Micro "soft" Music!

Yesterday I found myself browsing Youtube for hours due to an extremely dangerous level of boredom. I can't say it changed my life but I saw a lot in those hours. I saw people open cars by sending the key signal through their phones, I saw a boy allow his friend to smash a guitar over his head but nothing would prepare me for what came next.

Oh dear! I've bigged this up a little too much but hopefully you'll find it interesting. There it was on the side of my screen, a link saying "Music made only from sounds of XP!" Cool!!! I hit the link and was simply stunned by the ambient tune that then played and true enough, only noises from XP were used - like when a pop-up appears.

Check it out yourself here and listen to many different compositions which are not only clever, but plesant on the ear.

Rock My Baby

Ok now I have heard everything. Guns N Roses seem to always be in the news for some odd reason or another but I would never expect the rock legends to be a popular substitution for a bedtime lullaby. A recent surveyor, who had a lot of time on their hands, found out that modern mums are more likely to sing material from bands like Oasis and Guns N Roses rather than traditional lullabies to get their young offspring to drop off.

A website dedicated to babies polled 2000 mothers and found some absolutely crazy results. Songs like Take That’s “Patience” and Robbie Williams’ “Angels” are among the most popular choices which is weird but I suppose they are suitable. However, the top 20 from the survey included tracks like “I kissed a girl” by Katy Perry and “Dance Wiv Me” by Dizzee Rascal which don’t seem the most appropriate for our little ones. I don’t know what the world is coming to.

The top 20 are shown below:

1. Take That - Patience
2. Robbie Williams - Angels
3. Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
4. James Blunt - You’re Beautiful
5. Elvis Presley - Love Me Tender
6. Christina Aguilera - Beautiful
7. Duffy - Warwick Avenue
8. Guns N’ Roses - Sweet Child O’ Mine
9. Oasis - Wonderwall
10. The Sugababes - Girls
11. That That - Back For Good
12. Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You
13. Bryan Adams - (Everything I Do) I Do it for You
14. Adele - Chasing Pavements
15. Girls Aloud - I’ll Stand By You
16. Dizzee Rascal - Dance Wiv Me
17. Sinead O’Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U
18. Westlife - Flying Without Wings
19. Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On
20. The Spice Girls - Mama

Onion Power!

Ever thought you were to cool for batteries? No, neither do I, but you have got to admit that chargiing an ipod with an onion is flipping awesome!

So how do you do it?

1. Plonk your onion on a surface and poke a cm deep hole into the side of the onion. Do the same on the otherside. A screwdriver or pen would be perfect for this.
2. Submerge your onion in some powerade or similar sports drink.
3. Leave it there for 30 minutes to absorb a nice amount of liquid.
4. Dry it gently.
5. Plonk your super onion on your surface again.
6. Get your ipod and insert the usb cord into the onion.
7. Wait for a few seconds and then go crazy when you see your ipod turn on and start charging.

The science bit!
Well it is all to do with electrolytes which are salts that are specifically ions. These little gems come from the sports drink and get absorbed by the cells in the onion. The electrolytes are stored in the onion and release energy. Your usb has a cathode (negative) and an anode (positive). Ions that move to the cathode (cations) are positively charged and ions that move to the anode (anions not onions) are negatively charged allowing a current to your ipod.

You can watch a video of it here if my intructions were to rubbish but I now hope you won't worry about not getting the most out of your onions.

Musical Madness

Ever wondered what the weirdest and stupidest things to be done in the name of music have been? Well in this article I will attempt to seek out the oddest and most crazy musical facts so that you can crush your friends with useless musical trivia.

• 8 names John Lennon used to check into a hotel:
  Dr. Winston O’Boogie
  Long John
  Dwarf McDougall
  Musketeer Gripweed
  Rev Fred Ghurkin
  Dr. Dream
  Kaptain Kundalini
  Johnny Rhythm Honorary John St John Johnson.


• The smallest guitar in the world is smaller than a red blood cell and has strings that can be strummed. It was made using nanotechnology.


• Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music. Well any music with a big pounding beat and fast tempo.


• Elvis once said, I dont know anything about music. In my line you dont have to.


• A Mexican musician, Ramon Barrero, famous for playing the world's smallest harmonica, inhaled the harmonica and choked to death.


• Beethoven dipped his head in cold water before he composed.


• Pop was once banned in India. The song "Tirchi Topiwale" became so popular that the police were instructed to fine 50 rupees to anyone caught singing it.


• The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.


• Monaco's national orchestra is bigger than its army.


• Elvis Presley once entered an Elvis look-a-like contest in a US burger bar and only came 3rd!!


• The lead female singer in an opera is called the prima donna.

Well there you go, fascinating facts that will probably never actually come up in a conversation.

Dr. Pepper Democracy

After 15 plus years and $13 million spent, Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy is finally out. No really it is! Music fans have been baffled by countless release dates that have never been met and because of the way downloading has changed the music industry, the album will probably not make such a spectacular profit.

However, the album has caused a historic day in the fizzy drink world. Earlier on this year, the soda giant Dr Pepper promised that if Chinese Democracy was released in 2008, they would offer every American a free drink. Now that day of reckoning is upon us and the drinks company has lived up to its promise. "We never thought this day would come," Tony Jacobs, Dr Pepper's vice president of marketing, said in a statement. "But now that it's here, all we can say is: The Dr Pepper's on us."

So how does it work? Well actually the offer is already over because to obtain one's free can of Dr Pepper you had to get a coupon, which was only available for 24 hours on Dr Pepper's website starting at 12.01am Sunday 23rd November. That was it - 24 hours. If you were late, no Pepper for you. If you did get a coupon they will be honoured until 28 February 2009.

Back when the offer was first made, former guitarist slash and Buckethead would not be allowed their free sodas but now, Buckethead has been made eligible as his work features on the album. To be honest, I don't think they'll care too much.

Dr Pepper will be flowing like November Rain!