Things occupying my time

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Televisual: http://www.lovefilm.com continue to be great, sending me on average 3 discs a week. Apparently, if you sign up via this link, not only do you get a free 30 day trial, but if three of you then continue to use the thing, I get a free ipod. They do games, too, not just DVDs.

Laundry: I love my ecoballs. My laundry usually gets quite dirty - paint and food and all sorts of stains - but they clean them, and are more economical than chemical things, and I don't have to remember toi buy stuff and carry it home.

http://www.howrse.com: my horse is pregnant!

Silly party games: http://www.the-cbb.co.uk has all the Chalet School based party games I need. Thanks to bookwormsarah for the tip (also has lots of good fanfic).

Oh, and every so often I earn 50p by taking a brand index survey: here's the link if you want to also.

Comments

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

I used to do lots and lots of surveys, don't have the time nowadays. Try signing up for ciao.com, which also pays out for product reviews (if people read them).
I didn't know you had a horse? John's nieces really to have a real live horse. Must go an see it one time.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Sadly, not a real horse, just a computer horse.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

I'm very skeptical about those ecoballs and whether there's anything more than possibly a mechanical effect over washing with plain water. The claims on the website don't seem to make much sense.

I'd be tempted to do a blind trial; wash some loads with the balls and with just water (randomly distributed) and get somebody else to determine whether they had the balls in or not. Obviously with the null hypothesis that there is no effect, each time there's a .5 chance of picking the balls, so you'd need several repeats to elimitate randomness and demonstrate that they were effective.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

So am I. They claim to work by producing 'ionized oxygen', but there's no explanation of how this might work. I smell bad science.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Well I can see how things like superoxide anions and hydroxyl radicals might have a potent effect on dirt, and quite possibly a potent effect on your clothing too - then again, lots of conventional stain removers use things like peroxide too. However, generating such species catalytically at 30 degrees is more than a little surprising.

I'm dead curious though, and have some old T-Shirts that could be turned into good test samples...

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I would be sceptical, but I'm too busy being happy. My state of mind is fragile enough, that it's worth the having-spent-money, even if there isn';t really any effect.

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

non-chlorine bleaches do involve some kind of oxygen-stuff, must ask the husband (who is a chemist) how it works. The website I checked out had lots of reviews listed. I only read the 4 stars (the lowest rating given, out of 5 stars) and some people said they didn't get stains out. You could try eco balls and a stain remover and still feel good, probably. To burst bubbles, mother says ghoti's eco balls don't work. To re-inflate egos, I have been thinking recently how pretty my little sister is, and how much I love her.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Mother didn't try them, claiming that you have some which ruin her clothes. She did attempt to do laundry using only fabric softener, which didn't work.

And thankyou; I love you too.

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

That would explain it, then. The balls we have are not the same as your eco-balls. We have balls for the washing machine that are supposed to collect fluff, she thinks these would ruin her lint bandages, and I suppose she might be right. We have some knobbly balls for the tumble dryer, too, which are meant to make the washing soft, and help the dryer dry quicker by spreading heat. However, the probable reason we have holes in our cleaning cloths is that they are used to rub things, and that we get holes in our clothes is wear and tear, since the same sort of hole would appear before we used the balls.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

I hate the Brand INdex surverys, but quite like the others. I think one I did on breakfast cereals was mentioned in the news the other day (an ambition of mine). I never found time to watch the stuff LoveFilm sent me - maybe I should try again[0] and see if they have any TV series.

[0] Now I have worked out that getting up slightly earlier to do my exercise in the morning gives me more time in the evening.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

They have lots and lots of TV series - I've watched all of Buffy through them, and most of Sugar Rush and all of Tru Calling, and various other stuff.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I may have to reinvestigate. Although I guess it depends how fast I watch them.

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

I attempted to check out the-cbb but couldn't get past the requirement to log in - to the point where I tried upper case, lower case, mixed case and had me doubting my memory!

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I found it difficult the first time, too; username is joey (lowercase) and password her maiden name (lowercase) if that helps?

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

I had actually worked out what the username and password should be...

I just can't type. the password should have "tt" not "th"!

Thanks anyway.