Offbeat | Gear Diary

A Relevant Thought About ‘Free’

This week we learned that Samsung will be the latest Android licensee paying huge royalties to Microsoft, and a general sense that the final nails in the ‘Android is free’ coffin have been hammered. We also heard the uproar about the Spotify-Facebook linkage, and even though Spotify now has a ‘private listening mode’ they still require a Facebook account and connection. Finally, Facebook itself has gotten criticism for its practice of tracking users even when they are logged out of the service! This is yet another security issue for online services, something I talked about in Invasion of the Super-Cookies….

News & Features

Random Cool Videos: What Your Kids Are Watching On YouTube Today

The title is misleading, since you really never know … but here are three things my kids can’t see to leave alone this week – which I suppose is better than Nyan Cat yet again! First, we have an amazing show of ‘chicken beatboxing’ … which is beatboxing, but with chicken sounds! Yeah … just watch: Next we have a video simply Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom. It is totally stupid, which means you won’t get it out of your head today. Finally … minimalist cartoons that are somehow some of the most amusing stuff middle and high…

News & Features

Random Cool Video: The Imperial March Played on Floppy Disk Drives

Anyone old enough to remember how floppy disk drives had some very characteristic sounds will instant appreciate this video – the Imperial March from Star Wars played on two floppy disks. According to Silent’s official site: How does it work? It’s nothing new and it’s very simple. The sound comes from a magnetic head moved by stepper motor. To make a specific sound, head must be moved with appropriate frequency. FDD has a simple interface – the description may be found for example [ HERE ]. To move the head you need to activate the drive by pulling the DRVSB0…

Great Depression Bread Line, FDR Memorial, Washington D.C., photo taken by Flickr user Damon Green

Editorials

Dear Politicians, It Is Time to Fix This!

photo taken at the FDR Memorial in Washington D.C., by Flickr user Damon Green Let us be perfectly upfront here: this post is overtly political, and we don’t apologize for that fact. It is not Conservative or Liberal or even a Libertarian post. It is overtly political, but it calls out Democrats and Republicans alike. Yes, this post is political, but it is a “people post” because it is talking about our lives, our livelihood, and the American economy. Okay, enough disclaimer. Dan is reading a book called Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. The book starts…

Editorials

Are We Suffering Through An Anti-Intellectualism Backlash?

A few months ago I had started writing up an article called “Study: ‘Being Green’ Isn’t About Saving the Planet, But Pushing an Elitist Agenda” which I will get to shortly … but today there was an article about the “10 Things That Are Killing Indie Music in 2011”. And #1? “Suspicion of intellectualism”. The basis of the argument is that we are at a point where something that seems ‘smart’ shouldn’t be trusted, and should be rejected for being elitist: any semblance of intellectualism — or any divergence from popular opinion, for that matter — tends to get you…

News & Features

TV Goes Back to the Future With Digital Ad Placement

The other night we were watching Castle, and in the show he was signing books – the book was then advertised in a commercial right at the end of the episode! That same night I was playing ‘Stand O’Food 3’ and there was a poster in the office for ‘Supermarket Mania 2’. Neither was obvious or over the top – certainly nothing like the previous evening when we saw a bit of General Hospital with a woman making chocolate milk for a young boy, but saying things like ‘wouldn’t you like some HERSHEY’s chocolate milk? I know when I’m sad…

Editorials, Game Diary

Video Games and Marriage: Game Related Divorce Rampant in Real and Virtual Worlds!

I have no intent to make light of divorce or marriage or anything else related to human relationships – they are tough enough as it is. But recently there have been a couple of reports related to video games and divorce that I found interesting. So let’s dive right in! While just about any hobby involving a significant singular time commitment can cause strain in a marriage – my father and a couple of his friends called themselves ‘quilting widows’, and there are people I work with who go on fishing/hunting/camping weekends, and on and on – it seems that…

News & Features

The Return of Layaway?

About five years ago Wal-mart decided it was no longer going to offer layaway plans. What is layaway? Layaway works by you walking in to the store, picking what you want and going back to a layaway counter and putting a down payment on it. You then have a certain amount of time to pay it off then take it home. If you don’t pay it off, it goes back on the sales floor and you get your money refunded minus a service charge. The great ting is you don’t pay any interest like you do with credit cards….

Reviews

Oberon Designs Women’s Wallet Review

I’m a simple leather wallet type of girl. In fact, I’ve had the same worn men’s wallet from Target for several years. But when I’m out at a business meeting, or at a formal event, it’s not the best image when I reach for my wallet and whip out my Target special. So when Oberon offered me the chance to review their women’s wallet, I jumped. When I opened the package with the wallet, my first thought was that it was almost too nice to take it out of the house. Also, it seemed huge compared to my everyday wallet….

Gear Bits

Not Suitable For Children — Nature’s Porn-y Veggies

A friend sent me this, and it was too awesome not to share. Basically, these are all naturally occurring vegetable shapes, that just, uh, happen to be NSFW. Sarah and I joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) earlier this year, and we’ve really loved getting a box of fresh produce once a week, but now I feel robbed! I honestly don’t think I can include most of the pictures here, so you’ll have to head to Organic Authority to see them all. Just make sure your boss isn’t watching!

Editorials

Faceglat – Sadly, It’s Not Something “The Onion” Invented

There are times when the virtual world seems very real. I know that I consider my fellow writers on Gear Diary my friends, even though all of us have not met in person. But there’s a difference between real and virtual friendships, and I recognize the difference. Apparently, for some very orthodox Jews, there is no difference, and that’s what Faceglat is for. Effectively, it’s a Facebook-style website, but it’s gender-separated. Women and men maintain separate Faceglat areas, just as they would in a real-life gathering. On the surface, it’s not that weird, but if you stop and really think…

News & Features

Should I Just Etch That On A Stone Tablet For You?

Look, I’ve been using a digital calendar exclusively since I bought the HP95LX back more than 20 years ago. I was never the type to carry a DayRunner or other planner, but I had great multi-purpose cases for my Newton, HP200LX, and Palm/Pocket PC devices. So I was bemused at my answer when Dan came to the Gear Diary crew and asked: Do any of you know ANYONE who uses a paper calendar? I ask because my amexcard wrote to offer me a “free” desk and pocket calendar and before I rant I wanted to check if i am offbase….

Editorials, Travel

Lessons Learned from a Week of Road Tripping

Sarah and I have had a busy summer, but the big finale was definitely this past week. We started out Labor Day weekend, where we headed to Virginia, before returning to New Jersey for a day and then heading to Maine for a friend’s wedding. Lots of travel, lots of packing, lots of gear. What did we learn? Read on to see our hard-earned lessons and tips! Technology: Let’s start with travel gear. I opted to travel light to VA since we were driving to Richmond, then Virginia Beach for a race, then back to Richmond and then finally home….

News & Features

Are High-Energy Cartoons Rotting Your Kids’ Brains?

As a child I remember waiting anxiously for Saturday morning to watch cartoons like the Bugs Bunny / Road Runner hour. This (obviously) was well before the era of cartoon-specific channels and 24 hour programming, so our choices were far fewer. Yet even then adults said that watching that stuff was ruining our minds, that the Three Stooges was creating a culture of violence, and that Batman was infusing us with bad pun-filled expressions! According to a report from FOXNews there might be some truth – at least to the thoughts on the impact of cartoons: The problems were seen…

Editorials

After 100 Years, The Art of Steuben Glass Comes Crashing to an End

The image above is from the movie Risky Business. Aside from launching the career of Tom Cruise, there was also a critical plot item: an expensive glass egg on the mantle. That egg was made by the artists of the Steuben Glassworks in Corning NY. This week the parent company Schottenstein announced that Steuben would be closing its doors forever: Glass art manufacturer Steuben Glass Company, which has been based in Corning, N.Y., 37 miles southwest of Ithaca, since 1903, will close in November, parent company Schottenstein Stores Corp. announced Aug. 31 in a press release. “The difficult economy, declining…

Yum Log

Yum Log: Looks Like Candy Grandma Gave You, Tastes Like… Bacon

Have you ever put something in your mouth expecting one flavor and, instead, you get something totally different? Even if the actual flavor isn’t BAD the fact that you were expecting something else results in the taste being, at the minimum, jarring. Well Halloween isn’t THAT far off and these could be part of the fun this year. Here’s the deal with this delicious LOOKING bacon-flavored candy. These red and white striped hard candies look just like the ones that grandma used to put in her fancy candy dish for the holidays. But, my oh my, would grandma be in for…

News & Features

Hey Judie, Your Next Phone Just Called…

Judie, forget about the Vertu you reviewed last June and are using as your daily-driver. Serously, THIS phone makes THAT phone look like… like… a Moto Razr. Behold the Æ+Y PHONE. With a price STARTING at $10,425 it is sure to impress and make pretty much every other phone feel inadequate. No, it doesn’t have the cool concierge service the Vertu offers but hey, with such fine materials, and handcrafted artistry they had to cut corners somewhere. The phone is on pre-order with a gold option also available. As the site explains, Æsir is currently taking pre-orders for the first production quantity…

Editorials

So … When WILL It Be Enough? 4 Year Old With Fake Boobs and Butt on ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’

I have always been appalled by ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’, the ‘reality show’ of the awful and mentally twisted parents and over-indulged babies who are dressed like 18 year old beauty pageant entrants and strutted around on stages. If this is truly where our country is headed, let me off at the next stop! As if it couldn’t get any worse, today in the Daily Mail we hear about a little girl named Maddie: Barely out of nappies, four-year-old Maddy Jackson is already on the road to womanhood. Sporting fake C cup breasts and padding on her bottom, she is the…

Gear Bits

Denny’s Embraces Indulgence, Ignores Health Risks with the ‘Let’s Get Cheesy’ Menu

What would you like for lunch today? How about a full days worth of calories and two days worth of fat? Oh, I know you can easily get that in any ‘glutton burger’ you’ll find around in burger joints looking for a moment of fame on one of the Travel or Cooking network shows … but how about as one of the featured items on Denny’s ‘Let’s Get Cheesy’ campaign? Here is part of the press release: Cheese enthusiasts across the nation are set to rejoice with the launch of Denny’s “Let’s Get Cheesy!” menu. Showing some serious cheese love,…

News & Features

Gaypon: Daily Deals and Giving Back to the Community!

This is such a cool idea, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more “daily deals” type sites trying the Gaypon concept. Basically, they are a regular deals site, but a portion of the proceeds go to gay and lesbian charities, plus the companies featured in the deals are specifically vetted as being gay-friendly. It’s a great bit of niche marketing, and supports some very worthwhile organizations. Here’s a bit more background on Gaypon: Gaypon offers deals, discounts, coupons & special offers from gay friendly businesses that support the LGBT. We make arraignments with businesses that agree to extend special savings to…

News & Features

Chatbots Prove Robots Want intro to Philosophy, Not War

Engadget caught this bizarre and amazing video from some Cornell researchers, who pitted a Chatbot in a conversation with itself. Apparently, all Chatbot wants is to study philosophy! Don’t believe me? Watch the video below, and then check out my commentary showing how the Chatbot(s) just want to talk Plato. Let’s see…the Chatbot(s) start with social contract theory. They exchange pleasantries and indicate an attempt to set rules of engagement so no one gets stabbed in their sleep (do Chatbot(s) sleep?). Then they move on to personal identity theory; what are they? What is a robot? If one Chatbot is…