Light graffiti

We celebrated Earth Hour a little late on The Dan Logan Show this week and had a crack at light graffiti live on air. Dayve tried to spell out Focal but failed, mainly through spelling it wrong!

Here's our first off air attempt:



And with a few adjustments, here's the on air effort:



After failing pretty miserably, we tried again during the next song and managed a fair attempt at spelling out Focal in the darkened studio:



We then got a bit adventurous and attempted The Dan Logan Show in light. Here's the results...





Find out a bit more about this on the Earth Hour website at www.earthhour.org.

Words of the Week - 30/3/09

This week's words of the week:

Real Word of the Week

Supercentenarian

Someone aged 110 or more

Fake Word of the Week

Postdentarian

Someone who has lost all their natural teeth

Energy Wasting Day competition

We're running a competition on The Dan Logan show to win a fantastic Dan Power inspired 'Polar Bears Who Cares?' t-shirt courtesy of www.energywastingday.com.



We need your ideas for the best ways to waste energy and also (because Energy Wasting Day is happening on 1 April) your best energy saving ideas. The best ideas will win one of the T-shirts. Contact us by visiting www.focalradio.com and clicking 'email the studio', text in on 07717 99 10 53, or phone the studio on 01782 574584.

The competition closes at 8.30pm today - 30 March - so get in quick!

Energy Wasting Day

This coming Wednesday, 1 April, is Energy Wasting Day!

We'll be talking about this on the show but we're after your suggestions for the best energy wasting ideas, as well as the best tips for saving energy. Text them in during the show on 07717 99 10 53 or email dan.logan@focalradio.com along with your contact details. We'll be reading some of the suggestions out on air, as well as interviewing Tom Gribbin from the Energy Wasting Day campaign. The best suggestions will win one of two 'Polar Bears Who Cares?' t-shirts, as seen in the official Energy Wasting Day music video featuring Dan Power!

Here's Dan sporting one of the t-shirts:



Find out more about Energy Wasting Day at www.energywastingday.com and listen out on the show for one of the first on air plays of Dan Power's official single!

On this week's show, we talked kangaroos. Vandals had released some kangaroos from an Australian theme park in Southern France, which prompted us to ask "What can you do with a kangaroo?" Suggestions included taking it to the zoo (to see the kangaroos, of course!) and keeping it as a personal body guard due to their boxing skills.

We talked student tuition fees with Michael Sibbert, including the fact that the fees might be raising. Andrew Stuart explained lomography (check out www.lomography.com, the art of taking photos without looking what you're taking. It makes sense, he assures us! He also discussed 24 Hours in Stoke, a photography project chronicling that happens in Stoke throughout a 24 hour period.

We introduced a new feature on the show - higher or lower with a twist! Each week we'll be picking a different subject and asking the pub game question, higher or lower, or a themed equivalent. This week was Tower or Lower, guessing the heights of various towers and buildings throughout the world. If you want to be on the show to take part, text in during the show on 07717 991053 or email dan.logan@focalradio.com including your contact details for us to get back to you.

Fruit of the week was the Lemon, so we decided it would be fun to try to suck one during a link.

Here's Dan about to rise to the challenge:



His first attempt:



And Dayve having a go:

Lemonade

The fruit of the week this week was the Lemon so we decided to make some lemonade.

Here's the recipe:

Take a load of lemons



Chop them in half





And then squeeze the juice out of them. You can do it by hand like we did but it will take FOREVER! Better off using a citrus press.







You'll then have a load of juice





Pour around 2/3rds of a cup of water and add some of the lemon juice



And then add sugar to taste. We tried it without to begin with and it wasn't half bad. Adding the sugar just helps to take the edge off.

Here's Dan's first taste:



And it's good!



Even Andrew agrees!



The whole thing, including the sugar, lemons and jug, cost us around £3 but easily made 15 cups worth so a good way to beat the credit crunch!

Words of the Week - 23/3/09

Real Word of the Week

Sparge

Moisten by sprinkling, especially with water in brewing (verb)
The action of sprinkling or splashing (noun)

Fake Word of the Week

Tontogilism

A painful swelling of the tonsils, similar to tonsillitus

Photos from the show, 16/3/09

It was a birthday bash for Dan on this week's Dan Logan Show, having celebrated his 24th birthday this weekend. Coincidentally, there was a report out this week that men reach their mental peak at the age of 22, with the decline starting at 27. We put this theory to the test with Tommy (22), Kim (23), Dayve (31) and the photocopier repair guy (20) all taking part in a general knowledge quiz. Winner Dayve proved the theory slightly wrong, with ideal aged Tommy coming in a very close second!

We also started to learn how to play the violin - more on this next week. But to celebrate Dan's birthday, we attempted to play Happy Birthday To You on the violin while bringing in a cake.



While grabbing a CD in Hanley for the violin feature, Dan had to buy some ping pong balls to get change for the car park (don't ask - it's a long story!). Kim thought she would put them to use by attempting to be a puppet.



We then got to the most important issue of the night - bananas! It has recently been FairTrade Fortnight and part of the celebrations was an attempt to break a world record for the most people around the world eating a FairTrade banana. Although we missed the record attempt, we had a chat about FairTrade (find out more at www.fairtrade.org.uk including FairTrade towns in the Focal area such as Alsager and Stafford.

We thought we'd have a go at breaking a couple of banana related records ourselves including the world banana snapping record and the amount of bananas eaten in a minute.

Snapping a banana turned out to be much harder than expected with Dan and Kim unable to manage it and ending up with some very squashed banana! Dayve was victorious again by managing a perfect snap on the first attempt but fell well short of the record.



Apparently the record for the most bananas eaten in a minute currently stands at five bananas which we thought we'd easily beat! Optimistically, Kim and Dayve set up seven bananas each in front of them in preparation.





As well as messing around with them!



It turns out that it's much harder than you'd think, with Dayve only managing three and Kim three and a half. Here's the aftermath:



Tune in to next week's Dan Logan show, Monday 23 March on Focal Radio on DAB in Staffordshire and Cheshire or online at www.focalradio.com where we'll find out how we fared while busking on violins to the people of Sandbach, learning in a school night and seeing if we can make money during a recession!

Words of the Week - 16/3/09

Word of the Week

Clerihew
A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem, poking fun at mainly famous people. It has four lines of irregular length (for comic effect); the third and fourth lines are usually longer than the first two.

Fake Word of the Week

Punjigate
To express a pungent odour, more commonly in nature. For example a durian fruit or skunk may be said to punjigate.

Welsh Word of the Week

Cenhinen
English translation: Leek

Words of the Week - 9/3/09

Word of the Week

Windrow
A windrow is a row of cut (mowed) hay or small grain crop.
Woody debris that has been piled into a long continuous row.

Fake Word of the Week

Johnnywhip
Used in the 1700s in the cotton mills to chastise new recruits hence Johnny being the word for someone new to the area, as in Johnny Come Lately in New Kid In Town. It grew out of favour towards the end of the 1700s and has not been used since.

Welsh Word of the Week

Dyddiadur
English translation: Diary