It’s that time of year again. No, not just time for students to go back to school, or the musings about Halloween costumes becoming more serious.

It’s time for Dragon*Con, where your illustrious hosts will be herding geeks, participating in MMORPG discussion panels, and generally having a grand old time. While we’re not going to be giving any fitness-specific talks, it’s probably safe to say that we’ll be keeping an eye out for healthy eating destinations, at least some of the time. And, since some of us (okay, maybe it’s just me) have a penchant for being up first thing in the morning whether we want to or not, it’s likely that we’ll taking the hotel fitness center and hot tub for a spin.

Plus, of course, there are all the fabulous celebrities, vendors, and friends we don’t get to see nearly as often as we’d like. The Supplement-IT folks have told me that they’ll be around somewhere, too; I’m planning on swinging by to say howdy.

And, yes, there will be a fair number of calories burned because of us – Krystalle and Rafe will be spinning six hours’ worth of very danceable tunes at the MMO Gathering of Heroes party on Saturday night.

C-3PO? Scrap Iron? Our slash sense is tingling something fierce...

It is amazing how much crisper the general experience of life becomes when your body is given a chance to develop a little strength.

– Frank Duff

It is also amazing how fantastically aggravating getting kicked out of your regular workout schedule can be. Not only does it impede your progress (you can’t gear up or earn XP when your internet connection is down), it can really mess up your whole daily routine. We try hard to get our regular workouts in, and when it’s pushed aside – for whatever reason – that can cascade and cause other things to get knocked out of whack.

Like, you know, writing blog posts. *cough*

This is an extremely indirect way of approaching the subject of, “We know it’s been a little too quiet around here lately. Sorry about that.” The underlying reasons are both good (Mike and Krys have been really involved with a local theater company production) – and not so good (I’ve been dealing with an injury that landed me at the chiropractor’s office for unscheduled maintenance). So, in any case, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa (whatever the plural of that is).

However, it does put Mr. Duff’s words into perspective. It looks like there’s some science to back him up on the subject of, “Not being able to get my exercise fix is making me cranky.”

Image courtesy of kkimpel on Flickr

From time to time, you’ll see us do a review of a fitness product, exercise game, food or diet supplement, or whatever else around here. Most of the time, it’s because one of us owns it already; sometimes, we’ve gotten a trial sample of something, or are given the use of it for a while. A lot of the time, what you’ll read here originates from very close to home – Mike and Krystalle get a ton of use out of the exergaming titles they have for their Wii; both they and Scott and have made Weight Watchers a guiding principle in their eating habits; and my copy of Starting Strength sits right here on my desk, underneath the notebook where I log my daily workouts. It’s not just fiction authors who live by the dictum, “Write what you know.”

The companies that have been kind enough to send us review samples have done so knowing that we’re going to be giving you, our readers, our honest assessment of whatever they may be offering. Whether it’s effusive enthusiasm, a thumbs-up with a caveat, or some well-earned derision, we’re not going to sugar-coat what we say.

That’s not how we roll, whether it’s 1d4 or 8d12.

The idea for ShrinkGeek came from a series of emails back in January of 2008. We’ve told the story here before so we won’t go over the gory details again, but the Cliffs Notes summary of the story is that we took that idea and managed to make it a reality in May of 2009.

In the time that has passed since we’ve posted how-tos on things like 100 calorie breakfasts, had the chance to talk to other geeky fitness fiends like Tonya Kay (Creature from Stan Lee’s Who Wants To Be A Superhero), taken a look at fitness games and gizmos out there, and managed to attract a small but dedicated community. We feel that we’ve started something good, but there has recently been a great deal of talk among the geeks here about how we could make this year even better for our little labor of love.

ShrinkGeek 2.0 is what we’ve come up with.

Today we’re bringing the newer, shinier, faster version to you – and with several improvements from the original design we started with. Some of the improvements are:

• Forums – Simply put: while a blog is a great deal of fun, it doesn’t really give readers a place to share their stories. This was something we felt was severely lacking in the original site, so we’ve added a new forum system in.
• The Daily Quest – Looking for ways to jump start your healthy new year? Taking inspiration from MMOs, we’ve set up a Daily Quest that you can complete for your own fitness level-ups. Each day we’ll post a challenge on the forums for everyone to complete and report back.
• More reviews, interviews, and featured content – You’ve voted with your comments and pageviews, and we’re working hard to bring you more original content. We are still going to post links to news that we stumble across from other sources (with our own thoughts tossed in to the mix), but we’re going to make a concerted effort to have more original content here as well.
• A stronger commitment to Facebook and Twitter - While we’ve had a presence on Facebook and Twitter for a long time now, we really didn’t do anything with those services other than treat them as glorified RSS feeds (and really, if there is one that Twitter doesn’t need it is yet another link bot). We’re planning to use both services as another way to communicate with our readers as opposed to just linking to stories here.
• Our new mascot! – Lemuel “Lemmo” Pew, one of the creators of a truly trippy webcomic called Blank It, helped us bring to life an idea we’ve had in our heads since we originally launched the site. The cute little guy you see at the top of this post is going to be showing up a lot around these parts in the future, and we’re really excited to have him along for the ride.

At ShrinkGeek we believe that if you want to improve yourself you constantly need to take a look at what you’re doing and ask yourself if you could be doing it better. That’s what we’ve done here, and we’re really happy with the results. We hope you are too!

A bounty of polyhedrons (courtesy of House of Sims)

May you enjoy the companionship of your party members, the sublime joy of vanquishing your foes, the benevolence of the Random Number Generator, and every buff you receive.

From all of us here at ShrinkGeek Orbital Headquarters, to all of you, we wish you a healthy and joyful holiday season.