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.