Enigin offers some great tips for reducing energy within the home here. Some of these include do it yourself electricity via using a generator, to using air again instead of air conditioning.

Another great tip is to replace old appliances. It seems the newer appliances are more cost effective in terms of energy usage. Enigin even goes so far as to quote over the lifetime of a say, a refrigerator, one can realize a saving of a whopping £3,250 over it’s lifetime! This is even though it might cost you about a £1000 to replace. The long term gains are worth it, if taking into account these figures.

Solar and wind generated products are also cost efficient in the long run. However to make a house solar powered can be quite expensive. What if you don’t get that much sun in your country? Then what? Can we make the house rain powered? Now there’s an idea! Why don’t scientists come up with that one?

You may think that this is crazy, but they have found a way to untilize both wind and solar generated electricity already! You never know the water one might be the next natural resource we could utilize for powered household needs. Not to mention, by catching the downpour, it could also be a step to conserving fresh water.

I really enjoyed the film The Descent. In an era of terrible remakes and sub-standard horror films that came nowhere close to the magic of the video nasty 70s, it was a breathe of fresh air. I particularly enjoyed the intense claustrophobia of the tunnel scene–where one of the girls is about to be buried alive as the roof collapses–

Woo!

So of course I didn’t need to think twice about purchasing the box set containing The Descent and The Descent: Part 2. Even though my friends told me it was a terrible mistake (and my friends have Jobs in secondary education, so they learn this stuff from the kids…) and they should have just left the original film alone–

And they were right. More than right, they were absolutely dead right in that annoying “I told you so, idiot!"way that always hurts the most. The second part was a true monstrosity. I was embarrassed, ashamed of myself, and altogether very angry that I had spent twenty quid on such utter mindless rubbish. And all because I had trusted that one of my favourite directors (Neil Marshall who made the brilliant Dog Soldiers) had had the good sense to know how to make a sequel!

Never again!

It’s always a sad day when you find out that one of your favourite film-makers doesn’t care as much as he once did.

Of course, they made the second part for the money, but it does beg the question–what money? I’m sure that word of mouth has stopped many people renting and buying the second film.

Another person who thinks it’s a good deal writes about this at the following post. Have a look if you badly need some ammunition to convince your employer to let you out of the office.

This Enigin guide is brilliant. Because, while working from home makes sense in many ways, there are obvious reasons why an employer might be skeptical about your productivity when he or she can’t keep his beady slave-driving eye on you. I wouldn’t, I know I wouldn’t. If I was the boss of a company and someone asked me if they could ’work from home'I would probably say no. But when confronted with such an extensive list such as this, I’d like to think I could trust them.

There is one enormous benefit to allowing employees to work from home, of course, and that’s the happy factor. When an employee is happy then of course he or she will likely be more productive.

Walking around a popular music / film store the other day (the one which rhymes with “Horty McFlee” when you say it fast enough), I found myself kneeling on the floor mourning all the DVDs which had been dumped there. So sad. Most of them had sorry-looking labels (badly written at that) which said “3 pounds”; essentially they seemed to be saying “please buy me! I am down and out and in need of a good playing!”

It wasn’t until I overheard two shop assistant girls talking that I realized that us customers were actually part of a devious and well engineered plan. I could barely believe what I was hearing. Basically, what they were saying was this: “have you seen how many people buy the DVDs we put on the floor?”

And the other would say something like (it was hard to tell, they were too far away to properly eavesdrop on and half the conversation seemed to be about laser treatment for acne ) “yeah I know! What a load of loosers! It’s almost like they feel sorry for them! They love DVDs that much that they treat them like human beings! The worse the hand-writing is, the more they want to buy them!”

And they were right. Jennifer Anniston. Matt Damon. Robert DeNiro for crying out loud! None of these poor actors deserved to be kicked about on the floor! Their packets damaged and their cellophane perversly torn, of course we all wanted to buy them! No film fan worth his or her salt could standby and watch them suffer like that!

Then again, I may actually be all together wrong. But I hope that I am all together right. So there it is, these and more convoluted thoughts coming soon!