A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

Since I am semi-retired from Halloween prop-building (tho I still have 2 storage pods full of gear if anyone wants to buy some skeletons, tombstones, etc…) I have not been buying as many tools and workbench gadgets as I used to. If I was buying, I’d be trying these out:

• Planet Pocket Tool — small handmade tools with an arty bent. I never have time to follow the site and get in on the deals.
• Grabber. indispensable for fat-fingered guys like me.
• Fathead tweezers. ANother very nicely machined tool.
• Blackfire flashlight. Always need a clampy light.
• Cubify. I would LOVE to have a cost effective 3d printer.
• Inpection Camera. OK no real use for this but isn’t it cool? I am sure I could justify somehow.

• Photo Lens Burrito Wrap. Seems awesome.

Seriously, who would not want a Lava heater? I am ready to order one today.

Contrast with the “Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch”, Samsung’s latest phone. How stupid a name is this? Do they seriously think this will have lasting impact in the market? What will they call an upgraded version some day? Will they increment the S or the II or the Epic or the 4G or will they just abandon this?

I’m no product naming expert, I used to excuse myself from all naming discussions while at Microsoft since it always felt like a discussion of how many angels on the head of a pin. Ultimately good products can overcome bad names, and bad products aren’t helped by clever names. But I admire cleanliness and simplicity in names, and the Lava name is simple, evocative, and to the point. The Samsung name is ridiculous.

UPDATE: a smart guy informs me that the Samsung name of the phone is the Galaxy S II. A little long but not egregious. It is Sprint that has slapped on the “Epic 4G Touch” modifier and Sprint deserves the blame. Pro tip: if you include “epic” in the name, pretty much guarantees the offering is not epic.

Sony has a new e-reader out and it seems to be very nice hardware, I’d love to buy one. Let me check out their reader store and see what their book inventory looks like these days:

Oh. And this kind of sums up Sony’s strategy. Nicely designed premium hardware, but off in their own software and service planet, which is not well executed. I’ve tried to give Sony the benefit of the doubt — I owned the first Sony Reader back in 2007 — but they have failed to act on the big picture here. A big part of the Kindle’s awesomeness is the great store backend, the seamless download experience with the store, and the availability of Kindle software on every device on the planet so that I can read my purchases on my PC, my Mac, my phone, my Kindle, my iPad, on the web, pretty much anywhere. Sony totally whiffs on this total experience. It is kind of sad because I would love to see a first rate competitor to the Kindle, and Sony has some great assets to bring to bear — retail stores, solid hardware design skills.

In the long run, Amazon wants to sell digital goods, Sony wants to make great devices — I have to wonder why Sony doesn’t abase themselves, drop their own store, let Amazon run the backend for the Sony device, and make the Reader the best Kindle-compatible device in the world. Any other strategy just seems pointless.

I love the fact that my Beats earbuds never tangle in my pocket due to their ribbon cable design. Ok they tangle a little but like one millionth the tangle frustration of typical buds. 

But dammit, the in-ear gel plugs pop off constantly and get lost. 

Speculation: the tangling of the cord actually protects and secures the removable gel plugs. Mathematicians, get on this one. (Or alternatively – the gel plugs actually attract the cable and encourage tangling, this seems less likely.)

And if so, then earbuds actually conform to a universal law. The sum of tangle frustration and lost plug frustration is constant. The greater the tangling, the less likely you are to lose the plugs. The more plugs you lose, the less tangling you get. 

Insert Disneynature Ocean Blu-Ray disc into PS3. ”Oh your Blu-Ray player encryption keys are out of date, you must download an update”.

Spend 5 minutes wandering through obtuse PS3 menus to find the system update choice, “Oh your network connection isn’t working”.

Spend more time figuring out where and how to config the PS3 wireless connection.

Download the update, reboot the PS3, and bam all my bluetooth PS3 controllers quit working. Go find the right USB cable and remember how to plug in a PS3 controller.

Complete the update. Thankfully bluetooth controllers come back to life and disc now plays.

20 minutes, incredibly obtuse messages, just to play a movie. What do regular humans do? Obviously they don’t play Blu-Ray discs in PS3s.

Today’s example of design gone astray — the ostrich nap pillow

I don’t need or want any of this stuff actually but am drawn to all of it…

• Car map light. Ok who looks at maps anymore, but this is nicely designed!
• Multimeter Clock. Love the reuse of old tech here. Wish I had the skill/vision to create things like this.
• Carol Kipling Plates. Love the platter but $2800 is steep…
• 14 wheel skateboard so I can suck at skateboarding 3.5 times as much.
• Tourbillon vase — awesome organic-looking glass.
• Urban Balance Wave Hammock — can this possibly be stable? But cool.
• Designer Scrabble I love board games and I love nicely crafted items. I have a great cribbage board, would love to buy great boards for other games — Catan, TIcket to Ride, etc.
• LaserPegs. Lasers make everything better, including construction blocks.
• Freesia Book Stands — these look awesome, seems like a great item to have.
• Chemically Accurate Crayons. OK these are just labels you stick on crayons you buy, so kind of dorky, but I love the idea. “Could you please pass me the Yttrium Oxide crayon”?

No way your father has any of these…

• LED showerhead with remote control. Wrong on so many levels.
• Barking USB Dog. Just because you can make something, doesn’t mean you should.
• RoadKill Rug. High fashion in parts of West Virginia.
• DIY Liquid Nitrogen Generator. A thousand and one uses.
• The Thing Quarterly. No need to pick out an unusual useless trinket for your dad, let The Thing send him one regularly.
• Screw the Weber grill, get him a Fuego modular outdoor kitchen

Some smart guys have noticed that internally, the iPad looks more like a battery with a computer than a computer with a battery. This is a pretty fundamental point.

I remember back in my first job, working on automotive electronics strategies, someone asked me “how small can a CD player be” and to me it was clear — size would be dominated by the media and the controls, not by the internal electronics.

When we started buying PCs and TVs and cellphones and other gadgets, their sizes were dominated by internal considerations — tubes and motherboards and drives and power supplies and electronics and antennas and all kinds of crud. And we are still in the last stages of this — desktop computers are still big boxy things, many laptops are big chunky things. But thanks to Moore’s law, the electronics are in the last stages of disappearing, and with them the big clunky power supplies, and awkward big antennas, spinning disks, etc. The gadgets we carry will have their sizes driven by human interaction needs, and those damn batteries (getting batteries down in size/weight is a hard problem).

Which is why I think questions like “Which will win, the Kindle or iPad”, or “Will the iPad replace notebooks” are ultimately not very interesting. When gadgets all are lightweight and no bigger than they have to be, and electronics are basically free, and connectivity is ubiquitous, you’ll carry all kinds of these things around or have them in your house and not worry about it, just like we never worried about books vs magazines vs newspapers.

• Magimix Vision Toaster. Our current toaster works just fine but this one just looks so awesome.
• Wood Alarm Clock. I hate your typical alarm clock, this is pretty atypical.
• Magisso Cake Server. Don’t make that many cakes but this is a reason to start.
• Shattered Glass Table is awesome looking. Sign me up.
• Suitcase Chairs. Don’t love this color but love the idea.
• Found lumber staircase. There is something about this I love.
• Canisters. Ok what I really want is the indestructible French press mentioned.
• Glass pendant lamp. Dust will make me regret this but it looks awesome
• Canvas Clock. I think everyone else in the household might barf on this one.
• Flask salt/pepper shakers. No idea if functional, but nice looking.

• Solar coasters. Uber-dorky but I still think fun
• Curvaceous bookshelves. I suspect these might look a lot worse when filled. But still admirable.
• Sled chair. Blast back to the 60s.
• Glass decanters. Sucker for all things glass. In another life I would have been a glass-blower.
• Battery powered lamps. Gorgeous.

• Toshiba Escargot Vacuum. Japan only, boo hoo.
• The Storyboard book. Very nice.
• See-through sink trap. Not clear that I want to see what is in there but still a cool idea…
• Design plate challenge. Great looking plates…
• Wireless HDMI. Way too expensive, and hate the resolution limit.

• Awesome Studio Mango rugs. Love the asymmetry.
• Hometown Jigsaw Puzzle. Would order one but 2-3 weeks for production…
• Compartes Chocolates. Not really a chocolate fan but these are just so great looking…
• Blue shift bumper sticker. Geek humour.
• Tyler Cowen’s book list. His recos have a high hit rate.
• Pocket Ref book. If Kurt recos, it will be good.
• 3d power plug. Doesn’t exist but if it did…
• Cole-Bar Hammer. OK I only drive about 30 nails a year but still this looks like a winner.
• LED Bed. Looks like effective birth control to me.
• Motif cube. Looks puzzle-ish but isn’t.
• Power Plug with USB. Way underpriced.

• Terry Tao math blog. Brain stretching.
• How Goldman profited on housing crash. Don’t know how reliable this source is but disturbing.
• Controversy about whether there is or is not a giant magma chamber under the state of Washington.  Probably not but a great disaster movie in the making.
• Thread on design versus iteration.
• Automated sports writing. Amazingly readable. (Thanks Phil).
• The Billion Dollar Gram. Another one via Phil.
• Gravitational Corridors. Cool.
• Nowhere are we more honest than the search box.
• NASA dollars pissed away on 2012 nutballs
• Why it is harder than ever to get into some colleges. Interesting question about whether this applies to other markets.

• Kinetic wood sculptures. No idea what I’d do with but admire the artist (via Grimvisions)
• Secret Knock Detecting Doorlock. No sillier than any other door unlocking scheme we use.
• Bendywood. The perfect building material. For Gumby.
• Ceramic Speakers.
• Dinner set Lamp. OK this one I really secretly want.
• Revomaze. Because life is too simple and easy to manage.
• Bendit Bookends. Tho my Kindle is decimating my future bookshelf needs.
• Snowing Photo Frame. Where’s the “Make Me Look Thinner Photo Frame”, that thing would sell a bundle
• Wood shavings table. Awesome looking.

• Fold out shelving system. Wow this is just awesome looking.
• Kurt’s key list of propbuilding tools.
• Rich and Bob’s Tripod reco — Gitzo1541T and the Really Right Stuff BH-40LR. I actually need this.
• Hangman light. Awesome tho I think the rest of the family might object.

Remember the Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story?

• USB Aroma Diffuser/Hub/Moodlight — good to see that the tech industry inventive spirit remains alive, with products like this the US economy will remain a juggernaut for years to come.
• Paperclip Lamp. I bet it breaks if you adjust it too many times.
• GSelect. A whole site of overdesigned stuff that I should probably avoid.
• Infinite Attic. To store all the crap I shouldn’t have bought. Sadly I could really use this…

• Possibly the most ill-considered travel item ever — those TSA agents love a good joke. Ha ha ha, strip your clothes off sir.
• Vex robotic kit. Never had robot love, but if i did…
• Sticky tripod. No idea why but seems like I should have in my camera kit.
• I don’t know why I don’t have an eye-fi yet.
• Cooling bandanna. At less than $2 I should certainly get
• Dramm fogg-it hose nozzle. Doesn’t the name sound like a spoonerized curse phrase?
• Dynomighty wallet. If they had a buckeye one i’d be there
• Digital rachet wrench. Seems like a horrible idea.
• Traverse switchplates. Nice, I hate generic plastic switchplates.

• My Favorite Things Mars. Amusing and entertaining
• Why Nokia and Sony are failing. Succinct. Complexity is a killer.
• Inflatable buttons. Cool, not sure practical.
• Computer Hardware Chart. Periodic table of connectors
• W* house. Your portal for great looking expensive sh$t.
• Ford developing laser ignition. Nice, car engines with laser beams!
• WarrantyElephant. Idea is promising but site useless. I need something that will automatically find the warranty policy for my products and summarize my rights for me — without me having to punch in the data myself. IE something akin to ManualsOnline but for warranty info

Rich points out that we may have some progress on using micro-usb as a universal device connector. That would be awesome. I carry the most disastrous bag of wallwarts and cables now to keep everything going.

On the other hand, a new connector type for HDMI is coming. Sigh. The A/V connector/cable world remains a disaster.

Many good refs on the net for cable and connector types. Just discovered Hardware Book for instance.