Kristy

I'm trying to make smoothies and mixed drinks at home, and I'm discovering that blenders that SAY they crush ice rarely do! It's very frustrating. Can anyone recommend a blender that is a) cheap and b) really works well?

Please only recommend a blender if you've actually tried it - I could go onto shopping sites and read ad copy all day, but I want feedback from people who actually use it!

This question is a little unusual in that I may need more help than one answer can give - if you answer, please let me know if it's ok to message you with any follow-up questions.

I'm not computer-illiterate, but I am self-taught. I've created basic, decent-looking websites out of CSS and HTML before, and I'm comfortable with them, but I don't know much else.

I'm trying to create a site for a memorial for a family member. I need a comment section or something similar so that people from all over can leave messages or stories, and also a place where people can post pictures. I don't know how to set this up. I have a domain, but I'm not sure what to do with it at this point. I need some guidance. Is there a decent (free) web editor that I can use to do this? Do I need to learn a different kind of coding, and if so, can someone point me to a tutorial? What's the best way to go about setting this up?

I'm currently re-working a webpage (using just CSS and HTML.) There's an image that is supposed to go across the top of the page. The problem is, the image has a specified size, so I can get it to fit when I'm viewing it on, say, my monitor, but on a different monitor or different browser it stops short and there's just this blank space to the right of the image. How can I tell it to size itself to fit the length of the page?

I was at a party recently, and ditched the adults to hang out with the kids. I'm in my late 20's; the kids in question were about 10-13. I felt awkward, like I was the big gangling grown-up invading their world, except... one of them is my almost-sister-in-law (long story), and she's so much like me when I was her age, I can't help feeling empathy for her - and I know she (like I did) hates it when adults blow her off as "just a kid." And... she's interesting. She thinks and talks about nifty stuff, and if she's obnoxiously precocious, well, that's just a consequence of being both intelligent and young at the same time. She and her friends seemed to like the fact that I'd hang out with them, play silly games and teach them how to waltz and respond with appropriate grown-up horror when they cracked jokes they shouldn't even understand for a couple more years... and yet, I couldn't shake the feeling that I should be feeling weird. I mean, I ought to be talking to people my own age... except that at this party, this little girl was the only person who wasn't either directly related to me, or else dating someone directly related to me, and yet considered herself my friend. Given that, is it really that weird to spend the evening with her rather than brushing her aside for some friend-of-a-friend that I'll see once every 12 months?

So the question is - at what point does a friendship like that get weird? I don't want to be the person people look askance at for hanging out with the kids, but I also don't want to shoot myself in the foot by insulting the people who actually want to hang out with me in order to schmooze with the people who don't really care about me. (I'd add in that I don't want to be a bad influence, but I heard some of the jokes they made amongst themselves when no outsiders could hear, and dear me, I think it's way too late to worry about that.)

My computer has an excellent spell checker already built in, I am perfectly capable of recognizing on my own if I have left the Caps Lock button on, and if my sentence has a lot of punctuation it's because it bloody well requires a lot of punctuation.

The little sidebar pop-ups are annoying on many different levels. Please tell me there's a settings option to turn them off.

How would you translate the phrase "Life's a game, and then we win?"

I heard it on a compilation of political punk rock, which was subsequently stolen from my car. The song I remember best actually had more of a folky feel to it than punk, but the chorus went "I am a permanent free zone... in the people's republic." Male singer, voice sounded almost nasal, but not unpleasantly so.

Another song on the same album was much harder, the sort of thing I'd classify as metal or industrial (although music snobs would probably laugh at my simplistic categorizing.) the chorus of that one had a deep male voice growl-screaming, "illuminate... i will... seek... the light!"

If anyone can identify either of the songs by name or band, I'd appreciate it; if anyone knows the name of the compilation album I'd appreciate it more. I tried searching by the lyrics I remember, but nothing came up.

Specifically, what happens to the platinum? There is a chemical reaction - an explosion - but what happens to the platinum? Is it a part of the reaction, and consumed by it? Or is it merely a catalyst, triggering the reaction but ultimately untouched?

If there are any chemists out there with facts, numbers or formulae it'd be appreciated, otherwise a generalized idea would be fine too. Just please no wild guesses, we could do that ourselves!

All I can ever find is their connection with devadasis. I know they often became devadasis at age 3, now I need to know more. I can't even find which of the main castes they were part of, much less their standing in society! Can anyone, maybe someone from India, fill in some details for me?