Also awesome, also from ThinkGeek. This one’s $7.99.
Swordid umbrella
The only people almost as cool as ninjas are samurai. So the only thing almost as cool as a killer invisible ninja umbrella is this completely visible samurai sword umbrella. Tokyo Raiders eat your hearts out.
Failblog: Breadmaker fail
A hard day’s work. Still no joy.
Introducing
While playing around with WordPress I’ve created a new account here at nathanintownsville.com – for my lovely wife. Robyn. I don’t know how often she’ll post. If ever. She said she might. But at the very least it’s nice she’s got that option.
Obama: LOL Catz
I hope this sequence of events is true. I really do. Could be the best thing Obama has ever done.
A rivers runs through it
I love the Rivers clothing shop ads. I love how understated they are and how they bag out their own products. Particularly the latest ads for the $3.90 pairs of “Ugly” crocs. The whole family can be ugly together. Brilliant.
Epic fail
A few days ago in my post on coffee snobbery I mentioned that I liked the idea of rewiring my breadmaker so I wasn’t subject to it’s stupid cycles.
I had to wait half an hour for the motor to kick in and spin the beans. Now they won’t spin at all.
It sounded so easy on the website. Just add a wire here, a switch there. It wasn’t. I’ve killed the breadmaker (I think, I’m in the process of rewiring it again).
There was a spark, and a bang as the fuse blew when I turned it on for testing.
My soldering skills aren’t up to scratch and now I’m feeling a little light headed. In a rare moment of wisdom in this little episode I purchased the lead free solder. That could possibly have saved my life.
The breadmaker’s body, when you strip all the plastic off, is quite sharp. I now have cuts on my arms, the back of my hand and a nasty one right on an existing scar on my thumb.
The most annoying thing is the death of the breadmaker. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix it or replace it before the next batch of beans is due to be roasting.
If any of my readers have some electrical expertise and feel like coming around to take a look I’ll make them a coffee.
The best bits – February 7, 2009
Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.
- Fake Plastic Trees: Radiohead Leads the Rock ‘n Roll Green Movement
- #11.5% statistics
- How Starbucks Saved a Man’s Life
More stuff journalists like.
Fired, Divorced, Then Diagnosed with Brain Cancer… so he got a job at Starbucks. See, they’re not all bad. Right?
My Desk
WordPress has a widely reported glitch with third party posting software that strips angled brackets – < – these things – from incoming posts. So you didn’t get to see the photo of my spectacularly messy desk that I used in the test post before. So here it is. In all it’s glory. I can find most things on it when I need to…
Another Test
I’ve changed a setting. I tried showing off my messy desk last time. This time here’s a picture of one of the Townsville weirs (Aplins Weir) from this week.
Dear subscribers
I’m moving my feed over to feedburner. This appears to have broken the old feed.
But here’s a nice little link for you to use to update your feeds.
Not a subscriber? Maybe you should be, try Google Reader. It’s awesome.
Thanks for your patience.
White noise
There’s an odd white space appearing at the top of my blog at the moment. Can anyone else see it, or is it just me. Seem’s it’s working ok in Explorer. It’s just a Firefox thing.
Fixed. Hooray. Now all I need to do is figure out the Livewriter issue.
Now coming to you from Windows, Live
Nope, didn’t work. Let’s try again.
I am Robot
Admit it. You’ve always looked at Dr Evil with envy because of Mini Me. I know I have. A little me running around doing my bidding would be awesome. Especially if the “mini me” was every bit as funny as I am. And if they looked, and sounded, like me that would be extra awesome.
Well, your own army of robot minions is no longer an unattainable dream. Little Island, A Japanese company, is producing them upon request. No idea what it costs though. But here are the specs:
Features:
We produce the Look a Like Doll with the hand making.
The Look a Like Doll is able to make a speech in the person’s voice.
It is possible to talk over from the remote place to
the person who exists completely in front of the Look a Like Doll,
and to monitor it.
It is possible to use it as only LAN cable is connected with
the power cable, and the setting doesn’t exist.
The operation only turns on the power on/off switch and is OK.
Please call when you end, “Shutdown”. ”
Function
Voice recognition
It is possible to operate the Look a Like Doll using Voice recognition.
Voice synthesis
The Look a Like Doll synthesize the person’s voice, and it talks using the voice.
Remote Control
It talks from the destination with the person who exists completely in front of
the Look a Like Doll.
The appearance in the room etc. can be seen.
RSS reading out
The Look a Like Doll will tell you Today’s weather and fortune-telling, etc.
Specifications
☆ Shape
We will make Look a Like Dall for the customer’s hoped design.
The height is about 40cm.
☆ CPU
LX800（500MHz)(AMD Geode)
512MB DDR SDRAM
80GB Solid State Disk
10/100Base-TX Ethernet
☆ Software
WindowsXP（Ｍｉｃｒｏｓｏｆｔ）
ＡｌｉｆｅＥｎｇｉｎｅ
☆ Power Supply
ＡＣ１００－２４０Ｖ １．２Ａ
☆ Others
Camera：0.1M pixel CMOS sensor
Speaker：1W(0.5W+0.5W)(200Hz-20kHz)
World Wide Web
Hate spiders? Don’t go here. Otherwise check out this cool flash demonstration.