Peter Drake HAS MOVED @peterdrake@qoto.org

My attempt at drawing the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle. #MastoArt #drawing #sketching #usps #truck

#Violet will let me know if any invaders enter the office. #DogsOfMastodon #ears

#Violet rests before the day's chaos begins. #DogsOfMastodon

Landscape, per Ferreira. #MastoArt #drawing #ColoredPencil

Fruit still life, per Ferreira, Colour-Pencil Drawing. #MastoArt #drawing #ColoredPencil

Yyyeah, it was time to re-pot these. #plants #plantstodon #hostadon

#Violet: Or, hear me out, we could all just stay in bed. #DogsOfMastodon

More #fire #juggling.

A meerkat, per The Sketch Encyclopedia. #MastoArt #drawing #meerkatstodon

I have (deliberately) lost some weight in the past year. While I am in no way a health expert, I thought I'd share my experience. I recognize that the idea of dieting is fraught with issues of patriarchy, consumerism, etc.

Let me begin by saying that I was "playing on easy". I've never been obese, and indeed in my youth I was downright scrawny. Most of my life I've been able to get away with eating like a teenager. That said, middle age was finally catching up -- clothes weren't fitting and my gut was unflat -- so I decided to go on a diet.

It still took almost 9 months to lose 23 pounds. There were certainly days when I was hungry but chose to stop eating. I suppose this is the way to get the body to dig into its fat reserves.

I used the Lose It! calories tracker, which has a clean, cheerful interface. I also weighed in every day at the same time under the same conditions. As you can see in the graph, there was a lot of variability -- sometimes I appeared to gain or lose several pounds in one day. The last few pounds also took a long time. Of course, holiday feasts take a toll, but it's important to stay in it for the long game.

Portion control is important. Measuring things out helped. Michelina's frozen lunches are good (and also have the advantage of using no plastic packaging).

Hard candy occupied my taste buds without the risk of absently throwing back a bag of chips or candy in one sitting. Air-popped popcorn filled up space in my stomach with mostly air.

Restaurant food is devastating. Even the basic fast food meal takes up most of a day's allotted calories. I don't know how anyone gets through those Triple Bacon Cardiac Annihilators unless their jobs involve a huge amount of physical exertion.

Exercise is good for a lot of reasons ("a celebration of what your body can do, not punishment for what you ate"), but a long dog walk isn't going to burn off a cheeseburger.

Activities that fully engage me (like programming or video games) would make it easier to avoid snacking.

I hope this is helpful to anyone who chooses (for the right reasons) to lose weight.

I am SO going to get my liver eaten.

#fire #prometheus

Photo credit: Nina Johnson https://www.ninaleejohnson.com/

The Flaming Circle of Death.

#fire #juggling #SivaAfi #fireknife

Photo credit: Nina Johnson https://www.ninaleejohnson.com/

Jongleur! Jongleur!

#fire #juggling

Photo credit: Nina Johnson https://www.ninaleejohnson.com/

Doin' that thing I do.

#SivaAfi #fireknife #fire #dance #FlowArts #juggling #HotFoot

Photo credit: Nina Johnson https://www.ninaleejohnson.com/

Ooh, neat! PyCharm (and, I would imagine, other JetBrains IDEs) shows you all of the enclosing code you've scrolled past, to put what you're seeing into context.

#python #pycharm #programming #SoftwareDevelopment

#Violet made a frustrated noise so I looked out the front window to investigate.

"Ah-h-h-h," as Frank Herbert would say, '-h-h-h-h-h."

#Violet is happy for spring. #DogsOfMastodon

Something weird is going on in the Unity scene view: the bottom of the view is black, obscuring everything (including the grid). The region gets larger if I zoom in. There are no GameObjects to click on in the void region.

What's going on? A web search finds many forum posts with people having the same problem, and suggestions that it is a bug which has gone unfixed for at least ten years.

Help!

#unity #unity3d #GameDev

Meerkat (face detail), per The Sketch Encyclopedia. #MastoArt #drawing #sketching #meerkat #meerkatstodon

My Hardback discard pile is weighing in on a very Mastodon issue.

#BoardGames #hardback #emacs