Fantasist’s Scroll

I’m feeling very domestic this month.

I’m not sure if it was the four more bags of junk I threw out last night, or the six more bags I have to donate to the Salvation Army, or just moving furnature around, but I’m really enjoying home related links this month. Maybe I’m just nesting. In any case, following with the theme from last week, here are some more very strange domestic links that struck my fancy.

To start with, I’ve got two very different fireplaces. The first, called the Drop, wouldn’t work in my house at all. For one thing, it’s very modern, for another, it simply wouldn’t retrofit well with my current chimney. The other, from Hearthfalls, wouldn’t work either, because… Well, just look at them and I think you’ll see why. Frankly, it’s one of those things that looks perfect, for someone else’s house.
And, while we’re talking about water, here’s a funky lamp called, plainly enough, the Wet Lamp. It’s a lamp, in a bowl of water. Yes, electricity inside water in your house. And, it looks cool, too.
Speaking of “looking cool”, let’s contemplate the outdoors for a minute. Or, at least the garage. A European designer of unknown national origin has designed a variably transparent garage. Apparently, it’s done with LCDs, but it lets you show off your new, impossibly expensive sports car when your ridiculously wealthy friends are over, then hide it again from thieves. Sadly, I’m more likely to have a driveway edged with glow in the dark pebbles than I am the garage with disappearing walls.
Now, I am looking at new/different furnature, so I’ve got several links to that sort of thing, too.
I have a lot of friends that often find themselves in trouble with their wives and need a place to crash. Or, are going through some sort of meltdown and need a place to sit and rock while sucking their thumb and going to the “happy, quiet place”. So, this couch that opens into bunk beds struck me as useful.
And, naturally, I want to make a good impression and hide the fact that I’m as obsessed with TV as I am with books, so a reversable media center that’s combined with a bookcase seemed perfect for my living room.
Now, I’m sure none of my friends do this, but I’m told that sometimes people snoop through bathrooms when they’re in another person’s house. What better way to deal with that than a mirror that you can send SMS text messages to! So, now, when you think that nosey relative is about to snoop in your medicine cabinet, you can have the mirror tell them to mind their own business!

Now, finally, to wind things up on a more whimsical note, I have a link to a paper airplane coffee table that I just love! Yes, it’s a little strange, but you have to admit, it does look cool. And, what could go with that better than kid-sized Tetris pillows!? I can totally see those in my living room!

Well, I can tell it’s been a long week, because these Friday Fun Links just got sillier and sillier, even though they’re duplicates of the ones posted on Diary of a Network Geek. Still I hope you enjoy them and have a great Friday!

You’d think this belongs on my other blog, which is tech oriented, but…

Well, okay, it probably belongs there, too. Wired News ran this story about the efforts of researchers to localize cell phones for Ethiopia last week. It’s interesting to me for a number of reasons.
First, there’s the “alphabet”, which is actually a syllabary. It’s got over 300 characters and is nothing at all like the Roman alphabet. (You can see what it looks like at Omniglot.com.) A bit of a challenge for the English-speaking cell phone designers!
Second, it’s a fascinating look at the way technology effects us and the way we effect technology. The goal was to get SMS into the hands of farmers who could use it for communication and weather prediction to better manager their crops.
Thirdly, it’s a look at a section of the world that I hear about all too little. Africa is most likely the birth-place of man, or at least the tribe of man from which modern Europeans descended, but it seems so primative by our, oh, so refined Western standards.

In short, it was a very interesting look at an aspect of life that I rarely see. How will all that change in the future? Where will it all end up? How much will situations like that be the norm out on space colonies, if we ever get them? Language and technology make for very interesting idea combonations. There’s lots of stories there.