Back to biofuels

I've been thinking about this area of how we're going to fuel our cars in the future.

I mentioned recently about seeing that guy pouring vegetable oil into his fuel tank outside my local LIDL store.

A couple of you (thanks M. and Paulie) put some clarity around that and now it makes more sense.

So that got me thinking. And I did some poking around. And I found this interesting article on the Economist website.

Now call me cynical but could it be that some people are vying to convince the powers that be that their fuel should be the one adopted by the whole planet?

I mean right now there is petrol and diesel and aside from a little bit of marketing and price difference petrol is petrol pretty much all over the world.

So clearly we can't have a situation where you drive into a petrol station and they have 20 or so pumps each serving a different variety of fuel (one of which is clearly vegetable oil :-)

So we're back to VHS versus Betamax, DAT versus DCC, or Mini-Disc versus whatever it was competing with back then.

Is a bidding war to become the new future standard fuel on the horizon?

Cue scary music.

On a much more serious note Ireland was dumped out of the Rugby World Cup this evening. Talk about analysis paralysis. Do these TV sports pundits never take a break from pointing the finger. Yawn!

It's only a game and it's over. There'll be another day for redemption.

Hotfooting it through Waltham Chase

I've just returned from the UK where I was attending a class near Southampton.

I reserved a rental car and expected this..



When I got to Heathrow and picked up my car it turned out I was driving this..

Excellent.

Now the real question is why this kind of thing happens on a trip where I have virtually no time to use the car?

Then to compound it I found myself driving through a part of the UK that is overrun with speed cameras and such like. Not that I'd be speeding of course. A chance to drive faster than 30 miles per hour would have been good.

The irony is not lost on me.

Feedback via the toilet paper dispenser

After washing my hands in the bathroom/restroom in work this morning I pushed the button on the hand drier and nothing happened.

So I stepped into one of the cubicles to take some paper to dry my hands. I noticed someone had written in pen on one of the paper dispenser boxes. It said:

I hate my f*cking job

In one of those bizarre demonstrations of workplace democracy someone else had responded in pen just above it.

then f*cking leave you loser

I remember regularly seeing this kind of graffiti in college back when I was a student but haven't noticed it in work in recent times.

It's funny how people choose to provide feedback on their level of job satisfaction sometimes. It's interesting how others feel the need to respond.

Why do all shower gels for men smell like chemicals?

I was in Hawai'i a few years back and remember visiting the Iao Valley state park on the island of Maui. It was a really nice place and two things struck me about it.

One was how serene it was. There were other people there but the whole place had a real lack of anything touristy about it and aside from passing the odd person on a bridge through the park there was a real sense of it being a vary unspoiled place.

The second thing was the fragrant smell of the plants, flowers and trees. It was real Hawai'i for sure and you could smell the native plants. There were some signs here and there spelling out which plants were which as well as plenty of signs reminding visitors about the need to protect the native plant species of Hawai'i.

Anyway, I was standing in the shower today and as I squeezed some shower gel onto my hand I was struck by how unnatural it smells. It's one of those 'For Men' varieties, with a load of marketing bunkum on the back about spices, energy and all the other supposed merits of these manly gels.

Now I'm secure enough to be able to walk through a forest park and enjoy the smells of the plants, trees and flowers without feeling unmanly. So it struck me as odd that most of the shower gels that actually smell like flowers, plants and anything resembling nature's smells are all marketed to women.

Who decided that all men's shower gels have to smell like chemicals?

seriously...

I'm serious about that thing with the sunflower oil - does anyone know what the idea is.. pouring sunflower oil into the petrol tank?

Another big day

Our almost three year-old little boy starts Montessori school tomorrow.

He's pretty neutral about it, kind of matter of fact I suppose. He's a bit like that, cool as a cucumber about doing new things.

Hopefully he'll jog in there with all the other little boys and girls and will have a great time on his first day.

I think it will be strange around the house in the mornings from now on. No sounds of little boys at play. No horrendous mess everywhere.. maybe we won't miss that part too much.

Someone once told me to be careful about wishing your children would grow up because the time goes really fast.It's hard to believe that by lunchtime tomorrow both our little guys will be in the school system and will be on the road to becoming big boys.

Hey what are you doing with all that oil?

I was in my local LIDL supermarket tonight and while queueing up to pay for the few things I was buying I noticed the guy in the next aisle had a whole trolley full of bottles of sunflower oil.

I was thinking what the heck does someone need with all that oil and figured he probably owns a small restaurant and is buying up supplies.

Then when I was driving out of the car park there he was pouring the stuff into the fuel tank of his Peugeot 406.

Can someone explain to me what the heck he was doing?

Theme tune transference

What do you call it when you find yourself humming/singing a theme tune at various times during the day?

I suppose you could call it learning.

The boys are really into Power Rangers lately and I keep catching myself singing, whisting or humming a part of one of the various tunes that I hear on the TV when they are watching that show.

I mean it's not like I don't like other music, I do. But this theme tune seems to have transferred itself prominently into my head and I'm subs-consciously starting to sing it at times during the day.

I wonder if I'm doing it at work.

Actually wait a minute. I was doing it yesterday in work.

Time to put on a CD and give myself something else to whistle.