B5 Network - Tech, Gadgets and Weird Things

Do you remember the last time when you were camping out? Your whole body is bitten by mosquitoes, it itches and keeps you from falling asleep. And then you hear that buzzing, and know that one of those blood sucking menaces is planning an attack on you. So frustrating…

(Well, that may not be the case for some of you - some of us (my sister, for example) are gifted with repulsive blood that parasites despise. I, however, am a real treat to them - even repellents can’t keep them away. Arghh…)

In any case, I believe that you know someone who has experienced this. So if you’re cruel, you’ll definitely enjoy this gadget - The Mosquito Prankster. As soon as the lights are out, this gadget starts buzzing - just like a mosquito. This will get your prankees shaking in fear. But as soon as they turn on the lights, the buzzing stops. They’ll think that the bug has left and turn off the lights off again - and the little nuisance will come back with the darkness.

Granted, this artificial buzzing isn’t perfect. I had this gadget used on me, and I recognized that it was a fake, and found it without a problem. Same could be told for my buddy. But the thing is, we have hearing superior to most people’s (we checked for that - and now we brag about it on every chance we have). Others were totally fooled by the fake sounds.

WARNING: people can get quite angry if they are unable to sleep because of the buzzing. If they find out who did it, they usually seek revenge. (When my bunch was pranked, they behaved quite peacefully - mainly because the three tallest of the bunch (me, my buddy with the strong hearing and an another one who just slept through the buzzing) were playing peacemakers (As in: “start a fight and we will kill you”)).

The Mosquito Prankster is £4.99 ($8.98) from boystuff.

Everyone who likes custom-made (as in especially for you) stuff, raise your hand. Did you? - ’cause I did. I love that stuff - well, within reason, of course - 10$ are not worth a picture on my credit card, that barely ever leaves my wallet, and never longer than for a minute. Still, it’s fun having something that has ‘your touch’ on it, wouldn’t you agree?

So, for today, I’m writing a review of a website that specializes in custom buttons (you know, the badges with a needle at their backside for pinning it on clothes/bags/etc.).

Making your button is actually quite easy and actually fun. On the homepage of the website you’ll see a flash-based editor waiting for you. Using it, you can select a background colour, put some text on, put on a symbol (you have 5 categories of symbols to choose from), or upload an image from your computer and use it as a part of the composition or stretch it to take the part of background. When you want to get rid of the element, just drag it off the badge.

The second step is to select a size (small or standard) and the quantity. If you look at the picture at the top (top parts of a man’s and a woman’s face) you’ll see that the man is holding a small pink badge with something that look like a rabbit, and the woman is holding a standard sized badge with a picture of landscape - just to give you an idea of the sizes.

After you’ve decided, you just press “Add to cart”, and the cart, shown on the right, updates itself. You can choose to edit the items in cart or remove them at any time. And the cart shows you the price of the badges and the complete price with the shipping.

If for some reason the website fails to identify which country you are from, there’s a bubble in the top right corner (it’s either blue or has a flag of some country on it). Click it and choose your country.

The buttons cost 1.5USD each, regardless of their size. The shipping prices also seem reasonable, so I’d say this is a pretty good deal. So, if you want some custom buttons for yourself or for family friends (hey, custom items make great gifts), go to fatstatement.

P.S. The website seems to have issues with Opera browsers (which happens to be my favourite browser) - the flash interface for designing your button doesn’t load. However, I was assured that this problem is already being dealt with. Just so you wouldn’t be surprised if you’re a Opera user.

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.

You know that old saying “Boys don’t grow up - only their toys get bigger (and more expensive)”. Well, even if it seems to be universal, it’s not. Sometimes their toys get smaller, and encased in stainless steel. And sometimes, those toys are priced quite reasonably (and other times, you may get the impression that it’s covered with silver and not steel, judging from the price).

And time from time, you can find a pretty sweet deal. Just like this camcorder.

Well, first, the style factor - this thing is awesome. Small, covered in steel - what more could you possibly wish for? (don’t answer that)

The camera itself is pretty good - DVD quality video, nice LCD screen, direct audio/video connection (means you can connect it to your TV), 64Mb inbuilt memory (not impressive) + SD cards up to 4Gb (Now this is better - but you’ll have to buy the card yourself). Has a flash, 8x digital zoom, and takes 5.4 MegaPixel pictures. Quite good, eh?

And you get the whole package for $199.99 - actually it’s a pretty good price, since other cameras of such quality cost atleast twice as much.

Too bad it’s not available yet (though it should be soon). Found at thinkgeek.

Do you know what can be just as frustrating as your cell phone’s battery dying at the most important moment (a solution for this can be found here)? I’ll tell you - suddenly loosing the connectivity with the carriers’ towers.

Let me start by telling a short story. It’s probably the most recent one that is significant (read: frustrating) enough to remember.

This was on June 29 (yes, this summer’s June 29). It was my friend’s birthday. All I wanted was to send him an e-mail with my wishes. Seems easy enough, right? Well, unfortunately, due to freak thunderstorms occurring every few days since the end of May, my connection was down (it was like that for the bigger part of June). And a bigger part of Internet cafes were suffering the same problem + a horde a students on vacation. So, I chose something that seemed most logical - using my cellphone.

It just so happens that I had to spend in a place with a poor connectivity, but still, somehow I managed to open a java application for Gmail and somehow typed a very creative letter (note to self - that application doesn’t have line breaks and messes up your formatting). And that wasn’t easy either - usually I prefer to make a call for anything that’s over 5 words.

And in the end, the plan failed, because I lost all connectivity, and I was only able to do that 4 days later. This sucks.

If you have these situations oftenly, you could certainly use the cellphone signal extender. Basically, it just strenghtens the signal from the towers (meaning it’s useless if there’s absolutely no signal). There are three models - 1st one works with carriers in 824 - 894 MHz diapason, 2nd works for 1850-1990 MHz diapason and the third can operate in both.

The prices are $249.99 for the single band models and $359.99 for the dual-band one. Found at thinkgeek.

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.

USB keys have already become THE way to carry data around with you. they probably already share your pocket space with your house/car keys too (actually, in my case, the pockets were full already with a wallet, cellphone, headphones and a lighter (I’m a pyro), so I had to choose between my house keys and my USB stick - let’s just say that it takes some time to find my house keys in my shoulder bag). But a small USB stick is easy to misplace/drop/leave somewhere. And then someone will surely find it, and look through whatever you have on it - your downloaded legally obtained audio files, confidential information, will surely use your password manager, etc. (you don’t actually carry porn on our flash drives, right? and if you do, get rid of it or get rid of any evidence that it belongs to you - think if someone tries to return it by walking up to you and saying “here’s your USB stick with your porn collection”…cruel)

Well, IRONKEY USB drive is the perfect answer. It has a scrambling chip, that works basically by distorting your data to the point where it’s no longer recognisable using your password for the distortion pattern. And it won’t be able to unscramble it without knowing the password, so just reading the data would be useless (not that you could do it without specific equipment). Brute-forcing (having a program try out passwords) is useless - you only get 10 attempts at guessing. Fail to do so in those 10 attempts, and the encryption chip dies, destroying nearly all chances to retrieve the information. Lastly, working on the hardware level would be a pain as well, because in addition to being unable to unscramble the info, the insides of the drive are filled with epoxy, so attempting to open it would most likely result in damaging the drive beyond repair.

Oh, by the way, the case is really made from steel - that’s not painted plastic. And it’s totally waterproof, exceeding military standarts.

There’s the problem with drivers - only Windows XP and Windows Vista for now, but drivers for Linux And MacOSX are in development.

This is something that I really recommend getting. Keeping your data safe might not be too important for an individual, as long as you don’t have anything incriminating in your flash drive, but for businesses it could be invaluable. Recommend it to your boss (if you have one) - maybe he’ll like the idea (appearing smart in front of your boss is a good thing…I think).

These come in three models:
1 Gigabyte: $78.99
2 Gigabyte: $109.00
4 Gigabyte: $148.99

Found on thinkgeek.

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.