Thermal

Do you recognise this image? If so, do you know what it actually means? I didn’t….

I’m not exactly evangelical about recycling, although I don’t mind doing it, but this quiz from the BBC is rather hard. It asks you to look at a variety of different recycling symbols and logos and try and guess their exact meanings. There’s obviously too many, as i got most of them wrong!

We’ve recycled our bottles and stuff for years, simply because it was easy to, and it just seemed wasteful to throw them in the bin. It’s only been the last couple of years in the UK though, where it’s become more compulsory, and now we have to recycle paper, cardboard, tins and bottles at the kerbside. We’ve also got a compost bin which is handy. The ludicrous thing is though, that the system changes from town to town, county to county and by all accounts, a lot of what we save for recycling either goes for landfill, or is shipped halfway round the world for recycling-hardly environmentally friendly!  Of course, the next idea is to put taxes up, as that will save the planet…..

Anyway, have a go at the quiz if you want, and see if you can beat this:

Shouldn’t be hard!

You may (or may not) have noticed that the Blogcatalog widget has made a re-appearance on this blog. I took it off because anytime it decided to have a slow down or not appear at all, it took my blog with it.

Some of this is down to the way my blog template is designed, but I know I’m not the only one, as many people stuff the widgets into their footers, or otherwise out of sight, in an effort to prevent their blogs from getting clogged down. Well, if you’re on WordPress, help is at hand with the IFrameWidget plugin. This handy plugin lets you insert your widget into an iframe that you can drag & drop into your sidebars. Now the widget will load parallel to the rest of your blog, meaning that if it’s slow or even broken, the rest of your blog will load as normal.

Works with Blogcatalog, MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, Flickr widgets, Blogrush and just about any javascript widget.

Recommended.

I post this segment up from the more modern (i.e. colour) Twilight Zone movie, as my wife has never seen it, and describing the gremlin on the wing segment gave her the chills!

You can see the first 10 minute part here, to see the setup and the gremlin tearing bits off the engine, but if you want to go straight to the part where the passenger goes out the window and meets the gremlin, watch away…….

This was an amusing ‘TV-film’ as I recall, although some segments were better than others. I’ve only recently found out, that the actor Vic Morrow was killed filming this, along with 2 child actors. They were filming a scene with a helicopter which flew too low to some pyrotechnics which went off, knocking loose the tail rotor. This then decapitated Vic and one of the children, before the helicopter crushed the other one. Horrible…..

Don’t have nightmares…….

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

File this under ‘I want one’:

This is one of the winning entries in a design competition, and would be such a cool thing (or hot) to have on the breakfast table. It’s ceramic, and the elements are contained within the slot at the end. Small rubber wheels are belt driven to push the toast through, and it drops straight into the rack provided.

There’s lots more info about it on the Designboom website, but this is one of those cool designs that I would actually buy. As long as it wasn’t too expensive that is…..

RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome are obviously serious matters these days, so be sure to give your wrist the support it needs when using your mouse:

What?

When following one of my many & varied links the other day, Webduck  encountered a rather graphic ad, which was unfortunate (It’s sent her bandwidth bill through the roof as she keeps going back to it), but when I had visited the site I didn’t see it - because I use Adblock Plus.

ABP is a free extension to the FireFox web browser which will block most ads, banners, rotating & flashing images, pop-ups etc. and will take a website that looks like this:

To this:

Which is certainly easier on the eyes, as things aren’t flashing anymore. ABP will also work with Google Adsense and a fair few others. Should you encounter some ads that it hasn’t blocked, simply right click them & add them to your blacklist.

All you need to run it is a copy of FireFox, and then just go install the ABP extension.  While you’re there, get the Filterset updater to keep your blacklists up to date.

Is it hypocritical that I run ads and use Adblock Plus? No, because the sort of people who click on ads, don’t use ABP - people who hate ads and would appreciate ABP wouldn’t click on them anyway -  please feel free to use ABP when visiting my blogs, I really don’t mind at all.

You can disable ABP with one click on certain websites, which is handy for your own, and I’d also recommended it when using online application forms, banking etc. as it can block what you want to see. It learns as it goes though, and I wouldn’t use the net without it.

Go on, just the one…..

As regular visitors will well know, I never knowingly say no to a decent glass of beer, and I’m quite varied in my tastes as long as quality is involved: dark heavy English ales, Stout, German lagers, it’s all good. Amongst these varied types is one of the many quality Belgian beers, Stella Artois.

Whether you are a beer drinker or not, you are probably quite familiar with Stella Artois, mainly thanks to their famous, creative and slightly twisted adverts. Here’s one of the older ones, demonstrating that everyone has their price, especially if Stella is involved:

If you liked the look of that, then you’ll enjoy a delve through their new website, which is available any minute now. For reasons best known to themselves, I was invited to a sneak peak yesterday, via passworded access and a selection of promotional materials (I’m easily bought) and it’s well worth a visit. You’ll know if the new site is up if you’re asked this question:

If they’re still asking for your birth date, then you’re on the old one!

There’s lots of clever interactive stuff on the site, going right back to the birth of the beer in 1366, where you have to guide the nervous brewer through a rather dark & menacing forest, to a chance to interact with a barman in an effort to pour the perfect Stella. It was pretty exacting stuff, and when I accidentally clicked on a slice of lemon as an accompaniment to a beer (it was the mouses fault!), he wasn’t best pleased! Try out the challenge for yourself in ‘L’etranger’, and see how you get on.

The whole site is of very high quality, with full cinematic presentation throughout, and plenty more is to be added, including all of the classic adverts. You can read plenty more about the creation of the site at the Artoisblog, as well as catch up on some interesting info about the forthcoming academy training, where you can learn to be a draught master….

Fancy a quick one?

As the title says:

Slow-motion makes the world look better

This is a cool little game to while away your lunch hour: Jellybattle

It’s quite simple really. Just use your mouse to control your Jelly man. He can jump one square at a time, in any direction, while the power-ups and mines move down one square each turn. Plan your moves ahead to power up, heal yourself or drop a nuke as I did above.

Other options include air strike, lasers and dropping a weight on your opponent. Very therapeutic…..