Progress on the Dara O'Briain diet

I've tried to be better about my eating habits during this week, because the fact is I eat slightly too much - I noticed I was hovering around 180 pounds, and decided to do a little to cut that down, not for the sake of my appearance (because no diet will prevent me from looking like a boiled potato that someone has amusingly stuck eyes on to) but just to protect my health. To that end, I decided to bear the edicts of the Dara O'Briain diet in mind - here's how it's going.

1. Eat less food

I think I've been pretty successful at this over the last week. You have to accept that you'll be slightly hungry for a while as you get adjusted to eating less than you now think you need. Not desperately hungry - if that happens you're going badly wrong, and you must never feel guilty about eating - but just being conscious of your portion sizes and how much you eat over a day. My main problem is sweet things, not helped by a vast supply of British biscuits brought over by my parents recently. Rather than filling up on those, I've turned to having yoghurt parfait as a dessert due to its healthiness, served in a wine glass due to my being a huge wanker.

2. Do a bit of walking, you fat bastard

Less good on this front! I haven't been totally idle, because I've been making use of the ping-pong table at work (where we play it as a brutal sport with a chance of accidental death from returns smashed at head-height) and I really did do a bit of walking on Tuesday to pick up some necessities rather than taking the car. I started the couch-to-5K plan again on Sunday, but that's the only time I've been to the gym this week, mostly due to having some ten to twelve hour days at work. I take Friday off if I've already worked forty hours by then, though, and so I still have time to do the three-times-a-week promise.

Stumbling through Rise of the Triad 2013

Recently and seemingly out of nowhere, one of the games from my late childhood was revived - this is the eye-popping (literally, I'm afraid) Rise of the Triad by Interceptor! It's an odd combination of a FPS and a more crazy abstract game like Super Mario or something - featuring substitute Nazis, big guns and at least one unexpected furry moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H3WdCn1vvc&hd=1

If I were to sum it up in three words, it would be "Points for trying". It's a bizarre example of something getting all the little things right but all the big things wrong - performance is mystifyingly appalling, movement is so fast that the precision platforming bits are nigh-impossible and the movement just isn't smooth at all - but on the other hand, the great soundtrack has been lovingly recreated, and frantic fun don't-ask-questions style of gameplay and bizarre in-jokey attitude of the game are intact. So I love what they've tried to do with it - it just needs to be... fixed before I can really give it a recommendation.

It's actually really interesting looking at the things in this video that you would have expected to have come from more modern sensibilities (like the limited weapon inventory) and realizing they were in the first game... it was an innovator in unexpected ways.