Info Freaking

Summer is coming to the Northern Hemisphere. Most of people spend a lot of sunny days outdoors hiking, walking through the forest or sitting in the parks. Most of them don’t know that danger lurks anywhere in the tall grass and shrubs. Although it cannot be seen, it doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.
One of the biggest threats to our health is tiny, almost invisible parasite called – the tick.

What is tick?

Tick is the common name for the small arachnids in superfamily Ixodoidea. Ticks are ectoparasites (i.e. external parasites), living by hematophagy on the blood of mammals, birds, and occasionally reptiles and amphibians. Ticks are dangerous because they are vectors of a number of diseases, such as Lyme disease, Q fever or Colorado tick fever.
Ticks’ color is usually black, brown, reddish or tan. While they’re young ticks have six legs, and the mature ticks have eight legs. They vary in size and appearance depending on the species (about 900 known species).
A tick attaches itself to its host by inserting its mouth into the skin, and it’s almost impossible to remove it.
However, there is a way, but you first have to find a tick on your skin.

Symptoms

As said, ticks usually vary in size, from the size of a pinhead to almost the size of a thumbtack. You will usually see them as dark spots on your skin. Perform the check naked, because ticks can be stuck anywhere on your body, from head to toes.
However, some ticks are so small it is hard to see them. So you’ll have to pay attention to other signs, such as symptoms of a skin infection which may include:

• Pain, swelling, redness, or warmth on the skin
• Red streaks leading from the area of bite forming an ‘eye’
• Pus draining from the area of bite (in more serious cases of infection)
• Swollen lymph nodes in the neck, armpit, or groin (in more serious cases of infection)
• Fever or chills (in more serious cases of infection)

If you couldn’t find tick, or bite spot, visit your doctor who can perform tick removal and take care of infection.

How to Remove Tick

In case you find tick on your skin, perform following:

• Use fine-tipped tweezers to remove a tick. If you don’t have tweezers, do not handle the tick with bare hands. Put on gloves or cover your hands with tissue paper, then remove tick with your fingers.
• Grab the tick as close to its mouth as you can. Mouth is the part that is stuck in your skin, while the body of the tick will be above your skin.
• Try not to grab the tick around its bloated belly. If you squeeze it, you could push infected fluid from the tick into your body.
• Gently pull the tick straight out until its mouth lets go of your skin.
• Dispose of the tick immediately by burning it or by squishing it using a tissue and then flushing it down the toilet. If you’re concerned that tick might have been infected, put it in a jar filled with rubbing alcohol or freeze it in a plastic bag and save it for later identification in case you get sick.

After you removed the tick, wash the area of the tick bite with a lot of warm water and soap. Be sure to wash your hands with soap and water as well.

Do Not

• Twist or “unscrew” the tick, because this may separate the tick’s head from its body and cause the mouth parts to remain in the skin
• Squeeze, crush, or puncture the body of the tick because its fluids may be infected, containing bacteria of some of the mentioned diseases
• Use old wives’ recipes such as petroleum jelly, nail polish, gasoline, or rubbing alcohol trying to smother a tick that is stuck to your skin
• Burn the tick while it is stuck to your skin

Both smothering and burning a tick could make it release fluid into your body and increase your chance of infection.

If you have a rash, headache, joint pain, fever, or flu-like symptoms even after you’ve removed tick, this could mean you have an illness related to a tick bite. Any of these symptoms, or symptoms of a skin infection, should be taken seriously and reason to visit your doctor immediately.

This is the simplest recipe ever made, I think. It is prepared in 5 minutes and basic ingredients are:
0,5 l yogurt (soy yogurt or similar for vegetarians) and 1 package of gelatin  (6 leaves of gelatin)

**I know the first thing when comes to mind when I mention gelatin is animal product. But it doesn’t have to be that way: there are other forms of gelatin that meet the needs of those wishing alternatives to meat products for various reasons, either religious or nutritional.

I usually add fruit at the end, fruit such as strawberries, blueberries etc. This time I have added blackberries. When adding fruits make sure you do not add pineapple, raw fruits, kiwi, guava ginger root and papaya.
All these fruits contain an enzyme called bromelain. Bromelain breaks down gelatin causing it to lose its thickening properties. However, the enzymes are deactivated by cooking, so canned pineapple and kiwi are fine to use.

Instructions:

You will need 0, 5 l plain yogurt. Off course use low fat, since this can be a delicious low calorie meal. Very simple - add gelatin in yogurt (there are different forms of gelatin and on every package you will notice instructions about preparation. I used leaf gelatin. I soaked it into cold water for 5 minutes and let it swell for a few minutes. Then I removed the swollen leaf gelatin from the water and carefully squeezed water out. Then I put gelatin on a steam and after minute it had melted.

Then I have added yogurt to the gelatin and not vice versa. 

At the end when mixture was already in the cups I added fruits.

And voila! Bon Apetit!

Technorati Tags: yogurt, blackberry, dessert, gelatin

If you have precious DVD movie collection, you probably follow the rules on how to preserve them. But you should expect your family and friends to lend out movies from you and to often return them in almost unusable state. There will be dust, fingerprints and (oh yes) there will be scratches, which are the biggest fear of every passionate movie collector.

This article will explain how to deal dirt and scratches once you encounter them on your favorite DVDs.

Use Microfiber Cloth

Microfiber is usually quick and efficient way to get rid of dust and fingerprints. Same kind of cloths used to clean eyeglasses and monitors, should be used for cleaning the DVDs too. Synthetic materials in microfiber attract and lift dust and particles of dirt up, preventing the dust to spread around and scratch the DVD further. Also, microfiber cloth can be easily maintained with water and soap only.
When cleaning a DVD wipe in a straight line from the center of the disc to the outside edge of a disc. Never wipe the DVD in a circular direction, because if the scratch follows the circular track pattern of a CD, there will be more skipping than usual or your DVD may become totally unreadable.

Use Alcohol or Window Cleaner

For sticky fingers or small scratches, you can use alcohol or window cleaner solution. Alcohol isn’t strong solvent and it evaporates quickly without leaving a residue. Usually a 1:1 mixture of 90% Isopropyl Alcohol and water will do the thing. Also, you should wipe DVD in straight lines from the center of the DVD to the outside edge. To dry the DVD, just let it sit for a moment or two in a vertical position.
Same advice goes with window cleaner, which also isn’t strong solvent and evaporates fast. Both of these solutions are good for sticky stains, ‘stubborn’ fingerprints and small scratches.
Before you start cleaning, use an air puffer to blow off any dust on the DVD. Then use a dry and soft cotton cloth to wipe the disc carefully. Wipe with the dry cloth before you apply any solution on the DVD.

Use ToothPaste

If you encounter a bit deeper scratches that interfere normal DVD reproduction, you can always use non-abrasive toothpaste (usually with baking soda) to polish your discs. Toothpaste is a natural abrasive and it can remove minor scratches off the disc surface, but you should avoid extra-whitening formulas, because that can damage your DVD even more.
Just put a little bit of the toothpaste on the DVD, mix it with a little water and with either your finger or a small piece of soft cloth, and buff those scratches away. Don’t put too much toothpaste, because DVDs aren’t resistant as our teeth.

Note: These methods work only on minor scratches. Deeper scratches may require other methods.

Inspect How Deep Are Scratches

If you still have trouble with playback (DVD is unable to reproduce or it’s skipping), you may want to check how deep scratches on the disc surface are.
You can check that by holding DVD up to a bright lamp. If you can see light through the scratch, this means you’ve actually damaged the layers of data protected by the clear plastic. If this is the case, then it is perhaps time to find a new copy of the DVD, or if it’s still able to play, then copy the DVD using various tools.
If the scratches are too deep you can try DVD Shrink or DVDFab Decrypter to compress and burn the content of your discs to another media.
Also, you can use other solutions that may help you get rid of deep scratches, like SkipDoctor MD, a polisher that scrubs off the top layer of plastic until the scratches are faint or gone and costs around 30$.
Other useful tool is WipeOut solution that costs around 15$. However, be very carefull when working with WipeOut, since it’s extremely flammable solution.
Both of these products will not remove scratches 100 percent. They will only lessen the severity of scratches on CDs to a point where you can play them again and backup on another media.

Do Not

• Wipe the DVD in a circular direction
• Apply too much of any solution
• Use paper towel or any paper products to clean your DVDs - these products often have pieces of dirt and particles that will scratch the surface of the disc
• Clean your DVDs frequently – only when it’s necessary
• Use any kind of organic or harsh solvents like acetone or benzene
• Use hard water - use bottled lukewarm water instead
• Use canned air - it can be very cold and can cause the DVD to crack

Here is a  little PHP application named Digg Secrets Insight which will help you check digg statistics of any digg.com user. This is especially helpful when you want to see who is actually digging your stories. With this application you’ll be able to see links between other users as well.  Find out who is digging who and reveal secret relationships between digg.com users.  This application will give you insight in secret interest groups formed on digg.com whose members support each others’ stories. I’m sure that you will be pretty amazed how much useful data you can pull of digg.com using their public API and with little programming skills you can turn that raw data into interesting statistics. Statistics are currently limited to 100 last submissions but you can change it easily in the code. However I wouldn’t recommend this because it will slow down application execution. Current execution takes between 3-10 minutes and it depends on the user’s popularity and activity.

On the screenshot above you can see MrBabyMan’s friends stats. First few columns are icon, username, registration date. Befriended column shows date when the MrBabyMan befriended the user. Status means if the user is mutual friend with MrBabyMan or if MrBabyMan is user’s fan. Diggs column is number of stories out of 100 (or any other number of stories you set inside the application) user dugg. Missed column is obviously number of stories user missed to digg. Sometimes sum of Diggs column and Missed column is not 100. This is the case when observed users were not friends during the whole period of latest 100 submissions. Last column (Dugg) is performance percentage calculation.

There are two additional tables Fans and Nones. Fans table shows user’s fans performance. This can help you easily spot and recruit new mutual friends. Last table (Nones) is also interesting to find out who’s digging who, but between users who actually don’t have visible connections (friends/fans), which can lead to assumption external connections exist (chat messengers, mailing lists, hidden digg exchange forums and other off site activities). Now, just imagine what kind of statistics Digg administrators and moderators have ;).

To use Digg Secrets Insight just copy files dugg.php and view.php on your server. You should create MySQL database and user who can access and manipulate this database. If you don’t want to change database name and username/password in php files name your database digg and make user/pass combination: digguser/diggpass. After this create few tables as described in file tables.sql. You can additionally change password parameter inside dugg.php and view.php if your script is on public server as well as data expire period which is currently set to 3600 seconds (one hour).

Dugg.php is used for statistics data gathering. It connects to digg.com API and retrieves raw data, for example, http://localhost/dugg.php?password=password&user=mrbabyman. This script sometimes executes more than 5 minutes so don’t interrupt it. View.php displays actual statistics, http://localhost/view.php?password=password&user=mrbabyman.

I hope you will enjoy using DSI. I also hope it will help you to understand digg.com better.

Download DSI

We all know we should exercise (it’s good for our weight, mood, cognitive functioning and overall health) but when it actually comes to it, we all come up with the same lame excuse: “I don’t have the time.”

When we think about exercising, we usually think about going to the gym or having to run around the block. Few people would come up with an effective physical activity that would not require a lot of their additional time.
However, there are things we can do to introduce regular physical activity into our everyday regime without being taken away from everything else that we already do. These things will not require us to join a gym.

Here are some tips to help you build in a little more exercise into your daily routine with the minimum amount of fuss and disruption.

• Cut down the amount of time you spend watching television
• When watching TV, take periodic breaks. For every 30 minutes you spend sitting in front of the television or typing on the computer, get up and walk around the room.
• Keep a set of barbells next to the television and do curls during commercial breaks.  Having the barbells there will be a constant reminder to add some exercise.
• Get off of your chair whenever possible, both at home and at work.
• Stand up while on the telephone, in a bus, waiting room
• Use any opportunity to be active during your day by using the upstairs bathroom, parking at the edge of the car park, walking to the local post office, skipping the escalator at the mall, etc
• Skip the car as often as possible. When running to the carry out down the street or to your friend’s house, leave the car at home, and decide to walk.
• Take a walk during your lunch break. After having lunch, instead of spending the rest of your free time talking to your co-workers, go for a walk even if it is for five minutes, it still counts as exercise.
• Instead of calling your co-worker with a question, you better walk across the office to ask the question in person and of course update on the gossip you missed at lunch.
• Work out while in the shower; add some squats or dead lifts while waiting for your conditioner to take effect.
• Try replacing an after-work drink with your friends with a long walk where you can catch up with each other.
• Turn your household chores into an exercise class. Turn up the music and tackle them with vigour.

To be even more successful

I’m sure you could sneak in additional 20 to 30 minutes for a specific activity like walking, swimming or gardening. It doesn’t have to be 30 minutes all at once. Scientific evidence shows you get the same health benefits from breaking 30 minutes up into three 10-minute or two 15-minute intervals throughout the day. However, if you don’t do that activity for at least 10 minutes at a time, it won’t help you meet the recommendation for 30 minutes of moderately intense physical activity.

To stay motivated and keep on track

Encourage the whole family to get active by making it part of your social activities. Take a trip to the park instead of the cinema, or go dancing with friends rather than spending a night in the pub.

Keep a record of your exercise habits to check that you’re not slipping back into the old habits.
Don’t let a minor lapse from your exercise plan to turn into a major one.
Be positive.