The Tokyo Sky Tree, when completed, will be the tallest artificial structure in Japan, almost twice the size of the Tokyo Tower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Sky_Tree
I noticed I can see the Sky Tree growing from my bedroom window! I think it’s over 300 meters high already – almost half of its final 634 meter height. This photo was taken from my bedroom window.
Click on the photo to see it full size.
doug
It looks like it’s been 2.5 years since my last real diet diary post, saying I needed to “tweek” my diet. After that it was like a slow-moving car wreck, and I gained everything back again. (sigh)
After so many rebounds can I lose weight again? Or is this like Susan Boyle’s theme song where “there are dreams that cannot be?”
I don’t really feel like I have the confidence to start journaling *yet again*.
Yet I know from decades of experience that it truly is the only way for me to lose weight.
Believe me, I’ve tried EVERYTHING else and the only thing that works is limiting calories and exercise. And the only way of limiting calories (for me anyway) is to journal everything I eat.
The problem is always that after 700 days or so… I just start rebounding.
But I really do have to lose weight, get blood sugar and cholesterol under control, etc. It’s like an emergency already.
In my “last great diet” that started in June, 2005 and last about 2 years, and where I got down to 79.8 kg before rebounding to 125 kg yet again I got very used to beginning my week on Fridays. It seemed comfortable – and a good safety blanket for the weekend starting with bonus calories.
Well, tomorrow is:
- Friday
- January 1st, 2010
- The start of a new decade
It’s like… a sign that I really should start.
Plus I have to travel to Boston in the late spring and will probably end up in economy class, which is really uncomfortable for a 13 hour flight at this size and weight. Another incentive.
So I feel like I should just throw out everything too fattening tonight (like a tube of mayo staring at me) and just somehow, some way find it in me to start my diet over yet again. Even though I have no idea how to deal with the rebound I feel waiting for me down the road. And without the confidence that “it’s time again!”
But I have to start somewhere, right?
doug
A summer festival near my house tonight…
Shinkoiwa Bon Odori – a summer festival near my house tonight.
The Sumida River fireworks were tonight. This was taken from my 3rd floor veranda at my house in Shinkoiwa in Katsushika, Tokyo.
Here are some of the solar eclipse photos I took during today’s 11:13 am solar eclipse. Tokyo had 70% of total. I think the fact that it was cloudy adds to an other-worldly atmosphere.
Click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized photos.
doug
I have this Thorp & Martin eclipse viewer booklet from the 1925 Boston eclipse. I was hoping to use it to view tomorrow’s 70% eclipse in Tokyo – the first solar eclipse here in 46 years! But I can’t contact Thorp & Martin, and somebody else thinks the viewer provides no protection. Can I look at the LCD of my digital camera while taking a photo of the eclipse?
Click on the thumbnails to see them full size.
doug
It’s the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. I’m sure everybody who was alive then remembers where they were that day.
I didn’t get to see it live on TV because I was in the middle of the Atlantic ocean on a ship at the time.
doug
There is an interesting, balanced take on Chrome OS – why it is relevant and why it is irrelevant at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21004&tag=nl.e550
I lean towards the skeptical points mentioned.
You know, as experience showed with the iPhone when it was first released, users just wanted to do more with the device than Apple first envisioned and thus were forced to create a SDK and allow apps to be created for it – not just the original “web apps.” People found the web apps to be too limiting.
I think that people who buy even portable netbooks will not be satisfied by being constrained by a browser and web apps and are inevitably going to want to be able to run apps directly on their devices. I don’t believe that the future is entirely in the cloud. I think it will be a mix.
I think Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) is a good vision of the future – a mix of a very cool local client that works on Mac, Windows, iPhone and other mobile devices, combined with a cloud version that lets you synchronize and also access your data in a very nice web interface. Plus you can choose which data to synchronize, which to publish to the outside world and which to keep local on your own device in 100% privacy. And it just has really cool features.
That model is the best of both worlds I think.
doug
After helping me wash the dishes and taking a bath in my hands, Hao-chan flew over to the computer to dry himself.
It’s today all over the world… Auckland 10:40 pm, here in Tokyo 7:40 pm, Mumbai 4:10 pm (they are strangely off by a 1/2 hour), London 11:40 am, Boston 6:40 am, St. Louis 5:40 am, San Francisco 3:40 am, Honolulu 12:40 am… I think everybody’s on the same day only for 2 hours each day…
We should have a name for this time of day…
doug
