What Better for an ice tray than Hans Solo trapped in Carbonite or in this case Ice? If you are UK based, Play.com has one for sale at £9.95 and USA based? then NeatoShop has them for $9.95.

The Zombie invasion is in full swing here.

Do not panic!  The crawling zombie is here to stop that annoying door right in its tracks.  Now you can have your very own undead friend hold the door open for you.  Who knew Zombies could be so helpful!

Get your Zombie Doorstop (Crawling) now.  You don’t want to be left behind.  Can you really survive without one?

[Netoshop Zombie Doorstop - $19.95]

Need a little extra prodding or hours of cajoling before you get out of bed? Need to dress in time, avoid wolfing down your breakfast and causing near-death encounters trying to catch the last morning shuttle to work? Then, here is an exciting new option for you to wake up with a bang: literally!

The Danger Bomb alarm clock works on a simple principle for arousing sleepy-heads: it scares you awake! Have not heard of that one yet?

Not quiet a bomb, but aspiring for explosive power status, the Danger Bomb alarm clock lets out a powerful array of continuous explosion sounds that need to be disabled physically by following a light-up code (which is reset every morning) and by unhooking the correct wire! A whole new perspective to getting an incentive to wake up every morning on time isn ot it not having to defuse a bomber-type alarm clock that yells for attention?

Once again while out shopping for the odds and ends at Aldi, I spotted what I thought was a cheaper than normal 4GIG memory stick. I bought this item as it was mixed in with the 4GIG SDHC Memory cards and had a sign saying £6.79 and as I needed a  USB Key (8 would have been better), I bought this along with the rest of the shopping. I had not checked the receipt they printed off and once home, discarded all the box it came in (plastic wrap) and went on to use it.

Opening the pack

I was presently surprised when I saw it actually had in the bottom a Micro SD Card reader built right in, as I use these cards in my phones, this would come in handy even though I have it built in on my other device I bought (costing £1). You may ask what is the point of this? Well it is like having two memory sticks in one really, they come up as two separate drive letter.

Stiched up on price

I looked at the receipt later on and saw I was charged in fact £12.99, surely some mistake. I checked the web sites and such as seen it was in fact £12.99. Through the week I went into the store and by now they have re-arranged the part with the technical item in there and quite clearly they had it labled as £12.99 – the £6.79 was in fact as I suspected the SDHC SD Card (the type you shove in camera’s). I had a word with the guy at the till and he suggested that if I had the box (which I did not) – I could return it.

Lesson learnt

If I had shopped on-line, I could have bought 8GIG for the same price (minus the memory card reader). I should have checked my receipt before leaving the store or looked a lot more closely before getting this. This time I shall grin and bear it and live with the fact that I paid what I feel is “over the odds” for a memory stick.

Using the deivce

I have used this a few times already, the first was putting Windows 7 ISO onto the stick and installing – this worked much faster then a DVD for example. The other time was I needed to copy off 7.5 Gigs worth of photo’s from a machine I had booted via Ultimate Boot CD. I got a 8Gig Micro SD card from stores and used this device to get the stuff on there.

I got my hands on a couple of these plugs and as you can tell from the photo, these are UK plugs of course. This nifty device basically has 3 sockets with the top one been for the computer while the one on either side is for your equipment. The goal here is when your computer is on – then all the devices plugged into the sides are powered on (such as Monitor, Printer, Speakers etc). When you close down for the night – it senses that the computer is off (as it is not drawing power) and powers down the equipment on its own.

Now you may say “but it only has two sockets – I need more then that” – in this instance then you plug all the items you need to go off automatically into a extension cable and plug this extension cable into the socket on the left or right. Depending on your layout – this could include all items such as Router, Cable Modem box, Printer, screen, speakers and so forth.

I pay for my Gas and Electricity on a 3 months cycle, I always pass a meter reading to make sure that it is true to life and none of this Estimated stuff as that could leave you with a nasty shock when they do actually read the meters. Due to both the high prices and how much equipment I own that is powered by electricity – I decided to get myself one of those fancy meters that tell you in real time how much is been used and how much it all costs. I Called my Supplier (Souther Electric) and switched to a package which allows the free device.

It Arrived

I Need to say that it took MANY weeks for this to arrive, they claim they had lost the shipment but finally it turned up a few days after I called to complain (funny that). It was simple enough to clamp the device onto the 4th wire which ran to the fuse box, this is powered by battery.

The base unit was white and branded “southern electric” but it was in fact produced by CurrentCost and is called the Envi. The base unit talks to the device wrapped around the electricity supply by wireless of some sort and although there is a RJ45 on the back, I suspect this is not Network but more Serial.

Device in use

Once you have set everything up such as the time, the rate and so forth – basically it tells you how much is been used Now (in Watts), How much per day (In local currency) and per month (estimated of course). I suppose if you could end of getting paranoid and worry about switching things on but the idea was to find out how much juice the computer really takes and also to spot large spikes (and get rid of them) during the day.

The goal

When I get the chance, I plan to power everything down and see that it reads Zero. I need to power on the normal stuff that stays on all day and night such as Modem, Router, monitors on Stand-by and so on – this should hive me a rough reading of how much per day I am wasting. The next step is to power on one computer at a time (complete) and leave for a while – see how much each uses.

A graphical example

With the TV + all Media boxes on (Cable, Satellite) and house lights (which are fitted with energy saving bulbs) – I was burning up about 44 Watts or about 12p per day. I booted a Laptop, desktop and 2 monitors and we jumped up to 80 Watts or 22p per day. Now you might say – so what right? What if I started to power down (or get rid) of external drives, surplus Laptops and such or even jumped to a single screen?  The goal as I said was to work out if the computers were eating up the electric or in fact hardly making any difference.

I shall post another time a complete break down of each device with per day usage – the result might make interesting reading.

Another item I spotted while out shopping today and by luck I could test this out before even buying the item as they happen to have some office type chair for sale also (which I never bought of course). You can attach this to your office chair, your car seat and anywhere else I guess you can slip this on. The idea is it promotes correct posture and saves you having back troubles.

The Idea

It Pushes the base of the spine inwards which gives you better posture while sitting and will put an end to bad backs as we know it. My Office chair already had some sort of lumbar support but it was not a lot and as this was so cheap – I bought and fitted.

Does it work?

The easy answer is yes, as it sticks out so much (which is good), even if I do not sit back into the chair, I can still feel this support and already can feel the benefits. I would suggest buying one for the car, one for the office and one for home.

On most of my desktop and laptop computers I have various memory card readers but they all seem to be missing the one I need – this been Micro SD. While out today in one of these cheap shops where everything is £1 ($1.50) – I Spotted this all-in-one reader. My reasoning here is that you cannot go really too wrong given the price, I knew it would work as in picking up the device so I took the plunge and bought the thing.

Construction

The top of the device was literally falling off and had I not broke out the super glue – it would have been lost in next to no time. I choose the colour as per the picture, there was a bright pink model which was not to my taste. The device consists of a the top part (clear plastic as you can see) with one small circuit board inside and the USB Lead is underneath.

In operation

We can see it supports:

Support SD, MMC, RS-MMC, Mini SD, T-Flash, MS / MS PRO, MS Duo / MS PRO Duo, M2

Mini  SD, T-Flash, M2 use without adapter

Underneath we have the USB Lead which folds into the device and once out – only has about one inch worth of lead, no USB Extension lead is supplied.

Judging by the size, maybe they assume you will attach this to your keyring – while this is possible, it is not something I need to have on my person all the time.

In Use

This thing does what it says on the packet and it perfect for me to use both at home and at work. You cannot really go too far wrong with the price and do not expect it to last too long in heavy use. This allows me to quickly move files onto my Micro SD Card on my Android phone.

Spotted this on bigpockets.co.uk for £69.99 – seems like a good deal and a good device.

Supports All Popular HD Video
This product supports all popular 1080p HD video in the market, including H.264, MKV, Divx HD,
MPEG 2-TS, VC-1, WMV9, then you can enjoy HD video on your HD TV by HDMI interface.

Supports USB Host And LAN Samba Client
With a USB2.0 high speed host build-in, you can plug in your USB storage devices like USB hard
disk, USB flash drive and MP3 player to extend more storage space and playback your media direct
from these USB storage. Thanks to Samba supporting in this product, you can navigate your media
stored in your PC and playback them on TV, this is much helpful in sharing your media at home.

Supports Multi Memory Cards Media Input
With multi memory card reader socket, you can insert memory cards like SD, SDHC, MMC and MS cards into the product, then playback the media direct from the memory cards to TV.

HDMI Digital output
With a HDMI interface design-in, digital audio can output to TV with 1080p HD video signal. It enable user connect his video connection very easily.

PDF Sheet

SPECIFIACATIONS

∙Memory card
input Supports             SD, SDHC, MMC and MS cards
∙USB input                   USB2.0 high speed USB host x 2
∙Firmware                     Upgradeable
∙OS language                English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Dutch,
∙Audio file                     MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AAC, LPCM, FLAC, AC3 & DTS
∙Video codec                H.264, MKV, WMV9, MPEG 1/2/4, HD Divx , Xvid, FLV, RM/RMVB
∙Video file                     mkv, ts, m2ts, mts, tp, trp, wmv, Ifo, iso, vob, dat, avi, mpg, mp4,
mov, rm, rmvb, divx, xvid, flv
∙Video resolution                       H.264, MKV, WMV9, TS and HD Divx supports up to 1920 x 1080p 30p
RM/RMVB supports up to 720p
∙Subtitle                                    sub, smi, ssa, srt, idx + sub
∙Photo file                     JPG, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, GIF
∙Video out                    CVBS, HDMI 1.3(max 1080p)
∙Audio out                    stereo R/L, optical, HDMI digital
∙LAN                           RJ45, supports Samba client
∙Remote control                        Yes
∙Panel button                NO
∙power supply               Universal AC 100 ~230V 50Hz
∙Power rate                  DC 12V 2A
∙Product dimension       170 x 125 x 25 mm (L x W x H)

Thoughts

I do not own this device as I already have the WD TV which only plays any media plugged into the 2 USB Ports. The idea of a device that can stream media from wireless sounds interesting to me but I am not 100% sure it could cope with Full 1080P movie across wireless. They also sell another device – Sumvision Cyclone MKV FULL 1080p HD Player + Enclosure V2 which is the same as this but has the ability to house a harddrive as well.

This is the ultimate network hard drive. Simply connect the unit to your PC via USB or directly to your router, switch or hub via Ethernet and you’ve got plenty of room to back up and save your valuable data, music, photos and movies and instantly share them with everyone else on the network.
As well as FTP and Samba, the drive can act as your iTunes server – this way you do not need a computer to server your music to iTunes compatible devices. Add to that the ability to use it as a BitTorrent client to download your torrents without the need of a computer and the Print server to share your USB printer with anyone on the network and you end up with a very complete and stable must have network drive.
Furthermore with the built in Raid, setting up the drive as a safe mirrored data vault or a performance file server is entirely your choice making this one of the most versatile stand alone network storage appliance.