Eat it; it's good for you.

Once you start concentrating on a proper diet, the mere number of calories per serving becomes relatively irrelevant. What matters is how much protein, carbohydrate and fat is in stuff. (Whether it's fast or slow-acting carbohydrate matters as well, partly because you consume more energy processing slow-acting carbs than you do fast-acting carbs, and partly because immediately after a weight-training session you actually WANT fast-acting carbs with your regular 30g to 50g of protein because that aids the delivery of said protein to the muscle).

Anyhoo, I took to taking notes of the protein/carb/fat ratios of food that I bought fairly regularly, just to encourage myself to eat better things at the right time and to keep the balances right throughout the day.

It was somewhat worrying, therefore, to find that, just because I had taken notes on a particular food item, that didn't mean that I could take it as given that the proportions (or total calories) would remain the same. Look at these packets of hulled sunflower seeeds (I put them in my muesli each morning, probably no more than 10 grams or so, but, well, it's the principle that's at stake) that I bought a few weeks apart at the same Holland & Barrett store:




At first glance, the only diffrence between these two packets is the size. However, if you look VERY closely, you can see that one packet has seeds imported from Argentina, while the other has seeds imported from China.




But note how this one has 19.8g of protein per 100g...



but this packet has 26g of protein per 100g.

If I looked at these seeds from the different packets, I really couldn't tell them apart, but one of them appears to have 30% more protein per any given weight than has the other. Why should this be? Surely sunflower seeds are sunflower seeds?


Well, apparently not.

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I installed Office 2010 on my home computer today. Only a few hitches on the way and it only took two hours out of my life that I won't get back. The most entertaining part was agreeing to have InfoPath Designer as the default for xml editing -- something that I thought would be instantaneous, but which apparently takes 15 minutes to do and then requires "a complete reboot". Since "a complete reboot" takes another 15 minutes on this computer (cheers Windows Vista -- no wonder I only turn the machine off about once a fornight) it didn't get one.

All I need to do now is pay vast sums of money for manuals to help me operate the damn programs efficiently. For some reason I don't like learning this stuff from web pages, or even printed pdfs. The worst thing Microsoft ever did was to get rid of the manuals that came with the programs. Typical short-sightedness of when the bean-counters take over.

++++++

And, finally, another 23rd place with 16 places being paid on the Party RAS freeroll. This is a blinding freeroll with an EV of about $80 ($5000 prize money and 70 to 100 entries), and I don't think I've been paid more than once.

As with all Party tournies, the average stack soon gets down to 18BB or less (16BB when you throw in the antes), falling to about 14BB (12BB including the antes) as you approach the money, so you have to play thin edges. Ac7c seemed a reasonable shove with 10BB in the small blind after it had been passed round (net ROI is about 20% when the antes are included). BB snap-calls with KcQc and, as per usual, the 40% shot rolls home and I Go Home Now. Most frustrating.

Oh, and my Kingston Technologies SD card holder is falling apart. I only managed to transfer these pictures to the computer by the judicial use of sellotape. Plastic made and plastic performance, Kingston. Trip to Maplin's for a replacement tomorrow, methinks.

Early start tomorrow and training session with Nick. So, bedtime.

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