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Month: August 2009

recently on twitter.com/dsamojlenko

Published on August 30, 2009
  • Tech Support Cheat Sheet: http://xkcd.com/627/ #
  • TIFF schedule is out today – thanks @moviemartyr for posting a scan: http://tinyurl.com/nkqorj – now to put together a wishlist #tiff #
  • Listening to Peaches’ new album, I Feel Cream. It’s pretty awesome. #
  • RT @larry411: I’m sold on @TIFFReviews for #TIFF09 scheduling. Ties to Google Calendar, even shows end times. –TIFFReviews does indeed rock #
  • Making want list for #TIFF09, an exercise that may be futile – didn’t buy adv tix, so we’re at the mercy of the single-tix availability gods #
  • ok, this looks awesome: http://digg.com/d1u8wA – “I don’t know… I’m on marijuana minutes.” – HBO’s Noir-otic Comedy Bored to Death #

recently on twitter.com/dsamojlenko

Published on August 30, 2009
  • Tech Support Cheat Sheet: http://xkcd.com/627/ #
  • TIFF schedule is out today – thanks @moviemartyr for posting a scan: http://tinyurl.com/nkqorj – now to put together a wishlist #tiff #
  • Listening to Peaches’ new album, I Feel Cream. It’s pretty awesome. #
  • RT @larry411: I’m sold on @TIFFReviews for #TIFF09 scheduling. Ties to Google Calendar, even shows end times. –TIFFReviews does indeed rock #
  • Making want list for #TIFF09, an exercise that may be futile – didn’t buy adv tix, so we’re at the mercy of the single-tix availability gods #
  • ok, this looks awesome: http://digg.com/d1u8wA – “I don’t know… I’m on marijuana minutes.” – HBO’s Noir-otic Comedy Bored to Death #

Famous Frenchy’s

Published on August 24, 2009

Back in July Ron Eade wrote about Famous Frenchy‘s, a new burger joint in town.  Since I love a good burger, especially when they have names like “The Triple Bypass,” I figured I’d have to check it out for myself.

We walked into a smoke filled kitchen – apparently the hood fan was running at 20%.
Regardless of the smoke, they were pumping it out!

The place wasn’t packed, as it’s only been open for a few weeks – though I’m sure this will change shortly as word of mouth spreads.

As we approached the cash we were greeted by Shonn Bidner, one of the owners.  I’m a curious cat, so I pushed him for some details on the cost of opening a restaurant, food producers and suppliers, local chefs, and finally the burgers.

First things first: these aren’t gourmet burgers.  They are good old fashioned chip truck burgers. Seasoned ground beef and that’s it. No filler like eggs, bread crumbs or any other junk.  The seasoning is the secret ingredient, so of course as soon as I received my order I tried to break the code.

I was able to pickup some distinct flavours that lead me to think they were using some version of a steak spice.  I won’t try to dissect it all here, but Shonn says the secret seasoning is the brainchild of Louis Charest, executive chef for the Governor General.

The patty itself was a generous portion, cooked to perfection – nice and juicy.

My dad ordered the Triple Bypass and killed it.  This burger is a monster.  Three of their large patties piled a mile high on a burger bun.  After seeing the pic on Ron’s blog I had assumed it was served with cheese and bacon, lending some truth to it’s name.  Unfortunately @ $5.35 for this monster bacon and cheese are extra.

I guess you have to pay your own trip to the hospital. 🙂

My mom and I had the bison burger that was equally as good, and we shared a family fry with gravy on the house!
Thanks Shonn

Bang-Bang Servo Diet (aka Steve Ward Diet)

Published on August 22, 2009

Here is my version of the Bang-Bang Servo Diet (Excel Spreadsheet, 51Kb)

Via this article on Kottke.org linking an article by Philip Greenspun where he talks about The Steve Ward Diet:

In the 1980s Steve Ward, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, described a sure-fire dieting scheme. “All that you need for my diet is graph paper, a ruler, and a pencil,” Steve would explain. “The horizontal axis is time, one line per day. The vertical axis is weight in lbs. You plot your current weight on the left side of the paper. You plot your desired weight on a desired date towards the right side, making sure that you’ve left the correct number of lines in between (one per day). You draw a line from the current weight/date to the desired weight/date. Every morning you weigh yourself and plot the result. If the point is below the line, you eat whatever you want all day. If the point is above the line, you eat nothing but broccoli or some other low-calorie food.”

The hand-drawn version would look something like this:

steve-ward-dietthumb

I like this “diet” because it’s not really a diet per-se.  There’s only one rule – if you’re on target, eat what you want.  If you’re above your goal for the day, eat light (although he doesn’t mention it, I assume I can add “and/or exercise more” to the equation).  Every day you get feedback on how you’re doing, and you can adjust your daily routine as needed.

Of course now there’s an iPhone app that can help you track your progress in place of the graph paper and pencil, which looks pretty sweet.  I also came across this Excel spreadsheet that will help you plot your progress.

That spreadsheet didn’t quite do everything I’d wanted it to, so I went ahead and created my own.  I’m not much of an Excel guy, but I like to play when I get a chance, so I’ve included it below in case anyone else would find it useful.

One thing I added is a field that gives you your instructions for the day – pretty straight forward, if you’re under your target it says “EAT NORMAL”, if you’re over your target it says “EAT LIGHT.”  I didn’t really know what to do when you’re right on target, and I presume for simplicity’s sake it should probably just say “EAT NORMAL,” but I thought it deserved slightly different treatment for some reason, so it shows up in a different colour and says “MODERATE.”  That may or may not be useful, but whatever.

I’ve also made it printable.  My thinking is that in the mornings I get out of bed and head straight for the scale.  I need to record that number right then or else it won’t get recorded, so I like to keep a printout of this chart and a pen on my nightstand.  This way I can record it and even without plotting it on the graph, I can see if it’s above or below my target for the day and figure out the instructions myself.  Later on I can go record the numbers in excel for posterity, and to see the pretty lines that get drawn.

Feel free to grab the spreadsheet below, and if you have any suggestions or improvements, throw them in the comments.

Bang Bang Diet (Excel Spreadsheet, 51Kb)

UPDATE: I made a Google Sheets version of the Bang Bang Diet

UPDATE:  Also check out The Line Diet – a web-based version that looks great!