A very quick Friday Eyedrops this week – time is not on my side this Thursday…

I have mentioned before that I like books and also magazines. One magazine I tried for the first time this week was The New Yorker. All I can say is best €6.71 I spent all week. I’ve ordered a subscription too – now I now how Walter Kiam felt when he was “so impressed” that he “bought the company”.

This one article in particular I found fascinating and is quite simply a must read. It’s all about itching, brains and bodies. If you’re working right now, don’t attempt to read this right away, it deserves your full attention.  Print it out and read it tonight.

If you’re like me, you will feel itchy at some point during this and be reminded again of the mystery of our lives.

I’m sure lots of you have already discovered the New Yorker but I’m glad I’ve taken up the habit now!

Second magazine I bought this week was Monocle. It was on the shelf below the New Yorker and it stood out on the shelf + it had a special Design supplement which interested me. The tagline for the magazine is “A briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design”. Worth a read too. Had to laugh when I saw the reader survey on the back page. One of the questions was the household income. First box to tick was “Up to £100k” – last box to tick was “More than £7m”.  Ever read a magazine and feel like you shouldn’t be reading it. Seeing that survey, I did!

The latest Road Safety Authority of Ireland campaign was in the news this week. It’s called “He drives, she dies”. Research shows that two thirds of women who died in car crashes were passengers in cars driven by men.

This is another in a long line of ads targetted at young men and their bad driving habits. I can’t help getting the feeling that this sort of campaign is like telling someone they are “no good” until they start to believe it. They then act accordingly because everyone expects it of them anyway.

Maybe speed regulators on cars for young drivers would be a more sensible and life saving solution?

This video isn’t on Youtube so you’ll have to follow this link to watch. It’s a series of “15 x 20 second Idents for Russian channel ‘Bibigon’”. Lots of fun facts that you might not have known, including a very interesting one about pigs!

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Yesterday I decided to keep a food diary. I want to try and get an idea why I’m getting so tired. It’s not every day but maybe 2 or 3 times a week. Sometimes by the end of the day I am literally hardly able to walk.

I thought I might use my mobile’s note feature. I created the first diary entry but it was too awkward. Then I thought maybe my internet tablet. No good – battery time isn’t great. Create a document on the PC – maybe, but others use the same machine so it was a no to that.

Of course, the last thing I thought of was pen and paper which was exactly what I ended up using.

I couldn’t just use any old bit of paper though. I headed on over to pocketmod.com which allows you to create little disposable notebooks. Every pocketmod you create has customised pages – to do lists, food diary, contacts and shopping lists. It’s been updated since I last visited it and now allows you to include pages from your favourite website. The pocketmod is printed on a single sheet of A4 paper which is then folded to create a booklet. It’s a little tricky getting the folding right the first time but the video showing how it’s done helps.

Just passing it along in case you hadn’t heard of it.

Twitter week. I joined twitter this week. It’s been good so far and very useful. It has exceeded my expectations even though it is frightfully slow. I imagine there is a point at which it could become a distraction though.

For me it makes me feel connected. My typical day starts at 7.25 when I leave the house to catch the bus. From that point on until 12 or 1 in the afternoon, I might not have any interaction with another soul beyond various exchanged hellos or good mornings.

I miss the camraderie of the office working environment which I spent many years in. There was always someone to share your news and thoughts with. Always someone to discuss something from the previous nights tv. Innane chatter really but that’s the stuff of life isn’t it? I do have someone that works with me on a few afternoons a week so it’s not all bad. Still, 4 or 5 hours until the afternoon is a long time to spend on your own if it’s not busy.

Anyway, if you want to join my virtual office and keep me sane, do feel free to follow me I’d be glad of the company.

Ok, so this is a bit like all those kit kat ads, but the animation is gorgeous and you know I only bring you quality videos on a Friday don’t you?

I twittered about buying a book on Bookhabit this week. The book I bought was the Secret of Rapid Learning. The title drew me like a moth to a flame, so I put down my hard earned $2.50 and downloaded it.

I’ve read maybe a third and will probably write a summary post about it later. The site is worth a visit in the meantime.

What is Bookhabit all about. Well, I think they say it themselves very well.

Bookhabit gives discovered and undiscovered writers a conduit to the reading world, and gives readers a place to explore.

Readers can look for books about niche or specialist subjects that a mainstream publisher couldn’t promote profitably.

As if I don’t read enough already, I’m a subscriber to Business Book Summaries. I find them very handy to get the salient points of a book without having to invest in it or read it! They have a special offer right now. A years subscription for $39.95 – that’s a bargain as you can download all the previous summaries as well.

It must be 10 years ago that I went and had my fortune told. I just wanted to satisfy my belief that fortune telling is all a load of nonsense. And so it was one Bank Holiday weekend that I stepped up into Madam Boswell’s totally ordinary looking caravan to see what was in store for me. I was disappointed that there was no crystal ball. In fact, there was nothing to add to the sense of occasion I believed should accompany a visit to a fortune teller. To try and recall the details of what she told me ten years later is a task and a half for a man who will, quite often, make up a lunch and then leave the house sans sandwich.

What I can tell you is two specific things she told me from reading my palm. She said I worked in computers and that I had an accident. She was right on both counts. There were some vague references to dead relatives and other non specifics as well. When I left the caravan I thought “wow, she was amazing – so accurate”. It didn’t take me long to figure out that what she had told me was stuff that could apply to anyone. Telling me I worked in computers could easily have applied to a lot of guys my age at the time. Everyone has had an accident at some point. It might not have been serious, but just think for a second and I’ll bet you come up with something, even it was stubbing your toe this morning!

So why on earth am I recalling this “brush with the paranormal”. Well would you believe, it has a little something to do with a book I’m reading called Quirkology. Yep, I’m back to that book again, it’s becoming a bit of a hoary old chestnut at this stage.

There’s a bit in the book about personality tests and an experiment which shows that fortune telling and astrology just pick out general, non-specific pieces of information that could apply to anyone. Rather than make this post too long, I’ve put the personality test results on a separate page. When you read it, just imagine you did the test, had the results analysed and were presented with this description. How well does it describe you? Click here for the description of your personality.

This is lovely and floaty and wonderful.

A TV programme that I like very much is Dragon’s Den. If you’ve not seen it, the premise is very simple. Entrepreneurs pitch their business idea to a panel of multi-millionaire business people. If the dragons like the idea, the entrepreneur gets a nice wad of cash to take their business to the next level. It has had some really great ideas down through the years, and even more crazy ones.

One success story from the last series (or maybe the one before, I’m not sure) was Levi Roots who started off his pitch to the dragons by singing a song “Reggae Reggae sauce”. They liked the idea of his home made recipe for barbeque sauce and gave him an investment £50,000 for 40% of his company.

The product has gone on to sell very successfully in the big supermarkets in the UK and now Levi has a book out. It has 80 simple recipes with a Caribbean flavour. Selling well on Amazon at the moment and available locally in Eason.

A really great success story.

Isn’t it marvellous what computers can do? This is what I hear from customers when they watch me do some Photoshop related task that is second nature to me. It usually passes over my head but sometimes I say back “Well, it’s not the computer that does it – it’s the person in the driving seat”. “Ah yeah, well still though the computer is amazing” is sometimes the reply.

That’s the problem with allowing people look over your shoulder while you work on something. I try not to let that happen, precisely for the reason that when someone sees me do it and I make it look easy, they see no value in the work I’ve done.

It’s a bit like the golfer Gary Player who managed to to get himself out of a really tricky sand trap. Not only did he excute the perfect shot out of the sand trap, he landed the ball about half a metre from the hole.

Someone in the crowd heckled him after the shot saying, “Hey Gary, that was a really lucky shot.”

Gary stopped and turned to the heckler and said : “I guess you’re right. But you know, it’s a funny thing. The more I practice the better I become, and the better I become, the luckier I get.”

Walking down to the polling station this evening along a route known locally as the mass path, the smell of Elderflower was on the wind and it’s a smell that I really like. It reminds me of the long summer holidays as a child and the elderflower cordial we drank as refreshment. I also recall that elderflower steeped in water and then put in the fridge made a good sunburn soother.

If you’ve never tasted an Elderflower drink before, you really should give it a try - very refreshing. Some recipes here and tons more if you do a search on your favourite search engine.

Popbitch has a snippet about Brian McFadden’s foray into the world of radio down under. Here’s what they have to say :

“Ex-Westlifer Brian McFadden is now living in Sydney. He recently guest co-hosted a big breakfast radio show. It was reported that he was 30 minutes late, had three instances of ‘dead air’ in an hour and played the same song twice in 30 mins.”

The same song twice in 30 minutes - not a problem Brian, you’d fit right in on 98fm.

New series of Top Gear is “coming soon” - no one seems to know when though. Love this promo for it.

Bonus video (not embedded), office worker totally freaks out.

Picked up a magazine the other morning because it stood out on the shelf. Hadn’t a clue what it was, but I like the graphic on the front. It’s called Adbusters and their website is here.

It’s very different (it has no advertising at all) - and doesn’t have the formal structure of a magazine. It’s full of eye catching graphics, photographs and articles. One of the articles is entitled East Meets West and features the artwork of a Chinese Born artist called Yang Liu. She was raised in Germany and her art depicts the cultural differences between East and West.

Here’s an example entitled “View of Self” - blue is West, Red is East. There are lots more here - all very interesting and thought provoking. Which one catches your eye?

I already made a mention of a book I’m reading at the moment called Quirkology. It’s fascinating and I’m taking my time reading it because it’s one of those books I don’t want to get to the end of. Anyway, many of you will have heard about a very famous psychology experiment done in the 1960’s by Stanley Milgram. It was designed to test how much pain people would inflict on others when directed to do so by an authority figure (in this case a man in a white coat). Follow the link above if you want to read more. 60% of participants were prepared to deliver a potentially fatal shock to another human being just because the authority figure said so. Even though I’ve read about this experiment many times, I didn’t know about another similar experiment. Instead of actors playing the part of people getting electric shocks, they used live puppies. Incredibly, 50% of men delivered the maximum shock to the puppies versus 100% of women. This either shows that women are innately submissive or they really just don’t like dogs because they remind them of men, ergo women hate men? Thoughts on a postcard

Youtube video time. Superb promo for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. The sheet music turns into a roller coaster. Bet you’ll watch this one twice at least.

An inspirational story. I had read this before and dug the book out last night as, for some reason, it came to my mind when I was doing the Apprentice review post. There are days when I feel like what I do doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, so this is a bit of a pick me up.

In the pioneering days of space research, John Kennedy was visiting NASA at Cape Canaveral. He had met many great scientists and researchers. He had met the men whose great ambition was to conquer space and walk on the surface of the moon. He had met administrators, accountants and many others whose contribution to the project was immense. Men and women who had a sense of destiny, purpose and pride.

Walking through the corridors on his way back to his limousine, he came across a stooped, grey-haired black man with a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. It seemed to be quite a redundant question, but the president asked him politely, “And what do you do here at the Cape?”

Straightening his back, the cleaner looked square at the President, and with a strong sense of pride and dignity in his voice replied, “Sir, I’m doing the same as everyone else, I’m working here to put a man on the moon. That’s exactly what I’m doing here.”

If you are in the vicinity of Leopardstown on Sunday it might be worthwhile to drop by the Green Energy Fair. As well as having lots of ideas for home owners to reduce their carbon footprint, all your favourite green party people will be there - John Gormley, Eamon Ryan, Deirdre de Burca and Ciaran Cuffe. There’s foodie things there as well so it’s not just all about houses. I might pop along myself. It’s on Sunday from 11 to 6.

US postage stamp photo by mwboeckann and used under a creative commons license.

Via Frugal Ireland - €2 off Ben and Jerry’s Baked Alaska. Deb points out that it’s €3.24 in Te$co at the moment. Voucher valid until December. I’m stocking up - great deal…