Girls Can't Skim Stones

While surfing the other evening I came across this ball which bounces on water. It's called a Waboba. It looks pretty cool. You can see a video of it in action here.
While I was starting to watch the video, the Better Half came into the room and started watch it too.

"Can you do that thing with stones bouncing on the water?" she asked me.

"Skimg stones?! Of course I can" I replied, "I'm a guy."

"I can't" she said.

"No" I replied "because you're not a guy."

"My father can" she said.

"Duh! Of course he can. He's a guy!"

She was a bit confused now and seemed to be toying with the idea of accusing me of being sexist. Me!? Sexist?! I wasn't being sexist, I was just stating a fact of life.

Girls can't skim stones!

She didn't agree, so I did a quick straw poll and found that 100% of the women in room could not skim stones. Not convinced by these hard facts I tried some research on the topic on the internet. What better place to find hard evidence than the web site for the World Stone Skimming Championships which take place on a little island off the coast of Scotland called Easdale.

The results of the 2007 championships speak for themselves. The winner of the women's event, from South Africa, skimmed her stone 29m. Second was 26m and third 23m.

The Better Half thought that this was evidence that they could skim stones, but I had to point out that these were basically statistical anomalies. Freaks if you will. After all these were fully grown women at the peak of their stone skimming careers taking part in the world championships, and yet the winning distance in the under 10 boys competition was 24m. A puny young boy! He would have come third in the women's competition. The boys in the 10-15 years section got much better distances than the best of the women.

To further demonstrate my point there was only one girl in the girls under 10 years section that managed to skim a stone! One! In the whole world!


I did another straw poll at work, and again found that 100% of the female responses were that they couldn't skim stones, but her boyfriend could.
She put it down to the wrist action of fellas and that girls couldn't be arsed.

Girls can't skim stones! Okay - maybe there's some evidence that girls can skim stones, but I it's a bit like girls peeing standing up. They can do it but it's not a pretty site and they'll be wet after.

More Soaps in Your Eyes

So you don't want to remodel the entire bathroom just so that you can watch TV while having a shower, and you're more of a bath person anyway. Or you can afford to stay in hotels which have television sets in the bathroom. Or there's nothing you like more than watching your soaps while white water rafting....

Never fear - those fine people at Sanyo have just the thing for you. A waterproof LCD portable LCD television.

The battery goes for 7 hours on a charge - you should be good and wrinkly by then!

It's available, in Japan from November 21st - just in time for Christmas. More information from I4U.

Red Means Hot

What do you get for your bathroom that has everything - coloured water of course.

Here's a little gadget for lighting up the water coming from the tap (faucet). It will normally light it up in blue, but once the temperature hits 32C (89F) it goes red.


Perfect for those late night trips to the bathroom. Even better for teaching kids that the water is too hot for them. $20 to possibly prevent a nasty scalding - how could you not buy it?

Now if only they made them for taps outside of the US.

Wireless Photo Uploading

If you're one of those people that just can't wait to upload your photos for the world and your family to see, and your camera takes SD memory, then Eye-fi might just have the memory for your memorys.

It's a 2GB SD card with a built in wireless card. You first connect it, via it's own card reader, to your PC, and configure where you want it to upload the photos. It can upload to your PC, or to a website such as Flickr or Picasa.

Once that's done, pop the card into your camera and start shooting. When the camera is in range of your wireless network the card will upload the photos. No need for any cables or card readers - and if you're not saving to the PC, no need for that to be on either.

A great little idea which is sure to make life a little easier. It should also massively increase the amount of poor quality, badly focused, red-eyed photos which really should have been deleted photos on the internet. There'll probably be a lot of ones which accidentally get past the censor as well.

Too bad it's only usable in the U.S. at the moment

Soaps in your eyes

I like gadgets. (I might have said that before.) But even I know when to say enough is enough.

While having a slight fix of gadget related reading, I read this about a TV for the bathroom. It seems specifically designed for use in the shower. Putting aside the fact that you would probably have to remodel, or at least re-tile the bathroom so that you could run the cables for the TV, I just find myself asking why?!

Why would anyone want to watch TV while having a shower? What is so important that you couldn't afford to miss it while cleaning yourself? How much of it can you really watch while water and shampoo cascade down and get in your eyes? Will people that wear glasses have to keep them on in the shower.

It comes with a remote control!!! WHY?!

Answers on a postcard, or to the comment field...

I know I don't need it but...

I like gadgets. I'm a man. We like gadgets and tools. That's how Lidl and Aldi get us to go in there in the first place. How can you NOT buy a kango hammer at those prices!?! I got a soldering iron the other day. It was €7. How could I not buy it?! I might need it one day. Actually, I did need it one day, but that was about two months ago. I resolved the problem without one. But it might happen again and this time I'm prepared.

Since my ethnic make-up dictates that I have to be informed about the weather, and offer an opening to a conversation on it at any time; (Now reread the opening two sentences of the first paragraph so I don't have to type them again. I'm lazy like that.) I have a digital clock and indoor/outdoor thermometer, also from Lidl, for just such situations. It sees more use than the soldering iron, but it's early days on that front.

Now I'm just waiting for them to start selling these babies! I'll start forming a queue now, 'cos you'd never know when you might need it - and when you do, I'm sure the first thing you'll do is go look at it and see what it says!

Buyer Beware

Last weekend saw the first offical HD television broadcast in Ireland. It was limited to the trial recipients (and people in the transmission area with the hardware capable of receiving it). According to the reports it looked fantastic. One thing that it did highlight, however, was peoples lack off understanding surrounding digital TV, HD TV and HD Ready.

According to someone on 2FM, all that was needed to watch it was a HD TV. They thought that the idea of being able to watch the game in HD was so great, they were going to go and buy a new TV. They were wrong, and worse, they may have encouraged others to go out and part with their hard earned cash.

Technology is great. There's tons of cool gadgets and toys these days. The marketing people are finding it hard to keep up. I guess that's why they get together to come up with standard labels for things. It makes it easier on the customer to spend their money, while making an ill-informed purchase. Such as spending €1000+ on a TV which has a HD Ready sticker on it, without ever checking if it is capable of receiving and/or displaying HD television.

I've heard of people buying HD DVD players, not realising that there was a difference between a DVD and a HD DVD.

Lots of people have queued up at Lidl and Aldi for their large HD televisions - many without doing much research, apart from that's a good price for 40".

Have consumers become victims of their own success? Do they have too much money? Why do they gladly part with large chunks of cash, without understanding what they are buying?

Most people wouldn't go and buy a sandwich without looking to see what was in it. Why don't they do the same with modern consumer electronics? If you don't know what something can do then find out. Google is your friend!

If you want to buy something, know what you want it to do. Have some basic criteria that it has to fulfil. If it doesn't meet them don't buy it. If it does more, do you need the extra features? Will you use them? If not, look for a more basic model. Have a budget and stick with it. It's exciting buying new toys, and it's easy to get caught up in the moment. Hold yourself back, the next band wagon is right behind - and it's got better features.