So… Aspirin Isn’t Paracetamol Isn’t Ibuprofen?! Help.


This revelation I discovered today when crowdsourcing a fever-fixing remedy today was the following:

Person: Do you want paracetamol or ibuprofen?
Me: I don’t know. What is the difference? Aren’t they the same?
Person: No. Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory.
Me: OK. I’ll take that.
Person: *picking out the tabs*
Me breaking the silence: Hey i heard an aspirin a day will keep cancer at bay, lucky me today.
Person: Ibuprofen isn’t aspirin.
Me: … really? Ok. Wow.

It’s a bizarre feeling at 28 when you realise you don’t know much basic life information, like realising that all this time you never learnt to tie your shoelace or tell left from right. (Both of which are still a challenge to me but that’s another conversation.)

I don’t know if I blame this on being raised in a country (Singapore) where the resolve to everything was chalky tablets of PANADOL and vile tasting cough syrup. You were required to self-medicate on the bare selection of home remedies and get to work because you needed a doctors certificate to prove you were feeling under the weather, even for a day.

Can someone please tell me the difference? I googled some level of logic, but bearing in mind that anything that contains the word anal to me is reduced to a vision of bungholio so this is as far as I got:

  1. Paracetamol: An analgesic with no anti-inflammatory properties
  2. Aspirin: Anti-inflammatory analgesic, although few doctors use it and confine it to it’s anti-platelet properties which reduce heart attacks, strokes and other blood vessel blockages. Aspirin in higher doses run the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding
  3. Ibuprofen: Anti-inflammatory analgesic

So, seems like Ibuprofen is the winner? God help me.

Pets At Home: How to get 20 kilos of cat food for £30

  • Maximum of 2 orders or 3 for 2 on Whiskas cat food = 12 KG of dry food
  • 2 for £10 on wet food = 48 packs = 8 KG of wet food
  • 10% Pets at Home discount code
  • PROFIT

(Just gotta think of how to lug 30KG of cat food from the office to home!)

Don’t Wait for Tonight’s FMC: Facebook Timeline For Brands Is Already LIVE!

Facebook Timeline for Brands is already live (or in test?) ahead of launch on the Coca Cola brand page: https://www.facebook.com/cocacola

(Edit at 1556HRS: Other Timeline enabled Pages are FANTA: http://www.facebook.com/fanta STARBUCKS: http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks and MACYS: http://www.facebook.com/Macys to name a few)

Great. Now I don’t have to wait 5 hours to watch  4 hours of live-stream of first ever Facebook Marketing Conference happening at 6PM UK GMT in New York today.

But let’s have a closer look:

Interesting points of change:

  • The tabs now only display in a maximum of 4 before being nested (highlighted in the red box)
  • HMM: The little ribbon (highlighted in the 2nd red box) is unidentified – but could mean something linked to response/content that may be used in social ads (don’t quote me, just a thought) or it could just be… featured posts/pinned content that stays up longer
  • The new design 100% affects all existing tabs in display size and user journey and the split-wall layout will at some point be an interesting point of discussion in terms of content interaction and how it may impact Edgerank/natural discovery
  • Cover Photos and thumbnail profile picture are the same as Timeline for personal profiles
  • If landing pages are still applied, then basically you have an entire blank  canvas of space to work with such as Coke’s HOME tab: http://www.facebook.com/cocacola/app_161193133389 
  • Application boxes on the right reflect your friends that are fans of the brand, followed by drawing in a recent @Coca-Cola mention made by a common friend

The new emphasis on amplifying mutual fan/friend activity on fan pages reflects the whole echo chamber effect theory on small groups of peers making up the big picture and is not a surprising shift by the Facebook team who have clearly been crunching your behavioural data to make sure they’ve got you beyond hook, line and sinker.

I also have a strong personal opinion on the way that Timeline archives and reflects content. As it isn’t a very easy UX to retrieve backdated information, let alone find status updates in the clutter of app boxes and friend boxes. Will this impact EdgeRank?

But in the meantime you’ll see Coke doing all the bog standard native functionality that Timeline for Brands has to offer.

Such as… populating their page with brand history (dated) content. This obviously reflects their emphasis on Coke’s brand heritage.

P/S: They haven’t updated their apps so have a click on http://www.facebook.com/cocacola/app_161193133389 and see how there is a chance of a larger canvas for landing pages/apps.

PP/S: Better put a temporary hold on all applications being ideated/concieved till more information is revealed later today!

BOOMTINGS.

Cravendale Muppets Kermit Backpack Campaign + Eight Free Milk Codes!

I don’t think I am ever going to be too old for a Kermit backpack – and when I saw the ad on telly to trade 20 milk on-pack milk codes for a Kermit the Frog backpack, I felt like my life suddenly had a purpose.

I looked on eBay to find people selling their labels at £30 for 20, selling free promo codes at 99p and even hawking their Kermit backpacks for £60 a pop.

None of this makes sense because if a carton of milk is £1.80 and you need 20 codes, that works out to £36 and you’d have to be an idiot to list the backpack (or bid) for anything more than £40 (£4 inconvenience fee to the seller since it really isn’t that hard to obtain 20 codes)

But more importantly I really liked the very simple integration of Facebook Connect to execute the redemption. For the less savvy folk, Facebook Connect is what you would term as the modern day ‘universal log in’ or ‘online identity’ to sites. An objective that every site interested in databasing should be gravitating towards.

WANT SOME FREE CRAVENDALE MILK CODES?

The answer is yes? Then here are some free milk codes (yes, no shit) for you to redeem against your code collection, if codes are yo’ crack:

  • WMPROMO
  • JSPROMO
  • TESCOPROMO
  • ASDAPROMO
  • COOPPROMO
  • NEWSLETTER (contributed by reader Emmagwynne)
  • FACEBOOKPC (contributed by reader Helen T)
  • MOTHERSDAY

If you used this, say thank you.

Solve The Mystery: Which Cat Dirtied The Coffee Sack Rug?

There’s nothing more idiotic than having to wake up in the morning to lasagne gravy from a claw-ripped garbage bag dribbling onto your nice new £2 coffee sack rug.

Can you spot the culprit? Who looks more suspicious? Cat (Big black brown blob) or Monkey? (Glowing cream little shit)

Case files:

  • None of the cats were around the rug when it was found (scene of the crime)
  • None of the cats have ripped a plastic bag before
  • Cat scratches the couch and baskets
  • Monkey topples the bin and tries to climb the wall
  • Monkey has been seen licking gravy from the plates on two occasions
  • Cat has vengeance

SOLVE THE PUZZLE

Banes of my existence.

Another Leak/Sneak Peek for Feb 29th? Facebook Offers

Chanced upon Facebook Offers today while lurking on Facebook, a product offering i’ve not heard of which lead me to a test page for a Sunnyside Bar based in Palo Alto.

Extra points that the page owner was the Lead Product Manager at Facebook, so I figured this would be another product being tested for launch:

Have a look at the test page of Facebook Offers, the page is full of them: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sunnyside-Bar/200705603290136?sk=wall

I have a feeling this will have something to do with the DEALS + CHECK INS via mobile because it’s the only way for it to make any accountable sense. I am sure as hell that this isn’t Facebook Deals as the I read the product guide for Facebook Deals, it was only for Check ins (very foursquare-esque) and wasn’t an in-page offering. Deals also only 4 verticals of unlocking Deals so this is something new. Unless I missed a step somewhere over the rainbow.

This is following yesterday’s Premium Ad product leak pre Feb 29th that happened yesterday… a product PDF that conveniently left out the applied product screen shots on the old brand page layout instead of the new Timeline for Brands layout, which = deliberate leak, but anyway.

Have a look at the page. Note that all these ‘Facebook Offers’ seem to be posted in-page and are different to the ‘Facebook Deals‘ offering found in the tabs section of the page as I have highlighted in red below (page screenshot):

Newsfeed claim appears:

Timeline wall share appears:

Japanese Dude Makes McDonald’s Flavoured Rice

I just watched this guy cook rice covered with a Big Mac, fries, chicken nuggets, sauce and dribbles of coke to deliver… the same feelings i felt when I watched 2 girls 1 cup. (Which I was convinced was chocolate soft-serve but we all know that’s a lie… anyway.)

I think I will project this during the weekend. Although my tiny rice cooker could probably fit half a cup of rice in order to accomodate anything larger than a cheeseburger on a bed of two nuggets. Maybe i’ll make KFC rice.

But I should try this. You should try this. Watch it. Now.

How To Run The London Marathon From Home

Follow these steps to calculate how to run the London Marathon at Home:

  • Count the steps from your living room to your bedroom (In our case, 30 feet)
  • Know the length of a marathon = 25 miles & 1 mile is 5280 feet, 25 miles is (25 x 5280) = 132000 feet
  • Divide by steps to your room (132000 feet / 30 feet)
  • PROFIT (4400 runs to the room (2200 back and forth)

The Top 3 Worst Valentines Day Experiences Money Can Buy

So Valentines Day just passed and every street corner is now restored to normalcy.

(E.G: No more overdressed window displays, shitty stuffed bears, matching pillowcases, love mugs etc.)

I reflected on some thoughts of how I just got disinterested in it all because the concept of Valentines Day was never about thoughtful expression – but a creation of a bragging right for women to share with their bitchpals.

GIRL 1: “Oh what did you do”

GIRL 2: “I went and floated in a balloon up to the moon where a group of 100 musicians played a wonderful ballad and the rare apes served me sardines on a bed of rocket.”

Eitherway i’d always end up annoyed because the poor sod involved in the situation with me would either not bother, or bother in such a thoughtless way that it just was as good as doing nothing.

So I thought about the pressures on boys and figured they’d be as useless as me in devising a program of activities, often resorting to PRE-MADE PLANS (like tours for travel)…

I looked at this on the internet sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, KGBDeals and Amazon then realised that they all have Valentine’s Day gift shops and I thought i’d share some nightmare before christmas/torture camp valentines day gifts that would send me into an abyss of mind puzzleation.

Here are my top 3 worst gifts in random order…

1. KGBDeals: Generic Grandma Jewellery from the internetz

I kinda feel sorry for the 82 people that already bought this on KGBdeals. I just can’t fathom most types of jewellry, let alone some multicolour rainbow on a string with a dangly heart. In the first place, hearts aren’t even shaped like that.

I’d probably not really know how to react if I got given something like this and have a poker appreciation face:

But that would be the least of my worries if I was stuck in a…

 

2) Groupon: A Half-Day Boudoir Photoshoot (HUH)

I’m not even smart enough to compute what exactly a boudoir experience is. What the shit could be worse than being locked away for half a day for a boudoir photoshoot?

.

.

.

*SCROLL DOWN FOR UNIMAGINABLE EXCITEMENT*

.

.

.



3) Groupon: Classical Recital with Cheese (board)

I don’t understand the appeal of this on a normal day, let alone Valentines day. Maybe I just don’t get why it’s nice because I am used to repetitive electronic sounds  in a dark place with loads and loads of real booze.