Everyday Experiments

...and to think that this was published decades ago. (click on the image for a larger view)

I'm working on a 52-page document with hyperlinks, then my boss says I should remove all links in-text. Instead of spending hours removing each and every link manually, a simple Google search renders a very easy solution:

From Microsoft Support:

How do I remove a hyperlink without losing the display text or image?

To remove a single hyperlink without losing the display text or image, right-click the hyperlink, and then click Remove Hyperlink. 

To remove all hyperlinks in a document, press CTRL+A to select the entire document and then press CTRL+SHIFT+F9. 

Note Performing this operation converts all fields, not just hyperlinks, to plain text.

I was looking for a ground beef recipe that would be great with a bottle of red wine a friend just gave me, and stumbled upon an easy yet delectable Ground Beef Stroganoff dish. I made tweaks here and there to account for ingredients I have at hand. Here's an adaptation of the recipe from the Emeril Live show:

Just found a very simple way to update the BIOS of the EEE PC model 1005P:

Here's a nice cartoon to start the new year:

With economic recession (and depression, conversely) still in full swing (not to mention crime rates, mortality, and stress) I find it quite hard to adopt a more upbeat attitude about the year. Pragmatically speaking, it is indeed very hard to stay happy and perky the whole year long.

Here's a less depressing take on the same theme:

I've written zilch in the last 3 months. 3 months of sleepless nights, drowning in report after report, spewing out graph after figure after paper. I guess this is how my brain should feel like right now:



I think I'm going on a loooong needed (and deserved!) vacation right now. Preferably in a cold, dark cave where I can sleep undisturbed until Christmas :-p

Just in from Discovery blogs: a fully operational high-intensity lightsaber - er, portable laser - is up for sale by consumer laser manufacturer Wicked Lasers. This baby boasts of being the first ever 445-nm direct blue diode portable laser in existence. For $200, you get your own Li-ion battery powered version of Luke Skywalker's bright blue lightsaber.



It cannot cut through flesh like it was butter, but the S3 Arctic Spyder III can cause instant retinal damage, permanent blindness, and skin cancer, among other things. Yes fellas, this lightsaber - sorry, Class 4 portable laser - is not a toy and should not be used for puerile entertainment.


So what's exactly the point in making a portable lightsaber with a hilt that looks exactly like the one from the popular George Lucas franchise? It seems that Lucas is taking the hint. Lucasfilms is now planning to sue Hongkong-based Wicked Laser if they do not change the design of the laser. (More on that story here.)

I was in the middle of compiling my personal Jane Austen movie collection when I came across this message from a site I frequent for my movie fixes:

I finally made it to the Helium Homepage! And my article got top spot at that!

I'm so happy and thrilled and ecstatic that I just might forget my previous and present hang-ups about the site (namely, the inability to log in occasionally, and also the... oh, heck, I'll just drop my nitpicking). I've been part of Helium for 3 months and have written only 9 articles so far....and I was absolutely thrown off my seat when I got the email from Helium congratulating me for making it to the homepage. I'm so happy and proud I'm literally bouncing off my rickety office chair and doing cartwheels in my head. Yey for me.

Now only if being featured meant receiving some sort of prize or compensation... oh well, guess I'll have to do with my 15 minutes of fame and short-lived bragging rights for now. Yipee!

You can visit the Helium home page here.

Has the husky voice of a man ever turned you on so bad it can elicit uncontrollable shivers through your spine?


Well, it turns out that there's probably an evolutionary reason why women find men with very masculine voices especially irresistible. A study just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society has found a correlation between perceived masculinity in a male's voice to actual macho-ness in terms of physical strength. In the study, male and female subjects were asked to listen to speakers from four distinct language groups and asked to evaluate their upper-body strength based on their voice alone. Results showed that male speakers perceived as physically strong actually fared better than their counterparts in tests of hand grip, chest strength, shoulder strength, and bicep circumference. This, the subjects gleaned just from hearing the males say “When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow.”

Guilty as charged :-p

Before someone calls me an ignorant creationist...no, I am not one of those anti-science advocates who try to discredit scientific theory for the benefit of preserving their more traditional beliefs.


A new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, however, has identified the particular method that these people use to discredit scientific ideas. Called "scientific impotence," this method relies on discrediting a particular scientific finding - say, that humanity is causing climate change - to imply that science as a body of knowledge is impotent as a whole.

One of the many new things I vowed to do at the start of the year (or decade?) was to try my hand at writing for the web. I've met a couple of people who swear by the financial opportunities a decent writer can get online, and even know a few who actually make their living as web-based freelancers. So I did my own research on sites that accept non-US based writers and signed up for some of them.

It has been a little over four months and to date I've made around $850. That's not really too bad, considering I only spend 2-4 hours a day (or rather, at night), and not everyday at that, writing online. Here's a breakdown of my earnings so far:

(Btw, I've written a separate review of some of the sites listed here. You can read it here if you want more in-depth details about each site.)

Just came across a map showing the patient to doctor ratios in different countries worldwide. Though the map is three years old, it's still effective in showing how health care is addressed worldwide. Glaring fact: Cuba tops the doctor-to-patient ratio stats worldwide with one doctor per 170 citizens. Now this is not bad for a country that has been getting a lot of bad press through the years (actually, made me recall the scenes from Sicko where Michael Moore takes the 9/11 rescue workers to Havana to get free health care and cheap medicines). Another interesting factoid is that three of the top 10 countries with low doctor patient ratios include former Soviet states, namely Russia (230:1), Turkmenistan (240:1), and Ukraine (240:1).

A few decades (or perhaps years) from now, lab rats (at least of the murine kind) will cease to skitter, scamper, and be probed and tested in most research labs. A paper published in Tissue Engineering Methods just this quarter details how Dr. Amit Gefen of Tel Aviv University and his team were able to deduce, using fat cells, that stem cells are sufficient in creating the tissue required for most current animal tests. Once other scientists (including Dr. Gefen himself) take up this promising lead and conduct more experiments to verify this claim, this may lead to the elimination of the need to sacrifice so many mice for just one experiment on one tiny organ or system. No more cute furry little white critters to feed, grow, clean, and experiment on...

POVs can be quite confusing, sometimes you forget which POV you actually originally took on... (thanks to xkcd for the cartoon)

Starting May 1, the writing site Associated Content will start to close its doors to non-U.S. writers, except for those who qualify for its Featured Contributor program (those with "top-notch writing skills, and a strong body of work in one of our featured topic areas", and willing to submit a U.S. W-8BEN form).

Apparently, a new law passed by the U.S. Senate has affected several U.S.-based writing sites with a international, non-U.S. writers. Read more details about the issue here.

This sucks in a major, major way. Helium has just emailed me saying they're blocking users from "regions in the far east", including the Philippines, from accessing the site. And now this.

Oh, and yes, I haven't really been able to access my Factoidz account, either. I'm not sure if it's just a server problem or if they're blocking non-US I.P. addresses as well.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a possible review of the law, or a sudden decision of these writing sites to open up non-U.S. based domains.

*sigh*