Strawberry Mojito

I'm quite a lazy person especially when it comes to drinking, even fetching ice from the fridge for my cider is a massive effort. I've been meaning to experiment with cocktail mixing, and when I came across the adorable pink cocktail photos on Pinterest, I couldn't resist replicating these drinks myself. So without second thoughts I got myself down to the supermarket and got myself a 'bullet' of a blender. Its perfectly cheap and if my parents ever ask me why I need a blender, then I've got the excuse of using it for soup blending, its a win-win situation.

Mojitos have been my favourite drink since that one fatal meeting on a Portuguese beach. Since then I choose only to drink this when I feel like treating myself, as its pretty damn expensive for a student to indulge in the long run. I admit I've got better with alcohol though, well at least I no longer chug Sainsburys £1.21 2litre bottles of cider.

So how did my amateur attempt go? I'm crap at following instructions so I just went with the flow, and I've got to admit it was sw-eeet. Never mind the recommended ingredient measurements, I just based it on my own preference (note:probably not the best idea for other cocktails based on measurements to create a particular taste, but for this one you'll be safe)



What I used:

Rum, sugar, mint, lime, strawberry, ice, and soda water.

My method:

1. Chop up strawberries into smaller pieces into the blender, along with the rum. I added sugar here to blend in the sweetness, as the ice would make it hard to dissolve.


2. Tear up a few mint leaves into the glass adding a few ice cubes.


3. Pour the mix from blender into the glass (just over the half point)


4. Top up with soda water.


5. Drinking responsibly.

Result! Takes about 5minutes to make, and its delicious.

What're you going to be drinking this summer?

The up and coming Face'Detecting'Book

"Tagging launch: Facebook accused of eroding privacy"

Today's Metro newspaper ran the headline with an outburst on Facebook's new face detection feature, created to enhance our tagging experience. Facebookers are currently using the new pop up image viewer, but what hasn't quite caught on yet in Britain is the new recognition feature, which can also help the lazier bunch of users who can't be bothered to draw a mouse over a face to tag.

On the positive note, Facebook claims to improve the tagging process with its precision in tagging. It works like the face recognition function on digital cameras; when you next want to tag someone in a photo an automatic box will border only around the face, so all we need to do is type in the name and its ready to go. EASY and FAST.

So what makes this a piece of innovative technology? Well, Google Maps street view developed a complicated face tracker that ensured that the peoples faces in shot were blurred. The funny thing is in 2009 I was on holiday in Lisbon with my friends, and we actually saw the giant google mobile roaming around the tourist spot, and a few months later we found ourselves on street view with our faces blurred (for privacy issues). Now Facebook has latched onto the idea of face recognition to improve the convenience of tagging, I can only imagine the convenience when you get the moments when 2 heads are too close together to tag, instead you end up having to tag a leg or something stupid.

Unfortunately this has only been trialled in the U.S and has not yet reached us. As for Metro's headline, this technology is not breaching privacy, well not unless they are capable to detect individual user faces along with the persons name-which they can't do...yet?

 

A Panic Attack Can Be Quite a Panic!

Last night one of the most haunting things had happened to me...a panic attack. This may sound normal to those who suffer from it on a daily basis, but for me it was a far more tense affair. I felt like I was in some kind of freak horror show than in my room.

Let me take it from the start. I was lying in bed watching my beloved Tvcatchup online as per usual, when suddenly the screen started buffering continuously. This startled me slightly but I decided to ignore it and call it a night. When I crept into bed I started feeling like my head was swelling with an intense ringing in my ears (still from Saturday night), then things started to become more trippy. I started seeing white blurs all around the room as if some kind of spirit had entered. I am quite superstitious and a believer in the supernatural, so naturally I started shitting myself. So I started panicking and the worst came to worse I couldn't breathe properly and felt like I was being possessed/heart attack/asthma attack blah blah blah, but quick to my wits I decide to ring my expert friend in panic attacks to sort me out!

Voilà, I was diagnosed with having a panic attack, which I was extremely glad to hear. Popular culture has shaped horror flicks, and has also taken over my conscience, I'm starting to edge towards the idea of inviting a priest to house viewings, just to reassure that I'm not going to turn into the crazy girl in the Exorcist.

As dramatic as everything sounds, the sequence was so distressing I could have won an Oscar for playing the girl in hysterics. Next time I will definitely be more prepared when I start experiencing; unexpected racing of the heart, feeling dizzy/faint, breathing difficulties, and the feeling of impending doom or death. The only thing is to keep calm and take deep breathes counting 3 elephants at a time to restore breathing rate.

Hopefully tonight I can get a good nights rest.

 

 

Review: Save the Nail. Repair & Rescue Treatment by Nails Inc. Worth £7.50

I was in Boots when I came across this little number, my nails were peeling and wrecked from overkill of nail varnish that I needed something to sort it out pronto. Sometimes nails just need to bare it all and breathe, taking a break from varnish, or alternatively I went for this 'repair' treatment. This is just one of the nail 'enhancing' packs available from Boots. The Nail Inc range also provides a base gloss for longer lasting varnish, glossy wet look top coat, but with this one I can use as a base coat as well as healing.

Save the Nail claims its a 'first aid treatment for damaged nails from nail extensions or in need of a rescue'. It contains the chemical Nonychosine-E that aims to strengthen nails for a healthier growth, and along with a 'bio extender' to increase durability and nail resistance.

How does it work?

To get the best results I need to apply one coat everyday for a week and remove it by the end. I can either keep the process going or I can just start using it as a base coat, depending on how much progress I feel it has made.

So what's my Verdict? Day 3 into the process I found my nails feeling protected and stronger, it definitely doesn't feel as soft and bristle at the tips. The glossy appearance can act as a clear nail varnish, or as a base coat. I tend to grow my nails which always ends up chipping, but after trialling this for a week it has made quite a difference to its firmness. I would definitely recommend this to prevent nails from chipping, and I would gladly use this as a base coat to protect and layer my nail from any harsh varnish.

 

 

Facebook will need to try harder

So a few days ago I was mooching about on Facebook on my iPhone, doing the usual checking out my photos from the night before, but when I wanted to save a photo there wasn't such option anymore. Instead in early 2011 Facebook issued a crack down on security and privacy, and who's to blame-The stalkers/peado's. Too many people were saving photos that didn't belong to them or didn't have anything to do with them...they were simply taking it without permission which proved to be a problem.

To be fair I've done it, you've done it, everyone has saved a photo on Facebook that doesn't belong to them, but for the 'slower' people who hasn't figured out how to save yet then its simples; just below the 'tag yourself' option you can download the image, which works just the same as right clicking and save.

Have fun saving...

Birthdays

Birthdays to me is just another day of spending a wad of cash treating myself, it can be enjoyable but recently birthdays just doesn't feel the same. However today is my brother's 19th and not mine so I'll stop feeling sorry for myself. He ditched the traditional plan of coming home with sick on his shoes and settled instead for a civilised meal at home. Today wasn't just a welcoming of a new age, but for the first time my dad suggested that we go down to the pub! Just imagine one of those cheesy moments when the dad grabs onto his son's shoulder with pride in his eyes, handing over a pint...it was like that! Going to the pub with your old man is a symbolism of age, masculinity and acceptance, now suddenly my dad is trying peel me off Apprentice to go for a drink. It then got me thinking after I refused to go that both siblings have reached the age of adulthood; drinks is on the meunu for celebration rather than a cake shaped as a caterpillar, where has all the time gone? What happens next?

I found it unnerving thinking about where the 'innocence' of birthdays have vanished to; what the hell has happened to birthdays over the years? Importance of birthdays seems to be based on how many Facebook birthday messages received rather than a card, and a birthday bevvy is more endearing than an actual present, and then God created the greatest excuse for all students 'I'm skintos'. What I'm trying to say is where has all the friggin' fun gone? Only feels like yesterday when my limited English speaking rents turned up at (Notts people would know) the Maccys opposite Victoria Centre, and requested a little bash full of flying fries, ketchup and those godly nuggets. The limelight was all on my 6 year old brother with the flimsy cardboard octopus hat, and me suited with my mushroom haircut bobbing about like jellyfish to musical chairs. Now McDonalds is looking 'bangtidy' in there metallic and forest green walls with the drizzle of red, or was that ketchup?

Back to birthdays, my main stream of thought is what happens when our generation grows up, how would we celebrate then? Society is moving so rapidly that I can only hope that I celebrate my 80^th in a spaceship to Mars.

The Sensations of a Whiz Kid

I never really believed in real life nightmares until I finally came round to transferring my current iTunes to my new laptop. At first it was easy, download iTunes 8... and then it came to a full stop. I’d hit a problem! I only possessed a 1GB SD memory card which is basically ‘salad’ compared to the fat portable hardisks you can get to copy documents. Music would at least take 3GB and on top of that I have a host of other stuff like countless videos and photos, ok that sounded slightly sinister, as if I have hundreds of hidden pornographic images and videos (which of course I don’t...well at least not a hundred haha). Jokes aside the only way round it was to endure an hour’s worth of copying a handful of albums onto the card and then cut and pasting...exciting stuff.

You really start to become impatient and wish that you never bought the laptop in the first place if you’d known its downfall. I instantly withdrew that thought as I love my new laptop. I can only criticise its weird printed circle pattern that is randomly smeared at the front and keyboard space. It can only be described as ‘techno bubbles’, I say this as it doesn’t look cute but cold and metallic, yet it still manages to maintain its femininity, or as I like to call it: ‘gayness’. If it were to become a ‘Transformer’ it wouldn’t look butch or threatening, but more like a machine you would want to seek for interior design advice.

Moving on from bashing my new gay best friend, the routine of cutting and pasting became starved, literally passing the poverty level. By my tenth go at pasting, I was just about ready to get the rope out. Luckily I started playing ‘Mock the Week’ on BBC iPlayer, aiding the esteem to carry on the endless task. I found myself delaying my suicide so I could find out who won the round, oh yes Frankie Boyle and team!

After all that I spontaneously googled ‘copying old iTunes onto new pc’, to discover that I didn’t really need to perform all that cut and pasting, but I simply had to select my options to ‘manually manage’ files, and it should automatically do the shit for you. Now why didn’t I just Google it beforehand instead of pretending to be a smart arse?! All that time wasted and lesson still not learnt.

In the end my ‘used and abused’ shitty Dell is now a hollow shell; it contains no personality or evidence of the previous owner. This is excellent as i plan on giving it to my dad. He must not know anything beyond my name and birthday (as he needs this information for my birthday card and presents) what I listen to or who these faces are in my photos would be explicit. Not really I love my dad!