Monthly archive: May 2008

1. Mediawatch-UK (organisation that monitors broadcasts for violence, sex and bad language) is the current (since 2001) name of Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association.
2. One-fifth of Americans have never used email.
3. Border agents in the US can search your laptop or any other electronic device when you enter the country. UK customs agents search laptops too.
4. Chaka Khan has a sister named Taka Boom (real names: Yvette and Yvonne Stevens).
5. Oxytocin (the 'hormone of love' and trust) is destroyed in the stomach and must therefore be injected or inhaled.
6. Kelly Watch the Stars (1998 track by French duo Air) is inspired by Jaclyn Smith's character Kelly Garrett in 70s TV series Charlie's Angels.
7. In 2006 the UK environment minister urged shoppers to leave excess wrapping and packaging at the tills. Can anyone explain to me why most cucumbers are shrink-wrapped?

Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account over the past seven days:

• How to make a stop-mo movie – Telegraph
  'At Aardman (the Oscar-winning British animation studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts), we expect each animator to create one and a half seconds of footage a day.'
• Outlook Export Tool
  'free tool for exporting data from Microsoft Outlook to CSV text files. [...] exporting more data than offered by the built-in export feature in Outlook, [...] quicker and easier to use. [...] Contacts, Calendar, E-mail, Post, Tasks, Journal, Notes.'
• PollDaddy Twitter Polls – Send a poll directly to your Twitter!
  'Here you can quickly create a poll and post it as your Twitter status. Just fill out the form below and hit send!'
• Free Time Management Software | RescueTime
  'web-based time-management tool that allows you to easily understand how you spend your time. [...] NO DATA ENTRY. You install a doohicky on your computer and we magically track all of your time usage.'
• Adobe adds Flickr support to free Photoshop Express
  The public beta allows upload of up to 2GB worth of photos, and from 7 May Flickr will be included alongside Picasa, Photobucket, Facebook and MySpace.

1. Written Thai does not separate words with spaces except in certain cases.
2. Streetcar (the company I hire cars by the half-hour) also has a fleet of WV Transporter vans
3. Madonna bites the top off Cadbury's Creme Eggs and 'sucks the good stuff out'.
4. People on blood-thinners should avoid broccoli, as it is high in vitamin K which helps blood clotting.
5. Reduction ad Hitlerum is a fallacy in logic of the type 'Hitler supported X, therefore X is bad'.
6. Dick Tracy wears a zoot suit (high-waisted, wide-legged, with pegged trousers and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders).
7. Gmail advanced search (and filters) offers three ways to find messages containing x or y or z in a given field:
   • x OR y OR z ('OR' has to be upper case)
   • x|y|z (handy for long lists)
   • {x y z} (useful when writing more complex search syntax)