{ xenovoyance do stuff } » Lifestyle

What good have you done today?

Martin Karlsson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:17:25 +0000

Came across this amazing image over what is said to be Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule. In a word that become ever so much more time boxed it is a bit soothing to see that the ideas have lingered for hundred of years. I truly love the idea with the much philosophical question in the morning followed by the same one in the evening:

What good have you done today?

Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Martin Karlsson — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:29:46 +0000

Yet another great TED talk, this time by Alain de Botton which is a person I find highly interesting!

Hot or cold water?

Martin Karlsson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:48:59 +0000

Since I was young I’ve always been told to wash my hands in hot water because it’s more hygienic then to wash in cold water. I can’t remember who told me this the first time but I know for a fact that I have been raised with this claim. I even asked my mother last weekend if she remembered if she was the one telling me this as a fact but she denied that she was the one given me this claim. So if not form my parents it must have come from school. But really, is hot water really better then cold when it comes to washing you hands?

I was quite surprised when I read an article in NY Times some days ago about the fact that cold water is just as good as hot when it comes to wash my hands. It might me more comfortable to put your hands in but you will not be more clean afterwards then it you had splashed those hands with cold water. Hot water can even be less good as cold water due to the fact that the heat from the water might increase the possibility of irritations on the skin from the soap.

So there you have it. Hot or cold water wont really make any difference, as long as you mix it with soap and put your hands into it you will get the effect you wish.

A first glance at Geocaching

Martin Karlsson — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:51:55 +0000

Haven’t we all since we were children dreamt of finding a treasure just as in the tales? Something tells me that this is exactly the feeling people doing geocaching is feeling once again in their lives. And that was really the feeling I had when I went out last night with my trustworthy iPhone looking for my first hidden treasure in a game which is growing ever stronger right not – Geocaching! For people who never heard of this I will give a quick rundown on how it all works.

Geocaching is what one would call a game or a sport where people all over the world is looking for hidden treasures, here called caches, using map, problem-solving and a GPS-unit. First of all the people looking for the caches go to geocaching.com and can search for caches in their own vicinity. Taking down the coordinates to the cache or a place nearby and then head out to find it! Some caches are easy to find and it is just to go to the given coordinates while other is more complex to find and you need to solve problems and even triangulate new coordinates using riddles and math-problems. All caches contain a log-book in which finders can write a small note to other finders or just to claim their find. But in some caches there is also things to barter with. The rule that apply to the things in a cache is that if you take something out, you must put something back in. And the content can be really just about anything

So who did hide these caches from the very beginning you may ask? Well this is the complete beauty of it all. Everyone can create a cache and just log it at the website making it available for other people to find! some caches are big and other is small. The more one look for them the more you can find, some caches is shown right out in the public but invisible when you are not looking for them. After you start being a geocacher you quite fast have to take nothing for granted. Things can be hidden everywhere!

Equipment needed to start geocaching is really nothing at all. You can look up caches at home, mark them on a map and go out looking without nothing else. What really makes this easier though is if you have a portable GPS-unit which you can bring. Nowadays when GPS is something built in to ever more mobile phones this makes geocaching more available to the public then ever! What I quickly learned was to create a small kit you can bring when hunting for caches. The kit can be a couple of pens so that you can enter the log of a cache even if the original pens is gone (or in some caches the pen just wont fit), some things to trade if you find something in a cache you want to keep and an electronic map and preferably a GPS.

I found my first cache yesterday and was out today as well and found my second cache which was located very near my home! So if you feel this sound interesting, go to geocaching.com and search for caches near your home. Perhaps you find just as I that I pass by small hidden treasures everyday. Not until now I knew about them and now I can’t stop looking for new ones.