How to Spot a Psychopath

Never mind the quality, feel the price!

26 September 2008 — dan

A reader sent me the following early this month:

I've been a long time reader of your site, and seeing as you have a fascination for interesting cut-price electronic stuff, I thought this site might interest you:

www.dealextreme.com

I'm not affiliated with it in any way; I just think it's an awesome place to get things for silly low prices. Obviously build quality isn't great, but I've bought some interesting little gadgets of there for pittance. Also check out their diddly RC helicopter section - they're quite a bit cheaper than most other places!

I buy random incredibly-cheap stuff from Hong Kong eBay dealers all the time, so I just had to try out DealExtreme too. Like several other Hong Kong gadget dealers - USB Geek, for instance - shipping to anywhere in the world is included in DealExtreme's prices. So you don't have to do the usual overseas-shopping thing where you look for other stuff you can barely justify buying, to prevent shipping being 80% of the total order cost; if all you need is a ninety-eight-cent screwdriver, you won't be ripped off if that's all you buy.

I ordered a selection of entertaining objects from DealExtreme on the fifth of September, but the parcel didn't arrive until the 24th. That's because it took DealExtreme until the 16th before they actually sent it. And the package was stuffed too tight, so the pair of novelty tea infusers I'd ordered were both broken.

But DealExtreme's support people replied almost instantly to my request for a replacement, and I've no reason to suppose I won't receive it. Although it may, of course, take another nineteen days.

(The DealExtreme "Customer Service Express" contact form makes you include pictures. This is fair enough, but it makes you feel a bit stupid when it means you're taking 20 minutes out of your day to get a $2 item replaced...)

You can find most of DealExtreme's stuff on sale on eBay and elsewhere, but they stock some items that genuinely are hard to find elsewhere. Their Nintendo DS accessories, for instance, include not only dirt-cheap tri-wing screwdrivers for the little screws that hold a DS together, but also several flash carts for running homebrew (or, of course, pirated) software on your DS.

Flash carts are notoriously hard to find on sites like eBay, but DealExtreme have a bunch of them. They probably even work, too, despite the fact that some of them are cheap clones of the R4 cart I use in my own DS. Apparently future R4 firmware may deliberately break the cloned carts, or even DSes using them.

Many of the other cards are R4 clones too, with a panoply of similar-yet-different names - ND1, M3, N5, K6 - and your guess is as good as mine as to which one's best. But at least you can buy the darn things, and get your DSOrganize, Pocket Physics, Colors! or whatever on.

And DealExtreme do indeed have a ton of other fascinating things. Toys, tools, bare electronic components (including lots of high-power LED paraphernalia), deadly terrorist laser weapons, stationery... you name it.

They also have an affiliate scheme, for which I've signed up. So if you go there from my links, I ought to get a cut!

Posted in MiniReviews, Nerdery, Toys. 17 Comments »

Firepower: Just a fricking misunderstanding

26 September 2008 — dan

"You will see: we will eventually be vindicated and our investors will be well rewarded", claims Firepower boss Tim Johnston in an interview with The Australian. He also insists that he hasn't been hiding at all. (He just hasn't been anywhere the people who want him to pay what he owes have been looking. Oh, and not answering the phone, either.)

Johnston insists he's perfectly innocent, all of those never-shown-to-do-anything Firepower "products" work fine, Four Corners' report was a vile calumny, the investors will all get their money back, et cetera.

He also, at one point, is reported to have used the word "fricking".

And now, another link-dump of news stories about Firepower that've come out since my last update, in roughly chronological order, newest first:

Apparently Rose and Willie Porteous, or maybe only Rose, also bought into Firepower, and are as a result now one step closer to the penury which anybody which who cares to read up on them will, I think, agree they deserve.

The Australian High Commissioner in Pakistan is reported to have "acted unwisely" when she bought 200,000 shares in Firepower, but has been judged to have suffered enough, and so kept her job.

And there was a brief flap over a gaggle of Australian Defence Force chiefs who, apparently, invested in Firepower, and then became rather kindly disposed to the company. To the point where they let Firepower use the Navy frigate HMAS Sydney for a function in 2006, for free.

The function was to launch the basketball season for the Firepower-sponsored Sydney Kings, who followed Firepower down the plughole and no longer exist.

(The above Herald report is excellent, except for the part where it says "Firepower employees at the function literally swept from one person to the next generating confidence". One would think they used brooms for this purpose, but they were on a ship, so perhaps they swabbed the deck with mops.)

Firepower, by the way, gave people attending the above Frigate Function goodie bags including some of their magic pills, the unimpressiveness of which started the ball rolling at the Herald.

The previously-mentioned Warren Anderson said that people who'd lost money on Firepower were just "greedy". This statement was received with a certain amount of astonishment by the company's liquidator, who pointed out that expecting an investment to appreciate is kind of... the only reason why anybody invests.

Anderson's point was that many Firepower investors had "accountants and bloody lawyers and Christ knows what", and so should have been able to tell that the company wasn't on the level. And, one presumes, should then have sold on their foolishly-purchased shares for a handsome profit before Firepower folded. You know - like Warren Anderson himself did.

The above-linked article isn't primarily about the liquidator; it's about some un-named "Sydney man" who's alleged by a large group of small shareholders (presumably not including the ones who had "accountants and lawyers"...) to have embezzled five million bucks from Firepower. And therefore impeded Firepower's efforts to keep all of that money for itself.

The creditors are chasing this guy because, according to local litigation-funding company IMF, they've got bugger-all chance of squeezing any cash out of Firepower's entirely straightforward and above-board international operations. The liquidator previously said that unless the investors find someone to sue, they're not going to get a penny.

And then there's one Frank Timis, described in The Australian as "a colourful Romanian-Australian businessman", who says he's starting a new business that'll repay (plus ten per cent!) all of the ripped-off investors.

Timis and his new company, the entirely-unconfusingly-named "Greenpower" (or perhaps "Green Power"), scores a mention in the recent Johnston interview piece, too. Apparently Tim and Frank will be issuing free shares in the new company to shareholders in the old, so don't you worry about that.

(About 25 seconds after Timis said investors would be paid back, the IMF litigation-funders pointed out that this promise might just possibly not be worth an awful lot. IMF, like others, advises investors to consider their money to be gone, gone, gone.)

Posted in Firepower, Scams, Strange Tales. Leave a Comment »

What does pink taste like?

20 September 2008 — dan

Musk sticks are, I think, a peculiarly Australian sweet.

Actually, I think the whole "musk" flavour may only exist here.

I used to love musk sticks when I was a kid.

(I'll spare you the tediously wholesome story about carefully buying lollies with my pocket money on the holidays and making them last as long as I could and the milkman's cheery whistle and so on.)

So I bought some, the other day. Every Australian supermarket has them.

It turns out that I still like musk sticks. But because the sticks I ate when I was a kid had been sitting, unwrapped, in the shop for some time, I prefer them a bit dried out and crusty. The second comment on this post about musk sticks at Candy Blog indicates that I am not alone in this preference.

(I found that putting the sticks in a colander on top of a heating vent for a couple of hours dried 'em out nicely.)

That Candy Blog post, though, and the previous one about musk Life Savers, alerted me to the strangeness of these sweets.

Here in Australia, there are musk sticks, and musk Life Savers, and little hard musk pellets too. They're all pink, and they all taste the same, and I cannot for the life of me tell you what they taste of.

"Musk", here, does not indicate some flavour that started out being squeezed from some animal's glands. Well, not unless that animal had a sort of... flowery... smell, anyway.

I haven't actually smelled any natural musk, so perhaps it's amazingly similar to the candy smell. People grasping for words to describe lolly-musk often say it's "perfume-y", after all, and natural musk was used as a perfume component.

But since natural musk is alleged to smell "animalic, earthy and woody", I don't think it can really be much like the lolly musk.

I agree with the memorable observation that musk lollies smell a bit like an old lady's handbag.

But that doesn't really get it right, either.

Musk sticks actually smell, and taste... like musk sticks.

If pressed, I might venture the opinion that they taste pink.

It's sort of like that weird "bubble-gum flavour" that emerged as an entity unto itself at some point.

If you've never tasted "musk" and get the opportunity - without having to pay $25 for an air-mailed bag of the things, of course - I highly recommend it. You probably won't be crazy about the taste, but this is not one of those confrontational "local delicacies" like salted liquorice. (Which is, of course, not salted with mere sodium chloride - it's got ammonium chloride in it!)

The taste of a musk stick will hang around in your mouth for rather a while, but you probably won't be unhappy about that. It's pretty inoffensive.

This all reminded me that here in Australia, we really don't have any big guns in the "local delicacy" wars.

No hákarl...

...no lutefisk, no hundred-year-old eggs or casu marzu or balut.

OK, there are witchetty grubs, but it's not as if most of the Australian population have ever even seen one of those. And in any case, I'm told that witchetty grubs are actually quite delicious, if you can get over your irrational fear of eating an arthropod that doesn't happen to live in the sea.

Vegemite is the ISO Standard Weird Australian Food, but I'm here to tell you that it's really not that peculiar. Wipe a smear of Vegemite on a cracker and bite into it and you'll be experiencing an odd savory foodstuff, not some incredible brain-flipping toxic creation.

I was born and raised on Vegemite and so spread it on my bread like mortar on a brick, but in more moderate amounts, Vegemite is really not that big of a deal.

And I think that's pretty much it for weird Aussie food. I mean, what else is there for even the least adventurous tourist to get bothered about? Meat pies? Pie floaters? Sausage rolls?

Heck, even Chiko Rolls aren't that bad if, as with the witchetty grubs, you don't think too hard about what you're eating.

And not a lot of people find themselves retching after being cruelly forced to eat a lamington or pavlova, or even a Moreton Bay bug.

Am I forgetting anything? Has Australia actually managed to come up with any truly confronting food?

Posted in Strange Tales. 37 Comments »

Magic for the lazy

20 September 2008 — dan

This is a magic ring.

Here's a nice American man explaining it.

If you'd like to buy one, and/or see a nice English man explain it...

...the wonderful but expensive Grand Illusions stock it, for a mere three pounds plus delivery and possible VAT.

Many of the things Grand Illusions sells are very hard to find anywhere else, but this ring is not one of those things. I got mine for $AU8.99 delivered from this eBay seller. (Here they are on ebay.com, instead of ebay.com.au.)

They've got a lot of thumb-tips, too. With one of those and a good supply of chicken giblets, you could set yourself up with a nice little psychic surgery business!

Posted in Nerdery, Toys. 1 Comment »

Making tracks

19 September 2008 — dan

The most common limiting factor for makers of powered Lego tanks always used to be tracks.

The simplest Lego tracks were the one-piece rubber "Technic Tread Crawler" tracks that came with the Universal Motor Set. The rubber tracks fit all of those plastic-box pre-Technic motors, and they work well enough, within their limits.

I, like umpteen other kids lucky enough to have two motors, just stuck 'em together side by side with one driving a track on the left and one driving a track on the right and, with two battery boxes, then had myself a skid-steer machine.

(Which would never go quite straight, because the battery voltage and motor performance on either side never quite matched. But it was close enough for government work.)

The little rubber tracks were very limited, though. If you wanted less-power-sapping tracks of arbitrary length, you had to use the Technic Link Tread pieces.

The Link Treads were basically just Technic Link Chains with a broad bar attached to the top. They were small enough to mesh with standard Technic gears, which made them rather delicate. Not to mention a bit fiddly for even small fingers to snap together.

The Technic Link Treads weren't actually the first Lego chain/link pieces. That honour goes to Technic Link Chain Old, which was much sturdier because it meshed with the old big spiky gears. The spiky gears were replaced by the finer-toothed ones around 1980, though, because the old ones didn't mesh terribly well with each other, and couldn't be made small enough for intricate mechanisms. (The biggest ones might make a pretty nice scale waterwheel, though.)

Recently, Lego came out with some much beefier tracks to go with the cool new Power Functions line. (I was proud of my pneumatic 8851 Excavator, back in the day, but the all-electric 8294 Excavator, complete with linear actuators, knocks it into a cocked hat.)

The new tracks don't mesh with standard gears, so they need special driving wheels. But apart from that, they seem to be an excellent solution to the problem of making a tracked Lego vehicle that can traverse something more challenging than short-pile carpet.

But, via the excellent Technic Bricks, here's an even beefier solution.

Yep; that's a tank with treads made out of short, straight Technic "lift arm" pieces. Heck, you could probably make a clunkier version of these tracks out of good old studded beams.

This track design looks to be highly scalable, very strong, and easily repairable with cheap parts. And it doesn't need to crawl like this; you could probably drive these tracks quite fast, if you used a couple of the stronger motors.

Posted in Nerdery, Toys. 6 Comments »

Here's something you don't see every day

19 September 2008 — dan

I found this picture on Flickr while looking for something quite different. I think it's fair to say that almost anything is quite different from this picture.

I invite you to look at the picture for some time. Feel free to click through to the bigger version on Flickr. Turn it round and round in your head a bit.

Here's another angle:

In a moment, I will tell you how this strange tableau came to be. But you may prefer to read no further. Not because the explanation is as unsettling as the explanation for such a scene honestly ought to be, but merely because the explanation, like an explanation for a magic trick, may leave your perception of the world poorer than it found it.

I'm reminded of the Penn and Teller trick where Penn says that Teller, who just magicked his way out of a box he'd been sealed in, is about to do it again, but this time so that the audience can see how the trick is done.

Penn then commands the audience to make a choice.

They can close their eyes, and thereby preserve the mystery and astonishment of the trick.

Or they can leave their eyes open, and watch a middle-aged man get out of a box.

If you'd prefer to preserve the magic, do not scroll down.

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Greetings, fellow spoilers of jokes.

So far as I could glean from the comments on the Flickr picture pages, the explanation is:

There is something interesting inside the giant pig. Presumably real pigs.

The children have their faces pressed to windows, which allow them to see in.

You are not allowed to look through a window unless you first put on a tail.

The guy in the foreground in the first picture is probably not actually about to start butcherin' young 'uns.

The end.

Posted in Humour, Strange Tales. 4 Comments »

Every uni student needs a siege engine

16 September 2008 — dan

Herewith, a letter I received yesterday:

As the all-knowing expert on model war machines (and the receiver of sponsorship from Backyard Artillery if I recall correctly?), I was wondering if you could recommend to me a catapult or trebuchet that is:

- Suitable for a beginner with fairly limited access to tools
- Suitable for someone who lives in a college at university (i.e. must be highly portable)
- Shippable by a method that will have it arrive by the 6th of October (the recipient's birthday)
- Not unreasonably expensive (I was thinking in the range of $80-$120, but if thats too little for something exciting, go higher)

Advice on where to get it would also be nice :)

Ed

Backyard Artillery is one of Ron Toms' numerous Web sites. He also runs Trebuchet.com and CatapultKits.com. Of his current models, I think the TK3 Model Trebuchet is the closest to the Tabletop Trebuchet I reviewed years ago. You might also like the smaller Desktop Trebuchet.

Unfortunately, though, the RLT sites don't offer international shipping any more, on account of the usual credit-card fraud BS.

(Ed didn't specifically say that he's buying a gift for someone in Australia, but I presumed he was, from his .au e-mail address. If the recipient is in the USA, by all means just go straight to trebuchet.com or catapultkits.com and pick whatever you want. And if you follow my affiliate links, I'll get a cut!)

I don't know of any companies in Australia that sell trebuchet kits (if you do, tell us all in the comments!), but fortunately, there are some dealers who'll ship Down Under.

Educational Innovations at teachersource.com, for instance. I've bought from them and I think delivery was pretty snappy; ordinary international air mail should make the cut for you, provided the package doesn't get held for examination by Customs or something (which it shouldn't, but sometimes they just do it at random to packages that don't look suspicious).

Educational Innovations resell one of Ron Toms' kits; that'd probably suit you very nicely, but it's not cheap. Eighty US bucks for the kit, plus $US47.53 for delivery to Australia. Not peanuts, and a bit over your budget, but at least you ought to get it in plenty of time. And teachersource.com have lots of other cool stuff you might like.

You might also like to consider the kits ThinkGeek sell. You want the more expensive "Trebuchet Kit", not the cheaper "Catapult" one, which commits the cardinal sin of throwing from a cup on the end of the arm rather than from a sling.

(As I mentioned in the sidebar of the old trebuchet kit review, the cup-on-the-end "catapult" is the classic image of a medieval siege engine, but it's also mechanically stupid. All proper flingers actually used a sling, which allows the projectile to be hurled much faster than the end of the arm can move.)

ThinkGeek's international shipping fees are not low, either - more than the price of the kit, in this case, though the total is still well within your budget - but the regular DHL Express International delivery option is reliable and fast enough to make the cut for you. And the shipping's not too terrible if you add a few other lightweight items to the big thing you're buying; as with teachersource.com, you can easily build a small Emergency Present Pile out of ThinkGeek gear.

(See also HobbyLink Japan, who have tons of awesome stuff, much of which is not available anything like as cheaply, or at all, outside Japan. But don't see them now, because they don't have any siege engine kits.)

At this point, I started hunting on eBay, and found a couple of sellers with apparently identical treb kits for a reasonable price. Then I found the same thing on at catapultkits.com, which told me that this kit's from Pathfinders Design and Technology in Canada. Their trebuchet is a bit spindly, but that's because it's quite a nice scale model. And it's quite cheap. And Pathfinder even seem to offer international shipping - but when I entered dummy information to see how much the shipping actually cost (I just love how many sites make you do that...), I noticed that the "Country" box on the form is a text box, which doesn't seem to actually be taken into account when you click on through.

The Pathfinders site said shipping to Australia was a lousy nine bucks, for a grand total of $CA41.22. Which is great if it's true, but I'll bet you it's not.

If you're in Canada (or, surely, the USA...), though, Pathfinders look like an excellent source for cheap treb kits. They've got several other neat-looking products, too.

If ordering directly from Pathfinders doesn't work out, here and here are the eBay sellers I found that offerend the Pathfinders kit.

If it comes to that, it's actually not very difficult to make your own trebuchet, if you don't need something that can throw a bowling ball half a mile. Lego is very good for getting the hang of the concepts, and the basic simplicity of the idea - two A-frames, axle, throwing arm with sling at one end and weight at the other - means it's also not hard to knock one together from PVC pipe, or even authentic wood.

But a pile of plumbing and a book about siege engines is, I grant you, probably not the greatest of gifts.

(UPDATE: Murray Hill of 22AD Ancient & Medieval Artillery in New Zealand commented below. He isn't quite in the treb-kit business yet; at the moment he's just sending out free plans to school students, and making catapults himself for schools, now and then. But he just told me that he plans to "come up with a student friendly machine" quite soon. Check out his Web site, particularly the Shop section, for updates!)

Posted in Nerdery, Toys. 3 Comments »