I have a very good friend (who works for Hair Transplant Manchester, and I’m telling you, if you have a hair-related problem then she is the girl to speak to) and her name is Mary. Mary is one of those awesome people who has a one in a million smile, is a bit of a head-turner, and has a very tasteful home (as well as a cat which goes ballistic at any given opportunity; I am told she has a particular fondness for receipts for some reason…). Her home is full of stuff which I have never seen in anyone else’s, not ever. Why is Mary so cool? Well, one of those reasons has to be her telephone.

Instead of going out and buying a new-fangled digital phone when her phone broke ages ago, guess what she did? She went out and bought an old-fashioned one is what. One with a cable and one that weighed as much of four bags of sugar and everything! When you call Mary you get a vision in your mind of a pretty secretary answering her stylish antique phone. It makes you remember that technology isn’t everything, and there is a lot to be said for taste – something that appears to rapidly disappearing with every new ipod and techno gadget that is released in to the market.

I say down with new gadgets. Let us praise the gadgets of old! There’s nothing wrong with a bit of style people, and don’t you forget it!

ShareThis

Got a friend who is displaying worrying signs of Saved By The Bell style Geek Syndrome? (Google it if need be…I promise you won’t be dissapointed.) Haven’t we all. I have one particular friend who is a girl Geek. She is pretty, and charming, and has a sweet fringe that makes many a head turn. In other words she is exactly the kind of Geek that a man would want to marry. Why? Well because not only does she possess all the feminine charms of any non Geek female, she is also able to sort out any tech issues I may have at a speed which would have Bill Gates’s jaw dropping. And to be honest, as a male with the tech savviness of a really bored sloth, how could I not love that?

This article talks even more about Geeks and what they love even more than hanging out with other fellow Geeks: technology. You should take a look and who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.

I should also mention that the article (which belongs to Enigin, who are apparently masters of the Geek universe) talks a lot about Apple. A company that has, in modern times, evolved from a technological revolution in to almost a technological religion that reaches all four corners of the globe.

Who knows where Apple will stop in their quest for…well…even more world domination. One thing is for sure, although I am not a huge fan of new technology I have to confess that all those apps are pretty damn amazing!

ShareThis

It’s funny how we tell our children to play nice and to try to get along with everyone. We tell them to say they are sorry and to share their toys with one another. Yet, we as adults do not do any of those things. There are so many adults who have forgotten common manners and courtesy. Not many adults are exuding morals or setting the right examples for children to learn from. When someone holds a door open for you it used to be that people would hurry to grab it so the person isn’t just standing there like a doorman. Now people just go through the door.

They do not say thank you or even try to hold it. Sometimes they are even rude enough to tell their ten kids to hurry up and come on through. Saying that you do not want to hold the door for them all day. But, if you let the door go and it hit a child you would have to be worried about someone trying to sue you instead of them just holding the door themselves. A while ago when you let someone over in traffic they would give you a courtesy wave to say thank you. Not anymore. Now if you get any type of wave it is not one that means thank you. Adults today are too entitled.

They think they should be let over. It is their right. They should have the door held. It is their right. People are so confused on the difference between rights and privileges. People are fighting wars so that we can have both yet, many are so diluted with empowerment that they forget that there are people in the world without any rights or privileges. We may need to get back to reality and realize that sometimes a simple thank you goes a long way. Come on people! We do not need Corporate training for this now do we?

ShareThis

The answer is no. I’m not talking about retail therapy where stressed individuals (guys and girls alike) max out their credit cards after a bout of stress, which often results in the wardrobe being filled with colourful t-shirts and cheap beach dresses. Apparantly, the BBC had an article which reported that ’smart clothes'(everything in the future has smart preceeding it) can help monitor and control stress of the wearer with a number of functions.

These intelligent outfits have a number of gadgets in them which effectively help deal with stresses. These clothes have sensors which detect the temperature of the body, the emotional state and the heart rate. On receiving this data, the database will act appropriately to it, if the data sent to it shows that the wearer is under stress, music will play through the inbuilt speakers or images and videos through the display to calm the wearer down, reducing the stress and anxiety.

The clever invention was produced by Barbara Layne from Concordia University in Canada and Janis Jefferies from Goldsmiths College’s Digital Studios.

It would be great to have the stresses in your life removed with the help of your clothes. What if you’re in the office or at University and you have loads of assignments and feel stressed? The clothes will calm you down, play some calming music or a funny video to calm you down so you can cope with work a bit more. The ’smart clothes'have a place in our future, playing a part in reducing stress levels in the world.

ShareThis

With that in mind, the chance of me being interested in the following link was very high, and the likelihood of me doing anything about it was very low, of course.

Except this time I did do something about it. This time, in an effort to redeem myself, I went to my boss and said “you should really have a look at this–you might be able to save money on the electric in this place” (he’s always moaning about bills). And guess what happened? I shall tell you: a minor miracle is what! My boss got straight on the phone to the Enigin lot and sorted out a payment plan right there and then, just as described in the post.

My hope is that the money he saves he might give us as a Christmas bonus. We shall see if it works or not–

ShareThis

This article is about chicken samosas. Stop, don’t go anywhere. This article will blow your mind. If you don’t want to go out and buy ten chicken samosas after reading it then I will–I don’t know, just be very surprised is all.

I made a discovery last week, you see, which has, for me, turned the world of chicken samosas completely on its head! Up until the incident happened I hadn’t even considered that I could get my samosas from anywhere but a reputable traditional Indian supermarket. But alas there are dark secrets in England, and I had stumbled upon a big one–

I had wandered in to the local shop looking for cider. I needed cider and nothing else. So you can imagine the stunning shock that came over me when I saw the samosas there in the top of the refrigerator, a new kind I had never noticed before that looked good. Yeah right I bet they taste awful, I thought, and then a man appeared to the side of me. He stank of green diesel.

“Don’t mind if I take some do you?” said the man, glancing left and right suspiciously. “I need me some of these beauties.”

I said, “No–I don’t. Why do you ask?”

He smiled, but as if someone was watching and listening in. “Well, you know,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to take another man’s samosas–not if he’d been eyeing them up for some time.”

I made the mistake of laughing and saying “of course not, but they’re not that good are they? I mean come on, they can’t be that good.”

The man’s eyes grew. He came worryingly close to my face with his and muttered, “are you joking?”

I said I was not.

“These here are the nations best kept secret my man!” he went on. “The best packaged samosas anywhere in the land–the holy grail of samosas–”

This time I did not laugh. I simply waited for the man to leave, then I got my nerves together and bought three packs of them.

Then I went home and tucked in. The man was no liar. These were the best damn samosas I had ever tasted. Truly, my life would never be the same again–

ShareThis

As we are all more than aware, as well as terrorists, spam (both the meat featured on the awful new TV adverts and the email kind), and people who still do that annoying clicky-finger thing that Ali G used to do and was never not extremely annoying, slow walkers are among the worst and most time-wasting phenomenon plaguing our great modern society. Go to London and you will find them deliberately in your way everywhere – great herds of them following one another, sometimes traveling so slowly that they actually travel backwards.

Yes: I said backwards.

There are few tactics which are capable of winning against this monstrous foe; one is to try and go around them – which never works as, over the years, their ears have grown to monstrous proportions and can detect a regular speed walker who is even thinking about this – and the other is to shout “I am coming through!"and then attempt to go through. This works sometimes but is also very exhausting. After a long day of encountering slow walkers (and in extreme cases the even more feared super-slow-walkers), one is too worn out to even open his or her mouth.

In a perfect world there would be a shoot-on-sight law, of course, but until that day we will have to develop our own ears and eyes to the same degree as that which the slow walkers have perfected. It’s a battle to the death, people! Some long term care advice : you’d better either get a jet-pack or work out a way to fight this awful vermin!

ShareThis

I’m not big on barbeques myself, although I’ve never had a particular problem with them… until now. The family next door to us seem to live on nothing else. Over the last week they have had at least four. This is fine, except it absolutely stinks. They appear to be completely obsessed with barbequed food; they even cook their burgers outside to go with a meal they are making indoors. God alone knows what their cholesterol levels must be like, I mean seriously, why not just buy some personal biodiesel storage tanks for your garden?

I may be a vegetarian, but I do not have a problem if anyone else wants to eat meat. It is like religion; you have your own beliefs and you should not enforce them on other people. However, when I saw the guy next door lighting a bonfire the other week I was seriously concerned that he may be planning to throw a cow on top…

The barbeque itself is only an issue because of our neighbour’s thoughtlessness. If we have windows open or washing on the line they never think to warn us of their intent to spark up. Seared flesh is not my favourite aroma in the world, and if my clothes smell of it then it really gets me down.

It would be nice to sit in the garden without the fear of being engulfed in a cloud of acrid smoke at any moment. Surely, most families do not consume such a massive amount of barbequed food? I dread to think of how they lasted over the winter months, but I would guess they either have an interior barbeque installed or they just chow down on McDonalds every day.

ShareThis

But team-work, I started to realize a while back, is actually crucially important to this world. We really can’t do without it and we have to start pulling together, and, more importantly, in the same direction. Want proof?

I suppose I can’t be the only person who grew up afraid of rugby, but from the way many of our governments act, it would seem as though some people had a worse deal than me–but that’s not what you need really, is it? No, especially not when we are fighting this massive battle to save the planet. Clearly we should be working together, not going against one another. And Enigin know that. They prove it time and time again by handing out information that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else in such concise, easy-to-read form. And not only information, but insider information, too. It’s stuff that most companies keep to themselves and don’t want us others to know. And that’s what makes these guys and girls different. Go and have a look and you’ll see what I mean.

ShareThis

This article is about eggs. Thus, if you find the idea of chicken-spawn repulsive, nightmarish, or altogether distasteful, then leave at once, before it’s too late!

There, now we can begin. And I shall do so like this:

Contrary to popular belief, there really is only one way to cook a fried-egg, just as there is only one way to do leg vein treatment without making a right pig’s ear of it. It’s a good job you stumbled across this post dear reader. Prepare to have your mind duly BLOWN!

Now, some amateurs believe, mistakenly, that you can cook an egg yoke properly simply by tossing hot oil over it with your utensil. And they aren’t even the biggest offenders. No–The biggest offenders are those who turn their egg OVER to cook the yoke. Back in the middle-ages that kind of nonsensical behaviour would have got you hung-drawn, quartered, and possibly while simultaneously having rotten eggs thrown at you!

So as every person who can truly cook an egg knows, there really is only one way, and it goes like this: you drop the egg in to the hot oil like usual, and, when the underneath is starting to go golden-brown, you take your spoon and you ladle, yes, LADEL, the hot oil very carefully on to the yoke. And voila, in half the time that it takes with a poxy spatula you have yourself a perfectly cooked egg!

That’s the right way to do it. Don’t let anyone tell you any different!

ShareThis