If you can’t see the above video, click here.

I was browsing around my old desktop computer and found this video of me from November 2008 playing an acoustic riff that I was working on at the time. I hope you guys enjoy it!

There will be some more new videos next week, including a new Life In… video (pending on the weather) based on your suggestions via Google Moderator as well as a new N-FAQs video. See you guys then!

TheAndySan

P.S: Only 19 more days until I get shipped off to boot camp for 2-3 months! I’ll put together an awesome farewell video before I go.

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Lost Vlog 11 – Riff Idea #8 (Demo)

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

In this episode of First Impact Anime, we’re watching the beginning of a series that is highly underrated: BECK – Mongolian Chop Squad!

About First Impact Anime

This is the second totally epic collaboration series with my best bud Eriopolis, where we review the first episode of an anime series, in the same vein as the Movie Night series!

Instead of just picking out certain scenes and whatnot, we’re gonna comment throughout the entirety of the episode, Mystery Science Theater style.

Feel free to leave us your comments and suggestions for future videos! Also, be sure to subscribe to keep on the up-and-up with what we’re up to!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

First Impact Anime 02 – BECK Mongolian Chop Squad

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

This vlog was originally uploaded to Google Video back when they let you do that (I miss Google Video!!). I did that because it was too long for YouTube, hence the title Too Long For YouTube aka TL4YT.

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

I tried making this thing shorter, but the results came out even worse. Anyway, in this vlog, I talk about one of my old ideas for using a website to generate income for me so that I don’t have to work. Needless to say, none of these ideas have seen the light of day due to lack of funding and all that junk. However, I thought it would be interesting to put these up to see what I was up to back then.

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Lost Vlog 10 – TL4YT Vlog 1 – Making Money Online

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

This vlog was originally suppose to be Vlog 33, but I decided to rerecord it because I wanted to do a shorter take. However, I was able to par down the dialog and thankfully I did because I talk about some stuff here that I forgot to say in Vlog 33.

One of the things I forgot to mention was that Chrome Sparks has its own Soundclick account! It just has the 5 Riff Ideas for now (I haven’t officially recorded Riff Ideas #6 or #7 yet, aside from Lost Vlog 07), but I’ll be recording some new material when I get new equipment in San Diego.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Vlog 32 was actually released on my 4-year YouTube Anniversary and I forgot to talk about it!

I still can’t believe that it’s been four years since I signed up for YouTube! A lot has changed in that time, and I hope that the quality of my videos has gone up along with the times.

When I go to A-school in San Diego, I plan on getting an HD camcorder so that you guys can see me in HD as well as the surrounding areas. As I’ve said before, I’m also planning on continuing to vlog while I’m in the Navy as much as I can and hopefully let you guys in on the scenery.

Well, it’s been fun looking back on these past four years. Here’s to many more!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Lost Vlog 08 – Happy Belated 4-Year YouTube Anniversary (Alternate Take)

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

This is just a quick video I made to remember two Riff Ideas, back when I still had my Kay Les Paul copy. Since I don’t have any guitars at the moment, I’ll have to wait to record them properly on an MP3.

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Lost Vlog 07 – Chrome Sparks’ Riff Ideas #6 and #7 (Demo)

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

It seems like ages since I last made a vlog, so I decided to do a quick one to explain the status of my various video series as well as what’s been going on recently.

It’s been a great experience working with my best bud Eriopolis on the Movie Night series, and I hope that we’ll continue to make more videos together!!

Until I started working on the Movie Night and Life In… series, I haven’t really sat down and watched my videos that much. A lot of them seemed stuck to a certain point of time and there are a couple very early videos that I’m downright embarrassed about. The reason I still keep them up is to show my progression as not only a YouTuber, but as a person. Despite the overall badness of some of them, I still get warm feelings of nostalgia when I watch the videos that were taken back when I was still at UU! Ahh, memories…

But anyway, getting back to the subject at hand, several of my video series are in a state of flux at the moment. Let me just give you the short version of what’s going on:

J-Vid – Unless it’s for a collab or as a response to a popular video, I don’t have any plans to bring back the J-Vids as a regular series.

Life In… – Since I’m beginning to run out of interesting places to record in the local area, I might only have a couple more episodes of the Life In… series left before I move to San Diego. Once I move there and am able to do stuff, you can count on me bringing the series back in full force!

WAR – Because of the recent increase in views and interest from this series, I’ve been tinkering with the idea of bringing it back. I have a couple of excellent CDs in mind to review! There’s also the distinct possibility of doing a long-awaited anime review *audible gasp!*.

In conclusion, just stay tuned and I hope to be giving you guys some more awesome videos in the near future!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Vlog 37 – Video Status Report

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

This is just a light-hearted parody of The Tone King’s videos. No, I don’t hate him or anything (in fact, I really like all of his videos and I fought to keep them online); I just wanted to try out reviewing low-end guitars and gear.

Overall, I’m just trying out something new (well, not too new considering my older guitar & amp review videos) to see what you guys enjoy watching. I’m not sure how long this series will be considering how limited my gear selection is, but I might think of something.

Anywho, tell me what you guys think in the comments below and feel free to do a video response (I’ll try to approve your responses ASAP, but I’m not online all of the time contrary to popular belief so be patient). Keep on rockin’! Hell yeah!!

The Tone Pauper aka TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

The Tone Pauper 01 – Esteban Dreadnought Acoustic

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

Due to popular demand, I’ve decided to do a 3-part mini-series on how I lost over 20 lbs in 2 months without starving myself to death.

Intro-Don!

Initially, I wasn’t sure if the Navy was for me, even after I told my mom that I was gonna sign up. I was scared of the long commitment that I’d have to go through or else face very serious career-ending consequences. However, I didn’t see any other opportunities for me so I decided to try to lose weight.

When I went to MEPS the first time to do all my paperwork and get weighted in, I was really scared because I got that “this is really happening” feeling when I got on the bus. After I had filled out a ton of paperwork and stuff (including the dreaded “nut grab”), I got weighted in and was at 27% body fat, so I got sent home.

In order to be qualified to join the US Navy, you have to have at most 25% body fat, so needless to say, I was pretty discouraged. After I had gone home and sold all my guitars to make rent for the following month, I told myself that I would take this whole Navy thing seriously and do whatever I could to lose the weight.

So the next time I went in to MEPS a little over a month later, I passed the weigh-in with a 25% body fat. I know that it’s right on the dot, but I was never more proud of myself than when I heard that I passed!

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

My Workout Routine

When I started working out again, it was the dead of winter so I couldn’t do much outside beyond shoveling snow, which definitely helped me lose a couple of pounds. During this time, I stuck to using the treadmill in the basement that had been collecting dust.

Originally, my daily treadmill workout consisted of a 20-30 minute routine where I’d start off at 3 MPH at a 3% incline and then increased the speed every 5-6 minutes and then went back down to 3 MPH when it got to be too much to maintain. I then tried increasing the intervals as well as the overall length of the workout to 30-45 minutes, but I soon realized that simply increasing my workload wouldn’t help me lose more weight. In fact, I happened to be gaining a little bit of weight during that time.

Instead of chalking up my weight gain to muscle gain or some other BS, I decided to change up my routine in order to shock my body into losing the weight.

I then changed my routine to the following: 5 minute warm-up at 3 MPH, 1 minute at 6 MPH, 2 minutes at 3 MPH, 1 minute at 8 MPH (later 9 MPH), 2 minutes at 3 MPH, and so on until I’ve been working out for 20-25 minutes. This kind of routine is commonly known as interval training, and it really kick-started my weight loss and I began to notice that my endurance was increasing as well.

I used to do situps as well, but I found those to be largely ineffective since in order to lose the gut, you’d need to do cardio routines and have an overall good state of health. Even if I did situps until I was blue in the face, nobody would be able to see any changes because even if I had rockin’ ab muscles, they would be covered by fat.

Since the weather’s nice, I’m doing pretty much all of my workouts outside now. I would either run up and down my street for 1.5 miles or go on a long bike ride around town (by long, I mean at least 10 miles round-trip).

I remember back when I left UU around May 2007 and moved to Coldwater, I weighted around 230 lbs. This is definitely the heaviest that I ever been, and the heaviest that I ever will be! Besides blaming myself, I blame my weight mostly on poor eating, late-night eating, and not too much physical activity. Granted, I did go out on walks with my friend Dan and whoever else wanted to come along, as well as solo bike rides and stuff like that, but I was simply eating too many empty calories for it to make much of a difference. Not to mention that I was a pretty depressed guy at the time (just read some of my blog entries from late 2006-mid 2007 to get an idea of what was going on).

Anywho, when I moved from UU to Coldwater, there wasn’t much of anything to do there so I decided to walk around town every day. I then progressed to taking bike rides around town to going to the Wal-Mart in Celina and back every day. As a result, I lose 15 lbs in just a month’s time!

I know that there’s a large group of people who think that running is a more effective means of cardio training than biking, and it is when you compare the calories lost/distance, but I find riding my bike much more enjoyable than running because I can be outside longer and actually enjoy the scenery more than I could while I’m running. Also, biking is much kinder on my back and knees so I don’t feel like crap the next day.

Even though I’m not rockin’ the six-pack yet, I’m still the slimmest I’ve been in years and I couldn’t be happier! For a guy like me who’s 5’10″ (that’s 70 inches total or 175 cm for my international audience), being over 200 lbs is considered heavy. At the time, I didn’t think I was heavy (I knew I wasn’t slim, but I didn’t think I was fat), but now that I lost all that weight, I look back at some of my earlier videos and I can see that I was indeed overweight.

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

My Diet

When I started the diet, I knew I wanted to keep it simple and I didn’t want to count calories or carbs or stuff like that. I knew how super-analytical I could be about this, so I decided to keep things as simple as I could so I wouldn’t drive myself crazy analyzing every little thing I ate.

I did however keep a weight loss document that keeps track of how much I weigh every day as well as how much I’ve gained or lost compared to the previous day, how much I’ve lost overall compared to the first day of losing weight, and my average daily weight loss in ounces that would be calculated every 8 days. I highly recommend recording your weight loss in some fashion so that you can keep track of how much weight you’re losing as well as to keep yourself accountable so that when you gain weight, you see the figures right in front of you. The document needn’t be super fancy, heck I just used WordPad even though Excel would have worked much better in hindsight, but it’s fine as long as you have some means of keeping track of your weight loss and weight gain.

Remember, figures don’t lie, but liers do figure. Don’t try to cheat on it or else it won’t give you that subconscious push you need when you gain weight or that subconscious pat on the back when you lose weight.

Getting back to the actual dieting, I restricted my calories and my carbs by staying away from junk food, not drinking soda (or pop as I call it in my neck of the woods), drinking mostly water, eating healthy when I went out to eat, not eating late at night, and limiting my consumption of bread.

When I would eat something that would normally require bread like a sandwich, I would use either a whole-wheat tortilla (mmm, sloppy joe burritos!) or flaxseed bread, which is this kind of healthy bread that you can find in Wal-Mart and in most health food stores. Since it’s a really dry and stiff bread, I’d eat my sandwiches open-face (meaning with only one slice) so that would reduce my carbs and calories even further.

The majority of my lunches were tuna fish with generic Miracle Whip and some kind of a spicy element like jalapeños, taco sauce, red pepper, or something like that. Even with the Miracle Whip, I kept my calories and carbs in check. The spicy element that I would add also helps with digestion and gives the metabolism a boost too!

For a snack, I would eat an open-face peanut butter sandwich and that would usually be enough to quell my stomach rumblings. I’d also eat trail mix in order to increase my protein intake from the nuts as well as to get my chocolate fix.

When it came to drinks, I mostly stuck to water. Every once in awhile I’d have juice or apple cider to change things up, but 4 out of 5 times I’d be drinking water (in fact, I’m drinking water right now).

Closing Thoughts

In closing, I hope you found this mini-series informative and if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment or send me a message. Peace!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

How I Lost 20 lbs In 2 Months For The US Navy Without Starving Myself

Since I had some time to get online this week, I just wanted to write a brief post saying what I’ve been up to this week as well as what to expect with my upcoming vlogs.

Ever since I started posting my Navy videos, I’ve received mostly positive feedback (I’ve even managed to turn one of my anti-Navy critics into a good supporter). Although I’d like for all of my videos to be seen as much as possible, I didn’t really expect the Navy vids to do as well as they have. I’d like to thank all of my subscribers here on TheAndySan.com, as well as on YouTube and Twitter and wherever else you’re following me, for all of your support. I do read all of the comments (even the “lol dats funy” ones) and they’ve helped me create better videos as well as better blog posts.

The Status of My YouTube Video Series

Due to the unexpected popularity of my Navy videos as well as the influx of questions about the Navy from YouTube, I am gonna be recording more Navy-related videos. This is including the workout and diet that I used to lose 20+ pounds in a month-and-a-half.

I’m also gonna work on a new series where I take you on a tour of my hometown of Celina. I’ll show off the landmarks as well as different places that I visit regularly and record my videos at. This should be interesting indeed!

As far as my other existing video series goes, it’s hard to say right now. I know that I don’t want to do another J-Vid unless it’s part of a collab or something of the like. It started out as a great way to work on my Japanese skills, but then I started relying too much on Google Translate and the sentences became more and more cumbersome to say. But never say never I always say, haha!!

Like I said in my previous post, I’d love to do more review videos. I think those were my most worked-out videos compared to my other videos that were usually recorded on the fly. I have several ideas floating around for what I could review, so look forward to some more reviews!

Where To Go From Here

Once again, I’d like to thank you guys for your support and I look forward to hearing more from you guys! In the meantime, I’ll be working on some of the upcoming videos that I talked about as well as continue to play Pokemon Diamond (I just caught Dialga and I’m now chillin’ at SunyShore City. Does anyone know how to bring the Gym Leader out to battle?).

Well kiddies, I’m off to get some gas and then I’m heading home. After that, I’ll start recording for the new videos. See you guys next week!!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

A Not-So-Quick Reminder: More Videos Are Coming Soon!!

If you can’t see the video, click here.

I recorded this vlog earlier today, but I’m writing this from the hotel room that I stay in until I go to MEPS in the morning. Wish me luck with the weigh-in!

That’s right, I’m gonna go in and get weighed and measured and then discuss what my rating (job) will be in the Navy as well as when I’ll ship out for basic training/boot camp. I’m proud to say that as of this morning, I’m under 200 lbs!! That means I lost over 20 lbs in a month-and-a-half!!

As I’ve said before, I’m shooting for the IT rating, which involves fixing computers and stuff (from what I’ve read online). I plan on going back to college when my 4 years of active are done, and hopefully study abroad in Japan. I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to leave the country while I’m inactive so if any of you guys know, please leave me a comment below!

Although I said I was gonna do my own taxes (and I was almost done too), I decided to get them done professionally because my school taxes were a little screwy and I didn’t want the IRS on my ass for a couple bucks. They took out a shit-ton for fees and junk so I won’t be able to get a guitar or a camera. I will be getting something special though so look forward to the surprise!

Well kids, I’d better head to bed soon since I gotta get up super-early. Good night!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Vlog 34 – The Return To MEPS, College Plans, & A Surprise