Interesting Facts: Well I Never ... No. 7

Three Cool, Useful or Otherwise Interesting Things I Didn't Know a Month (or so ...) Ago.

1. You Can Edit the Display Name When You Tag Folks on Facebook

You know how Facebook added fairly recently the ability to tag folk in your status and comments? So that the person you're talking about gets a notification that you are. Talking about them that is. Well, I found out entirely by accident the other day that you can alter the name as it's displayed once you've added the link. Normally you start typing your mates name and then a suggested list comes up ("did you mean Aunty Maggie? or Annie May?"), you click on the one you want and the full name appears in your text. It can be amusing, leaving the full name in at times. I always feel like I'm addressing somebody as a Mum does when she's cross, using the full and even a middle name sometimes. "LOUISA JANE FISHER, GET DOWN THESE STAIRS!!!" kind of thing. If you'd rather address people on Facebook by first name only, put your cursor at the end of the link and Backspace to delete the surname. Ta da! Or go to the front of the link and press delete to lose the first name or names. Useful I suppose if you want to add a title and refer to someone very formally (Mr/Mrs/Sir/Lord/Her Majesty) or to add a nickname or family title, like 'Aunty' or 'Uncle'. Or, er "Bunnykins' or something.

2. You Can Open a Bottle of Bubbly by Rubbing It.

'Aroused' Champagne

I love my Hubby for many, many reasons but not least for his ability to make me smile or wow me with his seemingly endless knowledge of cool, if not world changing, facts. They have appeared in my ‘Well I Never’ posts before but his most recent revelation surpassed all others, particularly in the Super Cool way it was demonstrated. We had a Public Holiday recently and as I think is required in the National Constitution somewhere, we had a Braaii. That’s a Barbeque to anybody else. One of our employees, Nomore (yes, that’s his name) had brought along a bottle of fizzy apple juice with a full on champagne cork, and he looked puzzled as to how to open it. He passed it to Hubby and asked him how to take the wire off so Hubby starts unwinding and removing the wire and then says, very casually – as if he’d never tried this before “apparently, you can open a champagne bottle by just easing the cork out a little” (he does) “and then gently rubbing the neck” and he holds the bottle away from everyone and starts gently rubbing the glass neck. Less than three seconds later, POP! That cork flew out at high speed into the bushes somewhere all by itself, not a drop of bubbly apple juice spilt. I was speechless for about five seconds, slightly longer than it took Hubby to wow me with his bottle rubbing skills. “Dude, did you just turn that bottle ON??!!” Hubby laughs, not breaking his cool though as he hands a gape-mouthed Nomore his bottle back. I lost my cool totally “I’ve never seen anyone open a bottle like that before, seriously. That was AWE-SOME, have we got another bottle? I wanna see that again. This is going on my blog. My Hubby just opened a bottle by turning it on!” etc, etc, etc …

3. How to Make Bubble Mixture, PROPERLY

(Think Mr Bubbles in Finding Nemo) "Bubbles! BUBBLES!!"

As anyone who read my last post will know, youngest Nate had a very cool battery powered Nemo Bubble Blower for Christmas. Both boys also had bubbles in their stockings and it won't suprise you to hear that shortly after opening, all bubble mixture had been used and/or spilt by my two bubble loving boys. After mixing my dishwashing liquid with water in various different ratios with little success (i.e. bugger all bubbles) a Google search led me here where I learnt that not only is Gycerine a part of the mix, Johnsons Baby Shampoo works far better than dishwashing liquid. A quick dash to the bathroom and a check in my kitchen cupboards, and we have bubbles. Big, beautiful, bouncy bubbles! Talking of which, the site also gives a recipe for Bouncy Bubble solution, using gelatine. It sets and you have to warm it up a little in the microwave to use it but the result (so they say) is bubbles you can bounce. Who knew. I didn't, clearly.