A Slight Delay

 I don’t think I’ve ever been, nor do I think I’ll ever really be, what hardcore tech types and marketing gurus like to call an “early adopter.” I tend to adopt late, if I bother to adopt at all. Let the early adopters deal with the high prices, buggy performance, shipping issues, production shortages, and the fact that all the cool features typically come out in the second generation. The early buzz on Barnes and Noble’s new Nook e-reader indicates that there may just be good news for those of us who habitually lag behind the times.

Taken on its own merits, the Nook would appear to be a worthy competitor to the Kindle. It’s premature to call it the “Kindle killer,” as Wired has; the fact that Amazon was there first (at least vis-a-vis the Nook, if not the e-reader market in general) with a good product means that Nook’s presumed dominance — even with a product that looks this good — isn’t a done deal just yet. Entropy goes a long way toward reinforcing brand loyalty.

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Here’s where I blow any small shred of geek cred I may have had left. See, some people get really enthusiastic over gadgets, gizmos, and electronics. They’re “early adopters,” the first to latch onto the latest iSomething or wireless Other. Me, I’m a late adopter. I like to wait ’til the novelty wears off, the bugs are ironed out, and the prices drop. So you can’t imagine my happiness at the maturation of the spork.

Yes, you read correctly. That kitchen oddity, the utensil equivalent of the appendix (you can find sporks everywhere, but what in God’s name are they really for?) has finally, belatedly, come of age. Herein, I invite you to share my joy.

Sporks used to be standard equipment at KFC and other fast food joints. The spoon part of the spork was usually useless, its capacity diminished by a sorrowful approximation of tines at the business end. I use “tines” loosely; you really do much with them, since they were too short to pick anything up. Eating with a spork was a baleful experience. (more…)

I wouldn’t go so far as to call freezer burn the bane of my existence, but it’s pretty darn close. When you’re in the habit of stocking up on meats when you find them on sale, it kinda defeats the purpose if freezer burn renders them un-usable by the time you get around to using them.

Well, after doing some comparison shopping, we’ve settled on the Reynolds Handi-Vac, and so far it’s proven to be money well-spent. The vacuum unit looks like a miniature dust buster, and the bags look like your standard Ziploc bags, but with a little porthole thingy (forgive the technical jargon) for the vacuum. We’ve frozen veggies, beef, chicken, and hot dogs thus far, and have been satisfied with the results. I won’t go so far as to say it eliminates freezer burn, but it comes pretty close; the trick is to “burp” the bags before and during the vacuuming process so that you don’t have air pockets that lead to patches of freezer burn. A London Broil that we bagged and froze about three weeks ago still looks the same as it did the day we froze it.

The starter pack is ten bucks, give or take, and includes the vacuum with three quart-sized bags. Boxes of bags cost about $3.29 for either 14 quart-sized bags or 9 gallon-sized bags. While that’s more expensive than average freezer bags*, it’s less expensive than the fancier countertop models, not to mention less expensive than throwing out meats and veggies that look like they came from between a yeti’s toes.

For information from the manufacturer, visit the Handi-Vac website.

*Although less labor-intensive since you don’t have to wrap, then burp, then bag.

Nicholas Negroponte (MIT professor, Being Digital author) and his OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) organization have unveiled the XO2, their second-generation laptop, according to an article from the BBC’s website.

The Mac Book Air it ain’t. What it is, however, may prove more important to OLPC’s target “market”: classrooms and children in developing nations. Like the first-generation XO, which has shipped 600,000 units since it was unveiled late in 2005, the XO2 is intended as a low-cost learning tool for classrooms in locales as widespread as Brazil, Nigeria, and China. (more…)

Okay, here’s a review that will probably be useless to a lot of people. I’m posting it mostly for the handful that may find it useful.

As someone who goes bald (voluntarily) from time to time, I find the HeadBlade to be a pretty handy little item. Traditionally, a straight razor is supposed to give the best shave, but to be honest, the prospect of using one gives me the willies; I think my head would end up looking like a well-marbled New York strip steak, which wouldn’t be a good thing. That’s where the HeadBlade comes in. There are two designs: the Classic, which uses standard 2-blade Atra cartridges, and the Sport, which uses a triple blade, and comes with a set of little wheels (somewhere there’s an awful lot of Matchbox cars on little tiny cinderblocks). It’s thoughtfully designed, a hell of a lot easier to use than a conventional razor when you’re trying to de-fuzz your dome. (more…)

Okay, maybe you don’t need a potato ricer, as such. But once you have one, it’s a bit like having a microwave oven; you’re not sure what you did without it. If, when you’re mashing potatoes, you wonder how long it’s going to be before you end up with a repetetive strain injury, a potato ricer will be a welcome addition to your kitchen arsenal. Mine cost all of ten bucks, purchased at Target. You can also get a Potato Ricer on Amazon for the same price. The construction’s simple: picture a garlic press on steroids. And it’s easy to use, too. Boil your taters, stick ‘em in the ricer, and squeeze, and you’ve got perfectly fluffy, non-lumpy, mashed potatoes. They require less labor, and less butter and milk, than they would if you used a masher. Cleanup of the ricer pictured is easy, too, since the part that holds the potatoes removes easily for cleaning. See the next entry for a recipe to road-test your ricer.

I’m suspicious of anything I see advertised on television. So I’d been skeptical for a while about the George Foreman Grill, in any of its guises; if television advertising is cause for suspicion, then a celebrity’s name attached to a product is the kiss of death.

On the other hand, when you live in an apartment with no balcony, no patio, and not quite enough room to swing a cat, it’s not like you can set up a gas grill in the living room. So we caved in and bought the G5, the latest incarnation of the George Foreman Grill. (more…)

The promotions make it sound so enticing: motion pictures and events on demand, high picture quality, a variety of channels, and service that rivals cable. Then there’s the tagline: “Friends don’t let friends subscribe to cable.” Let’s just say that after having their service for nearly a year now, I know why so few of my friends and family have DirecTV. The channel selection’s not what it’s cracked up to be, picture quality is merely passable, and the service… well, I’ll let one story stand in for the several I could tell about the nail-biting experience that is DirecTV.
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A couple of years ago, when I picked up White Limousine by Duncan Sheik, I was surprised to find that it came with a DVD packed with .WAV files, and Ableton Lite. Anyone who wanted to could remix any of the album’s songs, leaving aside for the moment the fact that when one hears the word “remix,” Mr. Sheik’s name isn’t usually the first that leaps to mind.

But I digress. Many artists put up isolated tracks from their tunes in order that fans can do what they please with them. 808 State comes to mind, as do the tracks David Byrne and Brian Eno put on a dedicated site around the time that “My Life In The Bush of Ghosts” was re-released. Other artists, such as Bill Laswell, David Torn and Martin Atkins, have released sample sets for Cakewalk, ACID, and other DAWs. This was the first time, though, that I’d seen someone put up the whole kit n’ kaboodle, with the disc, and at a reasonable price.

A few years on, we have a followup. Trent Reznor has offered the backing tracks from his music before, but with Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D / [CD/DVD Combo] he’s put out an LP’s worth of remixes, and the individual backing tracks for each. Not only are the remixes themselves of a much higher quality than he’s done in some time, the samples (and the entirety of his new album, Ghosts I-IV) have been released under a Creative Commons license, which should go some way toward encouraging some creative responses to his music. Here’s hoping that other artists follow suit.