It's of course a simplification but is it not true? Come on, admit it, isn't there something to it?

What do you think? As a man I must admit that it does feel like that. I don't know about the girls perspective so I'd love to hear what you think (keeping it mind that it's an exaggeration)

Spotted this website called Healing Food Reference which is what the name says; a reference of food and their healing "power". From the home page:

"This site is part of a public education project created by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and hosted by Truth Publishing. Its purpose is to educate and empower consumers with information they can use to prevent and even help reverse degenerative disease. There are no commercial sponsors of this site, and neither Mike Adams nor Truth Publishing was paid anything to create this site."

Basically click on a type of food, for example tofu and you get a list of things it can help with such as fever and then from the fever page you can more foods that help.

At first I was a bit taken aback by the home page and huge amounts of text on it but once you're in it is so easy to use. Perhaps the reason the home page is jam packed with content is for his search engine optimization.

If you want to just remember one single password and you want to use different passwords for different site then Oplop might be right for you.

For those who use last.fm and like to visualize stuff with pretty graphs. For the really curious, here's mine of the last year (15 Mb)

The Fail Blog is funny but sometimes disgusting and borderline sad. Fail Dogs is almost better. A lot of the headlines they put on the pictures just makes it twice as fun. For example this one or this one

Enjoy!

A very sweet result to the Alan Turing petition ("Petition to: apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death.").

It goes to show that there is hope for undoing wrongs in the past. Great work John!

If you met someone from Nestle, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Dow Chemical or Monsanto in a suit and who is proud of her job, would you punch her in the face? No? But would you pretend that you don't know about the ways of her company?

Eco blogger Eco-Chick has written a great write-up on some of the worlds greediest and least irresponsible companies. A great read if you're one of the millions of people who understand that corporate ownership of the world is a bad thing but don't necessarily know any specific details or examples.

When you're desperate for money you can do crazy things like rob a bank or mug an innocent old lady. But decisions to mug an old lady is 100% yours whereas office workers for irresponsible corporations are usually just a cog in a wheel, and therefore they all blame their destructive practices aren't their own idea or initiative. That is was someone "in upper management who decided". Would you dare to confront those excuses at a dinner party if you met one?

"A table of countries lists every country and whether they drive on the left side of the road or the right side of the road."

I've been looking for something like this but thought I had to find an external VCAL file to import into my Google Calendar. Apparently Google Calendar has a whole bunch of useful public calendars. For example, UK Holidays.

To enable any of these click the little down arrow next to the word "Add" on the left hand side under the list of all calendars you have enabled.

The rest is easy and needs no explanation. I did however spot one "bug" or perhaps I just confused myself. When I went in the second time to take a screenshot of the list of public calendars available it had mistakenly unselected the ones I selected a few seconds ago. Perhaps a caching problem.

Typeracer is a game where you're competing with other typers by trying to write a text as quick as possible. One race takes about 1 minute.

Not only is it very well done and extremely "educational" but it's also fun. Unlike other games of the same genre you're not judged by your speed and accuracy. In Typeracer it's all about speed. Your mistakes is your problem since they stop your speed. It's hard to explain but it just works great. Play it and you'll see.

Having played this I realise that my spelling is absolutely terrible. I've grown to depend on the spellchecker in Firefox and when I'm doing programming I don't have to spell particularly much because I use auto-complete. At the moment I average around 55 words per minute which means I win quite a few races but still far far away from the high scores which start on 100+. Gotto to practice more!

I have for a long time been excited about getting one of those SSD drives to boost my laptop. Especially one of those SanDisk 40,000 RPM drop in replacement drives. Skimming around on YouTube there seem to be lots of videos showing how fast the new SSDs are at booting the operating system compared to HDDs.

BUT! These comments caught me attention:

chinesemilkman
"I've worked with those newfangled SSD Macs at my student computing support job and if memory serves, they run applications slower than your standard HDD Macs. I doubt any SDD storage product would run audio and visual as fast as a SATA II. Maybe one day they will optimize performance but in actuality, I have my doubts that any current SDD out performs top of the line HDDs in performance. AND COMPARING BOOTUP SPEED IS NOT A RELIABLE PERFORMANCE TEST! Lame marketing gimmick is what it is."

johnnyfast
"Interesting how NONE of the SSD tests show a real world multi-tasking environment.
I have an OCZ SSD 64 and it totally fails, as soon as my PC is doing 2 or more read/write multi tasks I get horrendous lock ups. It is going back to the shop as unfit for purpose.
SSD is a one trick (read speed) pony."

I mean, they "promise" speed, higher durability and lower power consumption. I was ready to almost accept the extreme prices and the disappointingly small sizes but if speed is only in boot up and single operations then I'd rather spend my money on RAM or CPU or something.

If you zoom in enough you can also see the label on Dick Cheney's wheelchair. I think we'll see more of these mega megapixel shots with Google maps like navigation.

But so does poking needles in at random places. Basically, this article talks of a study that proved that acupuncture does work to treat headaches.

"The Cochrane reviews involved a total of 6,736 patients, who were given acupuncture to prevent either mild to moderate "tension" headaches, or migraine attacks.

Following a course of at least eight weeks, acupuncture patients suffered fewer headaches than those given only painkillers."

That's interesting. So it is better than painkillers. But like my colleague Shane said "I bet it's because it's so relaxing to take a break and sit down and get the treatment unlike painkillers where you don't stop". The report continues

"The scientist leading the review said the results showed that putting needles into particular locations might not be that important."

If you're wondering. I take neither painkillers or acupuncture and I personally think both western and eastern medicine has merits.

A hard blow for the condom manufacturing business

"Abstract In a sample of sexually active college females, condom use, as an indirect measure of the presence of semen in the reproductive tract, was related to scores on the Beck Depression Inventory. Not only were females who were having sex without condoms less depressed, but depressive symptoms and suicide attempts among females who used condoms were proportional to the consistency of condom use. For females who did not use condoms, depression scores went up as the amount of time since their last sexual encounter increased. These data are consistent with the possibility that semen may antagonize depressive symptoms and evidence which shows that the vagina absorbs a number of components of semen that can be detected in the bloodstream within a few hours of administration."

No, I didn't read the paper. Just the abstract.

Is the story about Jesus in the bible just a serious case of plagiarism. Yes is the answer if you acknowledge the fact that the story of Horus came first; and that it did.

"Stories from the life of Horus had been circulating for centuries before Jesus birth (circa 4 to 7 BCE). If any copying occurred by the writers of the Egyptian or Christian religions, it was the followers of Jesus who incorporated into his biography the myths and legends of Horus, not vice-versa."

It's quite shocking read actually. I don't believe in the Bible or the character they call Jesus but if I did and studied the story of Horus I'd right now feel pretty damn pranked.

Is it just me or is this just another proof that the film "Wall·E":http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/ predicts the future, ie. that a couple of generations from now we'll be fat, lazy and living in space.

What's interesting about this article is that they even mention Chinese people become obese. I've heard it before, that other Europeans are getting Obese too but now it's Chinas turn to get some blame light.

"In Mexico, nobody was overweight 15 years ago; now 71 percent of Mexican women and 66 percent of men are."

I'm not a comic book kinda guy at all and I don't know who half of these costumes are supposed to be but it's nevertheless very impressive. Looking through the thumbnails you spot a couple of people who seem to take it very seriously but a large majority seem to just enjoy themselves. Just goes to show that people always like to dress up.

Booking and finding timetables for trains here in the UK sucks. The worst, for me, is when you don't know which London station certain destinations start from. For example, if you're going to take the train to Aberdeen, do those starts start from Victoria, Kings Cross, St Pancras, Paddington, Euston, Liverpool street or London Bridge? Sometimes you even have to know which train company to use!

Accessible UK Train Timetable seems like a great website to remedy this. You can enter a search for something like "London" to "Aberdeen" and it magically works out that Kings Cross is the London station you have to tube yourself to. They've also got this great map which I haven't fully understood yet but seems work. The URLs when you do a search become really friendly too. For example:

 http://traintimes.org.uk/london/aberdeen/10:00/2008-09-03

...when I've done a search for London to Aberdeen today. And if you want a timetable that isn't for a particular day just change the URL to this:

 http://traintimes.org.uk/london/aberdeen/10:00/

One last thing. Several months ago I found another website for booking trains and finding timetables. It had a blue background I think and was almost equally user-friendly. Only problem is that I can't find it again or remember what it was called. But I think I'll stick with traintimes.org.uk for now.

Here's a great blog tip: Weird Asia News, China, Japan, Korea | Offbeat, Strange, Odd, Crazy, Engrish

It's a constantly updated blog about all things weird happening in Asia. After a quick look it seems most of the entries are about China and Japan but that's fine. I'm definitely bookmarking this on on my Netvibes

It helped me find this awesome documentary about North Korea by VBS.tv. Do check it out.

My good friend Chris West has finally launched his blog

Chris is not a designer or hacker but he's done the design himself and learnt Django to be able to code it. I haven't helped at all other than listening which has just meant that he's discovered the solution himself.

I think the site looks great and has a unique feel to it and very user-friendly. There is a really interesting blog post about olympic superstitions that you should read.

Back in 2004 I used to sometimes read a blog called My Secret Life As A Prostitute which was both sexy, sobering and kind of educational. That blog was also a callgirl who wrote about her work-experiences, sex life in general and problems she had with her boyfriend. Sadly that blog disappeared suddenly. Perhaps the girl who wrote it got "discovered". By that I might mean that a colleague of hers at some investment bank found out what she was spending so much time on in her lunch breaks. Jokes aside, it's hard to tell if this is for real or just made up based on someone's fantasy of being an escort girl. Sometimes the blog gets very technical to the point that it's hard to imagine her not being a real call girl.

As I'm skimming through this new blog I find that it's so similar to the one I was skimming back in 2004. She's very blunt and has the same sense of humor and just like the 2004 blog every now and then, as she describes her encounters/jobs she also describes how she herself gets off on it.

Another similarity is that reading this gives the same feeling of shame of reading it. I'm obviously not so ashamed that I can't confess that I'm reading up it does feel a bit intimate and "dirty" at the same time. It's like reading an Bret Easton Ellis book which is sold in respectable normal bookshops but whose content is sometimes worse than porn.

And for people who've seen Flight of the Concordes, check out this post

I don't shop from Ocado anymore but maybe I should start doing that again. The reason I only tried it once was that I wasn't able to find as many products on their website as I needed plus if you're not a big family it often doesn't make sense to buy too much fresh food in one go.

They're cleverly keeping me in check by sending sporadic emails very rarely about changes to their features and other bits and pieces. I'd call it "spam I don't mind" and I don't get annoyed when I get them because they're so rare. And here's one that arrived the other day which I actually appreciate a lot. Basically, they've gone out of their way to improve their image on the environment to send me another email. It's well phrased, humane, well layed-out and informative.

Keep up the good work guys!

If you like Dilbert there are now a bunch of really nice widgets of different sizes that you can put into your Netvibes, MySpace, Facebook or Blogger. It's just a flash widget that shows the latest Dilbert plus an ability to see past ones. It looks very promising to me. I like the fact that these are coloured whereas the same strip on www.dilbert.com is black and white.

I did load one into my Facebook and one into my Netvibes start page but because it's flash and takes several seconds to load it slowed down my Netvibes front page so I'm kind of putting that on hold.

Clearly web services has taken off in the world of network plumbing and the higher level equivalent for non-programmers is widgets. I don't think Youtube was the first to do it but was clearly what proved it to be a working idea in the mainstream.

This time it's an e-commerce site called Comfy-Feet which seems to have been developed with Frontpage 5.0 and that doesn't surprise me at all.

I remember hearing somewhere that turnover on e-commerce and "good design" don't have any relationship. In other words, just because you're making an e-commerce site prettier doesn't mean you'll sell more. Well, I beg to differ that that rule must have some extreme exceptions.

A few quick things you immediately notice:

• Why two large Union Jack flags?
• blue text within black text making you think they're links
• no consistent layout when you drill down into various pages
• title tag doesn't even include the word "Comfy-Feet" just "Buy: Shoe Insoles, ..."
• If you add something to the cart, the click the "Back to store" button they ask you which site you want to go back to.
• I don't think a single page I clicked on was without error message in the validator

Actually, I feel a bit guilty for complaining about this site since it's probably as far from corporate as possible can be. It was one of few decent sites I even found that sells insoles with a decent range. I just hope these guys didn't pay anybody (lots of money) to work on this. If not, I'm sorry. If so, get a better web designer company next time!

I'm currently not in urgent need for one of these (in other words: I'm single) but if I wasn't this might be a really cool thing to try: The Love Mattress

How many times haven't you gone to bed tucked up close to someone warm and soft and then your arm painfully falls asleep before you do? Many! I say. This invention makes it possible to wrap your arm around and under someone without this person having to feel like sleeping on a exhaust pipe across the shoulders or neck.

I guess the only criticism against this invention is that sleeping in a snuggled up position is only a very small part of the whole sleeping (or "jumping") experience a bed attempts to make as comfortable as possible.

Anyhow, I like the cuteness of the idea enough to blog about it.

I haven't fully explored this site yet but it looks great. Some sort of blog about themed around Frank Zappa.

This site has got a great discography and lots of other misc stuff that looks worthy of some decent reading time. I also very much like the name which I guess you have to be a Zappa fan to appreciate.

I wouldn't call myself a diehard fan of Futurama but I sure as h**l love that show.

"Futurama was killed, but like some B-movie cyborg it refused to stay dead. The fans watched the 72 episodes religiously in syndication and shelled out $170 to get the entire run on DVD. So, in 2005, Fox green-lighted 16 new episodes. Cohen and Groening have reassembled many of the hundreds of writers, animators, and voice artists who'd gone on to other projects to create four DVDs of new material, including sexy robot stage shows. The first DVD hits stores on November 27, and the features will then be divided into half-hour episodes when the entire run of the series begins airing on Comedy Central next year."

I'm actually re-watching all of the previous 5 series at the moment at home and hopefully by the time I've watched it all, the new series will start to become available on DVD here in the UK (unlikely but one can hope).

I totally don't approve of what they're doing but what they're doing is totally impressive.

It's a long clip of a couple crazy couriers racing through the streets of New York crossing red lights and zebra crossings and going in the oncoming traffic lanes. Mental!

It's been a while since I last ranted about some website looking not only totally unappealing but also barely usable. This time it's called The Backyard Comedy Club and it's a quite simply, a comedy club near where I live. The sad thing about this site unlike other sites that I've criticized as being butt-ugly in the past, this one is actually quite new. The footer says "Copyright Backyard Comedy Club 2007 ©".

Maybe the intention is that the whole website is a joke. Kind of to get you in the right mood for the comedy acts.