I love how good this video is.
I love it when the dreaded paperclip shows up:
It looks like you’re trying to bend a spoon with your mind. Want some help?
These little parodies are usually so poorly acted that I can’t watch them, but this one was really good.
I have been looking for a simple dock to charge and sync my iPhone ever since my old dock stopped working. The Pottery Barn Simple Dock looks like it could replace my iLive ghetto blaster and do just that.
I have some questions about it before I’m willing to plunk down the eighty bucks, though:
Does it work with the iPhone 3G? The problem with buying electronics accessories from a furniture store is that they don’t give me any specifics. I even looked it up on their website (Simple Dock | Pottery Barn) and their product info tab was woefully incomplete. Since the iPhone 3G has a different charging system than the old iPods and old iPhone, a lot of the docks don’t work anymore. THAT’S what happened to my old charging dock. I’m not willing to spend $79 without some guarantee that it will WORK.
Does it sync? Again, the product info is slim on this and I can’t even tell if this dock has a USB cable that will allow me to connect it to my computer to sync. If it doesn’t, there’s no point in me buying it. I don’t want to just charge my iPhone. I need to sync it as well. Did the designers at Pottery Barn think of that? Who can tell. It’s obvious that the WEB designers on their site didn’t think to include that information.
The cool thing about this little dock is that it can play music from the iPhone AND charge. That would make it a tasteful addition to your bedroom by your bed, near your computer or even in the living room. Even though it’s highly unlikely that the speakers are audiophile quality, they are good enough for me to listen to tunes before I go to sleep or while I type away at my computer. Without the essential technical information, however, I’m not willing to pay eighty dollars to find out whether they will work with my iPhone or not.
I have gushed many times about the game, Animal Crossing: Wild World. You can see my entries here:
Almost two years ago, I first heard about Animal Crossing for the Wii:
It has finally arrived and I’m just head over heels happy with it. My favorite part of Animal Crossing were the daily conversations with my little animal friends, but after three years of playing the DS version, I had pretty much memorized the game. The writing for Wild World was spectacular and you can see the quotes I gleaned from that wonderful game here:
My biggest fear for City Folk was that they would recycle the writing. As spectacular as it was, I was a little sick of hearing Elvis tell me the SAME things every day. Fortunately, they have rewritten the entire game. Right down to what Nook says when you are buying a house. Almost all of the writing is new. There is a little bit of recycling here and there, but unless you’re an insane woman who memorizes everything she hears, you probably won’t even notice. They even went to the trouble of inventing new catchphrases every time you catch a fish. And Blathers will tell you about the zoological quirks of fish rather than go on and on about how tasty they are.
I was also worried about how the transfer for the DS would go. I had heard that I could transfer my character from my DS game to City Folk. I worried that it would work like a move. For example, in Wild World, you can move from one city to another, but you lose everything in your bureau, bank account and you arrive with only what you can carry in your pockets. THAT is how I thought the move to City Folk would go. Instead, the only thing that transfers is hair color, eye color, sex, name and my catalog. My character in Wild World is still there and I didn’t lose her when I transferred to the Wii game. It was a huge relief.
I had completed my museum collection in Wild World, so I thought that starting a town with an empty museum would be depressing, but surprisingly, it’s not. It gives me all the reason to fish, dig and hunt for bugs again. By the way, fishing and hunting for bugs can be done just like on the DS and Gamecube versions, but they have added features to let me fish a little more realistically with the Wiimote. Now, I can cast my fishing rod, just like a real rod with the Wii controller. To catch the fish, I pull up, just like I would if I were really fishing. Swinging a net is exactly the same.
There have been lots of talk about visiting the city. Here is a video talking about those features ad infinitum:
For me, I’m just happy to talk to my new little animal friends. The writing for City Folk is looking to be just as enjoyable and witty as the writing was for Wild World, so I’m looking forward to laughing with my imaginary friends for many days this year!
I was reminiscing and watching videos on YouTube when I saw this video by Bill Sharpe and Gary Numan:
Our little friend the original Mackintosh computer is a key component of the video along with a dot matrix printer. It’s so fun to see my beloved toys from so long ago in action.
I owned a VW Beetle for six years. During that time, I owned THREE smartphones. I had always longed for something to easily hold my phone at dashboard level and I never ONCE even considered using my bud vase.
What the heck was the matter with me?!!
Nathan Barry, on Flickr, has created this AWESOME iPhone holder using the budvase on his Beetle:
Works perfectly, and the iPhone picked one of my all favourite tunes for the test run! It holds the iPhone securely and safely in easy view from the driving position, pops on and off very easily, and it’s close enough for the speakerphone mode to negate the need for any handsfree kit.
You can see all the photos here:
Very cool! It makes me almost wish I had my VW Beetle back, until I remember the never-ending struggle with the Check Engine light. Maybe I can hack something like this for my Prius…
I was watching an old episode of House the other day. The patient wouldn’t allow Wilson to do a colonoscopy, so they had her swallow a Pillcam. The show followed the pillcam into her body snapping photos every few seconds. All very cool, but I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought it might be a good plot device for a medical drama, but I had no inkling that the Pillcam might be real.
It is. It’s made by a company called Given Imaging:
The PillCam SB video capsule is designed specifically to help your doctor see inside your small bowel (small intestine) to diagnose disorders such as Crohn’s disease, Celiac disease, benign and cancerous tumors, ulcerative colitis as well as others disorders. The small intestine is the part of the gastrointestinal tract that connects the stomach to the large intestine and absorbs nutrients. PillCam SB transmits images at a rate of two images per second for approximately eight hours, resulting in more than 50,000 images.
It’s funny how little trust I have in television programming. I immediately thought that Pillcam was fake and that the refusal of the colonoscopy was just a plot device to demonstrate the patient’s insistence on control. Now, I’m pretty sure the entire episode based on control was a plot device to show off the cool new toy from Given Imaging.
I have to admit that I love House M.D. and his gadget-loving ways. From his DS to his PSP to his tiny medical camera the size of a calcium pill and even his bad-ass motorcycle, he’s got to be the most geekiest of the television personalities.
Wired Magazine has a great article about the MP3 Hybrid Scooter from Piaggio.
The electric motor powers the MP3 Hybrid at low speeds and provides the gasoline engine with additional oomph when you open ‘er up — boosting acceleration by as much as 85 percent, the company says. The scooter can run in full electric or in one of three hybrid modes designed to maximize performance, maximize fuel economy or recharge the batteries quickly. Piaggio says the MP3 hybrid goes 60 kilometers on a liter of gas, which works out to about 141 mpg.
With three wheels for stability, freeway speeds and 141 mpg, this sounds like a great commuter bike, but only if you live in areas without weather. In Salt Lake City, this scooter would only be useful for about four months out of the year.
These motorcycles made out of watch parts are really cool:
You can see more here:
I love watches, so a little part of me cringes when I see this sort of thing. There used to be a beautifully functioning watch that made up that motorcycle. It makes me sad to think of all the dead watches that were sacrificed to make these.
I know watches die of their own accord, but it almost feels like a coat made out of the fur of a beloved pet.
Via: CraziestGadgets.com » Miniature Motorcycles Made from Watch Parts
A friend of mine purchased the Free Standing full size Harvest Shelf from Shelf Reliance and really loves it. I liked the idea of the food rotating through and not getting lost at the back of the cupboard, but I don’t have a ton of canned goods. As I researched further I found the CanSolidator and CanDensor models also by Shelf Reliance. Costco had a deal on two so I bought four, and was glad I did.
When I first put the unit together it was too small for my pantry leaving 5 inches of shelf in front and 7 inches on the side. Each bar of the unit is 10 inches long, so as long as your shelf is divisible by 10 inches wide these are great. The other issue I had with the CanSolidator was that after putting the two bars together and splitting it up for the cans (all the pieces for one shelf kit), I was one spacer short of fitting in four rows of standard size cans (the size of a Campbell’s soup can), making the unit even more of a space hog.
After trying various configurations and not liking any of them because they took up more space and held less, I ended up cutting the bars and adding an additional 7 inches to my row, which also allowed me a lot more variation in configuring for different can sizes. It’s not too hard to cut the bars apart and you can order additional pieces by the piece at ShelfReliance.com. I used my Open It! tool to cut the pieces to size. All in all it took me a half day of working and reworking the lay outs to get it right. I now have three shelves made up of most of the pieces of the four shelf kits.
I like that I know at a glance exactly how many cans I have of soup or tuna. I like that it automatically rotates my food for me so I eat the oldest stuff first. So for me it was worth the hassle of breaking it apart and putting it together the way I wanted it. This unit will take up more room and hold less than just stacking the cans on your shelves so if its space you’re worried about this might not be the best fit.
We have all purchased items in hard-to-open vacuum-formed plastic packaging and after trying to cut it with scissors, we try to tear it and then get a giant cut from just trying to grab the item out – we swear to never buy anything packaged like that again, but then we end up buying something packaged that way again because it’s all sold that way.
The tool everyone need is the Open It!. It easily cuts through the plastic and even has a blade knife for opening boxes. If for some reason you also need a screw driver, it has that too. The blades are on a spring-loaded scissor mechanism similar to garden shears (except much shorter) and sharp enough to cut through layers of plastic and cardstock easily. I even used it to cut through the hard plastic bars of my CanSolidator, and anytime I want a straight cut through something thick or difficultly placed this is my tool of choice.
Here’s a photo of how you can use it to open packaging:
Use it to snip open a plastic tie:
The box cutter can zip open a CD or DVD wrapper:
It’s difficult to find one tool that can do so many things, but Open It! has been my favorite.
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