What Cool Gadget Do You Have or Want?

Here's my choice…combo grill, coffee pot, charger, fueled with twigs. If it just had a hot shower feature, it would be perfect:

Biolite Camp Stove:

This kickstarter campaign is fully funded... in record time... and is just not pie in the sky. It will be produced.

This is an early video. They are for sale now. I have bought two of these at preproduction prices.  One went to a friend that had a lot of biting yellow flies. It doesn't always kill a fly, but they seem to haul ass when you shoot 'em if you didn't kill 'em outright. Shot it last weekend.

SheSurfs wrote:

Here's my choice…combo grill, coffee pot, charger, fueled with twigs. If it just had a hot shower feature, it would be perfect:

Biolite Camp Stove:

This is a pretty neat product. It is hard to believe that you can build a fire and convert the heat to electricity without a boiler making steam.

I have plenty of these....dead battery storage containers......

Better yet:

nochain wrote:

Better yet:

Only problem with that one is that it is all gas.  

I'm a charcoal guy... always have... always will be.  I love the smell of smoking wood.  I got two truckloads of smoking wood this year.

One of Hickory and one of Pecan.

Here is some ribs I cooked on July 4th just before adding smoke.  I didn't have time to smoke them all the time I wanted, but they were still good. It's hard to see, but there is 9 racks of baby backs...

I'm leaning more and more toward going back to a charcoal grill/smoker combination. Good ones that won't break the bank are hard to find though.

This is a good topic but  I couldn't think of an answer for it. I love my Keurig and my iphone. I love my slingbox and my bed that I can dial a number on a remote to  and get comfortable in.
I also like it that I can make my own sodas at home.

I guess I think the future is already here.

It's possible that I just don't have enough imagination.

Otter wrote:

This is a good topic but  I couldn't think of an answer for it. I love my Keurig and my iphone. I love my slingbox and my bed that I can dial a number on a remote to  and get comfortable in.
I also like it that I can make my own sodas at home.

I guess I think the future is already here.

It's possible that I just don't have enough imagination.

So, Otter.  How do you like your Slingbox?  I am looking for an overall solution to my audio-visual needs.  I would like to be able to wirelessly mirror my laptop to my receiver which is connected to the TV.  I have an AppleTV and it works great with the iPad via iTunes and AirPlay.  The receiver also uses AirPlay and I can transmit iTunes audio from my PC and iPad to the receiver, control the volume, etc.  I also have an AirPlay enabled speaker in the bedroom, but I cannot enable that speaker and the receiver at the same time.  AirPlay is Apple's proprietary system that uses Wifi signals to wirelessly transmit and receive.

I would like to be able to play music and video without having to use iTunes.

I have a program called AirParrot on my laptop that enables mirroring of the PC video and audio to my AppleTV, but it is not the easiest thing to use.  It seems that every time I try to get it to work, I have trouble, and, invariably, it is in front of guests.

Life's a bitch, ain't it?

So, what can you do with the Slingbox?

P.S. My sleep number bed is so old, it leaks pressure and every week or so, I have to dial up the number again.

Our sleep number was getting very old too. We actually bought it used about 15 years or so ago so I don't even know how old it might be. It leaks too and we had to dial up our numbers about once a week. So, we broke down and bought a new one last month. The one we have now has the head that raises up which has made it possible for us to watch TV in the bedroom comfortably. That's something we've never done before and it's pretty much heaven on earth. It's kind of odd in the middle though because it's a king size bed that is actually two extra long twins stuck together. They promised no valley between the mattresses but you could lose a small animal down in the valley that separates us. I'm sure I could complain about the assembly guys but it doesn't bug me too much. The beds never were cheap but they are very expensive now. Ours was about 5 grand and the one that I really wanted (It raised both head and feet) was $10,000. I just couldn't see putting out that kind of money for a bed. Some of them have temperature controls now so you can be warm and your spouse cool. Those do not come cheap either. We invested in a bed pad and two pillows that promised to spread your body heat around so you wouldn't ever have to flip your pillow to the cool side again, and those have proved to be amazing. They went for about $70 a pillow, but I used to flop my pillow over 6 or 8 times a night, and I haven't done it since buying these pillows. I've been looking for pillows like that for years. Just another one of those futuristic advances I guess.

I've had the slingbox for 2 years now and it never worked right on my phone until we changed to AT&T and got our internet speeds up on the phone. Now I can watch my home TV from wherever I am, even from out of town. I get every channel on my iphone that I get on our Cox coverage at home. I think the Cox Countour service may have had something to do with the improvement, but we didn't get the Contour on the phone until we got AT&T as our carrier. I love it. You can watch a college game from anywhere on a Saturday afternoon. We downloaded the app to both of our phones and the only problem I ever have with it is when my spouse is watching something from work and I"m sitting in a doctor's office being bored. We can change each other's stations and it can get contentious.
It's a gread device though and I wouldn't want to be without it now, especially when traveling. My neighbor swears he watched from his slingbox when he was in an airplane over Colorado. I guess it could be possible but I don't know how.

Gee, I am so out of it, I didn't even know about Slingbox…though I don't have cable so no matter.

It's funny but my favorite gadgets, are the ones that make life better when I am roughing it..camping, hiking, boating…

I feel like I have won a victory when I chop some bit of technology out of my life. I think I am trying to get back to my lifestyle as an eight-year-old when my most prized possessions were a blue Schwinn with a banana seat, a jackknife with a mother-of-pearl handle that my grandfather gave me (which I always had with me, even at school), and an army/navy surplus green canvas pup tent that usually stayed pitched in the backyard. I can still smell it .

My Harley and my glock

Slingbox? What's a Slingbox? (Gawd, I'm slow....and my eyes were crossing as I read Eric's description of Slingboxiness. Hook what to what to do WHAT?)   

I would be happy with an adult tricycle. Hubby gave me a bicycle for Christmas, and try as I might, I can't ride it unless I am going straight.

Well at least I'm in good company. I have never heard of Slingbox either. I thought it was some sort of slingshot and I was getting excited.

Melissa, do you need training wheels for your new bike? :-o

riceme wrote:

Well at least I'm in good company. I have never heard of Slingbox either. I thought it was some sort of slingshot and I was getting excited.

Melissa, do you need training wheels for your new bike? :-o

Hahaaa! I wish, Ricey. I was so convinced I could still ride a bike. I blame it all on Hallmark.   

808 Audio Canz Wireless Speaker



I love mine.  Fits in you pocket(if you have big ones).  Great audio.  Bout 25 dollars or less at Office depot...

@Melissa
Maybe a little smaller bike? I have one you can try.....

SheSurfs wrote:

Gee, I am so out of it, I didn't even know about Slingbox…though I don't have cable so no matter.

It's funny but my favorite gadgets, are the ones that make life better when I am roughing it..camping, hiking, boating…

I feel like I have won a victory when I chop some bit of technology out of my life. I think I am trying to get back to my lifestyle as an eight-year-old when my most prized possessions were a blue Schwinn with a banana seat, a jackknife with a mother-of-pearl handle that my grandfather gave me (which I always had with me, even at school), and an army/navy surplus green canvas pup tent that usually stayed pitched in the backyard. I can still smell it .

 

I didn't have a pup tent or a bike when I was young. I would have loved to have had either. I did have a piece of canvas though, and even though it was paint splattered from my dad painting the house, I could stretch it from our utility outhouse over to the fence with a few clothespins. I "camped out" there in the daytime but my mom wouldn't let us do it at night. We had plenty of baseballs and bats though and some great trees to play in. We made bows and arrows from the tree branches and you can make a nice little explosion with tin foil and the powder from inside firecrackers.

Mostly we were free to do or go wherever we wanted when we were kids and it was so different from kids today. We had to be back by supper when dad got home. That was basically all the "rules".

Mother of pearl was really pretty, wasn't it? I have some opera glasses of my dads made of brass and mother of pearl and I will always cherish them.

One of my favorite childhood toys was an Etch-a-Sketch.  My grandmother gave it to me one Christmas.

When I was 5 or 6, we had one of those blanket/clothespin tents set up a couple of houses over in a friend's front yard and after we turned in to sleep, my brother sneaked over and scared the bejesus out of us!

Melissa wrote:

Slingbox? What's a Slingbox? (Gawd, I'm slow....and my eyes were crossing as I read Eric's description of Slingboxiness. Hook what to what to do WHAT?)    

I would be happy with an adult tricycle. Hubby gave me a bicycle for Christmas, and try as I might, I can't ride it unless I am going straight.

A slingbox is a little box you hook directly to your cable box and you can download an app to your phone that will make it so you can watch your home TV on your telephone. It's live- whatever's on your satellite or cable channels you can just tune into on your phone.
It's great for traveling and for doctor's offices.

Supposedly it works from anywhere in America. My neighbor says his does, so I guess mine would.
You can also record shows from your phone and watch them later.

LOL- I don't really want to go back to camping under a paint tarp anymore.

Mel, I like to use a laptop or iPad to control my entertainment center. I can sit out back drinking Margaritas with friends and pick music on the iPad, for instance, and send the music via wifi to my stereo inside the house and it plays inside and on the outside speakers... without having to tether my iPad to wires.

A wireless jukebox, if you will.

Eric wrote:

One of my favorite childhood toys was an Etch-a-Sketch.  My grandmother gave it to me one Christmas.

When I was 5 or 6, we had one of those blanket/clothespin tents set up a couple of houses over in a friend's front yard and after we turned in to sleep, my brother sneaked over and scared the bejesus out of us!

Clothespins could do a lot of things, couldn't they? A lot of people don't even have any in their houses anymore.

Otter wrote:

Eric wrote:

One of my favorite childhood toys was an Etch-a-Sketch.  My grandmother gave it to me one Christmas.

When I was 5 or 6, we had one of those blanket/clothespin tents set up a couple of houses over in a friend's front yard and after we turned in to sleep, my brother sneaked over and scared the bejesus out of us!

Clothespins could do a lot of thing, couldn't they? A lot of people don't even have any in their houses anymore.

We still use 'em to pin a half-eaten bag of chips closed. Properly folded and clipped, chips will stay fresh... for a while.