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http://www.popgadget.net/2009/07/ihouse_builds_t.php

Remember that old MGM cartoon "The House of Tomorrow," where we were given a glimpse into the future of the modern household? While it was silly and over-the-top, it got one thing right, today's house is totally different from the appliances of 1949 or even 1990. And thanks to companies like iHouse, the House of Tomorrow is closer to becoming the House of Today.

iHouse's latest product the iHouse SmartFaucet is making bath time a whole lot more convenient and high tech. Besides from allowing running water to flow like regular faucets, the SmartFaucet is equipped with Facial Recognition technology. A little extravagant, but there's a totally good reason. If you stand in front of the SmartFaucet, it will run your bath water at your favorite temperature, ensuring perfect bathwater every time.

In addition to setting water temperature, the SmartFaucet also controls the water flow rate. And while you're enjoying a relaxing soak, you can use the touchscreen on top of the faucet to check out the weather outside and access your calender and emails. Yeah, it's a little gandiose, but it's still a cool preview into how tech will improve even the simplest of appliances.

Posted by sherri    Category: home | appliances
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Tonight, I had to tell Gail the following:

1. No matter how tight the spot, no matter how frustrating the situation, no matter how many times she's seen it in other writing, the protagonists in her school compositions should never ever say 'DAMN IT!'

2. She needs to vary the verb sometimes and avoid constructions like: 'Sigh...' he sighed.

3. She might want to stop using 'Craig' as her protagonist, especially in stories where the protagonist does something silly.

In one composition, entitled 'Disappointment' (I supplied the title and its spelling), Craig managed to spell the word 'dissapointment' and 'dissappointment' FIVE times. In the same essay, there was also 'accomodation' and 'necessery'. It's like English's most commonly mis-spelled words laid out in a row for me to circle in red.

*groan*

But it's ok. Some day all this will be worth it. Having properly literate kids is a goal worth aiming for.

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=166699

http://www.popgadget.net/2009/07/drape_fashion_a.php

Imagine what a pair of good-looking headphones can do to your personality. The truth ? Not much. Though it wouldn't be an utterly foolish idea to be aesthetically competent now, would it ? The Zumreed Dreams ZHP-005 headphones can perhaps help you along, given that they are striped chic and are available in 5 bright colors to match with your audio player.

These retro-looking colorfully striped headphones are sure to make a few heads turn to ogle your own, and you can pretend to be so immersed in music that the attention hasn't affected you. For the more serious, the headphones specs indicate decent performance too - they have a frequency response of 20 Hz - 20kHz, a 40mm driver unit and 1.2m length of cord, and come padded with soft earpads for a comfortable fit around the ears. Enough said.

Get yours from AudioCubes at $65.99.

Via The Red Ferret.

Posted by kanchana    Category: accessories | devices | wearables
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This is going to make me sound completely infantile, but one of the biggest things that bugs me about living on my own is having to source my own meals. When I'm working, the last thing I need/want to do is to have to go and whip up a meal. It's really not that hard, and most of the time I enjoy it. But other times, cooking and eating just feel like such a chore.

What's worse is cooking and eating when there's not much food left. In a concentrated effort to reduce the amount of trash we put out (not least because the city strike is still on, so there's still no garbage collection), we've decided not to purchase anything with extraneous packaging (which was why I was bitching about muesli bars a couple of posts back). So fresh food is excellent stuff (you bring a bag to the market, you fill up the bag with fresh stuff, you go home). Except that fresh food isn't like canned or packaged food - you can't go shopping once every two weeks. It's more like once every two days.

Anyway, it was one of those days I was marking and trying not to give in to the temptation of just shooting myself in the head to get it over with, and there wasn't much left in the fridge, but J was hungry.


Omelette with leftover ground beef and veggies, yogurt on the side.
So I was vaguely aware that J was moving around in the kitchen, doing God knows what. And moments later, this turned up on top of my papers and under my nose. This man, the very one who lives in this apartment with me, is an incredible man.

Food is love, indeed.

My turn.


Steel-cut oats with yogurt and fresh (leftover) blueberries.
For all the oatmeal-detractors, steel-cut oats is not the same thing. When I discovered steel-cut, seriously, I feel like I'd spent a lifetime wasted on rolled-oats and that instant crap. It does take longer to cook, but all it requires is some night-before prep. Boil some water on the stove, sprinkle some nutmeg, cinnamon, and a dollop of vanilla in it, throw in the oatmeal, cover it up, take it off the heat. When I get up in the morning and get the coffee going, I put it back on the heat and let it bubble for about 10 minutes. Flavour to your liking, good to go. I do brown sugar or honey, whatever fruit I have lying around, sometimes yogurt. J likes milk and brown sugar, sometimes raisins. Easy-peasy, and real good. Love it.

The berries were a little old, and a rare purchase - they're usually from too far away (we try to buy local) and expensive, but it's summer, and berries are in season. We were really lucky to find these at the Korean supermarket last week, relatively cheap. All gone now, though.

.... But only for PF.

If anyone else asked you to come in white from top to toe for their birthday gathering, you'd probably tell them to get lost. But all the girls were very obedient - Only for you PF!

It was a nice little girly gathering - Even little Kristy was clad in white next door with Daddy. I got to meet Adele for the first time, see my friendly ex-client, hang out with my super old skool pal and chill out with the Wunders.

But overwhelming when the room got chaotic tho - Boy, I'm old.


( Fav pix from the evening. )

Happy birthday again, PF :)

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http://cuteoverload.com/?p=29379

...I tell you. S'pore gahmen damn clever.

Make the announcement now, right after civil servant pay day, when we were supposed to get our July bonus...

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=170511

I got an email from my university in London, telling us that the UK has now moved from the 'containment' to the 'treatment' phase of swine flu since the number of infected continues to rise and transmission is within the community rather than from overseas. Then a long list of things to do and not to do, and websites to check for updates. Nothing there that we haven't been bombarded with for months already here in our island paradise. They don't have anything like our dedicated ambulance service or our Leave of Absence or travel restrictions yet. But then we are the leaders. Anything anyone else can do, we can do extra.

I have had a stomach bug since last Saturday which probably was not helped by all the eating and drinking over the weekend. I mysteriously get a low-grade fever every night (except that I thought I was just hot from alkie on Saturday) and need to go the loo after every big meal. The bigger mystery of course is that I haven't lost any weight. Otherwise I actually feel fine, and the stomach situation seems to be improving. No one around me seems to be experiencing stomach problems so all is well.

I had an interesting series of sms-es with someone recently about being invited out by not attractive people. I believe I value-added to that someone's life by giving a list of good excuses not to go out (which includes having to stay home and watch one's toenails grow) and by reminding him it is far better to be invited out by dogs and have a chio woman at home, than to be out with cuties and going home to your father's worst nightmare. Yep. I try to be helpful.

Reluctantly, I have to get back to my thesis. I have great sympathy now for delightt and what she said about the chapters being dragged out of her. To think that I have to spend the better part of the next year having a fish hook down my throat while I painfully regurgitate strings of polysyllabic words is very demoralising indeed. Sometimes I think I should have put more effort into growing taller and then maybe I could have been a celebrity and have loads of minions do all my bidding, including write my thesis for me. Because I will be a pseudo-cerebral type of celebrity lah. Haiz. Ok no more nonsense. The chapter ain't going to write itself.

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2009-07-14&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

You know now we got those gun things that measure temperature? See if you got fever or not?

Well I've just invented a gun that detect just how much of a dumbass you are. Works the same way: Just aim it at the forehead and press the trigger. But instead of giving a temperature reading, it gives an LED readout thusly:

Level 0: Not stupid.
Level 1: Dumbass
Level 2: Dumbfuck
Level 3: Fucking stupid
Level 4: Stupid like fuck

At level 5, it fires a high-powered laser beam that will bore a hole right through the person's head. But worry not, if the person's really that stupid, there shouldn't be much tissue damage anyway. [Level 5 stupidity is very serious. On the DEFCON scale, the fifth level (i.e. DEFCON 1) pretty much means the end of the world is imminent.]

I call it: The (s-man's) Stupidometer.






Hmm. If only...

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=cb5e250324093e4404dc3c0ecb1cf254

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/07/14.html

louche: of questionable taste or morality.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/F643aWE3crs/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-07-14/

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/CuteOverload/~3/LdW-dceIUh4/

http://cuteoverload.com/?p=29371

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=168230

Notes:
1. I'm not a tease.
2. I decided that the therapist couldn't be named "Dr. Falkner". It was too similar to "Faulkner". I'm not comfortable having a character named after such a major Southern writer. (Even though I just picked the name at random out of an infomercial.) So he's now named Dr. O'Connor¹. I have updated the previous entry.²
3. I shouldn't have posted the first part here. I should have kept it in my personal blog or one of my writing sites. I had previously resolved to keep these two parts of my life separate. I just wanted to acknowledge that. It's too late to go back now, I guess. (See #1.)
4. I'm concerned that this part is boring, and that it's necessity to the planned narrative arc is a sign of that arc's weakness.


Footnotes:
[1] Yes, this is an oblique attempt at humor. Seriously, though, the name just seemed more fitting.
[2] I made some other changes too, but they're not really important.

---

"I don't think that they were consciously using me. I don't think that they realized what I was either."

Dr. O'Connor had posed one of his frequent questions: "How is it, do you think, that it took so long for you to discover that you are a psink?" I had swiftly rambled off topic.

"Stop defending them", he said. Then, "Start again at the beginning." His method seemed to be to prompt me to tell him stories from my life, initially at my own direction but now in sequences guided by his prompting, until I picked out common threads and gained some new insight.

The first time he asked me about my childhood friendships, I told him, "I have always been a magnet for the weird." And by weird I meant the most reviled of the outcasts. After working with Dr. O'Connor for a time, I now knew better.

I have always been a magnet for the egotistical. And not the sort whose flights of ego are condoned by their peers; I drew those who were titans only in their own minds, and who railed against the world for refusing to recognize their worth.

On the first day of first grade, shy and quiet, I managed to throw my lot in with Patrick, the least popular boy in the class. I met him on the playground, loud and brash, demanding that sticks be brought to the large, half-buried tire.

"We have to build a wall to secure this region!", he barked.

As opposed to all of the other recess activities, which required taking some initiative, following orders was simple and unterrifying. I dropped an armful of sticks at his feet and was rewarded with a "Good soldier!"

Both of Patrick's parents were retired military. He was shocked at our unfamiliarity with old war films and drill sergeant tactics. He regarded everyone but me with suspicion; they regarded us with derision. I used to wonder if my social life would have been different, had its nascent blossoming not been marked by Patrick. Now I wonder if his would have been different, if he would have stopped playing at soldier and integrated with the others had I not been there to play along.


We moved the summer before third grade. I thought it was my chance to start fresh. The first day of school, Peter decided that we were best friends. Peter was loud, obnoxious, smarter than the rest of us, and knew it. And he wanted everyone else to know it. Peter got beaten up a lot. At first I thought it was normal bullying but, no, on top of being an obnoxious weakling, he was also prone to physically violent outbursts; he always started the fights, if something so lopsided could be called that.

His mother thought that I was a good influence on him. I heard her tell my mother that he didn't seem so angry when I was around. That was news to me. When he got made at me, which happened occasionally, he would clench his fists and wind up; I'd turn and let him punch me in the back.

"Why did you let him punch you?", asked Dr. O'Connor.

"It was the simplest solution," I said. "After he punched me, he wasn't mad anymore."

"So he would be full of rage, and then he would touch you, and all of the rage was gone?"

"That's one way to put it, I suppose."

"And you never realized that you are a pain sink?"

 

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