The Switch

It'll be a switch I'll flick on 29th March 2008, 8:00PM... Will you?

And here's something else that saves power, saves the environment...

Email accounts...

To all of my friends who use Hotmail:

Get a real email address!

PLEASE!

Oh for Christ-sake... All I want to do is send half a dozen people an email. I want to send it so that none of the recipients know any of the others, so I use the BCC field. I want you to be 100% assured that the email arrived from me, so I digitally sign it...

Please hotmail users, thank your postmaster for returning my email, claiming it took on a spam like appearance...

The contents of the email would have been unreadable to your postmaster without you receiving the message with all sorts of red flags appearing next to it, claiming that the message has been tampered with, as it rightly would have been, thanks to my digital signature.

The fact that I want to hide who else I've sent it to is common with all my emails at the moment, and remains to be common among businesses worldwide. Your postmaster has blocked a service that has existed in emails for years...

Yes, I've hated Hotmail for years because of it's simple interface, poor junk-filtering, incorrect diagnosis of legitimate emails, lack of connectivity (i.e. there's situations where you might want to be able to click on a link in an email (don't say you can, you can't... don't even bother... people have pages telling you that you suck).

So now it's time for you to actually do the world a favour and provide us with an email account that we can send emails to, and not have to suffer... Have some help...

Ok, ok... I'll relax... I'll calm down...

That “L” Word

• The following isn't directed at anybody, or anything, I just want my word back...

Something wrong with today's society... I don't feel like the word "love" has the same meaning it used to.

I just feel it's over used... It's in advertisements, telling people they'll "love" the new flavour or whatever; it's in music, telling us all how some singer "loved" someone but it all went to shit; it's on television, in some soppy soap opera; and we say it to each other, even when we don't really mean it at all.

Truth is, you can never truly "love" somebody until you actually know them fully. "Love at first sight" would be much better defined as "lust at first sight," because how do you instantly know, simply by looking at somebody, that they aren't a tosser or whatever... That's the thing, we say we "love" something, but truth is we just lust it until we get bored of it, then it simply becomes something we just like.

Situations:

• There's a new product (i.e. Coke Zero is released) and we try it and say to each other "Oh I simply LOVE the taste." – Truth is we merely like the taste, it's a nice change. Two weeks later you'll be sick of it and you'll go back to regular Coke.
• You meet someone new, and two weeks later you tell your best friend in private "Oh I think I'm in love with that guy, he's just so nice." – Yup, he's nice. Everyone is nice to the new people. If you ask him (or her, trying to be gender unspecific here, but failing) out you'll probably find a month later that he isn't your type at all, that you share nothing in common. You never "loved" him, not even if you said "I love you," you only ever lusted him, and when you found out he was boring/opinionated/rude/smelly/bad at sex or whatever you didn't even like him anymore.

I try whenever I can, to only use the word "love" when I absolutely mean it. When I'm writing something (a text message for example), I actually pause and think before writing the word "love." I ask myself, "Do I mean it? Do I honestly truthfully love?" Only when the answer is yes do I put it in.

I'm asking politely for the world to pause and think. Do you honestly mean that you "love" that person? Or are you just saying it because they said it to you?

Having trouble deciding whether you "love" somebody, "lust" somebody, "care for" somebody, "like" somebody or "like more than the other option?" Ask yourself, "If I was with this person, and we'd done everything together, and there was nothing new left to do or try, if we had seen everything and been everywhere, could I honestly say that the 'spark' would still be there between us, would I still want that person over any other, would this person be irreplaceable to me?"

If you find yourself saying "No, I don't think that 'spark' would still be there," then I suggest you find a new word to use, and leave "love" for those who mean it. There's no word greater than "love;" and today, as well as every other day, I wish there was, so I could use it...

Also, got sent a picture last night from someone I can honestly say I love:

Disiplined and ordered, Izzy's having fun, but missing home. She'll be back Easter time to see the important people :P

Happy Valentines Day for those who love somebody!

Energy Drink

Today on James' Kitchen we'll be making the energy drink he uses to keep himself awake, alive, entertained, or just plain energetic. In fact, there's probably enough energy in one drink to power all Australian homes for a day, so by drinking one, you better have something planned to do. Interestingly, this drink contains absolutely NO harmful drugs (James takes them separately), like caffeine, alcohol, or guarana that are commonly found in so called "energy drinks" such as Red Bull, V, or coffee...

Let's pick a few nasty names from those "energy drinks" and see how bad I can make them sound (while keeping to 99% fact...);

Taurine (found in Red Bull and V) is a conditionally essential "amino acid." I put "amino acid" in quotes because I'm simply quoting the Red Bull website on that, yet Taurine lacks a carboxyl group to be properly called an amino acid. It was named from Latin Taurus, meaning bull or ox, as it was first extracted from ox bile in 1827. Also, despite its presence in energy drinks, Taurine has not been shown to be energy-giving.

Glucuronolactone (found in Red Bull and V), also known as (2R)-2-[(2S,3R,4S)-3,4-Dihydroxy-5-oxo-tetrahydrofuran-2-yl]-2-hydroxy-acetaldehyde, "has received some notoriety... that it was a Vietnam War-era drug manufactured by the American government." Also worth mentioning is that "it was banned due to several brain tumour-related deaths." Scary huh?

I'm sure you already know all the hype about caffeine being bad for you, so I'll just skip over that one and you can imagine all the bad things I've just said.

Acesulfame K, found in Red Bull (and probably V, couldn't get a proper ingredient list for them), is one of those artificial sweetener doodads, and you all tell me off for drinking Diet Coke cause it has fake sugar in it so RIGHT BACK AT YA!!! Only this is found in all of Red Bull products, not just the "light" version. It's so dangerous that Kraft Foods had to add another chemical to its products to mask the damage that Acesulfame K did (to your tastebuds...). It has also been noticed that the "chemical has not been studied adequately and may be carcinogenic."

Sucralose, sounding like sucrose, but it's not, so there, is also an additive to Red Bull and V. To quote Wikipedia straight for this one

"Concerns have been raised about the effect of sucralose on the thymus, an organ that is important to the immune system. A report from NICNAS cites two studies on rats, both of which found "a significant decrease in mean thymus weight" at a certain dose."

The certain dose stated is calculated to be similar to the quantity that Luke drinks Red Bull at, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't worry as "some ingested sucralose is broken down and absorbed by the body there is concern that chronic consumption may lead to thymus shrinkage or other side-effects."

Now that I've told you the nasty parts of the other drinks, you can drink mine instead, knowing that you're probably safe (that all depends on how you make it really).

You will need:

1. A mixer blender thingo... I use a milkshake maker and it works... Just...
2. A cup with can withstand freezing (i.e. the condensation on the cup I use FREEZES... That's how much energy this drink sucks up from the environment... Cool huh?).
3. About 30mL of Milk (yup, that's all).
4. Half a tin of Milo (size of the tin depends on how much energy you require).
5. Chocolate Ice-cream... The DARK chocolate ice-cream... You know the stuff...
6. Chocolate syrup... To taste...
7. Sugar (optional).

Instructions:

1. Put about 10mL of milk at the bottom of the cup; this is to prevent the Milo getting stuck down the bottom.
2. Scoop Ice-cream in small scoops into the cup, large chunks means you might blow the motor. Don't be shy, use lots!!!
3. Pour Milo in (note: I said pour, not scoop; that means use LOTS).
4. Add sugar (optional).
5. Add remaining Milk, if it will fit, to give the mixer an attempt at a chance of working in the future.
6. Stick on the mixer thing and start. You'll hear it struggle, this is normal; it will spin a little faster once the ice-cream has been whipped to hell.
7. Take off; add Chocolate Syrup until mix is getting close to the edge of cup.
8. Mix again; stand back in case it goes over the edge...
9. When you can smell the motor smoking, it's finished and you can drink it off to drink it. Tastes best straight off the mixer.

Warning: Consistency is far thicker than Hungry Jack or McDonald's thickshakes, so tipping it towards your mouth may not produce any results... If this is the case, try blending it again. If that fails, buy a new blender and invest in blender shares...

Warning: Do not drink, then forget to exercise, the energy contained in the drink may make you fat in a matter of seconds...

Warning: Do not allow parents to watch you make this, they will kill you. Do not allow pets to consume the substance, as it's probably an aphrodisiac...

Yes, I actually drink that by the way... Tastes good... Like Chocolate...

Tune in next time for something else crazy!!! That's what I'm here for!!!