It’s a known fact that eating garlic and onions make you socially repulsive.  But garlic and onions also have known curative properties.

Garlic, for one, is known, and I have personal experience with this, to drastically lower blood cholesterol.  The downside is that you have to take it chopped and, yes, raw – for at least 2 weeks. Say goodbye to your non garlic-eating friends.

Onions, as far I’ve heard, is like the anti-flatulence vegetable. According to WikiPedia it has many medicinal properties, but it doesn’t mention purging air as being one of them.  But again, personal experience has taught me that onions make you fart, which at least leads to a less bloated stomach.

Recently though, something peculiar happened to me and I haven’t been able to verify it with evidence, anecdotal or otherwise. So here it is.

Super Onions & Super Garlic

Being of the single persuasion recently I have had the freedom to eat as much garlic and onion as I can stomach. It is important to note that my tolerance for garlic and onions (and chillies, for that matter) is quite substantial.

Also of importance is the fact that I have, in the centre of my lower jaw, two teeth that overlap, which are annoyingly prone to plaque buildup.  Perhaps because it overlaps in a way that protects it from any but the most stringent, multi-directional-approach tooth brushing.

Anyway, plaque, as you may know, is stubborn and never leaves on its own. So it was quite a surprise when mine did. A little bit at a time.

Dentist Grade Tools

It was only when I went at it with a plaque scrapper (you don’t have one?) that I realise how easily it really came off.

And it made me wonder; what brought this on?

Usually odd things in my body are due to a persistent change in diet, and the only change in my diet has been the edition of serious amounts of garlic and onion. Like 2 or 3 onion and a bulb of garlic at every meal.

So I searched Google to see whether or not the removal of plaque has ever been attributed to garlic and onions, or whether garlic and onions can in fact remove plaque.

I found nothing to answer this question, but having had this experience I  can’t help but wonder: do garlic and/or onion somehow work in on plaque to make it easier to remove?



When you ignore people on Facebook, they pretty much disappear from your world, assuming that Facebook is the only part of your world where you ever encountered them. Ignoring people in real life is substantially less effective and much more work.

Ever notice when mutual friends reply to a comment on their posts left by the Ignoree? The friend appear to either be having a conversation with themselves or give replies that are out of sync.

If you are the Ignorer, you will sometimes remember that you are, and put 2 and  2 together to conclude that what you’re witnessing is half a conversation between your friend and somebody you’ve chosen to exclude from your Facebook life.

The same goes for when you are the Ignoree – although the realisation that you are the Ignoree is an entirely different feeling all together. Sinking, I believe it is.

The only way you know you’re being excluded from whatever comment / update / post was made in first place though, is by picking up on random snippets of other people’s responses to an apparently non-existing post. And to pick up on those, you must have been expecting to find yourself on some or other limited access list.

At least Facebook privacy works in that regard – a powerful blade that cuts both ways. Deep.

Facebook Life

Also, if you’re spending too much time on Facebook, like I clearly am, then some statistics might cause worry.

Like having 515 friends, for instance, of which 235 are in common with your recently ex girlfriend.  And realising, at about the same time, that of those remaining friends of yours, at least 80% are overseas / out-of-reach / a business contact / were added after a night out when you had a bit too much to drink.

The world suddenly looks a lot smaller and your prospects of future good nights out  a lot slimmer.

It’s the price you pay for the choices you make.



For me a major WordPress Blog annoyance is the WordPress Revisions feature. It essentially saves a copy of your post or page every time you update it. If you share my frustration, here’s how to stop or limit WordPress Revisions and clean current revisions from your database.

Remember kids: Backup before you try this at home

WordPress is an awesome blogging platform with many useful features, but WordPress Revisions is the one feature I have never said about “oh, wow, I wish I had the previous iteration of this article“.  I back my database up regularly (and so should you), which gives me a backup of my article anyway, so for me it makes sense to disable WordPress Revisions all together.

There are various plug-ins that can handle this for you, and I recommend that you use one of them if you’re not comfortable fiddling around in code.

Otherwise, open your wp-config.php file, which resides in your WordPress root/install directory, and add either one of the following lines before the ?> at the bottom of the file.

To totally disable WordPress Revisions to prevent additional copies of posts and pages being saved, add this:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', FALSE);

To limit WordPress Revisions to say 1, 2 or 3 revision copies only, add this and change the number to suit your preference:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 2);

The following line of code will erase all the WordPress Revisions in your blog. I did this, because I don’t want any copies anywhere – it reduced my 7.4MiB database to 3.2MiB, which just shows how much space WordPress Revisions can occupy (and this is a development database, which means it’s still relatively small).

Do you really want to delete all your WordPress Revisions?

Open you favourite MySQL interface software (commandline, PHPMyAdmin, MySQL Workbench – they all work), back up your current database and then enter the following command:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

Your database will now be wiped clean of every single WordPress Revision (but obviously not your actual article or pages). In any case, please take my my advice: back up your database.

And… you’re done!  You should now have a significantly smaller WordPress database, which will speed things up a bit – it really makes a different if your blog is huge, less so if you only have a few entries.

Happy blogging!

I just deleted and old Ubuntu off the Journo’s dual-boot Ubuntu/XP HP Pavillion and along with it Ubuntu’s Grub and her Master Boot Record (MBR), which of course rendered the machine useless.

I had an Ubuntu 10.04 Lycid Lynx Live CD at hand (never leave home without it), so here’s how to repair an XP MBR with only an Ubuntu Live CD.

Repairing XP MBR with Ubuntu Live DC

It’s actually ridiculously easy:

1. Boot from the Live CD and into Ubuntu (it’s option 1, Try Ubuntu Without Making Any Changes to your Computer);
2. Once you’re in the OS, from the menu choose Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal;
3. In the Terminal Window type “sudo apt-get install lilo“, which is a Linux gadget that will fix your woes;
   It downloaded, then gave me a prompt box which required me to hit enter before it installed Lilo.  There were some warnings telling me to do something otherwise the computer might not work. The computer wasn’t working anyway, so I ignored those warnings and…
4. type “sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr“;
5. Done. Reboot.

The above assumes a straight forward flub with the Master Boot Record and a default setup as far as harddrives go.

I rebooted the PC and voila! it booted straight back in to Windows XP.

I’ll be the last person you’ll ever see at a screening of a regular football (soccer) game, yet, like many, I find the World Cup irresistible. And it’s not just because I’m from South Africa either.

Fine, a large part of me is drawn to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa for the very reason that it is in South Africa.  The minor parts of me are drawn to it because teams competing against each other on a country-level brings out something very competitive and patriotic in me.

Bafana Bafana – Boys Boys

Of course the team I support first is the South African Football Team, which are known as Bafana Bafana in the same way the South African Rugby Team is known as the Springboks. It’s a term of endearment, which contrary to their Wikipedia page, actually means Boys Boys. From my understanding, at least.

But it seems as if the rumours are true. You know, the rumours that said that the only reason South Africa is in the Football World Cup at all is because we’re the host nation.

Yes, our national soccer team doesn’t have a fully stocked trophy cabinet -  the Africa Cup of Nations it the only trophy in the cabinet – but we do have some skills.  And one or two players in other country’s club leagues.

So Bafana Bafana might not be the smart choice to bet on, but they’re my number 1 priority to support. Even though thus far they’re not doing that great and might soon be out of the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup.  But until they walk off the field for the very last time, I am a South African Football Supporter through and through.

In The Meantime…

While South Africa isn’t playing my allegiance lies with other African teams and Asian teams, and it’s them I root for in games that do not involve South Africans.

I saw the dark side of South African fans in our game against Uruguay.  The vuvuzelas where roaring, the crowds were cheering and then South Africa was 2 down against Uruguay.  Suddenly the vuvuzelas fell silent and the crowds became quiet – shortly after the stadium started to empty.

I know it was a terrible game – South Africa stood around as if they too were spectators.  But for our fellow fans to desert them like that hurt.  If it hurt me as a fellow supporter, imagine how the team on the field must have felt.  If they had the wind taken out of their sails by the goals against them, I can’t even imagine how the silence of their supporters must have been the kick in the ribs while they were down.

South Africa in the Rest of The World Cup

So experts and those who know nothing both agree: South Africa probably won’t advance any further than the pools in the 2010 FIFA World Cup on their home ground.

But France is not exactly in good shape either – in fact, they’re much worse off than Bafana Bafana.  For that reason I think our Boys still have a chance.  A slim chance, but a chance non-the-less.

If we beat France, and we beat them good to get our Goals For up, they might still have a chance.  And if Bafana Bafana wants to take that chance, I will be right behind them cheering to do it with gusto.

I promise that if the team doesn’t let the country down and try their hardest, the country won’t let them down.  You might not win, but at least die trying.

Go Bafana Bafana, go Boys Boys!

Here’s Some Quality World Cup Links for Instant Info

• Google.com’s Most Recent Scores & Upcoming Games
  It defaults to South Africa time (on Google.com), but you can your local time by using your local Google: google.com.my for everything in Malalysia time, for instance.
  
• FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa Full Schedule of Games
  Defaults to South Africa time, but you can set the time zone for easy conversion and have the times be for your time zone.
• FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa Standings
  A must have chart for following your team and see which other teams pose a threat – or not.
• Twitter.com’s FIFA 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa Coverage
  Not all of it is interesting, but most of it is certainly relevant.  If for some reason you can’t follow the live broadcast of your favourite game, you can always tune in to Twitter and follow the live game there.  Could be exciting… And if you hash the 3 letter code of a country, like in #rsa, or #worldcup – you’ll get a nice little icon next to it on the Twitter website.