Fell off the wagon slightly on Wednesday, and had a couple of pints after work with Dave, Paul and Blazej in the Star Tavern in Belgravia.
The new thing was really going into Belgravia, a posh bit of London not that far from the office but not somewhere I’d been before - and for certain hadn’t been drinking there before.
The pub itself was pretty decent, quite quiet (for central London) and with a slightly mysterious roped off area where there was a guy who was the spitting image of Scottish PM Alex Salmond (it wasn’t him!)
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After what seems like a very long wait, developers are finally allowed to upload their apps for the latest version of Windows Phone 7, so on Tuesday I uploaded the new, slightly improved version of my Bedside Clock app.
The only real issue I had was the upload tool kept moaning I was supporting fewer languages in my new version than in the old. This confused me for a long while, until I found a very useful article by Pawan Agrawal that pointed out I needed to set the default language differently.
Right now (Thursday 25th) the app is still going through certification, but hopefully it will be available soon for anyone who’s upgraded their phone.
Promised I wasn’t going to keep doing diet things, but it is all new to me …
As you can see from my spreadsheet, week 1 went quite well and I lost 3lbs/2lbs of fat which is a good start and good incentive to keep going.
As I’ve been moaning about for quite a while our lunch opportunities in Victoria are much reduced, so our previous “last resort” of Subway is now much higher in the list of places to go. It’s not the healthiest (or the worst) place to go, but to show willing for the first time I only had a 6 inch veggie patty rather than the full foot long one. What willpower!
I think I’m starting to get used to eating less now, and am starting to notice the difference physically too. Hard part will obviously be keeping it going, but I’m hoping the making public what I’m doing will be incentive enough.
I was talking to Hilary about how electronic publishing will soon overtake paper-based books (we have this conversation a lot and you can guess which side each of us is on!), and afterwards I thought I’d actually learn how you can publish your own Kindle books.
It turns out it’s actually quite easy, and you can see all the details for yourself at https://kdp.amazon.com. There are lots of standard formats (HTML, Word, PDFs etc.) that will work, but I suppose the art is making the book look reasonable on the slightly limited Kindle format.
What I’m thinking of doing is putting all the 365 days of this blog - assuming I make it to the end - in a free book on Kindle. If you’re reading this in that format, you must either be a very big fan (in which case you worry me) or you are me and I’m talking to myself. Hello.
I’ve been playing about with making some video slideshows from still pictures - mainly tinkering around with Josie’s “a photo every hour” series talked about on her blog (or see the pictures on her Facebook page).
I’ve done similar things before, mainly my epic movies of our 2005 US Jolly Boys holiday (here, here and here if you want to relive their glories), but I hadn’t tried using Windows Live MovieMaker 2011 before, which was a big improvement on earlier versions.
The new movie is still under wraps as it’s still work in progress, but it was so much easier to use, and a great tool for free.
I’ve been looking around for some new ideas for another phone app, and the other day I found out about Factual.com, which is a repository for all kinds of interesting and mostly location based data.
There are lots of interesting things there, including quite a lot of UK-based information which is very nice. I do have an idea for a (pretty dull) app based on what I’ve found, hopefully more about that in the next few weeks.
We’ve been struggling to find new places for lunch, and decided to try Itsu for lunch.
This was a bad choice. All of the food the 4 of us had was disappointing, and my vegetarian sushi was awful. No taste, too many vegetables just jammed into some rice, and extremely tasteless wasabi.
After checking the menu just now, I’m glad I didn’t have the vegetable rice bowl or potsu becuase both of them have fish in them. What’s all that about?
Turns out Itsu comes from the Pret-a-Manger stable, and that style of food production might be OK for sandwiches, but for psuedo-Japanese food I’d strongly advised to go somewhere else if possible.
I miss Soho.
Too much dieting? Already I’m getting a bit obsessed with it (which is new in itself), but I’m not taking any new data until Saturday so not sure in reality how it’s going.
Anyway, I did two new things in one yesterday. I went to Costa Coffee under the office in Cardinal Place before work for the first time, and ordered a “skinny” latte which I’d never done before. I’d obviously heard people ask that, but it did sound a bit weird saying it myself. Not sure any type of latte is really diet friendly, but too late now.
I was surprised when I was told there were tickets available for Arsenal’s Champions League Qualifier against Udinese at The Emirates, so it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
I just about managed to get to see the kickoff after leaving work late, and had a seat just 6 rows from the front just to the left of the goal at The Clock End. The stadium is quite nice if a little soulless, and the crowd - at least where I was sitting and the people rolling up late - were surprisingly quiet and nicely behaved.
The game itself was quite good for the neutral. Arsenal took an early lead through Walcott and should have had another soon afterwards, but after that Udinese battled back into it and were unlucky to lose 1-0 in the end. Their fans were great and put the home fans to shame with their passionate support and singing.
Definitely well worth going, but I’m glad I don’t have to watch Arsenal’s tiki-taka-lite football every week.
My diet is now officially 2 days in, and I’m trying to eat more protein and less carbs and fat than usual. Have to wait until Saturday’s first weigh-in to see if it’s working.
Anyway I was looking for something suitable at the supermarket, and decided to try something new; Quorn Sliced Fillets, which fitted the bill nicely. They were a little dull, but with some beans they were fine and made me feel I was actually dieting :-)
One of the dullest new things so far I’m afraid, but this is not easy!
