RoboTastic

I have been living without a decent pair of sunglasses. I had my previous pair, a nice pair of Bolle glasses, for 5 or 6 years. I was out on a ride and somehow dropped/lost them when I stop for a break. Lesson learned: never stop!

Anyhow after getting stung by a be flying into me while riding, I decided it would be a good idea to get another pair. I got a cheap $5 pair. They only sort of work. They protect my eyes from wind and sun… and flying insects. The problem is that they do nothing to protect against glare. Sometimes the make it tougher to see. You end up seeing a reflection of your eye in the lens. Not so helpful.

I just ordered a pair of Briko sunglasses. Briko is pretty well known for making edgy, top end athletic sunglasses. Sort of like Oakley used to be. Anyhow Nashbar had them on sale for $34, so I couldn’t pass it up. I will report back on how well they work.

Briko Starter Sunglass w/ Thrama HC Active 4000 Lens

Don’t you hate un-level sideburns? Well my “Big Idea” is have a small level built into the head of the razor. You would level the razor and then cut away. Of course you have to make sure you head is level too… can’t solve every problem!

How can you not like this? It is a Japanese wind-up toy that makes music and does a hula dance. There is entire family of these, each is a different instrument. One is a guitar, another is a cymbal. I think they are about as close to the definition of whimsical as you can get. I haven’t gotten one yet, but they are now officially on my list!

Knockman Family ~ $12 kidrobot.com

Are you like to obtain a ninja like death grip… Or be able to open stuck jar lids in order to impress women? Well the Dynaflex Gyro maybe what you are looking for!

This Dynaflex gyro dance on the fine line between a toy and a piece of excersice equipment. It is sort of like carrots… they are fun but they are good for you too! The Dynaflex is a gyro that you have to get going real fast and then try to stabalize. It nothing incrediablly hard to do, but it does leave you feeling like you got a good workout. It is sort of tough to explain but once the gyro is going it will tug and spurt in different directions… And if you got it going quick enough it will do this with a lot of force.

It takes a little bit of skill to get started at first. The trick is to use light flicks of the wrist until you have the gyro up to speed, then you can start throwing it about. Once it gets going it starts to make a fun whirrring sound. I have only had it for a week or so, but I find it is great for taking a break from typing. After a few minutes with the gyro my fingers feel all stretched out and ready to go. Don’t be discourage if you can’t get it going at first, it takes a bit of practice. Well worth it though!

The gyro is a bit pricey, but way more fun that any sort of Ab-sizer or something dumb like that… also probably as effective.

Pro: build up a vise like grip.

Cons: a bit exspensive, takes a little while to figure out how to start.

Dynaflex Pro Plus Gyro ~ $22

A while back I saw this really fun solar plant. It is essentially a glorified, solar powered night-lite. You charge it up during the day in sunlight and then when it gets dark out it will glow. Fun! Right?

Unfortunately it is from Japan and I couldn’t find anywhere to buy it… and even if I could I am guessing it would be rather pricey. Luckily however I managed to stumble across a similar product that is cheap and available… and what is better than that!

The Solar Flower is a lot like the Solar Plant, except it is shaped like a tulip. It has a green bendable stem, which nice because you can aim it towards the sun. In the center of the “flower” is a little solar cell. It charges a battery in the stem. When it gets dark out, there is a little white LED in the flower and the whole things start to glow. The whole thing is quite fun.

Since the flower is frosted, it glows more than shines. It is bright but I wouldn’t go reading any books with it or anything crazy. It is probably enough light to show which a path goes in a garden or something… not quite enough light to disconnect your house from the power grid, in a desperate attempt to stick it to the man.

It is winter right now, we are not getting much light and on top of that it is also cloudy. Even with that the flower still manages to gather enough light to glow for a few hours. On sunny days has glowed for atleast 8 hours… I went to bed before it did.

The Solar Flower comes in 3 different colors, red, white and yellow. Since all the circuitry looks pretty simple, there is a lot of fun hacking that could be had. It would probably be pretty simple to rig up something just like the Solar Plant.

You can get them in a set of 3 from Amazon for about $30… And when you do that I should get a little piece of the action if I setup the link correctly. Also you can buy them individually from a different site, possbily the manufacturer.

3 Solar Flowers: Amazon ~ $30

Other website, about $12 each

Pros:

• Mother Nature makes it glow
• Yet another deliteful reason to replace plants with plastic
• Reduces our dependence on foreign oil

Cons:

• Lets be serious…
• It is a glowing plastic solar powered flower
• If that does not make you giggle this is probably not the right thing for you

Well I got my Kill – A – Watt electricity meter in the mail. It really is a lot of fun… in a nerdy, penny pinching way. It lets you measure two main things, the electricity coming out of the socket and amount being used by a device.

It can tell you the Voltage and Hz of the electricity coming out of the socket. This should tell you the “quality” of the electricity you are getting. It should be around 120 volts and 50/60hz. If it is off from this then various appliance might not work right.

It also tells you how much juice a device is sucking and how much it has used over time. You can look at how many amps or watts a device is using. It also shows the amount of kilowatts it has used and for how long it has been measuring.

So far it seems pretty acurate, I am going to have to play with it a bit more and report back on how much different things use. Off course I am not too smart with this stuff, so I have to figure out what it all really means.

One interesting thing is that all of those black box that you use to charge cell phones and what-not all use power, even if they are not connected to anything. Crazy huh?!? Well stayed tuned for more crazy facts!

Kill – A – Watt: From Amazon ~ $29

Do you lie awake at night wondering how much electricity your TV is using even though it is off? Well if you had the Kill-a-Watt you would be sleeping a little easier at nite. this device monitors how much electritcy an appliance is using. Simply plug something into it and it will tell you how much it is using and how much it has used in the past day, week and month. Also tell it how much you are paying for power and it will compute how much it is costing you to run that stupid soothing waterfall…

Forks are one of those things that you use every day with out thinking about. Really though they are very usaully. There first use is to poke large objects and pick them up. This makes it very easy to pick up large irregular shaped objects. The second function of Forks is to scoop up lots of small objects that would tough to poke and pickup individually.

The only area where a fork could be improved is its ability to pick up liquids. Anything more liquidy than a pudding is difficult to pickup. However trying improve this would reduce its ability to poke things.