Soylent, day 11

I started with the strawberry flavored Soylent and it actually tastes strawberry.
The white/gray/yellow-ish look of the dry powder morphed into a more suitable red after being mixed with water. That was a bonus because it actually does not look bad either.
The texture is a bit like a smoothie with a bit more oat flakes mixed in than is customary. To test if the mixture changed flavor or texture when stored, I mixed a batch/meal/shake/portion last night and placed it in the fridge over night.
The prepared mixture did not really change flavor or texture over night.

All the other flavors followed the same pattern as the first: Tasted what the label says(OK, the label should maybe state "X-flavored oat flavor"), looked the right color and had an OK texture. And about the texture: You learn to appreciate the seeds in the mixture, because you get something to actually chew on...

All in all a pretty pleasant experience.

I guess to some extent I (and it seems: many others I talked to) were expecting some of that terrible "diet powder" crap that, in my experience at least, has the distinctive taste of "horrible, but I'll endure it to get results even if I know I'll regain any weight loss immediately because I'm eating expensive crap instead of changing my lifestyle". But in that respect I'm happy to be disappointed.

I'm guessing that as Soylent actually contains the stuff your body needs, your body recognizes it as something it can try and even have some more of.

OK, so that sounds all swell and terrific. So what's the catch?

• I feel good. Not better. Not worse. No real change. And I've worked out the same as I usually do, so no problem there.
• Cheaper than my regular diet, but I almost exclusively eat out, so that does not really say that much.
• Mindbogglingly boring. At least to me that loves any good food, be it a juicy food-truck burger at lunch or a long breakfast with a book in my local café on the weekends. To have Soylent as my only food source for any length of time would probably lead to some form of bacon-deficiency induced depression.

So far I would say that I'll probably keep buying it after this batch is depleted.

But I'll use it when I'm pressed for time at work.

When I forgot to buy anything to eat and it is to late to fix that.

When I'm to lazy.

Or when I just need to get something to eat really quick because I'm way to late for something.

I'd say those times are adding up to almost half my meals.

And the pooping you ask? No real difference actually. A bit less maybe. Perhaps a bit surprising I would say, but there it is.

PS: There's a sheet of really large bubble plastic in the package. *giggles*

PS2: Poop! *giggles*

Soylent

I wanted to try this futuristic Soylent thing. But the Soylent company does not yet ship from USA to Europe. However, a quick search gave me Soylent Life, a company in the Netherlands that makes it based on the D.I.Y. recipes of the movement around the original makers of Soylent. I love open source.

Anyway: I ordered one of their 1 month variation packs, which is 90 meals in 5 different flavors. I got it today and was struck by the size and weight of the package... It was big and it weighed around 20 kg.

A LEGO Mindstorms SPIK3ER for size reference... because... reasons.

I should not have been so surprised as I actually remember calculating the mass of the things you needed to eat to around 600g per day already 20 years ago after having a discussion on the possibility of taking a pill to replace eating. And just as the Soylent product, that calculation was "just add water".

It filled the entire base of of one of my cupboards:

I'm about to tear out the kitchen(it will be done this year, I swear), thus the lack of cupboard doors...

So the plan is to start "eating" only Soylent (nearly only, because: beer, steak and friends) , beginning breakfast tomorrow. And to answer the questions I have, like: Will I feel full? Does it taste dust flavored dust and chemical fruit? Will I have the energy to keep up my exercise schedule? Will I hate it? Is it the shiny Sci-Fi future or the dark one where it always rains?

And also the question a friend of mine had: What will my poop be like? I love the brain on that one.

I'll keep you posted.

Or just myself posted I guess. ;)

What women seem to think men want

I've exposed myself to Internet dating on and off for around... I don't know... 6 years maybe... and there are a few things that really does not make me want to contact a woman. And by a few I mean a lot. So I thought that instead of whining about it in my dating profile(I have done so in the past a few times with something around zero women throwing themselves at me as a direct result) I thought I would not do that and instead whine about it here. Because here nobody actually reads it and thus does not get offended. Yada yada, Puck something something mended.

A quick tip to the men: pointing out any of the things I mention here to a woman on a dating site will probably not be the start of a wonderful, long lasting, exciting and fulfilling relationship. None of them are great conversation starters. I tried. I'm kind of a trial and error moron that way.

But if you're a woman and want to increase your chances of bagging me (it seems not everyone does for some strange reason) you may at least increase the chances I will contact you by taking note now. Perhaps that special guy you have been waiting for suddenly drops you a line.

Poems

Fuck poems. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with poems. Like songs there are good and bad ones. And like songs there are ones directed at thirteen year old girls with severe damage to the frontal lobe. These are generally the poems women put on their dating profiles. The kind that the devil puts as texts about roses and violets stupid color in GIF images depicting sad teddy-bears and googly eyed kittens holding hearts. Sorry for the profound language, but they started it. And speaking of teddy-bears...

Teddy-bears

I am a man. I am looking for a woman. I am not looking for a playmate. Wait a minute... or rather... never mind. No matter what you think of when I mention the word "playmate": That is not what I'm looking for. Teddy-bears are for children. And maybe collectors. I'm not feeling at home in any of those categories.

Cats and dogs

I'm a cat person, and I can stand dogs and even become quite fond of them if they have the right personality. But pictures of your... cuuuuuteeeee doggywoggyyyy! Yeeesss hesss a goood doggywoggyyyy! Yes he isssss! ...on you'r profile? Sure: a picture of you playing with your dog, that can send a positive signal. You have a dog and you like it, fine. But five pictures of your dog? Wearing clothes? Sitting in cute places? Seriously?
On the other hand, if you are that serious about your pet: Maybe I should just be thankful for the warning...

"I love to work out"

There is nothing wrong with keeping fit. Quite the opposite. But when that is the only information about a persons interests, that is probably not someone I will have deep conversations with. Yeah but great sex you say? Sure. One time perhaps, but then what? If you are looking for someone to spend a huge amount of time with, perhaps the larger part of your life... I'd like something more.

No description, lots of pictures

This is so sad. Women I've talked to about the messages the get all say the same thing: They get tonnes of mindless messages from men with the imagination of dried bones and the vocabulary of retarded chimpanzees. The women with only pictures must be the saviors of the regular female Internet daters as they draw the attention of the most shallow of the mail bombers. Then again, these male daters probably copy-paste their cheerful greetings, giving them ample time to pester the rest of humanity as well.
It would be nice of dating sites to offer the filter "Only show results with a description" along with the more standardized "Only show results with pictures".
This angers some(in quite the same way as it did me, resulting in this current rant) to the point where they start...

Whining

This one is priceless when combined with the above. But even for women with otherwise good descriptions this is common. Hell, I've done it myself more than once.

I can't really complain about this one because I've heard stories about the staggering portion of mind-boggling stupidities that men in general seem to revel in sending to women. Really guys... shape the hell up. I'ts a scary concept that if you walk down a regular street in a regular city... a overwhelming amount of the seemingly normal guys you meet will become total ass-wipes when they talk to women behind an alias.

Trolling an Internet forum I can understand to some extent but on a dating site... aren't these women actually people you are entertaining the possibility of meeting in real life? Or are there really a bunch of people trolling dating sites just to be assholes?

Duck-face

At first I thought it was some Internet meme. But I've seen them... Don't they have friends that tell them when they do moronic things like that? Or do industrial strength morons naturally flock together, bereaving them of any chance of constructive feedback on their erronious behaviors?

Platitudes

In Sweden there are two words/expressions: "Busig" (Something like "mischievous" but more cute and feminine) and "Skinn på näsan" (Meaning "Mind of her own". Directly translated it becomes "Skin on the nose"). These are so common and has lost their meaning so utterly that I think a good dating site should allow women to tick a box to automatically display a text like "I'm a mischievous girl with a mind of my own" at the start of the presentation.
That way they could also offer men the search filter "Don't show women with platitudes".

"I don't know what to write about myself"

Describing oneself is something people are not generally used to. It can take a while to create a description that fairly accurately describes something that is even close to the wonderfully complex collection of thoughts, dreams, history and environment that is you. But talking at length about how hard it is only describes one or both of two things: your self-knowledge is pretty low and/or you are bad at putting thoughts into writing. None of which are obvious selling points.

Trying to look like you have a kind and caring heart(and failing miserably)

A few years back, an organisation (I think it was the Swedish branch of Ecpat) had a drive where they used TV-ads, billboards and he Internet to raise awareness of child pornography. Among these were a link that was spread with a message like "Help stop child pornography, go here for information" and the URL under it.
This message and link was posted on a lot of presentations during that time.
The sad thing was that after the drive ended: the link was taken down. But quite a few women still had the link on their presentations. And I'm not talking about weeks or months here. I think the last one I found referred to a page that had been removed 4 years ago.
That, to me, does not signal a deep commitment to a cause that is close to your heart.
And besides: If it was ever important to you, I think bringing up the issue with the operator of the dating site and or reporting any illegal activity you witness is a tad more effective. Also: liking pictures on Facebook may not actually core cancer/stop hunger/stop wars. If you truly care that is.

I'll stop whining now

Thank you. I feel better already.

There are a lot of reasons that do make me interested naturally, but the examples above hurts my eyes and make me loose faith in womankind. And that is something I would like to avoid if possible.

iOS or Android?

My 2 home screens

I’ve always used Android devices since the smart phone craze set in. If you call iPhone users Apple-heads, I would best be described as a Samsung-head.

The initial reason for this choice was rooted in the open source mindset and to some extent the dismissal of Apple users as shallow and conformist. I know. A childish reason.

But even if I’ve tried out different Apple products, I’ve never used them continually and so I have never been able to make any real comparison between them, other than on the basis of specifications and often biased reviews.

But now I’ve used the Apple iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1.1 for two weeks and I feel that I’m now actually able to compare it to the Samsung Galaxy Note with Android 4.0.3.

I’ll try to keep the hardware differences out of it where possible.

First let me kill the suspense by saying that there is no showstopper in any of the systems. I could use any of them, the question is more what parts would annoy me.


Battery life
The iPhone beats the Galaxy Note in battery longevity. It has about twice the up-time of the Note and that is really important if the difference is if the alarm wakes you up in the morning even if you forgot to charge it before you went to bed.
It is hard to say what parts of this is in the OS but at least one reason for this is that Apples use of semi-multitasking gives it better control of battery time.


Keyboard
I’m sure that you will get used to the iOS keyboard if it is the only virtual keyboard that you have used. I must say that it is really bad and ineffective to use compared to many of the different keyboards I’ve used on Android. My current favourite is “Scandinavian Keyboard”.


Hot spot
When it works it works fine for both systems, but I’ve found that even if the feature is active: in iOS I need to unlock the phone for it to work. This may be by design, maybe some security reason, but I just find it is just irritating.


Personalizing
iOS just does not have it(besides changing background and ring tones). Same as with the keyboard I think that I would not be as frustrated if there was no other options. But having used Android I know that I can change the appearance and functionality of my phone to something that really suits my needs. Heck, I can even modify it to look and feel like an iPhone if I want to.
This is probably a very conscious decision by Apple that makes people in general more comfortable with their product, but it does not suit me.


One-glance overview
Something I was not aware of when i used Android was how often I used the home screen as a way to get a quick overview. Stuff like time, date, calendar appointments, TODO lists, time reporting and general phone state(like if Skype or any other program was active).
This is probably the thing I miss the most in iOS and I was not even aware of it until now.
In the iOS home screen I can see time and battery status, anything else I have to start a specific program.


Developer OS access
Another thing that I noticed is that a program like “Vem Ringde?” (Who Called) is severely handicapped on iOS, probably due to the tougher restrictions on developers access to the OS. On Android it queries the interwebs for information on any current incoming call that is not in your phone book, but on iOS it attempts to mimic this by adding the 400 worst spam-callers to my phone book. It kind of solves the spam issue but it gives me no help distinguishing an unknown spammer from a friend that just got a new number.
I’m guessing here, but I suspect that this is because iOS does not allow either plugging into the call process or does not allow programs to run as background services.


The single button paradigm
I miss the back button. I miss the menu button. But mostly the back button. The in-program navigation with the arrow buttons at the top annoys me for several reasons:

• They change meaning based on context and have text that has to be read. This makes navigation a process that needs more thinking an analysing than strictly necessary.
• They are generally at the top of the screen, forcing me to have my fingers up there as opposed to the button that is at the absolute bottom. I think this on-screen button paradigm would work a lot smoother if all the navigation was made in a single area. Preferably at the bottom of the screen.
• They are not always there.
• If I click a URL in the mail client and it opens up the browser, I would like to be able to go back to the mail program again. To do this in iOS you double click the super-button to get the running programs, find the mail program and click it. I miss the back button.

The app store
Entering the app store password every time when downloading app, even a free app. Also: you must enter it yet again to update a program... Sure, when I’m paying for a program I can see the point of this, but for free programs and updates? That is just annoying.

Conclusion

If you read the above I guess you already know that I’m not very impressed. The strange thing is that I really thought it would be a pretty awesome OS, just different from Android.
I was expecting it to “Just work” and be very intuitive and smooth and glossy. Sure, smooth and glossy it is, but that can only hide the user-un-friendliness for so long.
It is quite possible that you don’t have the same requirements on a phone OS as I have. Perhaps you are just using as a... phone? But if you are selling me a “Smart-phone”, then I expect it to be something closer to a computer OS than what the iOS is.
I see iOS as a telephone with support for apps.
I see Android as a computer that supports phone calls.

Flash mob psychology

Edit: This post is a rather old, I just found it in my post list and noticed I had forgotten to publish it.

Just "witnessed" a flashmob at Stockholm Central. And by "witnessed" I mean it failed mierably. The wierd thing is that I knew it would fail and I was only there because I was on the way to work anyway. So why did it fail?

Well... several reasons... lets just go over the basics of this flashmob in particular, here is the instructions(translated from Swedish):

"Stomp Flash Mob

Create confusion and joy in the morning stress! Wednesday December the 3:d, Morgonpasset arranges their very own flash mob in central stations all over the country. At exactly 08:10 we will start clapping or stomping the rhythm in the morning rush. Let us make this morning into an unforgettable experience!"

OK, what was the problem?

• Vagueness 1 - "Exactly 08:10" sounds pretty exact, but it is not. Everyone has their own watch (or cell phone or sun dial or whatever). Had they said "Exactly 08:10 according to the central station clock" there would be no doubt. And most of all: there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that everyone else knew the correct time to start.
• Vagueness 2 - "start clapping or stomping the rhythm". Stomp or clap? And to what rhythm? As it was called a Stomp Flash Mob I'd suggest skipping the clapping. And as for the rhythm, either make sure a clear rhythm is present or state that the goal is a single stomp.
• Time - The mob was announced (I base this on the Facebook wall post dates) just 9 or 10 days before it was supposed to occurr. Too little time for it to obtain a large following.
• "Shyness" - All the unceritanty in the flash mob definition above creates an unceirtanty in the potential participants. "Will I be the only one?". This will make people wait just a second extra in fear of looking like a fool. The "Will I be the only one?" question is one of the features of a flash mob that makes it exiting and interesting, but if the doubt is too large, it will just fail miserably.

Thank you Mr. David Nana

Ah Nigeria letters... or actually a Ghana letter... today I got my first one over Skype:

"Hello Bjarne,

I am Mr. David Nana, a reputable banker here in Accra, and I have in my bank the existence of a big amount that belongs to a deceased customer, named; Mr. Samedy Bjarne, a citizen of your country,
This amount is now in my bank without any claim because the deceased died in a deadly earthquake in china 2008, and left nobody for the claim

So I hereby request your assistance to receive this fund into your account as the beneficiary hence you bear same surname to the deceased
Please kindly send me your reply of interest to my private email address (david.nana05@hotmail.com)

As soon as I received your respond to my private email address, I will give you more details on how the transfer will be successful.

I am not a greedy person, so I am suggesting we share the funds equal, which is 50%/50% to both parties,

I wait for your response direct to my private email… We shall go over the details once I receive your urgent response in my private email address.
Best Regards

Mr David"

He is reputable, not greedy, wants me to reply to his hotmail, thinks my last name is Bjarne(It is my first name) and wants to give me a "big amount" of money, not because I am related to this deceased person, but because I have the same (first) name as his (last) name.

I love this. I love that a single person in the world would fall for this. It makes the world a more interesting place to live. When I win that super-duper-big-as-bonkers lottery: I will set aside a few million bux and send out a genuine version. The first one who replies gets an insane amount without any hassle. Or maybe it would be more fun to actually demand the "initial small deposit to cover transfer fees" and then wait a week and then dump a mountain of cash on them.

Thank you Mr David, I love you a little.

Moral meat eaters are bastards

...they only eat pigs that are treated ethically, so called "happy pigs".

I'm OK with eating miserable pigs. I'm like a professional euthanasia doctor, happily killing "unhappy pigs" left and right.

Except I get paid in bacon.

Writing my ass...

In my last post I said I'd start writing again. That was a few month ago. Damn I suck.

Back to writing?

I feel the need to write here again. I can not say why really, except that I'm in kind of a weird state right now.
I'm totally aware that nobody reads my rants here so I could just as well write it down on a local text file on my computer... but for some reason I don't. The logical reason is, I guess, that I want someone to read it. Perhaps even to understand it. But logic is not my strongest ally right now.
My head is swarming with unsorted static and I can't really trust myself. I think one thing, hear a song and suddenly think the opposite.
So right now I should probably stop writing before I write something stupid(-er than usual).

SMS christmas greetings?

Nothing says "I really don't care enough to send a greeting card" like a Christmas/new year greeting per SMS. Does it? OK, the ones that are actually sent to you are nice, but the ones that are really generic and you know they are a standard SMS sent to most of the people in the phonebook are not. If you want to fake caring: either fake it good or think a minute why you are sending it at all. And no: I don't send them... I don't send postcards either... but it's not because I don't care. Or wait a minute... actually I send the exact same amount of postcards/SMS:es to the people I care about as the ones I don't care about.

Damn it.

OK... a premature new years resolution just became apparent: I'll be better at keeping touch with the ones I do care about. But I sure as hell won't do it by sending generic SMS:es.

Damn skippy.