My Star Trek door chime arrived in the mail today. The first time they showed up on ThinkGeek they sold out pretty quickly and I missed the window of opportunity.
They look just like the panels on the show, although perhaps a little more glossy. The sliding switch on the speaker part lets you toggle between the Star Trek door ‘whoosh’ sound (up) and a red alert klaxon (down). The red light flashes when the red alert goes off. Pushing the white button makes the intercom sound.
Around the back of the comm panel are a two switches that control the volume and which motion detectors (one on each side) are active. The panel can be set to use either left or right detector, or both. 3 AA batteries power the unit. Two slots for screws let you mount it to the wall.
Side view showing one of the motion detectors.
As far as I can tell, the white block doesn’t light up at all, which is too bad. Would have been cool if it lit up when the button was pressed. I wonder how hard it would be to hack a light into it.
I think it’s pretty cool.
Update: I decided to mount it next to my bedroom door. When I go to sleep I can set it to the red alert alarm and it will go off if someone tries to sneak into my room. Not that anybody ever does that.
Andru charger
I thought this little Andru phone charger was pretty cool, so I decided to pick one up.
It’s even neater in person. There’s a little stand it pops into when not in use and the little arms swivel and can even hold stuff for you.
And look, the eyes light up when plugged in!
Golden Ticket camera
Anybody who follows me on Twitter or Facebook or the blog knows I like to take pictures of my food and post them.
Andra introduced me to the Foodspotting app early last year and since then most of my food photos have been going there and cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook.
In December, Foodspotting ran a Golden Ticket promo contest where they hid Golden Tickets (think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) within the app. You ‘found’ them by browsing through food pictures that other people posted.
Just after I saw the email about the Golden Ticket promotion, I found one, much to my surprise. That it was a Golden Ticket for a wee little Sony WX9 camera was an even bigger surprise.
Haven’t tried it out yet. It’s still charging up. Fortunately Sony saw fit to design the camera so that it uses SD cards (which I already have) as well as their own Memory Sticks (which I don’t have). Unfortunately they decided to use a micro-USB like connector, so that means another USB cable dangling off my computer.
Looking forward to playing with this new little camera. Thanks Foodspotting!
Erfworld Dwagon plushies
These decrypted red Dwagons arrived from Erfworld yesterday. It took a few turns, but they made it just in time for Christmas.
The dogs keep thinking the dwagons are for them, and keep staring and expecting me to toss one to them. I’ll have to find a safe shelf to put them on.
Christmas tree is up
