Ivy is still the food of choice amongst the population, and it’s always a fun way to start the day by seeing how long it takes us to spot them all. They aren’t awfully active during the day, and there has been dissent from some corners that they are boring, thankfully their chosen ‘Weekend Carer’ was quick to rally in their defence.

We are still waiting for them to start their first shedding phase as the anticipation slowly builds towards this momentous event. Further updates here as it happens! Our World Alive Insect Kits are available to purchase here.

My first rule is to try and travel as light as possible at these events, humping huge and heavy loads of kit to and from the car is not fun. As far as stuff goes I take a tent (One man), sleeping bag, rollmat, rucksack with changes of clothes in, and a camping chair. Food and drink is normally transported on a second journey.

Tents come in a large range from those like mine that consist of a bit of canvas two poles and some pegs, to those that are basically like a three bedroom semi detached house that require planning permission before erecting. Don’t take a tent that’s any bigger or complex than you need, and if putting tents up isn’t your forte there are a range of quick pitch tents to make life easier for you, and they are generally also a lot easier and quicker to get packed up as well! (as demonstrated in the video below) It is debateable as to just how effective these would be in adverse weather, but in a field in Britain in the height of summer, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Sleeping bags, in my opinion, are fairly much of a muchness, so unless you really suffer from the cold, for the purposes of a summer festival your basic budget job should be fine. A roll mat, as well as making the ground slightly more comfortable, will also help keep you a little warmer by keeping you off the ground. If you have a larger budget however you may prefer something a bit more novel such as the SELK’BAG, a sleeping bag you wear.

Camping chairs can be picked up for about £5 and as well as giving you somewhere comfy to sit, most also incorporate a drink holder. Should you want even more there is a Rocking Camping Chair, or the really lazy could try the Lazy Days Hammock.

These are what I would consider the more ‘essential’ items, and I’ll have a look at some of the more ‘optional’ gadgets out there shortly.

Thankfully the world of Gadgets and Gizmos has a lot of possible solutions available to ease the tension. A Nintendo DS for the kids, a Satnav to assure that navigational issues are not a problem, a portable DVD player to keep the passengers occupied, or just an MP3 player to listen to while they snooze.

However should you not be able to obtain some or all of these items there are, believe it or not, slightly less technological but equally effective solutions! Rather than a portable games system, why not just fun games you can play in the car, a few suggestions can be found here on the AA’s website, but a quick search will unearth a few more suggestions as well. If you don’t have a trusty TomTom to hand, then try using one of the online route planners provided by the likes of the RAC, and the AA. I would recommend the driver looking over these instructions and maybe rewriting them into a format that both they and the navigator will be easily able to understand.

Whatever your plans for the weekend I hope it’s sunny and as relaxing as possible for you!

To be honest there had been murmurs that in fact none of the eggs were going to hatch and we would be without our new office mascots. But, oh Ye of Little Faith, two have now hatched and are with us. Sindy and Suzie (I didn’t choose the names) are both about 15mm in length at the moment, which in itself is somewhat amazing considering they hatched from eggs little more than 4 or 5 mm in diameter at the largest point. Predominantly active at night we haven’t seen an awful lot of action from them, however we did have an escape attempt mounted by Suzie the first night. Luckily she decided that their enclosure was much more hospitable than the world of Gadgets Towers outside it.

Before too long hopefully more of the eggs will hatch, Sindy, Suzie, and any future sisters will soon enter into their first shedding phase.

Here’s a photo of the girls lounging at home, can you spot them both?

First up is the new German DVD format, the DVD-D, or the “Self Destructing DVD”. Unfortunately not quite Mission Impossible style accompanied by a loud bang and a puff of smoke this take the much more health and safety conscious route of merely degrading itself due to a chemical reaction when exposed to air. Coming packed in a vaccum sealed container the DVD immediately starts to degrade when the package has been opened, giving you approximately 48 hours of use before the disc becomes unreadable. I first saw an article about this here . The main theoretic use of this particular media form is touted as being for rental DVDs. You rent them, they are posted out to you, you watch and then dispose of the defunct disk saving the postage of returning the item, but in the long run probably not helping the environment too much.

The next article I seemed to be bombarded with wherever I went was concerning the mammoth demand for the next big release on the Nintendo Wii. Wii Fit, in case you aren’t aware, is a ‘game’ that’s target is to make you aware of your body. The game comes with the Wii Balance Board, basically a set of weighing scales combined with a pressure pad to determine how weight is distributed across the board. The idea is you play the game once a day, perform various exercises, and/or yoga positions and through this become more aware of your body, stance, and general fitness. Great as a precursor to starting some proper training, or a gentle introduction to a health regime, as well as an easy way to track your weight over a period of time. Unfortunately the huge demand for this particular piece of software means that ahead of it’s release date at the end of next week, a number of large retailers have already taken pre-orders for all their expected stock. This article was first seen here.

As time passes and newer, more exciting gadgets are introduced one of the first and most obvious specifications of any release is the size, and of course the more you can cram into the least possible space, generally, the better that particular advancement is seen to be.

For example, just a few years ago if you wanted to carry some music around with you it required a personal stereo that played either CD’s or cassettes, you would then need to carry adequate amounts of that media to ensure you had a suitably large selection to choose from. This eventually added up to a lot of space, usually requiring a bag to carry around the extra tapes, or discs required. Enter the MP3 player and suddenly your are able to carry a week plus worth of music, and a device to play it on, all in one pocket sized device.

When home computers were built they required entire rooms and massive cooling systems, of course now just about every desk and every home have their own computer that sits neatly in a small corner of one room, possibly with one device that will also sit inconspicuously under the desk and handle all the scanning, printing, faxing, and copying requirements.

This brings me to my point, are things getting too small? A while ago I read an article about a journalist who was lucky enough to be given a new MacBook Air to review, but who had managed to mis-place it. Of course you would never misplace a computer the size of a whole room, and even a desktop computer, due in large to its more stationary nature, would be difficult to lose. But a laptop, which does not necessitate cables and power sockets to be plugged into, and especially one that is so small it will happily fit into a manilla envelope is surely imminently easily misplaced? The conclusion that the reporter comes to is that it was accidentally ’recycled’ with a large stack of old newspapers. (All too easy when you consider the MacBook Air weighs in at only 3lbs /1.36kg, and Sunday papers with all their supplements are usually in excess of this)

Should we be worried? Are we just a few stages of downsizing away from having stories emblazoned across the papers about people accidentally getting their teeny mobile phones jammed in their ears, and other such tragedies? Not really. Like many folks who I have seen comment on the reporters article regarding his MacBook Air, I take it with a pinch of salt, and think maybe it’s just some good marketing concerning a ‘nearly’ event.

The bottom line is that gadgets will keep getting smaller because that’s what people want. They want convenience. They want to have the ability to take all the various devices they require with them wherever they go, and without resembling a fully laden pack donkey at the start of a very long trek. It’s one area of life where it is seen to be a greater status symbol to have the smallest device possible.

Now I’m not the most green fingered individual. I personally have never seen the attraction gardening holds. Crawling around on your hands and knees in the mud pulling up what you hope are weeds and aren’t plants that you want to keep, only to do it again a couple of weeks later.

Having said that, at this time of year I do find myself thinking that it might be nice to have a bit of plant life around the place. Not high maintenance plant life, not something that’ll die if I forget to water it for a few days, and not something that will wilt or shrivel if I put it in the wrong window. Something nevertheless to demonstrate that amid all the great gadgets and technological wonders around us there are also some amazing things occurring in nature that maybe sometimes we don’t take enough time to think about because we are all too excited about the newest gizmo or technological advancement.

Of course there are plenty of ‘Easy Grow’ plant kits out there such as our own Grow It Starter Kit, and Botanicals Indoor Greenhouse Kit. However although these are easy enough to set up, for me personally I would begin to forget about them after a while and they would inevitably go the way of the Dodo as it were.

I then thought that maybe our Pet Plants might be more the thing for me. The Pet Plants are all various forms of plant that don’t require a lot of care and watering. Thinking about this a bit further I came to the conclusion that this was not ideal for me either, I can see that as the plant only needs watering every two months or so I’ll doubtless forget to water it.

Finally I stumbled upon something called the “Dinosaur Plant”, which is also known as the “Resurrection Plant”, or “Rose of Jericho”. This plant comes as what resembles a tumbleweed, but once watered it will transform within hours to a vibrant evergreen. Should you forget to water it the plant will merely shrivel into a kind of hibernation state waiting for water, perfect for those of us who lose interest in these things after a while!

So how can you improve your mood at work to make sure you make it to the weekend? By having amusing items on your desk of course!

Always set to raise a giggle should you have a pencil you need to sharpen is this great Cat’s Bum pencil sharpener, surely very little can come close to the “Meowing” sound emitted from kitty when you put your pencil where it was never intended? Or, as pencils are not overly common in the modern workplace how about this Buttstation Desktidy. A desktidy with spaces for your pens, notepad, tape dispenser, and when you lift up the little guy a space for paper clips in the ‘bowl’

Should that not quite be to your sense of humour why not do some desk-ercise to release those feel good endorphins scientists are always telling us about with a USB Finger Dance Mat.

Perhaps you’re more the vindictive type, and would gain most amusement from firing a salvo of missiles at your office nemesis with the USB Webcam with Missile Launcher, though I would urge caution with your actual usage of this particular item! Ultra handy is it’s compatibility with MSN Messenger meaning with the aid of the webcam you can even operate it remotely from another computer entirely.

Traditionally of course Easter is a religious festival celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. The Easter egg, as far as I am aware, became associated with the festival due to it’s linked symbolism with rebirth, then of course the Americans further commercialised this and added the Easter Bunny et al.

I have been scouring the Internet trying to locate some proper Easter themed gadgets, rather than just somewhat tenuous links with items remotely egg, or rabbit themed. First of all I was somewhat surprised by some of the religiously linked items , possibly the most worrying being theMiracle Jesus action figure. Unfortunately a lot of the religious items are not really suitable for those of us who aren’t regular church goers, and aside from these I was only able to find tenuously linked Rabbit and egg gadgets, such as the Easter Bunny Car Conversion kit, apparently a follow up to the bizarrely successful Reindeer Car Conversion Kit.  Thankfully this appears to only be available in America, and we can only hope this sort of thing doesn’t make the trip across the pond!

Not quite in keeping with the chocolate egg giving benevolence of the Easter Bunny, but appealing to me greatly due to my love of Monty Python are these Killer Rabbit Slippers. Sure to keep your feet warm, (especially welcome with the cold snap predicted for this weekend) and in my experience, likely to last about two days before the cat has ripped them into tiny fluffy white pieces.

So currently, unless you wants some egg shaped speakers, an Easter Bunny themed MP3 player, Plants that grow from eggs, or something similar you may be better off sticking with the chocolate eggs for this year at least.