thrashor

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Caffeine infused soap - does it work?

I am always looking for new ways to feed my adiction to the sweet purine alkaloid. Naturally I was excited when ars technica posted this important study - complete with a bar graph - on the effectiveness of caffeine infused soap as a mechanism for delivering caffeine to the human circulatory system.

"In the search for ever-more-efficient ways to ingest caffeine, someone came up with the bright idea of adding caffeine to soap. That way, all you need to do is to stumble out of bed and into the shower, wash with a bar of caffeine-infused soap, and you're well on your way to full wakefulness."

Monday, January 30, 2006

Multiculturalism on the Canadian Prairies

One does not typically look to Colby Cosh for insight into the new pluralism, but here is a great quote from his blog:

"When I was a boy, the Ukrainian Hour was probably the single most popular program on what was then the most popular radio station in Northern Alberta. And aside from a brief rundown of content at the outset, it wasn't a bilingual show either. Which, for some reason, didn't stop my father--and thousands of others who, like him, are no more Ukrainian than Boutros Boutros-Ghali--from listening religiously. That's sort of the way it works out here: you kind of grow up Ukrainian, whatever you actually are."

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Stego for your camera phone

Fujitsu has developed a technology that allows your camera phone to decode information from printed materials including reading barcodes, reading QR codes (sort of 2-D barcodes), or stegonographically hidden codes in a glossy magazine. This is a very interesting idea, but is it a useful one? (Fujitsu Labs announcement, newswireless.net blog post).