I didn’t consider myself to be that out of shape until I tried the Insanity Workout Fitness test last week only to find I was completely wiped out pouring sweat, about to pass out from lack of breath only 21 minutes into what is merely the fitness test to see how fit you are.

If you look at the average gym membership cost of $19 per month (I pay $36 per month for my LA Fitness membership) then this program pays for itself in less than a year.  Plus some people don’t like working out publicly and around other people, so if you are one who prefers to work out in private and in your own home this system can really benefit you.

Nothing will work if you don’t commit to a routine and stick with it however, you will need to prepare yourself for some REAL sore muscles and pain the first few days after working out.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B002QZ1RS6″ alt=”INSANITY: 60-Day Total Body Conditioning Workout DVD Program” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61YMZgApVuL.jpg” align=”center” width=”500″ height=”500″]

I do have a gym membership and a few times per week was doing 20-30 minutes on the treadmill at a 15 incline with 3.5 – 4.5 speed variants, rowing machines and various weights.  But none of this prepared me for the cardio workout of Insanity Fitness and I realized I don’t have nearly as much stamina as I would like.

I was sore as can be for 2 days after, particularly in my thighs and buttocks most of all.  The Insanity Workout isn’t for people who have weak knees or joints, as it has you do a lot of squatting, jumping and exercises that have you bending and stretching your legs which can put serious strain on your knees.  The good news is I had belly button hernia surgery just 8 weeks ago or so and I was able to do all of the stomach crunches and core exercises without feeling any pain or discomfort at the site of my surgery.

I was out of town and didn’t get a chance to dig into the fitness routine as you are expected to, 6 days per week you need to commit and the exercises vary based on the day.  The Insanity Workout also comes with a full meal planner, calendar printout and other information.

Just based on my initial trial there is no way this workout couldn’t improve your endurance and fitness levels if you stuck with it.  This workout was more intense than any other fitness video’s I have done which include Tai Bo and others in the past.

If you are looking for something intense to improve your fitness level, tone and lose weight you know it takes moderating your food intake and exercise but Insanity Workout will have both covered if you can commit to the exercise and at least partially to the meal plan.

How many of you have tried Insanity Workout and compared it to the P90X System?

-Justin Germino

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With me rotating between several vehicles on my trips I have several USB car chargers that I have purchased over the years and a few that have been sent to me as products to review.

I had not seen or used one as small and efficient as the [easyazon-link asin=”B00845NI8E”]New Trent IMP80C[/easyazon-link] previously and this extremely compact dual USB car charger can charge two phones of virtually any model at the same time without issue.

You can charge an iPhone 4S and a Blackberry, a phone and a wireless bluetooth headset or even the Galaxy note.  You can’t charge a tablet which requires more amp than this little USB charger can put out, but for $9.95 this is among the best 2 port car chargers I have ever used.

The ports are also placed at angles to make easy access without interference from the devices being plugged in.

If you are in the market for a USB Car Charger, this dual port one from New Trent is priced like most single port ones.

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-Justin Germino

For the first time I actually purchased someone’s pre-existing blog in the hopes that I can turn it into a profitable venture faster than starting up my own blog from scratch.

I am now the proud owner of WP Cypher which is a blog dedicated to WordPress, Plugins, Social Media, Web Design.  As DragonBlogger.com turns out to be more about Technology, Gadgets, Gaming and Entertainment I am finding the audience for WordPress specific articles is becoming smaller so wanted another site a little more focused for WordPress related marketing, and articles.

I bought WP Cypher which has a PR1, gets about 1,500 visits per month and already had a better Alexa rank than this blog which I have been running for almost 4 years.  I paid $150 for it, plus $13.99 to transfer the domain name and own it for my current hosting provider.  It is my goal to make this money back within 60 days and then to turn a profit form the site just from banner advertising, affiliate marketing and my normal guest blogging methods.

So this is my first experiment with purchasing another site, converting it to my own and then seeing if I can turn a profit from it.  I created the WPCypher Twitter account on day 1 (surprisingly it had no Twitter or Facebook fanpage by default).

Wish me luck and let me know your thoughts, also stop by WP Cypher and let me know what you think of the blog.  I didn’t want to invest any money into a paid theme at this point so using just Graphene, plus WordPress SEO by Yoast and other free plugins.  I am using EasyAzon which I have an unlimited Site License for and I also am using CommentLuv Premium which I also have an unlimited site license for.

-Justin Germino

Honestly though Facebook is somewhat stable but at quite a bit lower percentage than when their IPO went public the constant drive for shareholders to bring in profits and increase profit percentages will likely hurt the network for users and business more than help.

The fact that fanpages only show up in the timeline for an average 4-9% of people who like your fanpages unless you pay to promote the wall posts which is astronomically high is crazy.  It isn’t even corporations that have the money who suffer from this but I saw some good posts about local musicians and bands who barely can get the thousands of followers only to not be able to let them all know when their next gig is without paying to promote to make sure every member can see it.

Sure you can favorite fanpages and put them into lists but this is a very manual process and is a turnoff for the average Facebook user who won’t likely do it without prodding if at all even then.

Corporate greed, limitations, drive to make employees and shareholders wealthy?  I think in some cases businesses that truly want the freedom to explore and innovate and add value can do so without the pressures of meeting investors demands for increasingly higher dividends and stock values.

Do you think Facebook should have stayed private?

-Justin Germino

I really want to see if [easyazon-link asin=”B002BSA298″]Kinect[/easyazon-link] can engage people with real time strategy or RTS games on the Xbox 360.  Currently all RTS games are handicapped on a console system compared to a PC, the lack of keyboard and mouse means you have to compensate by grouping or limiting the options available to the player or by making menus they have to tap and scroll through to find what they want to do with their armies, structures…etc.

Kinect can change this, I picture myself in the future circling my hand around a unit of soldiers and pointing to where I want them to move to.  I picture using a sweep of the hands to zoom in or out on a large battle map, to be able to make gestures to indicate to stop my units, patrol or attack.

Provided the Kinect can be trained to recognize gestures with better accuracy than I have seen in previous games, or perhaps a newer Kinect model with better frame rate and camera as well as better recognition of finger motions could make such a play style possible.

Imagine the motion involved if you played an RTS game with your arms, hands and feet.  You would be sweating in no time under frantic combat scenarios and this may be a way to actually burn as much calories gaming as you could on a treadmill (though maybe arm and shoulder fatigue could be an issue).

Either way, the idea of being a giant overseeing a map reminds me of Clash of the Titans where Zeus looked at the pieces of mortals on the ground and would just smash them.  It gives you a god complex like you are the puppet master and your units are in  your control.  It is a cool concept and one that may be able to be put to good use if only Kinect or the games that are programmed for it had more accuracy.

What do you think?

-Justin Germino

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Teenagers spend so much time on the Internet, and they seem to be growing up faster than they ever did before. Is the Internet the reason for their precociousness? Maybe, maybe not. But if your teen has her own computer with unlimited Internet access, you can be sure that’s she’s able to view and learn things that aren’t age-appropriate. Most of what she’s doing is probably chatting with her friends on social networks, and perhaps talking to people she’s never met. You want to protect her from her own naiveté, but how can you do it?

One extreme option that some parents have considered is installing a keylogger on her computer. A keylogger is a program that will record every website that’s visited and every single thing that’s typed. It can be installed and ran without her knowledge, and the records can be delivered to you by email. If you’re considering doing this, would a keylogger really help you protect your teen?
You Have the Information – Now What?

A keylogger will let you know everything you daughter is doing and chatting about online. You’ll be overloaded with information, but what are you supposed to do with it? How do you know when you should intervene? If you confront your daughter with the information you have, she’ll no doubt be incredibly angry at you for snooping. While you might disapprove of some of the things she says or does online, you can’t do something about it all. Unless she’s in immediate danger, there might not be much you can do at all. Online she is likely only talking about things that are dangerous, not in the actual act of doing them.
Breaking Trust

When you do intervene based on information from the keylogger, you risk severely breaking the trust between the two of you. You daughter will feel extremely violated that you disregarded her privacy, especially if you tell her you installed a keylogger without her knowledge. The damage done to your relationship will not be easily repaired, and it could take years. If you consider installing a keylogger, make sure that the potential reward (protecting her) would outweigh the risk (breaking trust). Unless you find out she is harming herself in some way, such as by using drugs, or doing other illegal activities, most teen behavior isn’t life-threatening even if it’s undesirable.
Is It Worth It?

The truth is you might end up finding out a lot of extremely embarrassing and personal things about your daughter by installing a keylogger. You’ll find out all the things she’d talk about with her friends but not to you, and you don’t really want to hear all of that. It might upset you, and it would certainly horrify her. There is no way to filter the important information from average teen activities. Unless you sincerely suspect your daughter is doing something very dangerous, installing a keylogger is not likely to increase your ability to protect her and should only be used as a last resort.

There is a direct correlation between improper engagement on the web and low academic performance. If you see grade issues you may want to consider using a keylogger as a temporary tool to monitor your teen’s activities. Catching a problem early will reduce the risk of compromising their grades or even their safety.

Anthony Curren provides academic guidance to teens heading to college via Gradesaver.

Photo Credit: syauqi_indo

Yep, I did it again!

I entered another Guest Blogging Contest from Blog Engage in the hopes of winning the coveted $250 1st place prize.  This contest entry talks about what it would take to sell your blog and if you would let it go for a price or if you are creating a blog with the intention to sell later on.

Share your thoughts and help support me, remember I put all contest winnings back into product giveaways on DragonBlogger.com.

 

 

The Current Best of the Guest Blogger Sponsors

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It is awesome to see even more sponsors and new sponsors for the latest Blog Engage contest by the way!  Also, Blog Engage will host the annual $1,000 grand prize guest blogging contest which I am hoping to enter for as well.

If you haven’t looked at Blog Engage services yet, you really should for your own blog.  I honestly make more from Blog Engage (via contests, AdSense…etc) than I put into it!

-Justin Germino

I am excited that The Secret World public beta weekend starts tomorrow and this means I will finally be able to take some screenshots and maybe some video and upload it to the site in doing a review.

The Secret World is still a few weeks away from being released, but my pre-order is in and I can’t wait.  Meanwhile, I haven’t figured out how to really leverage parties and friends in the game yet, I don’t have any added, so if you do play the secret world and are a Dragon faction member (or not) add "dragonblogger" as a friend in The Secret World.

-Justin Germino

When I Know

When I know
what it means to be king
would I look down
upon those who need me

When I know
what it is to be poor
will I look up
in hatred and jealousy

When I know
what it is to be loved
will I look left
miss it staring at me

When I know
what it is to be hated
will I look right
with pity or humility

When I know
what it is to make mistakes
will I deny them
or learn and grow instead

When I know
what it is to succeed
will I appreciate
all that lead up to it

When I know
what it is to die
will I have lived
and have no regrets

-Justin Germino

Had a conversation with Abhi from The Odd Blogger last week over Facebook after reading his great article about the Better WP Security WordPress plugin.

I had been using the WP Security Scan plugin which isn’t as thorough but can’t muck up your WordPress blog either by locking down files or theme revisions too much which can screw up plugins and other functions from working, but I installed it and tested every option I could while minimizing risk and one of the biggest benefits I got surprised me.

In Better WP Security there is a Login Limits feature which not only limits the amount of login attempts by an account, but also has the ability to lockout the account for a set interval and ban the IP address making the request after X amount of lockout attempts indefinitely.

It seems that on all my blogs a login attempt was being made on my site every few hours constantly.

This was from more than 1 IP address, and I can’t find the source.  I wish the plugin would report which account or what ID was attempted to be logged in with (admin, which I don’t have a generic admin) or some other valid contributor/subscriber/admin account. 

This does tell me though that you are better off using this plugin because these could be brute force attack attempts to compromise your WordPress blog.  It could also be a paid blogging system I signed up for and gave access to publish to my blog remotely.  If you use MyBlogGuest or SocialSpark and grant publish access to your blog, only to change the password of the account you setup then you will see the same issue.  In these attempts however it was nothing I could identify so I am glad the IP’s were eventually banned.

If you haven’t started looking at WP Better Security for WordPress you should check it out and I highly recommend you read Abhi’s article here: http://oddblogger.com/best-wordpress-security-plugin/

Be warned, some settings could cause serious issue so pay attention to Abhi’s article and always take backups of your files and database before making changes.

-Justin Germino