2009 Gadget Rundown

December 30th, 2009 1 Comment »

Despite me initially thinking this had been a relatively slow year for gadgets, as I look back it seems I have purchased quite a few. There have been a number of none-physical gadgets in the form of software, as well as a record number of feline related ones and gadgets for my family and not me.. so here are my top 5 gadgets of 2009:

#5: Sony PSP-3000
Yup, I gave in a purchased another games console. This one has been very useful in ways I hadn’t considered when I purchased it. Aside from a quick Ridge Racer session to pass 5 minutes now and then, I’ve taken it to Berlin where it acted as a video player. I’ve also put training videos on it to watch so I can do a bit of learning on the go, it can remote control my PS3 allowing me to watch TV using the Sony PlayTV gadget which is nice but doesn’t make the top 5(although there’s issues there I won’t go in to), it works as a Skype phone and is generally quite cool just to hold and look at! The whole thing is protected by the excellent invisibleSHIELD which is the best screen / device protector ever and is highly recommended – it only misses out on the top 5 as it’s a bit boring.

#4: Balance Bike
Poppy absolutely loves her balance bike. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it since I bought it, but she is now able to push herself along at great speed and even lean in to her turns as you would on a proper bike. I don’t think it will be too long before she is able to ride a proper bike – but we’ll give that a little while longer yet.

#3: Sureflap RFID Catflap
Yup, I purchased a cat flap which can read the microchip in the back of my cat’s neck. And it really does work very well. Since I fitted it earlier this year, it is only on it’s second set of batteries so looks like it eats a set every 6 months which is pretty decent. It looks just like a normal cat flap with no sticky-out porch thing like the Pet-Porte cat flap and has prevented other moggies from entering my garage. Sadly my cat still hasn’t got over her little ‘wee’ problem so is banished to the garage until I can work something out, but at least her life is cosy since I gave her the Petnap Heated Cat Bed.

#2: Toyota Celica
Mmmmm, nice shiny silver car with shiny alloys and a nice low profile. Mmmmm. 5 months in to my new 4-wheeled toy and I’m not bored of it yet.

#1: Windows 7
Of course it is… Microsoft Windows 7 is my favourite “gadget” of the year. It’s given my laptop a new lease of life and my desktop an excuse for the 4GB of RAM I wanted. I’ve had next to no issues with it and to coin an Apple phrase… it just works. Coupled with Windows Home Server backing my machines up every night and providing a centralised storage, switching between my Windows 7 machines is seamless – offline files work perfectly for my documents on my laptop, and the integration of Windows Live with my personal domains means I have my very own Windows Live Mail domain integrated with my desktops. Windows 7…. come on you Mac boys, you know you like it really!

So, that’s it. Sadly not quite making the top 5 this year were the practical but boring Enviro-Light LED Spotlight bulbs from last week, Vicky’s Sony Reader Touch which I think is good, but haven’t used it much myself what with it being full of boring old classic novels. The digital Digital Photo Frames I was given for my birthday are still in use – one of which is permanently switched on on my desk at work. The Heatmiser Digital Touchscreen Thermostat is still going and works just fine - I do wish I’d gone for the one which also controls the hot water and expended the effort in extending the wiring for that but never mind, maybe in 2010. Oh yes, and the Steam Powered Wallpaper Remover is in its box in my garage waiting for me to be bothered with decorating the spare room – I’m working on the bathrooms at the moment so the spare room can wait.


The Enviro-Light

December 23rd, 2009 No Comments »

Some of you may already be aware of my light bulb fetish… but it has now progressed to a new level. My first step, a few years ago, was to abolish all standard bulbs and replace them with energy saving equivalents. This was straight forward for most of my fittings, but not so easy for the GU10 spotlights (those are the 50W or 35W halogen spotlights you generally get in your kitchen – see the right-hand bulb in the photo above). My first energy efficient GU10s were daylight bulbs and quite massive – not suitable for putting in a recessed spot fitting in a ceiling as they’d stick out too far, and they took ages to warm up. Once we moved to Wales, our new kitchen needed 6 spotlights all recessed, and running these on 35W would be quite costly. So I invested in some very compact ‘Kosnic’ 7W jobbies, shown as the middle bulb in the above photo. These fit very nicely in the fittings and once warmed up to full brightness (about a minute) give off as much light as normal halogen bulbs do. But… I don’t think they like being turned on and off frequently and one went pop the other day. So I again turned to Google and discovered that LED bulbs are now not too pricey. I went for a couple of Enviro-Light LED bulbs (see the left-hand bulb in the photo) which claim to provide the equivalent light of a 35W bulb but using only 3W. The first impressions are pretty good, you get light instantly when you turn it on so no more waiting for them to warm up to full brightness. Colour-wise, the light it slightly whiter than the Kosnics and the halogens, but only very slightly so – if I had a full ceiling of LED bulbs I don’t reckon I’d notice. They run cool too, no more wasted energy in the form of generated heat. My only issue is their length – they are about 4mm longer than the halogens and the Kosnics so they stick out very slightly from the fitting, but I’m being fussy here more than anything and trying hard to pick fault with them for the sake of trying to find a problem. In all honesty, the real issue most people may have with them is the price at about £12 a bulb… but keep in mind that they should last around 20 years or so – I replaced halogens at least once a year so replacement cost combined with running cost must even out pretty quickly… someone do the maths please? If you’re interested, I got mine from BLT Direct which seem to be the best price around at the moment. So, Dad… guess what I’m bringing with me on Boxing Day for you to test out…..

My first PS3 PPV IPTV experience

December 15th, 2009 No Comments »

Need a translation?? It means that for the first time ever I paid to watch a movie on my PlayStation 3 streamed over the Internet. I mentioned a few weeks back that Sony had opened a movie rental service on their PlayStation store and at the weekend I finally got around to testing it. As it was daytime, and in an attempt to keep Poppy quiet for a few minutes, I opted to rent Disney-Pixar’s Cars in Standard Definition (no HD version available) – rental of this movie was only £2.49. The process was very easy, just select the movie, choose to rent or buy (£11.99 to buy???? too much money in my opinion) then click the download button. After a couple of minutes I got the option to ‘play while downloading’. I left it about 20 minutes to download 15% before I started to play it, just to make sure, but in all honesty I could have clicked play straight away with no issues. Download time on my 3Mbps broadband connection was estimated at 105 minutes, and the film itself was just short of 2 hours long. Poppy’s attention span lasted 45 minutes so it was all irrelevant anyway.

In other news with thanks to my dad for his assistance, I also managed to put the Christmas lights up outside the house which wasn’t as straight forward as I had first intended. Due to various cable slicing incidents this involved a fair amount of re-soldering wires.. but they are up at last. Last night we met Santa as well. He made his annual trip around the village in the back of a pick-up while being followed by every resident capable of walking, and some who weren’t in their electric mobility scooters. Afterwards there were mince pies, mulled wine, and a photo opportunity with Santa (pictures to follow at a later date…).

And in the final news of this blog post, I received the result from my latest Open University course (the hellish exam I took in October) and I passed with a better score than expected giving me (just) a pretty decent overall result for the course. Now… in theory, this means that I am eligible for graduation with a BSc Open degree, but I’m plowing on with one more year of courses (including the two that I’m taking at the moment which finish in a couple of weeks) to gain the final 60 points required to get a BSc (Hons) Open degree. Nearly there then, only almost 10 years after most of my peers!

Lara Croft Way, Derby

December 3rd, 2009 1 Comment »

In their infinite wisdom, Derby City Council have opened up the naming of a new road to the public… and amongst the top 10 suggestions is ‘Lara Croft Way’. Of course I have voted, and when I checked the results, my selected was winning with 97% (over 15000) votes. To place your vote… you CAN make this happen.. go to www.derby.gov.uk and look at the voting panel on the right-hand side labelled ‘What Do You Think?’. The site says: “The top two choices will be used to name the two new stretches of road. Please submit your choice by 31st January 2010.”.

Cold days… warm cats

December 2nd, 2009 3 Comments »

A nice cold start to December yesterday and the first time this Winter I have needed to de-ice the car in the morning. We even put the fire on in the evening. Oh well that means it is time to put the tree and lights up again, it doesn’t seem long ago that I took them down though. Anyway, as I have banished my cat to the garage until I can find a solution to her floor/urination problem I felt a little guilty when I fed her in the mornings and she’d perched herself on top of the boiler feed hot water pipes…. and clawed at them as she stretched. So to save me the job of re-insulating the pipes I have invested in a nice new ca bed for her. Oh ok, being me it isn’t a normal cat bed, it has an integrated heated blanket in the base keeping her nice and toasty through the freezing nights this winter. For those interested, I purchased it from a company called Petnap (www.petnap.co.uk) but instead of buying from their website, I found that the same company sold the same products on ebay for less, so I saved myself a tenner. My power meter advises it takes less than 13 watts on average and I’ve set it to heat over night only (she can just get up and do some exercise in the day if she’s cold). Have I gone too far with my pet based gadgetry?

Tinkerbells Bed