Smile on the Dial

courtesy of cakies

What a summer! It hardly seems like any time has gone by and yet we're already almost into August. I made homebaked cupcakes last night with pink frosting, and I'm looking forward to tasting some real American lemonade. Sadly the weather outside doesn't reflect the sunny mood - it's a drizzly cloud - but No Bother as we say here in Glasgow. We can still light tea lights in lanterns indoors, turn on some Train and sing along!

I think the States is a bit depressed by all the sad oil-related news going on there, and everyone else is battling the weather or an empty purse, but we're not going there today. Let's take a break for a while and look at some good news from the last couple of weeks.

In California a young guy thought his way around money shortages and bargained his way up to a Porsche. He says it takes 'time and patience, definitely.' Meanwhile in the world of supercars, owners are willing to pay up to £7,000 to have their Porsches cleaned in an electronic/hands-on treatment that takes up to four weeks.


America's top world-changer under 25 years old is Jessica Posner, from Denver, Colorado. She co-founded an organisation that started the first free school for girls in Kibera, Africa's largest slum. Next month, it will open Kibera's first accessible community health center with paid staff. Meanwhile, in another part of Colorado, a man's life was saved just in time by the pizza delivery man, who turned out to be a paramedic just back from military duty in Iraq. "This only happens in movies,'' the man's wife says. I thought it would be good to see a photo update on what's happening now in Haiti six months after the big earthquake. I don't normally post stories like this one but it did make me smile to think of a 70-year-old homeowner fighting off an intruder with a cane. He seems like quite a character!

There's a lot of firsts happening in the world of Technology Stuff! The world's first biometric ATM opened up in Poland - it scans your fingerprints for security, then gives out your money. For the first time ever, Amazon reports that e-books are outselling some hardcover books, after their Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook dropped their prices. Overall it's not a terribly big deal, but it does mean that people aren't as addicted to paper and ink books as some people thought, although to be fair paperbacks are still flying off the shelves. Amazon also added groceries to their arsenal of goods last week for the first time in the UK, although Americans have had this feature for a while. It will be interesting to see how the big UK-based stores like Tesco and Sainsbury's handle the online competition. I think this would be useful (and extremely satisfying) to a lot of people: a couple used an application called Family Map to track their iPhone after it was stolen from their shopping trolley.

That's the round-up for this week! If you see any great news, pass it along!

courtesy of pancakes & french fries

courtesy of My Little Happy Place

courtesy of Canelle et Vanille