God says to one of his angels, “I’m knackered. I’ve just perfected an alternating 24 hour cycle of light and darkness on Earth.”
“Nice one God,” says the angel, “What are you gonna do next?”
“Probably call it a day.”

Yay, it’s official. Where I live – The London Borough of Tower Hamlets – is the UK’s swine flu capital.

http://www.thelondonpaper.com/…/tower-hamlets-is-swine-flu-hotspot

I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of London locked Tower Hamlets in using a very long length of barbed wire.  (I’m surprised London hasn’t done that even before the borough got Swine Flu.)

Lucky that I’m antisocial, and don’t know anyone else in the borough, so I don’t have swine flu… yet!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8163767.stm

I used to live in Camberwell on the 6th floor about 10 minutes’ walk from this building, it always scared me that we were on the highest floor in the furthest flat from the single stairwell, and I was never that happy about it.

When I look at the cost of flats in London, I wondered why the 15th and 16th floor flats near me are cheaper than the lower ones, despite the view they must have, and now I know!

Well I was looking through my logs of my website darnkitty.com and saw some people had been trying to hack my website.  They did it by attempting to hard-code certain variables in the URL of my page to override the need for the admin password.

Luckily they failed!!! Muhahahahaha.  Their attack would have worked if I had PHP’s register_globals option on.  Fortunately, I didn’t, as it’s a well known security hole.

If you’re reading this, and you’re a PHP developer… turn register_globals off.  Now.  Do it now.  Have you done it yet?

Now, some might say this is the whole reason I started a blog – so I could bitch about bad grammar.

And they’d be right.  Well… it’s not the whole reason, but it’s important enough to devote a whole category to it.  Now… how big will WordPress let me make this next sentence?

Please people… learn the difference between “you’re” and “your”!  *FACEPALM*

From: http://www.thamesbarrierpark.org.uk/
“Whether your out for a stroll, serious about keeping fit…”
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I emailed them (of course), but got an “undeliverable message”.  You obviously don’t have to be a university graduate to work for the London Development Agency.

Note: Some of you are bound to think that being pedantic is bad.  Well… I think being sloppy and uneducated is bad.  I’m sure most of the time it’s a matter of being sloppy, not being uneducated, but you just never know.

I’m an avid reader of the MoneySavingExpert.com forums.  Today I came across this one:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1829957

I’ll copy and paste the main bit from it here:

My brother was on holiday in Jersey and on the last day he went to an ATM to withdraw some cash. Just as he was about to insert his card the machine shoved out a large wodge of notes. There was no-one around and he had not noticed anyone walking away from the ATM when he arrived, so he grabbed the money and shot off. He met his wife and friends and they counted the cash – it was £300!!

Now I (and I’m not the only one) posted that I would probably keep the money.  First, I would check and make sure that the previous user of the cashpoint wasn’t still around.  If efforts to locate them failed, then yes I’d keep it.  Does that make me a bad person?  What do you think?

I was in Shepherd’s Bush a couple of months back and I had unknowingly dropped my debit card on the ground.  A guy came running up to me and handed it back to me.  I was very grateful for it.  So I would definitely try and find who it belonged to first.  But If I couldn’t find the person, then yes I’d probably keep it. 

Of course that situation is slightly different - the debit card has no real value to the finder.  If I had’ve dropped £300 on the ground, I would of course be happy if the person returned to me… but would I expect them to do it?  No I would not.  Perhaps I’ve been living in London too long, and my faith in mankind has diminished somewhat.

When I was 23 (in 2003), I was walking to The Hilly (Hillcrest Tavern – a popular student hangout near Waikato Uni) from my house in Albert St (about a 20 minute walk) and I found NZ$75 on the ground on Wellington St.  Was I going to hand it into the police?  No way!

Starting when I was about 15 I always had bad acne.  I remember going to my GP who tried all sorts of different antibiotics and creams, and none of them would clear up my acne.  So I was referred to Dr. Rademaker at Tristram Clinic who I got to know quite well over the few years after that.  He prescribed me Roaccutane, which he warned was quite a severe drug but would clear up my skin.

It sure did clear up my skin, but there was a huge list of side-effects, and I experienced just about every single one of them.  Conjunctivitis, fragile skin, dry and cracked lips, dry mouth, dry nose, itching, joint pains, nosebleed, delay in wound healing, depression, fatigue, headache, nausea, peeling palms or soles, sunburn-sensitive skin, thinning hair.  But ultimately, I decided, it was worth it.

The best bit was the cost, the dermatologist appointment was about NZ$120 but the tablets themselves were of negligible cost (perhaps $10-15).  Thing is, every time I finished the course of tablets, the acne would be back again a few months down the line.

So I kept taking them on and off until I was 25 and moved to England.  Over here in England, this medicine is not subsidised for private clients, and a three month course of the stuff was £2,000.  You could get it free on the NHS, but you had to be quite a severe case for that.

So I thought I’d give it time and see what happened.  In 2007 my skin was spotty on and off, it was particularly bad after a big night of drinking but never as bad as when I was a teenager.  In 2008, my GP put me on a course of Trimethoprim, a general antibiotic.  I was on it for 12 months and I convinced myself that it was working, even though I wasn’t sure it was.  Trimethoprim wasn’t generally presecribed for acne and when other doctors found out that I was on it they would look at me quizzically.

When Mum came to visit me in June 2009, she suggested that all the chocolate and junk food I was eating probably wasn’t helping.  I said that when I was 15, I tried eating healthy and it didn’t help (but when I thought longer about it, I was 15 back in 1995!).  So I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try it again.

I cut all chocolate, crisps, sweets and cakes out of my diet.  And that wasn’t easy – I can eat a lot of chocolate – a lot. In a chocolate eating contest, I would always win.

The point of this story is… that cutting all this rubbish out of my diet cleared my skin up in just over a week… it was incredible.  I’ve eaten almost no chocolate and sweets now for nearly 5 weeks and I feel so much better for it.  My skin is clearer, and I even lost 2.5kg.

So I’d just like to preach about the wonders of healthy eating and exercise.  It’s amazing what it can do for you.  Having clear skin and feeling healthy is almost (note… almost) worth never eating chocolate again.

I think the Sweet Chariot in Liverpool Street Station may have suffered a big drop in their sales since

I’m starting the Velocity Diet on Sunday, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me after that.

According to Wikipedia, who have linked to a semi-reliable source, the ITV1 show Golden Balls starts again on Monday!

The reason I’m so excited, other than the fact that it’s an absolutely brilliant game show, is that I went along to 3 recordings of it, twice by myself and once with my sister and a good friend of mine.  Twice I sat in a position where the camera was right on me… so I bought a PVR (personal video recorder) just to record the show in case I’m on TV!  I could have my 15 minutes of fame!  Well, more like 15 seconds.  But I’m still excited.

ITV1 used to show this for months, then they went into this weird mode of showing a new game show every 2 weeks for the 5pm time slot, which meant that Golden Balls had to take a back seat.  Some of the replacement game shows were good (e.g. The Chase, Divided), others not so good (e.g. The Fuse – it’s so American!  Let’s light The Fuse!!!  Haha bollocks).  But this time, hopefully it’s back to stay.

To sum it up, four people go through a procedure (which involves bluffing and deception) to build up money into a pot.  Two people are left at the end who have to split the prize money between them, which could be as high as £150,000.

Each of the two have to make a decision whether to split the money between them, or take it all themselves (steal).  The other person doesn’t know what the other person has chosen.  If they both choose to split the money, they get half each and everybody’s happy.  If one chooses to split, and the other steals, whoever decided to steal gets all the money, and whoever decided to split gets nothing (and if you’re in the studio during the recording, here’s your chance to boo them).  If they both decide to steal the money, they both get nothing and everyone laughs about it.

The choice that each of the two chose is revealed at the same time in a very dramatic fashion, and it’s guaranteed to have you stop whatever you’re doing and stare at the TV to see the result.

I saw a show where a girl “stole” over £100,000 off some guy and you could see he was devastated.  But then there were two people who split £76,000, netting each of them £38,000, and it was a nice happy ending.  They said in the recordings that people who steal such large amounts of money get recognized in the street and heckled.

As I studied mathematics, it’s clear that if you don’t consider human nature, the best thing to do for maximizing your winnings is for you to steal all the money for yourself.  But of course, if you’re playing against someone friendly and nice, it would be better to split the prize money because then you both get something.  But what if you think they’re going to steal from you?  Gaah, there’s no easy answer.  I’m glad I don’t have to make the decision.

Well, this Sunday 26 July 09 I’ve decided to start the Velocity Diet:
http://www.tmuscle.com/…/velocity_diet_30

I’ve always been particularly self-conscious with how I look, and I feel like I have looked the same since I was 21 (in 2001).  After reading the reviews online it seems like something I can do.

Basically, it involves nothing but protein shakes, milled flaxseed, natural nut butter, and a weird variety of supplements, none of which I have heard of.  Oh, and you get a healthy solid meal (HSM) once a week.

Three or four times before, I’ve done a “Juice Diet” where you drink nothing but Juice.  The longest I ever managed to do that for was 13 days in a row.  I think the Velocity Diet should be a bit easier since there’s actually a solid meal to look forward to once a week, and I love the taste of the protein powder that I have at home.

Being in the UK, the ingredients aren’t as readily available as they are in the USA.  I’ve used my favourite brand of Protein Powder – Scitec – but I’ve bought Biotest Surge, Biotest Flameout and Biotest Performance Superfood off eBay.

I can’t find the Biotest Leucine anywhere, so I’ve gone for Maxx Essentials Leucine 6000 Maxx.  It arrived from eBay today with packaging that’s all in French… which is a nice touch.  Doesn’t matter, I don’t know what the heck Leucine is anyway.

I’ve never had problems with eating the same thing for days and days on end.  I’ve never been good lifting weights though… I just can’t find the motivation.  In addition, I’m not the gym type, so I’m going to have to use the weights and weight bench I have at home.

Boy the Superfood is expensive – £34.95 for a tiny 140g (4.94 oz) container (plus the cost to send it to me!).  But… it’s got extract of Wild Blueberry, Orange, Raspberry, Strawberry, Acai Berry, Coffee Berry, Goji Berry, Pomegranate, Broccoli, Kale, Spinach, Wasabi, Wild Yam, Green Tea, Apple, Mango, Passion Fruit, and Watermelon.  Crikey.  It also has an Orac Factor of 5,000.  I wonder what that is.

The diet also involves Milled Flaxseed.  I bought it but am too scared to try it just yet.

It’s going to be hard not going out and having a drink or two with friends, or even a meal, so I’m potentially going to be a hermit for 28 days.  I’m not sure how well that’s going to go.

I’m quite nervous about all this, but I think it was in the “Body-for-life” book (something else I tried many years ago) where it said “if you do the things you always done, you’ll look and feel like you always have”.  Or something like that. 

So it’s only 28 days out of my life for this, and if I don’t try it, I’ll spend much longer than that wondering what the result would have been like.

Welcome one and all to my blog.  I’m really hoping to update this regularly.  It will be super exciting, I promise.