Day: August 23, 2010

Cool Nook Skins

On By Michel McDonaldIn Nook, Products I LikeLeave a comment

Now that I’ve made my choice to buy a Barnes and Noble Nook, it’s time to think about giving it a cool look. I found this website called DecalGirl that has cool skins for many gadgets and this is the skin that I want to buy. It’s only $15 plus shipping and it adds a lot of character to the nook.

They have many other skins that all look good but I really like this one. Who knows, I may get tired of it one day and want to take it off and buy a new one. While I’m there I might get a cool skin for my PSP. The PSP skins that I was looking at are $10.

What I love about these skins is that the screen matches the skin. They give you a code when you buy it to download the image so when you turn it on you automatically see that image. That’s pretty cool. Now I wish I had an iPod and a iPhone that I could skin lol.

End of Plateau?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, FoodLeave a comment

I’m finally losing weight again. I wonder if this is the end of my plateau or not. In order to give you a glimpse of why I plateaued I have to tell you this.

A few weeks ago I was doing great. I was losing 3-5lbs a week and I was happy. Every morning I would wake up and would be giddy after weighing myself. Ok giddy is a strong term, I was happy.

Unfortunately, both Darrin and I were sick of my menu. It was the same thing every day for lunch and dinner. 4oz of chicken (boneless/skinless) 1/2 cup brown rice and 1 cup of vegetables. After a few months anyone would get sick of that twice a day.

I said ok we can cool it with that for lunch. I started buying bread again which was my big no-no but the bread I was buying was only 50 calories and it was 100% whole wheat. I was also buying very low-calorie lunch meat but I don’t think I can blame that as the cause.

I was also starting to eat more junk food again. Darrin was tired of eating healthy all freaking day and so he started sneaking cookies into the house, Chips Ahoy to be exact. It has his name in the brand, what’d you expect?

So I caught wind of the cookies because he left the boxes all over the coffee table and I was bound to see them. Then he started going to Taco Bell and buying other things and I was eating them too because I am so sick of this diet.

Let me clarify that, I’m sick of this “new lifestyle change” lol. I’m not allowed to call it a diet because diets don’t work but a lifestyle change will if you stick with it.

In the last week or so we haven’t been eating so much bad stuff because we’re both broke so we have to save what money we have left on actual food instead of junk and now that I’m not eating as much crap anymore I’ve started losing weight again.

I think I was stuck at 222-224 but yesterday I weighed in at 219 and this morning it was 218 so I’m very happy to see those numbers dropping.  Also a pair of shorts that I haven’t been able to wear in years finally fit me but now they are getting so loose, too loose in fact.  I’m going to have to stop wearing them again which sucks because they are good shorts.

I’m hoping that those cravings will start to go away now that I’ve finally tasted the bad foods again. Unfortunately when you eat bad foods they taste too good to stop eating but we will see how it works out for me. I really want to get into the 2 teens and out of the 2 twenties you know?

Maybe when I’m 215 I will start to feel like I’m getting somewhere.  In reality I should be 215 by now if it hadn’t been for that plateau.  I should be 200 by October 12th so if I’m going to be there by then I have a lot of work to do and I need to start eating better again.

And by the way, the Nook was supposed to be my reward for going down to 200lbs and I’mplanning on buying it sooner for some reason so my reward system isn’t working for me at all.  I think if it were a sponsor who were rewarding me I would take it more seriously and maybe that’s why I’m plateauing because I’m offering myself rewards.  A reward for losing weightshouldn’t be a thing but more a feeling.  Nah screw that, I want devices.

Writing eBooks

On By Michel McDonaldIn eBookLeave a comment

I spent the entire day yesterday writing ebooks. It’s a learning process that I never thought I would ever do in a million years but I am learning. First I started using Mobipocket Creator which is a free program. It turns your ebooks into .mobi files but then I would have to turn around and use Calibre to turn them into .epub files.

I had to create a text or html file for Mobipocket creator. In order for me to do that I had to go into an html editor program.

I was using Microsoft Frontpage to create the html files and at first I thought that in order for me to make a table of contents I had to type out all the chapter names then go to each chapter and create a bookmark then go to the table of contents and make a link to each bookmark. That didn’t work lol.

I didn’t know what I was doing wrong until I realized that it won’t find the chapters unless you make them Heading 2. Ok so I made the chapters all Heading 2. There was one book I was copying and pasting but all the chapters names were Lesson 1, 2 etc. The Heading 2 didn’t do me any good there because they weren’t called Chapter. So I had to go back and rename them to Chapter 1, 2 etc.

In Mobipocket Creator it ignored all my images in my html file, actually it gave me nothing but errors. So I went directly to Calibre, added my html file, edited the meta details, gave it a lovely cover, did the title all that bullcrap then created my .epub file and it did it! It gave me all my images and it gave me a table of contents without having an actual table of contents in the 2nd page. It even gave me a title page because my title had Heading 1.

Now I can create like a photo album with all the pictures that I want and with names and as long as I give each album a Chapter name with Heading 2, it will show up in the table of contents. I think that is so cool.

I think I’m going to do that, create my own photo albums for my Nook. I don’t know if links will actually work in the Nook though but I’m pretty sure if I added a link in the photo album e-bookit should be clickable since the Nook now has a web browser on it. That should be cool to test.

I have a couple of weeks until I get the Nook so I have plenty of time to create tons of ebooks for it lol.  There are tons of possibilities. Who knows, maybe this will inspire me to write my own e-book about my f’d up life that I can bore you all with lol.