Monthly archive: January 2009

My meals for the next six days, originally uploaded by bitful.

I spent most of yesterday thinking of ways to eat less and stay away
from junk food.

I figured that if I knew exactly what I should eat every day in
advance it would be easier.

And that if I bought everything in advance I would not have to go to
the shops and avoid temptation.

So this is what I am going to eat during the next six days (plus 12
eggs and 6 tins of peas and carrots that I forgot to put in the
picture).

I know it's almost all tinned, but compared to my recent diet this is
super healthy.

I'll post a detailed meal plan tomorrow.

Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account over the past seven days:

• Tweet Replies / Get notifed when someone @replies you!
• Outlook: How Microsoft Adapts Getting Things Done for Outlook
  Using Outlook 2007 out of the box, dating and flagging items and assigning categories. The trick is not to look at your inbox but as various views according to what you set out to do.

Wine by the glass at Tesco, originally uploaded by bitful.

Taken at Tesco Express, St George's Wharf, Vauxhall (London). The cups are
plastic, the tops are similar to yoghurt lids that peel off.

Sunday lunch is probably my favourite meal. Today's was the perfect mix of friends and I did not want it to end.

I tried to extend the meal feeling by eating bread, cheese, salami, pizza and cookies on the way home but it was not the same thing.

Today's Italian word is pranzo, which means lunch.

1. Madonna does not like being called Madge, just as I do not like being called Lulu (don't ask). But I do feel special to have a nickname, and at least it's not 'baldy'.
2. You can remove cork taint from wine by pouring it through a sheet of plastic wrap. The smelly molecule (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) sticks to the plastic because it is chemically similar to polyethylene. Stuart has a doctorate in chemistry, so if this is nonsense you will soon hear it from him.
3. Bolivia produces more Brazil nuts than Brazil. In related news, eating a whole 125g packet in one go makes me sick (a friend says it is because nuts have digestion inhibitors).
4. The Loving Kind (Girls Aloud's current single) was co-written by the Pet Shop Boys.
5. You cannot use a PayPal Personal account to sell on eBay. If you do, you have to upgrade to Premier or Business, which allows PayPal to collect fees on payments you receive.
6. If you tag a file as an audiobook in iTunes it will leave the Music library (and not show up when you search it) and appear in the Audiobooks library instead.
7. Argyle (the pattern) uses the archaic spelling of what is today known as Argyll (the region in western Scotland).

4 Horseferry Road, London, originally uploaded by bitful.

Channel 4 headquarters. The huge sculpture outside the main entrance was
erected last summer to reflect the current
series of idents. I also took a brief video to show it.

Today we booked tickets to fly to Italy for a whole week in February. I need a break soon (Christmas was very good, but just two long weekends with work in between) and although Italy is not my destination of choice to relax (I think by definition family is never easy), this time I am excited because I have a new flat to furnish (we kept very little from the old house).

I know Italian design is world-famous but as I prefer clean Swedish simplicity we will be driving 145 km to the nearest IKEA instead. My wallet demands it too.

Today's Italian word is mobili, which means furniture.

Does anyone know what this building is?, originally uploaded by bitful.

I have started taking the bus to work instead of the tube, and the other day
I noticed this interesting fence around a building.
The building in question is at the corner of Bayswater Road and Leinster
Terrace (the photo is geotagged if you view it on Flickr), does anyone know
what it is?

Gordon recently pointed out that I have been running the '7 things I did not know last week' weekly post since January 2007.

That's… two years! And possibly the longest I have enjoyed doing something for, which makes me wonder how I managed to do that. I believe that it is because I did not set out to do something special, but shared my innate curiosity with others, via a very simple method.

The process I developed is the easiest I could think of. Whenever I learn something new during the course of the week, I send myself an email. Since most of the time this happens while I am online, this is as easy as sending a link to the page I am on. Most weeks I collect more than seven items, so I rarely have to start looking for ideas.

I have experimented with Gmail filters, labels, custom-made email addresses and saved searches, but in the end I went for the simplest possible solution: when I send these emails to myself, I stick in the subject line a special made-up word that triggers a rule that marks the email as read and archives it. I found it had to be a unique word to avoid false positives coming up in search results. Then, when I am ready to write the post in WordPress I fire up Gmail, search for that made-up word and find all the notes I sent myself on the subject. Once I have blogged them, I delete the email.

You can use the same system to track anything you like. I regularly use it to capture ideas and notes on the go, and to track the cash I spend and food I eat if I am on a diet. Then, once a week or so, I sit down and report the data if needed, extracting it from Gmail as above.

I hope you enjoy reading my '7 things' posts as much as I enjoy putting them together for you.

Yesterday I had lunch with a former colleague. We still work for the same employer but are in different teams now.

We also work in different disciplines, and oddly enough she told me she is considering applying for a job in mine, while I have been tempted to move back to her field, where I originally started.

Today's Italian word is scambio, which means exchange.

Call me a mug, originally uploaded by bitful.

have spent 2.99 on less than a litre of water.

Voss is artesian water from
Norway, and I don't care too much for that, but have you seen this
beauty of a bottle?

I had been looking for a glass bottle to keep filtered tap water
instead of using plastic, but all the options I found were badly
designed and/or expensive compared to this, that I found at the John
Lewis food hall in Oxford Street.

So now YouTube has decided to mute the audio on any user-generated video that plays material for which the user has no rights.

I hope that I will see the day when media companies will realise that

1. there is an incredible amount of creativity involved in producing movie mashups, anime videos, dance routines to chart songs, and
2. in the end this is all free buzz for the original works that may create interest and place them (or keep them for longer) on people's radar,

and act accordingly, but we are sadly still a very long way from there.

Today's Italian word is diritti, which means rights.

I was looking at the last few days' worth of Italian words on this site, and I would like to point out that I might have been 'malato', considered myself 'povero' and experienced 'delusione', but on the whole life is good.

Today's word is felice, which means happy.

Windows 7 for insomniacs, originally uploaded by bitful.

What do you do when you cannot sleep? Well, you download the beta
version of the next Windows operating system and start playing with it.

I was underwhelmed and unimpressed, but I must say that a) it was
4.30am and b) Windows 7 is still in beta so things can improve.

It's telling though that the only thing I really really like is a copy
of Apple's dock.

This morning started like any other morning of late: I woke up, ate breakfast, took some vitamins and supplements, drank a mug of peppermint tea while reading RSS feeds.

But then I started feeling very hot, I could feel my face and hands throbbing. I looked at them and they were bright red. This then spread all over my body. I looked and felt as if I was sunburnt.

It did not take long to guess that I might be having a reaction to chromium picolinate, a new supplement I started taking today as an aid to body development and weight loss. I was having a lot of hope in its capacity to reduce carbohydrate cravings, so I guess it's only good old willpower from now on for me.

Today's word is allergia, which means allergy.

Finally an ad that speaks to me, originally uploaded by bitful.

I was born into a catholic family and although I rebelled (read:
unmasked the impostors) at an early age, I cannot avoid flinching
whenever I see one of those evil adverts telling people to repent
unless they want to burn in hell.

So imagine my satisfaction when I heard that funds were being raised
to promote the opposite message on public transport. I donated.

I have just seen my first ad up close and I smiled and then took this
picture. Fellow passengers looked on, some equally pleased, others
clutching their bibles harder, while I felt validated and proud that
my beliefs (or lack thereof) were for once up there for all to consider.

Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account over the past seven days:

• Troubleshooting: Are My Sites Up? Tracks Multiple Web Sites' Availability
  'Are My Sites Up? is a web-based application for tracking the up time of web sites and sending notifications when they are down. [...] The service requires no ownership of or modification to the web sites you are monitoring, you can use it on your own site or any site you want to keep an eye on.'
• tiltshiftmaker.com – Transform your photos into tilt-shift miniatures
  1. upload your photo 2. select the area in focus 3. your tilt-shift picture is ready.

Plus two stone in two months, originally uploaded by bitful.

And plus 7% body fat to 23%. This is what happens when you let
yourself go.

I'd go back on the wagon if only I could hoist myself up to it.

Tonight I taught Stuart Italian for one hour. We thought we'd give it a go and make it a weekly one-hour lesson. He has lots of material we can use, but needs someone to guide him through it.

I asked him what his goal is, he says he would like to be able to understand what a conversation is about. I think we can get there, I suppose he needs to expand his vocabulary then.

Today's word is parole which means words.

Got this one in brown, originally uploaded by bitful.

Finally found a sofa that fits, ordered it last week in Croydon but
have just realised I had taken a picture of it when we saw I first in
the Nottingham branch over Christmas.

We almost went for the red one, but in the end chose a safer dark
brown, because we are getting a matching armchair and footstool and it
would be too much colour in one go.

It will take up to twelve weeks for it to be made and delivered.

So that was the third post about sofas in a week. Will get out and
live more once energy levels get back up.

I have realised that there is no way I can keep up with all the trips abroad (and to Brighton) my friends are planning this year.

Choices will have to be made. Well, at least I have friends and I am in good health – excluding the current cold that does not want to go away and that I am getting tired of by now.

Today's word is povero, which means poor, and can be used both in the financial and in the 'feeling sorry for oneself' way.

Drilling through three discs, originally uploaded by bitful.

It is always recommended to destroy very carefully any hard drive that
contained personal data before disposing of it.
Here is Stuart taking that advice very seriously.

1. Stuart and I have something in common with the Obama girls: we all got a Wii for Christmas from Mum and Dad.
2. The expression 'For the win' (FTW) entered popular culture via the TV show Hollywood Squares.
3. One century ago, pink used to be a colour for boys (a 'more decided' and 'stronger' colour) while blue was considered more suitable for girls (more delicate and dainty).
4. Noel Clarke (Mickey in Doctor Who) wrote the screenplay for Kidulthood and directed and starred in the sequel, Adulthood.
5. The cost of the items in the carol 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' has been added up and tracked since 1984 as a tongue-in-cheek economic indicator.
6. The original 1981 Now That's What I Call Music (that Stuart painstakingly put together as a playlist from single tracks) is being re-released on Monday.
7. If you email iPhone photos to Flickr they carry geotags and an option to add them to your map.

I thought Christmas was over, and yet a familiar carol manifested itself a bit late in a most peculiar way.

• On the ninth day of Christmas, I got muscle aches.
• On the tenth day of Christmas, I got a sore throat and muscle aches.
• On the eleventh day of Christmas, I got chills, a sore throat and muscle aches.
• On the twelfth day of Christmas, I got dry eyes, chills, a sore throat and muscle aches.
• On January 7th, I got a runny nose, dry eyes, chills, a sore throat and muscle aches.
• On January 8th, I got a cough, a runny nose, dry eyes, chills, a sore throat and muscle aches.
• Yesterday I finally got the hint and stayed home from work.

I'm OK-ish today but don't think I'll get up to much this weekend.

Today's Italian word is malato, which means ill.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, originally uploaded by bitful.

Sixteen years after spending one winter in Nottingham to start a Ph.D.
I never finished, I went back for a brief afternoon visit during this
Christmas break.

As we approached Nottingham, this familiar landmark popped up and
brought back many memories. It was probably the first sight that
welcomed me to the place where I was planning to spend a few years
researching, writing and teaching, and I realised I had no idea what
it was, so I looked it up.

Wikipedia says it's a power station – I had figures that bit out. It's
coal-fired (not nuclear then) and lets out steam (not CO2).

I do wish I had a more positive outlook at the time.

If you are studying a foreign language, you might find these two tools handy. I use them a lot when I study Spanish but they do other languages (including Italian):

• Wordreference.com (free online language dictionaries)
• WebVerbix (free online verb conjugators)

Today's Italian word is traduzione (translation).

A man I do not see very often, originally uploaded by bitful.

This chap graces the slip cover on our ironing board.

He and I do not meet very often.

You now have seven day's worth of Italian words. If you wish, you may revise them by using the Italian one word a day online flashcards I have prepared for you.

There is no need to create an account and log in. However, if you do, your progress will be stored and the words you get wrong will be presented to you again and again until you get them all right.

Today's Italian word is ripasso, which means revision.

Bye bye Christmas Radio Times, originally uploaded by bitful.

And so this year too our Christmas Radio Times goes into the recycling bin.
Unlike previous years, however, I only opened it once, to check the airing
times for Doctor Who and Wallace and Gromit to set the PVR (only to watch
them both on iPlayer anyway). Stuart quickly flicked through film listings
and that was it.

Sitting down for a while and marking interesting programmes on it used to be
a Christmas tradition, but next year I might not bother. In the age of
catch-up TV and downloadable torrents, are listing magazines doomed to
disappear?

Interesting programme on TV last night: My Big Fat Diet, about Claire Sweeney stopping to control her food intake and exercise, and putting on two stone in just a few weeks.

The programme was not particularly full of incredible revelations (Sweeney goes to Hollywood where an agent tells her to drop several dress sizes if she wants to get any work – doh). I stuck with it though because it seemed to mirror what has been happening to me recently: after years of carefully checking daily food intake and exercising regularly, I gave up for nearly two months (no time, no energy, no concentration for either) and ballooned too.

Like Sweeney, we are at our best when we control what we eat. Our bodies simply do not know what is good for them, so we must consciously use our brains to talk some sense into them. And very much like her, I am now finding it incredibly difficult to lose the weight, and exercising has become more strenuous because of it.

Today's Italian word is cibo, which means food.