bookofjoe

Bowlingual Dog Translator

The YouTube caption: "This new update to the early 2000s gadget not only interprets what your dog is 'saying' when he or she barks, it actually speaks on their behalf. Unfortunately, it only speaks in Japanese, so you need another translator to figure it out anyway."

Unless you understand Japanese.

[via Marcus Reimold]

Nixie Concrete Clock

From LikeCool::

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Nixie Concrete Clock

By designer Daniel Kurth, featuring a set of six vintage Z560M Nixie tubes embedded in a fairly hefty block of concrete.

The time in the photo above is 10:28:09.

The Luxembourgish designer enclosed the shiny orange Nixie tubes in a rough reinforced concrete body which can optionally be wall-mounted.

The strength of this design lies in the application of "retro technology" and its interesting combination of components and materials, where one is easily fooled as to what is old and what is new.

All electronic components in this fully functioning prototype are assembled by hand.

Unlike other clocks that make use of Nixie tubes, this one does not read like a traditional display.

Kurth noted that clocks — regardless of their esthetic value — sometimes form a disturbing factor in one's house, since being constantly reminded of the time can be stressful.

By rearranging the display, one can enjoy the playful interaction between the 6 different tubes without realizing straight away what time it is.

A short focus will, however, allow you to use it as a "normal" clock.

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Movies here.

[via Alistair Why]

The Philosophy of Kissing

Excerpts:

Aristotelian kiss: a kiss performed using techniques gained solely from theoretical speculation untainted by any experiential data, by one who feels that the latter is irrelevant anyway.

Gödelian kiss: a kiss that takes an extraordinarily long time, yet leaves you unable to decide whether you've been kissed or not.

Grouchoic kiss: a kiss given by someone who will only kiss those who would not kiss him or her.

Heisenbergian kiss: a hard-to-define kiss — the more it moves you, the less sure you are of where the kiss was; the more energy it has, the more trouble you have figuring out how long it lasted. Extreme versions of this type of kiss are known as "virtual kisses" because the level of uncertainty is so high that you're not quite sure if you were kissed or not. Virtual kisses have the advantage, however, that you need not have anyone else in the room with you to enjoy them.

Kantian kiss: a kiss that, eschewing inferior "phenomenal" contact, is performed entirely on the superior "noumenal" plane; though you don't actually feel it at all, you are, nonetheless, free to declare it the best kiss you've ever given or received.

Wittgensteinian kiss: the important thing about this type of kiss is that it refers only to the symbol (our internal mental representation we associate with the experience of the kiss — which must necessarily also be differentiated from the act itself for obvious reasons and which need not be by any means the same or even similar for the different people experiencing the act) rather than the act itself and, as such, one must be careful not to make unwarranted generalizations about the act itself or the experience thereof based merely on our manipulation of the symbology therefor.

Zenoian kiss: your lips approach, closer and closer, but never actually touch.

[via Milena]

These boots aren't made for walking

By Nina Ricci.

£4,163 (€4,764; $6,940).

Dover Street Market (17-18 Dover Street, London W1).

On buying a cheap printer as moral hazard

So here's a little slice of life from bookofjoe World Headquarters™®©: yesterday when I tried to print something out, my Epson C88+ printer (above; maybe the fifth in a series; I have two, one upstairs, one down and need to buy a replacement maybe every year) made bad noises and proceeded to destroy a piece of paper halfway through.

Huh, worked fine the night before.

I wonder if Gray Cat's been doing stuff while I'm sleeping... nah, she's got a great memory, she doesn't need to print stuff out.

So that can't be it.

I tried about five more times to print a page, each time with the same crumpled result that required me to pull out the mangled paper from the top.

Turned it off, turned it on, same thing.

Tried pushing the paper button to move a page through without printing but still making mincemeat.

Game over, time for a new printer.

I checked Epson's website, it costs $84.99, complete with four ink cartridges (black, yellow, cyan and magenta).

Then I checked the prices for cartridges alone: $19.94 for black, 39.89 for yellow + cyan + magenta = $59.83 total.

So getting a new printer costs $25.16 more than just buying ink.

Huh.

See where I'm going with this?

Makes almost as much sense to buy a new printer whenever you need ink as to just buy a new ink cartridge to replace the  empty one, since you can reuse the remaining cartridges from the old, still-functioning printer in your new one while having a fresh from the factory, perfectly aligned machine from the get-go.

But the total price of buying a new one in this scenario includes trashing the old-but-still-functional one, creating unnecessary waste.

There's your moral hazard: doing the wrong thing may be better than doing the right thing in terms of you as an individual — but for society as a whole it's just the opposite.

What is it?

Answer here this time tomorrow.

Google Dual Maps

[via Milena]

iPhocals

"Take a look at a pair of iPhocals. Proper reading glasses. Download books from an online iBrary via the USB socket on one of its arms (the other houses the rechargeable battery). Press the on/off switch in the frame and pages appear, apparently two feet in front of the lens, in sharp focus. It looks like magic, but it's actually Quasatz Spatial Pseudo Projection. A gentle flick of the head turns the page."

[via James Ferguson's Pat Pending feature on page 45 of the September 11, 2009 Financial Times How To Spend It Magazine supplement]