My first post about my sleeping patterns was a surprise hit. So I have decided to write a second update as I reach the halfway mark of my year-long experiment to keep data on my sleeping patterns.

The previous post ended on a bit of a cliffhanger as all my graphs were spiking up quite alarmingly. Since then I think progress has been quite good.

Here is graph 1 (data measured in clock times) updated to show the first six months (i.e. this year up to yesterday). As before, these are all seven day rolling averages.

As you can see, the broad trend for all of the lines is for them to go in the right direction. In fact, very recently the ‘alarm’ and ’slept until’ lines were at the lowest point they’ve been all year. However, since my sleeping patterns appear to be in cycles, that will be counterbalanced soon enough by a period where I wake up later. You can just see the start of that at the end of this graph.

The previous three months are very different to the first three months. The cut-off point for the last post came just after I had had my last class at university. Since then I have had far fewer regular engagements, but I have still had the odd activity to get up early for — exams, GP2 races, graduation ceremonies and what-have-you.

In general, I am still having a lot of trouble predicting how long I will sleep for. Choosing the right time to set the alarm for is the most difficult thing about getting my sleep under control. If I set it too late then that is useless, whereas if I set it too early I just go back to sleep, possibly not to be seen again until the afternoon!

The ‘morning’ lines (alarm, slept until, got up) have been much more unpredictable than the ‘night’ lines (bed at, slept from). In fact, the night time variables are remarkably flat, with only a little bulge a couple of weeks ago ruining an otherwise slow but relatively steady trend towards earlier times. It now feels weird to be up after, say, 0200 and I consciously try to avoid staying up beyond that time (which was otherwise commonplace for me).

Having said that, although they fluctuate a lot, the morning variables are also going in the right direction — but very slowly. At the start of the year I was most likely to wake up at midday. Nowadays I’m more likely to wake up at 1030. Considering we have also had the clocks changing in that period, I am effectively waking up two and a half hours earlier than I was at the start of the year. Assuming I end up with a normal job though I will be looking to get up three or four hours earlier than even this.

Here is graph 2 — variables measured as lengths of time.

This graph is still fluctuating quite a lot. As you can see, ‘insomnia’ is going down in general. But it is still causing me a headache. I seemingly can’t tell how tired I am, so sometimes I am unable to fall asleep for half an hour (which I consider to be normal), others for over four hours (as actually happened on one day and is distinctly abnormal).

Incidentally, the data for what I have called the ‘insomnia’ variable is slightly odd. The name is misleading. It measures the difference between the time when I go to bed and my estimate of when I fall asleep. But often I am sitting in bed reading a book before actually turning in. So perhaps you can knock, say, half an hour off the figures to get a better idea of my ‘insomnia’.

Another notable aspect of the graph is the fact that the area of green — which I have called ‘lazy’, the difference between the time when I wake up and when I get up — has increased. I think this is partly due to some advice I followed in the comments to the last post. Duncan2 and 4u1e both suggested putting my alarm at the other side of the room.

I had tried that trick before, but with little success. Now I have put it at the complete opposite side of the room, a good 15 or so yards from my bed, and in an awkward position. At first it certainly had me waking up earlier — but I felt so awful that I just stayed in bed for ages! Hence the increase in ‘laziness’.

As you can see on the ‘lazy’ graph, it is pretty easy to pinpoint the moment when I started putting the alarm at the other side of the room, with a massive spike in early April. Since then the spikes have still happened from time to time. But they are getting smaller, suggesting that I am coping better with the scheme now. However, the ‘lazy’ graph is disappointingly the one graph where the trendline is going in the wrong direction. So that’s something for me to work on over the coming months.

Another point to note from the comments is that I have now extended my caffeine curfew. Beforehand I just banned coffee after around 1800. Now I have banned tea as well. Green tea is banned from about 2000 onwards except for when I am working until 2100, in which case I have that final mug of caffeine at the first opportunity I get. I used to be sceptical about whether cutting out caffeine was actually working for me. But since I started cutting out tea as well I have found that I am getting to sleep earlier.

I think overall the year so far has been positive in terms of getting my sleep under control. Now what I am aiming for is to start waking up regularly at 1000 without feeling rotten and hauling myself out of bed at that time as well!

I am rather confused by Jeff’s post on the SNP’s new proposals designed to curb anti-social drinking. He says that the SNP’s approach is radical and is proof that the SNP is not just populist. But when you look at the proposals, they are a who’s who of reactionary measures that could well have been lifted straight out of a cliché-ridden Daily Excess editorial.

Let’s look at the list as laid out by Jeff.

• Raise the limit for purchasing alcohol in off-licenses to 21

  Well right away this is about as populist as policies get. Blame it on the yoof. The media loves to do it, and the politicians love to throw around these age limits. They get to look “tough” by passing some draconian legislation that adversely affects someone. And who better to do this to than the youth, who do not vote in high numbers because they are already so disenchanted? SNP wins by looking tough without losing any votes.

  Besides that, what is this age limit supposed to achieve? We all know that these age limits are about as workable as a chocolate kettle. Given that there is currently an age limit of 18 and under-18s still find it easy enough to get their hands on alcohol, what makes anyone think that raising the limit by a few years will improve the situation any?

  There is nothing to suggest that raising that limit to 21 will make it any more difficult for rowdy youths to get their hands on alcohol. And why should perfectly law-abiding 18-20 year olds who intend to drink alcohol responsibly be prohibited from doing so?

  The fact is that those youths who really want to get alcohol will just nick it from their dad’s cabinet. Or their friend’s dad’s cabinet. Or their uncle’s cabinet. Or anywhere they can get it from. That is assuming they haven’t just got someone else who is above 21 to buy it for them, as Scottish Tory Boy points out.

  Congratulations SNP — you have made it almost impossible for law-abiding drinkers to get their hands on alcohol, whereas the rowdy contingent are encouraged into behaving even more rowdily.

  And if you want people to act like adults, it’s probably not the best idea to treat them like kids.

• Reprice drinks to a minimum of 35p per unit of alcohol

  You want a continental “café-style” drinking culture? Then raising the price of alcohol is the last thing you should do.

  Why is that then? Well, increasing the price of alcohol will mean it will make little sense to just have one or two drinks with a meal. It will be too expensive for little return. If alcohol costs three or four times more than coffee, no-one will drink it like coffee. Instead, people will use alcohol by saving up their money for a big night out. The result? More binge drinking.

  Jeff says that the SNP’s policies are remarkably similar to those of Sweden. He is correct. Jeff also says that “I can easily imagine [they] don’t have the same alcohol-dependency and vandal culture that we have here.” Unfortunately, Jeff hasn’t done his research because Scandinavia — where alcohol is much more expensive than it is here — has a notorious binge drinking problem.

  Nor is the USA exactly a haven of responsible drinking. Has he never heard of the American phenomenon of “spring break”? These North American events are legendary for their excessive binge drinking and rowdy behaviour. Nor do I think of Australia as one of the most sober nations in the world!

  Clearly, simply raising the price of alcohol won’t encourage people to stop binge drinking. In fact, if anything, it will have the opposite effect.

• Have dedicated [alcohol] checkouts in some of the larger supermarkets

  I’m not exactly sure what this idea is supposed to achieve. Jeff says it is to create an “inconvenience of having to go for a separate checkout to buy alcohol.” But what does it mean? Walking a few yards? If people will have already travel all the way to the supermarket, having them walk to a different checkout is hardly going to put anyone off.

  And think about the scenario. You’ve got some irresponsible people who only go to the supermarket to buy some bottles. They just go to the alcohol checkout, pay for their goods and then saunter off to the park to cause some fuss. Then you’ve got the responsible drinkers who want to enjoy a few glasses with their meals. These people are genuinely inconvenienced, as they have to go to the checkout twice — once to pay for their food, and another time to pay for their alcohol.

  Yet again, the responsible drinkers are punished whereas the troublemakers hardly bat an eyelid. Yet another sloppy policy.

• Increase of financial support for alcohol prevention, treatment and support services

  No complaints here. This seems sensible enough to me.

This is not to say that there is not a problem with irresponsible binge-drinking and rowdy neds in the streets. Jeff rightly notes that Scotland has a problem and it’s not good enough just to sit there and let it continue. The point is that these measures will do absolutely nothing to curb binge drinking. If anything, they will exacerbate the problems while making life difficult for the majority who drink sensibly.

Unfortunately — as we see from governments of all shades time and again — the temptation for a government faced with a problem is just to do something, anything. Preferably sounding tough. Then declare the problem solved. No matter whether the solution is well thought-through or planned out.

I like to think that it is a function of my age rather than my popularity that I got only one birthday present this year! If I stretch the concept a bit, it was announced on my birthday that Formula 1 coverage was moving back to the BBC. But not even I am egotistical enough to believe that Bernie Ecclestone would arrange such things for my birthday.

Anyway, the present I got was from my brother. He got the hints I dropped (before Christmas, mind you) and bought me an AeroPress coffee and espresso maker. (Apparently he almost bought me a Stylophone, which would have been even cooler.)

I first heard of it on Boing Boing TV.

As much as anything else, I thought the mechanism was just ingenious. It would be great enough as a toy. The amazing thing, though, is that the reviews are right — it makes a great cup of coffee. It has a very smooth taste — probably the best coffee I’ve been able to make at home.

I normally use one of these mugs that act as their own little cafetière. This is an improvement over instant, but sometimes coffee granules escape through, leading to a mouthful of grit. It can also sometimes taste quite bitter.

The other method I use is an automatic drip-brew coffee maker. The cool thing about this is that it has an alarm timer on it, so if I have an early start I can be really lazy and lie in for five more minutes while the coffee is made for me. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t taste all that great, although it’s difficult to put my finger on what is wrong with it. Also, these things are not labour saving in the slightest in the long run. Preparing them beforehand and cleaning them afterwards is a faff I could really do without.

I am not a coffee geek. I think if I started to research coffee too much I would become like one of those audiophiles who get fleeced into buying expensive snake oil in the fruitless search for perfect audio. Nevertheless, I take note of anything that promises a better coffee, especially if it is gimmicky.

It did take me a couple of goes to get the hang of the AeroPress, but in the end it has turned out to be quite a fuss-free method. The best part is that the clean-up process is so quick and easy it just feels wrong. You just push the plunger all the way out, and out plops the coffee in one clean ‘puck’. You just need to give the bottom of the plunger a little rinse and that’s it, all set for the next time you want to make coffee.

There are a couple of downsides. One is that it needs a filter. The AeroPress comes with 350 filters, but you can re-use them several times. Some have even reported re-using them up to 20 times, which would make the package good enough for 7000 uses. Not bad.

Another thing is that it seems, from my perspective, to use up an awful lot of coffee. The scoop that comes with it is rather large compared to other scoops I have used, yet the coffee that is produced still tastes about the right strength (once the espresso produced is diluted to make an Americano).

I imagine if I used the AeroPress more than my other methods of making coffee, I would soon find myself spending a lot more money on coffee. On the other hand, the taste is worth it. Maybe it would be best for me to use it as a kind of luxury, like having an occasional glass of wine or something. Sundays, special occasions, tough days and so on. It also looks like it would be excellent if you are travelling.

If you like coffee, I’d definitely give the AeroPress a shot. It only costs around £25.

I saw this on television yesterday but couldn’t find anything about it online — although the video is here. Now Robert Sharp has directed me to a couple of pages on this issue.

It seems as though the regulations surrounding advertising junk food are about to be tightened further. Yesterday adverts for junk food were banned during programmes aimed at 16-year-olds and under.

But Netmums reckon this isn’t enough — they want such adverts to be banned until after 9pm! That’s right. Tomato ketchup is on an equal footing with blood and guts. Baps with burgers in them are now as offensive as bare baps.

An incredible fact appears in the Telegraph article as well. If breast milk were to be advertised, it would also be classed as junk food. These new regulations are not intended to do any real good at all. They are just designed to placate the authoritarian parents who think the answer to the world’s ills is more government legislation.

This ban will be completely counter-productive. It is against the interests of children. It is estimated that children’s channels could lose as much as 15% of their revenue as a result. Children’s programming has already seen an appreciable decline in quality. Terrestrial channels have begun to shunt off their children’s programming to various graveyard slots like 5am, to begrudgingly meet the quota.

The new advertising restrictions will accelerate this trend. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some children’s channels begin to go out of business. No doubt Netmums would then be complaining about the lack of decent children’s programming, but it would be partly their fault.

I don’t doubt that junk food is a problem. But is it caused by advertising? Surely only tangentially.

I have always been sceptical about the power of advertising. I spent a huge chunk of my childhood obsessively watching Formula 1 and I never became a smoker or a problem drinker. I’m sure advertising works — otherwise firms wouldn’t do it. But surely it is more about brand recognition than forming habits.

The real cause of the junk food problem is right under parents’ noses — but they can’t bear to accept it. If parents are worried about junk food, there is a simple solution that they can all apply. Don’t feed your children junk food.

It shouldn’t be difficult. If you are too weak-willed say “no” to your child’s requests for junk food, you are not doing your job as a parent.

The Netmums campaign is symptomatic of a wider problem with society. There is not a hint of Netmums suggesting that parents take personal responsibility for the upbringing of their children. Instead, they lobby the government to ensure that their preferred solutions are imposed on everyone — regardless of anyone else’s views on the matter.

The approach is summed up by a quote on the Netmums website.

The amount of ‘junk’ food advertising aimed specifically at children (especially during children’s programmes) is of particular concern to me. This advertising does work (with brand recognition), as my children ask me to buy the foods they have seen advertised.

Oh, and I take it you said no to your children? If not, then take some responsibility and do your job as a parent. If so, then congratulations! You have solved the problem yourself — without having to resort to yet more needless and counter-productive government legislation.

I would like to see a total ban on highly processed foods being promoted to young children (in shops and in the media) and instead see healthy foods advertised (fruit, vegetables, wholemeal bread etc.) using the same type of well-known characters, catchy jingles etc.

So not only does this person want to force junk food manufacturers to stop promoting their products (even in shops!), she also wants to force healthy food companies to advertise!

Nice try getting that to work, but some economic realities are working against you there. If fruit companies found it beneficial to advertise with catchy jingles, they would be doing it already. Perhaps if it is such a great — and financially viable — idea, then Netmums could buy the slots and advertise healthy foods themselves.

The reality? The junk food ban means that children’s television channels are now courting car manufacturers to fill the rather hefty gap (ahem) left by the junk food companies.

As Robert Sharp suggests though, developments in the future (and even in the present) will be even more sinister. Companies will start to resort to more subliminal (and therefore harder to police) forms of advertising such as product placement. And junk food manufacturers are now diverting their substantial advertising budgets (which won’t disappear just because Netmums would like them to) to the increasingly popular children’s websites.

Unlike some people, I am not a fat bastard. But for me, a day is not complete without a packet of crisps. Or two. Or three.

At work a few months ago I was talking to the representative from Walkers Crisps. He told me that Cheddar Cheese flavour was being discontinued along with Spicy Chilli (which most people thought was too hot) and Lamb and Mint (which was never going to be popular beyond novelty value, but I personally enjoyed it).

This made way for the return of Worcester Sauce and the introduction of Cajun Spice. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Cajun flavour has bombed as badly as the three discontinued flavours.

I was most upset by the fact that Cheddar Cheese was being discontinued. When they were first introduced I recognised the flavour immediately from one of Walkers’s special limited edition rangers. It was the same as Feta Cheese from the Mediterranean flavours. I absolutely loved it!

Seemingly, other people did not. However, while single packs of Cheddar Cheese have been bumped off, they are seemingly still being solid in multipacks. So I can still get my cheesy crispy fix.

Apart from the taste — which would be enough really — the Cheddar Cheese flavour has another thing going for it. Despite being flavoursome, it does not make my breath honk (as far as I know!).

This is unlike certain other flavours such as Cheese and Onion or — even worse — Pickled Onion. I mean, Cheese and Onion crisps are tasty enough, and they are not particularly offensive if I come into close quarters with someone else.

But if I were to get peckish late at night and find myself in need of a midnight snack, Cheese and Onion is a no-go area. Of course I brush my teeth before I go to bed, but the powerful odour of Cheese and Onion is such that the offensive fumes travel back up my digestive system the wrong way and leave me with the most foul taste in my mouth when I wake up.

Cheddar Cheese is not bland like Ready Salted (not that I would say no to a pack of Ready Salted, which is one of my favourite flavours). But its tastiness does not give me a yukky mouth that tastes like its been full of beach sand that the dog pissed in.

Speaking of which, I have also discovered at my work that Pickled Onion is one of the biggest sellers, if not the biggest seller. Why? Has this country got a vampire problem that nobody has told me about?

I have never really got into student life. Despite the fact that I hate summer, I love the holiday aspect of it. This is not because I am a lazy bum, because in my opinion I have actually been quite busy this summer. And the busiest bit (two weeks in Cumbernauld) was the bit I enjoyed the most.

Ever since I started at university I have noticed a pattern. The first Christmas after starting university felt amazing. I couldn’t work out why, but I just went along with it. After all, you oughtn’t worry about feeling good. Then, between Christmas and New Year it hit me again: I realised that I would have to go back to university in a couple of weeks.

Since then, every university holiday has felt the same. It’s not just having time off. Like I said, I am just as busy when I am away from university, just doing different stuff. But just not having to be there is such a weight off my mind. I must really hate university.

At this time of year a lot of people ask me if I’m looking forward to going back to university. The answer, “Actually, I’m dreading it,” is mostly met with confusion. It’s a bit like the “how are you” conversations. You’re not actually allowed to say what you actually feel about university. Student life is meant to be amazing — the best years of your life. I have spent them depressively gazing at my feet.

Student life is way overrated if you ask me. Maybe part of it is down to the fact that I still live at home, so I don’t get to sample much in the way of student life. I don’t get the fun bits. I just get the work. Plus three hours of commuting hell every single day. I don’t get to do all the cool things students do, whatever they are.

But even if I lived in Edinburgh I doubt I would be into it much. Student culture is probably one of the biggest stains on humanity. When it doesn’t involve getting horrendously drunk for the most tenuous of reasons, it seems to be about “ironically” watching Neighbours, “ironically” saying “retrooo” at anything that is vaguely more old-fashioned than an iPod Touch and “ironically” being a total and utter twat.

Plus, for a section of society that is meant to be well-educated and open minded, students are an incredibly reactionary bunch. You meet extremists of all sorts — right- as well as left-wing. I find myself wandering around going, “Where are all the reasonable people?” I can’t remember the last time I heard a student say, “On the one hand… On the other hand.” [Insert obligatory dig at excessive bansturbators People & Planet here.]

All-in-all, it is enough to make me want to “ironically” reach for the nearest gun and “ironically” shoot myself so that I could go to “ironic” hell, because that might be a little bit more pleasant than a university campus.

This year, the dread came a bit earlier than previous years. It came over me like a massive black cloud on a visit to Edinburgh a month or so back. I used to quite like Edinburgh, but now it just reminds me of university dread. On top of all of the usual stuff, I have to contend with a couple of factors that are making me more scared of this year than usual.

First there is the dissertation. Because of my unexpectedly busy summer, I have not done as much preparation over the summer as I would have liked. The deadline is March, but still. I have not come much further forward since April. And next week I have to meet my Director of Studies who is the same person as my Dissertation Supervisor. Meep.

Then there is the fact that I have still not worked out what the hell I am going to do once I have finished university. Given that this is my final year, I had better think of something quickly.

The thing about careers is, you really need to have a good idea of what you want to do from a young age. If you haven’t worked it out by the time you’re about 15, I reckon you are screwed (like me). I used to say to people, “It’s a bit worrying, I don’t know what I’m going to do once I leave education.” Invariably people said, “It doesn’t matter. Nobody really knows what they want to do. You still have plenty of time to think of something.”

This is bullcrap. I found this out the hard way by actually believing it. The thing is, the advice stays like that until you reach the age of about 20. At which point the general advice becomes, “Well you should have decided before then, shouldn’t you!” True, but unhelpful. And then you are stuck with it, all set for a life spent wandering around like a headless chicken.

So given that I have to think up a profession quick-smart, I am going to have to attend every Careers Service event under the sun this year. To have this on top of the dissertation, I have a feeling it’s going to be a pretty tough year.

There are some adverts running at the moment that jar with me a bit. The charity World Vision is advertising for sponsors. Nothing wrong with that of course. And the adverts are hardly going to be works of creative genius either. It’s pretty much what you would expect from that sort of advert.

But there is one thing that really annoys me about them. They go out of their way to point out that the advert is aimed at Scotland. The image to the right is from an advert I saw in MSN Messenger (they know where I live!). If I recall correctly, the television ad says something like, “Come on Scotland!”

I’m not sure what to make of it. There is nothing else particularly Scottish about the adverts. The actor is English, and I recall an older advert featuring John Craven. I am guessing that similar campaigns are running all over the UK, either with no reference at all to Scotland, or with a reference to your particular region. “It’s your call Anglia!”

My guess is that England does not get its own name check, either for England or regions of England. I know there are a few bloggers who get annoyed about Scotland getting fancy labels on its food in supermarkets while England has to make do with being British. English in British out, they call it.

But I don’t really understand the need to mention Scotland in the adverts. Does it actually make Scots delve deeper in their pockets this line is included in their adverts? It must do, otherwise it would be hard to justify the extra cost and effort involved in making different versions of adverts for different parts of the country.

I have spent most of the day saying, “I told you so!” to my mother. I cannot bloody stand Morrisons. While I’m aware that the cause of the latest chapter of E. Coli O157 Scottish edition has not yet been confirmed as Morrisons, it is not looking too good for them.

I had never heard of Morrisons until they took over Safeway. And Safeway was bad enough. I mean, as far as I could tell, the only reason you would shop at Safeway was if the other nearest supermarket was Lidl. Even then, at least Lidl don’t pretend to be classy when they’re not. It’s a bit like, “Look at us being a cheapo food shop where all the cooking instructions are not in English. Take it or leave it.”

Then along comes Morrisons, and boy, that really put Safeway into perspective. Invariably, their own-brand food tastes foul. You might say, “Serves you right for buying own brand food.” But I can eat own brand Sainsbury’s, own brand Tesco, and even own brand bloody Asda without being condemned to a yucky mouth (if you are lucky), violent diarrhoea attacks (if you moderately lucky) or death (if you are unlucky).

Even Kwik Save’s “No Frills” products were more appealing than Morrisons own brand. And I am not talking Morrisons economy or value lines. Actual own brand, I am talking about. Rancid. I have always told this to my parents, who sadly persist on going to Morrisons even though the food is foul.

I think I first noticed when I ate a pork pie. I mean, how you can eat a pork pie that is so dodgy that you can taste its dodginess is beyond me. Surely the point of pork pies is that they are disgustingly, disgracefully unhealthy. I doubt the existence of premium free range organic pork pies (although if you know of any, point me in the direction). Yet this pork pie was drier than the Sahara desert, which is just plain wrong. Actually, I think a mouthful of sand from the Sahara desert may have been preferable.

Then there are the rolls. Most supermarkets say something along the lines of, “Freshly baked today.” The label on this packet of “crusty rolls” says “Prepared for you in this store”. That is about as ominous as it gets. These rolls are less “crusty” and more “rock solid”. It tastes as though they have been “prepared for me in this store” then left out in the blazing sun to go stale for five days before someone remembered to put it out on the shelf.

One of my mother’s suggestions was that maybe it is not Morrisons’ fault, but a problem with their suppliers. But that hardly vindicates Morrisons. It just suggests that they are too cheap and / or rubbish to hook up with a supplier that can make pork pies with some moisture in.

If the source of this E. coli outbreak turns out to be Morrisons, then it will suggest that they were dealing with a meat supplier that was unable to follow the most basic of hygiene instructions. You know, like washing your hands between handling uncooked and cooked meat. Stuff that children know.

And of course I have an opinion on their logo, which is surely one of the worst known to man. Yellow and black can be a nice combination, but what is with that disgustingly ugly font? It looks like it was designed in the 1980s. The new logo is not much of an improvement. It looks like it was designed using Microsoft Word’s draw tools.

You might think I am joking, but this is a big part of what makes Morrisons unappealing to me. I mean, when the shop’s signage and products’ packaging are so ugly, it hardly gives you confidence about the quality of what’s inside. In short, Morrison’s image is old-fashioned and fusty. The food I had tasted old and fusty.

I am not all that picky when it comes to foods. Sure, I’m a bit queasy about sell by dates and the like, but I don’t mind eating cheap food. But I began to notice a pattern and it actually got to the point where I refused to eat own brand Morrisons products. This is not a joke. It is not every day you have your lifestyle choices vindicated by the top story in the news.

(NB. I do not wish to imply that I could have caught E. coli or any other gastric disease from Morrisons own brand pork pies or crusty rolls. Just that I found them so totally disgusting that I refused to eat them ever again.)

Perhaps my geekiest guilty pleasure is an interest in television idents. Many a lonely Friday evening has been spent perusing such websites as TV Ark and The TV Room. Not because I’m a sad loner, you understand, but because it’s the really cool thing to do these days.

I also love cereals. The most functional cereal of them all is Weetabix. It’s the only way to go if you have a particularly challenging day ahead. There is nothing in the world that three Weetabix can’t solve. Except perhaps indigestion.

So an advertising campaign that combines the might of Weetabix with the quaint kitsch of classic television idents cannot be anything but awesome. I don’t watch much television these days, so I guess there is the chance that everyone in the world apart from me already knew about it and this post is a bit like going, “ALL BECAUSE THE LADY LOVES MILK TRAY! LOL!”

The only way I learned about the Weetabix advertising campaign was from a post at Idents.tv. I had seen one of the adverts before out of the corner of my eye, probably when I was fast forwarding through the adverts during a grand prix. It didn’t occur to me that it was supposed to mimic idents, with their trippy ambient music and strange abstract visuals.

The TV theme is continued at the Weetabix.tv website, where all of the ident-adverts are available to view. A lot of them have clearly been inspired by classic BBC Two idents from the 1990s.

We have all seen idents thousands of times. Yet, they are forgotten by many and treated as though they are merely wallpaper at best and an annoyance at worst. Yet, idents are the most familiar sight on television; a reminder that all is right in the world. They are beautiful pieces of design that are almost always better than the programme that follows them. So it’s great to see idents being recognised by Weetabix in their advertising campaign.

One of the strangest things on the entire internet (and that really is saying something) is the BBC News feature, Most Popular Now. It can be found in the sidebar of most pages on the BBC News website. I often have a glance at it because often you do find some interesting stories there.

But it is really weird. Sometimes you see stories in there that are literally four or five years old. And it is not as if they are particularly interesting stories either. Okay, so that story about the bloke who was forced to marry a goat (and the goat’s subsequent suffocation on a plastic bag) was quite funny.

But the other day a rather unenlightening (and distinctly not very newsy) article about how to write a CV was right up there in the top five “most emailed”. Why would you email that to someone? To “gently hint” that you think they might be bad at writing CVs?

Today, for seemingly no good reason, this three-year-old story about a link between milk and ovarian cancer is the second most emailed story at the moment.

I realise that it is quite banal to point out the often contradictory nature of scientific studies on the various health effects of food. Red wine makes your heart happy but your liver sad. We all know it, and we are bombarded with so much contradictory information that we really might as well not bother.

You remember that advert that showed a girl guzzling down five litres of cooking oil because that is just what eating crisps is like (if you eat your annual consumption of crisps all in one go)? Almost put me off eating crisps. The next day I visited the dentist. He told me to eat more crisps and less chocolate. Not that I eat much chocolate anyway. I eat about three packets of crisps per day, so it’s a wonder I don’t constantly pee cooking oil.

Anyway, to veer back from that self-indulgent tangent, the point I am trying to make is this. It is slightly funny that the story about milk maybe possibly perhaps causing ovarian cancer was gazumped by a story saying that milk could cut the risk of getting diabetes and heart disease.

Helpfully, the related stories are: Milk in tea ‘blocks health gains’, Drinking milk ‘no risk to heart’ and Milk linked to Parkinson’s risk. So now you know.

For the Smarties egg. This is brilliant.

You get loads of different spin-off mini chocolate eggs these days. Most of them can’t hold a candle to the original Creme Eggs. But the Smarties egg is just brilliant. It’s got a really nice inside that’s a bit like how a Milky Way used to be before they were white on the inside. And then, inside that creamy mush, sits a cluster of little Smarties.

Much better than the normal ‘let’s stick some gunk in a chocolate egg and see how many suckers buy it’ nonsense.

I came across ISO 3103 when I was taking a look at Wikipedia’s Unusual articles at the weekend. ISO 3103 is ISO’s standardised method for brewing tea. There could hardly be a more inappropriate thing to standardise.

Because no matter what, only you can make the perfect cup of tea. Invariably, if somebody else makes me a cup of tea it tastes absolutely disgusting — and many people seem to say this. There is only one way to make decent tea, and that is my way.

People must assume that when I say that I take no milk and no sugar that I must want my tea to taste like compost. One person actually said this. She thought that because I took no milk or sugar that I must have wanted it really strong, so the tea bag was left in the mug for absolutely ages.

Yuk. No way. I keep the bag in my mug for a very short length of time — maybe five seconds. I just pour the water, swish the bag around a bit and take the bag straight out. A minimum of fuss and effort: this makes the perfect cup of tea for me.

I don’t mind milk in my tea, but it does seem a little bit pointless to me. It just ‘waters (milks) it down’ and makes it taste more like milk than tea. And it apparently takes away the lauded health benefits of drinking tea.

Some people have suggested that I put sugar in my tea. This is because I probably need to put on weight because I no longer fit any of my trousers, and I even bought smaller trousers and I don’t even properly fit them! A couple of years ago I was 10½ stone; nowadays I hover between 9 and 9½. I don’t know why really. I shovel food down my gullet like nobody’s business.

Nevertheless, some people have even made comments about how thin I look now. There is also the astonishing fact that I actually lost weight over Christmas. I explained this as being down to the fact that “junk food travels through faster”.

Sugar in my tea could fatten me up and allow me to reduce my clothing budget, so the theory goes. But I can hardly think of anything that tastes more disgusting than sugary tea. (Sugary coffee is not so bad, but I still much prefer my coffee completely untainted.) If I were to regularly put sugar in my tea, I would probably die of disgust before experiencing any fatty benefits.

Those ISO busybodies are not the only people suggesting a standard way to make tea. For instance, Scaryduck reckons:

Tea should be stewed for at least half an hour before serving, preferably in a mug last washed up in 1973 with full-fat milk and six sugars. Tea which breaks several international conventions against chemical weapons but we do not care. Anything else is a betrayal of British values.

And who could forget a few years back when the Royal Society of Chemistry suggested their own “perfect” cup of tea? (Link to PDF file.) Leader of the Tea Party, Tony Benn, approved:

He sniffed. He sipped. He pondered. “It’s very tasty, I must say,” he said. He sipped again. “Oh, it’s delicious.”

Update: Entirely coincidentally, this from Gordon McLean.

Then you need the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer!

Phuckd is quite a funny blog. Like me, phucker likes to take the piss out of awful late-night television, except he has a lot more exclamation marks. His latest target is the classic teleshopping presentation for Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer.

I had never heard of Jack LaLanne before I saw this commercial. Apparently he was some kind of muscle man in the 1940s. The commercial had led me to believe that he was a singer or entertainer of some sort. At the end he starts singing, and it goes split screen. On the left we have footage from about fifty years ago of Jack LaLanne singing some kind of song. On the right we have today’s Jack LaLanne trying to sing the same song, but he is now so bad at it that the original footage is mauled to pieces to get the pair to stay in sync.

Anyway, the Power Juicer purports to be “whisper quiet”, but when they demonstrate it, it is patently not whisper quiet. In fact, the presenters need to shout over it. (Incidentally, there is an episode of The Simpsons that is clearly inspired by this “whisper quiet” moment.)

They then make a big deal about how you can put whole vegetables and fruit in, because obviously these days people are just too bastarding lazy to peel an orange before they make home made juice. Yes, that’s right. Fruit goes into the machine, complete with skin.

And then, when the process is over, a load of sloppy gloop comes out of its spout. To be honest, it looks as though it has already gone through the entire digestive process, so there is no need to drink it.

But they didn’t endure that shouty loud motor for nothing. So they take their wares to the local supermarket and feed some poor unsuspecting customers their shit-juice. Clearly, the participants have been told that whatever they actually think of the juice, they must say it’s delicious.

You see, what they don’t tell you in this commercial is the fact that Jack LaLanne actually thinks that all good food should taste shit, at least according to Wikipedia:

When interviewed by Katie Couric on NBC’s Today show, LaLanne declared that his two simple rules of nutrition are: “If man made it, don’t eat it; if it tastes good, spit it out.”

So there you have it. Jack LaLanne himself tries his juice and goes on about how great it tastes, but he doesn’t spit it out. Still, since bad food is good and good food is bad, all of our sense of taste has been twisted inside out so that we don’t know what to think any more. So what are we to make of these vox pops in the supermarket?

There’s a nonplussed youth connecting his mouth to some brown pulp. “Delicious,” he says, unconvincingly.
Here comes a family! Let’s get the six-year-old child to try it. That’ll be cute! “Delicious!”, she says.

So far, so lame. But the peak is just around the corner. The next guinea pig is some poor elderly woman who actually grimaces when she takes a swig. “That’s delicious,” she says, with an immense gurn that under any other circumstances would look as though it had been photoshopped.

It’s worth sitting through the whole thing just for that moment. So if you happen to be awake at about 1am this morning, do take a look. If Jack LaLanne isn’t on, you can console yourself by watching the advert for the Brenda DyGraf Lateral Thigh Trainer (it’s so good because — get this — not only do you move up and down, but you also move from side to side! Genius!).

I wrote about the queue I stood in the day before Standinaqueue Day, and I somehow got sidetracked into talking about weirdos in trains. I have only just started on that, stay tuned for another train weirdo post to come one day.

But yesterday — the day after Standinaqueue Day — I did manage to find the time to stand in a queue. I feel a bit bad for not submitting a story to Standinaqueue, but what can you do if you haven’t stood in a queue on Standinaqueue Day? If only I could have moved that queue to a day before, but I think I already messed the queue around enough as it was.

It was in the little shop in Potterrow at the University. It was a long day, so I had to buy some sandwiches. I don’t often go to the shop there, but I think usually there are three tills but one queue. But today the queue was kind of loosely formed, although it extended fairly far back. It was difficult to tell whether somebody was in a queue, looking at something on the shelf or just standing around.

Tentatively, I joined what I thought might have been the back of the queue. Turns out I was standing next to somebody who was already in the queue. I was put off by the fact that he was chatting to two friends. But I then realised that I had pushed my way in front of his two friends! Oops. The guy graciously signalled to me to go ahead, but I felt bad so I just stood on the spot until he had been served.

Queues are not the only seemingly mundane things that can vex you though. As I said, I went into the shop to buy a sandwich. When I went up to the fridge with the sandwiches in it, I was faced with an awful dilemma.

There are clearly two tiers of sandwiches. On one low shelf we have “Simply Scottish” sandwiches. This is clearly the no-frills option. Basic fillings, cheap packaging. It looks like it probably has horrible white bread that tastes of polystyrene, and it wouldn’t surprise me if semen is used instead of mayonnaise.

On a higher shelf there are the more expensive Ginsters sandwiches from Cornwall. They are more expensive, but they look absolutely gorgeous and the packaging isn’t made of toilet paper. And how can you argue against fillings such as “roast chicken stuffing”?

Obviously, I chose the Ginsters sandwich. But as soon as I had paid for it, something struck me. Edinburgh University has a well-known divide between the (mostly) English (mostly) well-off “yahs” on the one hand, and the (mostly) Scottish (mostly) less well-off people on the other.

I personally think the divide is overhyped. I think in some ways it’s only really bad if you’re looking out for it. But I’m noticing it more and more as I near the end of the uni “experience”. Still, there is no denying that at least the perception is that there is some kind of class / nationality divide at Edinburgh University.

And I had just come out of my shop, having snobbishly turned my nose up at the basic Scottish sandwiches in preference for the more expensive English sandwiches with posh fillings. All of a sudden I became conscious of the fact that I was carrying Ginsters sandwiches. People were probably making judgements about me.

“Look at him; he’s a total yah for not eating the Simply Scottish sandwiches like normal students with massive debts,” people said to me in my head. Am I becoming one of those awful people who started university with a Scottish accent but have magically attained a posh accent somewhere in the intervening three years?

Ah, bollocks to it. Those sandwiches are so tasty. How could I resist the “meat feast” triple pack?! I may as well boycott Marks & Spencer now. I know where to go for my posh sandwiches from now on: the humble union!

I am a huge fan of the radio programme Up All Night. On Wednesday nights / Thursday mornings — if I am awake — I like to listen to Dr Karl’s science phone in. The man is smart and enthusiastic. He’s one of those people that can explain everything in layman’s terms.

But one day he said something that I could never agree with. It might be sound advice, but I cannot take it. Something like, say, “try to take five portions of fruit and veg a day” is fine enough advice for me. But what Dr Karl said on this occasion defies all common sense. He said: “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dine like a pauper.” Never will I do this!

Mike Flynn says, Down with breakfast. I agree. I know that breakfast is meant to be the most important meal of the day, because it breaks your fast and all that. But if I must eat breakfast, at least allow me to have a sufficiently small breakfast. Preferably one that won’t turn my backside into a drainpipe.

It’s true. I can’t just get up and eat breakfast then go about my business. I don’t think I have a very strong stomach. Eating breakfast early in the morning makes me a bit ill you see. If I have a free morning then I will almost always leave about half an hour or an hour before eating. This is fine.

But if I have something to do early in the morning I obviously just have to eat my breakfast pretty much as soon as I get up. But I simply don’t have the appetite if I have just got up. It takes at least half an hour for me to feel like wanting to eat something.

Now you smartarse responsible adults reading this will just be thinking, “why don’t you just get up half an hour earlier then?” Don’t be so preposterous. I need every last wink of sleep I can get, particularly if I’m going to stay up all night listening to worthy science phone-ins.

Besides, I once heard on the Thursday night / Friday morning sleep phone in that it is natural for people my age not to get up until about midday. One time, when we were being forced to play some rubbish ball game in the freezing cold at 10am, my PE teacher was obviously concerned at our breathless gasping. She did a straw poll, asking how many of us had eaten breakfast. Less than half had eaten breakfast. Do you know why? Because we need our sleep damnit!

The idea that I need my breakfast in order to function during the day goes against all of my real life experiences. Sure, if I don’t eat my breakfast I might get a rumble in my tummy by about 11 o’clock, but I get that even if I’ve had breakfast. I must have gone to school dozens of times without ever eating a bean until lunch, and look at me — I’m still alive.

I don’t need my breakfast. I need to sleep in the mornings! I don’t want to be forcing fibre down my gullet only for it to be ejected within the space of a train journey (20 pence piece at the ready for entry to the loos at Waverley Station).

This morning I woke up on my friend’s sofa in Dundee having spent the night over. There was no breakfast for me to have. I thought, well I’d better have breakfast because it’s the most important meal of the day apparently and I have to breakfast like a king. So I popped into the Spar. I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have to be heated in the microwave.

Knowing that having such an early breakfast would only make me ill anyway, I just hopped on the train home. My first food came an hour and a half after I woke up. Sure, I was starving when I got home. But boy, it was a great breakfast. I appreciated it much more than I would have appreciated any soggy sandwich I might have bought from a convenience store. And there was no need for a sloppy poop toilet trip.

Sometimes I’m lucky in that I won’t need to dispose of my waste following an early breakfast. But I will still have an unsettled stomach. It’s no wonder nobody will sit next to me during lectures because at some point during that first lesson I will have to unleash a gastric gas catastrophe. It isn’t pleasant. I can’t imagine what must be going on in my innards for such foul smells to be created.

Maybe you think I’m ill or I have some sort of allergy, but I doubt it. As I said, if I leave a bit of time after waking up before eating then I have no problems whatsoever. I can wolf down as much cereal as I like during the evening with no dire(-rhoea) consequences. If I have an allergy to anything, it’s to the morning.

I certainly don’t have an aversion to traditional breakfast-time foods. Infact I have at least one bowl of cereal per day — but always at around 9pm. Additionally I had some toast this evening. Yesterday lunchtime I had a bowl of fruity porridge. I’m not averse to the odd afternoon fry-up either. Even croissants are for lunchtime as far as I’m concerned.

So, if breakfast isn’t the best meal of the day, what is? Well, unlike Mike Flynn, I don’t think it’s lunch. Sandwiches might be good, but I’ve had some awful sandwiches in my time. It’s pretty hit and miss. Also, I have to pace myself when having lunch. I’ve got to be careful not to eat too much in case I don’t have enough room for a later meal that must be eaten with the family round the table.

The best meal of the day certainly isn’t anything called “tea”. Tea is not a meal. It is a hot drink that tastes like compost if you leave the bag in for too long.

You’ve guessed it, mostly because it’s in the title of this post: The best meal is dinner. The most diverse of the meals, dinner also usually provides you with the only hot meal of the day. Possibly the only decent slab of meat of the day. A nice mountain of filling carbohydrates. And I don’t care if I’m meant to eat like a pauper at this time. This is the biggest meal of the day. Fact.

Dinner is also a gateway into the evening, a period of freedom. Breakfast is usually just leading up to a hellish train journey and a bleary-eyed morning of work. Even lunch heralds the beginning of more work. Dinner links the end of work to the start of a relaxing, restful evening.

So down with breakfast indeed. Let’s hear it for dinner, the proper most important meal of the day.

Andrew at Definition Britain has a post about Coke Zero, so called because that’s how many people buy it. Seriously, sales of Coke Zero are falling after the initial launch buzz.

It wasn’t as if Coke Zero seemed to be selling very well anyway. Coke Zero launched just before I started working at Woolworths. What was notable was just how much of this Coke Zero (which I had never heard of) was lying in the stock room. We couldn’t bring them up because they simply weren’t selling.

Coca-Cola really messed it up if you ask me. A lot of people thought that Coke Zero was actually replacing Diet Coke! It’s not — it’s just Coke’s version of Pepsi Max (only about ten years after Pepsi Max launched). Funny how Coke decided to call theirs ‘Zero’ while Pepsi’s is ‘Max’. I see that the new Pepsi Max adverts are making fun of this.

Anyway, Coke Zero was designed to be a drink that appealed to men because Coke has become too closely associated with women. So say surveys and whatnot, apparently. It’s true though. Everybody remembers those Diet Coke adverts with those women cooing over a builder taking his shirt off. The advert was so strong that the whole Coke brand has become girly.

Normal Coca-Cola just about escapes. At around the same time as the famous Diet Coke adverts, normal Coca-Cola was all “Eat football, sleep football, drink Coca-Cola”. Nobody was really convinced, but at least it provided distance from that awful Diet Coke campaign.

But when I first saw Coke Zero I thought, “That must be aimed at women.” This was despite the distinctly non-girly packaging and the (awful) adverts with blokes talking about blokey things. And this is the worst bit of all about Coke Zero. The adverts are possibly among the worst I have ever seen.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” says a fictitious knuckle-dragging reader of Nuts and / or Zoo magazine who was created by a marketing man, “if you could have work without the boss?”

A banal thought. What is the point? But it doesn’t end there.

“Why don’t you get girlfriends without all the plans? Why don’t you get bras without the fumbling? Why can’t you get a holiday where you don’t have to come home?”

Yes, this is the most contrived advert I have ever seen. It is trying so hard to be blokey, but it just comes across as what it is: a really, really bad advert.

And have you ever actually met somebody who would actually say, in a normal conversation, “Great Coke taste… Zero sugar!” It couldn’t sound more like Teleshopping if it tried. Even if a normal person were to say something like that he would say, “This tastes just like Coke. And it’s got no sugar.”

I hope that Coke Zero is off our shelves very soon, just because of those terrible adverts.

I heard the other day that the latest political bandwagon that students are jumping on is a boycott of Marks & Spencer because they sell oranges from Israel or something. I’m not the boycotting type. Actually that’s not true. I boycott Starbucks, but that’s only because the last time I went there my coffee came in an utterly filthy mug.

I guess that’s not a proper boycott though. I’m not the sort of person to boycott in the name of workers’ rights or whatever anyway. Because what about