Fast-food ban

KFC, Burger King, McDonalds - the offenders. I decided 2 or 3 years ago that I was going to stop using them, and I've stuck to it pretty well. I once went into a McD's 'cos I was desparate to find a toilet and felt guilty, and was a bit hungry so I got some regular fries. But that's it.

Why? I've heard the stories about what people have found in their burgers, and you know it's junk food anyway and not particularly healthy. I have known people who've worked at these places and heard stories that makes me wonder about the hygiene at a few of the outlets. I don't abhor burgers or chips, although I don't have them that often (I do like them lots actually); but no more from any of the aforementioned places.

Tags: fastfood burgers

Techie Talks

I went to Techu Katchu, now to be called "Ask Later" (for copyright reasons) on Wednesday with a mate. It was a last-minute thing after work, I got a call asking if I was doing anything and wanted to come out for a more intellectual evening than sitting in the pub. Although there was a fair bit of that after too....

Talks can get boring if they're too long. So the rules were: 20 seconds per slide, and generally around 5-7 minutes long per talk. There were several people that had come along to do one, not to sell anything or promote stuff; just to talk 'cos they fancied doing it, or maybe as practice for other talks they might do in bigger arenas. I thought public talking was supposed to be scary stuff! Mind you, there wasn't a very full theatre so the audience was about 20-30 (guess).

They were all generally technical talks, but you can't go into too much detail with such short talks so we didn't get to any one subject inside-out. The subjects varied from bad/odd things wrong with the world (the most political talk of the evening) to how to automatically solve Sudokus in newspapers using a scanner and some image recognition software in Ruby.

Tags: talk technical asklater sudoku

Beware - Contains Fish

Careful! If you pick up a pack of Salmon (from Sainsbury's, say) - don't forget that it contains fish. So says the allergy advice on the back of a pack of Salmon fillets I bought today. I kid you not. The world has gone mad. Well, more mad than it was, anyway.

Tags: allergy food humour

Online Friends

Getting to know someone online is all well and safe, and can pave the way for a good real-life friendship; but meeting them face to face for the first time is quite different. It's almost like you've been told about this person by a friend who knows them well, but you can still feel a little remote at the initial stage of real life meeting. It's not even the same as getting to know them by chatting on the phone first, 'cos you can still project quite a lot of personality and feeling into a telephone conversation.

Tags: internet friends dating

Fast Dogs

I've gone to the dogs now. Greyhounds to be precise. Went out to the Wimbledon stadium to go watch some races and bet on a few the night before last, and I didn't win anything. My mate won on about 3 races, but only cos he was fairly flexible in his bets and didn't win much each time.

Of course, the two times I didn't bet but knew what I would have bet on, the dogs came home and I could have won a bit - not sure how much a forecast (betting which dog will come 1st and 2nd in that order) would have got me but I could have got one if I'd bothered to start betting a bit earlier. We're not talking much money, but it was annoying.

Some trivia: I remember hearing somewhere that greyhounds are actually incredibly fast off-the-line, and can be doing 40mph within a few bounds - even faster than cheetah's over the early steps. Cheetah's of course are faster and can keep up the acceleration for longer. But still impressive.

A fun night anyway. Although the mobile reception was rather messed up with a massive amount of steel around in the stadium.

Tags: dogs gambling greyhounds

I'm not dead

I just haven't thought of anything to post about that I've remembered when I have been home or in the mood to log on and write about. I'm sure I'll think of something as soon as I've posted this though... Typical.