke’s home, pouncing on him after seeing his girlfriend leave for work, before changing his clothes and fleeing back to Germany.
I never realized the extent of how far this affected players around the world – Here is how things spread like wildfire in the game and why doctors and scientists used it as a model for studying how real-life diseases can spread in a major urban environment – BBC News even covered it…see below!
– FlashAddict
Corrupted Blood was a virtual plague that infected characters in the computer gameWorld of Warcraft, spreading rapidly from character to character. Its resemblance to real-life disease epidemics drew international attention.
Corrupted Blood Plague taking place in Ironforge
The “epidemic” began on September 13, 2005 when Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of World of Warcraft, introduced a new instance dungeon called Zul’Gurub into the game as part of patch 1.7. Inside was a boss named Hakkar the Soulflayer, alluded to as the “blood god”. Players who fought Hakkar were affected by his debuff (a spell which has a negative effect over a fixed period of time). The debuff, in this case, was Corrupted Blood, a spell that caused 263–337 points of damage (compared to the average health of 2500–5000 for a character of the highest level, and with those at the mid-levels having about 1500) every two seconds to the afflicted character. The affliction was passed on to any characters standing too close to an infected character. While the curse would kill most lower-level characters in a matter of seconds, higher-level characters could keep themselves alive (via healing spells, having high stamina, or other means) long enough to spread the disease around the immense landscape inside the game. Death caused by the debuff did not cause any durability penalty, unlike most other causes of death in the game. The disease would eventually go away as time passed or when the infected character died.
The only way that a player was able to bring the disease outside of Zul’Gurub was by allowing a pet to get the debuff, dismissing the pet in less than five seconds, then summoning it in a populated area. (When dismissed, the pet retains the debuff and the timer of the debuff is paused.) This debuff transmission technique was first seen with the “living bomb” debuff from Baron Geddon in Molten Core. The plague was spread by players’ pets that contracted the disease and also by malicious players known as “griefers”, who found ways to bring the digital virus into heavily inhabited areas.
After a few days, Corrupted Blood had become World of Warcraft‘s version of the Black Death, rendering entire cities uninhabitable and causing players to avoid large clusters of others, and in many cases, causing players to avoid major cities altogether.
Due to the curse’s peculiar behavior—it was never meant to leave Zul’Gurub—the ability to infect pets and NPCs was a side effect unconsidered by the developers. The intended behavior involves the final boss fight with Hakkar. Every so often, Hakkar will cast this debuff on a random player, effectively forcing players to be spread apart, or in the case of melee classes, to move away from Hakkar before spreading it to the other melee classes. Blizzard Entertainment tried several times to fix the problem, including imposing a quarantine on certain places. This “plague” was eventually “cured” by restarting the servers, and changing the mechanics of the Hakkar encounter to eliminate the spreading of the effect from character to character. Hakkar still has an ability called Corrupted Blood, but it now takes the form of a red bolt launched at a random player fighting the boss. The player and those nearby take damage, and receive a heavy damage over time, but the effect no longer spreads further.
Due to the large scale outbreak of the “plague” (some servers had half of their characters infected), it drew wide attention from the media.
In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist physician at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel, published an article in the Journal Epidemiology describing the similarities between this outbreak and the recent SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. Dr Balicer suggested role-playing games could serve as an advanced platform for modeling the dissemination of infectious diseases. In a follow-up article in the journal Science, the game Second Life was suggested as another possible platform for these studies.
In August 2007, Nina Fefferman, a Tufts University assistant research professor of public health and family medicine, called for research on this incident, citing the resemblances with biological plagues. Some scientists want to study how people would react to environmental pathogens, by using the virtual counterpart as a point of reference. Subsequently she co-authored a paper in the journal “Lancet Infectious Diseases” discussing the epidemiological and disease modeling implications of the outbreak, along with Eric Lofgren, a University of North Carolina graduate student.
In addition, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requested statistics on this event for research on epidemics, but it is unknown if they followed through with their request after learning that it was just caused by a bug.
By Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website
Players get the chance to be heroes in World of Warcraft
A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of Warcraft.
Although limited to only a few of the game’s servers the numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in the thousands.
Originally it was thought that the deadly digital disease was the result of a programming bug in a location only recently added to the Warcraft game.
However, it now appears that players kicked off the plague and then kept it spreading after the first outbreak.
Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft (Wow) has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world.
Its creator, Blizzard, claims that now more than four million people are regular players.
Last rites
Wow is an online game that gives players the chance to adventure in the fantasy world of Azeroth that is populated by the usual mixture of humans, elves, orcs and other fantastic beasts.
As players explore the world, the characters they control become more powerful as they complete quests, kill monsters and find magical items and artefacts that boost abilities.
The Warcraft world is a familiar fantasy setting
To give these powerful characters more of a challenge, Blizzard regularly introduces new places to explore in the online world.
In the last week, it added the Zul’Gurub dungeon which gave players a chance to confront and kill the fearsome Hakkar – the god of Blood.
In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a “corrupted blood” infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.
The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar’s corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.
This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.
Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as “carriers” and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.
Body count
The first server, or “realm” as Blizzard calls them, affected by the plague was Archimonde; but it is known to have spread to at least two others.
The spread of the disease could have been limited by the fact that Hakkar is difficult to kill, so some realms may not yet have got round to killing him and unleashing his parting shot.
In World of Warcraft players can be orcs, humans or other fantastic creatures
The digital disease instantly killed lower level characters and did not take much longer to kill even powerful characters.
Many online discussion sites were buzzing with reports from the disaster zones with some describing seeing “hundreds” of bodies lying in the virtual streets of the online towns and cities.
“The debate amongst players now is if it really was intentional although due to the effects of the problem it seems unlikely,” Paul Younger, an editor on the unofficial worldofwar.net site, told the BBC News website.
“It’s giving players something to talk about and could possibly be considered the first proper ‘world event'”, he said.
Luckily the death of a character in World of Warcraft is not final so all those killed were soon resurrected.
Blizzard tried to control the plague by staging rolling re-starts of all the servers supporting the Warcraft realms and applying quick fixes.
However, there are reports that this has not solved all the problems and that isolated pockets of plague are breaking out again.
The “Corrupted Blood” plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in game worlds. In May 2000 many players of The Sims were outraged when their game characters died because of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual guinea pig.
Burnaby Mountain Trail Guide
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