A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

• Mitsubishi Ultra Thin Frame Premium Flat Panel TV with Integrated Sound Projector » Coolest Gadgets — cool. I have a discrete sound projector in one room and have been happy with. this is a great way to get surround sound with minimal fuss.
• At the other end of the price spectrum, the Li’l Guppie Multi-tool. I am not sure I actually get much value out of multi-tools but they look cool.
• Realtime power use monitor — this actually seems pretty useful.

Egad 2. I am sure I’ve never had our countertops tested.

We are planning some remodelling and trying to exchange ideas with our designers. I know that the people who design websites for all the furniture industry mean well, and their sites look cool, but they are usability disasters. there is no way to send links back and forth to items we like because all the content is embedded deep in flash animations. KraftMaid Cabinetry, IKEA are great examples — we find a set of cabinets we like, and we have to tell our collaborators to go search for the item themselves. oh and of course there is no search function.

If searchable, linkable, plain old HTML is good enough for Amazon, the number one web retailer, how is it that it isn’t good enough for all the rest of these guys.

Dark Roasted Blend: Disturbing Wiring, Part 4 — we have 5 miles of Cat5 in our house, I can relate

Thrill of the (book <em>and</em> stair) case — cool

Like many people I have a mess of extra cables — displays, ethernet, usb, sound/speaker of many flavors, firewire, etc etc etc.  I used to just keep them in a tangled mess in a drawer.

But I had an unused shoe rack like this one — Chrome Over-the-Door Shoe Rack — it is pretty great for storing cables. Lots of ways to hook them over the shoe holders, easy to keep them organized by type, etc.

eHomeUpgrade | Honeywell Introduces HDMI to Cat5 Converter — maybe the wireless HDMI stuff people are talking about will render this useless, but with 5 miles of cat5e in my house I am always looking for ways to use it up.

• Ping Pong Door ? Coolest Gadgets — just a concept now I guess.
• Another concept — mobile phone/tv remote combo. I love this idea. Not sure I like this particular form factor but the concept is great.
• Response Kettle — cool! The general idea of embedding small amounts of processing power into everyday objects and having them exhibit some behaviour seems fruitful
• Combo spatula tong — OK i really need this

Home Owners Club — wonder if this is worth joining

quick scan of google results –
* Westinghouse 5 Channel Wireless Home Intercom System with Doorbell
* Radio shack unit with telephony interface
* Westinghouse or on amazon (savage customer reviews)
* Doorbell fon units — telephony integrated solution
* a list of units at nextag
* … and at smarthome

• MoCo Loco: Finding Cheska — awesome looking placesettings.
• Ice cream scoops that in theory stay warm and thus scoop better
• Wine ratchet. OK opening wine bottles is not that big a problem but still.

Environmental Home Center, Seattle, green building materials. — “We are your most complete source for green building materials—simply the highest-quality choices with the added benefit of being healthy and resource-efficient”

Nice place. Smallish but a lot of interesting supplies. One wonders if there is not space in the home improvement market for a national Whole-Foods-like play.

Five Plants That Repel Mosquitoes — not a big deal here in Seattle but good to know.

• French Ranges – Lacanche Stoves — beautiful ranges
• Pioneer music tap — in the sonos, slimdevice space
• d3o shock responding polymer — absolutely no need for this but it is cool
• Van Hoy Snap Lock Knife — cool opening mechanism
• Casio Youtube Camera
• Belkin Vision Router — i hate most of the belkin gear i get but this is a nice innovation on your standard ugly router box
• Remote Control Jousting Knights.

Considering a SelectComfort bed — The Fool on SCSS — recent consumer complaints — SCSS financial info

• Unclutterer: Under stairs storage: brilliant — simple but brilliant
• Scuttling spider robot — who wouldn’t want one of these? freaking awesome. the scourge of pets everywhere.
• Hydrodynamic building set — it was a sad day when they took real chemistry sets away from the kids but this looks pretty awesome.
• Capacitive touch everywhere — sure microsoft can give you a table that is a computer, but with this technology you can turn every surface in your house into an active surface.
• The perfect charging station?
• brad likes his reader. OK i actually have one of these. actually broke my first one, it is off getting refurbed now.

• Cymat: Home — metallic foams. Because they just look cool. The resin coated version would be a cool desktop.
• Intensity vacuum. The folding-up-ness is nice.
• Kraft paper sofas. Because no one else will have one. Oh and their felt rocks look cool.
• Floating Jellyfish pool lights
• Highgear adventureplus — all the cool campers will snicker at you
• A finger skateboard game. just strange.
• Wallet optimized for cards. Why more of these don’t exist puzzles me.
• Non contact infrared thermometer. Seems like a totally useless gadget to me. Will go in the drawer with my stud finders.
• Rich on HD camcorders. OK I really need one of these. Really.
• Clamp multimeter. nothing unique here, I just like these.

Hate the feel of softened water. Didn’t really understand the chemistry of water softening until I poked around a little tonight — how does a water softener work, wikipedia topic — apparently water softeners replace the Ca and Mg ions with Na which is less damaging to pipes, etc. But it still makes the water feel slippery.  I’d like something that removes the Ca and Mg and leaves nothing behind. A lot of systems claim to do this, some below:

• Water Softener – Water Filter – Water Softners
• Advanced Water Filters
• GMX – this looks way too low capacity
• The Aquafer
• The ScaleBlaster. Also probably too low capacity but I love the name.

I wonder if any of these work. And are cost effective.

• Roche-Bobois > Contemporary & Modern European Furniture – French Country Furniture — ok their website is a broken disaster, but if you search for the legend bookcase in the contemporary collection, it is a pretty nice bookcase
• A foldable bookshelf that can turn into a bench — great for transporting.
• A bookshelf made of …books. previously blogged but thematic.

Oh and cool book sculptures

Vintage Porch gliders — a childhood memory.