Thursday, December 14, 2006

John McCain hates bloggers!

I know. That title is pretty weaselly. I'm sure that McCain doesn't hate bloggers, but he wants them to be under the same restrictions as large organizations who devote huge resources to preventing copyright violations. He wants bloggers to police comments. Violations could cost the offending blogger $300,000!

I don't have $300,000.

Think Progress

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Super Lettuce Turns Sour Sweet

It has been almost ten years since I tried "miracle fruit" and I'll never forget it. The little red berry, the only fruit on the bush, was split three ways. It tasted like, well, nothing. I didn't think it was much of a miracle.

After consuming a large bowl of lemons, followed up with another bowl of oranges, we were convinced of the miraculous nature of that fruit. Those were the sweetest lemons I have ever had.

I've since tried to explain the situation to others, and even to find information on the fruit on the internet to no avail.

Until now.

It seems that Japanese scientists have engineered lettuce to contain the protein that binds to your taste buds and make sour things sweet.

The protein is called miraculin, and the fruit it occurs in naturally is called Richadella dulcifica, or "miracle fruit".

Super Lettuce Turns Sour Sweet

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

McGyver this!

Well, I misspelled McGyver as 'McGuiver' and now Farrer Commons comes up as number three when searching for the mispelled name on Google.

Anyway, I have another nice little life-hack for you.

When you've dropped something into the toilet, and don't relish the thought of toilet water all over your hands, then try this.

Take a plastic grocery bag and place your hand inside. With your hand covered, reach into the toilet and get the missing item. Then, still holding the item, turn the bag inside-out and you can toss it into the trash.

If you dropped some valuable jewelry, you may wish to reconsider throwing it away.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Get an R.S.S. reader

It looks like half of the readers of my blogs (i.e. Davis County Watch, and Farrer Commons) are using Internet Explorer version 6 which means that they are probably not taking advantage of R.S.S. There are plugins available to allow I.E. 6 users to see feeds.

There are a few that have made the jump to I.E. 7 which has a built in R.S.S. feed reader. Although, I haven't heard great reviews of version 7 itself.

About 30% are using some version of Firefox which has a number of R.S.S. feed readers. I use Sage.

I'm sure that Safari users have Feed readers. However, I've never used Safari.

If you don't use R.S.S. and are an internet information junkie, then you should get yourself a feed reader for R.S.S.

R.S.S. stands for Really Simple Syndication and is the best way, at present, for keeping track of all of the websites that you frequent. If you don't want to have to trouble yourself to visit each and every website in turn, that you like, to see if they've been updated then you want an R.S.S. reader.

Only a small number of websites don't use R.S.S. feeds. All Blogger blogs have an option to publish feeds.