Microsoft Office and Walker's Crisps

We all know that Walker's got it the wrong way round by making salt and vinegar crisps green and cheese and onion blue. We will have to live with that, even though half of use will never get used to it (I did a Fun Online Poll on this six years ago which is no longer accessible).

Microsoft used to use the same colours:
Excel = salt and vinegar = green.
Word = cheese and onion = blue
Powerpoint = ready salted = red
Outlook = roast chicken = yellow.

One of the millions of really shit things about Windows 10 is that they kept the colours for Excel and Word, but Outlook is now blue and white and Powerpoint is a sickly orange-red colour.

ALDI Passions

Dearieme left a comment recently to say that ALDI's Passions were better than Tyrrell's, which is not actually saying much, as Tyrrell's came a distant fourth in the Fun Online Poll, so honour bound, I drove to my nearest ALDI this morning (which unfortunately is half an hour's drive away) to buy some.

We had people round for lunch today and I road tested their entry level flavour ('sea salt with crushed black pepper'). The five adults and three children present agreed they were very tasty indeed. If you ask me they are a lot better than Kettle's as well, but I don't really go for these 'hand cooked' crisps so maybe I'm not the best person to judge.

In the next few hours and days we will also sample the other two flavours available, 'sea salt and cider vinegar' and 'mature cheddar and onion'. I note to my horror that they only charged me for two packets of hand cooked crisps but I'm not going back now. ALDI's Cava was excellent as well, a snip at £3.99 a bottle.

Fun Online Polls: crisps and idiot commenters

Thank you to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll, results as follows:

Which is your favourite brand of crisps?

Kettle - 24%
Seabrook's - 21%
Walker's - 13%
Also rans: Tyrell's - 6%, Brannigan's - 5%, Golden Wonder - 5%, TESCO (incl. Premium) - 3%, Lay's - 2%, Smith's - 2%, Burt's - 1%, Tayto - 1%

Honourable mention must go to McCoy's, which I missed off the ballot paper. Dick Puddlecote, Shades, Andy Nicholas, Adam Collyer and Sniper all named McCoy's as their favourite.

Duly fired up, I bought some Seabrook's and some Golden Wonder for research purposes yesterday. My lad reckoned that Seabrook's Prawn Cocktail are the best crisps ever, but I have slight misgivings about crinkle-cut crisps, they seem a bit artificial. The Cheese & Chives seem a bit inspid and they proudly say New 90% less salt on the back. I was very impressed with Golden Wonder's Salt and Vinegar, which make your lips go pale pink like in olden times and bonus points for getting green/pale blue the right way round, but for some reason, their Ready Salted are dark blue and not red, which sort of spoils it.
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Turning to idiot commenters, I believe in free speech and really don't like deleting comments (by the same token, I didn't disable the facility which allows commenters to delete their own comments should they wish to do so), but there are some people, usually hiding behind twatty pseudonyms, who have nothing to add to any debate apart from personal insults. The three people I'm thinking about are all hardcore Home-Owner-ists, but that might be a coincidence.

I'm not sure what the correct procedure is here, so that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: M5 pile up and crisps

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were pretty conclusive:

What do you think caused the poor visibility that led to the M5 pile up?

Fog - 61%
Smoke - 8%
Other, please specify - 30%

I'm glad to see that most of you share my cynical view that they only tried to blame it on the fireworks because of this knee-jerk reaction that Somebody Is To Blame and Something Must Be Done. And if that involves Banning Something Which Is Pointless But Fun, then so much the better, of course. The most interesting comment was this one, which I shall have to take at face value:

Ryan: I know somebody who was in the accident. It was caused when a small car pulled out of the slip-road between two lorries. One of these lorries put on its brakes hard causing it to jack-knife and everyone else piled into it. Nothing to do with fireworks (ended ages before apparently).

Which suggests that the accident wasn't even caused by poor visibility in the first place, a thought which hadn't even occurred to my cynical mind. Although it seems beyond dispute that visibility was bad at the time (having ruled out fireworks, we are left with fog), which may have made the crash worse than otherwise.
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My recent post on crisps attracted a (to me) staggering twenty-five comments, people were naming crisp brands which I had long forgotten (or never heard of). I didn't realise that so many other people had such strong views on the topic. So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Which is your favourite brand of crisps?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
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Next week: "What's your favourite type of nuclear reactor?" Suggestions as to the best way of classifying the basic types welcome.

TESCO crisps

For the past seventeen years, I have been faithfully/loyally/stupidly (delete according to taste) buying Walker's Crisps, even though they have been getting blander and blander and more and more expensive (relative to supermarket own brand crisps). I have occasionally strayed and bought supermarket own brand and usually been disappointed, up until now.

TESCO own brand crisps are a lot cheaper (standard price about £3.20 for a 20-pack multipack) than Walker's, and while they a) don't pack the full flavour explosion of crisps of yesteryear, and b) they copy Walker's blue/green colour switcheroo, they are certainly less bland than Walker's crisps have become:DISCLAIMER: I do not own and have never owned shares or had any other financial interest in TESCO plc or whoever it is who makes Walker's Crisps.

Product Placement

I picked up eight packets of McCoys at the Poundland for snacks on the train home on Saturday and was delighted to see that they still use the correct colours, i.e. cheese and onion = green and salt and vinegar = blue:I did a Fun Online Poll (results now deleted) on this and 51% of people thought that all crisp manufacturers stuck to this simple system, despite the gits at Walkers having swapped over blue and green about ten years ago.

Can anybody spot the empty crisp packets?

From The Metro:

It seems collecting empty crisp packets is quite a popular hobby. Last week Metro reported on Dave Valentine’s impressive 500-pack archive – but this obviously opened a can (well, a packet) of worms. Hannah Conduct has come forward to reveal a whopping 9,000 empty bags in her collection, which she has gathered over the past 30 years...

"What this government really wants to do is bring back rationing"

Bayard left this comment on an earlier post:

... what this government really wants to do (and may yet) is bring back rationing.

??? There's no 'and may yet' about it. From an article in the FT last week:

Food agency declares war on dietary nasties

... as Britons indulge in Easter eggs and other sugary and fatty treats, the government is increasingly concerned about long-term health problems associated with over-eating. In a bid to tackle rising obesity and ill-health caused by poor diet, which costs the NHS £7bn a year, the Food Standards Agency has now issued a mandate for change...

It is the second assault on the food industry in recent years. The FSA has already run a salt reduction campaign, viewed by campaigners as a success after salt intake dropped by 10 per cent nationwide in 2008 – only two years after the campaign was launched... “Salt came first and the reduction in salt is easier because you can do it by stealth,” he says. “You can also retrain taste buds to accept less salt. But saturated fats are much harder to do.”

Food Standards Agency recommendations:
* Chocolate: Cut the saturated fat level in some confectionery (bars with fillings) by at least10 per cent.
* Soft drinks: Those containing added sugar should be made readily available in single portion sizes of 250ml.
* Cakes and biscuits: Cut the saturated fat in plain sweet and savoury biscuits, and plain cakes by at least 10 per cent; 5 per cent in non-plain biscuits and cakes.
* Portion size: Smaller single portion sizes should be more easily available for chocolate and confectionery...

RELATED ARTICLES
Crunch time for crisps - Apr-02
Pepsi pledges healthier foods - Mar-22
Outside Edge: Bread, fish and cheeses of Nazareth - Mar-26
The healthy eating challenge - Mar-22

Geek points for whomever can work out which EU Directive this stems from.

Vote Blue, Go Green

It seems that Walker's idea of swapping round the colours between packets of salt'n'vinegar and cheese'n'onion crisps still hasn't gained acceptance; only 49% got the right answer in last week's Fun Online Poll (I cheerfully admit that I popped down to the kitchen to check - and yes, Walker's cheese'n'onion crisps really are sold in blue packets). Thanks to everybody who took part, as ever - it's not just me then.

The story about the US bombing a civilian village, allegedly, has inspired this week's Fun Online Poll. I've tried not to give 'leading' answers this time. Vote here, or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Poll Results

When asked Which was the first country in the Euro-currency-zone? seventy-three per cent chose the option All the above countries joined on the same day, which is factually correct but does not answer the question.

As far as I understand it, all countries joined on 1 January 1999 at a 00:01. As Finland is in an earlier timezone than the other ten countries, it must have joined first. It's a bit like the stupid pub-quiz question, "Which month is longer - October or December?"

This week's Fun Online Poll asks "What colour are packets of cheese'n'onion crisps?" Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Bright idea of the day

Colleague was popping to the shops, asked whether anybody wanted crisps. A lot of humming and hah'ing ensued "Wait a minute ... shall I have salt'n'vinegar or ready salted? Hmmm, let me think..."

Said colleague quips, "They ought to make packets of multi-flavour crisps with a few of each, for people who can never make up their minds!"

Am very busy, must get on.