Sunny.

It’s a lovely sunny afternoon as I type this, so for no other reason, here is a nice photo I found online of a sunny afternoon somewhere else. Some of you reading this will be familiar with the Dover Cliff pylons and are laughing now as they remember the hilarity that ensued when you asked an innocent new Dukie what they were. “Pylon” they replied and so a large group of you did in a sudden, violent but nonetheless entirely heterosexual manner.

The image reminds me of the hell that was CCF Run & March. Pounding pointlessly through the mud and gravel with Karl Beverly firmly, but fairly pushing you on and trying to find that inner strength and stamina you so clearly didn’t have and probably never would. As a 40 year old diabetic with a weight problem, I wonder now if I should have looked harder.

Podcast.

Now don’t get excited. I haven’t gone out and bought a load of expensive audio equipment and decided to start broadcasting my thoughts. Where to begin? Well, this week I dusted off my StumbleUpon account and began to stumble around the web once more. Stumbling threatened to become a total addiction amongst me and my friends last year sometime, until that is, something else happened. It could have been Travian , I am not sure. Anyhow, Stumbling basically involves downloading a new toolbar for Firefox or (spit) Internet Explorer. This toolbar has a ‘Stumble’ button that, when clicked, sends you to a random website. I say random, what I actually mean is a random website that someone else has found and recommended. You see, on the toolbar are also voting buttons - a ‘thumbs up’ and a ‘thumbs down’. The more positive votes it gets, the more likely it is to appear when you click the stumble button. With me so far? cool. The system is more refined by your own preferences. Here you can define what sort of sites you like according to hundreds of categories. You can then either stumble all your chosen categories or just one. Try it and watch the hours disappear. Those of you with families and/or lives will be struggling with the concept a little at this point.

So there I was, stumbling away through the ‘web development’ category when up came a site called “500 Wordpress Plugins You Must Try”. Wordpress is the blog software I use and those of you who read this blog daily (14 or so at the moment) may have noticed little gadgets appear and disappear as the week moved on. Some were fun, some were useless, some didn’t work and some slowed the loading of the page down beyond belief. However, last night, one remained defiant - Odiogo. It takes RSS Feeds and then reads them aloud using the best speech synthesis I have ever heard. Those in the know will know that most blog and forum software automatically produces RSS feeds and mine is no exception.

So not long after each blog entry is posted, the “listen now” button at the top of the page will work. Alternatively, IPod equipped listeners can click on the podcast button in the sidebar to the right and subscribe to it as a podcast.

The speech synthesiser sounds like a cross between the sort of smooth american who read’s Stephen King or Bill Bryson Audiobooks and the old guy who used to narrate the Disney live-action wildlife films. Try it and love or hate it. I intend to continue thinking it is the coolest thing in the world until at least Wednesday. Incidentally, you may notice my grammar improving, in an effort to get it to read my stuff properly. Sometimes the mistakes are it’s own - particularly read (pronounced “reed”) and read (pronounced “red”). As I type this, I must confess to wondering how it will read this particular sentence.

It’s not perfect by any means. There are two main problems at present. Firstly, there is a delay of about 20 minutes between me posting and the audio being available. Secondly, if I post and then spot a mistake, the feed is changed and the audio must be re-processed. As I quite often read and rewrite 3 or 4 times, this may be a problem for those of you who hang on my every word.

Interview Jitters.

If all goes well, I have an interview for an internal vacancy this week. At least 6 months management of a new team of keyers. The job is slightly different -six days a week, five hours per day and a few more hours here and there but it is something I really want to do. The only intimidating thing is the interview. Where I work, interviews are structured oddly and they are the toughest thing in the world to do well. By the time I blog again, I will know either way.

Another Half.

Again…another half pound at Slimming World. Just me and Jo this week and we didn’t stay until the end, opting instead for lunch up the road. She stayed the same this week and seemed quite glad not to be slimmer of the week for a third time. I am now 15 stone 13½ pounds which is the lowest in about 18 months. It’s going slow but I have still lost every week for 8 weeks.

I am now more or less obsessed with cooking. There is no point in denying it. On Sundays, I cook most of the day and fill up the fridge for the rest of the week. One of the more difficult concepts for someone like me to grasp, is the idea that you must eat to lose weight. Three meals with snacks between. Everyone I speak to who loses 4 or 5 pounds in a week has eaten more than they did during the week when they lost none. I eat beans, pasta, eggs, rice and potatoes - all ‘free’ on Green Days and am rarely hungry. I eat more fruit than ever and seem to find time to eat cereal bars and Ryvita when I get bored. I make a healthy chocolate cake at least once a week which beats the biscuit craving. I can really take or leave meat these days.

Here endeth the ramble, except to say that I am going to talk about the new Terminator TV series tomorrow. I bet you can’t wait.

Until tommorrow…

Categories: Blog, DYRMS, Family, Health, Internet, The Diet, Web Design, Work
Tags: audio, bill bryson, biscuit, ccf, chocolate, cliffs, disney, Dover, eggs, Features, Free, half, interview, karl beverly, meat, odiogo, pasta, podcast, potatoes, pylons, rice, saturday, slimming world, speech, stephen king, stumbleupon, Sunday, Travian, wordpress