Minty Monkey

Kitchen Tech for Wine

theadmin — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:06:53 +0000

One of the things which sucks about being a wine drinker is that, you can’t exactly drink a whole bottle by yourself. Well you could, but you usually don’t feel great the next morning and its hard to drink that much without feeling like a lush.

Saving wine has come a long way in the past few years. Originally, you could simply pump the oxygen out of the bottle and hope for the best. These days, you can actually put in argon gas to keep the wine for a longer period of time. How long is longer? It depends who you ask and how you store the bottle after pumping in the gas, but you can keep a wine in literally perfect condition for about a week once opened. That certainly beats a few hours doesn’t it?

Technology is Necessary but not Sufficient

theadmin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:30:44 +0000

It is a standard way to analyse a situation todescribe something as necessary but not sufficient. For example, it is necessary to happiness to have enough money to buy food, clothes, water and shelter; but these things (and the money to buy them) are not in themselves sufficient to guarantee human happiness. The missing ingredients are perhaps family, friendship, love and a sense of self-worth and acheivement. In the kitchen it is necessary to have a certain level of technology in order to allow you to make certain dishes, but the technology intself is not sufficient to guarantee delicious food.

Indeed sometimes the ingredients are more important than the technology. Whether you have a coffee maker or cafetiere is not as important as the quality of the coffee beans that you use. Even the most rudimentary technology will make a better cup of coffee with real coffee rather than making a cup of instant coffee.

For soups, juices and smoothies it is important to get a good liquidizer or juicer to get the best results. It is near impossible to use elbow grease to mash fruits or vegetables up to the same perfect consistency as a good liquidizer can do.

One piece of technology for the kitchen that I’m trying to find is a machine that will open green coconuts. At the moment I use an old rusty machete. My wife is continually worried I’m going to take one of my fingers off. A machine to open older coconuts in their husks would also be fantastic. One also that can remove the coconut meat without me having to go at the shards of coconut with a potato peeler. Which reminds me – I’m left-handed. Why is everything in a kitchen always designed for right-handed people? No wonder the average life expectancy for left handed people is shorter than for right-handed people!

The Internet Shackles

theadmin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:05:23 +0000

Blocked and filtered, monitored and restricted – this is the reality of the internet today. Ever clicked on a particularly funny looking video to be greeted by the message – ’we’re sorry that video is not available in your area’. When did the internet change like this, it was once open to all, it didn’t matter if you were in a cyber cafe in Karachi, an Airport in Harare or sitting in a Starbucks in London – we all saw the same online, we were all equal. But that’s not the case any more – commercial interests, government filters and restrictive licensing meant that whatever you see online is highly dependent on where you live.

Mostly it’s GeoTargeting that’s to blame, a website will check which country your IP address is from before deciding on what you can see. If you don’t believe me check out any media site in a country apart from yours – Non US residents try and watch something on ABC or Hulu, if you’re in the US go and try to watch something on the BBC Iplayer website. Put simply it won’t work simply because the internet is now layered in Tiers and not all open to all.

As always though there are work arounds, mainly in the various technologies that can be used to bypass these blocks. You can use a BBC Iplayer proxy or a VPN to access Hulu and Pandora and it doesn’t really matter where you are. In fact for internet surfers in most developed countries, a subscription to one of these services is becoming a necessity. Many services offer access to servers across the world meaning whenever you get blocked you can simply select the appropriate server and you’re back in business. But of course this has meant that slowly the internet is becoming accessible to some and inaccesible to others. If you can afford one of these subscriptions you’ll be fine but others will have to live with the handicaps. It’s not really how the internet used to be and I suspect it’s not how most of us wanted it to be!

Cool Things in Koh Samui

theadmin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:02:03 +0000

I love technology. I love collecting cool pieces of technology and trying new technology. The problem is that technology soon becomes old and not exciting. I remember when digital cameras first came out in the late 1990s. People at the time said, ’digital cameras don’t produce as high quality pictures as film cameras’. I ignored this advice and rushed out and bought one. Now everyone has a digital camera. Indeed many people don’t use their digital camera because they have a camera function on their smart phone. Knowing that technology becomes obsolescent quickly doesn’t stop me spending my money on it.

I recently went on holiday with some friends to Thailand. We went to Koh Samui, a tropical island. My friends wanted a beach holiday and wanted to go crazy at night in ther bars and clubs of Chaweng. We booked into a mid-range resort in Chaweng on the beach. The room was fine, but I was immediately disappointed because the free wifi in the resort was painfully slow. No good for streaming movies, only just about good enough for Skype. The satellite TV was rubbish too. Only a couple of movie channels all showing bad Hollywood flicks.

We went down the beach and I found a cool piece of technology that I had never tried before. It was a jet ski. I was so keen to try that I handed over my passport as insurance against damages. I was lucky that I didn’t scratch the jet ski as I later found out some people had paid $1,000 to get their passport back.

Anyway, I loved it. Zipping about in the bay. The sea was slightly rough and it was frightening but exhilerating to run head long into a wave and ride over the crest and land back end first behind the wave. What an adrenalin rush.

The next day we headed over to Bophut and had a go on the go-karts. I thought it would be lame, but they had a few bigger carts that really had some strong acceleration. We had lots of boys fun on the go karts.

The nights in Chaweng were full of booze and meeting girls. There were a few cheesy bands to see and the DJs were nothing special but the atmosphere around Soi Green Mango was something not to be missed. My favorite bar, however, was the Ice Bar. They had somehow managed to turn a freezer into a bar. You wore fur coats to go into the bar. The cocktails were lousy, but I enjoyed the technology.

So there you have it cool things in Koh Samui: jet skis, go karts and the Ice Bar.

A Chance To Get Free Cutting Edge Technology

theadmin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:47:59 +0000

The PS3 is probably the coolest games console on the planet and lots of kids are now trying out referral schemes to get a free PS3. These referral schemes were once demonised to be nothing more than illegal pyramid schemes but recently, cool shows like the Gadget Show in the UK, as well as the CNN and BBC news corporations, have all come out and said after investigation that these referral schemes are all above board.

The way they work is actually through affiliate marketing;

- An affiliate company sets up a scheme that allows users to sign up to an advertisers offer. This can be a free offer but is more often than not a very low cost trial offer.

- The advertiser then pays the affiliate company a commission.

- This allows the affiliate company to pay you, the user.

To encourage you to send more people through the affiliate company, they offer a free gift if you get X number of people to sign up. For example, if you wish to get a free PS3 then they may require you to sign up 11 more people through the scheme. They have a whole range of ’gifts’ available and each requires a different number of sign ups. There are plenty of different offers to choose from for your initial referral. They can range from setting up a betting account and playing through a small amount of credit, to buying insurance with a particular company on the list. If you are in the market for new home or car insurance then this kind of offer is ideal.

All that is left to you to figure out is how to get enough sign ups so you can get your own gift!

Cool New Gift Baskets

theadmin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 04:17:07 +0000

It isn’t easy to buy for certain people on your Christmas list, is it?

Giving them a gift basket seems like a cop-out to many people, but I tend to give wine gift baskets every Christmas to my mother in law who is, by far, the most difficult person I know to buy for.

So what’s cool about buying a gift basket for my mother in law? First, it’s pretty darn easy for me. Second, she tends to really, really like it….which gives me good points with my wife (a good thing).

Lastly, she plans and takes trips to visit some of the wineries whose wine was featured in her gift basket. Dorky a bit I know, but it just seems really cool to feel so strongly about something. With so many 20 somethings walking around the average winery, I think it is good she is so comfortable with a younger crowd despite being in her 60’s!

Best curling irons for the year

theadmin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 01:38:35 +0000

If you look at the past few years there are several new curling irons which can come up on the market. These curling irons are really only different in usage than those which were available in the yesteryears. The only change is that the new models have better materials and better technology which means less damage to the hair while you curl. The traditional barrel which used to be there is chrome and now that has become either gold or ceramic or even tourmaline.

Now talking about the curling irons which is the best then I would say that Hot Tools Professional Spring Curling Iron is the best among the lot. I would rate it at number one among the top 10 best curling irons for 2012. It has 24 karat gold plating and we all know that gold is an excellent heat conductor.

The main thing that makes this the bets for the professionals is the fact that it has a sensor which helps it stand out form the cord, The sensor in the barrel will make sure that as and when there is a heat loss in the rod then the heat is increased accordingly to make up for the heat loss.

The other thing which makes this curling iron the best choice is the fact that it has a mica heating element which covers the entire barrel and this will make sure that the heating is consistent throughout the barrel.

The other feature worth noting is the 10 setting variable heating control as well as the fact that it can heat up to 430 degrees Fahrenheit very quickly. It helps if you are a professional and need the iron to heat up quickly.

This curling iron no doubt is the best and the other one which is almost there at the top is the CHI Auto Digital Ceramic Spring Curling Iron.

New technologies for web design

theadmin — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:10:45 +0000

Web internet site design has gone through a revolutionary adjust since the beginning of its existence. The New era offers that considerably more tough compared to earlier. Along with relatively new technologies rising every single day, this particular generation associated with web developers and builders contain it a lot more difficult. Your purpose of web templates is usually to design any web website. In case you are building a person new driver website, it needs to fit the part.

All internet marketers realize it is better to begin dabbling in a very project to test their possibilities just before committing full-scale, and also the 6 ways to do so is usually to create a fundamental internet site, if the targeted customers start showing up. To make a powerful web design is just not always easy, and it demands the possible ways to provide good quality website visitors to your site. The benefit is always to create attractive, however well-designed website that can transform your prospective customers into buyer/ clientele. A lot of the effective web designs organizations as well as other creative designers stress that this the first thing pertaining to making web design templates is it should provide initial articles on the visitors in a manner that will effortlessly help the search engine.

So that you can achieve this, web design templates ought to be fascinating in this they should entice visitors with the addition of high quality and also original content material. Various ways increasingly becoming the brand appropriate, maintaining your home framework brief, simple relating internet pages, and images to present adequate stress; also, the size of the writing specifically about website should be just right to match your web design structure. Nonetheless, the first is not necessarily limited to one design it’s always best to investigate for the content that certainly wants to use and even ask people on the best way to produce great web design templates.

Twitter Brings Day Traders Closer Together

JessicaR — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:31:38 +0000

It used to be that if you wanted to learn about stock market day trading strategies from a pro, you had to open up — get this! — a book or visit a trading firm in person. Then the Internet came around and it became easier to learn strategies via online courses or trading forums. Still though, the latest strategies delivered through online mediums lacked interaction.

… and then came Twitter. At first, it seemed like no one knew what to do with Twitter other than share random comments about their lives. Soon enough, though, day traders realized the value in Twitter. They could “tweet” out a trade as soon as they entered it, and their followers could read their tweet and place the same trade within seconds.

Currently, hundreds of top day traders have subscription Twitter feeds that allow their hungry followers to trade right along with them. They run anywhere from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars per month and eager traders (and wannabe traders) are happy to snatch up subscriptions.

The Latest in Hair Growth Technology

theadmin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:12:52 +0000

The industry of hair growth products is huge. Men and women all around the globe pump millions of dollars into this industry every year for creams and oils that offer them the hope that their hair will regrow and will return to its former glory. Some products work and some don’t. Some of this is due to the quality of the product itself and some of it is due to the fact that people lose hair for different reasons. For some it may be a hormonal imbalance; for others, it is simply the overuse of chemicals in their hair.

Technology has come a long way in this industry, and now there are increasingly more options for permanent hair regrowth using technology. Recently, a study run by the UCLA and Veterans Administration found that hair loss may be due to a stress-related hormone. This stress-related hormone can be blocked by using a certain chemical compound that was discovered during the study. In the mice used in the study, only a short exposure to the chemical compound led to amazing hair regrowth. Some mice, the study found, were overproducing a stress hormone called CRF that was causing the hair loss. Once blocked, the hair (or fur, in the case of a mouse) regrew. Further studies are being done now to see if this can be replicated in humans.

Keep checking back to Minty Monkey for more updates on hair regrowth technology.