Birthdays

Someone text me, "thanks for making my birthday special".
I thought, that's the whole point! Our birthdays are special and so is how we celebrate them.

So I wanted to reflect on how important age is to us:

• Age defines laws, what we can and cannot do. This means we use age to determine if doing something is socially or ethically acceptable based on our known behaviour when we are younger while the brain is learning, adapting, becoming aware
• It defines maturity, intelligence, wisdom, intellect. Our minds change with age
• How many times we have passed around the sun starting from the same place in the orbit of the Earth around the sun
• Our physical appearance changes, we lose energy, vibrance, the ability to self-repair. Ears however continue to grow with age
• Genetic diseases are more likely to become apparent. We become more vulnerable because of joints.
• Our brains lose the ability to modify easily, especially with reality shift
• Our desires change when looking for partners

Epiphany: Problem-solving

I wanted to highlight the key points and feelings I can remember that have helped me to reach an epiphany and solve my problems. Different things work for different people and for me it helps to write everything down.

An easy way to get over things with are bothering you (anxiety) is to 'invent' a reason. This is called Cognitive dissonance.

As for ways to help you get over your problems:

• Writing them down - helps me a lot when insomnia kicks in
• Being around other people/friends
• Listening to music/watching a film/reading a book
• Drinking (although this isn't really solving them just postponing them)
• Sleeping

Some things that have helped me realise the best idea to 'invent' and how I should approach situations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism

HTC Wildfire on 3 - Review

Pros

• Android - awesome operating system with a lot of features
• 30,000+ apps on the Android App Market
• Small, compact, lightweight
• Decent screen resolution, improved font display with the 2.2 update
• Reasonable 5MP camera, very bright flash. Doesn't take the best pictures but are good enough for a small phone like this
• HTC Sync software is easy enough to use
• Nice Facebook integration to your contacts (sometimes requires manual updates)
• The apps do a lot of talking here, there are countless things you can do with it, some coming pre-installed
• External volume controls when locked
• Easy-to-use interface and options
• Support for up to 32GB SD
• Has lived through a few accidental drops and no harm seems to be done
• 2.2 update includes ability to install apps on your SD card

Cons

• Seemingly slow compared to other HTC models - because of the 512MHz processor and 500MB RAM instead of the 1GB for both in other HTC models
• Slowness affects: opening apps, navigating, browsing the internet, deleting messages (may take about 2 or 3 minutes to delete 50+ messages)
• 3 Network coverage is very bad in some areas, customer service is not very good, they are very slow at getting HTC to release software updates for Android, some call cut outs which I never had on Tesco
• Requires charging quite regularly if you're using it - power is mainly drained by the display and the Wifi
• Landscape message typing is a little buggy with using backspace, and you can't select the text where the character count is
• Method of returning to an underlying screen is not very clear, usually have to press Menu and cancel the menu to escape from typing mode
• Cannot block specific numbers (limited by Android)
• No Internet Connection Sharing (tethering your phone to your computer)
• Some apps run slowly and you will probably want a Task Manger (e.g. TaskKill) to manage your running applications so you don't run out of memory
• On a couple of occasions I haven't been able to unlock my phone while it is ringing

Table comparison of fast food nutritional information

I wrote this blog as I wanted to reveal what the calories and other values are for different fast foods - and more precisely to compare what they are like against competing chains.

Sources come from the websites of the companies themselves.
I have chosen particular flavours/types based on which ones appear in more than one restaurant.
Values have been rounded down where beyond 1 decimal place.
I haven't included drinks because these technically should be the same wherever you go as they are third-party ;)
Also these are individual items rather than meals for this reason.

Any suggestions of entries to add - please feel free to request!
I may also add a price column to compare.

Item	Energy (Calories) (kcal)	Protein (g)	Carbohydrates (g)		Fat (g)		Fibre (g)	Salt (g)
			Total	Of which sugars	Total	Of which saturated fats
Beef Burger
McDonalds Big Mac	490	28	41	8	24	10	4	2.1
Quarter Pounder with Cheese	490	31	37	10	25	13	3	2.2
Burger King Whopper	634	29	48	10	35	9	2	0.9
With Cheese	721	34	49	11	42	14	2	1.3
Burger King Double Whopper	876	50	49	10	53	17	3	0.9
Hambugers
McDonalds Hamburger	250	14	30	6	8	3	2	1.2
Burger King Hamburger	275	14	31	6	9	3	1	0.5
Chicken Burger
McChicken Sandwich	385	16	44	7	16	2	4	1.6
Burger King Chicken Royale	606	23	53	6	32	5	3	1.3
KFC Fillet Burger	460	28.9	46.3	5.3	18	4.1	1.1	2.8
Chicken Nuggets
McDonalds Chicken McNuggets (9 Pieces)	375	20	30	1	21	3	2	0.9
Burger King Chicken Bites (x14)	317	18	28	0	15	4	1	0.5
KFC Popcorn Chicken – Large	426	29.5	24.7	0.9	23.8	2.2	1.3	3.2
Fish
McDonalds Filet-o-Fish	350	15	36	6	16	3	2	1.7
Burger King Ocean Catch	495	17	43	4	27	5	2	0.9
Fries
McDonald’s French Fries Large	460	5	60	1	23	2	6	0.9
Burger King Large	381	4	54	2	18	6	5	0.5
KFC Fries – Large	379	5.2	52.5	1.7	18.9	3.1	<0.1	0.2
Breakfast
McDonalds Bacon & Egg McMuffin	340	20	26	2	17	6	2	1.4
Burger King Bacon & Egg Butty/Bap with Heinz Ketchup	362	18	35	8	17	6	2	0.9
Subway Bacon & Egg	337	17	35	1.5	13.6	4.5	2.3	0.7
Subs
Subway Meatball Mariana	511	27	55	16.1	20.9	8.7	6.2	1.3
Dominos Meatball Sub	541	25.1	67.4	6.9	22.8	10.1	8.3	3.5
Wraps
McDonalds Ranch Snack Wrap	340	15	30	2	18	7	2	2
Burger King Texican Wrap	541	13	59	7	27	5	5	1.2
KFC Toasted Twister	510	23.2	50.1	2.8	24.2	6.1	1.2	2.9
Ice Cream
Burger King Mint Choc Swirl	269	6	37	33	11	8	1	0.2
McDonalds Dairy Milk McFlurry	340	6	49	45	13	9	1	0.3
Pizzas
Dominos Cheese & Tomato Large Regular Crust (10 Slices) *	1830	97	239	30	54	25	17	2.8
Pizza Hut Margherita Large Italian (10 Slices) *	1540	75	196	20	58	28	X	9

* For the pizzas these have been calculated based on the values for 1 slice and multiplied, so they may be slightly inaccurate: details for a whole pizza were not available from the websites.