The challenge is simple. Build something that inspires the Web and keep it as small as possible. You can cheat a bit though. You may use jQuery (which weighs in at over double the entire challenge-limit), Prototype and Typekit as your tools.

Fantastic idea. My favorite submission so far is gravity.

We made our way to McDonald’s and, of course, I thought it would be a good idea to have a nugget eating challenge. This time, though, I would only attempt to eat 50 nuggets. As I said on Twitter, I was trying to eat 50 just so I could see how hard it would be to eat 100 at a later date. I thought I could eat 50 with little problem. Boy was I wrong.

About 12 nuggets into the challenge I knew that I would fail. I wasn’t full. I was disgusted. The grease on the nuggets is positively revolting after only a few nuggets. The few times that I’ve order McNuggets in my life I’ve only gotten 4 nuggets at a time. Obviously not enough to be prepared for a 50-nugget (let alone a 100-nugget) challenge. Yuck.

So, I quit at 28. I had 2 nuggets left in my third box of ten and, although I could have eaten those, I thought ‘what is the point?’. I gave up and I will now not eat McNuggets until at least 2020. I’m glad I tried and now know that eating 100 nuggets – at least by me – is impossible.

My two fellow nugget-challengers, Sam and Austin, did better than I did with 40 and 32 nuggets respectively.

Photo credit: Ben Wagner.

Guess who’s back? Back again! The Diet is back, tell some friends!

You read that right. The Diet is back. And, like a Phoenix, it is back in a whole new way once again. Sort of like last time, what started out as a friendly challenge between a few ended up becoming something much larger, so too has The Diet this time. Last week I got an email from a guy name Pat Dryburgh who wanted to get on The Diet. We setup a challenge to see who could lose 20 pounds in the shortest amount of time. I asked him to write a little something for us here on the blog.

“There’s this guy who hangs around these parts that goes by the name of “Colin.” “Colin” invited me to check out his blog after seeing how über awesome I am over on my own blog. As I was poking around, I came across a cobweb-infested page simply titled “The Diet.” It was refreshing to see someone who spends their life behind a computer screen who had taken an interest in getting active. A year or so ago, I weighed about 270 lb., and today weigh in around 225 lb. However, I’ve been at this weight for the past few months. I was looking for encouragement, for direction, for guidance. With excitement filling my heart I scrolled down to see Colin’s most recent weigh-in…

June. 2008. 207 lb.

I realized then and there that something needed to be done. Colin has clearly neglected the Pudge 2.0 that’s formed between himself and his Mac for too long, and it was time to take action. So I wrote to Colin “hey, Colin. I know we don’t really know each other. In fact, we’ve barely made it through two emails back and forth. But seriously, we have a problem. You and me, we’ve got belly’s. And they ain’t pretty.

This is an intervention.

Think of your wife.

Think of your children.

We need to do this now.”

And so, with that the challenge was made. First one to lose 20 pounds wins. Loser buys the winner an online gift worth $21 USD (which is about $70 Canadian dollars).

Colin’s an American. He basically gets McDonalds delivered to his door every morning. Starbucks is part of his daily medication. I, on the other hand, was born with a hockey stick in my hands.

This will be a cake walk.

(Especially if I can convince Colin cake is part of a balanced breakfast).

Colin, it’s on like donkey kong.”

It is definitely on!  However, since we exchanged emails others had expressed interest in doing some dieting as well. Since most of them are my friends here in the local area – you can say I have my own support group – and I’m looking forward to following their journeys of weight loss.  I’ll let them tell their story in the comments.

My weigh-in for today, March 23, 2009: So we’re going to weigh-in every Monday. If you want to make your weight public, that’s cool, if you don’t that is fine too. My current weight is 207lbs.

Want to join us?

Like last time, this is an open invitation for anyone that would like to lose weight, get healthy, and have some support doing it. It can be hard to lose weight on your own. Hard to get motivated. Hard to stay on track. This is why we do this diet. We’re here to help each other.

So, whether you have 1 pound or 100 pounds to lose – please leave a comment below and let us know you’re in this for the long hall. Pat and I are going to race to 20, but then we’re going to be sticking around to keep each other and everyone else motivated to lose the weight and keep it off.  Third time’s a charm?

Reminder note: All photos, blog posts, AND Twitter messages should be tagged with ‘the-diet’ so that we can keep track of this thing. (For Twitter/Facebook, you can write #the-diet in your post.)