As we upgrade our gym website of Activ8.club we continue to learn how to use OxygenBuilder and the power it provides. Overall we have been able to work our way up the learning curve with the great user community. Today however I ran into a new problem that did take some time and a call back to my days of working with Javascript and Sharepoint.

Use Case:

Trent wanted to offer certain documents to visitors to the website and before they could download them capture email details to follow up on. Seems simple enough and most sites do that these days. Our technology platform is GymMaster, WordPress (with OxygenBuilder) and ActiveCampaign. This should be simple as there is a plugin for WordPress to embed the ActiveCampaign forms and there are great tutorials on using forms in OxygenBuilder using the modal component.

A huge acknowledgment to Fabrizo Van Marciano and his YouTube channel on using OxygenBuilder as his video on Pop-Up Contact forms was hugely helpful here.

Issues:

As I followed thru the tutorial from Fabrizo it all went well given I was embedded an ActiveCampaign form, then shit hit the fan. The modal would not close after the visitor clicks the ‘Submit’ button. Not good. Spent an afternoon looking at different options. After some experiments I moved backwards to the other options of embedding the form from ActiveCampaign and not using a short code – Success.

Solution:

Firstly I’m need to make you the reader aware that ActiveCampaign say that using the Word Press Plugin provides extra tracking back into their system so be aware we are not going to be using the Plugin. We are a small gym business so necessary (also it may still be happening, I did not delve into the code that deeply).

1. Within ActiveCampaign create the form that you want to have displayed (I am not going to cover any formatting and CSS here as others have that covered.
2. We wanted our form to direct the user to a download URL so add that to the actions that ActiveCampaign will do. (again not going to cover this much).
3. As you finish the form there is the integration option before you save. Copy out the code for the Full Embed. This will give you all the code
4. Put this into a text editor or however you want to.

Scroll to the very bottom of the code and you will find this section

err ? err.parentNode.removeChild(err) : false;
_load_script(‘https://activ8healthclub.activehosted.com/proc.php?’ + serialized + ‘&jsonp=true’);
oxyCloseModal();
}
return false;
};
addEvent(form_to_submit, ‘submit’, form_submit);
})();

I have added in Bold the new line of code you need to add.

5. Open up Oxygen builder and edit the page you want to add this to. I’m not going to cover all the details of adding an Oxygen Modal and formatting it as again many others do better at that.

6. Add a modal to the page. Add div’s sections etc and set the trigger to be the button/text link you want to have the form open from.

7. Add a code block to the model area. Use the PHP/HTML section and paste in the modified code.

8. All done and test away. The new page will open the modal as required and also follow the rules from ActiveCampaign on what fields need to be filled. After the visitor clicks Submit the modal will close and the download of the document from the URL via ActiveCampaign will occur (FYI we are using the great plugin WordPress Download Manager which provides a direct link URL which you can use with the URL redirect of ActiveCampaign forms.

Now I understand how better the ability to just use other HTML and Javascript within OxygenBuilder I may experiment with some additional lines of javascript to let the visitor know that the download of the document is happening.

I have only been using OxygenBuilder for a year now part time and still getting to grips with the full feature set it offers. What has impressed me so much on this little adventure is that the system is closed and very easily allows for the injection of PHP, HTML and Javascript code into the pages so easily.

Hope this might help others who have the same situation. Take care, stay fit in mind and body.

The Activ8 Team. Sydney

I’ve stayed well away from any posts on the American Elections and even further away from comment over the last four years.

A left over documentary from the Obama period was a historical documentary piece on who is Vice President Joe Biden. It does not take long to get an understanding that this is a man who has suffered immense loss and found a way forward and wants to try and do the right thing.

As you follow forward his loss is compounded by losing one of his sons in later life to cancer and again seeing how this man responds to it.

A recent photo of Joe Biden and his last remaining son Hunter was called out as being inappropriate. So very wrong. Anyone who has lost a parent will know the chance to hug and kiss them on the cheek one more time keeps us awake at night sometimes. Living in a different country from my father I have done the final phone call where he could not really speak back as his heart was failing so all I had left was to say how much I loved him. That one chance of having a photo like Joe and Hunter have is so damn precious and something we should all admire.

Is Joe Biden the best president elect that the USA could have voted for the future. Well without going into all the details maybe not. Is the best president elect that the world needs right now. I’m going with yes he is. The world needs compassion and understanding now and he is the right man for that position and also very importantly the right women as his Vice President.

While not a fan initially of Kamala Harris I’m converted and agree fully the best choice for VP.

So there we have the basica layout of my own thoughts on the US situation (with a huge gap on saying nothing of the last four years )

Spent along time trying to work out why my CR-10 printer was not working after I moved it. First issue was leveling and that fixed a few issues but the printer still seemed to lose the plot on the 100th layer.

Anyway I moved it to a new location in my office a did a full table leveling. Worked great first level stuck, but there was a bad x Axis issue after a while and it got worse after the move. Firstly I tried a full tighten up of all screws and bolts but did not work.

Seem the X was still out badling. Next did a full tighten up with a screwdriver pusing the x axis out. Nope. Next attempt was pull the right end apart and put together with just finger pressure to tighten up while making sure it was eye level level. And wow, we are back on track for good prints.

Been along time since I got to pull out my mad science stuff and whow I have way to my kit and projects

About a year ago I started using Smartthings (thou not available in Oz). Seemed like a great system and I got the hub, sensors and it could use my wemo switch’s and lifx bulbs. so all good.

Well problem was not the actual system, that still seems to work quite well. The issue has been the quality of the sensors. Been thru 5 different smart sensors and they have all died on me.

Got to the point that hardware is totally crap and just does not work.

Switched now to Z-Wave (australian model) so also had to get an Australian Z-Wave stick then put it all together with OpenHab2 and after abit of a learning curve it works way better that Smarthings.

The configureation of OpenHab does need alot of learning about the how do code it. But it does work relaiably.

There is hope that Smarthings from Samsung might work out better, but until they can provide sensors that last longer that 6-8 months and work all the time the platform is defunt.

Z-wave may be more expense but that cost is offset by reliability.

Yeah, what hell, why this.  Men have hair!

Well, yeah we have hair, and we love the chest, abs and lower arms.  But what about the BACK.  Well thats something not so good.  

As we get older the hair start showing up in places that not so sexy.

So what to do.  Well. I'll let you know my story.   Had back and shoulder hair growing.  Being a sort semi blond it didn't concern me.  Then it started coming out as big bad  hair that needed shaving.  Did that for a few years, easy as.  Then I started to get more fit and knew I had back hair.  

Waxing definately worked  but it grew back and huge ingrown hairs.  And not very comfortable.  

Then I signed up for Laser hair reduction.  What a change!

Result one.  You will not notice for about 3 weeks.  Then if you check it's smooth back there.  They will say come back in 5-6 weeks and they mean it.  You have to go back.  

The key to laser hair reduction is going back and getting the next treatment when you body is growing the next cycle of hair.  And thats the key to laser hair reduction.

I did the full cycle for my back and shoulder and now into the maintenance cycle to just keep smooth.  

My end result of male treatment of back and shoulders has been excellant.  I still get some growth and all now all blond and thin.  Will I need a follow up every six months.  yep most likely.  Cheaper than an wax, totally.  And does my back look better.  Totallly.

I've been playing around with my new raspberry pi unit.  Its now freely available to buy and while I will sound very geeky its a cool thing to play with.

For sure its linux based and the default install of raspberry debian is very easy to use with help from the great internet community.  What I am really loving about it is that it can do so much!  

My first interest was to give it a go.  I come use Windows for work, Mac for home (with remote access to work), but a few years back i was so pissed of with Vista i tried Ubuntu and got into Linux.  Been a fun mix.  I'll still use Mac now the bulk of my daily work, but the linux box takes care of three key things for me.

1.  Deluge Torrents

2. Crashplan back for myself and other friends

3. OwnCloud (this is a new item and still experimental).

Having my linux box with all the disks and high end processor, plus the mac running all day is eating into my power bill.  In Australia energy is not cheap so after playing around and researching the PI it looks like it might fit the bill really well.  

Looking at all the great work been done it made sense to divide the functions.  So my first PI will run my torrents and owncloud and the second will be for the crashplan backups.  Each unit will have its own USB 2TB drive.  Should alot less power consumption that my current setup.

I will focus on this blog on the crashplan setup as it has been the most challenging.

The Basics.

Crashplan needs a Java Virtual machine.  Until a few months ago the only way to run Java was on the the PI without using the hardware floating point ability.  The great news is now we have the core OS with hareware FP and Oracle have release a new preveiw version of Java for embedded devices with hardware FP.

The Setup

I played around with various setups and also pulled in lots of info from other people on here.  If you are going to use a PI as a crashplan device it only makes sense that you will have a USB drive attached to it for storage.  Great news is there are so many and cheap to buy.

So after doing the basic setup of the Pi i added the USB drive to the system.  But there are a few steps to make this work really well.

Load up the basic operating system. and boot into it.  You can use a 2GB card if you like.

after boot up and I like to switch on SSH so i can do it all remotely.

So after intial boot, turn on SSH, you can do localisation again if you want.

Boot and login (via SSH – doesn't matter)

do

sudo apt-get update

so you have the latest updates,

then

sudo apt-get upgrade

so you now have the latest os.

I then wanted the latest firmware so followed this blog to do that.

Well life has gone odd since the last post.  don't even know what it was.

but its all good here for me now.  I've spent the last year getting fit and healthy and while not always as healthy as I could be the fit bit seems to have taken a hold.

I'lm working on lower that 20% body fat now, so guess where that takes me.  Actually off to another email to a friend.

laters.

Going to do the 8 week winter waist challenge at the gym!

http://activ8fitness.com.au/What-s-Happening/8-week-winter-waist-challenge.html

Let see how this goes.  tough mudder at the end of it.

While the Price concert was a letdown there was a cool fun part of it.  I got to wear one of my new slim fit L size shirts, and was totally confident with it.  Oddly it was my new Nerd Fitness shirt.  L size, with a slim cut.  Was great to get out and feel comfortable wearing it!

Was even more fun taking of the warm top (as we are now in late autumn) and get to show off what is now shaping upto to be a rather good body.  Even more fun was dancing away at our seats knowing it was all muscle showing.

I can actually now fully understand why people with great bodies want to show them off.  My is far from great, but its certainly in a far better place than it was.  T-Shirt hugs fits perfectly over the chest and just falls over what used to be a huge stomach.  Now there is just well basically umm space!!!  Still heaps more work to do, but it felt so good to knowing that I looked good.

A quick (okay, deep review) of others my ages, I'm doing really well!  What is so so so so good is, I'm loving the whole process.  6 month check in has capped the loss at 15kgs, and that will be a solid 15kgs of FAT as the muscle mass has increased alot.

My BMI is of the standard scale and won't take into account the conversion of fat to muscle.  1 kg over next 3 weeks and I'm bang on target.  That's over 2 kgs per month, which is an excellant result.  One of the things I have now learnt from this process is that massive weight loss in just a few weeks is not the way to go.

Losing it slowly (and 2kgs per month is top of recommended range) is the totally best way to do it.  New habits form due to the upgraded diet and excercise program and its become a part of my life now.  We have just started the 8 week fitness challenge and I'm loving it.  So now upto 6 times a week it will be group and I'm still doing one day PT.  We have worked out that my PT session will be more muscle building/weight training.

I've also now decided what body to get out of this.  Sounds like an odd thing to think about,, but there are quite a few choices.

1.  Skinny As – Basically just be really thin

2. Regular – Probably where it will end up, not thin, not fat, but also no real muscle. 

3. Lean Muscular – BMI about right, maybe a little above, but good lean muscle mass without looking like a body builder.

4. Muscular – More of the above, but alot more muscle, but not looking huge

5. Body Builder – self expanatory.

My choice is lean muscular, seems obvious but there are options.  Oh well, lets see if i get there.  I'm doing well, today i felt ribs under my chest instead of just on the side.  For some reason my system is on fire and burning fat.  Bring it all on.