Mmm, Filler

This blog has been veering slightly away from the worksafe recently, what with imflammatory political propaganda, Buffy sliding down Giles' "length" and criticisms of the Pope. OK, maybe that last one's just my work, but still... I've been getting particularly embarrassed by the "darkies" poster a few screens below, especially since it's right alongside all the bookmark links I use at work.

I was trying to think of ways of filling up the space, and was reminded by Something Rotten, the latest Jasper Fforde novel which I gave B. for Christmas and have only just got around to reading, of the existence of the Lorem ipsum, the cod-Latin text used by typographers and others to provide null content for layout and design purposes.

Anyway, I'm not going to type "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" etcetera until I fill up the space, but I did discover this Lorem ipsum generator, which allows you to generate text to a variety of different specifications for various purposes. And this one, rather splendidly, allows you to generate meaningless text in languages including Arabic, Esperanto, Luxembourgish and L33tspeak. This may be one of those things everyone else has already known about for years, but I thought it was rather fun.

In other news, I'm starting dieting today. I've said before that my metabolism wavers sinuously between stallion and walrus, and I've been getting noticeably blubbery in recent months. It's time to cut down on food and start taking exercise, oh yes. This is something I want to do because I'd prefer not to drop dead of a heart attack in ten years' time, even if I do get to eat a lot of cheese in the interim.

The current diet plan, devised by B., is to eat the regulation 1500-odd calories for weight loss, but to spread these out throughout the day in six or seven snacks -- resulting in a hobbit-style regime of breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper, but all in quantities which show a distinctly non-hobbitish restraint. The idea is that, while we may be hungry a lot of the time, we'll never be so hungry as to make us want to binge, especially as we'll know our next mini-meal is on its way shortly.

It's a cunning plan, but it's still going to be challenging in practice. I'm already craving cheese (full-fat red leicester or cheshire, for preference), crisps (good-quality ones, like tortilla chips or kettle chips, not your bog-standard Walkers), decent beer (any pale ale or bitter) and chocolate (Cadbury's Fruit and Nut, or possibly a Snickers). Not that I've spent a lot of time thinking about this or anything.

My next meal is a cereal bar and an apple, when I get home in about 40 minutes' time. Which, erm, will be nice.

Let's see -- how far down are those Tory posters now? OK, yeah, that should do.