Surprisingly I feel really great.  I’ve never felt hungry, and maybe it’s all psychological, but I feel healthier already.  I have a feeling that around day 5 or day 10 I will be extremely sick of drinking protein shakes, but for now it’s not too bad.

I took some “before photos”, I’ll post them when I feel brave (if that ever happens!)

I’m very sore today, because I tried the new exercises in the training plan, some of which I’d never done before (like squats, or this bent over dumbbell lift thing).  It’s been ages since I felt the “soreness” of weight training and it feels good.

I noticed I was a bit “away with the fairies” at work, forgetting to do some of the things that people asked me to do, but I’m really looking forward to seeing some results.

Tower Hamlets, the London borough in which I live, doesn’t have the greatest reputation, but for some strange reason I’m proud to live here.  I haven’t yet worked out what that reason is! I went for a walk today around the borough and took some photos.  You can click any of the photos to see a bigger version.

We’ve got some nice canals:

And some not-so-nice canals:

We’ve got a church… with a bar in the basement, which always seemed a bit wrong to me.

We’ve got stunning architecture and silly street names.

Note… I was being sarcastic with the stunning architecture.  In fact, I was absolutely mortified to learn that the name of the first building is Gordon House.

We’ve got the three tallest buildings in the UK.  And we’re not even compensating for anything.

See?  Our buildings are bigger than your buildings.  And our traffic lights are bigger than your traffic lights.

We’ve got Whitechapel Road, the second cheapest street on the Monopoly board.

The 25 Bus that is in the picture is the bus I got on to get out of Stepney as quickly as I could.  I was walking down Whitechapel Road through Stepney and I was quite scared.  There were some people looking at me as if they were going to mug me.  I quickly got on the bus and went down the road about 5 minutes.  Stepney is evil.  Don’t go there, ever.

Here’s an interesting sight I saw on Whitechapel Road…  first time I ever saw a real penny-farthing:

Some other photos I took on my walk:

Feeding time in Tower Hamlets

According to the sign, this area had regeneration that finished in 2001. Wonder how bad it looked before that.

I walk down here on the way to work each day. It’s got no offical name, but I call it Diarrhea Alley, or sometimes Dead Rat Passage.

Oh yeah, we’ve got Tower Bridge and The Tower Of London. But you don’t need to see those. They’re far too touristy.

When Mum came to visit in June, I pointed out an ugly block of flats in Old Kent Road which I thought were the ugliest I’d ever seen.  I was wrong.  These flats here are the ugliest I’ve ever seen.  Ever.

They are in Stepney, part of Tower Hamlets.  Stepney scares the hell out of me.  And my sister, who had to get her National Insurance number from the Job Centre in Stepney.  I was almost too scared to take these photos.  They take up almost the whole length of Cotall Street, Stepney.

All the graffiti and disrepair must be a recent thing though… because Street View doesn’t show them to be in quite as bad condition as the photos I took today (from the Street View link, you might have to rotate the camera 180 degrees to see the flats).

I was sure these flats were uninhabited, waiting to be demolished.  But believe it or not, that’s not the case!  There were people everywhere!  Click the photos to see them up close.

I go past these flats a lot, as they overlook the Limehouse Cut canal which I like to run down. 

The worst bit is there’s a brand new fancy apartment block going up on the other side of the canal that, when finished, will have a view directly onto this eyesore.  Poor them.

EDIT: I read this Page:
http://gutshot.com/bforum/blog.php?b=387
Apparently they were due to be demolished.  But they’ve been completely taken over by squatters.  Lovely.  Makes sense though.

The construction of the Olympic Village has closed all but two of East London’s many canals.

Grrr.  Olympic Site – you owe me a picturesque canal-side walkway.  A month ago I set out on a big walk to check out all the canals, and they were almost all closed.

Well I’m halfway through the first day of the velocity diet.  2 meals down and 138 to go, oh boy this is going to be tough.  I have to take this thing called Leucine, no idea what it is but it’s an essential amino-acid in a powder form that you mix with water and it has one hell of an aftertaste.

I had a lot to eat yesterday so I don’t feel that hungry today.  That makes my first day of the diet not too bad, however I’m not sure how this is going to go after day 4 or 7 or 28.  Oh boy.

I had a vanilla berry protein shake mixed with flaxseed and “superfood” and Leucine for breakfast, then after I got back from a long walk I had a chocolate raspberry protein shake.  Exciting stuff.

For those of you that don’t know, I like running and walking, and each time I go out for at least an hour, I draw the route that I ran on www.mapmyrun.com.  The site has a lot of bugs, but it’s the best one out there that I know of (that, and I started on that site, and I don’t want to swtich to another site).

Yes, that makes me a geek alright… but it’s a good way to track how far I go each month and how many calories it burns.

I walked for 22km today around Tower Hamlets to take some photos (the map’s just there), and put it on the map when I got back home. I’ll put the photos I took up in a separate post so you can see where I live!  It will be exciting.

This is something I learned about when I went to Rome with my Mum in 2007 and I was getting a bit panicky because of all the noise and disorder in Rome’s central train station – Rome is very chaotic… I don’t suppose anyone else has noticed that?

She explained to me I have Asperger’s, which is a mild form of Autism.  Characteristics (to rattle off the main headings from the Wikipedia article) include difficulties with social interaction, repetitive interests and behaviour, atypical and verbose language… yup that’s definitely me.  Also loud noise and crowds make me nervous. 

I like to think it goes some way to explaining why I’m such an independent person and have a tough time making really close friends.

What’s hotlinking?  It’s when a website links directly to images hosted on my webserver.  That means that that website gets images on their site, and I pay for the bandwidth.

But… what happens if I delete that image off my webserver?  Or… change it to something else?  Muhahahaha… this gives me an idea.

I’ve knocked up the following image in a few minutes:

Any time anybody downloads anything off my website (darnkitty.com), it’s logged.  I can easily check the logs and see which websites are hotlinking to my images.  I’ve found that websites are only linking to two particular images on my server… a picture of a question mark, and a picture of the java icon.

Note… to avoid this problem, all a website has to do is download the image and then re-post it on their own server!

I’m going to replace the appropriate images on my website with the picture above.  That means that those sites that display my images are now going to show the image above!  Check here and you’ll see what I mean (when they notice, they’ll probably take them down, but they were there at the time of writing):

http://sushiwidget.blogspot.com/2009/01/belgian-weather-forecast.html
http://www.highspiritsclan.net=094f2e9873c80320dcaa490e0d9f4487
http://z3.invisionfree.com/The_Quidditch_Site/index.php
http://www.ljojol.com/vb/t14.html
http://www.seed-forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=795487
http://www.pcintv.com/forums/showthread.php?=&threadid=30995

On the 11th of July I went to Trafalgar Square about 3.30pm because I had heard of the Fourth Plinth “art” project by Antony Gormley.  Basically, one person stands on the Fourth Plinth (these are usually reserved for statues of Kings) for an hour, and they have a different person there every hour for 3 months.  People can do whatever they like when they’re up there.  Because Trafalgar Square and The National Gallery are such massive tourist attractions, there’s no shortage of people to see them.  Here’s the official link: http://www.oneandother.co.uk/

When I went along, there was a lady with red and white balloons, but because she was so high up I couldn’t see what charity or whatever she was supporting.  But she was friendly and waved to everyone and I felt important when she waved to me.

Right on the hour she had to get down and an old guy got up, he took a deckchair and sat there reading the paper until it started to rain, when he pulled out a small brolly and hid under it.

See the link above – there’s even a webcam where you can watch them (it’s high resolution and the sound is very clear).  Right now there’s a guy dressed up as something out of Toy Story rambling about something.  Interesting.  I wonder what I’d do or talk about if I went up there.

In London, they have “Look Left” and “Look Right” painted on the road at most intersections, to relieve people of the one tiny bit of thinking they have to do when crossing the road.

However… I’m not sure which way to look at this intersection!  Oh no what do I do!

Apparently I look to the rigiht. 

Actually, I do know which way to look; I walk along this road every day and have done every weekday for the last 3 or so years.  In fact, that’s my work in the top right of the picture.

This is becoming one of my most popular sayings already… but you clearly don’t have to have a university degree to work for the City of London Road Painting Division.