Energy flows where attention goes. The self is a continuous manifestation of endless reality.

We become a channel to those energies which we pay attention to. We become this channel of energy, and identify with it's form. If we fixate to long on the form of the energies within us, manifest to our conscious mind as self identity (ego), we often find ourselves stagnating the flow of the same energies we seek to identify with, creating frustrations and crisis of self identity, wants and fears follow.

Sometimes I wonder at the person I go around in the world as, and at times how I managed to become him, if I simply managed to convince myself that I am him. A personal reminder slips into focus: Anything that I call my self that is changeable is not the actual, true self. It is at best a reflection. Mannerism, inner sense of culture, dominant thought pattern, habit, hang-ups: all transient, changeable, not lasting.

What happens when you take ten thousand tiny steps in the right direction?

My last post was about finding a good place to start altering your diet and getting into a more active lifestyle, especially after finding yourself "off the health wagon" for some time. So, now you have made several small changes over time to your diet, and have been gradually and steadily increasing the workout intensity and frequency, maybe even changing walks into jogs. You're ready for more and are about to take the next step, but have some lingering questions. Now it's time to take the conversation a bit further, and explore a few of the hurdles in the approach to nutrition when stepping up the ante and delving into a more serious workout program, like P90X.

For a good long while I found myself very miserable, and very overweight. I was always eating way too large of portions of horrible foods all too often, being very sedentary in my spare time, drinking too much, smoking, never exercising, living in constant stress, etc., etc.,.. While I lived this way, I was in no way happy with how the way that I was living was making me feel, and what it kept me from being able to do. Things like riding a bike or climbing stairs without wheezing, feeling good about myself, or knowing I could accomplish for myself. I knew, for some time that I wanted, that I needed a change in my life. I knew what I wanted to be but I had zero idea how to get form where I was then, to where I am now: healthy, fit, active, glad to be alive with the knowledge that if I set my heart and mind to something that I will achieve it. I know that rather than believe it because every moment I exist, I am constantly reminded by the truly amazing way I feel, and the obvious transformation that I have put my body through.

When I landed in the hospital over and over again due to hypertension, stress, and debilitating anxiety attacks I knew I had to make a change, or continue to suffer serious consequences. It took me several months to finally discover the way to treat myself in order to achieve my personal best direction. It took a lot of shifting in focus and the relationship I had with my basic environment had to change subtly and consistently over time in order to realize what I wanted to be doing. A friend recently asked me where a good place to start getting fit is for someone a good 40 pounds overweight. I had that same problem about a hundred pounds ago, and wish someone would have been able to tell me then, what I know now, and offer me the simple tools I am now able to offer my good friends and brothers and sisters who are just starting out their fitness journey.

I have written before about some cool things you can do with Rhythmbox Music Player in linux, and it's no secret that I love to find ways to make my desktop experience merge with my server/online presence. So I was particularly happy when I found a great third party plugin for Rhythmbox that can post the now playing info to just about anywhere you want it to.

Ever wanted to trick out a forum signature, or a profile on a website you frequent? Or are you (like me) just looking for neat ways to make your personal website a bit more snazzy? In walks the rhythmtoweb plugin and this "need" is filled. Fret not, it's pretty straightforward to set up.

What do you do when your entire music library is infested with wma files, incorrectly tagged and renamed, sorted all wrong and just one big mess? You admit it was your own fault for not sticking to one single standard for naming and organizing, for letting Windows Media Player try to do the work for you, and not trying first to understand formats and codecs and licenses. Then you get rid of your wma files (DELETED) and re-rip, re-download, re-tag and re-encode until your entire library is ogg, uniformly named, sorted and tagged correctly.

This is the 17000 file mess I am cleaning up right now, and I decided I should join the PlayOgg movement for some inner support. Henceforth, I will be displaying this

or similar on my site. Ogg is a great multimedia format that is simply the one solution that will work for everything I need as a format, and as a piece of nicely licensed and supported free and open source goodness. It's widespread implementation would be just an awesome thing. The only reason I have not moved on this yet, is the knowledge that doing so would force me to do so much tedious work on my music library...well, I'm over it (Trying hard not to slam wma to compare it to ogg) and I am now taking the correct steps. Read below the break for some useful tips to get the job done.