Being a kid was awesome. Sure, you were at the mercy of your parents, when it came to driving some place, or what you got to eat, or sometimes what you had to wear. But you were guaranteed a lunch and two recesses, you got home by 3:30, and you had two glorious months in the summer.
Unless you’re a teacher, try convincing your boss you need that much time off now.
Still, sometimes it would be nice to have just some of the child-friendly amenities still around in the world, but tweaked for adults. Who hasn’t thought to themselves, at some point, that it would be awesome to crawl into the play structures at a fast food restaurant? Or to get absolutely wired on juice.
Anyway, tumblr user Exploding Dog has posted one more entry in that “things you wish the adult world had learned from kids” list. Check it:
YESSSS! Why not?!?!? Why can’t this be true. I mean, they have ice cream trucks, and hot dog carts, and here where I live there’s Ye Olde Chip Truck, but why can’t we have a mobile bartender?
Grant and I are no strangers to ice cube trays. He has one of those old fashioned metal ones where you pull back the lever to crack the ice into cubes, and we have several of those silicone ones that come in the shape of bottles, or Christmas trees, or whatever, and bend like Gumby.
The most common ice cube tray, of course, is the standard plastic version, where you twist to crack the cubes. I’ve always thought they were kind of a hassle. Ice cubes always ended up on the floor, or just not cracking perfectly.
Ice cube trays and how well they work doesn’t really affect our lives, I know, especially when it’s so easy to go and buy a bag of pre-made ice that doesn’t have any of that gross freezer burn smell. But some ingenious soul has come up with a better ice cube tray:
Awesome. Really, how has no one thought of this before?
It is difficult for me to believe that these have never before been invented, but there you go — there’s something new under the sun.
Anyway, if you’ve ever dreamed of walking with reverse knees like a horse or goat, you can strap a pair of Weta Legs on, and go to ‘er. For about a thousand bucks.
I’ve often thought that you could soak gummy bears in a bottle of rum or vodka, if you were looking for an interesting flavour. But now you can do the reverse.
The website says that they are more than durable enough to handle multiple shots but that they won’t survive the dishwasher. Which is good — no cleanup!
$15 for six is a little steep, but might be worth it for ….. oh shit, I almost wrote “for a child’s birthday party” before I remembered that these are shot glasses!
There are a ton of interesting and wild designs on Nova68, but I couldn’t stop looking at this solid block of chair. It’s called the Kashiwado chair:
The Kashiwado chair is a fabulous yet hard to find icon of modern design, a work of art, a master piece. Stunning in every way, perfect for upscale residential and commercial projects. A spectacular piece of sculpture which still maintains its principal function: seating. The Kashiwado chair will be custom made for you by the original workshop in Japan.
Designed by Isamu Kenmochi for Tendo Japan in 1961. The Kashiwado chair was actually created for a famous Sumo wrestler named Kashiwado from that time. This chair is truly a work of art which takes several weeks to create. Craftsmen first cut out several blocks of the bottom roots of a Japanese cedar (Sugi). They carefully select the best wood with most tree-rings. The blocks are carved and layered on top of each other with a special process. The chair is polished and coated afterwards.
Of course, all that hand-crafting comes at a price — shall we say $12,400?
Anna Hurley is a designer with a cute blog. One of the things she’s put up there is this poster, which she claims is a “work in progress, okay really pretty much/almost/so close to being done.”
I can’t wait.
(No, it’s unreadable, even if you click for the full-size. I know. She says she’ll post a larger one when it goes on sale. But at a reasonable price, I might just buy it anyway!)
I was pretty chuffed when I saw this lamp, which would have been absolutely swell in my room, during that myterious phase of growing up when I was old enough to have nice things, but young enough to still want toys.
By this, I mean a six-month period about 12 or 13.
Or, most of my mid-20s.
I found this at Boing Boing, but there are several more shots, plus a larger companion crane lamp, at Design Boom. Awesome.
This is the perfect gift for your photographer friend who also likes coffee — so long as that friend isn’t a Nikonista, I suppose.
I read somewhere that these coffee travel mugs — shaped like Canon telephoto lenses — were handed out as swag to official photogs at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. But they proved so popular (and went viral) that they’re being released to order for the general public. I want.
Or, if you want one faster and free-er (but also more expensive) you can order $200 of stuff at the Canon Canada e-store, and they’ll throw one in for free. But hurry — that offer ends March 23.
Hopefully they are electronically stabilized to prevent motion blur and spills.
Because I live in Canada, for eight months of the year, it’s near-essential to plug in your car (for the block heater). But, as most people don’t know, you only need the block heater running for a couple of hours — yet most people will plug in the car when they get home from work, and leave it plugged in all night long.
That’s a waste. When I was a kid, my parents bought timers for their cars, so that they would automatically turn on at about 5 a.m., and warm up the engine block before the car needed to be started.
Now, I kind of have a similar problem. Instead of plugging in my car (for some reason, my car starts like a charm, even in -40 weather, and has never been plugged in) I plug in my cell phone, overnight, every night, so that it starts the day with a full charge.
Of course, it probably only needs to charge for a couple of hours — not eight to 10. And yet, I don’t have a timer or anything. What I need, instead, is this:
When the device is charged, the plug pops out of its own accord.
Good idea! So far, it’s just a design concept. But there should be no reason why the idea can’t be easily manufactured.
I find the online craft sale Etsy to be hit and miss. But user hammeronsteel, a blacksmith from Massachusetts, is a definite hit. I particularly like the twisted-railroad-spike “churchkeys” to open beer bottles.
I carry a bottle-cap pryer on my keychain (it’s from Sweden — thanks Denise!) but I would love to have a gigantic, threatening-looking one made from an enormous steel nail, maybe hanging from a strip of leather in my garage (I don’t currently have a garage, either).
Best of all is the pointy end, if I happen across a really old-school can that has to be punctured. (The one above has the point bent back for safety, but some of them are left extended. I long to find beer in such a can — I think it’s just tomato and pineapple juices these days.)
Churchkeys with twisty handles are $44, plus shipping (I’m guessing they’re a tad heavy, too). You can also get non-twisty ones for $39. The item descriptions are drool-worthy:
Each of these beer defense tools started off as a railroad spike I found while walking tracks. Years of weather and rust have deeply etched their mark into the material itself. After I bring them back to my shop, I heat them to thousands of degrees, and beat them many times with my hammer. After the final clean-up, all the rust is whisked away, and we’re left with a great tool that has a great history.
On another listing, they are given quite the warranty:
These openers comes with a two-generation guarantee: if they fail for any reason during your life, or the lives of your children, I’ll do what I can to make it right. If it fails for your grandkids, maybe they shouldn’t have tried to take it on interstellar travel.
And, why do I always find such great things a month after I tell people that “I don’t know” what I want for Christmas?
I laughed and laughed and laughed while browsing the selection at MeanCards.com, which means you’ll laugh and laugh and laugh when you give them to people whose feelings you either don’t care that much about, or whose friendship you are really secure in keeping.
At just $3 a card, they’re super affordable, and shipping looks pretty reasonable, too (it tested out to about $5 to Manitoba, so load up a few cards, and it’s comparable to buying Hallmark).
NASA is planning to retire the space shuttles in the next year or so, but once they’re done with them, they’re going to offer them up to interested buyers. Yes, the space shuttles are for sale.
And, they’ve dropped the price. When the initially announced the sale, in late 2008, they estimated that the price of the shuttles, including shipping from the Kennedy Space Center to an airport, would be $42 million.
Good news, millionaires! Space shuttles must go! They’ve reduced the price to a crazy-low $28 million — and they’ll throw in the engines for free (you must pay shipping and handling and, as the New York Times wryly notes, “assembly will be required.”)
A Macallan brand ice-ball maker will run you a few grand (it’s basically solid copper) but it makes smooth, perfect ice spheres — apparently just the thing for drinking single malt Macallan Scotch.
