Apr 06

Bodum’s Conical Charcoal Grill Is Hot, Hot, Hot

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

Bodum’s conical-shaped grill will attract a better class of people to your cook-outs

It is officially barbecue season or, for those to whom “barbecue” means burying a pig in a hole in the ground, “grill season.” And it is official because I had a barbecue up on the roof terrace this past weekend, and it was warm enough to stay up there for long enough to get properly drunk.

If only I’d had a Bodum Fyrkat grill, instead of the primitive homemade rig I usually use. It would have transformed my crude sausage-fest into a sophisticated soiree, full of beautiful people sipping cava instead of my dull friends chugging beer.

I could have marveled at the elegant conical shape of the kettle (and cleaned up easily thanks to the pointy ash-collecting base). I could have cooked the chickens evenly all around thanks to the hand-cranked rotisserie attachment (with an included but optional battery-powered motor). I could even have hung my tongs and other tools from the handy hooks on the side instead of just dropping them onto the filthy floor.

And even when not in use, the Fyrkat would keep a stylish presence on the rooftop, coming as it does in any of three candy colors or plain old black.

As it is, I cooked up lunch on a grill made from an old asbestos water tank, a satellite dish and a split and splayed metal basket. Don’t believe me? Here it is in action:

The ugliest damn grill in the whole world sits on my roof. Photo Charlie Sorrel

In truth, this is the best grill I have ever used, assembled from parts found on the roof some years ago. But for those of you who prefer to spend €200 ($284) on a metal bucket instead of on wine and food, the Fyrkat is available now.

Bodum – Fyrkat cone-charcoal grill [Connox via the Giz]

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Apr 05

Toepener: Open Bathroom Door With Your Feet

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

The Toepener brings hygiene to any public restroom, no matter how disgusting

I’m about to tell you about what I do in public bathrooms. Don’t worry, though: its not gross or weird. I use my foot to open doors and to pop up toilet seats. And I never wash my hands in public restrooms — I just figure that everything in there is too dirty to touch.

As you can imagine, this makes things tricky, and gets me some weird looks. And sometimes, with heavy doors that need to be pulled, it’s impossible. And so I welcome the Toepener, a foot-friendly door handle which is mounted down near the floor so you never have to touch a wet, slimy, germ-infested handle ever again. You just hook it with your toe, pull, and then walk through the door. Simple.

Simple and amazingly obvious. Everywhere I see the Toepener mentioned, the writer remarks that this should be in every bathroom in the world. I agree — almost. It should be in every public bathroom in the world except those in Britain, where it would be wholly undeserved. The Brits, when they get drunk (which is every day) like nothing more than smashing up public bathrooms (I’m English, so bear with me here).

Come Saturday night, you can enjoy the sight of rolls of toilet paper stuffed into toilet bowls, floors slick with urine and water from faucets left running deliberately, cigarette butts everywhere* and all manner of hardware yanked from the walls. And that’s just in the Ladies’. Installing a Toepener in a pub toilet in Britain would be a great idea — right up until the first hooligan sees it, stamps on it, splits the door and spoils it for everyone else.

The Toepener is $50 (or £31, should you wish to flush your money down the toilet by buying one in the UK).

Toepener product page [Toepener via Oh Gizmo!]

*Perhaps, thanks to the ban on smoking in public places, the cigarettes are no longer a problem, but I doubt it.

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Apr 04

It Was Bound to Happen: Kitchen Scale With iPod Dock and Speaker

Posted in: household, iPhone, ipod, speakers, Today's Chili

The ADE Joy forces two disparate gadgets into the same box

It’s always nice to start the week with a little frivolous nonsense, before we realize the reality of our soul-crushing jobs: that we’ll spend almost every day of our lives doing the same thing, over and over again, until we’re 65 and ready to die. Happy Monday.

Today’s piece of superficial silliness is a kitchen scale, with a built-in iPod dock. That’s right. A precision kitchen workhorse, one of a serious cook’s most important gadgets, has been “improved” by adding a dock and speaker. The dock is up front, where you can easily touch screens or click-wheels with greasy fingers, and the speaker is underneath the glass weighing platform, ready to shake some bass as you try to delicately measure ingredients in 1 gram (0.04 ounces) increments (up to 5 kg or 0.0055 short tons).

Your first concern is addressed: The dock comes with a tight-fitting cover plate to seal it against liquids and mess. Otherwise, you are buying one gadget that would play nicer as two separate items. To prove that this marriage is indeed forced, both bride and groom bring their own power supplies: a CR2032 button cell for the scale and a power socket and cable for the speaker.

“But,” you say, “I have a tiny kitchen. Wouldn’t this save space?” Not unless you regularly leave out your scale despite you teeny countertop. Better to buy a speaker and put it on a high shelf or the top of the fridge and keep your (much smaller) scale tucked away. What next? A refrigerator with an iPod dock? Wait… What?

The price for this crazy mongrel of a tool? $100

ADE Joy scale and iPod dock [ADE Frieling via Oh Gizmo]

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Apr 01

High-Tech Home Brew Kit Would Make Beer Robot Swoon

Posted in: household, science, Today's Chili

The Synergy beer-making kit is a world away from the plastic buckets of student home brew

If Doc Brown ever made home-brew beer, he’d make it in something that looked like this, the Synergy Home Beer Brewing System. The all stainless steel setup will let you mash your own hops and barley, sparge the wort and then let it ferment. There are gas burners built in, and the high mash-tun lets you siphon the wort by gravity, meaning no pump is needed. Finally, all tubes are silicone, which won’t taint flavors, and won’t dry and crack with age or heat.

If the above paragraph leaves you confused, then don’t worry. You mightn’t be ready for this $1,900 setup, but you can do everything with stuff you likely have in your own kitchen (you’ll probably need to buy a big plastic bucket for the fermentation, though). The Synergy kit certainly makes things easier, though, and you’ll look like a real pro.

Is it worth making your own beer? Well, the hassle outweighs the cost savings, but it can be a lot of fun. As a student, I bottled a brew which I called Venusian Death Cell. Some guy on my fine art course had combined the pictures from porn playing cards with horror-themed Top Trumps cards. The last one remaining from his no doubt highbrow project was the Venusian Death Cell, which I photocopied 50 times over and glued to the bottles.

Like I said, a hassle, but lots of fun. The Synergy Home Beer Brewing System is available now, and can be further customized by the fine folks at Synergy Brewing Systems.

Home beer brewing system 15 Gallon [Etsy via Uncrate]

Synergy Brewing Systems [Synergy Brew]

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Apr 01

Three-In One Lightbulb Is an Energy-Saving Matryoshka

Posted in: Environment, household, Today's Chili

GE’s 3-in-1 bulb lights up instantly yet still saves power

Can’t decide between a warm, instant-on halogen bulb, a long-lasting, low-power compact fluorescent or a plain old incandescent in its familiar bulb shape? You don’t have to. Just buy GE’s new hybrid and you get all three, in one handsome glass bauble.

The bulb looks like any bulb you may have bought in the last hundred years or so, but inside you’ll find a cool CF tube coiled spring-like around a hot halogen core. When you flip the switch, the halogen lamp lights up instantly, and the CF tube starts to warm up. When the tube reaches full power, the halogen lamp winks off.

The bulb, which will start showing up in stores this month, will come in two colors, both of them white: 2,700 Kelvin and a slightly warmer 2,500 Kelvin. They will burn for up to 8,000 hours, eight times the life of an incandescent. You’ll pay between $6 and $10 depending on the wattage and model you choose.

I like this, and I think I may send one to my parents to put in their computer room (yes, they still have a “computer room”). Whenever I Skype them, usually when it’s late and I’m drunk enough to want to talk to them, they flip on the CF light in their room and I am treated to ten minutes of dim orange shapes looming into view on my 27-inch monitor. Finally the lights come up to speed and I can actually make out my mother, at which time the gin finally kicks in and everything goes blurry again.

Three Bulbs in One: GE’s Hybrid Halogen-CFL with Incandescent Shape [GE. Thanks, David!]

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Mar 31

Witness Turns Your Mac and iPhone into a Burglar Alarm

Posted in: household, ios, ipad, iPhone, Mac, security, Today's Chili

Witness uses your Mac’s iSight camera to detect movement and sound the alarm

If you own both a Mac and an iPad, it’s a fair bet that you also have a home stuffed with other electronic gear, the kind of gear that burglars like to, well, burglarize. Luckily, there’s an app for that.

It’s called Witness, and it turns your Mac into a motion-activated security camera. When running, it monitors your room with using the iSight camera, and when it detects movement it sends an alert to your iPhone or iPad.

Included with the alert are photos and videos, so you can either rest easy knowing that Kitty has jumped up on the desk again, or watch in horror as your home is emptied miles from where you are standing.

Forgot to activate the alarm? You can do it remotely from the phone.

Witness seems like a great idea, but for a couple of things: you need to leave your Mac running 24/7 while you are away, which is something of a waste of electricity. It also requires an internet connection, so the smart thief could just cut the power on entry — it’s pretty unlikely that your Mac is out in the hallway where the breakers are often kept.

Aside from this, though, it’s nice not to be worrying about the house when you’re out. The Mac App costs $40, and the companion iOS app is free.

Witness product page [Orbicule]

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Mar 31

Water Leak Alarms Will Make Your Neighbors Hate You Even More

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

Water leak detectors add noise to flood damage

You have a smoke alarm, right? And maybe even a burglar alarm. But do you have a water alarm? Probably not.

The Water Leak Alarm is ready to join the bevvy of paranoia-salving gadgets in your home. Place one next to a washing machine, in the basement or anywhere else that water is likely to leak, and sleep easy. When the leak finally happens, and water touches the alarm, it will utter a shrill, piercing 100dB scream for up to 24 hours. So if there’s a leak when you’re not around to see it — which is the only time a leak is ever really damaging — your neighbor will not only have water dripping through his ceiling, but he’ll have to put up with a full day of screeching noise.

The (non-replaceable) battery in a Leak Alarm lasts for up to three years, and you get three in a pack for just $20. That’s cheap enough to dream up some alternate uses.

I can imagine my parents putting one inside the shower, for example. Bear with me here. Taking a shower in my family home is a daunting task. For some reason, my mother and father go crazy if the walls get wet, or if the room gets too steamy. This includes the tiles on the wall inside the shower cubicle, and probably the glass shower curtain itself. Using this handy widget, my father could detect whether an hapless guest has gotten the shower wet, and all without leaving the dining room and the TV showing the 24 hour news and weather channel. Dad — I have your Christmas gift already.

Available now.

Water Leak Alarms [Improvements via Liszewski]

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Mar 28

Save ‘Leftover’ Wine With Silicone Screw Caps

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

The redundant silicone screw stopper saves ‘leftover’ wine

Sometimes — not often but sometimes — I am invited to real people’s homes. In these homes we sometimes eat, and often drink. Then, when we’re “done”, the host will grab the half-full bottle of wine and slip in a cap. It may be a simple rubber stopper, or a more complex Vacu-Vin-style closure with a pump to evacuate the oxidizing air from the bottle.

When I see this, I usually laugh to myself as I leave, passing by the liquor store to pick up a bottle of whisky on my way home to bed.

For me, an opened bottle is a started bottle, and I was always taught to finish what I started, however difficult it might be. You might guess, then, that I do not, not have I ever, owned a special stopper for wine. Besides, every bottle comes with its own cork, which can be flipped and jammed back in if you have an emergency — say you have to leave the house before the bottle is done and must take it with you.

For those amateurs out there, those weak-minded fools who never finish what they begin, then may I recommend you check out these novelty silicone bottle screws. They resemble exaggerated cartoon-like Philips-head screws, but need only to be pushed into the bottle’s neck to seal it. Inexplicably, they come in sets of three, meaning that somebody, somewhere thinks you’ll need to seal three bottles at once.

A set of screws costs $13, which is $13 that could have been spent on alcohol.

Set of Three Bottle Screws [Pop Deluxe via Book of Joe]

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Mar 24

Loca Brews Pod Coffee in a Stovetop Moka

Posted in: Apparel, household, Today's Chili

The Loca lets you use expensive coffee pods in your cheap stovetop moka

Luca Veneri’s “Loca” takes the simple, effective and well loved moka coffee pot and modifies to use expensive, wasteful and environmentally questionable coffee pods.

The moka is a classic, and can be found in almost every kitchen across western Europe. I have used one daily for most of my adult life. It’s cheap, easy to use and makes a good, strong faux-spresso.

Podular coffee, on the other hand, uses overpriced single-serve capsules which then need to be recycled. In a machine that delivers a known and exact pressure, they make a great espresso. In the rather more primeval bubbling of a moka, things aren’t so precise.

So the Loca, as Veneri’s design is fittingly named, gives the worst of both worlds: pricy, high-maintenance coffee and an imprecise, low-pressure machine. It does look pretty cool, though.

Lemme See You Percolate [Yanko]

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Mar 23

Twist&Brush, A Kind of Reverse, Toothpaste-Filled Fountain Pen for Teeth

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

Twist&Brush complicates an easy chore

Imagine a beautiful old steel fountain pen, with its twist-to-suck pump that slurps in ink. Now imagine that instead of twisting the reservoir to fill the pen, you turn it in the other direction and force ink to seep out through the nib.

Now imagine that instead of ink, you are squeezing out toothpaste, and instead of a pen, you have a toothbrush. Finally, swap the metal for plastic and you have Kawamura Ganjavian’s Twist&Brush, a toothbrush with its own supply of toothpaste.

It’s made for travel. You fill it — probably quite messily — from a regular toothpaste tube and you’re ready to go. Twist the knob to deliver a dose of minty paste to the bristles and brush.

Because, you know, it’s so hard to carry the two separately. And while the cap may untwist from a tube of toothpaste and soil your luggage, this contraption may also twist and pump out a sticky mess into your suitcase, so you’ll still need a toiletry bag to keep it in.

Still, it looks neat, which is probably enough to make many people want one. Sadly, it is a one-off concept design, but it has given me an idea. Why not take the hollow head of this brush and cut a thread into its neck? Then you could just screw it onto the top of any toothpaste tube. Easier, and a lot less messy.

Twist&Brush [Studio KG]

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