After watching the series finale of Dollhouse (which made me very sad and also a firm believer that Joss Whedon should finally give the Fox Network a huge middle finger) I found this little treasure, which to me would be exactly the kind of tech that would belong in such a dystopian future.
A grenade shaped USB drive!
It’s tiny and malicious looking, and perfect for the nerdy rebel in me that fantasizes about overthrowing the current corporate paradigm that would allow such destructive tech loose on the planet in order to mind control the populace.
Wait. Sorry. Did I get carried away? Man that show was good.
But back to reality here.
Seriously though. Grenade shaped USB drives that can hold up to 8GB of your most important data. I’m sure Topher Brink would approve.
Never thought I’d say this, but, Hitler got it right this time. The iPad is somewhat a disappointment. No camera. No multitasking. No Flash. No Thanks.
Happy New Year to everyone from the folks at GadgetMETER. GadgetMETER is now officially 1 year old and I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in that time.
One of my New Years resolution consists of simplifying my online and offline lifestyle.
Get rid of junk in my house I haven’t used in years
Eat less or no meat.
Reduced the number of RSS subscriptions.
Deactivated my Facebook account. (I’ll talk more about this later).
Discovered http://mnmlist.com and http://minimalmac.com. These are two great websites if you feel you are too distracted with todays bombardment of information.
Run a 10k
Enrolled at UPenn for Graduate School.
De clutter my MacBook desktop and menu bar
Now, if you are wondering how this screenshot is appropriate for this post. Well, I just happen to look at my iPhone at exactly 1/1 11:11pm so I quickly captured it. The background is a picture of Monica Belluci on my jail broken iPhone. Pretty cool huh? It must be a sign because I see it as a way to reset our tech lifestyle and look back at what’s really important: family, friend (true friends, not the persons you don’t know on your Facebook), health, and the environment. Today, we have way too many distractions in our life that really clouds our judgetment on what’s really important. Let’s take time to get rid of online and offline baggage and welcome the New Year!
So I propose this New Years Challenge for you.
Go take a walk.
Meet with a friend for coffee.
Enough with Twitter already. It’s really just for celebrities!
Delete contacts on Facebook you don’t ever engage with. Heck, deactivate your Facebook account like I did!
Delete LinkedIn. Who really uses this anyway?
Stop texting while having lunch or dinner with someone. Enjoy the moment.
Volunteer at a community center or shelter.
Donate to a charity: time, money, clothes, food. It can be anything.
Number 9 on my 12 Things It Would Be Really Cool To Get For Xmas list is probably the most affordable and accessible of all the items I have listed (or plan to list).
It’s the Darth Vadar Breathing Keychain.
For only $12.99 this is a perfect stocking stuffer for any Star Wars fan in your life. And double bonus if they tend to lose their keys a lot (they will be much less likely if something as cool as Darth Vadar’s breathing head is on them).
Number 10 on my list is probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and completely impractical since I still live in an apartment. The Han Solo secret door book case!
See how it works!
The DIY install only cost this individual about $150, not including the Han Frozen-in-Carbonite addition. That will probably cost a pretty penny. But someday, when I have an actual house, this is going high on my list of priorities.
Yesterday I thought I had found the desk of my dreams. But it was not to be since this desk featuring Han Solo frozen in carbonite is just a one off custom job, not ever to be sold commercially to all of us envious Star Wars nerds.
But I have to say, this desk was done right. I especially love the glowing panel legs. I imagine that if Solo had ended up as a prize for the Emperor instead of Jabba, this is exactly what would have been done with him.
The only thing that would make it better would be if the access panels on the front actually came out and acted as drawers (everything for me has to be functional… I don’t know why).
While I was still lusting after the Han Solo desk I came across yet another welcome Star Wars item, though admittedly not on anywhere near as grand a scale (but hey, at least I can actually buy these)…
Star Wars cellphone alert charms! I love phone charms, an obsession I picked up in Japan (those guys are NUTZ with phone charms, seriously). These might be a little too cumbersome to actually connect to your phone, but there are plenty of other places they could go. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
These little light up do-dads respond to frequencies emitted by your cell phone (only for 800-1600 MHz GSM network handsets). So you can leave your phone on silent, in your bag, and these little guys will light up and spin around when it goes off.
Neat. Sadly I don’t think there is one with Boba Fette, but for use uber-nerds there is one with a Dalek!
Can be bought from Thinkgeek.com for about $10, batteries included
I recently came across Soomi Park’s LED Eyelashes on Gizmodo.
Without knowing anything about Ms. Park’s design philosophy it would be easy to dismiss these as just some weird Asian quirky accessory that a niche subculture would wear when going clubbing (think Japanese Ganguro). As several bloggers and commenters have stated, wearing these would be like a special form of torture for the fairer sex. And they would be. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t find a way to design them into one of my own costumes. I could think of at least 2 events a year I could wear these to. As noted on Gizmodo, they are strangely hypnotic.
But then I read this on her website: “Her artwork utilizes the increasing banalization of plastic surgery in many countries around the world, including in Korea.”
I then remembered that the number one form of plastic surgery in Japan and Korea is the kind that makes the eye more round. And these LED Eyelashes very obviously change the shape of the eye, at least to the observer.
So it’s not about fashion. It’s art making a statement. So right on Soomi Park!
Here is a video for your viewing pleasure (note: no need to watch the entire video, it’s awfully long… you’ll get it after the first 30 seconds).
I came across these interesting little guys a few weeks ago. Solar powered water purifiers being used in Osaka Japan to keep the canals clean, as well as the moat around Osaka castle.
Trust me, they need it.
These Solar UFOs have been built by Tokyo-based engineering group NTT Facilities. They pump fresh oxygen into the water and spray clean water out of a nozzle at the top of the craft. They can purify 2400 gallons of water each day.
And at night they are lit up with LEDs. Some people may think they’re an eyesore, but they are way better than brown smelly polluted water.
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