One of my short stories has recently been published on the Kindle and Nook and is currently only 99 cents. We’ve got more in the works, but the publishing experience has taught me a lot. Some posts will be coming soon detailing the whole process and explaining how you can take advantage of it to get your own work published. In the meantime, here’s a little excerpt from Honorbound

We were surprised today with a free copy of Chris Guillebeau’s latest book, The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make A Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future. We’ll be writing a review of the book within a few days, or as soon as we’ve finished reading it.

Whether you’re lifting, doing endurance work or a little bit of everything, warming up before an intense exercise session is extremely important. Just a very basic warm up can cut your risk of injury by more than half, and they generally only take a few extra moments to complete.

Most people tend to understand that, and try to incorporate some kind of warm up into their routine. The problem is, most people never learn how to properly warm up. I often see people doing way too much, doing warm ups that prepare the wrong body parts for their routine or even doing things that just have no effect like sitting on a heater. In an effort to fix that, here are some of the basics of warming up properly.

People are very, very good at coming up with excuses for avoiding things that they think are unpleasant. It’s human nature. The problem is, frequently these unpleasant things they work so hard to avoid are things that are actually really good for you. Of all of these, exercise seems to be one of the most common.

The excuse that bothers me the most is the age excuse. The more common one is ‘I’m too old to start exercising‘ although I do occasionally also hear ‘I or my child is too young to start exercising‘. Usually these two complaints are even more pronounced when we’re talking about weight lifting.

If you’re involved in the fitness community even a little bit, chances are you’ve heard of CrossFit. Particularly with recent endorsements by Reebok and the popularization of the CrossFit Games, this fitness program is becoming more and more popular with both the fitness community and the mainstream public. If you haven’t ever heard of it before, you can get the basics here.

The increasing popularity has also lead to some extreme opinions about the program, the mention of CrossFit in various fitness communities often results in heated battles between those fanatically in favor of it and those vehemently against it.

Caroline and I have spent a full month training almost daily at a local CrossFit box here in Cincinnati, in addition to our own supplementary training at home, and we thought we would give our own opinions so far of what appear to be the pros and the cons of following CrossFit.

Most people who set out to learn a new language have no idea where to start. Do they follow this program, or that program? Do they take courses, buy books, go with a computer program, a set of CDs? Maybe it’s best to just do all of it.

I’m not going to say here which way I think is best (though I certainly have my opinions), but rather give some options for the wayward language learners who are adrift on their linguistic journey but have, as of yet, failed to develop any cohesive plan for how to get to their destination. Each of these three methods is broad, and all of them have their pros and cons, but hopefully you can find something you’ll like.

I used to have an atrocious memory.

If I didn’t take a list when going shopping, I would forget to buy things I needed. If you told me your name, you could expect to tell me again the next several times we met. If it weren’t for automated reminders no one I know would ever get a birthday card. Even phone numbers weren’t safe in my cerebral sieve.

Thankfully I was able to fix all that with a technique that’s easy to learn, incredibly effective, and can be used in the blink of an eye to not only memorize any sequence of facts but to memorize them in proper order – the Memory Palace.

What is often undervalued, desired by all and depressingly lacking in abundance? It’s sleep! Everyone needs it and everyone wants more of it, but sometimes there’s something in the way between you and a good night’s rest. Sometimes it’s an early morning flight, burning the midnight oil working on a project or leftover tension and stress from the day. Life has a way of getting between you and your much needed sleep.

I don’t need to tell you why you need to do bicep curls. You want ripped guns? You want women to faint when you flex? You want to be able to crush walnuts in your elbow crease (but not be able to touch your own shoulders)? You do bicep curls.

If you’ve been to a gym before, you’ve probably seen a few of the stations in the picture up there. Usually, they’re relegated to some dark corner with the free weights, far from all the cable machines and ellipticals so they don’t interfere with the serious gym goers. They’re called squat racks. No one knows why.

These squat racks are specially designed gym stations built solely to perform the one exercise every fit person must do – bicep curls.

Diet is a complicated topic – everyone seems to have a strong opinion on what everyone else should eat. We have one too, but we think you’ll see ours is quite a bit different from other’s opinions on diet. Ours is simple and revolves around a simple philosophy but goes a bit further than just diet. Being healthy is essential to being awesome – literally. Beyond how you look and feel, being healthy is essential to brain function, longevity and how active you can be throughout your life. Which is why we’re going to focus on diet but talk a bit about other factors that come into play as well.