posted by admin on Oct 7

Pre-historic pets can be so easy to get hold of these days!

Now, we have all heard of sea monkeys for a novelty pet – but there is now a new kid on the block.  Well, infact – they aren’t new at all – they have been around since the dinosaurs!

These tiny little creatures have survived since then because of their habit of only living for 1 season, and having eggs that can survive in dry sand.  They only hatch out after being soaked in water for a few hours.

They grow really fast once hatched, and shed their skin every week or so until they are about 2 inches long, have see-through shells and over 140 legs!  They end up looking like a miniature horseshoe crab!

As A Pet:
You buy your Triops in a tiny bag of sand from a toy store or online!

They usually come with a small tank and a bag of food as part of the package – and you just need to add some bottled water when you get home.

If it is ‘jumper’ cold where the tank is in your home of office – or there is less than 12 hours sunlight a day – then you will need to add a lamp to the set-up to get the little babies started!

Within a few days of adding the water and the heat – you will start to see tiny little ‘things’ moving about the tank, and then a few days after that you will be able to see the little creatures swimming about!

You usually manage to hatch out 5 or 6 from each batch, and they will interact with each other as they swim about (usually upside-down) and feed.

As they grow, they shed their old skin and grow a new one – leaving the old one floating about in the water for you to fish out and play with (or scare your mum with!).

As A New Idea:
These pets are great – they come with their food included, only need a tiny tank, no specialist equipment, don’t live for years and years, no insurance needed, no walking needed – and best of all: no vets bills!

You can store them for years and years in the original packet until you are ready for pets or the weather is warmer, or pickle the adults skins when they shed them to keep for ever.

And – these creatures are hermaphrodites too – so even if you only have females or only 1 adult – you will probably get eggs laid in the sand in your tank for a new batch. 

Just dry out the sand again and store for a few weeks – they cover in bottled water again and you will hatch the next generation!

So if your kids want a pet and you don’t want hair or sawdust all over the house- then maybe you should opt for a Triops!

posted by admin on Sep 16

Another month has passed and another million pages and articles have appeared online!  So lets get a look at some of them right here……..

So, let’s get straight to business with a light look at the new Google search engine – and what it has to offer both the business and the searcher! Follow Hudson Horizons with their ‘explain all’ article: Keeping Up with Google Caffeine and How the New Platform Affects SEO.

Then lets jump to the short but strange GPS Underwear from Good News Weekly presents – I mean; why underwear and not pets, car keys or something more important?

Leslie Yoelson offers up a new branch of science with this brief article with 7 Ways to Learn About Informatics.

And this starts us of with the whole ‘numbers game again’. Science people love lists of resources! So furst up is Adam Park with Top 20 Tech Blogs, closely followed by Zach Macias’ concise list of only 5 Excellent iPad Apps to Learn About the Human Body.

Up next is Natalie Thomas with a plentiful Top 50 Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News and finishing with Olivia Davis and her helping hand for teachers of all ilks: 20 Amazing iPad Apps for Educators.

Saved by the bell!

posted by admin on Aug 16

Hello Again – and what a great time to be at the fore-front of the latest inventions and technology!

Almost every day, there is an announcement about something great to advance our thinking or challenge our current ways of thinking – the future looks so different – if only we would make the change!

Looking back over time Adam Park takes us through his top 10 Tech Milestones That Changed The World for a glance at the past – and hopefully they can take us places in the future!

Add to this some of the following technological information here from Susan, as she details her best 25 Startups Revolutionizing Biotechnology. Even small things can make a huge difference!

Staying with the prefix ‘bio’ – take a look at the amazing advances and technology involved with Mike’s great article on: Massive Future MRI Machine Promises to Unravel the Secrets of Human Biochemistry! Great stuff!

Moving on to inventions today – read on if you want to know about something new: Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You: 10 Things To Know About Robot Teachersby the converted Erin Lenderts! Now I’m not sure if these will ever really take over in mainstream schools – but the idea for smaller groups or adult learners could really be a good thing!

And, if you ignore all the adverts at the top – scroll down to a very thorough article by Rick Cole as he reviews the difference between to very similar in-car technologies: Garmin vs TomTom. Worth a peak if you are considering a sat nav in the future.

And finally – How to use Twitter in a way I hadn’t really thought off: Sharons719 offers us 50 “Healthy” Ways to Use Twitter. Very interesting!

And on that note – get back outside and enjoy the nice weather before winter sets in!

posted by admin on Jun 21

Dyson are at it again with something totally new to the world – and something stylish too!

Not only have they come up with the bag-less vacuum – and the vacuum that goes around corners; they are now breaking out from the floor and up onto our desks and tables!

Well, why only blow wind about inside a cute little vacuum cleaner when you could be cooling off busy office workers instead?  So, they gave it a go!

The result is the very stylish looking desk fan that blows cool air around – but without the blades.  It is basically a fancy looking basketball hoop on it’s end!

The Bladeless Wonder!
The theory of these new fans is the fact that they don’t have blades spinning around at top speed all the time – making rather a loud annoying noise.  And the blades are usually covered in dust and stuck in an equally dusty ‘cage’ around them making them virtually impossible to clean – however they are made safer by this.

What Dyson want to do is get rid of the dirty noisy fan blades and make the physics of air do all the moving you need!

Just as moving water sucks more water towards it – so does air – and this is one of the factors which makes the fan work – and also gives it it’s complete name: the Air Multiplier. 

Basically, a small motor in the base sucks in air from the surrounding space and then shoots it out of a thin slither at the rear of the ‘fan’ and shoots it over the curved surface (just like on a planes wing).  This action of faster moving air drags in more air behind it to replace that which has been blown over it in the first place!

Still with me?  Good.  Now we have already got the air from the fan itself shooting out towards you as well as the sucked in air around the edges – but there is more multiplying to come!  The rim of the fan gets wider, so therefore spreads out the air – and you guessed it: that sucks in more air through the centre of the hoop!

And yet more – as the air all rushes through it also draws in air from outside of the fan hoop and shoots it out towards you as well – basically multiplying up all the original little bit of air loads of times!

Your basic Air Multiplier!

Other Benefits?
Well apart from the cleaning part and the unbroken stream of air (that hasn’t been chopped up by the fans) – they also claim it is more environmentally friendly than air conditioning.

Although this isn’t a direct comparison, they aren’t lying as the amount of wattage to run these fans is so much less than a whole air conditioning system.

However, you would need an awful lot more of them to keep the whole office cool – and I’m not sure if the production, transport and production energy costs have been taken into account here.  I would imagine that you would need a fan for almost every desk, so about 200 for a large office – now imagine how much less energy would be used for a comprehensive air con system instead of 200 single electrical fans on site!

However – they do look pretty cool and come in all shapes and sizes too (at around £199 though!).

posted by admin on May 27

Every Olympic Games host seems to think it’s a great idea to have one – so why not the UK?

Infact – they haven’t stopped at just the one – they have created a pair of the little things: Wenlock and Mandeville! 

The story goes (and yes, they have a story) that they were drops of molten metal that fell during a welding activity of one of the stadiums, were welded into ‘toys’ for an appropriately happy family – and then ran off on rainbows to cheer up the whole world!

Apparently, the whole event can’t be televised and promoted by just using the Olympic Games logo or wording – we need these very shiny cycloptic aliens with taxicab lights on their heads to do it instead!

So after nearly 2 years of artistic collaboration and (apparently) 40 focus groups worth of discussion – all in top secret – they were revealed to the nation on a rather slapdash early evening chat show!

As always, the celebrity who has been put in charge of promoting them has plenty to say about the meaning behind this tiny part of one mascot and that tiny part of the other – but to everyone else – they are just 2 cartoon characters!  Whether the bracelets mean so-and-so on the left wrist (heaven forbid they were on the right wrist), or the shape of their feet represent something-or-other, the public probably don’t really mind.

All they care about is the money spent on such a trivial thing when the country is in financial strife as it is.  And they are still reeling after the disastrous and unwelcome original 2012 logo was unveiled – and estimated to have cost around £400,000!

So, the Mascots: Are they fun?  Are they worth the money?  Will they make more people visit the UK and it’s events?

Apparently their main aim is at children - to help the younger generations to relate better to the Games, rather than it being viewed as a more ‘adult’ event – and seeing as millions of kids in the UK will be affected by the Games, the events and the influx of thousands upon thousands of tourists into their towns – I suppose we have got to soften the blow a little bit!

And I suppose as there are 2 of them – you can have a ‘favourite’ one, or just make your parents buy 2 toys instead of just the one!  Great for a pair of novelty slippers!

Well, we need to make some money to pay for the Games, so this wasn’t a bad marketing ploy!