So, the pigs have finally risen against their human oppressors and have fought back with the thing that humans fear the most.

The sniffles.

Whilst you have all been enjoying your bacon sandwiches and ham and cheese pasties, the pinky, muddy animals have been plotting to infect us all with a cold so bad that even doctors will have to stay in bed!

In the event of an all out Swine Flu Pandemic, I present the definative Survival Kit to help protect your family from the evil green bogies and head colds that threaten our civilisation.

1. Face Masks
The surgical face mask has already become a best seller on all of the Amazon stores all over the world - just see for yourself! This leads me to believe that people think that a simple piece of cloth that slowly cuts off circulation to your ears and actually causes more warm condensation around your mouth and nose and increases risk of infection is going to save us all. If you don't have a spar scarf around the house to tie round your face like a football hooligan - get a box of face masks.

2. Nasal Spray
Nothing stops the world better than the onset of a massive sinus headache that threatens to prevent you from leaning over to put your socks on. The parachuting of Nasal Sprays by army helicopters will keep the pounding ache at bay - at least until you can get to the shops for some Obais Oil or to the Sauna.

3. Chicken Soup
Nothing prevents the onset of flu and cold better than mums chicken soup. This is certainly the reason why the human race was never wiped out before by diseases like the black death and the plague. Tuck yourself up with a nice bowl of soup, put on that DVD of Mama Mia you were bought for christmas and sweat it out!

4. Body Bags
There may come a time where a loved one, lodger, neighbour or wife might have been overcome by the Swine Flu and you will need to get rid of them before they either turn into a Zombie or start to smell like the bottom shelf of the fridge. You will most likely be required to bag up the body, drag it into the street and wait for someone from Freecycle to come and collect them - to resell on eBay (like all Freecycle people do).

5. Antiseptic Spray
Before bed, after brushing your teeth, you will be required to go through the intimate cavity spraying of a cleansing spray. This spray will burn skin, but will also prevent germs from spreading across the "invisible line" in the bed you share with your partner - and it will also do a great job on getting rid of any limescale in your bathroom at the same time.

6. Ear Thermometer
"Hello? Battersea Dogs Home" or "nanoo-nanoo" are both some of the pranks you can play whilst jamming a very uncomfortable ear thermometer in... your ear! I think they actually read the status of your brain and transmit it to the alien mothership - but that's just my weird opinion!

With these 6 items at your disposal, you are sure to last out the terrible oncoming threat of a global pandemic posed by the cute little sandwich making oinkers.

Ahh... they are still cute though!

Recent searches:

Its about time of the year that I did another A-List. A detail of my favorite software that I am installing/using these days. It's probably not going to be much different from the previous list, but here goes…

OS:
Windows XP Media Center editon with Office 2003.
Installed this version of Windows so I could stream video to my Xbox 360.

Virus/Spyware:
I have ditched the Symantec AntiVirus 10 and the Giant Anti Spyware (now known as Microsoft Defender) and am using ZoneAlarm Security Suite. Since having this installed I have had nothing unusual turn up on the PC, only cookies. Even with Symantec and Giant installed before, if I ran a scan it always found something, but ZoneAlarm seems excellent! Plus with the ZoneAlarm firewall built in you can't go wrong.

Browser:
Firefox, firefox, firefox!!! Get it! This is a no-brainer really. Since using this my spyware infections have literally dropped off the planet. I have also installed the FasterFox extension which makes it even faster! I also have the Web Developer Toolbar installed into Firefox which makes checking and testing CSS changes in my blog all the easier. It also makes me into a god when helping people over at the Blogger Help Group.

Torrent Sites:

• Demonoid
• Mininova
• ISOHunt

I still use torrents frequently and they are the three sites that I use most often.
I have started using uTorrent to download torrent files as I found that the webs most popular torrent client, Azureus was big, bloated, built from Java and made my router hang all the time (despite its numerous awards) . uTorrent is small, runs from a folder with no installation needed and is fast! I have also found that on my 2mb ADSL line, if I limit my upload to 18kbps on each torrent, the download speed goes up like a rocket (seeds pending out course). I am thinking of doing a basic "uTorrent users guide" soon - so watch this space.

P2P Apps:
None.
Yep - thats right - none!
I have given up on using these. The last time I was bothering, Warez was still my favorite but now that the torrents have really picked up and downloading stuff does not seem so important any more, I have stopped using it.

Bookmarks:
Some new bookmarks that I go to each day are the Del.icio.us popular links, my Bloglines subscriptions and the Digg.com homepage. There is always something new and amazing on there to look at over lunch. I have started using Del.icio.us more to store my bookmarks now. With Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature, they are available immediately regardless of if I am at home or work.

Recap:
Away Goal:
ZoneAlarm, uTorrent, Del.icio.us, Digg, Torrents

Own Goal:
Symantec, Giant Antispyware, P2P apps, Azureus

Technorati Tags: a-list, symantec, zonelabs, zonealarm, spyware, virus, microsoft, defender, bittorrent, utorrent, azureus, firefox, media center, fasterfox, delicious, bloglines, digg
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