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Earlier this month, the kind folks at Walkers sent us a sneaky preview of three mystery crisp flavours. Munching them down was the easy part but trying to guess the flavours isn’t as easy as it sounds. We thought we would be bringing the big reveal to you this week but Walkers have instead put an interesting twist on things…

Walkers are now giving you the chance to take a guess for yourselves. Although our little office guessing game was just for fun; now you could win £50,000 just for eating a bag of crisps! Now that’s tasty. 

Grab yourself a bag of Mystery flavour A, B or C available at any self-respecting fried potato vendor, have a little nibble and make your guess at www.walkers.co.uk or www.facebook.com/walkers. Three correct guessers will win the grand prize and we’ll finally discover the secret of the mystery flavours on Friday 9th March. Is it a sign of my crisp addiction that I’m really excited about this?

Just to help you whittle it down, here are some suggestions for flavours that are almost certainly not correct:

Gary Lineker’s Feet Flavour
Potato Flavour
Jealousy Flavour
Ice Cream and Custard Flavour
Cold-Chinese-For-Breakfast Flavour
Prawn Cocktail Flavour 2: Revenge of the Prawns
Eyelash Flavour

Happy guessing!

“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae let the Lord be thankit.”

Scottish person.

With those words, the Burns Night Supper is started. It may surprise you to know that I, Murray Stuart Dougall, am a Scottish person. With that in mind, Gadget HQ have asked me to teach you all a wee bit aboot Burns night and whit it entails.

Scottish persons.

As you already ken, Rabbie Burns is the greatest Scottish poet o’ all time, an’ so on the 25^th o’ January every year we hae a big feast in honour o’ his memory. First, the host gives a big speech welcoming one an’ all tae the dinner, which is followed by the Selkirk Grace from the start of the column an’ a starter course that’s usually scotch broth.

Then it’s time for the big yin, the haggis is rolled in an’ the host delivers “Address tae a Haggis”, Burns’ ode to the traditional Scottish dish. I know most non-Scots are squeamish when it comes tae eatin’ haggis, but if you try one new thing this year make sure it’s haggis, it’s honestly one o’ the greatest foods in the world.

After the main course it’s speech time, beginnin’ with a memorial tae Rabbie Burns and then going into the toast to the lassies and the toast to the laddies. Efter this there’s some recitals of Burns’ work, and then we come tae the end o’ the evening. In 1997 when I wis jist 9 years old, my dear mother had taken me an’ ma brither tae Crown Court Church of Scotland fir the big night, an’ at the behest o’ ma elders I stood up an’ sang Flower Of Scotland tae finish off the speeches before the traditional communal singing of Auld Lang Syne.

Burns Night Supper.

An’ that, ye wee Sassenachs, is a Rabbie Burns Night Supper!

Today is a very exciting day… if you’re Chinese. For today is the start of the year of the Dragon, which is unassailably cool and the only one of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac that is legendary. Both Sam and myself were born in the year of the Dragon, and as you can see we’ve made nothing but success of our lives!

(May not necessarily be me or Sam)

A couple of years ago I mistakenly bumbled into a Chinese restaurant with a few friends, completely unaware that we were arriving without a reservation on the eve of Chinese new year. Even after waiting 20 minutes and getting a table, we remained blissfully oblivious to the fact that anything out of the ordinary was happening until a 12-man-long Dragon came charging into the room accompanied by another 12 men beating out pounding rhythms on various drums.

We watch with bemused bewilderment as the Dragon danced between tables and girls started handing presents out to all the guests, ourselves included. For 15 minutes we bore witness to a wonderful display of colours, music, dancing and celebration and then, quick as a flash, it was all gone and we were back to being in a Chinese restaurant.

(May not necessarily be me or Sam)

On a side note, ever wondered why the Chinese zodiac contains just those animals? The legend is that they were all fighting over who would be first so the Chinese Gods made them race across a river to determine a winner. The rat and cat wondered how they were going to get across because of their small stature, so they jumped on the back of the ox. Halfway across, the rat pushed the cat off the ox and just before the ox reached the shore the rat jumped ahead of him, which is why the rat is the first animal of the zodiac. The cat finished so late that he was not granted a year at all, and vowed to be the rat’s enemy forever. The full legend is available here.

Here at Gadget HQ, we pride ourselves on having a wide selection of gifts for any occasion. But unfortunately, we can’t stock everything that we’d like to. Some of it’s impractical, some of it’s downright impossible, but if we could, then here is our gadgets.co.uk list of:

The 20 Best Impossible Gifts

20: Dinner at a fancy restaurant with Academy-Award-Nominated-Actor Woody Harrelson

19: A new pen.

18: The ability to Irish dance.

17: Monkey butler.

16: One free punch, redeemable against anyone who has appeared on X-Factor.

15: Post-it notes. Lots of post-it notes.

14: A really, really nice hedge.

13: A producer credit on a Hollywood blockbuster.

12: A pet kestrel.

11: Bi-Polar, the fourth studio album from Vanilla Ice.

10: One free punch, redeemable against Vanilla Ice.

9: The ability to Irish dance with Academy-Award-Nominated-Actor Woody Harrelson.

8: Saturn. You couldn’t go there but c’mon, “I own Saturn”? How is that not a great thing to say!

7: One free punch, redeemable against anyone named Justin Bieber.

6: A producer credit on a Hollywood blockbuster starring Academy-Award-Nominated-Actor Woody Harrelson.

5: Robot butler.

4: That jacket you’ve been looking at in the shop, but you think it’s probably a bit too expensive to justify it and besides, you’ve never really been able to pull of leather so you write it off, but then you look at it again and you think “hmm… maybe I could.” It’s really nice, and you’ve been working hard this month, surely you deserve a little treat right? Beat the January blues and all that. Yeah. That jacket. We want to give you that.

3: Immortality.

2: True love.

1: Bernard’s Watch.

What do you think, readerland? Have we missed something out, have we included something you disagree with? Maybe you want to defend Vanilla Ice, maybe you’re allergic to kestrels, whatever your thoughts are, we want to know!

Thanks to the beautifully-coiffured Professor Brian Cox and the slightly-less-coiffured comedian Dara O’Briain, stargazing has become the new form of reality TV that it’s okay to like. It’s scientifically interesting, intellectually stimulating and can provide us with some unbelievably beautiful and astounding images. But, as the two presenters are keen to point out, stargazing is next to impossible when you live in, or even near, a big town or city.

Obviously, it would be foolish to suggest moving to the countryside just for stargazing; moving homes is a lot of hassle, and you’d have to be pretty gaga for galaxies to even consider such extreme measures. So then, what do you do? Fortunately, as always, Gadget HQ has a solution:

This is our Deep Space Planetarium, a small device that turns your room into an entire galaxy of stars, projecting them onto your ceiling to show you the entire Milky Way and all the wonders within it. It’s stargazing with none of the drawbacks: you won’t get cold, you won’t suffer from light pollution and it’s better value than even the cheapest telescope.

If, like me, you think our galaxy is beautiful but fundamentally lacking in the spaceship and galactic warfare departments, how about this for an alternative? The Death Star Planetarium does exactly the same as the Deep Space, but with the Star Wars galaxy instead of our own! A whole new world of stars and planets at your fingertips, with the added bonus of being able to switch back to the good ol’ Milky Way whenever you’re feeling homesick.

We’re obviously not daft enough to suggest that they can truly replace the wonder of real stargazing but, particularly if you have little ones who are showing an interest in the universe, they’re fantastic ways to familiarise yourself with the night sky before taking a more expensive plunge into the real thing.

For the last two years the Golden Globes has provided us with some of Ricky Gervais’s finest moments, cutting Hollywood superstars down to size with his decidedly British brand of comedy insults. Having been invited back again this year, we were all expecting more of the same, and I for one was very keen to check the videos of last night when I woke up this morning to see who had fallen into his firing line this time.

For the first time since beginning his run as the host of the Globes, Gervais fell somewhat flat. Compared to his previous two appearances he exchanged his trademark brand of political incorrectness for bigger laughs from his Hollywood audience, poking fun at people with a blunted knife where last year he had ruthlessly wielded a rapier.

While Gervais may have faltered, George Clooney rose out of nowhere to claim Best Actor in a Drama for the film that won Best Drama, The Descendants. A year ago Clooney had fallen off the radar somewhat, still a big name but not really appearing to do anything of note, and now he’s garnering accolades by the bucket load for November’s sleeper hit.

From home, Downton Abbey was victorious in Best Mini-Series, and Britain ruled the Best Actor/Actress in a TV Movie category with Idris Elba and Kate Winslet both deserving winners for Luther and Mildred Pierce respectively.

As usual, however, the final talking point would appear to be Ricky Gervais; although his opening speech fell a bit flat, his dropping of the F-bomb later on in the show has had the American media fawning over how controversial he is once again. Controversial or not, it’s a brave man who’d bet against him hosting it again next year.

Today’s blog has a slightly different flavour… in fact it has three slightly different flavours. The lovely people at Walkers have asked if we’d like to be one of the first to try out their new flavours, and because we’re such kind and generous people we graciously accepted their offer of free food! These crisps are so new that they don’t even have real names yet, so we thought we’d guess what the flavours actually are.

Crisps.

DAIRY FLAVOUR

First up, we have the mysteriously-named “dairy flavour”. Smooth and tangy with a hint of cheesiness, the general consensus is that it has some form of onion in it as well. This naturally led us to declaring it “Cheese and Onion”, until Sam wisely pointed out that that’s already a fairly popular flavour. After confirming his story, we decided on “Soft Cheese and Spring Onion” and awarded the dairy flavour a solid 6/10.

Crisps unleashed.

SPICY FLAVOUR

Next up, we have the “spicy flavour” which we could tell was some type of curry without even tasting it thanks to its smell. Realising that smelling them probably didn’t constitute a thorough review, we found the flavour to be strong and very authentic, almost certainly a masala of some kind. After much debate over which meat, we declare this to be “Lamb Tikka Masala” and give it a strong 7/10.

Sam unleashed.

MEATY FLAVOUR

Finally, we come to the unanimous favourite simply called “meaty flavour”. Easily the best of a very good bunch, the porky taste made us all instantly think of sausages. After much umming and erring over whether it was a Cumberland, Mandy noticed a definite hint of tomato, leading us to name this flavour “Hot Dog” and award it a staggering 9/10.

Are we right or wrong? Only time will tell. But when they come out, be sure to sample all three because they’re chuffing lovely!

One might expect that as purveyors of various different types of world maps and globes, we might have a little extra knowledge when it comes to geography… sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Despite stocking a world traveler map, a scratch map, an earth and constellation globe, a real time rotating day and night globe and even map jigsaw puzzles, I for one STILL can’t name the United States of America or very many of the countries of the world!

World Traveler Map

I know this because we tested our geographical knowledge as part of a little light relief this week. We’ve mentioned Sporcle on the blog before and these were two more of their amazing timed challenges. The first challenge was to name all the US states which didn’t sound too difficult at first but did prove to be a real headache. The worst part is kicking yourself afterwards when it finally reveals how to spell Massachusetts. There you go, you can have that one for free. Give it a try! The final results were heartbreaking.

Mandy: 26
Murray: 25
Sam: 18

Rubbish! Clearly a 10 year old American child would be able to name at least 30. Pah. So we thought, hey how about countries of the world? At least we’ll get all the ones near to us.

Wrong again. Well.. Murray did very well but then this was mainly because of his extensive knowledge of international football. Still credit where credit is due, the man does know his countries. Mandy and I…? Less so apparently.

Murray: 103
Mandy: 62
Sam: 56

So I think we’ve established there that geography is certainly not my strong point (well it was never my favourite at school either). Give them a go and be sure to let us know how you get on!

So you were happily surfing away. Sending a work email. Doing some online shopping perhaps. Maybe even socially interacting with your friends. When suddenly, out of nowhere, the unthinkable happens…

…the internet stops working…

The spinning pizza wheel of doom mocks you as it whizzes in circles, laughing maniacally. In a
sudden panicked shirking of it’s responsibilities, your browser throws up vague excuses and thinks
up random error codes. Your broadband router blinks up at you with it’s big innocent LED’s as if to say “It’s not my fault.” Not one of these infernal components will take the blame for your inability to perform such a basic function as a Google search. I mean what is this? The 20th century?

Remain calm

There’s no need to kick your computer tower or headbutt your monitor. In fact research has shown that this can actually cause further internet connectivity issues. This may be somewhat counterintuitive but it’s true.

Use the phone

You’re not paying a £35 per month phone contract just to play Angry Birds you know. You’ve got 3G haven’t you? If you’re logging into webmail such as Google Mail, it’ll probably have saved your latest draft so you can finish that email. If you can only text, you can at least post an emergency “My internet has stopped working” to Twitter and wait until the aid packages start to arrive. These will consist mainly of print-outs of your friend’s Facebook statuses and any interesting Google logo changes you may have missed.

Do something else

That’s right, you could actually just not be on the internet for a while. If you were at work, chances are you might even get the afternoon off. For alternative sources of information, you could make do with a newspaper, the television or talking to a neighbour perhaps. And if you want to be updated with what your friends are eating, thinking or watching on TV; try hanging out with them and they may very well express these things to you verbally.

Now you may think that internet blackouts are a thing of the past, but these were all part of our considerations last week when we lost the internet for almost an entire half an hour. It was difficult let me tell you, but if you print out this guide and keep it handy, you’ll be prepared for when the worse happens to you…

Now that we’re a few days removed from the Christmas holidays, it’s probably safe to assume that many of you are back to the daily grind of the office. Given the stark contrast between the joy of opening up gifts from your loved ones and the monotony of sitting in a cubicle filing reports, it would be more than understandable if one found the week passing by quite a bit more slowly than it usually does.
However, the fact that you’re back at work doesn’t necessarily mean the fun has to stop. Here are 10 fun ways to keep your spirits up at work through the new year and beyond.

1. iPhone Desktop Phone
   Let’s be honest – nobody likes picking up the phone at work. The sound of its ring is more often than not accompanied by someone demanding to know why you missed that deadline when you know it was really Tim down the hall who screwed it up. Thanks to the iPhone Desktop Phone, however, answering the phone no longer has to be a chore. Styled like any other office phone, the iPhone Desktop Phone gives your mobile the ability to function as both a traditional office handset as well as a speakerphone while also acting as a dock so you don’t need to fumble around in your pockets anytime you receive a personal call.
   

   iPhone Phone

    

2. Bubblehead Webcam
   What’s better than being stuck on a conference call? Well, most things, to be honest. But as long as you’re going to be on one, it may as well be with a fun Bubblehead monster. The Bubblehead Webcam comes equipped with a 1.3 megapixel camera that lets you see all your coworkers’ pores, greasy hair, and general crustiness as clearly as if they were next to you. Additionally, its poseable limbs and  grippy hands mean that it’ll securely stick to wherever you put it, whether it’s on top of your monitor or on the floor so you can look down at your boss and show him or her where you really belong.   

3. Cassette USB Hub
   If you’re anything like us, you’ve probably got a ton of things clogging up your computer’s USB ports. There’s your mouse taking up one spot, your keyboard taking another, a webcam hogging one more, and your phone charging in the last one. Of course, you’ve also got to contort your arms in all sorts of uncomfortable shapes to manage to reach the ones on the back of your computer. Here’s an easy solution to your problem: grab one of these cassette USB hubs, comfortably plug your peripherals in there, and stick it to those new kids who just got hired out of college and wouldn’t know a cassette tape from a floppy disk.   

4. Golf Bag Pen Holder
   For the aspiring professional golfer in all of us, there’s no better way to daydream your way out of the office than the Golf Bag Pen Holder. Sure, none of us have ever managed to beat out Rory McIlroy or anything, but we’re absolutely certain that we’d be able to if only the PGA would answer our phone calls or even bother to take a look at all those videos we sent them of us sinking hole-in-one after hole-in-one at the local putt-putt. All we want is a chance!
   

   Golf Bag Pen Holder

    

5. Rubber Bandit Pen
   Even if you’re the kind of person who loves everybody, there’s always that one person at the office who even Santa himself wouldn’t be able to stand. Not that we’re recommending office violence (for legal reasons, of course), but if you’ve got someone who’s always getting on your nerves, the Rubber Bandit Pen will get you about 1/1000ths of the way toward taking care of the problem. Of course, in addition to acting as a ridiculously accurate rubber band gun, it also still works as a regular pen in case you need to hide the evidence.   

6. Origami Sticky Notes
   As an eight year old in maths class, I quickly learned that it’s possible to turn anything into a toy if you’re sufficiently bored, and paper was no exception. I can only imagine the fun I would’ve had if said paper came with instructions to create things like water bombs and frogs. Do eight your old me a favor and make it up to him by grabbing a set of these Origami Sticky Notes to use around the office. No longer does it have to be an intimidating message telling you, “HAVE THESE TPS REPORTS DONE BY TOMORROW.” Now, it’s a beautiful paper crane telling you, “HAVE THESE TPS REPORTS DONE BY TOMORROW.”   

7. Play More Notepad
   That frustrating feeling of tossing away a perfectly good sheet of paper after misspelling a word in a memo to your boss is one that we’re all probably familiar with. Not to worry, however, as the Play More Notepad lets you momentarily feel the thrill of being a professional athlete rather than the embarrassment of being a spelling bee failure whenever that happens. Each sheet of paper resembles anything from a football to a basketball when crumbled, giving you the chance to score the game winning goal you’re sure you would if only Arsenal would return your phone ca- wait, we’ve been here before.  
   

   Play More Notepad

    

8. Cheering Basket
   Well, there’s certainly no point in having crumpled paper footballs if you don’t have a goal to shoot it in, right? The Cheering Basket Football Goal easily affixes itself to nearly any waste basket and lets you hear the crowd rooting you on every time you score a goal. Sure, it might not be nearly as discreet as some of the other things on the list, but nobody plays football to pass up the glory. If anything, streak down the halls as if you’ve just won the Champions League.   

9. Cyber Clean
   We fully understand that theoretically, Cyber Clean is meant to be used to absorb the dirt and dust covering your electronics. At least, that’s what you’ll tell your superiors. But, what your boss doesn’t know is that when it’s not being used to clean up your workplace, it also serves marvelously as putty that can be used to create the sculpture that at the moment exists only inside your head.  All great artists need to start somewhere after all, and we’re certain that had it been available during the Renaissance era, Cyber Clean would’ve been the preferred medium of Michelangelo himself.   

10. Desk Tidy Aquarium
    We would all love to keep some relaxing pet fish at the office, but the issue of them potentially dying over the weekend when nobody’s around to feed them is a bit problematic. Problem solved, thanks to the Desk Tidy Aquarium. The Desk Tidy Aquarium comes replete with a set of three colorful fish that are immortal, thanks in large part to the fact that they’re made out of plastic. Additionally, it also serves as a fully functioning place to store your pens and pencils, as well as a clock and calendar for when you actually need to do work. 

Desktop Aquarium

This is a guest post from Kenny Kraisornkowit who offers shopping advice, product reviews and ways to save money on tech gear and gadgets at Savoo.co.uk.