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I don’t care for tea. Think it’s awful stuff. I like coffee. I don’t like people who like coffee. Half the time, they’re drinking big bowls of milk like they’re some sort of human-shaped, baby-man-cat. The other half, they’re talking all this fancy bullshit about roasts and beans and people working in fields. It’s just a fucking cup of coffee. When did everyone turn into such a bloody connoisseur about things that cost a couple bucks a cup in a restaurant and you can get a pound of for like eight dollars? We’re not exactly talking cocaine here. And it’s not even like these people actually have any idea what they’re talking about. They’re just making the shit up. Trying to get  laid, I assume, but who ever got laid by showing off their great taste in coffee? And then you see them there, sniffing their nice cup of coffee like it’s the best thing ever. Only thing you should ever sniff like that is a pussy. These fucking idiots are out of their mind. Cause there’s only like two types of coffee anyway. There’s “Hey this is a good cup of coffee” and then there’s “This shit is weak.” That’s it. That’s all you need to know about coffee. Good or weak. Me? I like black coffee. Sometimes with some sugar but usually not. Same goes with cream. I don’t even mind instant. Makes me feel kinda cracked out but it also reminds me of camping.

Anyway, here’s a robot tea infuser for you tea enthusiasts.

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With death comes the peculiar experience of seeing a person’s possessions detached from their owner. They’re like orphans.

This sewing machine belonged to Nan and has now been passed down to me. She used it to mend and alter our clothes.

Although it’s around a hundred years old, it’s still in working order.

A video of the same model is below.

I plan to use it for sock-darning and other routine tasks. Nan always preferred people to “get some use” out of their things. It’s an opinion I share.

I know nothing of how she came into this machine. Given its age and cost, I assume that it was passed to her from her family. It’s one of those things that I never thought to ask. This machine was such a fixture, sitting at the little sewing station in her kitchen, that I rarely thought about it.

I wish I knew the story behind it. I doubt I ever will.

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Based on Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, this melting clock rests on your shelf and costs $13.49.

But, if you’re looking to give your home or office a surrealist look, you might be better off stuffing a peacock into a birdcage and feeding it methamphetamine.

It’s interesting to see objects that were once dreams become art and then simple household appliances. Makes me think that my toaster might one day look like a giant cucumber penetrating a blooming flower held by my mother who has a pelican head.

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This little device combined three weapons: Knife, knuckleduster and pepperbox pistol.

Easily concealed in a pocket, this weapon was for close combat. Pepperbox pistols are only effective at point blank range. Though pepperbox pistols were mainly meant for civilian self-defense, this one was more likely for civilian offence. It was popular with French muggers.

It’s named for the Belle Époque street gang, Les Apaches, who were famed for their savagery and feared by the bourgeois middle class.

This gang also had an Apache Dance that acted out a fight between a man and a woman. (Most likely a pimp and a hooker.) My wife and I often perform a variant of this. Our version, however, lacks music.

Continue reading »]]> Being written in 1998, David Brin’s The Transparent Society might be a bit dated or maybe it’s more relevant than ever.  The basic idea of the book was that people had to accept the death of privacy, which probably never really existed anyway, and decide between a world where everyone and everything was under surveillance or one in which the powers that be had the right to watch everything while not allowing anyone to watch them.  As Brin framed it, the issue was not so much whether you were going to be watched but by who and whether you could watch back.

Since I’m not quite sure what year it is now and am too lazy to look it up, let’s just say we fast-forward to whatever year this is.  And here, in this strange present day, we see LOOXIE introducing a wearable bluetooth camcorder that records everything you see.  Should you want to save something, you hit a button and it stores the last 30 seconds.

This is reminiscent of the personal black boxes and alibi archive in Robert J. Sawyer’s Hominid’s trilogy.  These little devices kept tabs on you and, should you be accused of a crime, could act as your defense or convict you.

I like techs like this but also like fair play.  Until POTUS, the police and the mayor are wearing one, I’m not sure what I’d gain by recording everything I do.  Like everyone else, I probably break ten laws a day without even thinking about it or hurting a single person.  Until these techs are used by the top as well as the middle and the bottom, forcing our legal system to become based on something like reality as opposed to arbitrary enforcement, they’re quite dangerous. Even more so if guilt becomes assumed because you choose not to wear one, turned yours off or had it turned off for you by the city’s finest.

But who knows?  Maybe one thing forces the other and we’ll start to see political campaigns based on “My opponent has no Looxie and what are they hiding?”  For now, however, I have little interest in clipping a mechanical snitch to my ear.

Continue reading »]]> Japanese artist Mio I-zawa has created a fleshy umbilical charger for the iPhone.  It makes sucking noises, twitches and looks alive.

This recalls her other work, like the mechanical tumor (video below) that pulsates with  CPU usage.

Some people consider this stuff “gross.”  But a lot of tech blogging is the expression of infantile feelings about some product.  That robot is creepy! and This new thing by those benevolent nuts at DARPA is really NEAT-O! being the most popular sentiments. It’s nice to see that “gross” is about to enter the lexicon.  God knows, tech bloggers should sound more like little girls being chased about with worms.

I’ll try to elevate the discussion to the adolescent.  This is product is, as Rudy Rucker might say, gnarly.  Steampunk is so played out.  Let the biofunk begin.

Continue reading »]]> In 2006 I posted about an interesting new tech that printed bacon using a simple inkjet printer.  It’s now 2010 and printable food is well on its way to becoming a product.  Allow me to introduce the Digital Fabricator by MIT.

Welcome to The Jetsons, bitches.

The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients. Its cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate food combinations with sub-millimeter precision. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by the Fabricator’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but, through a touch-screen interface and web connectivity, also allows users to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

While this is still “conceptual” (meaning it’s not for you and me) both Philips and Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are working on making it into a product.

I’m looking forward to a few things here, not the least of which is printable food.

1. Various copyright fights from cookbook manufacturers.  How will the Julia Child estate feel about her recipes being copied and used?  Will Apple produce its own digital fabricator and then charge people for recipes at their iFood store?  If they do, I bet the Macheads still worship Jobs and figure he’s doing them a favor.

2.  Clever people figuring out how to use this device to manufacture explosives and drugs then sharing those recipes and modifications online.  The anarchist cookbook might have a much more literal meaning.

3. Computer viruses that infect your fabricator and creates food that will get you high or poison you.  This might be that hippie dream of spiking the water supply come true.

4.  Massive government bailouts to help suddenly unemployed farm animals.

5. Foursquare of Food — “I just cooked bacon and eggs.”  ”I am now the mayor of chocolate.” — and the amazing obesity that such competition will engender.

The future looks bright, friends.

Continue reading »]]> I have some pretty clever comrades.

One of these, an incomparable chap who probably doesn’t want his name used, has long collected my empty pipe tobacco tins in order to repurpose them into various electronic devices – most of which have something to do with music.  A while ago, he hosted a little workshop where he taught a few people how to make such things.  I only recently got a look at one of the devices.

Ian Blurton's "Big Muff"

This is a Big Muff made by Ian Blurton (iconic musician/producer and notorious gear hound)   out of an old tin of Symphony Pipe Tobacco.  This blend is not in my regular rotation and I can’t remember how it tasted.  I’ve also never heard how this device sounds.  All I really know is that it has a funny name.  (VAGINA!)

But it’s nice to see these tins put to some use.  They always seem too nice to toss out.

Continue reading »]]> I had high hopes for steampunk.  By combining the technological with the hand-crafted, it might have carved a path into a pleasant future.   It circled back into the Victorian era but even that was forgiveable.  Sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward.  Steampunk, I thought, just needs to mature.  But, like all high hopes, mine are proving to be wrong.

As evidenced by this phone, it’s just a cumbersome and ridiculous affectation.  It’s an aesthetic done by rote.  A geekish dogma.   It serves no purpose other than to make something “steampunk.”  It’s aesthetic does not emerge organically from the logic of its function.  Instead it’s just pasted on top of something else.  It’s just copper bullshit.

When I look at the phone, I cannot think of a single way that all that effort has improved the device.  It’s made it heavier, larger and clunkier.  The thing is not better.  The phone has just become a weapon in  identity politics, an assertion of tribal loyalty to the cost of function.  “I’m a steampunk,” it screams.  “Pity me!”

Beauty always emerges from function.  A bird’s plumage or the shape of tiger is striking because it is efficient.  This phone is an ugly contraption and too crude a flag to wave.  And this is what steampunk has become.

These problems were once forgiveable as growing pains.  But steampunk has had time to grow.  Now it’s like a twenty year old with the mind of a two year old.   Its retardation is cause for concern.