The Gadgets Page

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As if Vibrating Mascara wasn’t enough, now Dior has “blessed” us with their “Magic Wand” for their Lip Addict lip gloss. The Magic Wand is a spinning wand that helps you apply your lip gloss.

The Lip Addict lip glosses used to have a brush to apply the gloss, but the Magic Wand is a doe foot sponge. I personally prefer the doe foot sponge for lip gloss, but there seems to be a bit of a controversy in the makeup world split along the lines of brushes versus sponge applicators. Dior is taking a risk of losing their faithful brush customers by switching to the doe foot sponge.

The Lip Addict glosses have always cost between $27 and $30 depending on where you shop and Dior hasn’t changed the price since they have added the amazing spinning Magic Wand. This merely seems like a marketing ploy to get people interested in buying their lip gloss and be willing to fork out thirty bucks for it.

When I tried the original Lip Addict at the Sephora store, I wasn’t impressed enough to spend thirty dollars on it. It reminded me of Wet and Wild lip gloss, except they had a brush instead of a sponge applicator. I can buy Wet and Wild lip gloss at any drug store for two bucks, so it felt like I would be paying an extra 27 dollars for the Dior name and a floppy plastic bristled brush. Both brands use numbers to name their colors instead of names. Both brands have a lip gloss that feels about the same. Why is Dior’s so much more expensive?

Now that they’ve added batteries and gadgetry, does the Dior price tag fit? For me? No.

I DON’T want makeup applicators that vibrate or spin. It’s hard enough for me to put on lip gloss without having to navigate the difficulties of moving parts as well. I wasn’t willing to spend thirty bucks for two dollars worth of lip gloss before and I’m even LESS inclined to do so with a spinning Magic Wand thwarting my early morning routine.

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When we visited my grandma in Wisconsin, Stacey and I were enthralled with her automatic card shuffler. We found it in the hall closet of her house. It was a gadget that she had bought long before and never used anymore. It looked exactly like the one in this video, right down the the gold foil and imprints of the card suits on the side.

What is missing from this video is the sound of two girls laughing hysterically each time it shuffled the cards. I think Stacey was three years old that trip and I would put the cards in machine and let her push the button. She would squeal and laugh, which would make me laugh.

We were a family that played ALOT of pinochle, so Stacey and I were able to shuffle cards by hand from the age of five, so the idea of a machine to shuffle cards was funny to us. It was so much easier for me to shuffle the cards WITHOUT the machine, that it seemed like such a fantastical gadget to even exist.

Card shufflers are still made and sold today and look remarkably similar. Here is one made by Bicycle:

• Bicycle Automatic Card Shuffler at Amazon.com

For a little over ten dollars, you can get a machine that doesn’t actually shuffle cards any better than you could do yourself by hand. In fact, the shuffler was so exact that it just took one card from each side of the machine. The randomness of hand shuffling is actually BETTER for mixing up the cards, and my hands don’t require batteries.

If you need to entertain two young girls, however, the automatic card shuffler just might be the trick.

A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I went on a trip to Yellowstone. We stayed in West Yellowstone, and some of the hotels there were quite old. I snapped a photo of an old motel sign, advertising that every room had a color television by RCA.

This is not a unique sign. If you do a simple search on Flickr, you’ll find hundreds of hotel signs with the same RCA advertisement.

• Flickr Search: Color TV by RCA

These signs must have subsidized hotels somehow. Did RCA provide free or discounted television sets to motels that proudly displayed these signs? Maybe the hotel owners actually had to PAY to advertise for RCA just to compete. In the Fifties and Sixties, families saw the U.S.A. in their Chevrolets and they all had to sleep somewhere. Holiday Inn had first dibs, but I’m sure a hotel with the sign, “Color TV by RCA” was a good second choice.

Now, hotels and motels are quick to announce that they have free wi-fi or free high speed Internet. They are doing the same thing as they did fifty years ago to compete, just using a different gadget. When you plan your summer trip this year, remember the Color TV by RCA sign and laugh at the hotels that won’t give you Internet access without charging you ten bucks a day.

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As great as looking at photos on the computer can be, sometimes, I just want to look at pictures in a book. I can sit on the couch with family members and we can turn the pages together instead of crowding around my computer desk and trying to look at the photos together on the screen.

Unibind offers a way for you to make your own books with their MyBook kits:

• Photobook Creator Bundle

Here is a video showing how it works:

It costs $99 for the Photobook Creator and then $19 to $25 dollars for the MyBook kits. After looking at the cost for comparable Blurb and Qoop books, the Unibind system seems like a pretty good deal if you like to make books often (i.e. for each vacation or family event).

The Photobook Creator reminds me of the UniBind Binding Machine that I used when I worked at the engineering firm. It heat up the glue in the UniBind Steelback Spine and make a great book that stayed together. It was a great gadget and we made MANY reports with it, but it cost them a bunch of money just to buy the machine.

Those steelback spines came in a WIDE variety of sizes and we could make reports that held over 350 sheets of paper, but we had to add our own plastic sheets and covers to the reports, whereas the MyBook kits come with what looks like a hard cover book instead. I suspect I could use the smaller spines with the Photobook Creator gadget and that would make it affordable for normal human beings (instead of engineering firms).

I enjoy having a book that I can pull off the shelf and show friends, so I think this would be a good thing for me. It looks like Digital Scrapbooking 101 likes the Unibind system and even has tips on how to get the printing exactly right using the Photobook Creator software.

One thing she didn’t mention is that if you put more sheets of paper than are supposed to go in the book, the papers won’t be bound correctly and the middle sheets will fall out. You MUST follow their guidelines about how many sheets of paper that they can hold, otherwise, you’ll be sorry.

If you notice, she holds the book right on the heating element instead of letting it sit like they show in the official Unibind video. That’s because she has learned, just like we did, that the books MUST be fully on that heating element in order to melt the glue correctly. Otherwise, it just won’t work. At the engineering firm, we were making 10 or 15 books at a time, so we would just put them all in the Unibinder and they would be held upright by the plastic holders on the side. Based on this video, it looks like the Photobook Creator is big enough for the larger steelback spines from UniBind, so I would feel confident in using it for them as well.

Whether you’re creating photo books, reports, or even journals for writing with beautiful pictures, the Unibind system is a great way to make books that stand up to many viewings.

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I love this photo from Darth Bengal.

I can just imagine what was said before the photograph was taken.

Dick and Baby Judy, go over and stand by the new refrigerator. I want to get a picture!

Imagine being so proud of your new fridge that you want to take a photo of it. That’s how it used to be. Maybe they had some old ice box from way back when and when that photo was taken, they were FINALLY able to have a REAL fridge.

A few weeks ago, I retweeted a message in Twitter about unboxing photos. I have never really understood unboxing photos. They are just pictures of someone opening the box to their new toy. What’s the fun in that?

The fun in that is GRATITUDE. When people are so excited about their gadget that they take photos of it while they are taking it out of the box, they are GRATEFUL for the toy they just got. It’s the same reason people take pictures of themselves next to their cars.

This HotPoint Refrigerator was a LOVED gadget. So valued that it was included in the family photos. THAT’S gratitude.

If you haven’t noticed, I love watches and have too many to really keep nearby. My favorites were thrown in a drawer, which made it difficult to find them and easy to scratch their crystals. I decided to create a watch drawer so I could easily store my favorite watches. Here are the results.

This is a fairly easy project and the watch holders can also be used for bracelets. It took me one day to complete the project from start to finish.

Tools and Materials:

• PVC Pipe (cut to the proper length at the home improvement store)
• Foam Pipe Insulation
• Scissors to cut the insulation
• Closet bar holders (one for each watch holder you want)
• Screwdriver with a short handle (to fit in the drawer)
• SHORT screws that will fit in the closet bar holders (the ones that come with them are WAY too long)

Directions:

• Measure the inner width of your drawer so you know the length of PVC pipes you need. Decide how many watch holders you want. I filled my entire drawer with them, but you can a few or many as you want.

• At the home improvement store, buy a length of PVC pipe that is enough for as many watch holders you want. They can cut the pipe for you at the store and I HIGHLY recommend that you use that service. At first, I tried to cut the pipe with a hack saw. It worked, but the edges were so rough that it wasn’t pretty, so I went back to the store and bought some MORE pipe and let them cut it for me. The edges are much cleaner.

• I used 1″ diameter PVC pipe and the corresponding 1″ insulation, which was the perfect diameter for my watches, but you might want a slightly larger diameter if you are a man or prefer your watches to be loose on your wrist.

• The foam pipe insulation should be in the plumbing aisle as well. Choose the insulation that is the same pipe size as your PVC pipe. It is meant to be slit open so it can be fitted over existing piping, but you shouldn’t cut along that mark. If you keep it intact, it will look very nice when it is slid onto the PVC pipe.

• The closet bar holders were in the closet section. You can get them in plastic or wood. Since my PVC pipe was white, the plastic matched very well. The watches aren’t going to be heavy, so you don’t have to worry about getting something that sturdy.

• When I got back home, I cut the foam insulation to be almost as long as the PVC pipe (see photo above) and slid the pre-cut pipes into the insulation.

• Make sure you measure where you’re going to put your watch holders carefully. If you notice, I have an extra hole in my drawer where I screwed up the first time and didn’t leave enough room for the watch holder AND the watch. I measured about an inch below the top of the drawer, so there would be room for the watches to fit when the drawer is closed. If you are going to have more than one watch holder, make sure you leave at least one inch between them as well.

• Attach half of the closet rod holder onto the side of the drawer. I had to buy short screws that would fit in the closet bar holder holes because the ones that came with it were LONG and made to hold up a closet rod, not a light watch holder.

• On the the other side of the drawer, I attached the other closet rod holder. Screwing in the screws was difficult for me because my drawer was so narrow that my normal screwdriver wouldn’t fit. I had to go back to the home improvement store to buy a stubby little screwdriver to use instead.

• Add watches and place the watch holders into the drawer.

This set up has made it SO much easier for me to choose a watch each day. I hope it helps you as well.