Monoprice 8320s – Very Affordable Headphones

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

The Monoprice 8320 Bass Enhanced headphones have become very well known on the Internet over the last year or so for their remarkably low price and good sound. The low price, $8.40 with free shipping to be exact, created a demand for the phones among everyone who heard about them. Lots of people ordered them, lots of people tried them … and hardly anyone said anything negative about them. Even the most elite of audio snobs didn’t seem to have the heart to sneer at something so inexpensive and unpretentious. The surprising thing turned out to be that the Monoprice 8320s turned out to be good headphones, not just good for the price.

Monoprice 8320 headphones

The headphones have gold-plated plugs, fabric-covered wires and large 14.2 mm drivers that can’t quite fit into your ear behind the tips; they wait outside in your outer ear and somehow get the solid bass response in where you can hear it just fine. I compared them directly to my Shures to get sense of how good they really are. While they are different, I can’t honestly say the Shures are all that much better or that they let you hear more of the music, for about twenty times as much money.

But here’s the luxurious part: you can leave the expensive audiophile earbuds at home and take the Monoprice headphones on a trip, to the gym, the beach or anywhere you might be concerned about the good ones being lost, stolen or damaged. Great sound and no worries – what more could you want for $8.40? Or maybe you don’t have a pair of high-priced headphones yet, so the Monoprice ones could be the only ones you need. Or even better, two pairs are better than one, so pick up an extra pair and a splitter and you’ll always be able to share the tunes with a friend.

Available from Amazon

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European Toothpaste: Botot or Elgydium, Anyone?

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

I’ve posted before about toothpaste as luxury item. GoSmile from Sephora, the morning and evening whitening toothpaste as an alternative to the same old boring Crest and Colgate varieties that fill the shelves at your local market or big drugstore.

There are other upscale brands out there. I’ve been checking out Elgydium and Botot since I first saw Elgydium at Bigelow Chemist in Greenwich Village. Their claims to luxury may be exaggerated; Elgydium is supposed to be the secret whitening method of movie stars who bring it back by the case from Paris and Botot is the world’s first toothpaste, created in 1755 for King Louis XV. Although it may be fun to imagine King Louis brushing with Botot in one of the fabulous bathrooms of Versailles before a liaison with Madame de Pompadour, what really matters today is just whether you like it or not.

Imported Toothpaste Elgydium’s claim to fame is its micropulverized bicarbonate. That sounds like fine baking soda particles that can get in those little crevices and give you maximum whitening power to get rid of those stubborn red wine or Gauloise cigarette stains that are always such a problem for French people. It does seem effective. It tastes kind of like Arm and Hammer baking soda (not very minty) and leaves your mouth feeling polished. A downside for me is that there does not seem to be any added fluoride, but it you have fluoridated drinking water or use a fluoride mouthwash it might not matter. Not to get too complicated, but they also offer a Decay Protection variety. Daisy misses the mint.

French Toothpaste

Botot, on the other hand, seems to have all the needed ingredients. Fluoride to prevent cavities and triclosan to kill germs (both added since 1755 is my guess), along with an unusual and very pleasant flavor of anise with a hint of cinnamon. Definitely a toothpaste for adults.

Clearly, these are much more expensive than the mass market kind, but if you like them, you can afford them more easily than a house in France.

Elgydium Toothpaste

Available from Amazon

Botot Toothpaste

Available from Amazon

 

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Daisy On a Bicycle Built for Two

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

If you frequently ride bikes with another person, maybe you should consider trying a tandem. Why? Is a tandem better than two bikes?
For many people, it certainly is. Think of it as adding another motor to your bike, turning it into a twin-engine machine with double the horsepower, while keeping the aerodynamics exactly the same. Above 18 mph, 80% of the power in a bike is needed to overcome wind resistance, so two people on a tandem can ride faster and more efficiently than they can on 2 bikes. It’s like drafting, only much tighter. Going downhill, with twice the weight and less drag, is a thrill ride limited only by how safe you feel going 40 or 50 mph on a bicycle.

As a practical matter, riders on 2 bikes who want to stay together are limited to the speed of the slowest one; whoever is the weakest or just the most tired. On a tandem, however, you both go faster than the speed of the strongest rider alone. If there is a big disparity between the riders’ ability, the tandem is an even better alternative. The person in the back, the “stoker,” is relieved from shifting, steering or even always having to hold on. This frees him or her up to navigate, take pictures, peel bananas, open water bottles or most useful of all, signal turns with sweeping and dramatic movements to enable those nerve-wracking moves into the left turn lane.

Tandem riders have another advantage over single cyclists:  conversation.  Without needing to reduce their speed or violate the rule that “cyclists maintain single file,” tandem riders can engage in conversation as they ride without having to turn around to shout in the direction of their companions.

Communication, cooperation and trust are absolutely necessary. You have to learn to pedal and coast at the same time, and the person in the front, the “captain,” has to announce upcoming shifts, turns, stops and bumps. Stopping and starting at intersections are not as easy, either.

It all gets better with practice. It’s like everything in life: try it and see if you like it. If you do, you’ll get good at it.

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Screen in the Bedroom – Part Three: Roku

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

The Roku box looks almost exactly like the Apple TV from the last post and does almost the same job. The differences are quite subtle, and which one you might end up wanting to buy might be as simple as whether you plan to rent your movies (or TV shows) from iTunes or Amazon (the Roku is one of the devices that will let you stream the free stuff from Amazon Prime, if you are that into the Amazon world). The Roku is a bit lighter; a stiff wire may lift it right up, and also has composite output, the familiar red, white and yellow RCA cables.

Roku XS inputs

This feature alone might be the deciding factor if the TV or screen you want to light up is more than five or so years old and does not have HDMI. Also, the Roku remote is not IR and does not need to be line of sight, so you can put the unit behind the TV or in the cabinet.

Roku front view

The three models of Roku add a bit to the confusion. They offer the HD, XD and XS models. The entry-level HD and the 1080p enabled XD cost about the same $65-$70, so deciding between those is easy. The XS adds a motion control remote that you can swing around like a Wii controller and an Ethernet port for about $35 more (basically the price of the remote by itself). So if you want to play the occasional game of Angry Birds with a satisfying swing of the game controller, and you want to have the Ethernet for maximum bandwidth available in the future (3D, anyone?), you might want to go with the XS.

Setup is easy and the standard channels (Netflix, etc.) are right there. It is a much more open platform than the Apple TV; a huge universe of private channels are available to add (although not all that many that you’d really want, but definitely check out what Nowhere Man is up to).

See the first post: Screen in the Bedroom – Part One: TiVo.

See the second post: Screen in the Bedroom – Part Two : Apple TV.

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Screen in the Bedroom – Part Two: AppleTV

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

     If the TiVo from my earlier post is not for you (you don’t have cable, it’s too 20th century, it’s too big), it’s now the perfect time to pick up the 3rd generation Apple TV. The brand spanking new version was just introduced yesterday, March 7, so you’re as safe from the danger of planned obsolescence as you can possibly be. The new Apple TV is not all that much different from its predecessor. It’s exactly the same form factor, but it can pump out 1080p video through a faster A5 processor, and it’s still the same $99 price.

     Compared to the TiVo, it’s very tiny (like a square hockey puck), and it hooks up in minutes to an HDMI-equipped screen. You must supply your own HDMI cable, of course, but they have come down quite a bit in price. The setup is quick and easy, then you’re ready to decide what to watch. Along with Netflix, which you can watch on just about anything, it also has YouTube and the all-important iTunes. Not surprisingly, iTunes just might be the killer app. If you don’t mind paying by the movie a la carte, iTunes is the place to go for the ones you just missed seeing in the theaters. With the old corner video store having gone the way of the dodo, what else can you do? Netflix used to be the greatest way to get movies (they more or less replaced the mom and pop video rental place), but lately they are acting more and more like a crazy passive-aggressive former lover, sweetly trying to lure you back to the couch to watch unlimited streaming. Then you remember yet again why you wanted to break up: most of what you want to see is only available on DVD, often with a “very long wait” (hint: just put it by itself in the queue; never mind the six they suggest). 

     The little Apple TV fits anywhere, is very high quality and is particularly useful as a part of the ecosphere in an Apple household. It can stream music through the TV out to an amplifier and speakers in any room, it can show you movies to buy and store in the cloud and the Airplay mirroring feature is a lot of fun with the iPad. 

     If you want to watch new releases and don’t mind paying to rent each one, iTunes through the Apple TV is the video box for you.

     See the first post: Screen in the Bedroom – Part One: TiVo.

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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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