Tag: lists

At least ten R2-D2 items you don’t want or need

I don’t really get excited by Star Wars – which is why I mercifully (or mercilessly) flogged off my garage sale haul of Star Wars figurines rather than putting them in a cupboard to look at once every couple of years.

But, I do see weird Star Wars merchandise from time to time as I trawl the internet for blogworthy goodness – to be honest they’ve all fallen into my lap via Google Reader. Now I am collating them for your reading pleasure… in no particular order.

Yes, a Plush robot. Probably life size, but who can tell.


A backpack…

A tissue box cover…


A Pepper Mill…

A pool toy – available in Target apparently…


A USB Hub

A children’s laptop…

An aquarium…

A drink bottle


A Nutcracker…


A USB drive.


An all in one remote controlled media centre, DVD drive and projector

An iPhone controlled life sized robot companion…

May 19, 2009

Card bored?

Business cards are over-rated, well the standard ones are anyway. I get a lot of business cards in the average work month – and most of them are average. And they end up in a bowl on my desk – much like my own in house business card draw, only without prizes. Boring and conservative cards don’t get noticed. They get filed. So a nice card is a nice point of difference.

A while ago I posted 10 novel business cards. Here’s a collection of 100. Most of the ten I posted are there, but there are others that are nice. 90 of them in fact…

May 15, 2009

Invention fail

Being an inventor is such a glamourous career path. Coming up with new and exciting things seems so noble – every one of the products I post here as an inventor or designer.

Sometimes inventions go bad. Sometimes they kill their creator. Here’s a list of people killed by their inventions courtesy of list repository “Listables“…

A couple of my favourite dead inventors…

Franz Reichelt

He invented a parasuit – a parachute in a suit. It didn’t work.

William Bullock
In a bizarre accident, Bullock was killed by his own invention. On April 3, 1867, he was making adjustments to one of his new presses that was being installed for the Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper. Bullock tried to kick a driving belt onto a pulley. His leg was crushed when it became caught in the machine. After a few days, gangrene set in. On April 12, 1867, Bullock died during an operation to amputate the leg.

And now, some of my favourite lists from listables:

List of words you should never, ever say.

Fonts most used by designers.

List of words only journalists use.

List of words containing the letter x.

March 27, 2009

Geek checklist

Continuing the vein of discussion about whether I’m a geek or a nerd (and in fact whether the distinction is necessary) – here’s a list of ten habits of a geek spouse from Wired. And here’s how I fare…
1. Punning.
Guilty as charged. Really, really guilty. I had no idea that this was a geek thing. 1 point.
2. Swearing in Klingon.
Nope. Not interested. Not really interested in sci-fi – but that doesn’t stop me wearing my Star Wars inspired “Milk I am your Father” shirt. 0 points.
3. Weird or over the top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays.
Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I do however celebrate federal budget night with an annual beer and budget celebration featuring only myself (and my wife who is there in presence not spirit). I’ll give myself half a point.
4. Dissecting movies.
I’m not really a movie geek/film buff. In fact I like really stupid movies that would no doubt annoy those who are film geeks. I certainly don’t point out continuity errors or any time a movie breaks natural law. So no points.
5. Wearing obscure geeky t-shirts to “normal places”.
Well yes, I do that. Lots. It shows just how clever you are. If you understand them. It’s like an idiot filter. 1 point.

6. Requiring extra space in the house for geeky things.
Yes. I have a coffee machine that’s more than a metre wide. I have a breadmaker set up on the back patio for roasting coffee, and I have four archaic consoles sitting in our TV unit. 1 point.
7. Geeky toys/decorations can be hard to explain to kids.
Well I don’t have kids. But I can’t imagine explaining why I own a plastic Bob Hawke drink dispenser will be easy. 1 point.
8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in progress.
In the internet age who doesn’t do this? Really? Maybe it is just me. Very, very guilty. Especially when I know I’m right and I’m just doing it to back up my argument. 1 point.
9. Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers.
Well, I actively seek out spoilers at times – just to stay ahead of the curve. But there are times when I guess this could be true. 1/2 a point.
10. Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends.
I guess ripping apart a breadmaker to install a switch bypassing the circuit board is pretty geeky. I like little DIY challenges – like the restoration of my coffee machine. 1 point.

Things aren’t looking so good. Lets count up those points. Drum roll.

6 7 out of 10 by my count. I guess that makes me an annoying geek spouse.

March 22, 2009

Google sets, lets you match stuff on the net, I love it

So many pieces of tennis terminology. Somewhat ironically I could have used Google Sets to generate them if I wasn’t already using it to generate me a list of movies similar to the Godfather, Goodfellas and Scarface. Which it did.

You can make really big lists. It’s fun. And a nice way to find lists of similar stuff.

March 9, 2009

Ten of the best

People who write about successful blogging are almost unanimously in favour of having numeric lists for posts. They’re meant to be good reading and a nice way to encourage brevity.

Here’s my top 1 site for a list of Time Magazine’s “top tens” from 2008.

1. Time’s Top Ten Page.

February 17, 2009

Listmania

I’ve been sharing a lot of lists using Google Reader lately – which means a lot of list links on this ‘ere blog. If you like having all of the good bits of the internet in one place I recommend Alltop – the self described magazine rack of the internet. Sorted by topics, or alphabetically.

January 4, 2009