Wednesday, August 13, 2008

How to Change the Filter on an Air Purifier - AC

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Home air purifiers are essential devices for those suffering from dust or mite-based allergies, and can generally improve the air quality for all members of the family. They work by drawing the air in a house through a fine particulate filter, thus removing any irritants. Obviously, this leaves the irritants in the filter itself, and the longer the purifier is in use, the more particles will accumulate. Eventually these will build up to a level where the filter is less effective, being unable to draw air through as efficiency, and in long term cases, can even be detrimental to improving air quality, as they simply become dust recyclers. This is why all manufacturers of air purifiers recommend you change the filters within the purifier on a regular basis. What follows is a step by step guide for this simple (but daunting if you've never done it) procedure.


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Monday, August 11, 2008

The characteristics of an atom (Helium R-a-T)

Atoms are about as small as anything gets, at least in any terms the average person can comprehend. Any smaller, and you're looking at a particle that no longer retains any of its chemical properties: You can't have, for instance, half an oxygen atom, without it ceasing to be oxygen any more. The size varies a little, from the smallest (Helium, at around 32 picometres), to the largest (one of which is caesium, at 225pm). A picometre, in case you're wondering, is 1/1,000,000,000,000th of a metre, or one millionth-millionth.

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Saturday, August 9, 2008

Role-playing game reviews: Legend Of The Green Dragon (Helium R-a-T)

Legend of the Green Dragon (http://www.lotgd.net) is a web-based role playing game based on the old Telnet BBS game, Legend of the Red Dragon.

The idea of the game, as with many role playing games, is to slowly advance your character through battling adversaries, acquiring experience and money, upgrading your weapons, and eventually becoming powerful enough to confront and kill the titular green dragon. At this point, the game 'resets', and the character starts again from level one, but with a slight advantage and an change of title; If say they were previous referred to as 'Peasant ', they might now be 'Page '...

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Friday, August 8, 2008

The Titanic in popular culture and film (Helium R-a-T)

Naturally, a great many movies and TV specials have been made regarding the disaster, not least of which is the popular 1997 film, but I'm avoiding these for the scope of the article, in that while they deal with the events, they're literally /just/ dealing with the events. For my purposes here, I'll be looking more at references to the Titanic, rather than actual historical films.

Depending on where you stand on such things, the disaster regarding the sinking of the RMS Titanic could be one of the few examples of an event which had influences on popular culture long before it actually happened...

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Thursday, August 7, 2008

Reflections on Douglas Adams' Books and How They Predicted Cutting Edge Publishing (AC)

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When The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first transmitted on BBC radio in 1977, it's odd to consider that Douglas Adams (the man behind the stories of intergalactic travel, sulking robots and computers which could calculate the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything) actually typed everything up on a good old-fashioned typewriter. Despite the scifi theme (or perhaps because of it), the whole first two series gives a definite air of an author who's not terribly keen on technology, or the progress it makes...

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References to A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, in popular culture and film (Helium R-a-T)

A Clockwork Orange is one of those few books which becomes heavily embedded in the collective public consciousness so thoroughly. The evocative 'nadsat' language has a great deal to do with this, I'm sure, as does Kubrick's vivid interpretation of the book, helped enormously by McDowell's portayal of Alex...

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Wednesday, August 6, 2008

How is the Lord of the Rings an allegory? (Helium R-a-T)

Just noticed this is in the 'movie analysis' section, not literature. Don't give a shit; it still holds true, given the movies were a reasonably faithful adaptation of the books. Peter Jackson didn't change the ending or anything.

There's a pretty simple answer to this, but it doesn't make for a very long article: How is the Lord of the Rings an allegory?

It isn't.

Let's start again here, by looking at what an allegory is. According to Merriam Webster, an allegory is "the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence; also : an instance (as in a story or painting) of such expression".

In other words, it's a story told to symbolise another thing altogether.

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