Archive for Misc & Random
January 13, 2009 at 8:01 am · Filed under Fashion, Misc & Random
Back in the day, tattoos used to be a shocker. If you had a tattoo, you had to be in some biker gang or are living life on the edge. Now, tattoos are just decorative body adornments, much like your favorite shirt. Same with piercings. There was a time when having multiple parts of your face and body pierced made you the coolest, freakiest person in the neighborhood. Now? Pffft. That 15 year old kid down the block just got a bunch of them too.
What hasn’t seemed to catch on to the mainstream set yet are horns and other bodily implants. Right now, it can still feel a little too freaky prancing around the street with bulging Satanic implants looking to break out of your skin. If you truly want to be the coolest freak in your clique, there’s no other way around it – transdermal implants are the way to go.
Ouch The Pain
Transdermal implants will be painful. Even though you’ll be amply anesthetized, you’ll likely still feel some of it, especially after the procedure. Even worse, some implantees have complained of continued pain due to the skin trying to accommodate the implant well after the sutures have healed.
A Part Of You
Horn and spike implants made from teflon and stainless steel are easily removable via another operation should you decide to get rid of them. Coral-based materials, however, are supposed to eventually calcify and become permanent parts of your bone structure.
In The Future
I’m willing to bet good money that in the future, horn and spike implants will be so common we’ll have all sorts of people resembling comic book characters. It wouldn’t be surprising too considering how piercings and tattoos eventually came to be regular, everyday things.
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January 8, 2009 at 7:54 am · Filed under Gadgets, Misc & Random
Steve Jobs is certainly banking it. Between the iPod’s incredible sales and the abundance of licensing deals with manufacturers who all want to produce “Made For iPod” stuff, the guy is probably neck deep in Benjamins.
Everyone wants to make products for iPods. They don’t care what it is. If it’s made for iPod then there’s a ready consumer base they can market to. They don’t care if it even makes sense in the Twilight Zone. If it’s made for iPod, some idiot will probably buy it.
The iPod Door
Well, Gorenje unveiled plans of making a fridge with an iPod Touch dock and speakers. Who the heck would buy this unless it costs the same as a similarly working fridge?
If that thing sells, then a door with an iPod dock and speakers should sell as well. After all, you have doors in your entryway, bedrooms, bathrooms and basement so an iPod dock makes perfect sense!
The iPod TV
“Wow, the TV is boring, turn the iPod on instead.”
Create a big ass flatscreen plasma and outfit it with an iPod dock. I’m sure people will buy it.
The iPod Dog Collar
Hey, I hang out with my dog a lot so he may as well make himself useful and serve as a dock for my iPod so we can have tunes blasting while I’m walking him out for his morning dump .
The iPod Zune
Maybe people will actually buy a Zune if you outfit it with an iPod dock. Microsoft, are you listening?
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January 4, 2009 at 7:44 am · Filed under Misc & Random
Looking for the perfect gift for your cooking-enamored friend? Why, look no further.
The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook is a compelling and, surprisingly, readable guide to cooking insects. Subtitled “33 ways to cook grasshoppers, ants, water bugs, spiders, centipedes, and their kin” with a kooky-looking chef on its cover, it may look like it belongs in the jokes section. The book, however, is deathly serious.
In fact, author David George Gordon contends that eating bugs (which are made up of mostly proteins) is both a healthy food choice and gentle on the earth. A naturalist, Gordon takes advantage of people’s innate aversion to the subject by pulling the reader into a knowledgeable discussion of history, anthropology, science, pop culture and culinary arts.
The recipes are presented in a clear and easy to follow manner with educational tidbits about the history and life of the insects included in the dish. Recipes you are likely to never forget (even if you do decide not to try it) include the Three Bee Salad (bees, what else?), Really Hoppin’ John (grasshoppers) and Fried Green Hornworm. Full-color photos of the delicious-looking dishes adorn each recipe. Additionally, he makes note of insects you want to avoid in your cooking.
To help you out in your newfound culinary specialty, the author compiles a three-page list of suppliers selling edible bugs and insects (both live and ready to cook), tips to catching your own insects for personal consumption and organizations that sponsor events related to eating bugs.
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December 31, 2008 at 7:35 am · Filed under Misc & Random
Pets are cool. But you know what? They litter up the house, they eat like animals and they can be noisy right when you need some rest. Why not opt for a robot pet instead?
Pleo is a one-week old robot baby dinosaur. His lineage is that of the Camarasaurus from the Jurassic era. One of the most advanced robot toys to come out in the last two years, Pleo is an interactive pet that can do more than walk and look cute.
Just like a real pet, Pleo will interact with his masters and respond autonomously to inputs from his environment. He is designed to feel emotions as well as enjoy an active sensory system – he can see, hear, touch and eventually comprehend the world around him. He learns how to walk properly, how to avoid falling over, where to turn when obstacles are in place and many other things simple robots aren’t supposed to be capable of doing.
Consequently, he develops feelings including curiosity, confusion, fear, surprise, sadness and joy. Pleo will respond and attempt to communicate via honks, toots and other sounds. Each Pleo will begin as an infant and grow into his own personality right before your very eyes.
Outfitted with numerous sensors that allow him a remarkable cognitive awareness of his world, Pleo is a marvel in robot design. It will be like having a real pet around, without all the mess. Plus, you can turn him off when he gets a little too hard-headed.
Pleo measures 52.5 cm long, 15 cm wide and 19 cm tall. He weighs a light 4 kilograms.
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December 30, 2008 at 7:34 am · Filed under Misc & Random
Everyone deserves a spa at home. Seriously.
Listening to some soft music while lounging around in warm temperatures with jets of water streaming at you – it’s an experience that can wipe the hassle of the daily grind away.
Installing a full-size hot tub is expensive though. Not to mention all the maintenance cost it entails. For the poverty-stricken among us, however, a solution has been handed down from the graces of God – the Lay-Z-Spa. A fully-functional hot tub that easily seats three people, it is 100% portable and can be set up in as little as 10 minutes. Why spend thousands to install a grandiose unit when you can enjoy the same for cheap – once you’re in the water, it all feels the same anyway.
The Lay-Z-Spa simultaneously heats, filters and circulates the water and can hold up to 230 gallons of it. The unit is very sturdy once inflated – no bending, falling or moving around even when there’s three of you creating a ruckus inside it. It includes an advanced control system to monitor the tub’s vital processes, including temperature and water pressure.
The pump-inflated Lay-Z-Spa measures at 70 cm tall, 200 cm wide and 200 cm diameter. It weighs a mere 40 kilos when deflated and up to 1 metric tonne when filled with water. It comes with its own pump and a soft-locking cover so you can keep it inflated without leaving it a prey for dirt just like a real hot tub. Temperature is adjustable up to 40 degrees celsius.
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December 23, 2008 at 7:18 am · Filed under Artwork & Design, Misc & Random
Death ceremonies are solemn, serious and, usually, lamentable events. After all, it marks the loss of someone who was likely loved by family and friends. The caskets and coffins usually reflect this emotion. Donned in elegant and subdued designs, they mirror the perceived solemnity and sadness of its purpose.
Some people, though, can look at death and not see loss. For individuals who have lived full lives, death can be nothing more than the next phase in their cycle of being. Instead of mourning, they would rather have people celebrating the lives the deceased have lead.
Understandably, then, a few folks just don’t want to settle for the same bland coffin designs to see them through the other side. For those who require a last gift that reflect more of their lives and not their passing, Colourful Coffins provide caskets that are, to put it simply, out of the ordinary.
Their website houses a large gallery of unique coffins with various makes, colors and designs. Many are custom-designed for specific interests and passions. What better way to honor the dead, after all, than to bury them along with what fueled their existence! The numerous design themes available for choosing include:arts and music, floral, wildlife, outdoors, hobbies, sports, patriotism and many more.
Custom coffins can also be designed based on existing models or created totally unique. Living individuals who wish to pick their own burial caskets can pre-order according to their wishes. All purchases, however, should go through funeral directors who will assist the family during the ceremonies to ensure that nothing is mishandled or inappropriately used.
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December 21, 2008 at 7:12 am · Filed under Gadgets, Misc & Random
If you hit the outdoors a lot, keeping an energy source handy can prove vital for both survival (read: lights) and a more comfortable experience (read: cell phone). Disposable batteries can work but could prove costly if you tend to spend much time in the outdoors. Additionally, running out of stock can force you to cut your trip short – a real bummer.
A good idea is to keep a personal power pack, such as Solardyne’s popular Personal Utility Solar Power Pack. Designed for the rugged outdoors enthusiast, it’s a great unit to keep around whether you’re hiking up a trail, camping on an uninhabited beach or backpacking through country roads. It can also prove useful as an emergency power unit at home in case unexpected outages occur.
The Personal Utility Solar Power Pack is a complete set of everything you need to enjoy portable power that’s both effective enough to last you adequate periods of time and light enough (38 lbs) to prove less than difficult to bring along. The whole kit is set up in a backpack that comes with a purchase of the unit.
The setup includes a foldable 22-watt monocrystalline PV panel, battery controller fitted with appropriate charge indicators, sealed battery (maintenance free), inverters, output ports, plugs (various options) and an 8-watt DC lamp. Chances are you can leave some of the parts when actually on the road (save for the ones you need to use) so the 38 lbs can be cut down to less. With all parts in the bag, dimensions are 17.5 inches (height) x 10.5 inches (width) x 10.5 inches (diameter).
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December 20, 2008 at 7:11 am · Filed under Misc & Random
Training dogs is hard enough. In fact, some dogs don’t take too well to instruction and end up just as devoid of any useful tricks as when you started teaching them. Regardless, though, there are always professional dog trainers who are likely more capable that can take your uneducated mutt and teach him a useful skill or two.
But fish?
Aren’t fishes supposed to be dumb with really small brains incapable of registering useful instructions? Apparently, not everybody thinks that.
If you have an aquarium and keep fish for pet, this may be a cool way to spend a lazy afternoon – the R2 Fish Training School Kit. Just like the name suggests, this is a complete set of tools to help you train your fish. Train fish to do what, you may be asking? A wide variety of skills, as it turns out.
Learn how to teach your fish to :
* play American football
* play soccer
* shoot hoops
* limbo rock
* weave through the water
* fetch stuff
* find their way through tubes and tunnels
* and more
How exactly do you do this? We have no idea. But you’re going to learn it because the R2 Fish Training School Kit includes an instructional DVD and a step by step manual to guide through the ordeal. The kit also contains everything you will need for the drills including the R2 Fish School training platform, numerous accessories (basketball rings, tubes, soccer goal, etc), a feeding wand (you’ll most likely feed it after tricks, just like dogs) and a weighted base for bowls and tanks to make the classroom experience much easier.
The tricks, by the way, are designed to be performed by fishes between 1 to 6 inches in length. No, your shark doesn’t qualify. Available from Thinkgeek.
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December 19, 2008 at 7:09 am · Filed under Misc & Random
Richard Linklater’s classic movie Dazed and Confused, despite being a movie frozen in time, continues to speak to the affectations of young people decades beyond its scope. Perhaps that’s what great cinema is about – timeless and forever relevant.
Despite being riddled with stoner adolescents and drunken partying, the film ably brings some profound truths that can tug at your heart. The more the years pass, it seems, the more the years of youthful wonder remain the same.
Taking its cue from the film’s success, the book version of the movie brings 70s youth culture to the forefront. Presented partly as a high school yearbook and partly as a chronicle of the decade’s cultural artifacts, it serves more as a primer to the environment the characters lived in for the fans of today. Despite being a bit corny in parts, the film’s fans should be able to appreciate its merits.
The book begins with an introduction by the director, introducing how the film came about along with his views of the period. It includes a synopsis of all the characters presented like they would appear in a typical yearbook. The main cast members contribute bits and pieces to the tome as well.
While nothing special, the book is a good companion to the movie, especially considering that so many of its fans comprise of younger audiences much removed from the time. This book is also old, by the way, released as a paperback in 1993. It’s currently still available from Amazon.
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December 17, 2008 at 7:01 am · Filed under Misc & Random
Soap is cool. It cleans you up and makes you smell good. Unfortunately, it often gets shared around the house and used to clean other people’s germ-filled bodily crevices. Do you know where your soap has been today?
For instance, say your roommate got up earlier than you and he takes a dump in the toilet. He finishes, tissues up and decides he wants to wash his ass to ensure a maximum clean. He takes the soap from the holder and runs it smack his dirty bottom. Then, being the nice roommate, he puts it back nicely.
Then, you wake up. You hit the toilet and begin your morning ritual. You brush your teeth, shave, then take the same soap your roommate used and lather it all over your face. From his dirty bottom to your ugly mug. Without any idea what the hell just happened.
If you want to avoid all the unintentional consequences of sharing soap with a roommate who wakes up earlier than you and takes a dump every morning, here’s a quick fix and it’s much simpler than you think:
It’s called the Arse/Face Soap. Each side is clearly labeled and colored. Use the dark side for the ass and the white side for the face. This way, you can avoid the torture of realizing that for the last two years you’ve lived together, you’ve been effectively rubbing your face with your roommate’s ass without realizing it. Never unwittingly wash your face with an undesirable part of the soap again. Available from RED5.
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