Hasta La Gadget!

File under “first-world problems”. This travel belt from Hermès concertinas, zig-zag, like a folding ruler and ends up short enough to fit into a carry-on bag. It is made of metal and leather and costs €580, or $725. I hate it.

Are you ready for the rant? First, a well made leather belt is probably the least likely item of clothing to malfunction on any length of trip. But second, a belt – by its very nature – is a flexible strip that will bend, twist and roll into any shape, adopting the form of any nook or cranny in your suitcase. The Hermès belt turns into an inflexible block of hide and metal, demanding its own space in your luggage and managing to fail utterly in its purpose.

It doesn’t end there. Take a look at the design, and imagine pulling it through the belt-loops in your pants. The joints are set the wrong way, so every one of them will catch on each and every belt-loop. And remember, these riveted-together offcuts are priced at $750. Classy work as ever, Hermès. I still haven’t forgiven you for buying Leica and turning it into a fashion brand all those years ago.

Hermès Folding Travel Belt [Selectism via Oh Gizmo! Not available on Hermès web-store]

We love shoes. We wear them every day. But not these shoes: Sometimes, footgear that comes into the Wired offices is just too strange for everyday use.

In this video we visit three new shoes whose function beats the holy hell out of form.

From fishing shoes with replaceable soles to sandals with frickin’ flashlights on them to shoes that barely have a sole at all, we make a lighthearted visit to the weird world of highly alternative foot covering.

Here’s a little more information on each of these shoes.

The first wading boot with interchangeable soles, the Korkers Guide is designed to adapt to almost any fishing situation. Wading on slimy riverbed? The felt soles will keep you from slipping. Long hike between honey pots? The lugged soles get a grip on dry land just like a hiking boot. And with Boa’s stainless steel lacing system replacing the standard cat’s cradle of nylon string, these boots are the easiest we’ve ever put on. The only drawback — and it’s a pretty big one — is that the soles are seriously tricky to swap out. You need a special lever-type key to set the new bottoms into the boot — a key which we lost before we even hit the water. Good thing we had a flat-head screwdriver in the trunk: It did the job OK. $180, korkers.com

The Teva Illum takes almost the opposite approach to outdoor fun: stripped-down and minimal. A standard flip-flop in design, the Illum adds a small LED light, mounted on top of the strap, to help illuminate your path in the darkness. Teva touts this as an aid to surfers on dawn patrol, but we think it would work pretty well for dog owners on poop patrol, too. $60, teva.com

The Terra Plana EVO is the latest installment in the company’s line of nearly-barefoot shoes. Like the company’s Vivo Barefoot, the EVO has a flexible, minimal sole designed to protect your feet while encouraging a more natural, barefoot-like gait. The EVO is a comfortable, if slightly odd-looking shoe, and it does work well for barefoot-like running, in our tests — it’s much like a running flat. It’s also much less unusual-looking than the Vibram FiveFingers, a glove-like foot covering with individual pockets for each toe. If you want a flexible sole but don’t want to call attention to yourself, the EVO is a good bet. $160, www.terraplana.com/the-evo

Note: We’ve examined the science of barefoot running before, and found mixed evidence for the claim that running barefoot — or nearly so — is actually better for your body than wearing the kind of running shoes that have big, cushioned, wedge-like heels. That’s because, with a shoe like this, you’ve got to land more on the front or middle of your foot, instead of pounding your heel down. But be careful: Most people’s feet and legs aren’t accustomed to running this way, so build up very, very slowly or you’ll run the risk of injuring yourself, as Wired.com senior editor Dylan Tweney did. Start slow, with quarter-mile runs at most, and build up very, very gradually.

Written by Joe Brown and Dylan Tweney; video produced by Annaliza Savage, with camera work and editing by Michael Lennon and Fernando Cardoso. Guest appearance by former Wired.com science editor Kristen Philipkoski.

This week’s dumbest gadget award goes to the TV Hat, a baseball cap with an elongated peak from which hangs a “personal private theater”. It is a head-mounted blackout tent into which you drop your portable media player, wherein you can watch movies in the glare of the midday sun, or in bed next to your smiling spouse. It costs $30, and includes a 2.5x magnification screen.

Who would use this? First, you look like an idiot, or at the very best like some weird, creepy guy in night-vision goggles. Second, this is most likely to be used outside or in a public place, which means you will be rendered not only blind and deaf to the outside world, you will not be paying any attention to the goings-on around you. That would make me very nervous.

But wait, there is another use. The head-mounted dork-theater is not only for watching distraction-free. It is also for keeping others out: “Privacy side shields prevent others from seeing what you are viewing.” Be careful, though. They might not be able to peek at the naughty movie you are watching, but they can sure as hell still see what your hands are doing.

TV Hat [Things You Never Knew Existed via Book of Joe]

It’s a concept design, but as most of Tokyo Flash’s production watches are even wilder, this e-ink timepiece will probably make it almost intact into stores and onto wrists. The stainless steel bracelet covers a panel of the same e-ink “paper” found in the Kindle and other e-readers, with cut-outs to reveal several odd-shaped sections. The paper of course offers the same low-power consumption and high-readability of any e-ink display.

The watch will have a Bluetooth radio to communicate with your cellphone. It will vibrate to give “message, mail and call notifications” and these notifications will also be cryptically encoded into unreadable runes at the top of the display.

There’s no price, no launch date, and not even a picture of a prototype outside of these CAD mockups. We have a feeling that an e-ink watch would look awesome, though, and it looks like Tokyo Flash is breaking with long tradition and actually showing the time in normal numbers. Unbelievable.

E-Clock [Tokyo Flash blog via the Giz]

The only way to be truly prepared for every alcoholic emergency is to always carry a bottle opener with you, but this is, of course, impractical and easy to forget. So what about building an opener into something that you do always carry with you? That’s exactly what the Happy Hour Watch is for.

The quartz timepiece has a bottle opener in the buckle, keeping spraying beer away from the watch itself, which is fashioned from alloy with a stainless-steel back. The watch has two faces, one LCD and the other with traditional hands, and only marked with one hour (beer O’clock).

This only takes care of beer bottles (and if you have two bottles of beer, you have a beer opener anyway), so it’s more suited to tailgating than to romantic picnics. On the other hand, you should be buying screw-top wine anyway: no cork-taint and no corkscrew required. The Happy Hour Watch is $50.

Happy Hour Watch [Happy Hour Timepieces via Uncrate]