15 years of increasingly sedentary computer-related jobs has taken a severe toll on my physique and health. I don’t have the physical strength, stamina, or endurance that I used to have, and I got fed up with that and decided to do something about it several weeks ago.

I wanted to build a little workout space. It needed to be compact, easily moved, and not a complete eyesore just in case we move somewhere that doesn’t have a garage. I spent a lot of time researching various types of equipment, and decided on a set of dumbbells because of their versatility, compactness, and lower cost of entry. I also sprung for a weight bench and a floor mat.

Here’s the complete setup:

While researching the various types of dumbbells on the market, one of the standouts I kept coming across was the Bowflex SelectTech 552, which is an adjustable-weight dumbbell that uses a pair of twist dial selectors to choose a weight between 5 pounds and 52.5 pounds. MSRP is $349.00 USD, but Amazon had them for $309 USD.

I was a bit put off by the price at first, but after we walked into a local sporting goods store and priced out conventional dumbbells, I got over my sticker shock pretty quickly. If I were to buy the cheapest set of metal hex dumbbells covering a weight spread of 5 pounds to 50 pounds, I calculated that I’d need 22 dumbbells with a total mass of 566 pounds and a total price of $689.78. If I bought the rack so I wouldn’t be tripping over wayward dumbbells every time I stepped into the garage, the total goes up to $759.78, and the whole thing would take up an amount of space equivalent to a short, wide bookshelf.

At about 40% of that price, about 19% of that total mass, and a little more volume than a pair of large shoeboxes, the SelectTech 552s just made a lot more sense to me, so I pulled the trigger on them.

Close up of a SelectTech 552 dumbbell in its storage tray:

Dial selector. There’s one on each end of the dumbbell:

When you set the weight and pull the dumbbell out, the unused weight plates remain in the storage tray:

The selected weight plates remain locked to the dumbbell:

My immediate reaction when I first unboxed them was “Holy shit, they’re enormous” followed by some concern about whether or not their size would cause range-of-motion issues. I found that their size wasn’t much of an issue and that it was easy to compensate for during workouts. I was also a little worried that they might be clanky given how they work, but they didn’t feel loose or sloppy. They feel solid and well-balanced.

Their size and length also has an interesting side effect–I can feel my stabilizing muscles also getting a workout while targeting a specific major muscle. After my first few workouts, it’s easy to see why the SelectTech 552 is consistently praised by reviewers.

The weight bench is an Adidas Performance Flat Training Bench. I picked it because it was the cheapest one that had a maximum weight rating that exceeded the total weight of myself plus 105 pounds of dumbbells by a comfortable margin. $80 USD for a bench rated for 600 pounds seemed like a good deal to me.

The fit and finish is decent, and the construction is very solid. It doesn’t feel flimsy or wobbly at all when I’m sitting on it, kneeling on it, or laying on it. The padding is thick and firm, but comfortable. The biggest problem I have with it is the fact that I have to share it with my cat.

The 6×4 floor mat is made of foam rubber and consists of 6 interlocking 24″ square tiles, with border edging strips. This particular one is made by ProSource and is about half an inch thick. It’s firmer than the spongy stuff sold for kids, but just soft enough that it’s comfortable to do floor exercises on. The tiles lock together firmly enough that they won’t come apart readily, but I wouldn’t deliberately do any exercise that puts a lot of tension between the tiles.

In addition to weight training, I looked into things that would make getting in some cardio easy and fun. I opted for a DeskCycle compact exercise bike, which lives under my office desk. It’s fun to pretend I’m commuting to/from work in a pedal-powered office chair.

It comes with a little stand and extension cord for the display unit, which I keep on my desk. I have it set to display my speed (in miles per hour) and distance traveled (in miles).

When assembling it, the front and rear legs offered me some pretty good general life advice:

One of the primary differentiators of the DeskCycle is that it uses a magnetic resistance flywheel system. On bikes with friction knobs, pedaling frequently feels jerky or squeaky, and a lot of times even if you torque the resistance knob as tightly as you can, you don’t really feel much resistance and the jerkiness becomes more pronounced. With a magnetic resistance system, pedaling is extremely fluid and smooth. There are 8 resistance settings on the DeskCycle, with 1 being pretty much frictionless and 8 feeling like you’re pedaling a heavy load uphill. Settings 3-5 feel like pedaling a real bike over flat ground to a gentle uphill slope.

Another differentiator is its weight–at around 25 pounds, it’s heavy enough to stay in place without scooting forward while you pedal, especially on carpet. I found with normal compact exercise bikes that I constantly had to stop and pull them back after accidentally booting them forward. If you’re pedaling on a smooth surface, the DeskCycle includes a Velcro tether that allows you to strap your chair to the bike to prevent unwanted motion.

So far, I’m very pleased with it, and have been using it daily for 30 to 45 minutes. Between the upper body workout and the cycling, I’ve already noticed a pronounced increase in my sense of well-being, an increase in energy levels, and a generally better mood.

The next items I want to acquire are a 65cm exercise ball to replace the dining room chair that I keep stealing when I want to use the Mac in the dining room, a ring base for it, and a set of push-up handles (regular push-ups are murder on my left wrist, which hasn’t been right ever since that time I rode a 250cc 3-wheeler into a chain link fence when I was 12).

I started shopping around for a small and inexpensive travel tablet a couple months ago, since the fourth quarter of the year tends to be when we do most of our traveling. I wanted something small and light with a physical keyboard and long battery life, and I didn’t want to spend more than $200-300 on it. I went for the 64GB version of the Dell Venue 8 Pro 5000, an 8″ Windows 8.1 tablet.

To take it for a spin, I decided to use it to compose and post a review of it and its accessories here.

Initial Impressions

It has a 1280×800 screen, which initially sounds a bit coarse compared other tablets that have 2K or Retina screens, but it’s actually a rather nice screen. Text is pleasingly sharp, images look really good, and the color is vibrant.

When running desktop programs, I find that I sometimes hunch over and squint a little bit more than I should when trying to make out small text, but the Metro-style apps work very well on smaller screens.

The tablet’s size is almost perfect. It’s not too big and not too small for me. It’s about 5 inches tall and about 8.5 inches wide, and a bit less than half an inch thick.

The tablet’s processor is an Intel Atom 3740. Before the current Bay Trail architecture, Atom chipsets were pretty underpowered, and I wouldn’t have gone near an Atom powered Windows RT device with a 10 foot pole. The Venue 8 Pro 5000 runs Windows 8.1.

I’m surprised by how zippy and responsive the tablet is. I was expecting it to struggle a bit, but it’s pretty fluid and responsive. This is even more true after it’s been updated with the latest drivers and software updates from Dell.

Fit and finish is pretty good. It doesn’t feel cheap or cheesy. The back is a textured, rubbery surface that feels satisfyingly grippy, and it doesn’t look chintzy.

Accessories

To get the most out of it, I also got the keyboard folio case and Dell Active Stylus. The keyboard folio is interesting–it’s a rigid plastic case with a semi-rigid cover that the keyboard attaches to magnetically.

The tablet clicks into the case, the cover folds over the screen, and the keyboard sticks to the cover. There’s a loop on the back that serves two purposes–it holds a stylus and serves as a tuck point for the cover when you fold it up into a stand.

The magnetic attachment for the keyboard is one of those things that sounds great on paper, but falls a little bit short in practice. The magnets hold fine for the most part, but I can see the keyboard coming off fairly easily if the tablet is carried in a bag without a built in sleeve or tablet pocket of some sort.

The semi-rigid cover is jointed so that it can be bent into a triangular stand, and tucks into the stylus loop. There are two viewing angles to choose from: upright like a laptop screen, or on its back and slightly inclined. There isn’t a mechanism to keep the cover closed, however–no strap, latch, or magnetic closure.

The keyboard feels pretty nice and doesn’t look or feel cheap. It does, however, have a number of weirdly placed keys. Several punctuation marks like single and double quotes, underscore, pipe, plus and equal signs, backslash, and hyphen are function keys in the QWERTY row. The function keys are literally function keys themselves rather than separate, standalone keys.

The sizing and placement of a few keys are also a little bit off compared to a normal keyboard. If you’re a touch typist, you might find it frustrating to get used to. I find that my typing speed is about 60% to 75% of my normal speed when using this keyboard.

I’m also using a Dell WM524 wireless travel mouse, which works beautifully with the Venue 8 Pro 5000 and the keyboard folio. In this configuration, it feels like a tiny version of my XPS 18 all-in-one.

The Dell Active Stylus got off to a rocky start before the A02 hardware revision and tablet driver updates. The one I received was an A02 and I’d updated all of the drivers and firmware practically first thing after unboxing it, so I had a better first experience with it than the early adopters did. It won’t put Wacom out of business tomorrow, but it’s plenty good enough for my own needs. It’s also markedly better than the stylus that came with the Gateway CX2720 convertible notebook that I carried around in the mid-2000s.

The stylus loop on the keyboard folio holds it snugly. I think I would have preferred the loop to be on the top edge of the folio rather than on the back, however.

I can’t get over how cool it is to run something like Photoshop CC 2014 on such a tiny computer and actually be able to do useful work on it. I don’t think I would want to open any massive texture atlases or have too many print resolution documents open at the same time, but it’s totally usable otherwise.

Most of my papercraft software installed and worked fine. Metasequoia, Silo, and Pepakura Designer work just fine. Ultimate Papercraft 3D has some issues with the Intel graphics on both the Venue 8 Pro and my XPS 18 all-in-one, so it doesn’t see much use these days.

2 Months Later…

I’ve had the tablet for roughly 2 months now. I took it on a 4 day Thanksgiving road trip, and upon our return, I decided to use it as my sole computer for a week to see how it held up. I really like the little booger. It’s more than enough computer for my travel needs and is nowhere nearly as large and heavy as my old XPS 15 laptop.

I also recently replaced the original Dell keyboard folio with a Microsoft Wedge keyboard and a Poetic faux leather folio case. The Wedge has a much better keyboard layout and has a rigid protective cover that lets me toss it in the bag without worrying about it, and the Poetic folio case is a significant improvement over the Dell folio case in a number of areas. It has an elastic strap that keeps it closed, like the one on a Moleskine notebook, and is more comfortable to hold when using the tablet as a touch device.

After I quit smoking back in 2011, I just wasn’t taking breaks and getting out of my chair as often as I had done before, and I was starting to feel the effects of the prolonged sitting and bad posture in my ankles and back. So, when I came across this interesting IKEA standing station hack, I was intrigued and decided to give it a try for a while.

The basic components are:

1 Lack side table

1 Ekby Viktor shelf

2 Ekby Valter brackets

4 3″ bolts and washers from Home Depot (the Lack legs are hollow so screws won’t work well)

I picked the black-finish to match my workstation hardware. Some of the stuff was on sale and my total ended up slightly south of $23 USD, and it took me about 15 minutes to do all the measuring and drilling and assembly.

Here’s the finished product:

I also picked up a soft foam rubber anti-fatigue mat from Home Depot.

I’ve used the standing desk for two months now. It took a little bit of getting used to, but I ended up really liking it. I alternate between sitting and standing, and I no longer have any back pain or other issues. I also find that it helps my energy level throughout the day, and I’m glad I made this change.