Monthly archive: September 2009

Memo.m4a (1562 KB)

Since the release of Halo 3: ODST last week Stuart has been playing on
the Xbox every night, and this is what it sounds like.

I know, content duplication, I hate it too but…

I use Twitter because it's pushed through to my phone and I love the @, RT and # syntax.

However, I get many more comments on Facebook (that's where most of my friends are), and some of the comments are very useful when I ask questions or need advice.

After recently swapping usernames (from @bitful to @lucabelletti), I did not think to reset the Facebook Twitter app, which is username-based. I only found out when I noticed that nobody commented on my FB status any longer – because it had not been updated in over a month.

They are now in sync again. World harmony is restored.

1. You can get pregnant while pregnant.
2. A Mac ad an iPhone an create their own wireless network.
3. Naked mole rats never get cancer.
4. Røyksopp means puffball mushroom in Norwegian.
5. Feeds can be translated and read in a different language in Google Reader.
6. Scatman John stuttered.
7. The title of Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men is taken from the poem To a Mouse by Robert Burns.

When I was little, this album cover was one of the scariest things in the house.

Someone mentioned Uriah Heep the other day, the name rang a bell, I googled it and there it was.

Shudder.

I love it when they swap advertising but leave old layered posters on in between campaigns.

Or maybe it's a new campaign made to look old. I had just got to the platform, the train was coming in and I did not have time to check, will do tomorrow.

1. Sarah-Jane Woodhall was nicknamed Trinny by family friend Frank Lauder – the director of the St Trinians films – when she was five-years-old. He dubbed her ‘Trinny’ when she was sent home from school for cutting off another girl’s plait.
2. Eurovision Song Contest organisers may ban countries if broadcasters reveal voters' identities, after people in Azerbaijan were questioned by police after voting for neighbouring Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over disputed land in the 1990s.
3. Livestock are responsible for nearly a fifth of all greenhouse emissions. We should eat more plants. Meat-free Monday anyone?
4. Sportswear brands Adidas and Puma were founded by feuding brothers.
5. Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe has put on weight.
6. We have enough body fat to sustain about 40 marathons.
7. Media files in Windows 7 taskbar thumbnails have a toolbar that allows you to play/pause and skip to next and forward items in a playlist.

I had a great time, danced for a whole hour in Trafalgar Square, and briefly caught up with the lovely Mike after his stint on the plinth.

Remember the line diet I started at the beginning of the month? It is not going so well. The idea that each day I could eat anything I wanted except if my weight was above a certain digit (in which case I would only eat broccoli) did not work out. I would either eat too much and then too little and I do not enjoy the extremes.

So it's back to eating slightly less and exercising slightly more, because it might be boring and slow but I know it works. I'm allowing myself 2000 calories per day, divided into six equal meals of low glycemic load eaten at three-hour intervals. It sounds clinical, but I have been doing it for a few days and I can assure you that it's yummy. It's based on musclehack.com GLAD diet, but I've reduced the number of calories to turn it from a muscle-building to a fat-busting regime. It is 1000 calories per day less than what I need to maintain my current weight, and it is expected to produce a weight loss of two pounds per week (each pound of fat corresponding to 3500 calories).

My long-term objective is to be a healthy, steady weigh constantlyt, and to help me achieve that I am trying to eat normally, but less. I know I can diet and lose weight fast, but it comes back faster and faster as I grow old. This is why on Sunday I had some fizzy wine at a friend – but turned down cake. Then I had Stuart's mammoth roast dinner – but only half, and ate the other half the following evening, followed by a Wispa Gold limited edition that I had instead of my late night planned meal, so that the daily total would still be under 2000 calories.

Yesterday's dinner wasn't exactly clean eating, but I'm back on track today.

It's got to work.

Sunday dinner. Could only have half, so I finished it last night. Made it last twice as long, for twice the pleasure!

On Sunday morning I tied an electronic chip on my running shoes, pinned my race number on my running top and headed to Regent's Park to take part in the Bupa Great Capital Run.

Runners were divided into England, Australia and Rest of the world teams, and all runners who completed the race in under forty minutes contributed to their team's average time. I'm sure I registered as England but ended up being in the Rest of the World team. Just as well, as we were second and Australia won.

Until last week I was not even too sure I could take part, as carrying two extra stone makes running a pain: it's like wading through treacle, and my joints feel like they are jammed with grit. But I trained moderately, took it easy and only did one full 5k run last week, just to reassure myself that I could still do it.

I had a fantastic time, the atmosphere was great, there was even a group warmup that brought me back to my aerobics and step-filled 90s (audio file attached, no idea where Posterous is going to place it, but you should be able to play it here).

I ended up being at the front for the start (and saw the dozen or so elite athletes start off in front of me). Which of course meant that for most of the race I was constantly overtaken by hundreds of people, but I kept going.

I did a very good personal time of 26:20, better than the first 5k I did when I took up running two years ago, but a little slower than the last 5k I ran in 2008.

There are a few pictures on the run site, but rights are reserved (the photos are for sale), so if you want to check my stats and see me pant you can enter my race number (1223) at http://raceresults.greatrun.org/?race=128.

My next race is going to be a real challenge for me, as it's a longer distance (10 miles). So training starts today for the Bupa Great South Run in Portsmouth on 25 October.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

20090913 093712.m4a (4252 KB)

1. In Google Reader, 'v' is the keyboard shortcut to jump to the website an item comes from (i.e. 'view original').
2. You can extend a disposable razor's life with a pair of jeans.
3. In Firefox, 'Ctrl-F-Enter' highlights all instances of the string you are searching for. In Chrome, 'Ctrl-F' already highlights them all, and then you can toggle from instance to instance using Enter.
4. Many airlines allow the use a GPS-enabled device on their flights.
5. Double tapping with three fingers on the display of an iPhone 3GS turns on zoomed mode. Double tapping with three fingers again zooms back out.
6. In the sixties, the UK briefly considered switching to driving on the right-hand side. It would have cost '£264m – about £3.4bn today. But that would now be seen as a ridiculously conservative estimate.'
7. When you hold and shake a window in Windows 7, all other windows are minimised. Shake again to restore them back. Also, AERO is a backronym for 'Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and Open'.

Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician and computer pioneer, widely known because of his outstanding contribution on breaking the German Enigma codes during World War 2.

In 1952 he was convicted of 'gross indecency' after admitting a sexual relationship with a man, and chemically castrated. He committed suicide in prison.

Three weeks ago, the first action I performed with my newly acquired rights as a British citizen was to sign the petition asking the UK government to apologise for Turing's prosecution.

As a gay man, IT professional and British citizen I accept Gordon Brown's apology and I remain as ever proud of my country.

I had noticed the little arrows scribbled on the mattress a long time ago but never asked why. After all, I've got my own quirks so who am I to judge.
 
Then Stuart recently told me that there are four arrows, two on each side of the mattress, at opposite corners, one ponting up and one pointing sideways. And that every time I change the sheets I was meant to turn the mattress in the direction of the arrow at the foot of the bed, so that in the long run both sides and both surfaces of the mattress get used evenly.
 
Like I was going to guess that by myself.

Sent from my iPhone

From 7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat, Tim Ferriss' a review of Dr. Eades' forthcoming book, which is directed at people who want to reduce abdominal fat and suggests that eating saturated fat has the following benefits:

1. Improved cardiovascular risk factors
2. Stronger bones
3. Improved liver health
4. Healthy lungs
5. Healthy brain
6. Proper nerve signaling
7. Strong immune system

I am coming round to this argument lately, and now cannot stop finding evidence for it. All those years with a low-fat diet might have been a waste of time after all (and I have got the midriff spread to prove it).

Three mallets. Three surprisingly small holes. Three empty-handed thieves on the run.

1. The distance between your eyes is one tenth the length of your arm, and this can help you estimate distances.
2. My (old) computer keyboard at work has a Scroll Lock key. I had to look it up to find out that 'Today, this particular use of scroll lock is rare'.
3. People on morphine still feel the pain, but are 'less troubled by it than they would be without the drug'. Found out while reading about the possibility of genetically engineered pain-free animals, so that they would not suffer because of factory farming. Er, improve their living conditions instead? But don't get me started on that – it's the only instance where I am happy to pay more for food.
4. Anna Wintour has had her hair in her trademark pageboy bob since the age of 14.
5. About 10,000 children were sent to Australia from British orphanages and institutions from the 1930s to 1967, many without their parents knowing.
6. The British comedy drama 'Jam & Jerusalem' airs in the US as Clatterford (from the name of the fictional West Country location where it takes place).
7. Paddington bear has an evil twin called Euston. You can follow Euston on Twitter. That's how you can find out that he is how he is because of 'growing up with a smug, t-total, non swearing, non-drug taking marmalade freak who has a fetish for wellington boots'.

Done in 10-15 minutes from a display MBP at the Apple store by feeding my British Citizenship ceremony Flickr photo set into Animoto. Random and very cool, can't wait to have some time to do a longer video and tweak the custom settings.

But things seemed to pick up on the way to work as I beat my PB (never went above level 100 before) – see pic #2. And this is the reason I stopped reading.

And then the sun was shining most of today, and when I got home I could still see shadows on the walls – pic #3.

Yesterday I recorded the heaviest weight ever when I stepped on the scales. I have not been to the gym in a month so it's not muscle mass that I've put on. Not that I needed to check, I just look down at my belly and shudder.

I am not entirely sure what happened, but over the past year I have really struggled to keep a healthy weight. I thought I had cracked it, after not having exactly the most balanced eating habits in my early twenties, but in the last twelve months I have made a bigger effort to keep the weight down and yet I got the worst results.

My friends are by now familiar with this, and often joke and ask me if this week I am eating out of tins or on the Master Cleanse. So here we go, another fad (perhaps) but this time in line with my everlasting desire to simplify and go to the essential: the Steve Ward Diet aka the Line Diet.

I first read about it on kottke.org, and I loved how simple and straight-forward it is. You enter your weight every day and it tells you if you can eat normally or just broccoli or some other low-calorie food. It can be achieved with graph paper, a spreadsheet, a website or an iPhone application, anything that lets you plot your daily weight on a graph and compare it to where you want to be. Here is what mine looks like:

We shall see if this one works. I am planning to lose 10 pounds in a month. And check back here in a few days, the spreadsheet will update as I progress. Nothing like being accountable to ensure I get results.

I went to return a book at the library and I'd forgotten it was moving today to new premises right next to Westfield.
 
It all looked very new but the automatic book return machines were not working yet (they are meant to identify the book and accept its return).
 
It is now even closer to work and I am looking forward to using it more.
 
Apart from a handful of old favourites, I always release books into the wild once I'm done with them.
 
What do you do with books you have read?

This morning I missed my bus stop on the way to work and found myself in Sussex Gardens. This is where I stayed when I first arrived in London, unsurprisingly as the street is packed with hotels end to end.

It wasn't my first visit to London but it turned out to be a life-changing experience.

Today I got off, had a quick look around, took this photo and realised that I was there in the same time of year (I was about to start uni) and memories of one of the most exciting periods of my life started rushing back. I knew that I had found The Place I wanted to be in, it was a very comforting feeling but at the same time I knew it was going to mess up my plans.

Now, 19 years (and two moves in other European countries) later, I have just become a British subject. Yes, my life has not exactly been as linear as I would have wanted it, but I am here now and I could not be happier anywhere else.