The first thing that springs right out at you is that there’s a thank you gift for the postman for delivering the package. Our postman didn’t collect it, but the package actually has a packet of Love Hearts at the side with instructions for the postie. Here’s a photo:

Once you get inside the package, there’s a postcard to remind you what they’re all about. Men Are Useless is a service whereby you can get your male grooming products sent to you regularly by post. There’s no running out of your essentials, there’s no getting “confused”, there’s no excuse to not follow your grooming regime. Here’s the postcard I was talking about:

Opening up the box is a well packaged set of products:

The box is full of male essentials that we’re always running out of, and this is just the service that Men Are Useless provide. They have a choice of different packs, the Essentials Box that has all the things you need and the “The Works” Box that adds on a different set of luxury items every month. You can get a run down of their boxes on their site. The site also contains some great bits like Why Men are Useless (Male Chromosomes + Shops = Misery etc), a Wall of Shame and even the option to buy the packs as a gift (Hint, Hint). All in all, I think this is an awesome idea and one that’s going to benefit a whole lot of blokes around the country.

P.S. You can also find them on FaceBook and Twitter

All you have to do is click on the picture to go to the competition website, find our photo and give us your vote. Easy peasy .. so go on, what are you waiting for?

(The competition is only running for a few days, till Sunday 12th, so please tell everyone you know to pop by and give us a vote)

p.s. If clicking on the photo doesn’t take your the Gallery to vote, just go to the bottom of the page and click “Gallery”. You’ll have to find our photo (seen above) in the Gallery and vote for us! We’re not that hard to find!

Now here’s the thought that struck me. If you could transfer some of the heat from the waste water into the water that’s heading into the electric shower, then you would need less energy to heat it up, and therefore save some energy in the process. What I’m talking is some sort of heat exchanger that could even be fitted into the shower base. It doesn’t have to be extremely efficient, but even just running the waste water side-by-side with the incoming water, I’m sure it would have a positive impact on your power consumption. Here’s what I have in mind:

The shower drain would be fed into “Tube-side fluid in” and proceed through the exchanged before coming out from the other end to continue on it’s way down the drain. The fresh supply of water to the electric shower would be fed into the “shell-side in” before actually getting to the shower. Even if the shower didn’t use an electric shower, but used an ordinary mixer, piping the cold water through this system could remove the chill from the water requiring less hot water to bring it to the required temperature.

Anyway, I wondered what I could do with the idea and, while reading the FuelMyBlog newsletter, I got introduced to a company called Perpetuity Direct who are offering loans of up to $25,000 which could be starting capital to actually taking the idea to fruition. If I could borrow the money, I would use it to do some proper engineering as well as market research to find out if the idea is a viable one to take to market.

I don’t think I have the time to take up another project at the moment, but if this idea had to come to market, would you consider changing your shower to be more energy efficient?

photo credit: .klash

If you’ve been following my posts over the last few weeks you’d have noticed that I was taking part in a competition organised by PicApp and FuelMyBlog. Well, the competition is now over and the winner has been announced.

The winner was BenSpark who’s off to Blog World Expo in Vegas next month. Congratulations mate!

I got a notable mention together with www.acelebrationofcurves.com; www.greasyguide.com; www.pieknyibogaty.blogspot.com.

It was a fun competition and I always love the spirit of camaraderie that these online contests bring about. I made the mistake of getting emotionally drawn into this one though. Didn’t realise until I found out how gutted I was when I didn’t win. Maybe I should have realised earlier and put more effort into winning. Andrew certainly went all out on his blog Google is not God. Still, it was a valiant effort and I was glad I took part in the competition.

Way to go FuelMyBlog and PicApp. When are you holding another one?

Ah well, time is running out for the FuelMyBlog PicApp competition, with a ticket with accommodation and travel to Blog World Expo as the prize. I don’t know if I have managed to made the grade; I do know that my friend BenSpark has made a concerted effort to win, but I think I have made a valiant effort too; so we’ll have to see who managed to make the grade.

Good luck everyone. We’ll find out who wins next week.

Well, today is the last day of the PicApp competition organised together with FuelMyBlog. I’ve done my best, so it’s really up to the powers that be. I hope you, my readers have enjoyed having the PicApp pictures as part of my posts. It’s been an interesting experience and I’ve been impressed with two things about PicApp:

• The sheer volume of photos: There are photos about everything you can imagine. And I love the way there are always updated with the latest events. If you search for the Olympics for example, you get all the recent photos from the events
• The interactivity of the photos: I like the way the photos automatically get a description together with tools to share the photo with your friends etc. This is done automatically for you, as is the resizing and styling options you need to insert the picture into you blog post.

All in all, regardless of how I do in their comptition, I wish PicApp the best of luck. Great concept guys!