True or false: Six Santa themed 'facts' for Christmas

Naughty kids, green Santa suits and fermented ant droppings.

With Christmas quickly approaching, this week I've compiled a list of six Santa themed ‘facts’ to test people on how sharp they are at spotting a bluff and how astute they are at recognising the truth. Just to clarify, some of these Santa ‘facts’ are true but others are entirely made up.

Santa Claus pictured with a strange child-sized object in his sack.

Anyway, these are the Santa related ‘facts’ so have a read and see if you can guess which ones are true and which are made up, then check the answers at the bottom of the page to see how well you did.

Fact 1 - Swiss Santa's helper kidnaps naughty kids in his sack.

In the UK and many other countries parents often scare their kids into behaving in the run-up to Christmas by telling them that if they’re naughty then Santa won’t bring them any presents. While you could say this was a slightly cruel lie to tell kids, in Switzerland they take things one step further by telling kids that if they are naughty, Santa's helper 'Schmutzli' will kidnap them by putting them into his sack and then carrying them off into the woods.

True or false?

Some kind words from two friends I met on my recent travel adventures

A letter of gratitude for a minor deed I performed on my travels.

As an author perhaps one of the best ways to find inspiration for your stories is to travel the world, make new friends and experience exciting travel adventures. I've met many new friends on my travels and I recently received a photo as a gift from two new friends I met on one of my recent travel adventures, together with a note of thanks for a minor deed I performed. I therefore thought it would be a nice idea to post their kind words on my blog.

The two tigers soon calmed down once
they realised they had met their match.

"Dear Charles

We just wanted to wish you a big thank you once again for saving the life of our small child the other day. We don't know what we would have done if you hadn't been there when little Sami wandered into the path of those two stray tigers and we will forever be grateful for the bravery you showed as you sprang into action and taught the two ferocious beasts a lesson they won't forget in a hurry.

We were also grateful that you were able to take time out of your busy schedule to pose for a quick photo with the tigers after you had showed them who was the boss and returned Sami to safety.

Sneeze page: Four of my favourite posts

Charles Fudgemuffin goes green!

Recycling old rubbish.

I’m a firm believer in recycling, so when I recently read a post on another blog discussing the concept of a ‘sneeze’ page, whereby you basically recycle your most popular old posts to create a fresh new compilation post, I was instantly intrigued. As well as the green aspect, my lazy side was also attracted by the thought of reusing old material, and so after reading the article I decided to compile my own sneeze page.

So on that note, here are five of my favourite posts to have previously appeared on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog:

1) 10 cool internet Easter eggs

This post features a selection of weird hidden features (known as Easter eggs) found on the internet, and at the time of writing it gets more page views via Google than any other post on my blog. It features some reasonably well-known Easter Eggs such as the YouTube snake and facebook hidden languages, but also showcases some less well-known internet Easter eggs such as an amusing website reporting on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and there’s also a mention for a little known trick found on wikipedia.

More signs from around the world

Or to provide a more accurate description…  'More signs, menus, t-shirts and ice creams from around the world'.

Following on from my previous post entitled, ‘Signs From Around The World,’ I’ve now collected together some more photos of signs from around the world. After much thought I decided to call this post, ‘More Signs From Around The World’.

1) Childish translations

Let’s start things off with a very childish photo of a sign in Mallorca Airport.

Childish sign at Mallorca Airport.

I think it was a restaurant, but after reading the sign I suddenly wasn’t very hungry.

Daft office pranks (part 1)

Childish tomfoolery around the office.

A prank involving the 'Auto Correct' feature found in Word.

I'm a big fan of funny pranks and tricks, and in fact devious tricks and deceptions feature in many of my books and short stories. Some of these fictional tricks takes place on a galactic scale, but other deceptions take place on a much smaller scale.

This week though, I'm going to highlight a real prank that I used to play when I worked in an office. It's a fairly straight forward prank which anyone with a basic level of proficiency in Microsoft Word will be able to play.

Anyway, one day a girl in the office had to leave her desk for a few moments, so I took quick advantage of her absence to set up the prank. For the purposes of the example I’ll call her Lisa, but that wasn’t her real name. (Her real name was Lesley). Anyway, while 'Lisa' was away I quickly went into Word on her PC and opened up the ‘Auto Correct’ feature (found in the ‘Tools’ tab).

Author Quiz ... A new blog from Charles Fudgemuffin

Author Quiz featuring personalised interviews from indie authors.

Author Quiz: Personalised interviews from indie authors.

Update: Please note, I am no longer updating the Author Quiz blog. Previous interviews with authors are still available to read, but I am no longer accepting future submissions.

Over the last few months as I’ve explored the various websites and blogs on the web dedicated to helping authors promote their work, one thing I’ve felt would be a useful addition to the selection of promotional websites out there, but which I couldn’t seem to find, was a blog dedicated to providing interviews which authors can themselves personalise. After all, the person who knows an author's work best is generally the author themselves, so if you’re doing an interview then I think it makes sense to allow authors as much flexibility as possible on how best to introduce readers to their writing.

Anyway, spotting this gap in the blogosphere I decided to take things into my own hands and therefore recently launched a new blog called Author Quiz where I feature interviews which authors can personalise. Thankfully, so far it seems to have met with a positive response as several authors have submitted personalised interviews which I’ve featured on the blog. Interviews published so far have included authors from various genres including humour, paranormal, adventure, science fiction, mystery and romance, and I hope to feature authors from as varied a range of genres as possible.

Santa Claus, camper vans and Swedish girls

An analysis of some unusual Google searches.

When most people think of Google they probably think first and foremost of the Google search engine, then maybe after that they perhaps think of things like Google Earth and Gmail.

Searching for Santa on Google.

However, another cool gizmo which Google have is the Google Keywords Tool which is a fun way to pass the time if you ever have a spare half hour or so (especially if you’re easily amused like me). It’s actually designed to help potential Google advertisers find useful key phrases to advertise on, but I use it to discover and explore some of the weird phrases that people actually search for on Google.

For example, did you know that every month 91 people actually search for: