It featured in the B3ta Newsletter 173 and in the end McV sent me a £3 off voucher which still sits dormant on my notice board. Heres the original article.

 After being prompted by this (http://www.weebls-stuff.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28517) thread on the Weebl and Bob Forums, slating McVities for the overpackaging of their flapjacks, I recalled being rather peeved off with another of their bakery products.The McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes Muffin to be precise.Here is a shot of the product inside its rather overweight packaging:As you can see the muffin sits, not completely out of place, inside of the plastic packaging.But when removed the packaging easily over shadows the muffin:I wanted to prove the fact that these muffins were in fact over packaged and so I decided to measure the volumes of the packaging and then of the muffin without any packaging.I puzzled over how to measure this before I Eurekaed and remember the whole displacement thing.So I filled a measuring jug with 600ml of water:Then, the watertight Jaffa Muffin packaging could be placed inside and the difference in the water level (in ml) would equal the volume of the inserted object in cm3 (remember kids, 1ml = 1cm3).The water rose to 970ml (conservative estimate) giving the packaging a total volume of 330cm3.I then proceeded to take the muffin from its packaging and placed it into a plastic sandwich bag, tied in order to leave as little air in as possible.This was then placed in the Jug:and the water level rised only to the 760ml mark giving the muffin a volume of 160cm3 (not allowing for some air which was enevitably trapped by the sandwich bag.This means that the muffin is only 43% of the volume of the packaging which consumes it. Yes, the plastic wrapper and box are 2.3x larger than the muffin itself!Truely a massive difference if I ever saw one.I do have a feeling that McVities are already aware of this problem given the messages on the sides of the pack:However I decided it would do no harm to alert McVities to my findings.

I’m responsible now so a panda called Zhu Xiong now calls me its father (apparently). I’ve had a cuddly panda since birth so I guess its a natural progression.

Canon persuaded me to pick up one of their EOS 400Ds . I’ve been wanting to get more into photography for a while and this should let me be a bit more creative.

Generosity was the name of the game for James and he bought me a loverly pair of Shure E2C earbuds that I have been lusting over for a while. I’ve tried to give my camera a go at taking some pictures of them.

Thanks also to everyone else who gave me stuff in celebration. Particularly the next door neighbours who seemed to be encouraging me to a have a party (!). 

The Gadget Palace 

A few days was spent in Copenhagen, Denmark where we enjoyed the city life and the £6 cups of coffee. Also the Tivoli Gardens theme park that you can see in the pictures.
Then on to Smogen, Sweden where I am sitting now in a little house right on the edge of a lake, peaceful and relaxing.

I think I’ve decided to keep my online store of pictures on flickr despite having just forked out for my .Mac renewal. It seems to have tight integration with most of what I use, including uploads from iPhoto and Aperture which I am planning to start using once I get a DSLR.

Have a look at the photo’s I have put in as part of a great new plugin I found Flickr Photo Album for Wordpress with Lightbox added in for extra woo.

I’ve found this picture framing company in Nottingham and they have loads of retro adverts and photographs that I think would look great. Have a look at the site and let me know in the comments which catch your eye.

www.paramount-picture-framing.co.uk

I shall also hopefully be posting some pictures of my complete setup.
Bear with me the next couple of weeks though as I shall be rather busy sorting out the gig (mentioned below) as well as trying to pass my driving theory test and running a shop whilst owners are away!

Line up currently consists of

13th Hour
Kick Elmo
Second Wave
DBM
Marshy, Rob, Joss
Tim Price
Defected Minds
Illicit

Hope you can all come!

Ooh and the MacBooks did come out. Got a White 2.0GHz C2D on its ways now. *happy me*

In other news I’m still waiting for Core2Duo MacBooks to come out. I’m researching 32″ LCDs ready for my Wii and I’m busy trying to sort out a compilation CD and gig for the beginning of December. More on that soon.

We’ve finally done a new one so go and have a listen and subscribe.

http://www.scarybanana.com/