OK folks, two things to report this weigh-in Monday. Firstly of course there is the numbers for the week, and also I’m going to tell you how this week I’m actually putting my money where my mouth is. For those of you who are keeping track, I missed a weigh-in last week. I did weigh-in, I just forgot to blog it. I’ve posted last weeks results as well so that the record will be complete.

This week I weigh-in at 183.8 for a total loss of 11 lbs. That’s (on average) just under -2 lbs a week. On one hand, that’s alot better than where I’d have been by now if I hadn’t started the-diet. On the other hand, I could have done much better.

I’m glad to be -11, but I’ve decided to up the ante as I know that number could have been even more impressive if I’d stuck to a plan better. I cheated alot over the past several weeks - not out of lack of will so much as lack of time/energy … I failed to plan things out ahead of time and ended up “winging it” at restaurants for lunch and having to guess at how many calories I had left for dinner (something I’m not all that great at).

So this week, I’m trying something new. I’m actually going to be using one of those prepared meal services this week. At first, I didn’t know if I’d like the idea, but Doug tried it and had good success with it - and it actually looked like really good food. I also have to admit that letting someone else worry about shopping/cooking/planning is appealing. Meanwhile the average cost per meal is less than I usually spend otherwise, so it may actually save me money in the long run. It seems a win-win-win. I may do a fuller review of the service later.

With four months left before Vlogger Camp I’m going to use that date as a deadline so to speak and set some aggressive goals. Hopefully the meal plan I’m starting will help a great deal.

So with the addition of this new meal plan (which starts tonight at dinner), and the start of a new month tomorrow … this kinda feels like a new start for me.

I forgot to weigh-in last week even though I did get on the scale and record a result. So I’m posting this (backdated) late so as to keep the record honest …

I’ll be posting this at the same time as I post week 6, so be sure to read week 6 for recaps/thoughts/etc.

Well this the second week in a row, where the numbers weren’t so good … although it’s also the 2nd week in a row where I got exactly what I deserved.

In my defense, I had a week of semi-mandatory business lunch outings which really threw me off.

Having squeaked by this week without a gain, I’m going to try to get really serious about this again this week.

I thought sure I was going to gain weight this week. I didn’t but as you can tell by this week’s numbers that likely had more to do with The Universe having pity on me than any actual effort on my part. Not the great week I had last week, but such is life … on to week 4.

Doug had a good week. I’m going to have to look into the nutrition plan he’s doing.

I’m stupid-crazy-busy this week so I’ll have to cut this post short.

I started to write a comment to Colin Devroe’s post “Giving into community pressure” and while I was writing said comment I realized two things. 1) Man I should just blog about this, and 2) No, seriously, I really SHOULD just blog about this and send him a pingback as a comment. So here it is …

In Colin’s post he points out how often we seem to jump on a bandwagon for a given web site or service not because it’s the best one out there, or even just because it’s our inexplicable favorite … but rather just because that site or service is where it seems everyone else is going.

I’m somewhere in the middle.

In some ways I do tend to use what “everyone else” is using. Twitter and facebook for exmaple. There are alternatives to each. I use these because they are the ones that everyone else is using.

However in other areas I laugh in the face of convention. I’ve been videoblogging since before YouTube was … YouTube (not that you could tell recently). Despite YouTube coming on the scene and the great exposure it can offer, I don’t plan on using it routinely anytime soon. Granted I don’t really care about exposure, but mainly I avoid YouTube because I’m geekish enough that I want far more control over my presentation, alternate formats, syndication feeds, etc than most walled gardens like YouTube allow for. Also I like the terms and conditions at Blip.tv way more than I do the ones at YouTube. So in this case, despite it being one of those “everybody else in the world is using it” sort of things, I’ll stubbornly post and syndicate from my own site thank you very much.

Honestly, I’m also rather fatigued of constantly trying to get in on the next big thing that may not even be any better at all than the things we’re using today. I dislike ning (even though it’s cool) because I’m sick and freaking tired of signing up for yet another social network. Ning makes this fairly painless I guess, but thats assuming you want the same profile info etc. I may hire someone to shoot me if I have to sign up for one more freakin social network.

This all reminds me of the great IM wars … really preferring service A, but trying to get all your buddies on the same contact list while trying to make sure you are signed into service B often enough to be available to someone who wasn’t on service A … UHG. In the end, we all started using clients that tried to hack together all of them into one place even though such clients had half (or fewer) of the features which made us prefer service A in the first place.

Maybe the interwebs move too fast sometimes. I think that’s the bottom line: there are too many new things every single day to constantly be jumping camps … so, some services (like Pownce) don’t get the use/credit they deserve because … well dang it we just don’t want to reinvent this wheel yet … we just got here. Colin points out that being first is a huge advantage and he’s right … the later the entry the better the service will have to be to convince me to switch.

Through all of this, I’ve become a big fan of the idea that we can and should create distributed social networks and services that are open an cross-compatible. There’s alot of work to be done on that front, but it has already begun (check out http://diso-project.org/ ). It’s one of the reasons I liked Colin’s “The-Diet” page so much - it basically formed up a simple and loose distributed social network.

Someday I’ll be able to enter into my single authorative profile (openID maybe?) my standard profile/avatar info as well as things like:

• My Friends/Buddies are: <url to FOAF/XFN info here>
• My photos feed is: <flikr url here> (or maybe picasa if I use that instead)
• My Updates feed is: <twitter url here> (or maybe pownce if I use that instead)
• My blog feed is: <rss feed here>
• My IM service is: <service>/<screenname>
• etc etc etc etc etc

Social networks could be distributed and dynamically updated. Imagine: you signup at SocialNetwork-A and it automatically gets your buddie info from your authorative profile and knows that I’m one of your friends. (We are friends, right?) It could then check my friends info the same way it checked yours to confirm that I count you as a friend as well. SocialNetwork-A could include for you in your social network view things like my twitter updates, my photo feeds, my blog updates, etc all without my having to enter all that info AGAIN into YET ANOTHER social network. I could do the same for you at SocialNetwork-B. We could chit-chat accross networks via blogs/posts/tags/feeds etc (if you dont have a blog then your socialNetwork-A can provide that feed) … ah it would be so wonderful.

Maybe it sounds too geeky and confusing, but trust me it could be done in a way that is very simple and transparent to the non-geek-user. I guess it will depend on someone figuring out a way to make such a system profitable.

I long for the day I can have one profile and list of services that others can consume without my having to redo it all 150 times every 6 months.

• I use twitter because that’s where everyone else is.
• I don’t use pownce (but I do have an account) because I don’t want to have to do ad-hoc spontaneous updates at two places.
• I use gtalk becuase its awesome, not littered with adds and plugins, and is open.
• I use YahooIM because I have a huge list of contacts that use the service.
• I use MSN because my xBox360 signs me into it.
• I use AIM only because I can now do so through gtalk.
• I use facebook because the dang thing wont stop spamming me with vampire bites and cocktails.
• I use flickr because it both rocks and is where everyone is.
• I use blip.tv because they allow me far more granual control over how/when/where my work is presented, distributed, and discussed than any other service I’ve tried.
• I dont use YouTube because I want/need a video hoster that allows for multiple file formats.
• I use MeFeedia because I can watch sources from all over the net at one site.
• I don’t use GoogleVideo because it sucks.
• I use Seesmic … well I don’t really use it actually, but I do have an account, and look forward to where the service might go.
• I use ning … as rarely as possible.
• … there are others … oh, there are others …

Turns out week 2 was a pretty good week. In fact it was like twice as good as week #1.

Although being a bit more strict about ‘the rules’ as far as eating seems to have paid off, I still felt like I was slacking off too much. I didn’t really exercise at all … that will come back to haunt me.

Anyway, you may have noticed that I’ve renumbered the weeks to start with zero rather than one 1. This way “week X” numbers are reporting the results for that week, rather than the starting numbers for that week … this just makes more sense to me.

So here are the results for week 2: