But eventually I came to accept the truth: I am overweight. This is not my fault. My body, without consulting me, has been converting the food I eat into fat, as opposed to something I can actually use, such as toothpaste.

The problem with human bodies is that they’re based on a design that is eons old. Our bodies believe that any day now, we’ll have another Ice Age, and there won’t be any more food, so they need to store up lots of fat. So while our brains are in the 21st century, wanting desperately to lose weight, forcing us to eat salads and engage in bizarre cult activities such as ”Pilates,” our bodies are back in 12,000 B.C., thinking: “I made six more ounces of fat today! Bring on the glaciers!”

– Dave Barry, He ain’t heavy — he’s fat

Why are video players so badly designed? I think it’s some sort of male conspiracy. What could be more fun than mocking a woman when she can’t work out how to use the video? I’ve never had a problem with the video before but tonight I needed to re-set the time. There was nothing on the control panel or the remote that seemed to do this. After 15 minutes I gave up. Beaten by a machine.

I’m responsible for organising speakers for Belfast.pm. This didn’t go particularly well in October but things are looking up for the rest of the year. On November 17th Dave Cross will be speaking on Tieing with Perl and in December Mark Jason Dominus will be the speaker. Belfast.pm, like most Perl Mongers groups, doesn’t have any money. We are only able to get speakers like Mark because the company I work for puts on training events in Belfast featuring some of these speakers – which really helps with covering the expenses. This year we are hoping to run a three day version of Mark’s CGI Programming with Perl. Once I have that sorted out I’ll pick a topic for Mark to speak on at Belfast.pm.

Tony and Marc were chatting last week about earworms – songs that keep repeating over and over inside your head that you just can’t get rid of. I’ve been plagued recently by Daniel Beddingfield’s “If You’re Not the One”. This song makes me glad that I’m not twenty and single. When I was single I used to get tapes sent in the post from boyfriends, ex-boyfriends and boyfriend wannabes. Watching High Fidelity made me realise that some people take making compilations really seriously. Sometimes some of these were quite good. But the song that made the most appearances was Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting”. Why did anyone think that I would actually like that song?

Today I imagine they would be sending me “If You’re Not The One”.