Stuff you should have

These are my favourite things, and you should have them, too!

Monday, November 19, 2007 , terribly early in the morning

Buy my iPod Nano(s)?

I would like to sell the two third-generation iPod Nano mp3 players I won at Blog World Expo.  We’re trying to get me home to Canada for Christmas, and we need all the bits of income we can get.  This is an official fundraiser!  Money raised here will also be used to care for Pinto and the other Bean if they end up getting pneumonia.  They really don’t sound very good at all.

Anyway, these two Nanos are each 4GB.  They’re silver.  They’ve never been out of their packages, so have never been touched by human fingers!!! (except the ones that packaged them in the first place).  They play both music and video, so you can listen to music from you own CD library, music you purchase online, and free audio items you can find online, like podcasts.  Even the least-important Podcaster usually uploads their material to the iTunes store, and you just download it for free.  Regarding video, you can load your Nano with video you shot yourself (of your kitties doing something cute!), or you can again download files from the iTunes store, including entire movies and TV shows.  Free things you can download include video podcasts.  If you like books on tape, the Nano is compatible with Audible audiobook “rentals”, and again, there are books to purchase from iTunes.  Maybe they even sell groceries. 

Other things your Nano can do (according to what I’ve read), include storing thousands of cute photos of your cats and dogs, playing a few games (guess where you buy those?  Have you been paying attention?), and it has handy features like a calendar, world clock, stopwatch, and contacts list.  Flippy would say that the best thing about it is that you can choose from dozens of super-cute protective cases for it.

The Nano has a suggested retail at the Apple store of $149.99.  It sells at Amazon.com for $139.99.  I will sell my Nanos for $129.99 each, and will pay for free Priority Mail Shipping and insurance.  I will also give a free pink brushed metal protective case (it’s pretty!) to the first purchaser who requests it (I only have one).  And one more bargain—I’ll send you a $5 iTunes gift certificate via email to go along with your new toy.  I’m going to list these on eBay as soon as I get around to it, but thought I’d offer them here, first.  If you’re interested in buying either of them, just send me an email and we can work something out.  Thanks!

Oh, here’s the Nano itself:

iPod_Nano_4GB

And here’s the pink brushed metal case:

pink_case

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/19 at 04:31 AM
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Friday, November 16, 2007 , late evening

Bad pens, good pens

You heard me… I said BAD PENS.  The scourge of humanity.  Flippy and I were at Office Depot a few months ago, and they had a clearance cart near the store entrance.  I can’t resist a clearance cart, and definitely could not resist the lure of cheap pens.  We bought a 10 pack of blue stick pens, and a 10 pack of black stick pens, for only 5 cents per bag!  The pens were labeled, “Office Depot value.  Stick pens with grip.  Quality assured, 100% laboratory tested.” I could spend an entire blog entry going on about what sort of scientist spends his or her life testing cheap pens in the lab, but instead, I’ll just stick to the subject and say that these pens are the worst pens I’ve ever encountered.  They do have ink in them, and they do write without glopping.  However, they’re constantly falling apart!  If you remove the cap and put it on the bottom of the pen, you pull the bottom plug out of the pen when you take the cap off.  When you take the cap off the top of the pen, you pull the entire pen mechanism, ink and all, out of the pen.  The pens have extra parts because of the special “grip”, so instead of just the ink tube and the pen casing falling apart, there are other small pieces to complicate things.  Once you’ve reassembled it, you’re still doomed, because the pen will just continue to fall apart.  I guess these pens might be okay if you glued them together, but otherwise they just fall to pieces as soon as you point them towards a sheet of paper.  It’s not just one bad pen, either… it’s all twenty of them, blue and black.  Maybe India isn’t completed skilled in pen manufacture yet.  It was first amusing, then frustrating, to try to do a crossword puzzle without ever removing my pen tip from the paper.  If I forgot and lifted the pen, it fell apart.  I found the horrid beasts on the Office Depot website.  I still have 17 of them here, mostly black, if you want me to send them to you, but if you request them, I’ll know you’re a masochist.

Luckily, I’ve got much, much better news pen news for you.  At Office Max, I saw a neat-looking and inexpensive pen called TUL.  They even have their own entertaining website at TUL.com, where you can have a humourous handwriting analysis. (It properly determined that my parents live in Canada.  I think it was a lucky guess).  I love these pens!  My favourite is a black 7mm gel pen, which writes smoothly and cleanly, and makes me want to take pen to paper, the old-fashioned way.  It costs about one dollar.  It’s rare for me to feel comfortable holding a pen, because I’ve spent the last decade using a keyboard for all my long thoughts.  I also like the blue 5mm retractable gel pens, but I think the 7mm line is a better fit for me.  5mm is for you “fine point” folks (my Mom is one of you).  While writing this entry, I found out that TUL makes a pack of gel pens in assorted colours, and my heart leapt.  It took over four decades to happen, but I believe I’ve finally found the pen for me!

I know that inexpensive pens aren’t common blog fodder, but wanted to share because the TUL pens would even make a nice gift for the writer or engineer in your family.  Flippy and I are going to give some to our fathers, former engineers, who love to have a good pen always at the ready.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/16 at 10:49 PM
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Sunday, November 11, 2007 , early afternoon

Buy a cat calendar, save the world

The lovely Yoshi of Von Krankipantzen’s blog is featured in a 2008 calendar tribute to “iconic women”.  The photos I’ve seen from the calendar are hilarious (and inspiring, of course), so I’d like to encourage you to take a peek at it by going to Urban Beast.  All proceeds from the calendar are going to the SPCA of British Columbia.  I’m going to buy a copy just so I can have a larger version of Yoshi Kennedy.  Even if I wasn’t already a Yoshi fan, I’d be impressed at the sight of any cat wearing clothing.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/11 at 02:31 PM
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Woolite P.O.D.

We love a gadget, especially one that only costs a few bucks, which is why we purchased the new Woolite Portable Oxy Deep (aka, P.O.D.).  The Woolite website says that the P.O.D. for pet stains isn’t available yet, but that’s the one we purchased at the grocery store.  I tried it on a few old cat vomit stains in the guest bedroom, and it actually worked really well.  I was skeptical, because you just rub the solution into the stain and let it dry—you don’t sop it up with a towel or anything, like you do with OxyClean.  When I went back into the bedroom the day after cleaning, however, the stains were definitely gone.  I can’t say for sure that they’re 100% gone, because the lighting in the room isn’t the best, but I can say that the stains were very prominent, and now I can’t see them at all.

The P.O.D. isn’t very large, so it won’t last very long if you have a lot of big stains to clean up.  It’s unfortunately not refillable, which really bugs me, but it’s supposedly recyclable.  That’s great, except that a new P.O.D. will cost you about $5 or $6.  I’d much rather refill the one I have than pay all that money every time we need a new one.  I guess it’s less expensive than the Bissell SpotBot that I still don’t own, however, so that’s a plus.

I need to invoke my own BlogPound rating system for all the products I write about.  If I had one, and was rating on a scale of one to five, I’d rate the P.O.D. about a 4.  It can’t be a 5 because it’s non-refillable, and because it makes me get on my hands and knees to use.

woolite_pod_for_pet_stains

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/11 at 02:43 AM
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Friday, November 02, 2007 , terribly early in the morning

Electrasol

I’m going to follow “Bananas” with another frivolous entry about dishwasher detergent.  I’ve been buying Electrasol “Dual-Action Tabs” because they’ve been fairly inexpensive, and because I wanted the Jetsons collector tins that the tabs were being sold in.  I ended up with two Elroys and two Astros and one George—I never did see Jane or Judy, even though we shop at two different stores.  Anyway, the tins are suddenly gone, and they’ve been replaced with a brand new item called, “3in1 Powerball Tabs”.  The “powerball” is an exciting red colour, and as I’m a sucker for a new product (or a product in a cartoon tin), I decided to buy it.  I have to say that I’ve used the new tabs twice and I’m really impressed.  Even though we have a water softener and I use a rinse agent, a lot of my dishes still end up with spots on them.  Today when I opened the dishwasher I immediately noticed that there were no spots.  Not one!  The new Electrasol tabs are supposed to have the ability to soften hard food deposits, and the box doesn’t say anything about a change in rinse agent, but there was an incredible difference.  The dishes look really clean, and not all spotty and blotchy.

I’m such a sucker.  I’m sure someone, somewhere, is raking in dough from “PayPerPost” for writing sincere blog entries about dishwasher soap, and here I am doing it for free.  I received no compensation for this entry, I just want to brighten up the life of the poor person who has black dinner plates and can’t get rid of hard water spots.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/02 at 03:35 AM
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Saturday, December 30, 2006 , terribly early in the morning

Invasion of the sock creatures, finally

I got the neatest thing, and I want to blog about it, but I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to do this before Christmas.  I want to rave about the wonderful gift that is the Stupid Sock Creatures Book & Kit.  Now, if you’re in Mommy-blogger circles, the “sock toy” craze is old news to you, and forgive for being behind the times.  However if you’re in the crazy cat lady blogger circle, like me, this product will have just recently come to your attention.  This book/kit combo will let you make two “sock creatures” or “sock monsters”, the modern equivalent of the sock monkey.  You get two boldly coloured and striped socks in the kit, thread, needles, buttons, ribbons, and stuffing, as well as a great book which shows how to make a number of different creatures.  The guy who wrote the book maintains a website, Stupid Creatures, where he sells these things for up to $85 each!  It’s crazy!  You’re much further ahead if you just buy the book and kit for a measly $13.57 at Amazon.  Here’s a picture of the book you get:

image

In the interests of full disclosure, Flippy bought this book about six months ago, and then we promptly lost it in our vast abyss of a library.  I searched and searched and couldn’t find it, and decided to just buy the kit and be done with it.  I used to make lots of very complicated teddy bears, so I’m sure socks are within my talents.  I hope to sock creature my way to serenity and peace.

Still on a bit of a “creature” note, I want to recommend a store called Online Science Mall if you want inexpensive but unique novelty items.  They sell fascinating stress balls, called “Rainbow Blob Balls”, for $2 each (I think I bought all their current stock, but they should have more soon), original Silly Putty for $1.99, and lots of weird items made of slime and polymers.  They have some classic toys, like Slinkys, and many science-related items.  If you’ve got a young scientist at home, you can purchase owl pellets for dissection for $1.25.  You can even purchase large things to dissect, like frogs, fetal pigs, and cats.  Now, I dissected frogs and fetal pigs, and even people, but I still can’t get comfortable with the idea of cat dissection.  I’m sure it’s species discrimination on my part, but I suggest you don’t look at the photo of the cat specimen.  Instead, go look at the cow eyes!  Just $2.50!

I know the holidays are over, but there are still birthdays and other gift-giving occasions coming up, so maybe you’ll find some of these items useful.  My birthday is next week, and fyi, I prefer Silly Putty to cow eyes.  No offense to the cows.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/30 at 03:15 AM
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Thursday, December 28, 2006 , the wee hours

By popular demand… Digital photo frames!

For those of you living in the dark ages (wink), here’s a little primer about digital photo frames.  A digital photo frame is a small monitor/display screen which looks like a picture frame, and which stores photos on a memory card.  You copy your photos onto a memory card, insert the card into the frame, and then the frame displays the pictures.  The frame is complete independent from your computer, but it does require electricity to power, so it needs to be plugged in.  Flippy and I bought frames for all our family members, and preloaded them with family pictures that we either already had on our computer or that we scanned, and it made our Moms really happy (Moms like photos).  The frames usually ship with small remote controls, and they can be set to display photo sequentially, randomly, or to just display a single picture for an indefinite period of time.  Most frames also will play video files and music files, so they’re really versatile.  Storage is just limited to the size of the memory card you use.  I bought a 512MB card for my parent’s frame, but because the image on the screen is tiny, the image files can be tiny as well.  I calculated that I could fit about 3600 photos onto my memory card!

Pros of the frames are things like a) they’re cool, b) Moms like them.  Cons of the frames are that each brand seems to have its own quirks, and right now, they’re expensive.  I gave my family the Digital Spectrum MemoryFrame MF-575 5.6-Inch Digital Picture Frame, and while it’s a nice frame, the image quality isn’t great.  It’s acceptable, but the resolution won’t knock your socks off.  The frame was really easy to use, however.

Amazon ran out of the frames I bought for my family members, so for Flippy’s family we bought the TAO 5.6-Inch Classic Digital Picture Frame.  It was substantially more expensive, but the image quality is better than that of the Digital Spectrum frames.  Also, the Tao frames can be easily swapped out for different styles and colours, so you’re not stuck with just one colour of frame.  Unfortunately, the Tao frame was a bit of a technological puzzle, and Flippy literally spent 10 hours trying to get it to work!  What the manual won’t tell you is that the frame will only display jpg images which are “baseline” quality (lossless), and it turns out that the best way to convert your photos to that format is to open them all in Windows Paint and then to save them.  It took Flippy hours and hours of searching and tinkering to get all her images to show up, so it was a big headache.  Like the Digital Spectrum manual, the Tao manual seems to have been written in Mandarin and then electronically translated into English, so parts of it make no sense whatsoever.

In summation, digital frames are great if you get one as a gift (easy for me to say).  I don’t think I’d buy one for myself right now, if only because I can’t afford it, but also because I think prices will come down quickly.  By next Christmas, these frames may be half the price they are now, and I’m sure the resolution will improve dramatically.  If you plan to buy one in the near future, buy the most expensive one you can afford, because you seem to get what you pay for.  Here’s a link to one of the best-rated frames for sale on Amazon right now, but it was out of our price-range (especially because we had to buy four of them):

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/28 at 01:36 AM
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Thursday, December 07, 2006 , the wee hours

Free books, bwahahahaha

I hate to do this to you, seriously, but BookCloseouts.com is having their annual holiday sale, where you get $1 in free books for every $1 you spend.  In other words, if you find $15 worth of books you’d like to have, you can then choose another $15 worth of books to receive for free—there’s absolutely no spending limit.  If books are crack, these folks are your pusher.  I’m always amazed that every time I venture to their site I find something wonderful that I absolutely must have.  I consider them like a wonderful used book store, except the books are new and don’t smell like mildew.

So, on the slight chance you might have a book lover on your shopping list, give the site a quick visit.  In the interests of full disclosure, you must choose your free books from a list of 15000 preselected titles, but I think you still might find a little something you like.  If you decide you can’t find any free titles which interest you, you can switch your promotion and use a discount code instead.  I was offered a few codes of my very own to use on this blog, and here they are:

Coupon code: theblogpound-5
Coupon password: bookcloseouts.com
Value: Get $5 off an order of $35 or more
Expires: Dec 31, 2007

Coupon code: theblogpound-10
Coupon password: bookcloseouts.com
Value: Get $10 off an order of $60 or more
Expires: Dec 31, 2007

The hyperlinks I used for the coupon codes link directly to the autographed book section.  It’s one of my favourite sections to browse for something fun and unusual.  Happy shopping and happy reading!

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Just to show I’m not a hypocrite, I forced myself to go do some shopping.  Oh, it was painful for me.  I spent $10.98 and bought these titles:

Complete Care for Your Aging Cat (I already own Complete Care for Your Aging Dog)
From Ace to Zummo (a book about names for pets)
My Fine Feathered Friend (a true story about a chicken living in New York City)
Discovering Cultural Japan (title is self-explanatory, I think)
21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com (the autobiography of someone who worked at Amazon while they were just a startup company)

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/07 at 02:28 AM
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006 , mid-afternoon

This frightens me






The Pneumatic Drive Highest-Jumping Pogo Stick.

The Pneumatic Drive Highest-Jumping Pogo Stick.

This is the pogo stick that set the world record for highest jump of 7’, using an air compression spring that generates over 1,500 pounds of thrust-more than any pogo stick available. Unlike common pogo sticks with steel springs that add excessive weight, deteriorate over time, and are not adjustable, this unit has a lightweight pneumatic cylinder.

I keep imagining bumping my head on the overhang of the roof, or on a tree branch, or on something similarly cartoonish.  I’d bet it would keep my three year old nephew busy for hours, though.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/05 at 04:49 PM
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Sunday, November 26, 2006 , mid-afternoon

Dick Proenneke

The television in the bird’s bedroom is always on PBS, so I occasionally wander in on some interesting documentaries.  Earlier this week, I caught the first few minutes of a show that was so engrossing, I had to run out to the “big TV” to tape the rest of it on TiVo.  I had no idea what I was watching until I played it back yesterday—it was a documentary called “Silence and Solitude”, and was about a man named Dick Proenneke.  Long story short, it’s about a mechanic/ranch-hand man from the midwest who retired and moved to Alaska, out in the isolated wilderness.  He built his own cabin and furniture, filming his progress with a 16mm movie camera.  The documentary I saw was a combination of Dick’s original movie footage, and footage from a documentary made 30 years later.  It’s a fascinating contrast to see the man in his 50s and then suddenly in his 80s, having lived this life of isolation all those years.

Dick enjoyed living with the wildlife around him, and what originally caught my eye in the documentary was footage of wild birds flying down to eat out of his hands.  He’d walk for miles each day just to look for moose or mountain sheep, and he’d observe them.  He did some hunting of small game, but in his own words, he said he’d never shoot a deer or a bear or anything large, because it was too much meat for one man and it would be a waste.  He seemed to mostly live on beans which I guess were delivered periodically by plane, and some other staple items like oatmeal, raisins, and honey.  I was so impressed by his respect and admiration for the wildlife, and how he went out of his way to not harm them.  He’d even feed them if food was scarce during the 7-month-long winter.

When the documentary film ended, I was saddened to see that it was dedicated to the memory of Dick Proenneke, who died in 2003 at the age of 87.  I’d sort of hoped he’d still be alive, perhaps living in the wildness well into his 90’s.  In the end, it was too painful for him to live in the cold and he spent his last few years in California, so I guess arthritis can hamper even those of us in the best of physical and mental health.  He was an incredible, quirky man, though—I wish I’d had time to jot him a note while he was alive, telling him what fun I had trying to imagine living amongst the animals, enjoying silence and serenity and my own thoughts.  I bet he had tons of stories to tell about the animals.

I’m going to order a published book of Dick’s journals, One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, and I can’t wait to read his writings.  Writing and photography were his main hobbies, so he’s got tons of material to work with.  If you prefer visuals, though, and are interested in this story, you can buy the DVD of “Silence and Solitude” from the website of the film’s producer.  If you poke around that website, you’ll see other videos for sale as well, including the original, ”Alone in the Wilderness”.  If there’s someone in your life who enjoys camping or dreams of one day living in a cabin in the wilderness, they’d love these movies.  I loved them because they made me feel peaceful, and happy.  Not one frame of these films went by when I didn’t imagine how wonderful all the trees must have smelled!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/26 at 03:05 PM
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