Screen in the Bedroom – Part One: TiVo

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

     You get a new, big screen TV for the living room or the master bedroom – then what do you do with the old, not-so-big-screen you already have? Or if you are leaning the other way and want to have the main theater (maybe with screen, projector and Dolby Surround) in a room that’s not used for much else? All good questions, but the important one is what do you watch on that “new” screen?

TiVo Logo and Box
     A TiVo box is a great choice if you have DirecTV, or if you don’t hate your cable company that much. It really is possible; for example, we live in a city where Comcast gives jobs to a lot of people. If you don’t want to “cut the cord,” a TiVo combines a quality machine and remote with a great interface and excellent search capability. It will record all the episodes of your favorite TV shows, all the movies with your favorite actor, all the network holiday specials and all the games of your favorite sports teams. It’s very liberating during football season to start watching a game around halftime, skip through the commercials, replay anything you want to see again and still have all the suspense at the end of the game. No need to ever watch anything when it’s actually on. It has 2 tuners, so you will never have to decide between 2 shows that conflict or overlap. If you live near broadcast antennas, you can also record network shows (like major sporting events) in the highest definition there is. You can fast forward through the pledge breaks when PBS shows the good stuff. 

     It also streams from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus and YouTube. It connects to your home network, letting you remotely program over the Internet, stream shows between 2 TiVos and enjoy pictures and music from your computer. As a substitute for your cable box, it’s hard to beat, but you have to factor in the TiVo subscription cost for the programming information, which will cost you another $10 – $20 per month, depending on how you pay for the box. 

     TiVo’s been around since 1999, so you are most likely either already a convert or you’re not sure it’s for you. Maybe it’s time to give it another look.

     Now, of course, there is competition in the set-top box space. The next posts will help you decide if you’d rather have a Roku or an Apple TV, which incidentally are both quite tiny and take up very little space on top of that set.

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The Cuisinart Stick Blender Will Blend In Place and Rinse Right Off

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Daisy B

The Cuisinart Stick Blender looks nothing like traditional blender that sits on the counter and makes milkshakes and margaritas, but it mostly does the same job. It is better in many respects. It takes up much less counter space, it rinses clean in the sink and you can blend large quantities of cooked ingredients right in the pot where you’re cooking them, instead of pouring them out, blending them in batches, and pouring them back into the pot to finish cooking.

Cooking can be fun, especially in cold weather: preheat the oven (warm up the kitchen), select the ingredients, chop or slice them, taste them. It’s all part of the anticipation of a home-cooked dinner. Then comes the eating with candles and conversation. The cleanup, though, is not so much  fun. By that time, you’re ready to move on to books or TV or putting the kids to bed.

The stick blender consolidates some of your work.  Say you have a cold-weather taste for butternut squash soup.  You cook many, many chunks of butternut squash (with other ingredients )in a soup pot, and then, to get the creamy consistency the soup requires, you simply put the stick blender into the simmering mixture, turn it on for a few minutes, and watch it turn those large chunks of squash into a delicious puree — in the same pot.  When you’re done, remove the blending stick from the blender and drop it into the dishwasher.  No extra pots to clean, no mess on the counter, and your soup is ready for its finishing touches.  The stick blender saves enormous amounts of time and energy and takes what could be drudgery out of the preparation of an otherwise delicious winter meal.

The blender works so well because it has an extra-sharp, 2-pronged blade concealed at the bottom — but that, too, reveals one of its advantages:  the difficulty you have getting all that residue out of the bottom of your ordinary blender is eliminated with the stick blender, whose blade, though recessed, is easy enough to rinse under the faucet. Be careful, though; it’s not too recessed to cut the tip of your finger off. It comes in lots of bright, fun colors, as well as the more traditional white or chrome.

Available from Amazon.

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The Rain Shower Head Pours Water the Way Nature Intended

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Daisy B

In Costa Rica last year, we got lucky when we learned a friend of a friend had a high-rise luxury condo that was sitting empty the week we were there. It was fabulous in every way: a breathtaking view of the Tamarindo beach on one side and the mountains on the other, ocean breezes blowing straight through the rooms and generally ultra-high-end everything. Of course, we never wanted to leave. Sadly, one must work to vacation, so home we went, but ever since we have tried to import as much of the luxury of our experience as we can into our own home.

One of the simplest luxuries we discovered in our Tamarindo escape was the rain shower head.  Unlike the traditional shower head, or even the more sophisticated shower massager heads that have become so popular, the rain shower head has a larger surface area, typically either round or rectangular, that, just as its name suggests, gives you the feeling of standing under a rainfall each time you’re in the shower.  If you’ve ever had the innocent pleasure of showering in the rain (at camp, for example, or on vacation), you know that when you don’t mind standing in the rain, you can luxuriate in the sensation of water drenching your entire body at the same time, making it easier for you to shower from head to toe, or wash your hair, or just enjoy the feeling of the water covering you.  The rain shower head brings this experience to your bathroom.

Luxury Shower Head

The large, broad shower head covers you with water and keeps your whole body warm while you shower.  You can lather your whole head with shampoo at once, and then rinse it thoroughly without having to rotate your head in circles or taking the handheld shower head off of its hook.  As an added bonus, it generates a nice steamy bathroom (which we, having a shower over a big spa tub and, thus, no shower curtain, could not otherwise enjoy).  Like most shower heads, the rain shower head is easy to install — all you need is a single wrench (to take the old one off) and the ability to follow simple instructions.  All in all, for just a little bit of work, you can have a greatly improved shower experience without traveling all the way to Costa Rica (though you should go there, anyway).

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Kuhn Rikon Spill Stop Made In Europe For Your Pots

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Daisy B

There are certain cooking utensils that you might not realize you need. Over the hundreds of thousands of years that man (and woman) has been cooking food, making sure a pot  doesn’t boil over onto the nice clean stove surface is a relatively recent problem. Also, the clever Germans behind the Kuhn Rikon Spill Stop had to go ahead and invent it before you could think of it.

Now you can not only think of it, but you can get one, too. Kuhn Rikon is a Swiss company that makes all kinds of useful kitchen utensils, but most of them are design improvements on tools that have been invented before. For example, they make a whole line of kitchen knives and other items designed to be operated safely and appeal to children.

The Spill Stop is different. Before, when you had a pot threatening to boil over, even with a lid on it, you had to stand there, watch and be ready to quickly snatch it off the heat. Unless you timed it perfectly, you wouldn’t even be able to rescue it until it had already begun to boil over. The Spill Stop frees you from this responsibility.

Once it’s safely on the dangerous pot, you’re free to concentrate on whatever else needs to be done. You can even walk out of the kitchen for a few minutes with no worries. You can use it to steam small quantities of whatever on top of a boiling pot, and it is dishwasher-safe. It rolls up when you’re done and fits in a drawer, or stores flat.

If you’re not yet a loyal reader of this blog, and you Googled your way here past the wooden spoon theory, you might wonder why one would invest in the Spill Stop when an ordinary wooden spoon would do.  Here’s why it won’t:  as any cook knows, if you’re cooking rice, pasta, or potatoes — the starchy foods that are the most frequent culprits of pot boil-overs — you know that to cook them quickly, thereby saving valuable time in the kitchen, you have to COVER THE POT.  You can’t cover the pot with a wooden spoon.  We just tried it — no, not to cover a pot with a wooden spoon, but we compared a covered pot with an uncovered one crossed with a wooden spoon.  The pot with the wooden spoon did not boil over, but it will require twice as much time to cook your rice.

Bottom line:  the Spill Stop really does work.  It comes in two sizes, 10″ and 12″, and your choice of red, green or purple. You might think the larger one would be the more logical choice, but it’s pretty big, and the smaller one might just work for most of the pots in which you boil things.  In any event, the smaller one is $5 cheaper than the $29.95 MSRP of the large one. A bit pricey for a silicone disk, but certainly very useful for its intended purpose.

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Tire Shine Is Like Armor All For Dull Tires

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Tire shine is the final step in making your car look showroom new. When your car is clean and shiny, looking great after being washed and waxed, the contrast makes the tires look even more gray, dry and dull than they did when the car was dirty. They are thirsty for silicone and dried out from the sun’s UV rays, so tire shine solves both those problems. Back in the day, Armor All applied with a sponge was the way to go, but it wasn’t all that shiny and it did not last past the first good rain. Over time, though, it was worthwhile to keep the tires from drying out and cracking.

Tire wet sprays like Black Magic were better; they went on in minutes and gave a very wet, black look to the formerly grayish tire surface and Black Magic in particular had a pleasant cherry smell. It’s best to give it a while to soak in, because people complain about sling, which is the stuff getting on the car’s finish from the centrifugal force of the spinning tire. I never noticed that to be a problem, but I was concerned about someone maybe slipping and falling on the slick patch left on the driveway.

Black Magic Tire Wet Gel

Now they make tire wet gel, once again applied with a sponge. We have come full circle. Modern tires now have such low aspect ratios that the spray will most certainly get on the rim when you aim for the tiny sidewall. Although the spray helpfully has a narrow setting on the nozzle, gel on the sponge applicator will get the shine on the tire where it belongs. You can apply as much or as little as you want for the desired level of shine, and best of all, it’s even a little bit rain resistant. Your tires will keep looking wet, even after they really do get wet.

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Schroeder Hand Drill Is A Great Little Hand Tool

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

It’s beautifully designed, made in Germany, has a transmission – is it a Porsche? No, it’s the Schroeder hand drill. It requires no gas or even electricity to run, it’s very smooth and quiet, and much less expensive, too.

OK, I’ll stop the comparison; it’s way too much of a stretch, but there’s something about a high quality machine that makes it a pleasure to look at, handle and use for its intended purpose. I like rechargeable power drills, too – they’re fun to use, and very handy when you have a lot of holes to drill and a fully charged battery. Some day, though, the battery will stop holding a charge or the gears will wear out, it will go to a landfill and you’ll need a new one.

Schroeder manual drill
After seeing the movie Hugo, I have become more fascinated with mechanical objects. You see exactly how the speed of your turning hand is multiplied to the speed of the drill bit. You’ll hear it, and feel it, too. The Schroeder hand drill will never end up being thrown away. It could be passed down to your grandchildren, or in a worse scenario, be used to rebuild the post-apocalyptic world where an electromagnetic pulse has toasted the power drills (not to mention the grid itself). OK, let’s not worry about that …

Schoeder makes two models of this for woodworking: a 1/4 drill about 9″ long with a single pinion at the bottom and a longer one, about 11″ long with a bigger chuck for larger bits. I figured bigger meant  sturdier, so when I saw the large model at Sears online for just a few dollars more, the decision was easy. The smaller one is usually about $25; the larger more like $50.

A hand drill is convenient for woodworking outside or when you just don’t want to worry about recharging. It gives finer control for precision jobs. Just take it out and drill away. It’s easy and safe for children to use, too.

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A Bone Folder Might Change Your Relationship With Paper

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Let’s get it out of the way right now: you don’t need a bone folder. You could use a butter knife to do more or less the same thing most of the time, but once you have a bone folder, you won’t. Nor will you use the bone folder to butter toast. The knife will be in the kitchen, where it belongs, and the folder will be in the office. It will be right there whenever you need it. bone folder paper tool

Reaching for the bone folder makes you think of a Victorian lady or gentleman writing many letters in longhand, by gaslight, and reaching for the bone folder after each one to crease it neatly before stuffing into the envelope. You can do that, too, but I’m guessing not too many of us still write a lot of letters to people who might care about the neatness of the crease.

I got mine when I was learning the rudiments of making pop-ups. Inspired by Robert Sabuda, I tried it myself, and one of the things I found out was the importance of the bone folder in the art of mechanical paper engineering. The point on the one end is for scoring before you make a fold, and the blunt end is for creasing, flattening and burnishing. You use it all the time.

But let’s say you’re not planning on writing your own pop-up books. Why would you need a bone folder in a 21st-century paperless office, with scanners and laser printers? Well, we all know what happened to the paperless office: it’s the one we drive to in our flying cars. You’d be surprised how often you need to fold stuff, so if you have to do it, do it well. They are handy for children’s crafts, too; anything that helps children do things more neatly is always worthwhile. Finally, when packing things in boxes to ship via UPS (a very 21st century task), you can burnish the tape down tighter than ever before and really get that box sealed.
So put the butter knife back in the kitchen and pick up a bone folder from Amazon or your local art supply store. They’re cheap, too.

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Nordstrom Is My Favorite Department Store … and Here’s Why

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Daisy B

Why is Nordstrom the best?

I have a lifelong affair with shopping. I love clothes and shoes and the anticipation of fall clothes in midsummer, resort wear at New Year’s, and spring fashion when winter’s SAD threatens to swallow me up. Salespeople … not so much. No, you cannot help me: I am self-sufficient, I know what I like and it isn’t green. Looking at this doesn’t mean I want that. I don’t know you, and I don’t trust your taste. That’s why my mother is here. Just unlock those stupid fitting rooms and stop following us all around like we fit the shoplifter profile.

Nordstrom in Mall

See? I love to shop, but not with a pushy stranger hovering nearby. Somehow, some stores, like Nordstrom, understand this. By clever training or careful recruiting or both, Nordstrom has figured out how to send sales consultants to their floor who know when to approach me, how long to stand there and when to retreat. They gauge when I actually need unsolicited advice (rarely) and when I’m confident enough in my choices to be left alone.

Let’s assume, though, that I’m there to not just look at stuff, but maybe to buy some, too. After all, if all one did was stay home and shop through Amazon Prime, one would turn flabby and pasty white, and presumably clothes would not fit as well as they would if one actually went somewhere and tried them on once in a while. Sensing this intent is the genius of the best sales consultants. Like a potential new friend, they compliment something I’m already wearing or carrying, they suggest alternatives only after I’ve indicated some slight intent to purchase by trying things on, and they bring items like those I’m already considering, not wholly different items — “How about that dress in blue?” and not “Do you also need jeans?” — offered so I’ll spend more. If I lovelovelove something and the store doesn’t have it in my size, they offer to find it elsewhere, remind me of the free shipping that will offset my lack of immediate gratification, and process the order in less than five minutes. They will do this in a clean modern store that is tastefully decorated, and quietly accompanied by music.

Nordstrom started in 1901 as a shoe store (not surprisingly) in Seattle, Washington. They had the cool Pacific Northwestthing down nearly a century before Starbucks came along. Now you can find them in upscale shopping malls throughout most of the country. They are still largely controlled by the Nordstrom family, and they consistently rank well up in the top 100 companies to work for. Their customer service is legendary. They work hard at being easy to like, just as other stores (NM, anyone?) can be so easy to dislike for their devotion to the one-percenters and all the NON-affordable luxuries they have for sale …

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Do You Still Need a Landline Telephone In The 21st Century?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Do you still need a landline? You will not die without one, but we are going to keep ours for a while. Western Electric 302

Back around the turn of the century, when cellphones started to become the universal objects they are now, I seemed to have the worst luck trying to use one. The phone would ring in elevators, in the car with the top down, in the subway, in noisy bars and anywhere else where having a conversation right then was out of the question. Not only that, but there were some people I would rather just get a message from to return later. Or not. Even now, dropped calls are tolerated for the overall convenience.

Now, of course, phones have keyboards and everyone sends text messages instead, but I still always say, “Can I call back on the landline?” if that’s at all possible. At work, where calls between offices are on landlines (or at least on one end) and the environment is quiet, it is just so easy to hear. The 100 year monopoly of the Bell Company may have needed to come to an end, but the technology and the infrastructure were rock solid. A dial tone was almost always there with crystal clear sound on the other end and you could hammer nails with the Western Electric phones.

Those days are gone, of course. AT&T has given way to Vonage, Comcast and other VOIP systems, but phone conversations still sound better over wires. Nobody pays a la carte for call waiting and all that other stuff. You can use a device like an Ooma, port your old familiar phone number you have had for your entire adult life and pay essentially nothing every month.

So here are my three reasons: sentimental attachment to my old phone number, no dropped calls and great, easy to listen to sound. If the price is right, it works for me.

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A T-Amp Will Make Your Music Sound As Good As It Used To

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

A T-amp, like the Dayton Audio DTA-100a, could be just the thing to give you big sound, if you have a pair of great speakers (or can get them from eBay or Craigslist). Consumer audio products may have reached their peak in the late 1970s, before the Sony Walkman started the movement toward small, portable music products like the 21st century iPod. A good turntable or an FM tube tuner plugged into a preamp and amplifier hooked up in turn to a big pair of AR or JBL speakers took up a lot of living space in 20th century dorm rooms (along with boxes of vinyl and later, CDs). The sound, though, was glorious: the strings, the cymbal strikes and the vocals on the high end and the bass line and drums on the low end. I suppose those speakers now are mostly gathering dust, taking up space in attics and storage lockers.

Now we listen to TV speakers, iPod docks and wireless streaming speakers from Logitech and Sonos, with Dolby Digital 7.1 and a subwoofer in the living room, if we’re lucky. However, I still missed listening to the speakers in the attic. What we need is power, and a way to connect them to the iPod or mp3 player. First, you might need something like this:

headphone plug to RCA adapter

Then, you need power, 30 watts or so per channel. The old receivers had the power and quality, but they were heavy and the size of suitcases. Today, you can pick up a T-amp for about $100 and fit it pretty much anywhere.


All you need to do is connect the speaker wires to the T-amp and turn it on, then you can adjust the volume anywhere from quiet to loud to very loud to too loud, all the way to painfully loud, depending on the efficiency of your speakers. There is a very bright blue LED that I put a piece of black duct tape over; you can still see it. We have it hooked up to the audio out on the TV in the bedroom, which gets its music mostly from the little Apple TV. The Apple TV needs a screen (the TV) and only has HDMI-out, so the TV makes the conversion. The speakers also add the home theater effect to whatever we watch on TV: more bass and better stereo separation.

Plug your iPod dock of choice into the T-amp and you’ll get a roomful of sounds, some of which you may never have heard before.

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