Tickets are still available, so register now to take part in this fantastic event!

I’ll see you there!

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.

Oh, and if you can think of a catchy name for the blog let me know.

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.

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.