Coffee - The Greatest Air Freshener

Random Things nobody cares about.

2009-11-03T22:30:00.001Z

I have decided to start using my blog to post about random facts and snippets of information that I come across in everyday life. I hope this interests you despite the title.

Windows live writer

2009-08-24T12:25:00.002+01:00

Windows live writer is one of the programmes that comes with the windows live messenger download. It is a very nice little programme a bit like Microsoft office word except that it is a programme that lets you write blog posts and upload them straight to your blog.

It is in fact the programme that I am using to write this very blog post that you are reading (and hopefully enjoying)

I haven’t posted much in a while mainly because I couldn’t be bothered but maybe with the discovery of this programme you may be seeing a lot more blog posts from now on :).

Moka Pots

2009-02-15T12:30:00.011Z

This is a picture of my two moka pots. My regular readers may remember an article that I wrote on my blog last year when I first got my moka pot. This going to be more of an instructional post with photographs of my moka pots on the way, not necessarily relating to the instructions. Follow this for the perfect coffee:
1. Unscrew the moka pot, and fill the bottom portion with water. Make sure not to fill past the pressure release open valve.
2. Fill the funnel portion with ground coffee. Tamp down slightly.
3.Place the funnel into the bottom portion of the moka pot.
4.Screw on the top half of the moka pot, and place the whole thing on a heat source (like a stove burner).
5.After a few minutes, the water will boil and steam will come up through the coffee grounds, filling the top portion of the pot with espresso.
6.Pour and enjoy.

Mint tea

2008-08-19T18:03:00.002+01:00

Tea, the drink that very little people dislike and is a worldwide drink. It is made in very different ways all over the world but my favourite is the Morrocan way, mint tea:

first you need to pick a few sprigs of mint enough to cover the bottom of the cup.
Then you need to add sugar to taste without sugar it tastes pretty disgusting.
Then boil the kettle (obviously)
add a tea bag to the cup.
pour in the water from the kettle as normal.
DO NOT ADD MILK!!
Drink.

That is how you make delicious morrocan mint tea.

Puzzle (click the picture)

2008-07-06T17:42:00.003+01:00

Flying

2008-07-06T17:27:00.003+01:00

As I am going on holiday tomorrow , to Corfu, I thought that I would blog about flying and how tedious it is. I know that most of you will have flown before and will also share my views (probably). Flying is extremely boring, when you think about it basically you are spending a few hours encased in a metal tube 30 thousand feet in the air. There is nowhere to walk, nowhere to go in fact there is escape (at least until you land). To stop you from being very bored on your next flying venture I will tell you what I am taking in my hand luggage to keep me occupied:

firstly My MP3 player (highly important)
A very good book
My rubik's cube
Some drawing paper and pencil
A pen
Finally a newspaper.*

*If you are into Su Doku then I highly recommend The Times as it has three of them each with varying difficulty.

I hope this information helps for the next time you fly.

Rubiks cube

2008-06-22T18:34:00.005+01:00

Key combinations

Start/stop

Scramble : spacebar
Abort : Esc

Turns

Left/right : E/D, I/K
Top/front : J/F, H/G
Bottom/back : L/S, O/W

Cube rotations

Pitch : Y/N
Yaw : ;/A
Roll : P/Q

Wide turns

Left/right : R/V, U/M

Hand shifts (for larger cubes)

Left hand : 4/3
Right hand : 7/8

Ekralc's weekly Puzzle (click the picture)

2008-06-09T19:36:00.001+01:00

The Frisbee

2008-06-09T19:27:00.004+01:00

Playing Frisbee is one of my favourite past-times. The reason for this is that it is fun and keeps you quiet fit. Here is a short History of the frisbee:

A baker named William Russel Frisbie, of Warren, Connecticut, and later of Bridgeport, came up with a clever marketing idea back in the 1870s. He put the family name in relief on the bottom of the light tin pans in which his company’s homemade pies were sold. The pans were reusable, but every time a housewife started to bake a pie in one, she would see the name Frisbie and, it was hoped, think, "How much easier to buy one". Eventually Mr. Frisbie’s pies were sold throughout much of Connecticut, including New Haven.
There, sometime in the 1940s, Yale students began sailing the pie tins through the air and catching them. A decade later, out in California, a flying-saucer enthusiast named Walter Frederick Morrison designed a saucer-like disk for playing catch. It was produced by a company named Wham-O. On a promotional tour of college campuses, the president of Wham-O encountered the pie-plate-tossing craze at Yale. And so the flying saucer from California was renamed after the pie plate from Connecticut. Of course the name was changed from Frisbie to Frisbee to avoid any legal problems.

Ghead's jigsaw. (click the picture)

2008-05-27T19:30:00.002+01:00

ekralc's weekly puzzle - try it! [beat 3:04] (click on the picture)

2008-05-27T18:39:00.013+01:00

Gliding

2008-05-27T16:37:00.003+01:00

"Once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned forever skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return" Leonardo Da Vinci

In the early 1970's I became a member of the Blackpool and Fylde Gliding Club based at that time at Samlesbury Aerodrome.

I have always been interested in flying, but at that time the only flying I had done was from Blackpool Airport to the Isle-of-Man.

The training glider used by the club was a Slingsby T21B open cockpit glider. The instructor and trainee were sat side-by-side on wooden seats with just a semi-circular sloped windscreen in front each of them. It was possible to be sat with your elbow resting on the edge of the cockpit and be able to just look straight down at the revolving earth.

At Samlesbury the flying was restricted somewhat by the lack of good thermals, it was not too bad late morning or early afternoon, but after about 3pm, the thermals were dying due to the sea breeze effect coming in from the coast. In fact, those of you who live in this part of, the world will recognise this phenomenon. Many times here, we will have cloudy skies, or in summer, nice white fluffy clouds, but come late afternoon or early evening and the skies are a clear blue with brilliant sunshine. This is caused by the sea breeze effect making its way from the coast killing off the thermals.

It is for this reason that the club started searching for alternative accommodation, because the length of flights was so short due to the lack of lift. Now the club is situated at Cock Hill farm near Chipping, close to Bleasedale fells; they launch from there and use the bowl shaped fell-side where the lift comes not from thermals but by the prevailing wind blowing from the coast onto the fell-side and rising up over it, the gliders use this lift to soar the ridge, just like a seagull would on cliffs. It is possible to stay up soaring for as long as you likes in this manner.

I have only flown from this site once, because by then, I was no longer a club member. But one year I took a group of young people there and we all had flights one evening. I remember it well; this time I wasn’t flying in the T21B trainer, but a much more high performance training glider, with the instructor sat behind me. It was the normal closed cockpit type and it felt to me as if I were alone, the views from there were fantastic looking out to the coast and being able to see the sea and the Ribble Estuary glistening in the distance; very memorable. I would love to experience this once more before I become too old.

As Leonardo Da Vinci once said: “Once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned forever skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return”

Hexaflexagons

2008-05-27T16:17:00.001+01:00

Hexaflexagons are hexagons which means that they have six sides and two faces. Althogh this may seem regular and rather boring, Hexaflexagons are in fact the exact opposite of this as they have a secret hidden feature.

The secret feature of the Hexaflexagon is the fact that when you pinch one side and pull out the opposite side a brand new side appears and there are four of these unseen sides. Although this may sound complicated and not very amazing, but I highly recomend that you make one using the instructions above and I think you will be suitably amazed.

2008-02-26T20:56:00.003Z

This is a picture from the programme called stellarium which is an open source planetarium suit. You can choose what observatory you want to view the sky from, which adds a good choice of celstial viewing.

This image was taken at 9:50 in the morning which seems to be a good time to see shooting stars. As you can probably see in the picture there is plenty of shooting stars.

Jimi Hendrix

2008-02-19T08:25:00.001Z

Hendrix, Jimi (1942-1970), American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter, considered one of the best guitarists in rock music, and who died at the height of his fame in 1970. Born in Seattle, Washington state, he was originally called Johnny Allen Hendrix but was later renamed James Marshall Hendrix by his father. Hendrix began his short career by touring with a number of rhythm-and-blues shows (1961-1966). In 1966 Hendrix moved to England and founded the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a trio that included Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding. The group made its debut appearance in Paris (1966) and toured clubs on the European continent and England (1966-1967). The trio was an immediate hit, and its singles “Hey, Joe”, “Purple Haze”, and “The Wind Cries Mary” rose to the top of the pop charts in England.

Returning to the United States, Hendrix appeared at the Monterey Festival (1967), where he performed “Wild Thing”—a performance documented in the film Monterey Pop (1969). The film Woodstock (1970), in turn, recorded his participation in the now-famous 1969 music festival. His eroticized style, with suggestive gyrations, a pulsating beat, a strongly amplified sound, and the smashing of his guitar made his appearances controversial but extremely popular. His version of “The Star Spangled Banner”, in which he plucked the guitar with his teeth, became legendary. He died in London of a drug overdose at the height of his fame. His best-selling albums include Are You Experienced? (1967), Axis Bold As Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968).

Random Facts

2008-02-07T20:42:00.002Z

The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.
The tentacles of the giant Arctic jellyfish can reach 120 feet (36.6 meters) in length.
Coca-Cola translated to Chinese means, "To make mouth happy".
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
Hummingbirds can't walk.

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Rules of exodus

2008-02-07T20:18:00.000Z

Exodus is a game which involves running out or away from somewhere as fast as possible. Such as a school or work place. Basically somebody shouts out "EXODUS" or "PURGE" and when either of these are shouted everybody who plays the game must run out or away from wherever they are. The game can be played at any time any place and is extremely funny when you run past people who are not playing as they wonder why you are running and shouting!!

Paper recycling

2008-02-07T20:04:00.000Z

The first piece of paper as we know it was produced from rags in AD 105 by Ts'ai Luin, who was part of the Eastern Han Court of the Chinese Emperor Ho Ti.
Paper is made from cellulose fibre, the source of which can be pulped wood, or a variety of other materials such as rags, cotton, grasses, sugar cane, straw, waste paper, or even elephant dung! In this country, wood pulp is the most common source material for the manufacture of virgin paper, i.e. paper which has no recycled content.
In 2004 recycled paper and board provided about 74% of the source materials for the 6.2million tonnes of paper manufactured in the UK's 76 paper and board mills. A further 7.7 million tonnes were imported.
There are different sources of waste fibre used as a source material for manufacturing recycled paper.
Mill Broke is "waste" paper which has never been used, either printers' off cuts or rolls damaged during production. When mixed with water the fibres are freed into pulp. The National Association of Paper Manufacturers does not recognise a paper as recycled if it contains more than 25% mill broke and/or virgin wood pulp.
The recycling of paper which has been printed on and used is known as "post-consumer waste". It is more problematic, (see de-inking below), but it is still worthwhile. Paper cannot be recycled indefinitely, it can only be recycled 4-6 times, as the fibres get shorter and weaker each time. Some virgin pulp must be introduced into the process to maintain the strength and quality of the fibre, so no matter how much we recycle we will never eradicate the need for virgin fibre.