I just had a vision of the future. Y'know how people say the singularity is coming, and that artificially intelligent technology is going to take over the world? I think technology will fall under the domain of a single crazy person long before it can exercise its own will; "technological warlords" will be the new worry, and not the technology itself. Imagine a robot army of 10 billion under the control of a single person; this might be a more likely and more dangerous scenario than some kind of terminator/matrix scenario of machines waging war on humanity of their own accord.
Haha
I'm making a lovely breakfast. I will take a picture of it when it's done, and that will be your picture for the day. As always, you are powerless to influence the flow of culture.
Halal corned beef, organic super-expensive eggs, and toast: approximately 500 billion calories. I need to live it up before the 30th, man...my "last hurrah" will be my parents visiting me and eating out then. After that it's "hello, new matthew." "hello, 2500-calorie-a-day matthew." "hello, 3x-a-week-exercising matthew." I still haven't worked that last part out yet. Maybe I should. I thikn like the diet, it needs to be a lifelong committment to being active, so therefore I need to find things that I enjoy doing (like cycling and martial arts and possibly pickup league sports, if they'll have me).
Ima find you a random image from wikipedia today. It's some UK nobleman; "lord truro" I presume.
I just made a pot o' food. I used my chili recipe, but instead of meat I used no-meat, and I added a can of jalapeņo peppers (do you like my fancy ņ?). After boiling it for 10 minutes, I made rice and stirred it all together. So I now have on the stove a pot full of red kidney beans, diced tomatoes, jalapeņos, spices, and rice. I am going to let it cool off to room temperature, then eat it. I hear that beans and rice constitutes a "complete protein" -- i.e., it's a good vegetarian food. Healthy shit. Too much salt, though.
I start my new food lifestyle on October 30th. The challenge is finding ways to exercise, and staying motivated. Maybe martial arts? So expensive. I want a job. I was thinking about trying to work for a credit union, because I like finance but dislike capitalistic slimebaggery. I think they want customer service people for that, though, who look nice in suits. I am extra-ordinarily ugly at the moment, due to excess body fat and a lack of nice clothes, so maybe that precludes a job in customer service.
I tried to fiddle with ruby on rails a bit, but I couldn't follow some installation instructions for SQL I found online, and gave up. I'm just not a computer person -- I can't problem-solve or follow directions to the degree of precision needed to be successful with computer coding and administration. I don't think like that, pure and simple. I'd like to be one of those people, but I'm not. I'm not really sure if I have any notable abilities at all. Perhaps I have a lot of potential, whatever that means, but I've never practiced or developed or persevered with anything long enough to develop it into a skill. I'm a pretty worthless human being, actually.
I've kinda given up on life. There just doesn't seem to be much in it for me. I'll do my whole thing with leaving london and whatever, and see where that takes me, but I don't have high hopes for a great life-changing success or anything like that. It's mostly just a way not to die of boredom before I die of heart disease.
Yeah, I'm probably depressed or bipolar. But I can't afford medication, plus I just don't want to take it. I don't like drugs. I have a few more days left before my "diet" starts, so maybe I'll eat some fun things before then. My parents are going to come up soon, and will see how fat I've become. So embarrassing.
It's not that bad, really. I'm just run-of-the-mill depressed, like so many people. I can hack it.
But I do need to find something else in my life besides old movies, blogging, streaming internet tv, chatting, browsing the web, wendy's, the grocery store, and playing elevator action, or else I think bad things will start to happen to my mental health. I just don't know how long this lifestyle is sustainable, which is partly why I'm planning on leaving. I'd like to reduce my possessions to just what I can carry on my back, but I don't know if that'll work. For one thing I like my possessions, and for another thing I make good use of them. I don't have as many as a lot of people, though. The main ones of value are my computer/data, bike, guitars (which I haven't played in a long time), nostalgia, and some miscellaneous essentials (passport, files, ipod, wallet, etc). I guess if I really wanted to go mobile, I would replace the computer with a laptop, and ditch the other stuff (other than things like wallet and so on).
I don't know, though. I really don't enjoy being human.
This page has gotten goddamn huge because of all that ascii art -- every single character that constitutes it is surrounded by a font tag with color attribute. View source if you don't believe me. A 142k html document (not including images)...ridiculous.
I'm getting the fuck out of here. I'll give my 2 months notice by or on December 1st, and be out of here by or on feburary 1st. There's just no reason for me to stick around. I might as well go have adventures, as long as I have no job or family to keep me here. I do have an art degree, after all -- what better license to be a free thinker and free agent? It's also a convenient justification for being a bum.
As to where I'll go, I don't know that yet. Victoria was one idea I had, or somewhere in the less-developed part of vancouver island (which amounts to most of it).
In related news, I want to do something about my weight problem. I recently passed over the threshhold into "morbid obesity," with a BMI of 40.4. I simple can't be this way and hope to gain any measure of social acceptance or health.
A website calculates that in order for me to lose the 121 lbs necessary for me to reach a weight of 194 lbs by march 11th, 2013, which would put me at the absolute top of the BMI range for an acceptable weight for my height, I will have to assume a healthy lifestyle (an important distinction from "dieting," since a "diet" is ceased when a goal weight is reached) that consists of eating 2500 calories a day and full-on exercising 3x a week, for 30 minutes. 2500 is a 300 calorie increase from the 2200 daily limit I'd previously set for myself. My hope is that this added leniency will make the "diet" easier to stick to, and convert it from diet into the aforementioned "permanent lifestyle change".
I guess this is a somewhat reasonable estimate (if there are 71 weeks between now and then, then that means an average loss of about 1.7 lbs a week, which is perhaps a bit high for a guess, considering the decreasing rate of loss that comes from being lighter). I think I need more complicated math for this -- "rate of change" screams "calculus."
A 2500 calorie a day diet now will cause a weekly calorie deficit of 5600 calories, which amounts to a 1.6 pound-a-week loss. When I've lost half that weight and only weigh 255 lbs (red letter day indeed), my calorie needs will have decreased such that 2500 calories a day then will only cause a weekly loss of .8 lbs a week. I'm seeing a limit curve with decreasing slope. When I've lost half again of the remaining weight and am at 225, getting there at that rate will have taken...ok, this is too hard. I need calculus, but I don't remember how to use it.
I'm going to guess 4 years to "approach" 194 lbs. The thing is, exercising 3x a week and eating 2500 calories a day is what's needed to maintain 194 lbs, at my age (jeez...i didn't even take age into account when estimating). So, when I weigh 195 lbs and am still eating 2500 calories a day, it will take me about 6 weeks to lose that last pound, compared to about 4 days to lose a single pound when I started, which is a rate decrease of about 470%.
| weight checkpoint | pounds lost a week | weeks to get to the next checkpoint | total weeks |
| 315 | 1.6 | 37 | |
| 255 | .8 | 37 | |
| 225 | .6 | 25 | |
| 210 | .4 | 37 | |
| 195 | .2 | 5 | |
| 194 | 0 | - | 141 |
So, not 4 years, but about 2.7 years. July 13, 2014, is when I will weigh 194 lbs. My estimate is about twice as long as the website's estimate; I am inclined to think they didn't use include rate of change in their figuring.
There are variables that are just beyond my control, most of them coming from variations in my own metabolism and the impossiblity of precise measurement. maybe I should write to james and ask him to set me up a dy/dx problem. Or, I can just send him the link to this entry. Hehe.
Finding some way to exercise in the winter is going to be a challenge, though. Of course, moving to vancouver island might fix this. So, I think I've got it all covered. It will now all fall into place.
Oh yeah...an image for today. More rainbow ascii art? At least this time I'll do original ascii art, and not rely on cowsay.
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This is pretty much what I do. I set my emulator to play on maximum speed, and it does odd things to my brain.
Everyone once and a while I get re-inspired with the proposition that type o negative is the greatest band ever to have existed.
I think adding honey to my chili would improve it.
I think I might be becoming a boring person.
I forgot to blog yesterday. It was first time neglecting a day, in this new resurgence of 2011. That's ok, because I've been doing other things: posting on a bbs, and fiddling with bash shell scripting/apache served from home/dynamic dns/user accounts. Graduation comes in 8 days. I hope it goes smoothly. I know, though, that there's going to be at least one point at which it's not entirely clear what I'm supposed to be doing, or where I'm supposed to be going. That's just the nature of my reality: something to which I've grown accustomed over the years, and look forward to at every new event at which there are instructions to be followed and expectations to be lived up to.
Sorry -- I guess that sounds a bit eeyorish.
I'm thinking of giving renewed focus to the whole "computer geek" thing, except that it requires some of the same things that gave me problems in school, and that promise to give me problems at the convocation ceremony: reading and following directions. I could probably get into making video games, if I were a better programmer. But, I'm not -- I've attempted that road many times and it bears no fruit beyond 20 lines of code, loops, and random number generation.
I've made that chili in the entry below three or four times now. It's good stuff. However, I am still getting fatter, via it and via other things (like honey and granny smith apples). I have a new plan though: I bought a well-reviewed, electronic, solar-powered scale to replace the battery-powered scale that ate a $15 set of nicad batteries every few days, and had it delivered to my parents' house. When they come and visit me, I will ask that they bring it up. Then, I will start posting about my diet as I engage in it on reddit.com/r/loseit. I can't fail!
I have a long ways to go before I reach 194 lbs. A conservative estimate would be two years.
On the bright side, I found a script that will generate rainbow html text. It turns out by weird coincidence that I know the guy that wrote it, although I unfriended him on facebook, along with hundreds of others, so I'm not eager to send him a personal "thank you". You can then combine your rainbow html with the pre tag for cowsay fun and adventures:
_________________________________________
/ George Orwell once remarked that \
| political thought, especially on the |
| left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy |
| in which the world of fact hardly |
| matters. That's true, unfortunately, |
| and it's part of the reason that our |
| society lacks a genuine, responsible, |
| serious left-wing movement. ~ Noam |
\ Chomsky /
-----------------------------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
That's your "image" for the day, by the way. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
_-. .-_
_..-'( )`-.._
./'. '||\\. (\_/) .//||` .`\.
./'.|'.'||||\\|.. )*.*( ..|//||||`.`|.`\.
./'..|'.|| |||||\``````` " '''''''/||||| ||.`|..`\.
./'.||'.|||| ||||||||||||. .|||||||||||| ||||.`||.`\.
/'|||'.|||||| ||||||||||||{ }|||||||||||| ||||||.`|||`\
'.|||'.||||||| ||||||||||||{ }|||||||||||| |||||||.`|||.`
secure 2 large cans diced tomatoes, 2 cans red kidney beans, about 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of ground beef, 2 packets of chili spices, a splash of olive oil, and a pinch of salt.
coat the bottom of a large cooking pot with olive oil.
add hamburgers loaves to the oiled pan, heated to medium-high.
chop it up real good with a spatula.
fry til crumbly and brown, draining fatty water if necessary.
open cans.
add canned goods and spices/salt to the pot o' beef. Don't drain/rinse the beans.
stir it up real good.
boil violently on that same medium-high setting for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently enough to prevent burning.
transfer to a crockpot shell so you can use your single cooking pot to make rice. It's done.