Random

While the rest of us (me and Lee at the very least) worry about losing it, you can get to be 80 years old and remain young by having a sharp mind. At the ongoing BA Festival of Science in Dublin, Ireland, Professor Ian Robertson gives 7 tips to keep your brains in top shape all the time:

First is Aerobic Exercise – the more aerobically fit you are, the healthier your brain becomes.

Second is Mental Stimulation – play chess, do crossword puzzles, do math problems, do anything in which your mind will be challenged to solve a puzzle.

Third is New Learning – learn a new skill like dancing, playing a musical instrument, painting, or speaking a new language.

Fourth is Decreasing Stress – eliminate and lessen different types of stress in your lives, mostly physical and emotional stress. Strive to be happy!

Fifth is being Socially Active – go out with your friends, call on your classmates from high school, and don’t close your doors on those blind date offers.

Sixth is improving Dietary Habits – eat more servings of fruits, vegetables, and fish.

Last is… Think Young! – “If you think of yourself as old at 60, which isn’t really justified any more, then you will behave as though you’re old and you will do fewer of these seven things that can have such positive effects.”

Think of your brain as your car engine. If it doesn’t perform well it’ll never take you anywhere. So cheer up and work on keeping your finest device sharp and tuned!

From Irish Times, Sept 8 2005 via Doctor Emer.

I got this in my inbox today and I don’t know how much truth there is to it but it makes a very interesting accusation:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to “kill” Google in an
expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior
engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work
for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made
public on Friday.

In a sworn statement made public Friday, Mark Lucovsky,
another Microsoft senior engineer who left for Google in
November 2004, recounted Ballmer’s angry reaction when
Lucovsky told Ballmer he was going to work for the search
engine company.

“At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said:
‘Just tell me it’s not Google,’”Lucovosky said in his
statement. Lucovosky replied that he was joining Google.

“At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it
across the room hitting a table in his office,” Lucovosky
recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade
about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “I’m going to f***ing bury
that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again.
I’m going to f***ing kill Google.” Schmidt previously
worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell.

Microsoft is like fart, everybody hates it when people fart but they always gotta fart too one time or another. It fucking stinks!!

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I bumped into Randy from KBCafe yesterday and we chatted a little about how I can improve my blog. He took a brief look at this place and immediately suggested that I let my visitors subscribe to my RSS feed via email. He said to make it easy for people, the more ways you have and the easier they are for your visitors to read your posts the better your chances are in getting that valuable return traffic.

Of course I didn’t have time to look into this RSS via Email technology so he suggested his R|mail snipplet, which I found very easy to use and very helpful and intuitive. The result is a subscription box on my sidebar (in action) where you can put your email and subscribe to my RSS feed. You’ll get a confirmation email with a link you have to click to make sure you want to opt in to my feeds by email. Then you’ll get an email everytime I blog a new post here. It’s that simple. There’s also an option to unsubscribe should you feel that you don’t need to read me in your mailbox.

So if you too are a blogger wondering why people don’t come back, plug R|mail today and see to it that people are reading you even when they don’t have time to visit your blog.

Speaking of death and games here’s another article that might tickle your attention if you’re an avid gamer or have a friend who’s a game maniac.

Last month, on a muggy Wednesday afternoon, a machete-wielding 19 year old teenager charged into a crowded Taipei internet café and hacked another boy to death for having killed his online character in the popular “Blade-&-Sword” video game. In February, a 41 year old Shanghai man murdered a 26 year old fellow gamer he claimed “stole” his cyber sword (reportedly worth a whopping $870US in the “real world”) in the “Legends of Mir 3″ gaming world. The murderer, Qiu Chengwei, was reportedly laughed at by the police when he tried to report the theft of his virtual weapon, which he had loaned to a friend who then refused to return it. Swordless and without legal recourse, Qiu took the Law into his own hands, broke into his former friend’s house, and stabbed him in his bed. Although they certainly have a grisly way of going about it, cases like these clearly illustrate that East Asians are eager to catch up with the West in terms of homicidal gaming traditions.

I’m in East Asia all right. Oh damn!