The Bytelove Gadget Blog

A little astronomy lesson for you, gadget enthusiasts. The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite, and the 5th biggest satellite in the Solar System. It completes it’s orbit around Earth in 27.3 days, and repeats the lunar phases every 29.5 days.

On some more humorous note, the Moon was for a long time considered to be made of cheese. For those interested, this isn’t actually something created to fool kids. The idea was born from a phrase John Heywood wrote in his Proverbes (1546) - “The Moon is made of a greene cheese” (greene means new; not old; not aged).

In the old days, people used to believe that the full Moon awakened a beast inside a man and turned one into a werewolf (a number of superstitious people still believe it). Another superstition, that is still incredibly popular, is that full Moon causes lunacy (a quick lesson in languages: Moon translates into Latin as Luna). Also, it is supposedly the celestial body that’s supposed to be ruling over me, and doing a poor job at that (My zodiac is Cancer.).

Nonetheless, on a bright night, the Moon is a truly beautiful sight. However, if you’re not a night person (you’re missing a lot), you can have the next best thing – a Moon in your room.

Measuring 260 mm x 260 mm x 60 mm, the fake Moon has 12 phases, which you can shift through manually using an included remote control or leave them to change automatically. The Moon has a light sensor that allows it to turn on as soon as it gets dark, and turn off 30 minutes later in order to preserve the batteries, however, you can turn off the battery saving setting. You even get a CD with a 15 minute audio tour of the Moon and it’s relation to other planets.

A personal Moon will cost you £29.99 at CrazyAboutGadgets.

A typical office in most countries is imagined as a a cold prison with cold, hard concrete walls and windows with bars (well, okay, maybe the windows don’t usually have bars). To lighten the atmosphere, corporate workers have taken up the habit of personalizing their workspace – bringing in family photos, potted plants and so on…

Of course, certain members of the society just can’t help but try to show off by bastardizing the tradition. For example, changing the old traditional photo frames with digital ones. That, however, is old news – digital photo frames can be found in most electronics’s stores. A digitalized version of the potted plant, however, is far more original.

Well, in truth, it’s more like a digital version of the flower pot (electronic flowers still are behind natural ones in all aspects, except maybe longevity – depends on the type of the flower). The USB greenhouse is in all ways a small copy of a modern greenhouse.

Growing a plant in this USB greenhouse is a piece of cake. The included software monitors the plant’s growth and reminds you when to water it. The light on the top of the greenhouse (a sort of an artificial sun) has controllable intensity. Even the soil is provided! Included in the package is a pack of Marigold (a yellow flower) seeds, however, there’s nothing keeping you from using your own seeds. How about growing your own strawberries?

If you want to be questioned about your attitude towards potted flowers, the USB Greenhouse is £29.99 at Drinkstuff.

What’s a party without cold drinks? And what better way there is to keep them cold than popping a few ice cubes.

Now, the idea of ice cubes is good and all, but some of us like to show off, so we look for an ice tray that produces ice cubes in a form that is more imaginative than a cube. I have already seen ice trays that produce such forms like jewels, flowers, cylinders and even duckies…However, none of them look as good as these…

A single ice tray has three molds, each with a different guitar design (specifically – Les Paul, classic and Fender). Making ice guitars is easy – just place the plastic guitar neck in the mold and pour water in. Then just leave it in the freezer.

Once frozen, the guitars are 5.5cm long, and since the necks are from plastic, they can serve as stylish spoon to mix your drinks (do take into account that ice melts, so such spoons won’t hold out for a long time).

These guitar ice trays were found at ParamountZone, and cost £5.95.

For today, we have a gadget that’s innovative, small, 2-in-1 and is related to fire. In other words - perfect.

Well, maybe not. My evaluation may have been influenced by the inner pyro (most of my friends say that it’s actually an outer pyro - well, they are allowed their opinion, though I don’t have to respect it). Still, i love this little gadget. A jet ligther with an inbuilt clock. what’s not to like?

The lighter’s corpus is designed to look like polished bronze. Looks elegant, and at the same time, not tacky (though I personally would prefer something a bit brighter. Still, I don’t have a reason to complain). There’s a spring on the “hinges” of the lid, therefore the lid is kept tightly shut or open and doesn’t wobble - and taken into account the fact that this lighter can be used upside down, it is really a welcomed feature - you wouldn’t want your lid getting into the way of fire everytime you try to light a candle.

As for the clock, it is nothing special (you weren’t expecting a Swiss made mechanism I hope?), but it does the job - you set the time, it ticks and shows the time. The design of the clock is either non-intrusive or elegant - depends on your taste. However, I’m certain that noone would complain about it.

The lighter itself burns with a strong, green flame and the appropriate jet-engine-like sound (A word about the pictures - they don’t show the flame - neither me nor my camera are good enough to capture it). In truth, the green will wear off with time, and be replaced with classical blue jet flame. In the case of my lighter, it has already begun, however, it took two weeks of extremely heavy usage to get there (no, i wasn’t trying to get rid of the green - I just felt the urge to set a lot of things aflame). The overall construction is quite sturdy, so I don’t have any complaints about it. Also, you don’t need to carry any tools for refilling - no unscrewing or anything. Though you will need something like a screwdriver (I prefer using a knife - a lot easier) to adjust the flame height.

A word of caution if you’ve never used a jet lighter - the jet flame is hottest just above the tip of the visual part. Be careful - if you burn yourself, it will be with a 1300 degrees Celsius hot flame.

Also, to keep your lighter working longer, use only purified butane. Preferably one that’s been purified 3 times or so. One of the more common brands is Supaflame. If you don’t have a better choice (for example, I don’t - there are no other brands of purified butane within a radius of 60 kilometers), I have tested it and can confirm that it is good enough for jet lighters.

Never be tempted to use unpurified butane (filtered butane is also usually far from being sufficient), as it will clog your lighter after a single refill - I did that mistake with my first jet lighter.

Like what you’ve read so far? Well, in addition to that, the lighter is actually pretty cheap. It’s 4.74$ from DealExtreme.

Well people, we all know that you know a thing or two about technology. How about music?

Regardless of your answer, you should like this musical gadget. I bet that 99% of you (or people in general actually) haven’t heard of something like this in their lives, never mind actually seeing one. I myself have only seen such an instrument once in my life - albeit a homemade one (with a below average playability - you try playing by poking at pencil-made dots).

Fortunately, our prayers have been answered - we got a professionally manufactured version of this retro instrument (meaning no pencil dots). Invented in 1967 (40 years ago) this wacky idea for an instrument is making a comeback thanks to people from IWOOT.

Right, I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Most of you probably still don’t know what’s a stylophone. A stylophone is an instrument that makes sounds based on the position of a special pen on a pad of the stylophone (different positions result in different resistance to currency - yeah, I sort of saw the plans for that homemade monstrosity I mentioned earlier).

I’ve got to add that even though trying to play the homemade stylophone was frustrating, it was still an amusing way to occupy myself. A quality stylophone should be a pure pleasure to play.

By the way, this stylophone is a bit different from it’s predecessors. You can plug in your mp3 player to it and play along to your songs (after all, we do live in the age of mp3’s - this was to be expected, and I say it’s a pretty good idea).

The Stylophone is £14.99 (Approx USD $26.98) at IWantOneOfThose

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” These words, said on July 20, 1969 by Neil Armstrong became one of the best known phrases in history. What’s more, a lot of people actually know where and on what occasion it was said. I still think it would have sounded better if he had said something along the lines of “What? I thought this was supposed to be made of cheese…”.

Well, he probably chose his own phrase just because he wasn’t particularly hungry. And that is all thanks to the great minds in NASA, who have thought of rations that can last for 50 years without refrigeration, AKA “Astronaut food” (yeah, thanks guys. Now we have something utterly meaningless in history textbooks. A good joke would be far more useful - laughing is good for everyone.).

Well, as much as I would like to see hunger-driven ramblings in the textbooks, I’ve got to admit that the concept of space food is great. It’s mainly the same food, just deprived of any moisture or air inside it (i.e. made unfit for bacteria to live in). Don’t think it’s still as tasty after all of that, but who cares - it’s cool, wouldn’t you agree?

And now you have a chance to try some of that food yourself. It can be Bananas, Strawberries or Neapolitan Ice-Cream. Perfect for a long camping trip (I mean, it IS very unlikely that you have a space shuttle in your garage, so you won’t probably use it for what it was originally intended to be used for), or just as a rare treat at a party (better tell them what you’re serving in advance, or your lack of cooking skills will be quickly known through out the neighborhood).

A pack of food costs £2.95 (approximately USD $5.31) at IWantOneOfThose.

How long has it been since your birthday? Try remembering the candles on your birthday cake and all the space they took. I remember that I’ve been annoyed by the sheer number of those ever since I was twelve - and every year there’s one more. Seriously, how can anyone take those little petty things seriously?

So, whenever something becomes no longer interesting, you do the first (somewhat)logical thing that comes to your mind - SUPERSIZE it.

Who cares about candles that are only a few centimetres each and burn down after 5 - 6 minutes. They are easily replaced by one, humongous candle, at a height of 25.5 centimetres that can burn for 24 hours.

Well, okay, so it’s not humongous, but it’s still big in comparison. Yet at the same time, it’s size won’t cause you any trouble when you try to blow it out and won’t require a fire extinguisher present.

The candle only comes in reddish-pink (like in a picture) with it’s glass stand and a presentation box, in case you want to give it to someone as a present. My only complaint is that I like blue better (or nearly every other color with the exception of brown and grey).

The candle is £14.95 (Approx USD $26.91) from IWantOneOfThose.

Water. The source of life. The element that makes up over 70% of our bodies.

Big titles, eh? Well, who are we to disagree? After all, those are true. We wouldn’t be here today if not for that clear liquid.

And that is the problem. Clear, colourless, see through. Sure, that may be a great sight when you have been dragging yourself home for the last hour on foot, when the outside is like a hot oven. But for some menial tasks, like washing your face at night (for various reasons which I’m not interested in knowing) or something like that…Well, honestly, do you actually think of water as something impressive then.

That can be changed. How about water that glows? Sounds good, right? Want to find out why it’s even better in reality? Well, first, think about how that will look when it’s dark. Second, porcelain sinks are relatively reflective, so if you have those, it will look awesomely (those who doubt this, shine a laser (at least a cheap red one) and see for yourself).

Best of all, it’s just light, so your water is still just as good (or bad) as it was. By the way, the light chambers that ‘colorize’ the water have changeable batteries.

If you want something more, 7 additional dollars will give you red water as soon as the water temperature exceeds 89 degrees Fahrenheits (about 31 degrees Celsius if memory serves me right).

Found at thinkgeek, $12.99 for the blue LED model and $19.99 for a blue LED model that turns into red when the water gets warm.

Hey, does anyone like doing experiments with light? Regardless of their nature - from making a rainbow with a prism to setting up a matrix of optics for a laser beam. All you need is some optics.

The only problem with optics is that you constantly have to clean them, protect them from scratches, and just hope they don’t fall and break in pieces.

How about making your own eatable optics. Yep, that’s right, after you’re done with them, you can always eat them. (You’re gonna have to do that or throw them away in a few days - they aren’t too durable)

The optics are made of high concentrate gelatin. That makes them stronger than jelly, yet still rather flexible (okay, actually, they only hold together better). Oh, and about the eatable part - concentrated jelly isn’t exactly too tasty, but still, the sensation is quite interesting (imagine a jelly without any flavouring).

The kit for making your own edible optics includes 4 Petri dishes, 4 large watch glasses, 1 spherometer, 1 plastic tube with scale, 3 packages of gelatin, and an instruction guide.

The kit costs $47.75. Found at skelementary. However, before buying it, find local chemistry suppliers and ask them about gelatin concentrate (they should have it) - three packs won’t last long.

Do you remember the old good swear box? You know, that nuisance that’s supposed to cure your habit of swearing by eating up your finances? You know, the model where you put a coin in it each time you swear?

Well, stand back oldie. Time for a real swear box - literally. You see, when you curse and put in a coin in it, it strenghtens the effect by cursing you to death (As they say - fight fire with fire).

The swear box has a loud inbuilt speaker, so it will be expressing it’s opinion about you quite loudly, and for nearly 12 minutes too.

By the way, the box also has a button to activate the box without throwing coins in (cheapskates :)). I suggest hinting annoying kids of your houseguests to go and try pressing that button.

Also, the box has a removable stopper on the back, so you can remove your money without using a hammer or gravity (for those who are not thinking too well at the moment, that meant “without smashing it to pieces or dropping it off a skyscraper”).

Lastly, it has a really good price - £7.95 at IWantOneOfThose.