Unhappy Windies

Going up to Lords on Sunday for day 4 versus the West Indies at Lord's (after the small matter of a wedding tomorrow). I'm hoping I won't see anything like this famous moment in cricket history, though it probably reflects quite accurately the current mood in the West Indian dressing room.

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Tags: cricket, photo

Eat your garden snails

Having posted the video of them in action yesterday, I though I'd mention that I saw a programme recently where Gordon Ramsey explained that the snails in your garden are just as good to eat as escargot you'd get in a posh restaurant. Here's how to prepare them -

Before you can eat garden snails you have to get rid of their toxins. For the first two days, leave the snails in a container without any food, washing them regularly with clean water. On day three, give them a carrot and leave them for a couple of days until you see orange droppings. Finally, wash them again and place them in the fridge in a sealed container which sends them into a deep sleep. They are then ready to be cooked!

Related: food, snails

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Those crazy snails

If we could talk to snails, we'd probably find out that they're actually adrenalin junkies. They're always playing chicken on the pavement with the passers by, and judging by this YouTube vid (made with Flix), they're forever messing around with each other like hyper-active monkeys, only at a slower pace.

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Bee Movie

Here's a very clever trailer for the upcoming animated feature Bee Movie from Dreamworks. Frankly, I think anything that Jerry Seinfeld's in is funny by default.

By the way, with all the never-ending repeats of Friends on at the moment, are any other Seinfeld fans noticing how many ideas they stole?! Please add any observations in the comments section. Off the top of my head I can think of the "breath-taking" (a.k.a. ugly) babies and the neighbours that wear few or no clothes...

Tags: Bee Movie, Seinfeld

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A couple of blogs

Here are a couple of blogs that friends from uni days have been keeping - James' No Earthly City and Richard's Brash by Name.

Related: blog

Better navigation

The menus on both the US and UK sections of Half Price Bargains have been changed. They're more generic on the whole and have further sub categories at the top of most pages. Hopefully it makes navigating around the site a bit easier!

Make money from taking photos

Rate yourself as a bit of a photographer and want some extra pocket money? You don't have to be a pro and work for a newspaper anymore. A couple of sites accept photos from Joe Public and will sell them for you for a fee. Check out iStockPhoto and CitizenImage.

iStockPhoto is the bigger of the two. My application is still being processed. This involves a little test to check that you've learnt their guidelines and a sample of three original 1600x1200 pixel resolution photos proving a modicum of ability.
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Tags: photo, money, iStockPhoto, CitizenImage

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How accurate is Alexa?

Alexa.com, the "web information company" is designed to provide statistics on the popularity of websites on the internet - I just wonder how accurate it is at doing so.

Alexa gathers its statistics using the Alexa Toolbar which is an add-on to Internet Explorer. There's the first problem - there's no official Firefox version. (I say official because there is this Firefox extension, but I'm not convinced that it sends home browsing statistics). I think most would agree that the more savvy web user will tend to use Firefox in preference to IE... and they'll sift through more of the web than the average surfer. But, being affiliated to Amazon.com, you'd think it would have enough users to provide statistical reliability anyway. I guess the more popular you website is, the more reliable the figures are. (Other problems include extra browsing lag and occasional crashes.)
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Related: statistics, webmaster, Alexa

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