Feb 26
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 …
Nov 27
I only rarely smoke from this pipe and never in public. Being large, ostentatious and fragile, I dislike my pipes to upstage me. Plus I’m not even a Sherlock Holmes fan. Like Jesus, he’s a bit of a know-it-all. A friend picked this up for me in Turkey. I had given him money to buy …
Oct 12
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 …
Oct 03
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 …
Sep 27
Few things are as functional as luggage. Unless you have someone to carry it for you, you want it to be as practical as possible. If you have someone to carry it for you, why would you be concerned with how it looks? It’s about as unlikely a target for a Dali-esque makeover as one …
Sep 20
I would claim that I miss getting things by mail but I still get them. Burqas, priest collars, magazine subscriptions and bills all come via the post. As far as personal correspondence, I’ve never received nor sent any of that at any time in my life. So it’s hard to miss it. But I can still appreciate the …
Sep 12
I remember mother sitting at my bedside, telling me stories about animals who needed rescuing and the brave little boy who rescued them. I remember the jungle print wall paper, some poster on my door that had pictures of lions and tigers and elephants. The tagline: “It’s a jungle out there.” I remember the very …
Aug 25
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. The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, …
Jul 03
the art of alex varanese – alt/1977: we are not time travelers. Alex Varanese looks at modern products through a 1977 lens.
