Ever been stuck for finding what rhymes with another word? Then head over to writerhymes.com where all you have to do is hold down the “alt” key and click on a word of your choice to find what rhymes with it. Great for Valentine’s poems, birthday cards, scrapbooks etc.

I just came across these two sites: Decodeme.com and 23andme.com where you can get your DNA scanned to see if you have any possible genetic health conditions (based on current knowledge). There’s also the very tantalizing statement “decipher the history written in your genes” which honestly makes me want to run over there and fork out the $1000 to get it done. If I ever do have the money to spare (which may be never!) I will really consider this service.

I came across this handy tool yesterday at touchgraph.com You can type in your web site’s URL or just a keyword, for example “web design” and it will show you a kind of map of web sites and how they are connected. It’s a good way of finding new web sites in your niche which you have not come across before or see how the bigger sites are connected.

This morning as I was reading my usual blog feeds I came across this competition for a twitter profile design. I’ve been having a go but my current attempt is not very up to date looking so it’s back to the drawing board for me I think. The hardest part is trying to make a design that will work on different screen resolutions. I’m using 1024×768 on my computer but from what I’m told this is not the most popular screen resolution anymore. Anyway if I come up with any good method of creating these backgrounds I will probably offer a few of them for free on my other site.

One of my favourite sites to browse aimlessly is foodgawker. Whenever I’m not sure what to cook I always find something on this site that ends up turning out amazing. While browsing aimlessly tonight I came across this interesting recipe from Taste Buddies. I’m writing it here so I don’t forget abut it. I’ll be buying broccoli next time I go shopping!

Raw Broccoli Salad Recipe
(Serves 2)

3 cups of chopped broccoli
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2 tbs of finely minced coriander
1 tsp of cumin seeds
1/4 cup good quality extra virgin olive oil
Juice from 1 lemon
1/2 tsp of sea salt, or if you have it, flor de sal

Method:

1. Wash and finely chop the broccoli, several florets at a time. Include 1 garlic clove in the chopping. Chop for another minute and then add the second clove. Keep chopping until the broccoli is in 1/2cm to 1cm pieces.
2. Place the broccoli into a large, non-reactive bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and then mix well with a metal spoon. Cover and let the broccoli sit in the fridge for one hour.
3. Serve with an accompanying meal of chicken, seafood or on its own.

Finally WordPress has a word count feature! This is very exciting to me because certain posts sometimes have to be written to certain requirements and word count is one of them. Up to now I’ve been using a word counting script on a website by copying and pasting each time I wanted to see if I have enough words. This was a bit time consuming and annoying so this is a tool for me that will really help increase productivity.

Last week Google announced their launch of virtual world Lively, available as a Firefox or IE plugin. It is basically social networking/chat using avatars or 3D chat. It will be interesting to see if it takes off, it certainly looks interesting, it kind of reminds me of the Sims actually judging by the screen shots. If my ancient computer allows I might even download it and take a look. Here is the link to Lively.

Shopping.com and Dealtime.co.uk are both great ecommerce (or shopping comparison) search engines. They save a great deal of time and effort by comparing prices of any product you are looking for, for example a Cheap Plasma TV across many different web sites. As well as price comparisons you can also find user reviews and buying guides about products which is very handy when researching your next major buy (even including things like flights and mortgages). You also get a range of related products links to further increase your chances of getting the best possible deal. So don’t spend hours comparing prices manually when you can use these search engines.

Here are the top 10 most popular goals in the world according to 43things. I’m guessing this mainly applies to English speaking countries. Here they are in order:

1. lose weight
2. stop procrastinating
3. write a book
4. Fall in love
5. be happy
6. Get a tattoo
7. go on a road trip with no predetermined destination
8. drink more water
9. travel the world
10. get married

I can’t believe people rate “drink more water” so highly. For example higher then getting married or traveling the world?? And having a baby is waay down the list, nowhere near the top 10. I suppose the site must attract a certain age group (ie young people) and also people who really want to write books..