Using an array of salvaged electronics, Kenyan tinkerer Simon Mwaura turned his cell phone into a remote control that lets him turn on lights, monitor his front door, and even brew tea. [via AfriGadget ]

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Kenyan Builds DIY Smart Home

Can’t Afford Em Crafts describes itself as “two people with a passion for finding clever ways to reduce waste creatively.” A part of me finds this Atari abuse horrifying, but let’s face it: most of their arcade conversions sucked. Product Page [CantAffordEmCrafts Geeky Gadgets via CrunchGear ]

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Atari Cart Clocks

Sometimes, my dogs puke. This is because they eat everything from grass to flip flops to sheets of paper towel soiled with grease. Twice, Ruby got into a huge bag of dark green iron pills and had to get her stomach pumped. Several weeks ago, Malcolm puked out a grass-and-kibble stew, which I didn’t discover until I got home hours later. All of these incidents had left seemingly indelible stains on my carpets and couch. Enter SpotBot Pet, a not-so-little cleaning robot that claims to work any stubborn pet stain &mdash be it puke, pee, or butt juice &mdash out of carpets and upholstery. It has three modes &mdash one for surface stains, one for deeper stains, and a manual mode for use with the attached hose. The SpotBot Pet has two fluid tanks–one for a cleaner-water mix and another that dirty water gets sucked back into. Below the dirty water tank is a pair of nylon bristle brushes and little vacuum cleaner heads that simultaneously scrub stains out and suck dirt in. Its diameter is 8 inches, so any stain bigger than that might require two treatments. The SpotBot came with a trial size of Bissell’s Pet Stain & Odor advanced formula cleaner, which supposedly works for pee, puke, and butt juice. Perfect. A full cycle of the set-in stain takes about five minutes and is deafeningly loud. It didn’t bother me that much, though &mdash after spending days trying to scrub canine vomit out with soap and water and Nature’s Miracle, I was beginning to think the couch would just have to sport a puke stain motif forever. I was willing to listen to this Bot do its deed. Five minutes later: The couch was soaking wet, but the stain? Gone! It was awesome. I tried it on an area of carpet stained with pee, too, and it worked great. At $140, it’s a tad pricey and it’s heavy and loud, but it works, and it doesn’t require any manual labor other than picking the thing up and placing it on top of the stain. Product Page (Bissell) This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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Review: A puke stain with the Bissell SpotBot Pet

Scott Amron sells these juicers made from old bottles for a reasonable $6.50, but they look like something you could do yourself with a nice serrated blade. [via Charlie Sorrel ]

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Juicer made from an old soda bottle

My house is lit primarily by sunken floodlights. Putting in a bulb that doesn’t fill the fixture looks trashy, and the incandescent bulbs burn out quite frequently. I found a GE R40 CFL floodlamp in a local drugstore that could even be dimmed. It was expensive—$20, although Green Electrical Supply them sells for $8 plus shipping—but if it could last for a couple of years, I’d still come out ahead. I screwed it in and turned up the dimmer switch in my kitchen. The bulb flickered, but ignited. Not bad! I could deal with a little flickering, especially since I rarely ever kept the light at its lower settings. But then I went to turn it on and off again, there was a pop, and the CFL bulb broke completely. Looks like CFL and dimmers still aren’t a great combination.

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Anecdote as Data: Dimmable CFL light bulbs don’t quite work right yet

PhotoShowerCurtain.com will print your photo on shower curtains for $150 - $200, depending on size, using a dye sublimation process that they promise won’t fade or crack. You can even machine launder them—or, you know, wash them in the shower. A nice way to sauce up a bathroom, for sure. I’d suggest using a picture of you naked in the shower. [via Red Ferret ]

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Print your photos on a shower curtain

My kitchen knives have been dull for way too long. I have a sharpening steel, but I find it hard to use. I’m also too lazy to take all five of my kitchen knives to a professional knife sharpener. The Electric Sharpener is German knife company Wsthof’s first automated sharpening device ever &mdash since I have trusted Wsthof to make good knives for years, I decided to give this machine a try. There are basically three main features to the Electric Sharpener &mdash the on/off button, the coarse diamond wheel on the left, and the fine diamond wheel on the right. The coarse wheel sands both sides of the blade sharp; the fine wheel gives an already-pretty-sharp blade a good honing. One of the best ways to test a knife for sharpness is by cutting a tomato. Tomatoes are squishy, and when cut with a dull knife, they spew seeds and juice all over the cutting board. And every bad incision shows up looking twice as bad in red. This knife hadn’t been sharpened for at least a few months, so I used the coarse wheel. Ok, now take a look at the tomato in the picture. The slice on the far right was cut before sharpening. As you can see, there is juice everywhere, and the surface looks really uneven. After sharpening the knife, I took a stab (ha ha) at the rest of the tomato. The difference was simply amazing. The tomato didn’t resist or spew juice at all. The Electric Sharpener is rectangular and compact, so it won’t take up too much counter or pantry space. At $200, it’s kinda expensive, but think of it this way &mdash taking your knife to a professional sharpener (if you can find one) costs $4 a knife, and if you have 5 knives like me, and you want to maintain the blades by honing them every time you use them and sharpening them once every few weeks, and you’re lazy about leaving the house… well, you do the math. It quickly adds up to being worth it, I think. Wsthof Electric Sharpener [Williams & Sonoma]

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Review: Wsthof electric knife sharpener

Dwell has human-computer interaction expert Don Norman look at the design of faucets : “There are only two things you care about besides the appearance,” he explains. “The amount of water coming out and the temperature.” This seemingly simple balance between image and duty is one that Norman understands implicitly. As an engineer his priority is making sure things operate properly, but as a psychologist he argues that there’s more to functionality than, well, functioning. “Emotions are really the most important part of life. Things have to work well, but they also should excite you.”

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A psychologist reviews faucets

Kwikset’s own benefit list (pdf file) for this product includes five main selling points. Let’s review them one at a time, shall we? 1. Three Levels of controlled access. The idea here is that you basically have “admin” or “god” type access so that you can control all the settings and enroll other fingerprints. Then there is a “user” access which allows you to set who can and cannot access your door. Then finally a “timed user” access where you can specify time and day of the week someone can have access, like say a maid. The idea is solid enough and its easy enough to add people to the system. I’d say the problem here (which I’ll address again later) is that this is a closed system where you don’t have the ability to upgrade the firmware or do extensive programming of the lock. What would have been a welcome addition to this type of lock is to have a USB port so that you could use a thumb drive that could not only upgrade firmware but also could allow you (the admin) the ability to do advanced programming of who gets in and when, and then be able to simply load that information into the lock. Instead, programming is a process of bending over or kneeling piously in front of the lock to access the UI. 2. Subdermal fingerprint scan safer and more precise. This is true. Not only is it harder to spoof this type of a lock, it is also temperamental and can cause you great angst as your wife will surely stand in the extreme cold or hot, wondering why the hell she can’t get in the house because the lock won’t recognize her fingerprint. You see it is not only subdermal, but it also requires you swipe your finger across the electronic “eye” of the lock. The problem here is that it likes you to always swipe your finger at the same rate every. single. time. This is enough to anger any spouse to such a degree as they start to bypass the lock altogether and instead use the garage door keypad. You may also get a call from the pet sitter while you are on your way to say, Hawaii, explaining that he cannot get in the house and the dog is likely peeing on the rug. There is a trick to fixing this that I’ve found. Basically, you enroll the same person 3-4 times at different speeds, essentially a CYA, keeping a record of the 1.2 second swipe, the 1 second swipe, the .56 second swipe, and so on. 3. “Backup” key included. Yes, there is a backup key. Handy for when your pet sitter calls you while you are on your way to Hawaii and can’t get into the house. 4. Easy to install, program and use. It was rather painless to install. It took some modification to my door strike and a little Dremel work to get the deadbolt to fit just right, but through no fault of the lock itself. It is rather easy to program (although I mentioned above a better way they could handle this), and once you enroll everyone 3-4 times, it is very easy to use. For example, when leaving the house, simply tap the scanning area 3 times to lock the door (this is a feature I love). And unlocking the deadbolt is only about 3-20 seconds from the arrival at your door. This could be good or bad depending on what’s chasing you at the moment (zombies good, vampires bad). 5. Standard preparation fits most doors. This seems to fit in with number 4, but I can only agree to the extent that it fit my own. I can’t speak for anyone else. Final thoughts I’m a little rough on this product only due to the persnickety way it makes me scan my finger 3 times before I seem to find it’s subdermal g-spot. On the whole I rather like it. It’s affordable and secure. The batteries last a very long time between replacements. The finish is really nice and matches my existing door hardware perfectly. It is quite straightforward in its installation, programming, and function. And the best feature is that you control how many keys you give out…meaning zero. If you’ve ever given out a key or two to people and they’ve lost them, you know you’re a large locksmith bill away from re-keying your front door. With this product if you suddenly find yourself on the outs with your significant other, you are only one finger swipe away from deleting their access, depending of course who gets home first and how many swipes it takes you to gain admin access. For the breakup inclined, that alone is worth the price of admission, and the occasional headache. So on the whole, I’d recommend this product, but with the slight caveat that I’d hope Kwikset takes my recommendations to heart and improves upon the next version. Available on Amazon for under $200.

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Review: 6 Months with Kwikset Smartscan Biometric Deadbolt

Instructables user rstraugh is building a kick-ass model of the Oberbaum Bridge in Berlin out of gingerbread, using an Epilog Laser. So far, the project looks awesome , but he says he probably won’t finish it until next Christmas.

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Get This Guy To Finish His Laser-Cut Gingerbread Bridge