There's a lot of plastic in this shower radio, but nonetheless it has still been voted the worst household gadget. Worse even than the fondue set and electric fluff remover.
The survey was conducted among 3,000 women by the insurance company Sheilas' Wheels, according to this article in the Daily Mail.
Other Top 10 Worst Gadgets:
1 Shower radio
2 Electric candles
3 Electric nail file
4 Soda Stream
5 Teasmaid
6 Pancake maker
7 Fondue set
8 Electric fluff remover
9 Facial tanner
10 Egg slicer
Conference preparations are well under way at
We've checked out the online delegate list, now standing at a very healthy 1,833 names and still with days to go.
I've packed a box of fliers for the ICIS Aromatics conference, which will be scattered like confetti around the ICIS suite in the Interconti - the Tiergarten 1 on the ground floor - and thrust into the hands of all comers.
Meeting schedules, business cards, party invitations - check. Now I have to get this tune out of my head ... "First we take
There is a rather cerebral advert for Total in the papers today, connecting a half-built pipeline in the desert to a lone oil tanker sailing across a moody seascape. The picture is only really intelligible if you turn the page upside down, playing on the idea of exploration Down Under (
Unfortunately, the advert isn't mentioned on the Total website as one of its 2009 ad campaigns, so here is an earlier one to make up for the disappointment.
More Top Chemical Adverts:
Chemical folk are keen on tall buildings, so my eye was drawn to this artist's impression of Gazprom's proposed Okhta Centre on the
At 403 metres it will dwarf Europe's current tallest building, the 300-metre Commerzbank HQ in
How soon will it before the world's petrochemical conferences move in to the hotel and business centre planned for the building already nicknamed the "Corn on the Cob" for its twisting design?
(photo: e-architect.co.uk)
Readers of the ICIS weekly Paraffin Wax (Europe) report will be flocking to see a new sculpture in
A 20-tonne slab of crimson wax on a train track that squelches through the doorways of the RA, leaving a residue of goo in its wake, is the star piece of the Anish Kapoor retrospective which opens on 26 September.
Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" sculpture in
The ICIS Chemicals Confidential blog is two years old today. Like many difficult toddlers hitting the Terrible Twos, it is now moving into the difficult phase for blogs, where many just give up.
So many links to postings on other sites lead to defunct blogs, where the blogger just ran out of enthusiasm after two years, but Chemicals Confidential is happily thriving on its diet of gossip and trivia from the petrochemical industry.
The second year saw more postings, more comments, and more readers than the first year. The Blog is now stuffed with 615 postings and 280 comments, and the Google Analytics map above shows that it is even more widely read than a year ago, reaching 188 countries and an unbelievable 8,980 cities (being least read in: Mnichovice, Chiclayo, Phrae and Portoviejo), although I suspect that a fair few of these hits were attracted more by pictures of cuddly animals than by a thirst for petchem background knowledge.
I wonder if a picture of Knut the
For more anniversaries see:
How do you know you're a chemical engineer?
The Mussels in Brussels - Training and EPL
It may be stretching the bounds of legitimate chemical-related stories, but the Blog was mildly amused to read this one about an American dentist who has a record-breaking collection of more than 2,000 different toothpastes from around the world, including whisky, amaretto and champagne flavours.
Not only is Dr Val Kolpakov a dentist and a collector, but he also writes for a must-read website called "Toothpasteworld.com," which features breaking news like "Toothpaste News," and "Have you ever tried to brush your teeth with chocolate?"
(photo: toothpasteworld)
We thrilled to hear about one celebrity's intention to build and live in a Lego house, but no sooner had the house been built than it had to be torn down.
James May, co-presenter of motoring TV programme "Top Gear", built his two-storey Lego house in Dorking, Surrey, UK, but it was smashed apart on Tuesday because the wine estate on which it was built needed the land, and nearby Legoland had said it could not afford the £50,000 transport and dismantling costs.
(Photo Finkangel)
On the subject of gadgets, I like the look of the new Digital Video Memo. It's a small magnetised box with a video camera and microphone. You look into the camera, press record, and it captures a 30-second clip of your message, which can be played back to your colleagues in the office, or family members from the fridge door, to help them cope with the pain of your absence. At only £30, it's the ideal price for a purchase-on-a-whim.
(photo: iwantoneofthose.com)
This is what I need to liven up my conference meetings. The new Livescribe Pulse Smartpen records audio and logs keystrokes as text - then you can retrieve the audio recording by tapping on the section of handwritten notes. Brilliant. It's the next must-have gadget, and is sure to spread fear and loathing in face-to-face meetings in
The ICIS Training team is in
Knowing that our own Ed Cox from ICIS Heren was being interviewed about gas prices at 8.45 this morning on Radio Five Live, I eventually managed to find the station, tucked away on Medium Wave, on my car radio and listened to Ed answering questions on why gas prices in the UK weren't coming down, and why gas providers' forward buying never resulted in price reductions.
Other ICIS reporters were clustered around a PC in the office listening to him online, so there was something of an Ed-fest when I got into the office. Soon he was up on yahoo messenger and telling everyone how relieved he was that it was over.
Greenery abounds at Total's
"That's a lot of plants for an office space," says my colleague Joe Chang who visited a few years ago to interview the CEO, and has just spotted this on the company website while researching an article.
A flautist suspended in a giant transparent plastic sphere, the size of a four-storey building, floats on London's River Thames at low tide, as part of the Mayor's Thames Festival last weekend. The flautist was in the exact centre (eighteen feet above the water), performing Water Cycle, a piece for flute and sound system.
(Photo:
The 50 millionth chemical has been registered on the database of the American Chemical Society. It is "a novel arylmethylidene heterocycle with analgesic properties." Discoveries are speeding up. It took 33 years for the CAS website to register the 10 millionth compound in 1990.
If you had thought that swine flu had put an end to the social obligation of conference kissing, think again. The Blog has detected two major influences sweeping across the world of social cheek-kissing, and conference-goers will want to familiarise themselves with them before embarking for EPCA in Berlin. First is the inexorable spread of the Dutch three-cheek kiss, and second is the emerging trend sweeping in from
Regular attendees at petrochemical conferences will have noticed the Dutch kiss sweeping across European borders, practiced now not only by Dutch members of the petchem community but also anyone with a Dutch office or who has at any time done business in or around the Netherlands. "We're all Dutch now," is the standard refrain.
More unnerving for the majority of attendees at the forthcoming EPCA conference will be the spread of the Argentine/Uruguayan "Saludar." Oh yes, I have seen the future of social kissing and am waiting agog to see its arrival in the world of petchem conferences.
At a polo match at
How long before the Dutch get hold of the Saludar and bring us the Dutch Saludar?
(Photo Rex)
The mystery of the hotel minibar has long been a conversation point at industry conferences. Delegates who move the minibar contents around in the search for a midnight swig of mineral water are often found at hotel reception desks expressing their outrage when they are billed for numerous miniatures of hard liquor, due to the minibar mistakenly registering the movements as bottles being removed.
Now a new breed of super-sleuth minibars fitted with infrared sensors can spot the difference between items removed, and items reshuffled and replaced. They record the date and time of use, and can differentiate between employees and guests, according to an article in the August issue of British Airways High Life.
News of a new dining trend for secret restaurants in
Secret restaurants which are unpublicised and hard to find are all the rage in
The Blog particularly liked the sound of one hidden candlelit deluxe restaurant which can only be reached by navigating a dark back alley and by knocking on a metal door.
(photo Rex)
Truly the return to the office from holiday has to be one of the year's low points. It's not just the pure volume of email but also the intricate email trails, snaking back and forth with assorted players chipping in. There are always a few token bits of bad news hidden in the midst of it all, and a few things that have gone wrong which never would have gone wrong if you hadn't gone away.
It is as if chaos is always looking for a chance to break out. I am reminded of the way the natural world reasserts itself as soon as mankind turns its back, like the monster trees which reclaim the ancient temples of lost civilisations (as seen in Tomb Raider.)
(Photo Rex)
