Category: Lifestyle

Enjoy an Intelligence Toilet!

Talk about efficiency. The Japanese have created a new way to be even more efficient – while you’re “doing your business.” Their latest gadget allows you to test your sugar levels in your urine, while also checking your weight and blood pressure, all while you use the facilities.

The scale is built right into the floor and the blood pressure armband is offered to you next to the toilet seat.  Your results are all displayed on a readout screen attached to the wall.  The system can only keep track of up to five people’s health data – so this is a device for the home and for the family.  Visitors will have to invest in their own “Intelligence Toilet” if they want to keep track of their health in this way.


So far, this device is only available in Japan and the price tag is between $4100-$5850 USD.

Making Time for Loved Ones

Often, when we first begin a new schedule, it can be very difficult to fit everything in.  This is often a real challenge for students, who have moved away from home for the first time and are having to manage everything on their own.  What happens is that they have a hard time getting their priorities right.  It’s not that they are doing this intentionally; it’s more a case of not knowing how to juggle everything. But, this need not necessarily be a problem.  Students would be well advised to write down a list of priorities and then work out how to stick to it.  It is all too easy to forget about loved ones, especially when they are all too often far way geographically.  But these days, with cheap phone plans, IM and even Skype, staying in touch has never been easier.  Remember the days when it would take up to a week for a letter to travel overseas; now you can access those important to you with the mere click of a button.  So make sure you have your Skype or other piece of technology set up ahead of time and that way you will find it easy and fun to stay in touch.

Sudoku Makes a Comeback

The modern development of Sudoku is most likely traced to a man named Howard Garns, who apparently created this number puzzle for Dell Magazines, who published it as ‘Number Place’  in 1979. Garns was a retired architect, a freelance puzzle maker from Indiana and 74 years old at the time of the creation of this puzzle. It is not known if he had any knowledge of the Paris versions of the same puzzle which vanished from the newspapers about 70 years previously, when Garns was only about 5 years old.

In 1984 these puzzles appeared in a Japanese publication called Monthly Nikolist. The longish Japanese name for the puzzle translated into English as “the digits must be single.” The word for ‘single’ being dokushin, more specifically, an unmarried person. The lengthy title in Japanese was shortened soon after, resulting in the name we use today, Sudoku.

A bit later, in 1986, the same Japanese publisher, Nikoli, added some refinements to the puzzle’s design. Firstly, the number of already revealed numbers can be no more than 32, and the revealed numbers must form a symmetrical pattern, meaning that the given numbers are placed in rotationally symmetric cells.

There are many variants on this basic design, but whether you enjoy a small, relaxing challenge, or a demanding brain workout, Sudoku puzzles can be a great source of pleasure.

The Puzzling Past of Sudoku

Do you enjoy doing puzzles? How about number puzzles? A recently invented number puzzle, based on logical deduction, has taken the world by storm, and that is Sudoku. In case you are one of the last hold-outs on earth not in the know about what a Sudoku puzzle is, just imagine a square composed of nine boxes, and within each of those nine boxes were nine smaller boxes, or cells. So what you have is a nine-cell by nine-cell square, in which you must place the digits 1 through 9, never repeating a digit with a line across, a column down, or one of the nine larger squares. They range in difficulty from strikingly simple to devastatingly difficult, requiring deductive reasoning to solve, rather than any kind of math skills. No adding or subtracting required.

The earliest number puzzles made their appearance in newspapers towards the end of the 19th century. One such puzzle was constructed from taking magic squares and removing some of the numbers from them. Solvers were required to discover the correct numbers which had been removed. This is different than Sudoku because it required adding to find the solution and frequently double digit numbers were involved. On November 19, 1892 a Paris newspaper published a partly finished 9×9 magic square containing 3×3 sub-squares.  Although it was not a true Sudoku, it still had the same key characteristic that each row and column added up to the same number.


Three years later a competing newspaper in Paris refined this puzzle’s design until it became indistinguishable from today’s modern Sudoku. Only the number 1-9 were used, and each sub-square had the same constraints of containing each digit only once. This puzzle continued to appear in this newspaper for about ten years, until its disappearance around the beginning of the outbreak of World War One.

Sleeping Well

Insomnia is a common problem among students.  This is even more so, at the beginning of your college career since you have no doubt undergone a huge change of pace and environment.  Still, there is no need to panic since there are many ways of dealing with this.  More importantly, there are many very healthy ways of dealing with this that should sort out the problem in no time at all.  First of all, never resort to drugs.  That is always a bad idea.  Sleeping pills are only meant to be used in very specific short-term temporary emergency situations such as when one is grieving and even then one need to consult a medical expert.  So what else can be done with regular insomnia?  Here are some basic tips:
a)    Get into a relaxing pre-bedtime routine
b)    Stop drinking caffeine at least 5 hours before you want to fall asleep
c)    If you are likely to be buzzing all night with worries, make sure you take a pen and paper and write a list of all the things you want to deal with TOMORROW and then put it away
d)    Take a bath
e)    Have a warm milky drink

f)    Turn off the phone
g)    Turn off the TV
h)    Make peace with loved ones.
All of these small tips are very easy to implement and can really make a difference to your entire sleep pattern.  It might seem like a hassle at first, but within no time at all you will come to look forward to your bedtime routine as you see how much it benefits the quality of your overall sleep.

Picking a Watermelon Can Be Like Picking a Friend

Like relationships, watermelons do not come with guarantees. Nevertheless just as we jump into new friendships or romances despite previous disappointments, so too do we continue to bring home watermelons in the hope that this one will be the one. And just like with friendships and romances there are ways of increasing the chance of picking one that will bring us a positive experience, there are also several simple things you can do to help increase your chances of this watermelon being the perfect taste experience that you know a watermelon can be.

We’ve all heard the one about tapping on the outside of the watermelon and listening for something or other to help us choose. Thumping the watermelon is controversial; not everyone believes it works, while many swear by it. So all I can say is give it a try. Hold the watermelon a bit away from your body and give it few good raps with your knuckles. Try and detect a not-too-deep sound, perhaps more of a tenor voice than a bass. A too deep sound can either mean that the watermelon has too much water and is not completely ripe yet, or that the center has separated and formed into chunks. This condition, called ‘hollow heart,’ can be caused by improper fertilization or by the farmer trying to speed up the ripening process with too much fertilizer and water.

Check out the outer look of the watermelon. Dull is better than shiny, and the shape should be symmetrical and uniform. Strange curves and bumps could mean an uneven watering schedule or not a consistent exposure to the sun’s rays.


Watermelons should have a creamy patch on their surface, which is the place where the watermelon was touching the ground as it grew. The deeper the color means the longer the fruit stayed on the vine, slowly developing its characteristically sweet taste.  A yellow patch is better than a white patch, and a white patch is better than no patch at all.

You can also tell if a watermelon will be good by its weight-to-size ratio. The heavier the melon feels as compared to its size, the better. Check out a few watermelons of the same dimensions, and pick the heaviest among them. Hopefully with all these tips you will be able to bring home the perfect friend, I mean watermelon, which with a little luck and a bit of effort, won’t have a ‘hollow heart.’