The Gadgets Page

I was looking through some of my old files the other day and I found this advertisement for the Yamaha DX100 Synthesizer.

It reads:

It has two wheels, two sources of power and can go from 0 to 192 in just one shift. But instead of riding it, you strap it over your shoulder. Because this machine is so powerful, it can take you places just standing still.

The DX100 synthesizer.

Anything’s possible.

Yamaha

This advertisement happened to be on the back of a Swatch ad that I have kept for the last twenty years. I always thought it was an advert for a motorcycle, considering the helmet and all. I never read the copy on the ad until a couple of days ago.

What in the $#*@ were they talking about?

They are talking about a synthesizer that looks like this:

• Vintage Synth Explorer – Yamaha DX-100

The DX-100 is a small and portable budget DX synthesizer from Yamaha. Like all DX’s it uses (FM) Frequency Modulation synthesis. It’s not the easiest form of synthesis to program but can result in some excellent sounds. The DX100 is not as flexible nor powerful as a DX7, but it does have some cool sounds. It is most renowned for its great analog bass sound (Patch #01) that is awesome for techno, house, jungle, and acid music styles; it’s very gritty, the bass tone with gristle! However, any other preset sounds that you’ll find in the DX-100 are pretty bad and require editing for anything else useable.

The DX-100 has mini-keys and only 49 of them. No filters, arpeggiators, effects or programmable controllers are available either. Small pitch and mod wheels in the upper left and guitar strap pegs make this synth usable for live use if you’re feeling whimsical. If you mess around with the settings on Parameter 13, even if you don’t know anything about FM, you can get some seriously twisted sounds out of it. If you’re willing to spend a little time with it, it has a lot more potential than just that one bass sound that people will eventually get sick of. And at its currently low street price, it just might be worth getting. It is used by Orbital, Scanner, Jean-Michel Jarre, Autechre, Laurent Garnier, and countless other house and dance artists.

All the talk about wheels and power and shifting are “funny” double-entendres comparing music gear with motorcycles. Considering that this ad was run in Seventeen magazine, it was a complete waste of money for Yamaha.

For fun, here’s a video of a guy jamming on a Yamaha DX100:

The Yamaha DX100 is one of the more beloved of the old synthesizers from the Eighties and you can find them selling on eBay anywhere from $400 to $150 for working models. Even a broken DX100 will earn the owner fifty bucks. In fact, this ad itself is something of a collector’s item, so feel free to click on over to Flickr and download the full size if you want to print it up and put it on your wall with the rest of your Yamaha memorabilia.

It has been a LONG time since I’ve been able to say that I’ve enjoyed a Microsoft advertisement for anything other than train wreck gawking. This ad for Microsoft Office 2010, however, is enjoyable!

I’m sure that no one is mourning the loss of Clippy, but I’m most excited about the return of Visio. I used to use that program for everything from flow charts to floor plans. I hope it’s just as easy to use as it was when it was a Visio Corporation property.

Via: A funny Microsoft ad? Yes

Our old neighbor, Lisa, just remodeled her kitchen. When we heard about it, both NakedJen and I were wondering what happened to her beautiful old pink oven. Fortunately, Lisa was smart enough to keep it. While we looked at her lovely new kitchen, we also took the time to take some photos of her old Frigidaire. Here are the photos:

The cool thing about this oven is that it is meant to be built into the wall at body level. The doors open out like a refrigerator to reveal a fairly small oven.

I love how the dark color of the knobs contrast with the light pink color. This oven was made during that time when you coordinated your appliances with your color scheme. Instead of only a choice of white, black or stainless steel, you had a rainbow of colors to choose from.

This timer is PERFECT and I trust timers like this so much more than the digital ones on my current oven (mostly because they are easier to set).

Lisa plans on selling her oven on eBay, so, if you like it, keep an eye out there for it.

I had never heard of Nixie Tube Clocks until yesterday. I’m in love, but I’m far too cheap to buy them. I can’t bear to spend three hundred dollars on a timepiece when I can buy a clock just as accurate (if not as steampunky) for ten bucks.

Here is a great blog entry with links to a bunch of places that sell Nixie Tube Clocks:

• If It’s Hip, It’s Here: A Modern Take On Nixie Tube Clocks from BDDW, Chronotronix, Puhlmann and Peter J. Jensen

The neon tubes, when combined with blackened bronze, silver chrome, and stunning woods, become an unusual blend of science and art, making a functional item a pretty piece of home decor.

Here is a video of a clock in action:

If you don’t know what nixie tubes are, here’s a link to Wikipedia:

• Nixie tube – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A nixie tube is an electronic device for displaying numerals or other information. The glass tube contains a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes. In most tubes, the cathodes are shaped like numerals. Applying power to one cathode surrounds it with an orange glow discharge. The tube is filled with a gas at low pressure, usually mostly neon and often a little mercury and/or argon, in a Penning mixture.

Although it resembles a vacuum tube in appearance, its operation does not depend on thermionic emission of electrons from a heated cathode. It is therefore called a cold-cathode tube (a form of gas filled tube), or a variant of neon lamp. Such tubes rarely exceed 40 °C (104 °F) even under the most severe of operating conditions in a room at ambient temperature.

They look awesome and there are less expensive options if you are able to solder electronic kits. For me, I’ll just have to admire them from afar.

Via: The Steampunk Home: More Nixie Tube Clocks

I haven’t upgraded to a Blu-Ray player yet. I have a bunch of DVDs and I honestly can’t tell the difference between HD quality video on DVDs and HD quality video on Blu-Ray players. They look the same to me. Every time I walk into Best Buy, this video screeches and urges me to upgrade.

The problem with this video is that it’s FAR too similar to this one:

Only a few years ago, the movie industry screeched that DVD was the future of entertainment. Now that the future is here, it looks like they’ve changed their minds.

I’m NOT going to upgrade. I want to go on record saying that Blu-Ray is NOT the future of entertainment. The future of entertainment is going to look a lot more like NetFlix’s Instant Play feature on my Xbox than the Blu-Ray player on the shelf at the electronics store.

Quit screeching at me.

Via: Everything Is Terrible!: I’m not convinced…

• Rubbermaid: Making UR stickers so hard to remove is counterproductive. When I can’t remove UR branding, it reminds me how much I hate U. #

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This video from KhenaKara on YouTube caused a bit of a sensation. He appears to be taking a video with his iPhone 3GS when he accidentally drops it into a swimming pool.

His comments were:

Was trying video on my new iPhone 3G S at the pool and dropped it in the pool. Don’t know if it’s waterproof, but it still works fine. I had a few people comment on seeing a strap in the video. I have a rubber cover and had put a strap through the earpiece hole to avoid just this type of thing. I didn’t have it on my wrist at the time, but believe me, I will from now on!!!! Maybe the rubber cover helped with it not getting damaged.

You can see the wrist strap he was talking about at the 43 second mark. Here is a screen shot of it:

The problems with this video is that it wasn’t uploaded directly from the iPhone, so it was played with in iMovie a bit. I import ALL the video I take into iMovie so I can add headlines and other information, so this is very common. Additionally, the strap is something that is rarely included on an iPhone case. Here is KhenaKara’s video showing the case and strap he was using:

It looks like a typical rubber case with a camera strap added to it. I have a Sanyo Xacti E1 that can easily be dropped in the water and survive because it’s made to do that. It’s impossible to tell if he took this video with a waterproof camera and said it was his iPhone, or if he actually dropped his phone in the pool and lived to tell the tale.

What do you think?

Via: Don’t try this at home

Sims always seemed like a strange game to me and I never really liked playing it. Reading this blog, however, makes me interested in the new version of the game, Sims 3.

• Alice and Kev

The premise of the story:

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.

The beginning of the story: Alice and Kev « Alice and Kev

Just wandering around the neighborhood and talking to the various animal characters was my favorite part of playing Animal Crossing. I wonder if Sims 3 is finally a game I could enjoy.

A few months ago, I talked about the Wham-O Fun Fountain. It had been one of our favorite toys of all time.

• Gadgets Page » Retro Gadgets: Fun Fountain by Wham-O

If you are unfamiliar with the toy, here is a commercial describing it:

With summer finally here, I’m wishing for a Fun Fountain, or something else to cool off my days.

In that entry, I had mentioned that we used the clown hat for every kind of dress up play. After months of searching, I finally found a picture of Stacey, my sister, with the Fun Fountain clown hat on. It was held on her head by some yarn passed through the holes on the sides of the hat where the water splashed out. We had a parade on our street that day, so I dressed up Stacey like a clown. She looks adorable, doesn’t she? (Click on the photo to see it full size)

It’s funny how versatile toys can be. I don’t think the Wham-O people ever thought that we would be using their toy all year round for sprinkler fun AND dress up play. The same toy can function in many different aspects of our play life, none of which were conceived of by the manufacturer.

We make our gadgets our own by the way that we use them, with or without the permission of the manufacturer.

Matthew Strebe’s Review:

The SKYLaser 125mW high-powered green laser is a fairly large sized laser pointer that uses an extremely high power green laser. How powerful is it?

In my testing, it’s powerful enough to:

• Cause temporary blind spots (dazzling) from the reflection. Do not point it at reflective surfaces. The FDA certifies that it is not powerful enough to cause permanent eye damage.
• See the beam. Yes, you can see the beam indoors and outdoors at night, not just the spot.
• Point to items outdoors in broad daylight that are kilometers away.
• See the spot on low clouds.
• Point the beam to stars and other astronomy.
• Damage itself if used for more than 100 seconds per burst.
• Scare away that damned crow from the power pole outside my bedroom.

The big question a reviewer has to ask, especially when they like a gadget, is why someone would buy it. Now, there’s a significant portion of gadget’s page readers who don’t need a reason to buy a high-powered laser, they only to know where to get a matching shark. But for you practical folk, here are the legal uses I’ve come up with:

• Outdoor guides, scoutmasters, and birders who want to point out plants or wildlife in broad daylight.
• Astronomy buffs who want to dazzle other astronomy buffs with their ability to point out specific stars.
• Safely scaring away birds and wild or feral animals away from a distance.

I came up with a much longer list of illegal uses, but I won’t repeat those here.

To be frank, high-powered lasers are marketed to people who need a reason not to buy them, and if you’re in that group, this is definitely the laser for you.

The laser also has a low power mode for boring things like PowerPoint presentations. $299 from Skylasers.com.

Laura Moncur’s Review:

When Mike and I tested the SKYLaser high-powered green laser, we could only think of testing it with our cat. He he enjoyed it greatly, but we were scared of blinding him, so we only let him play a little bit.

This is a VERY bright laser. Not only can you see the laser point, you can see the beam.

Warning: This laser is freakishly bright and can put a burn mark on your eyes if you look at it too much. I’m not talking turning the laser on your eyes. If you look at the laser point on the wall, you will have an afterimage on your eyes for a LONG time (several hours). It also can burn your skin if it is held in one place too long. It’s intense enough to pop balloons.

It’s intense enough to melt a credit card.

Additionally, it is a Federal offense in the U.S. to shine a laser pointer like this at an aircraft and illegal to shine at drivers of cars in some states.

So BE CAREFUL!