Posts filed under 'General Rambling'
April 9th, 2008
A couple Sundays ago (March 30th) I started a little vegetarianism experiment. This was mostly inspired by a post by Mark on his blog, and also a follow-up conversation with Mark at lunch. This is the portion that triggered my experiment:
By fasting from particular foods, I become more conscious of the food I do eat. How much am I eating? Why am I eating? In the same way, I can limit my indulgence in TV and I start asking “Why am I watching this? How much have I watched?’
So, I’m a fan of meat. I have no moral objections to the wholesale slaughter of cows, chickens, etc. I think meat is a necessary part of a great meal. But I also think my diet could use a little more rounding (what? a bag of beef jerky isn’t a meal?) So, here is my experiment:
- Go vegetarian for 2 weeks (minimum)
- Dairy and fish are okay (I’m not that crazy)
That’s it. Pretty simple. So, I’m a week and a half into it and I thought I’d share some observations:
- I haven’t had a huge craving for meat, unless it’s thrown in my face (ads for a delicious looking cheeseburger, people eating tasty chicken wings at a restaurant)
- Meat-substitute products (Morningstar crumbles, burgers, etc) are surprisingly tasty, but more expensive than their meat-original counterparts
- One can be a vegetarian and have a lousy diet. Pizza, chips, cookies—lots of junk food falls under that vegetarian umbrella.
- I’ve been eating better not because I’ve gone vegetarian, but because I’ve been overall more conscious of the food I’m eating/preparing. This goes along with what Mark said in his post. The corollary: A diet that includes meat is quite healthy, given the correct balance and well-reasoned choices are maintained.
- All the good sandwiches need meat. Walk into a deli for a sandwich and your vegetarian choices are tuna salad or what amounts to a tossed salad between bread slices. I did the tuna a couple days, the other option doesn’t appeal to me.
- Eggs without bacon or sausage? Not the same.
- I’ve been forced to expand my culinary repertoire. When cooking, it’s so easy to fall into a rut of the same tried and true dishes. Most of my go-to meals, I’ve found, feature some type of meat. Some of those I’ve converted using the faux-meat choice (tacos with the Morningstar crumbles for instance) but generally I’ve been hitting the cookbooks and trying some new stuff. I hope to document some of those on the Great Taste Coaster blog.
That’s it for now. I’ll have more updates as the experiment continues.
February 20th, 2008
John Scalzi, over on his blog, wrote some advice to writers about managing their money. I think a good deal of that advice makes sense for non-writers as well, so I’m linking to it. You never know when you could pick up some nugget of wisdom that changes your life!
February 13th, 2008
One of these days I will actually blog more often than the current quarterly or semi-annual schedule. But in the meantime, check out a new group blog I’m involved in called… well, we still need a good name. Call it Random Food Blog for now. We’re going to post recipes, share adventures in dining, and various other food-related topics.
Oh, and if you can think of a catchy name for the blog let me know.
July 6th, 2007
The are few things more satisfying than the crack of bat on baseball. The sturdy plastic of the Whiffle (not your cheap imitation) variety bat & ball makes a surprisingly good substitute.
July 5th, 2007
So now Pownce has entered the fray among services like Twitter and Jaiku. Yet another social medium to keep tabs and share with your friends. And then there’s more full-featured services like Facebook, Vox or Virb–I won’t mention the M-word. All have the pros and cons.
They’re social, so you want to keep up with your friends or feel like part of a community. But how do you pick just one? You may have friends partial to one or the other, how do you choose? You might end up trying to update with multiple sites. Which then leads to the overload mentioned in the title. Then you realize you should just stick to email.
This is just like competing IM networks. So I guess we need multi-protocol clients to tackle this problem, like Adium/Trillian/gaim/etc did for IM.
February 15th, 2007
In my part-time job as sometimes Organizer within the various social circles of which I am a member, I have availed myself of technical assistance in the form of an invitation/planning website whose name shell not be mentioned (but shares some letters in common with the word EVIL.) My continued use of this resource, despite an increasing number of ads and bad design decisions, was due to the fact that this EVIl site offered a few “killer” features which competitors lacked. Namely, the ability to offer a choice of dates and times and thereby choose the best one based on user feedback.
So, over the years I’ve come across a number of services which touted themselves to be EVIl-slayers. Hopeful, I’ve evaluated them always to find disappointed when my killer features requirement went unrealized. The latest foray came yesterday after reading a post by Scoble. I was yet again foiled by the lack of features. This time, however, I decided to post my dismay in the comments.
Enter Planypus, which was offered by Yan Pritzker as a possible solution to those in my organization dilemma. I checked it out. It was so close, the closest I’d seen to my organizational nirvana. In fact, when I envisioned my “Screw it, I should just code it myself” app that would meets my needs it looked a lot like Planypus. However, it still had that focus on one single date choice which makes things a no go for me. So much promise, though!
I offered some feedback on the site, sharing my hope that the feature of my dreams could somehow be added. I got a response back from Yan in about a minute telling me that not only was my feature in the works but he also offered an workaround that could simulate my multiple-date-choices using the Places functionality already present. Sweet!
I invite you (heh. get it?!) to check out Planypus. Great design and functionality, friendly and responsive development team, and it’s even written in Rails! Maybe some of these guys will be in attendance at RailsConf and I can lay the praise on them in person.
And those of you who know me, expect some Planypus invitations shortly. 
October 16th, 2006
Late to the game, I know, but those of you who experience the extreme what of “John Mayer Has a TV Show” will appreciate that the humor lives on (apparently) in his blog. Be sure to read the Oct. 10 entry “I’m thinking about tanning professionally” because it’s true comedy gold. A laugh riot. And I’m not just saying that.
August 15th, 2006
First off, the amusement level of this music video is off the chart. Warp Factor Love (via WWdN)
AMD is releasing some new Opterons (and a new freakin’ socket, Socket F) to keep up with Intel’s new Woodcrest. I’ll wait to see some benchmarks and reviews, but I’d be more interested to see an AMD response to the desktop Conroe chips and mobile Meroms.
Along with the indispensible Quicksilver, Blacktree has released Visor, which pops down a term from the top of the screen ala the console in many an FPS game. There are a lot of times when I switch to or load up a new term just to run a quick command (the odd host or ping, etc), this just saves a bit of time and looks cool to boot.
February 10th, 2005
NOPE!
September 16th, 2004
This project by Jon Udell looks like a great synergy opportunity between Amazon and local libraries. Look up the book on Amazon, click the bookmarket and it’ll find the book at your local library. Libraries should pre-load this on all their public machines.
Mark told me that reference librarians already utilize Amazon in their work (because of the wealth of meta-data and excellent searching.) This could be a further timesaver.
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