Not to be out shown by the feat of bread in a can, a German company took it upon themselves to deliver the ultimate: Cheeseburger in a can!
Here is an excerpt from a review of said in(di)gestible:
“Never let it be said that we don’t make sacrifices for our readers. Terrible, greasy, wadded sacrifices. When word hit the Internet that a German camping-supplies company was marketing a canned cheeseburger, we were instantly buried under a wave of requests—nay, demands—that we get our hands on one and rate the experience of eating it. The German company doesn’t ship to the U.S., but we paid an embarrassing price for one on eBay, acquired by an American soldier currently stationed at a German military base. (We’re fairly sure it wasn’t smuggled out of the country in a coffin, à la American Gangster, but we aren’t 100 percent positive.) A few days later, we all eagerly gathered around the hot plate in the A.V. Club labs to see whether cheeseburger-in-a-can could possibly be any good.
Answer: no. Oh dear sweet shrieking Lord, no.”
I was unfortunately away on business travel when the big Apple Macworld happened last week. I couldn’t watch the keynote live to get all of the juicy new product information, but Mahalo Daily did a wonderful 60 second wrap-up. Sure, I could go and watch the whole thing off of Apple’s Website, but hey – I got enough catching up to do!
Much post-Christmas shopping was done today. First to Guitar Center where we bought an Alesis MultiMix 8 Firewire mixing board; a new microphone; boom stand; and pop filters. I’ve wanted to buy a “real” mixer since I was a teenager. The closest I had come was a Tascam Porta Two 4 track recorder. I think it has 6 input channels and, of course, records onto 4 tape tracks.
The mixing on the Tascam works well and is pretty inclusive as far as effects loops inputs/outputs and all, but it is a very noisy board. You get extreme hiss (its a tape deck, after all) and so I always wanted a more professional board..
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Enter the Alesis. This is a little thing of beauty. Pots instead of faders, but its got all of the goods, including some decent effects (though I wish it had a noise gate!) and firewire input/output so you can record each discrete channel, as well as the mix simultaneously on a computer. Very snazzy.
After Guitar Center we hit CostCo, and the mall. Picked up some dirt cheap basketball nets from a toy store that was closing down. The shelves were pretty bare, but I had just taken down the half-there basketball net from our hoop last week so I was glad to see something useful there for 40% off.
Finally we did some grocery shopping, then it was time to hook up the mixer, mics, and everything. I found the combination of gear, cables, and positions that worked well just in time for dinner. Just need to make sure the drivers are happy on the Mac and we’re good to go. I can’t wait to do some recording. Perhaps tomorrow.
Sometimes you just have to shake your head. What on earth are these product designers thinking- didn’t somebody stand back and scratch there head and say “well darn- that looks like…… nah!”
From BoingBoing:
Today in my series of photos from my travels: this baby bath on sale at the John Lewis store in London’s Oxford Street. It’s basically a bucket (the instructions refer to it as “womb-shaped”) that you wash your baby in. Seems reasonable, but once you use the enclosed stand, it begins to look a little bit too much like “baby in a blender” for my taste. Link
These snack bowls are an interesting novelty. Sometimes a gimmick or gadget can be a good way to help you start a good habit, like smaller portions when snacking.
From BoingBoing:
Royal VKB’s “Balancing Bowls” are two-sided melanine snack-bowls that rock from side to side, and are balanced to tip over when one side has precisely 100g (or 250g for the large size) worth of nosh loaded into it, providing a built-in snack-measurement system. They also look great! Link
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Nowadays more and more devices are getting RFID tagged. If you have a “badge reader” at work to get into a door, or to log into your computer then you carry one along with you all day. They are now in car keys, passports, and credit cards (FastPay, FastPass, etc).
But they have a dirty little secret. Well, not so secret, but here it is: they can be read by bad guys. And those bad guys don’t have to be within a few inches of you, like the manufacturers would like you to believe.
Given that fact makes a gadget like The Guardian here a nifty idea. The article below explains it better, but basically this doodad will block random attempts by others to read the tags you are carrying around, and gives you the power to decide when your tags will and will not respond to read attempts.
From BoingBoing:
The RFID Guardian project has released the hardware and software schematics for the latest version of its personal RFID firewall. The RFID Guardian is a device that detects all the RFID tags on your person (passport, transit pass, bank-card, toll-card, car keys, etc), and interdicts them so that they can’t answer queries anymore. The Guardian can clone all of these tags, and emit their signal on demand, but unlike a dumb tag, the Guardian only emits when you tell it to, and gives you a central way to set and enforce policy about when you will be identified and by whom.
The new version is completely open, and the relaunched RFID Guardian site includes a wiki, source code repository and bug-tracker. Link (Thanks, Melanie!)
The newly launched Mahalo Daily has a video about Tesla Motor‘s electric sports car. It does 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds; performs the equivalent of 135 MPG; and average cost of power is less that 2 cents per mile; and it charges in 3 hours.
One question I don’t believe she asks is “how much”.. of which the answer is $98k !
These dice belong on the desk of any techie geek. With this handy-dandy PC troubleshooting system, you can give credible recommendations to resolve any computer problem.
From Oh Gizmo!:
If you’re curious, the blue die includes the words Install, New PC, Upgrade, No Idea, Quit and $$. The green die includes Virus, Spyware, Modem, Video, Network and Reboot. And the red die includes Windows, Unix, Linux, Wireless, Wired and Mixed.
To go with our bread in a can last week, here is pancakes in a can! Though, its not “ready to eat” like the bread.
“With its unique, pressurized, patent pending process, Batter Blaster makes organic light and fluffy pancakes and light and crisp waffles in minutes!”
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