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Sept 2006 to Dec 2007

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Do you have a friendly face

The Daily Telegraph (Thursday 27 Dec 2007) has analysed the features that mark a friendly face. Why not test yourself looking in a mirror and check off the features that you have:

But do not worry if you score low. Anyone can look friendly if they smile, look you in the eye, and pay attention to you.

Be a good neighbour

Things that have been quoted as being a bad neighbour include:

• broken down vehicles
• commercial vehicles parked
• inconsiderate parking
• rubbish in the garden
• dogs barking
• loud parties
• loud music
• poor house maintenance or garish colours
• rubbish put out on the wrong days
• boundary and fencing problems
• smoke from bonfires and barbecues

Top tip for being a good neighbour is to communicate with them and make friends. A survey recently says 95% of people do know their neighbours. Whether this is all their neighbours, including the students that live next door, and that disreputable amateur mechanic that lives the other side, is not clear.

Urban Myths - without scientific basis

In the Daily Telegraph (20 Dec) is a list by Indiana School of Medicine of commonly held beliefs that have no basis in fact:

• You should drink eight glasses of water a day
• Reading in poor light harms your eyesight
• Humans use only about 10% of their brains
• Mobile phones can affect hospital equipment
• Eating turkey makes you sleepy
• Shaving your legs will make the hair grow back thicker and faster
• Number of units of alchohol that cause ill-health

Revised Health Commandments

The Daily Mail (Dec 26) has some revised commandments which are a different slant on the Urban Myths (apove).

Old Rule: Running will give you arthritic knees
New Rule: Running protects against arthritis
   - if you run regularly, your joints, tendons, ligaments, discs, and muscles adapt. But if you run hard only every now and then, you may store up problems

Old Rule: Stay out of the sun
New Rule: Get a daily dose of sunlight
   - 30 minutes of exposure of face and arms provides a good daily dose of Vitamin D

Old Rule: Get eight hours sleep a night
New Rule: Take power naps
   - if you feel weary, take a short nap

Old Rule: Your Body Mass Index (BMI) determines if you are healthy
New Rule: Measure your waist circumferance instead
   - BMI 18.5 to 24.9 was considered good. But muscle weighs more than fat, so if you exercise then you get a high BMI which is nonsence. Try measuring your waist; if it is more than 40 inches perhaps you are too fat.
BMI Calculator

Old Rule: Eat no more than three eggs a week
New Rule: Eat as many eggs as you like.
   - it is the egg yoke that contains cholesterol; but this is good cholesterol, not saturated fat which is the dangerous stuff. And eggs also provide a wide range of other good things.

Old Rule: Eat carrots to improve your eyesight
New Rule: Eat peas, broccoli and sweetcorn which are even better
   - the carrot thing was war-time propaganda to explain why the fighter pilots were doing so well; RADAR was a secret at that time.

Old Rule: You need three vigorous gym workouts a week to get fit
New Rule: Half an hour of any ordinary daily actrivity, such as walking or doing the housework is enough
   - but do walk fast, or work hard at the housework

Old Rule: Eat Spinach to boost iron intake
New Rule: Eat Kale, Endive, or Meat instead
   - apparently spinach has substances that block the absorbtion of iron. So the other vegetables are better.

Old Rule: Drink at least eight glasses of water a day
New Rule: You don't need eight glasses and any non-alcholic fluid will do
   - water is fine, but you can also drink juice, smoothies, soup, gravy, tomatoes etc. There is some argument about tea and coffee, but within reason these are fine too. But see also below.

Drinking Water

They keep shouting that I should drink two litres of water a day. Sounds a lot, since this has to be between meals; any water drunk with your lunch just dilutes the gastric fluids. So about eight glasses of water. Gosh. But apparently 2-3 pints (1000ml)are needed to provide for persperation, and keeping the mouth and nose moist. A lot is need to keep the bowels working. Coffee and tea, and certainly alchohol, are treated as food and flushed through the liver. About one and a half litres are used as saliva at each meal; but this is probably recycled within the body. Caffeine, cranberry juice and alcohol are all weak diuretics, causing water to be taken from the body and pushed into the bladder.

Drink a pint of milk a day says the advertising. I guess this is a contribution, but the water is what we should all go for. See also above.

Christmas card postage rates

http://www.royalmail.com/ Rate calculator

Letters and cards should be not more than:

• Length: 240mm max
• Width: 165mm max
• Thickness: 5mm max
• Weight: 100g max

All the cards and business envelopes we send are OK for 24p rate. Panic not!

Rechargeable Batteries

At last I have found a description that seems reasonable to me - in the UK Daily Mail no less. The Which feature on batteries was not much help.

Rechargeables are NiCD Nickel Cadium or NiMH Nickel Metal Hydride. NiCD are banned by EU from 2008 cos Cadium is hazardous. All mine seem to be NiCD of course.

Charging time seems to be seven hours, but some chargers switch themselves off more quickly. It seems difficult, perhaps with older batteries, to get them up to the full 1.5 volts. Rechargeables lose power at 1% per day so they will be completely flat without being used in three months. No wonder the spare batteries I carry in my camera case never seem much good.

They do say that you ought to discharge the batteries entirely before recharging. I sometimes find this difficult, particularly because the camera switches itself off after a few minutes. The razor is easier, you can leave it running on the table. I worry about the mobile phone, which I plug in every night.

So not useful for small load devices like smoke alarms, remote controls. I don't use my camera very often so that rechargeable batteries always seem to be flat, where as regular batteries hold their charge better. If I used my camera or iPod every day I can see that rechargeables would be much much cheaper - between 10 and 50 times better they say.

Regular batteries seem most useful for me, and I buy when the local hardware shop has a discount offer, and have a vaste stock.

In your phone you would normally not change the batteries, but recharge them in the unit. Lithium ion batteries are commonly used in consumer electronics. They are currently one of the most popular types of battery for portable electronics, with one of the best energy-to-weight ratios, no memory effect, and a slow loss of charge when not in use. Certain kinds of mistreatment may cause Li-ion batteries to explode.

  10 November 2006

Office Jargon

A BBC News Magazine article got some new jargon to join 'Thinking outside the box', 'Out of the loop', 'Blame Storming', Get your ducks in a row', 'Singing from the same hymn sheet'

Decending flightpath of headcount.
Sexagesimal theorising = watching the office clock
We're sunsetting that idea now = killing it
The juice ain't worth the squeeze
A seagull manager = flies in, makes a lot of noise, dumps over everything, and flies off again
Herd the dinosaurs = get the deadwood out the way and let the A-Streamers get on with some real work
Einstein Worker = knows everything, everyone knows all his theories, but no one truly understands what they mean
Get it, get off it, get on with it = understand you are wrong, stop sulking, get on with your work

More jargon on: wilk4.com/humor/humore1.htm

  10 November 2006

Is your dog insured?

Dog insurance is sometimes included with the house insurance. Would you like to check yours? My wife and two (well-behaved) dogs was walking in the Goring Hall playing-field when a boxer dog raced up at full speed and swerved into her, knocking her down. The owner did come across and acknowledged that his dog was at fault but with our mind on the casualty we did not get his name. And we have not seen him since.

So it took four ambulance men to carry my wife out of the field, leaving our two dogs for me to collect. Eight days in Worthing Hospital while they screwed the top of the tibia back on - the tibia is the main bone in the lower leg. Now home, sleeping downstairs, on a zimmer frame for six weeks, then crutches for another six weeks over Christmas. I am full time carer and don't seem to have time to do anything else. We are not happy.

While we are on the subject, the Control of Dogs Order 1992 says that all dogs in a public place must have a proper collar with the owner's name and address. This, of course, is never enforced, along with most of the other laws coming out of Westminster or Brussels. But it is a good idea for a dog to have a collar so that you can catch hold of it, and also to be on a lead in traffic or crowds. As a modern day alternative, it is also wise to have a dog implanted with a chip on his shoulder; the vet or police dog warden can then return him to you if he strays.

  10 October 2006

Saving Water

I left a message with Southern Water asking them for a 'hippo' bag to put into the toilet cistern. It arrived after a month - perhaps they were out of stock. They save one litre per flush, and my house has 20 flushes a day. Interestingly my plumber is against the idea. The cistern is designed to do the correct job. Anyway it would be easier to bend the ball-valve rod. Anyway, the hippo is now immersed and we shall see.

Later: We have the 'hippos' installed, and my plumber is quite right. When there is anything substantial to flush away, you have to check, and then sometimes flush again. Which destroys the value of the exercise. It would be better just not to flush at all when it is only yellow.

I have a whole water-butt full of grey water saved during the drought. I use it for washing the car; and for watering plants in the greenhouse. Can't think of anything else. Rain water goes into a separate water-butt and is useful for the birdbath and the dog's bowl.

  6 October 2006

Stones on the grass

I walk my dog on the Greensward every morning. These early morning strolls turn into a stone gathering exercise returning them to the beach.

The problem arises from visitors utilising the pebbles for goalposts, barbecue bases etc. They then leave them on the green for the tractor grasscutter to slice into razor-sharp flints, ideal for cutting the feet of unsuspecting children and dogs.

It worries me that the litter-pickers from the gardening contractors, who do such a good job on the litter, leave the stones. Despite the fact that they will ruin the blades on their own grass-cutter. And sometimes the stones are so thickly spread that it really needs a man with a bucket and shovel to put them back on the beach.

The random stones worry me. I saw a man throw stones from the beach onto the grass for his Alsation to chase. The dog gave them a good lick and then ran off after the next stone. I followed 50 yards behind picking all the stones up and throwing them back on the beach. Then of course my dog goes and retrieves those stones off the beach and brings them back to me.

NTL TV codes changed

NTL cable TV used to have two different programme access codes depending on where you live. Suddenly today, Wednesday, the second lot of codes have been dropped. Keying 1 for BBC1 now has to be 101. They have a great number of subscribers and none of them were warned. They do have a message on their help line. Neither the Radio Times, nor the Whats on TV papers had any mention, just quietly changed the top-of-page codes. But the Guide function now has all the programmes, so you can click from there.

The NTL website has a page that has the code card, but if you try and print it it is too small without changing your glasses. Apparently a better printed card is coming by post sometime.
www.ntl.com/home/epg/multichannel.asp

Meanwhile try my list on www.goring-by-sea.uk.com/ntlpages.htm

Who does watch all these channels? 120 NTL channels are available. 101 on Sky. About 30 on Freeview. Only 48 get a mention in Radio Times and 35 in Whats on TV. We watch only about 15 channels on occasion but three of these are not on Freeview. And there is little consistency. Freeview has some, Sky has a lot, NTL have some that the others do not have. You go to the Internet websites for UKTV and for Discovery and there are several more channels mentioned. Maybe it is an ego-trip to produce your own TV channel, like self-publishing a book, and it doesn't really matter if no one views it.

WD40

Not military at all, but named for 'Water Dispersant which we got right at the 40th attempt'. Join the club to tell you 2000 strange new uses for the product. A product which everyone must have on their shelf someplace if only they could put their hands on it.

• Freeing rusted hinges and locks (the most usual usage)
• Use to loosen rusty nuts and screws, clean garden tools
• Cleans piano keys
• Keeps wicker chairs from squeaking
• Removes crayon from walls
• Removes tea stains from countertops

One Mintos in a bottle of Diet Coke

www.arborsci.com/CoolStuff/cool24.htm#Mentos
When a Mentos mint is dropped in a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke, a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide gas is released in an instant, resulting in an eruption of soda

Worthing's Waterwise Garden

This area of beach opposite Marine Gardens in West Worthing has suffered from the drought, but not nearly as much as most gardens. For the record, the plants growing there include:

sea holly
sea lavender
sea campion
white stonecrop
English stonecrop
seakale
thrift
tamarisk
New Zealand flax
cabbage palm
perennial wallflower
verbena rigida
hebe albicans
euonymus japonicus
griselinia littoralis
elymus magellanicus
beschorneria yuccoides

My favourite pictures

Rodin's Thinker Otherwise known as Constipation, is well described on www.artsology.com/thinker.php

Rodin's Kiss is also a classic and is described on artchive.com/artchive/R/rodin/kiss.jpg.html

Boulter's Lock is on my wall, or just a print of it I guess; www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ladylever/collections/boulterslock.asp

The Three Graces by Rubins has to go in but we wonder why www.artfund.org/artwork/5413/the-three-graces

Siesta The Isles of Scilly by Janet Swanborough
www.hockinandroberts.com/about_janetandpatsyswanborough.asp
It is also on my list at This Link

Zero Risk - a good thing?

The reality is that zero defects in products plus zero pollution plus zero risk on the job is equivalent to maximum growth of government plus zero economic growth plus runaway inflation.
Dixie Lee Ray -seventeenth governor of Washington and the first woman to hold that position

Every risk results in a new law, and each law seems to require more paperwork for business or the police, health, education, welfare segments. Boring.

"Healthensafety" is a concept invented in the 1960s by civil servants. Its primary function is to stop everyone who wants to do more with their lives than eat bread and watch circuses from actually having any fun.

How long is red tape?
Pythagoras's Theorem - 24 words
The Lord's Prayer - 66 words
Archimedes Principle - 67 words
The Ten Commandments - 179 words
The Gettysburg Address - 286 words
The new European rules on the sale of cabbages - 26,253 words
- Paris Magazine of St Mary Magdalen, Chulmleigh, Devon, quoted in the Mail on Sunday

Federation of Small Businesses

A small yearly subscription; a range of benefits covering everything a small business needs; insurance and discounts to cover most of lifes' woes; 300,000 members; 200 local branches to meet like minded business contacts. This has surely got to be the one of the organisations you must join to survive the 40 items of new legislation to hit us so far, with more to come every month.
www.fsb.org.uk/

Worthing Freecycle

Here in Worthing there is an excellent way of getting things you may need, or passing on things that have been cluttering up you attic or garage. All for free. All you have to do is collect the stuff. But there is competition for most things, and as the OFFER person you have to choose which of the several respondents you will favour. First come first served perhaps. Or the man in the next street to you.
groups.yahoo.com/group/worthing-freecycle/