The most popular post for commenting on, at least in recent memory, was the post about toothpaste. When I mention this to others, they say “You wrote, on your website, in front of the whole world about why toothpaste is minty?!” So I wondered why that post was the most interesting. My guess is that it is because, either:

• It actually is something people are interested in.
  
• It’s easier to comment on than other posts, as it’s much more “commentable”; in that, there is a question to the post. As opposed to, say, the music posts which are more “closed”.
  
• Minty toothpaste strikes a chord with people.
  
• People felt compelled to tell me not all toothpaste is minty (all the flavours sound really odd — cinnamon in particular seems popular — but I may try some one day).
  

Any other ideas as to why that post got more comments?

This is an unashamedly geeky post about why I find Linux very useful. It’s essentially because of the little commands. A couple of examples are:

shutdown -h +45

That means “shutdown in forty-five minutes”. Nothing massively useful in itself, but there are occasions where it’s very useful.

The first is when I want to listen to an album I only have in mp3 format when I’m going to sleep. I don’t want the computer staying on and waking me up, but how to get it to switch off without getting up? A quick “shutdown -h +50”, that’s what.

Interestingly, the SiteAdvisor service and browser plugin that I mentioned a few months ago has been bought by McAfee. I still have their plugin installed, because I believe it is a necessary plugin even if you never need to use it. (I keep the Google Phishing Filter installed for this reason too — it doesn’t intrude, so why run the risk of not having it?) I wonder what the purchase of SiteAdvisor will mean for the service.

I have started using a wide-screen monitor at work — 24" and awesome — and have been experimenting with having a vertical taskbar along the right side of the screen. I’ve seen the screenshots of Windows Vista with a sidebar and thought it was a bit funny; it takes up too much screen real-estate on a “normal” monitor. However, I can say that with a wide-screen, this setup starts making more than sense: it’s great.

I had a strange desire when brushing my teeth last night to know why toothpaste seems to always be mint flavoured. As far as I could think, there are a couple of reasons it could be:

1. Mint makes things taste funny so you don’t want to eat things afterwards (thus making your teeth dirty again).
   
2. Mint makes your mouth feel fresh, and is good at masking other flavours and smells — I’m thinking this could be a reason for after-dinner mints too!
   

A quick look over the internet revealed more speculation, but no concrete facts. Interesting thoughts were that mint is strong enough to cover up the weird taste toothpaste would have otherwise and that, back in the early days of toothpaste, mint was a cheap and easy flavouring to get hold of.