Auto-Soap Dispenser

OK, I have a confession to make: I am someone who rants.

To anyone who knows me this is like me admitting that I breath, or that I eat, or that Justin Bieber is really creepy (seriously, what the hell is going on there?) but as no-one who knows me (or anyone else at the time of typing for that matter) is reading this I'm going to put this out there. While I am incredibly patient with some things there are other things for which I have no patience whatsoever.

For instance: A baby grabs my nose and decides that it's a fun toy with which to play.

I'm OK with that. It might not be particularly comfortable but the baby seems to be enjoying it and it's not really doing me any harm so go for it baby. I'll even throw in some amusing noises while you do that. Go ahead, knock yourself out (not literally hypothetical kiddo; we don't want you getting hurt), carry on. You'll get bored with this before I will because you're a baby. It's not like you're doing this to annoy me. You're just, well, being a baby. As "being a baby" is not something you can help I have all the patience in the World for you.

By contrast: Coldplay exist.

Quite reasonably this fact reduces me to a seething mass of fury.

However I am not here to discuss this. Not on this occasion. Oh no. On this occasion I am mentioning something that I have spotted more recently and that annoys the crap out of me.

Auto-Soap Dispensers.

"What are Auto-Soap Dispensers?" You may ask. "Why do they annoy you so?" You may go on to ask. "Are you going to tell us or just carry on with the build-up like some overly-verbose, pretentious, asshat?" You may continue.

Steady on.

That over there (→) is a picture of a box of Auto-Soap Dispensers as I am sure you can all work out from the words that are photographed on the box itself. You may be wondering exactly what is wrong with this product. Of course you may already have worked that out and if that's the case, well done you, keep it quiet until I've finished.

What is wrong with this product is that it is being sold as an aid to hygiene. Now you may argue, as the manufacturer does, that being touch free, it does not help to spread anything via a transmission route. "Lack of touching things must be a good idea" some might say.

This would be all well and good but for the fact that you wash your hands after you've obtained the soap. It doesn't actually matter all that much if you're touching the soap dispenser as that happens before you're clean. And you can push a soap dispenser with something that hasn't come into contact with whatever you've been handling anyway.

You know what helps with this problem? Something that helps you to not touch the taps. Elbow taps are one solution (beloved of laboratories but not so common outside of these environs in my experience) as are touch-free taps (with motion sensor technology THAT ACTUALLY HAS A USEFUL PURPOSE) but they're not that common, and seriously, you can just install elbow taps.

If anyone falls for this product then there's a very good chance that they'll not pay attention to the transmission routes that they're supposed to be avoiding (so they end up giving, for example, that innocent, nose-grabbing, hypothetical baby something from handling raw meat, getting something on the tap, washing their hands and then getting that something back on their hands to poison the hypothetical baby) as their wonderful Auto-Soap Dispenser has supposedly protected them from harm. Only it hasn't protected them. The lack of care resulting from a false sense of security actually causing a problem.

WAY TO HELP SPREAD DISEASE AND FILTH YOU SUPPOSED PROTECTORS OF HYGIENE.

This kind of crap really does piss me off.

As most of the people that I talk to have eyes that tend to glaze over when I talk about stuff like this I am hurling it at the internet on the grounds that getting it off my chest might make me feel a bit better.

Let's see how that works out.

Aide de memoire

There are different kinds of memory.

Some people have a good memory for names (I am not one of those people). Some people have a good memory for processes and how things work and fit together (I am more one of these people).

Away from this there is magnetic memory. Whereby we can magnetise (I'm English, get over it) something by means of induction and then at a later time retrieve the information allowing the patterns in the magnetised material to induce a current.

There is a memory that some plastics can possess so if the plastic is heated it will return to an earlier shape.

And then there is salt.

The more literal amongst you might be wondering what it is that I am about to reveal about salt memory. Could it be connected to silicon dating (whereby the distortion of the electron shells of silicon can date when the fire of which said silicon was engulfed raged millennia ago)? No. No it is not that. Could it be something about impurities in the salt? No. No it is not that. Could it possibly be something to do with the larger scale aspects of crystal formation and the rates of formation and the shapes that they form? OK, if you asked that then I must admit that I hadn't thought about it until I typed it out. Possibly. But it's not what I'm talking about here so no. No it is not that.

It is, I suppose, not really a memory that salt itself possesses but rather than it can remind one of something.

The salt in question reminded me that I have a paper cut on my right hand. It also, shortly after this, reminded me that I swear. A lot.

Salt memory.

Balls*.

*I did not actually say "balls" but do not feel the need to mention what I actually said. I've calmed down a bit since then.

A thought occurs

It occurs to me that starting this last thing on a Sunday night might not have been the best idea in the World.

I promise that I shall try to sort out this travesty of a default scheme (I don't think that it looks so bad to be honest but it doesn't look like I'm trying very hard) but probably not on a day when I'm in work.

Full time work getting in the way of internet? Well really.

Oh yeah, and I'm going to write more posts, that too.

They shall probably, although I make no promises, not involve porridge.

Pawridge

The other day I was eating some microwavable porridge (for kids, yes, what's your point?) as I realised that I'd not really eaten much that day. Oops. Anyway, while I was making it up (in the sense of preparing the porridge, not in the sense that the porridge is fictitious) almost by the instructions (the instructions do not tell one to add enough sugar to kill a toddler, go figure) I noticed something about the individual packets in the box: They each have a different animal character on them.

All of this, and the stuff on the site (http://www.pawridge.co.uk/), seem to be trying to encourage kids to eat healthily while respecting nature... which is, y'know, a good thing, or whatever. You can celebrate on this one Quaker Oats, break out the champagne and blow-jobs, you're doing good work. The odd thing about it in my eyes (and I have pretty eyes so they count for more than they might otherwise do) is that one of the characters is called Derek the Diprotodon (Extinct Marsupial).

Now, I'm sure that none of you needed reminding that Diprotodons are extinct, but I do wonder about what message this sends to young children. The other animals on there, from what I've looked at, are endangered. This means that they still exist... however, being extinct does not mean that they have blue fur and that they're still hanging around engaging in appealingly goofy escapades. It means they're dead. All of them. Dead. Dead as, well, as a Dodo, which are also extinct.

Come on Quaker Oats... close... so close.

Posting for the first time is hard

My first blog post at blogspot and I am confronted by a question that I am yet to answer. That question is "what is this blog for?"

This blog is for me to write about stuff. Any stuff that catches my eye. Any stuff that amuses me and as such causes me to muse. It is not for me to just say that various things are hard. That would be silly. And while I am silly I am not quite that silly. Yes, I suppose that this is for me to be silly, but not too silly, somewhere where I can flex my writing muscles (RARGH! I AM WRITER! HEAR ME BLOOOOOOG!) without it being too linked to where I currently exist on-line which is rather more basic keeping in touch with people I already know. Not that I shall make any claims to be doing anything other than mucking about.

It is a place for me to ramble. It is a place for me to rant. It is a place for me to write an entry that should probably have been better placed on some kind of "about" section or something. Oh if only such places existed!

Whoops.

So, first post on this blog: sorted.