Special - not Magic - K

When it comes to dieting, isn't it amazing how some people can 'get it', yet at the same time completely miss the point? Take this segment from the article above for example... "Second of all, Special K cereal does not cause weight loss in any way whatsoever. It’s just calories. There are no weight loss vitamins, minerals, ingredients or magic fairy dust in it that makes it any different than...

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Dogs can't look up

I never thought I'd find myself having a heated debate about dogs' capacity for grape consumption of all things. I was standing in the park the other day waiting for my furry friend to finish watering the lamp posts when he came bounding over to me, suddenly distracted by the bunch of grapes I was...

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Greetings from the north pole

I learnt today that here in the Greatest of Britains (not any of the lesser ones), if you write to "Santa, Reindeerland, SAN 1TA" before the 13th December, Royal Mail will deliver your letter directly to the red-coated, beardy bloke himself and hang around long enough to return with his personal reply. You can imagine how this must have come about can't you. Every year 56 squillion (give or take...

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Wake me up before you go go

If a movie is on very late I tend to schedule it to record with EyeTV, set my Mac to automatically shut down shortly after it finishes, and then go to bed. Nevertheless, very often I'll wake up in the morning to find my computer is still switched on because OS X's 'Energy Saver' utility has failed to act on my so-clear-Britney-Spears-could-understand-them instructions. Since discovering that it only...

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Deciphering the indecipherable

Sometimes the information you really want is only available on a single web site, and that web site happens to look like it was whipped up by a blind, drunk Thalidomide baby. As much as you might like to, you can't just FTP into the author's web server and give them a stern lesson in web design. So...

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Holy ear perforation Batman!

Whether you watch movies through your computer or on a traditional TV you will have noticed that there is often a dramatic contrast between the volume levels of the audio depending on what's happening on screen. The dialog can be so subdued the actors appear to be whispering making it impossible to determine what's being said, whereas the action sequences, explosions, gun shots and so on are loud...

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Samsung branches out... into ED-209 style automated killing machines

Are you a dictator with conscription woes? Are your troops getting a tad too obstreperous? Maybe their trigger fingers are aching from all that rapid fire annihilation and their performance is suffering as a result? Why not usurp your whole motley crew with a legion of the all-new, bleeding edge Samsung isagRs. In the blink of an eye the isagR will identify your adversaries, lock them into its sights...

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Pick 'n' mix RSS feeds

If you subscribe to a high traffic blog or news web site through an RSS to email service such as R-Mail or RSSFwd, you won't be a stranger to a bulging inbox. No matter how much you love a particular site you're unlikely to want to read absolutely every article posted to its RSS feed. Some sites will give you a range of tweaked feeds to choose from (one for each tag or a 'best of' round up for example)...

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Taking out the G-Trash

It's funny how you can put up with niggling annoyances and learn to muddle through, and then as soon as you throw a tantrum a solution presents itself entirely out of the blue. Today I stumbled upon what is known as Gumbmug, phonetically speaking. No idea where the name comes from, but being down with the latest web trends I'd guess it stems from the tendency to drop the vowels from words so you've...

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MiggyTrack

When it comes to offering personalised search tools, Rollyo are no longer the only game in town. Google are hungry for a slice of the pie and aim to claim a sizeable portion by way of their newly uncorked Co-Op web app. With Co-Op you get pretty much the same deal, except under the bonnet (or 'hood'...

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My First Search Engine. Porn and spam sold separately.

Statistics show that 98.54% of the content on the internet is worthless dross, yet we still have to wade our way through it to get to the good stuff. Perfect example: whenever you search Google to locate a trustworthy review of a piece of tech gear you're considering purchasing, it spews out wads of irrelevant shopping spam sites which - purely by chance of course - contain the word 'review', even...

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Our cannon fodd... er, distinguished superhero soldiers are "plenty smart"

Since hearing about John Kerry's cringeworthy "stuck in Iraq" goof I've been Googling away to discover if there is any truth behind the accusation he didn't make. I have to confess I've always believed in the 'stupid grunt' stereotype, but according to some credible studies I'm dead wrong. I can't...

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Convert owt to owt (ish)

You can't have failed to notice the current web 2.0 trend of taking commonplace computing tasks online. Everything from virus scanning and making backups to writing documents can now be performed from within your web browser; the advantage being that you can take your 'applications' with you wherever you go and never have to worry about updating them (or paying for them in most cases for that matter). One...

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Backup your entire Blogger blog in under 2 minutes

For my next party trick I'm going to show you how to perform an entire backup of your Blogspot (aka Google's Blogger) blog in three idiot-proof steps. This technique requires no software other than a web browser so you can put your offline site sucking tools back in their box. Neither will any template modifications or configuration alterations be necessary. Your backup will consist of a single html...

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