“Why I love smart toothbrushes and loathe internet plug-ins” – The Guardian headline
Stephen on the crazy world of Ogg Vorbis, plug-ins and incompatibility, and the joys of using a smart electric toothbrush
There is fury in the web community on account of Apple and Nokia’s reported bullying of the W3 consortium, the body (headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee) that lays down the standards for the web. The casus belli is this: in the same way that all browsers are capable of reading baseline picture formats .gif, .jpg and .png, so the latest implementation of the web language HTML 5.0, due out soon, had planned to incorporate a baseline audio and video format, or “codec”, to stop having to load plug-ins for QuickTime, Real, Flash, Windows Media, etc. This was welcomed by the developer community, whose preferred codec is Ogg Vorbis: this weird, Terry Pratchett-derived name signifies an entity of higher quality as an audio codec than MP3, and has the advantage common to all Open Source software of being free and available for development by everyone.
The problem is that Nokia claims ownership of some elements of Ogg, which is essentially the file format for the streaming and delivery part of the codec. This was news to me: I thought Ogg was as Open Source as Vorbis. Anyway, Apple doesn’t like the idea of its QuickTime not being the baseline video codec and, of course, iPods don’t read Ogg Vorbis audio. So it seems it’s going to be the same old mad world of plug-ins and incompatibilities for the near future – unless, that is, you all subscribe to the Working Hypertext Application Technology Working Group mailing list (whatwg.org/mailing-list#specs) and exert pressure. Despite the high ideals of W3C, it is often closer to Swift’s Isle Of Laputa than anything sane – indeed, an angry developer recently compared it to Orwell’s Minitrue. Oh dear. All things that are human are also frail and foolish. Never mind. I am sure thousands of individual voices can be as influential as two big corporations.
On a happier note, I have added to my collection of unnecessary but pleasing technological doo-dads. I have not spent any time in the bathroom with you yet, so I am very happy to report that Oral-B has come up with a mad new electric toothbrush. It is so over-engineered as almost to defy description. A base station, where sits and charges the toothbrush itself, transmits by radio to a receiving element. The receiver substation is a plastic cartouche complete with obligatory LCD screen called a SmartGuide (phrases compressed with UpperCaseLetters such as this are DeRigueur for today’s sad MarketingPerson), which gives a reading of how long you’ve brushed, and how long you’ve got to go in each of the quadrants of the mouth, according to “professional” brushing standards recommended by dentists. It also tells you the time and rewards you with a smiley face when you’re done. Sigh. I think I’m in love.
It is basically, of course, an electric toothbrush, a class of good that appeared to be in the doldrums a few years ago. They would sit mournfully gathering dust in locked cabinets in Boots, along with Philishaves and weird objects made by BaByliss – foot spas and ceramic hair rollers, that kind of thing. Recently, thanks to cheap, battery-operated models and the low cost of charging units and components, they have enjoyed something of a revival. With this model – the Oral-B®, Professional Care™ Triumph™ (with Wireless SmartGuide) Oral-B (“powered by Braun”) enters the luxury end of the market. I suppose, given the low cost of a basic model, the margins are so tight that it has to consider every possible way to “add value”. It is the same with shaver and razor manufacturers. The core technology has not changed for 50 years, so they have to find a way to dress up new products. Although all this wireless tosh is senseless and functionally meaningless, I love it. Brushing my teeth bores me to tears and anything – anything – that relieves the tedium of the procedure is good.
I want a treadmill that presents on screen a reality game that interacts with your exercise: an adventure in which you chase villains, rescue damsels or solve puzzles – this is where technology should be headed so far as humdrum chores are concerned. Come on, you eccentric British software geniuses and game designers. Help me to a brilliant white smile and slim fitness the fun way.
© Stephen Fry 2007
[...] Original post by Stephen Fry [...]
Teeth are an odorous chore but, as much as I like gizmos, I can’t help but think that electronic toothbrushes are a step in the wrong direction. A spot of elbow grease and a yard of floss have always served me well. I dislike the sensation of those high frequency vibrations going through my jaw. The thought of wireless signals disturb me even more. I fear that my teeth are not 802.11g compatible.
Incompatibility is something that frustrates me beyond words. Even though I design simple and basic websites, I’ve had a go at CSS coding and even with some HTML sites, the differences in how the sites appear on different browsers infuriates me endlessly – Firefox and Internet Explorer being the two main culprits.
With that in mind, I estimate the faffing around with codecs to be at least six to seven times more irritating than that of the webdesign headache. I’ll be hastily joining the mailing list. Anything to make life easier is alright by me.
Speaking of making life – slightly – easier, that toothbrush sounds utterly preposterous. I want one! The activity of brushing one’s teeth is beyond monotonous; new features and buttons are a fantastic way to capture us gadgeteers, hook, line and sinker!
To risk making the super-fandango Oral-B®, Professional Careâ„¢ Triumphâ„¢ (with Wireless SmartGuide) – sounds like a less absurd then usual Japanese concept car – even more complicated, I’d quite like a toothbrush which fired fine jets of mouthwash while you brushed. Silly?
This treadmill idea sounds interesting too. I trust it would come with a few levels ranging from Amateur to HARDCORE? With the likes of the Wii out there I can’t see designing something like this would take too much thought for the aforementioned eccentric British software geniuses and game designers.
The future’s bright. The future’s pearly-white and toned like an Olympian.
Graham
http://www.letmerephrasethat.com
I must agree with Mr Madeley. Flossing seemed a silly thing to do until I hadn’t done it for long enough, and the results were appalling. Now I regard floss as the string of dental health and feel wrong to venture forth into the world without having used it. Very cheap, too. And this is from someone who shares Mr Fry’s keen interest in gadgets. If there’s ever a gadget that whitens teeth instantly, I’ll have the first one, but not any devices short of that.
How about a solar powered toothbrush that recharges itself during the day? Or failing that, how about a toothbrush that displays video clips in a standardised format?
Hello! I’m the editor of the HTML5 specification, so I thought I’d jump in here and clarify some things.
First, while everyone’s feedback is extremely welcome and in fact I would indeed encourage everyone to take part in the work, I have to emphasise that “pressure” will have no effect on the spec. I base the text in the spec purely on technical arguments and research. It doesn’t matter if the arguments come from one lone developer or from a hundred corporations, the proposals are all considered with the same weight.
In the case of the video codec, Nokia and Apple had sound arguments against requiring Ogg Theora support, and since that meant that we could not get all the browsers to support that codec, I removed the requirement and replaced it with an open issue marker stating what we needed (namely, a freely available codec that everyone is willing to implement).
We haven’t found a suitable codec yet, but we’re still looking.
A methane-powered toothbrush might work with some of the more soiled buccal cavities.
Personally I have found my Oral-B sonic toothbrush indispensible. My dentist is usually incredibly impressed with the state of my fangs after a year of wandering around remote parts of dentist-free Europe. It’s also good for polishing scuffmarks off the keyhole to the TARDIS.
[...] Stephen Fry had just mentioned his idea for a treadmill with a built-in games console of sorts. Something to [...]
Regarding the new toothbrush. I recall hearing about a similar thingie way back in my barely post-Soviet days. Someone at school told me that the Japanese have invented a toothbrush that plays a song as you brush your teeth, and if you do it wrong or stop too soon, it distorts the music to unbearable noise until you start brushing properly again. Naturally, I thought they were telling lies. Electronics, in my experience, were limited to TVs, fridges and cassette decks. (I met my first computer at the age of twelve. This was back in 1995.)
Anyhow, if I hadn’t been told horrible lies, and this gadget does, as they say in Odessa, “have place being,” imagine the joy it could bring to your morning ablutions! Or the pain, depending on your brushing savoir-faire. “Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus ElyEeEEeaeaEE!!sium, wir betreten feuertrunken…” etc. etc.
With regards to the treadmill – oy va voi. I used to run cross-country in high school, and the only reason I didn’t drop dead of boredom during 10k stretches along the school’s fire trail was the little game called “race a team-mate to the roadkill.” (There was also the game called “save yourself from the pissed-off javelina,” but I saved that one for competitions.)
These days, there is only the treadmill. The visuals do leave a lot to be desired. There is only so long one can stare at the red numbers blinking on the monitors and push random buttons just to have something happen. It’s a waste of neural activity. “1.43 miles… 1.44; lower the incline to .5, raise the speed to 6.4… 1.44 miles becomes 1.45… 20:04 minutes into the run… 20:05…20:06… 1.46 miles… god this is boring.”
Seriously, someone take a page from the book of Wii and design us some exercise equipment games. Even a primitive simulacrum of flashing scenery would be great.
(But imagine if an exercise bike could play back a Tour de France program! One could spend one’s whole work-out glaring at Lance Armstrong’s yellow back.
About the treadmill Mr. Fry they do make one with a interactive screen. I suffered an on the job accident that resulted in four years of physical rehab and part of that was learning to walk again. I used to work with a interactive treadmill and for the life of me I can’t remember the company that makes them. It does take the tedium out of working on them. I am doing much better now. I walk with a cane and still work on a treadmill however they also added Dance Dance Revolution to my work out now. It’s for my balance and coordination I’m told, I sometimes think my therapist wants to goof around. As for souped up toothbrushes Philips Sonicare is scary when you first use it. I looked like a mad dog when I started out. Hope your travels are going well. Merry Christmas.
You’ve got the Nokia and Ogg problem (sorry) a bit wrong. Nokia claims that they don’t trust Ogg to be quite as free of other people’s patents as Xiph, the organisation behind Ogg, claims them to be. Thus Nokia is afraid of future patent claims that could cost them loads of money.
By the way, Ogg isn’t the codec, it’s a container for a number of codecs. Among those Vorbis for music and Theora for film material, both of which were supposed to be part of HTML 5.0. (and Xiph claims that the name has nothing to do with Pratchett)
http://xiph.org/ would be a good point for more information, if you like.
I’m surprised and tickled you’ve reviewed the Oral-B Triumph toothbrush since it is one of the two items on my Christmas list this year (the other being a “car powered” espresso maker in Chili Red). Always in search of a way to make the boring task of toothbrushing a more enjoyable experience, I find myself drawn to the “younger” side of the oral health aisle at the store. I have several electric toothbrushes featuring everything from Disney characters to race cars, as well as one that plays two minutes of “Rock & Roll All Night” by KISS (my current favorite). My only question is… how long until Oral-B releases the iTriumph with iPod docking?
On the issue of internet plug-ins, Ogg Vorbis, and video codecs, I really don’t see what is wrong with using Flash these days … Granted, Flash is a browser plug-in, but its almost so ubiquitous that you’d be forgiven for thinking every browser had it. As its really just another scripting language, it leaves open many more possibilities, than a standard player could (I’ve never seen Quicktime, Windows Media Player or Real offer an embed or link feature for example), and most importantly the experience is the same across all browsers – making a built-in standard will no doubt see Microsoft, and others, “improving it”, so we won’t be in a much better place. Granted Flash isn’t open source, but that certainly hasn’t stopped it being popular as yet.
I say encode in .flv through a free open source program, and use a free open source Flash player on your website (I’d suggest “FlowPlayer”), and its great … it instantly works the minute you view a site, no messing waiting for plugins like Windows Media Player to load, you’re not reliant on those ugly controls that those nasty media programs have, which don’t suit websites at all.
I think the problem isn’t having to install one of those plugins to use the video, but the fact that they’re just not very good – I don’t think a plugin for video is a good idea, use existing scripting languages like Flash and the experience is much better.
Esteemed Mr. Fry:
If the various Dance Dance Revolution mats don’t give you enough cardio stimulation (and some of the associated games have a “workout mode” which tracks workouts and calories burned), then the even more obscure Cateye Game Bike may be interesting to you, albeit that is effectively a stationary bike that is Playstation-compatible, not a treadmill.
Oh, and as for Tour de France programs on exercise bikes? Welcome to the hardcore world of the Computrainer. Those things can be networked so you can race against people in remote locations, or just against your buddy on the next trainer over.
[...] the virtues of Firefox were enough to tell that he was ‘one of us’, but this week Stephen Fry is blogging about the W3C and WHATWG. In fact, this makes a lot of sense, if the W3C’s efforts were to be compared to a gameshow [...]
I have an Oral-B® Professional Care® 8500, a couple of models below the Triumph in the line up, but seemingly just as functional. Although it lacks the wireless display, it gives the same feedback by pulsing the motors after 30 seconds to tell you to switch to the next oral quadrant. After your dentist-approved two minutes, the motors pulse again with slightly more force. If you press too hard, one of the motors cuts out entirely until the excess pressure is released. I suppose I don’t get the smiley face, but I find the tactile feedback is perfect for the job.
To those who mentioned exercise video games, I suggest you search the interweb for Wii Fit. Depending on the price, I think this could turn out to be huge success. The latest revolution in human-video game interaction from Nintendo, after the touch screen DS and motion-sensing Wii.
Thank you for these blessays and columns, Mr. Fry. My morning RSS ritual is brightened when I see you’ve written something new.
As far as VR fitness equipment is concerned, cyclists can try the Tacx range of VR trainers which enable the indoor fitness fanatic to pretend that they are climbing Mont Ventoux. I’ve no idea whether it’s any good, being the sort of person who would generally prefer to cycle outside of the house.
Actually, it’s Sig O’Phantique that says: “I desperately need a Stephen Fry plug-in that converts almost everything to a Fry-esque viewpoint standpoint and point-point. Browse on that, m’lady…” Lurve and a Happy Christmas to one and all, especially users of an Oral B system with low battery levels…..
“I want a treadmill that presents on screen a reality game that interacts with your exercise: an adventure in which you chase villains, rescue damsels or solve puzzles”
Now there’s an idea!
Come on boffins, get to work imediately!
[...] Though I find really odd yet wonderful how Stephen is blogging about HTML5. [...]
May I contribute a suggestion to reduce the boredom routine involved in the act of toothbrushing? This approach might appear slightly sadistic, but there is undoubtedly something motivating about it … Imagine yourself on a big game hunt among the steep rocks of your teeth, and enjoy the triumph of chasing, aiming at and finally shooting the extraordinary bits of wildlife this colourful ecosystem has to offer.
Have a very merry Christmas and a gorgeous, splendid, fantastic and thoroughly happy new year!
Surely, however, the most infuriating behaviour of MarketingPeople is declaring any new feature to be ’smart’ simply because it has a resistor hooked up to it, and then zealously trademarking it as one of the many stupid SmartNames®?
The publicised reason Nokia gave for rejecting Ogg Vorbis and Theora is “there may be patents out there somewhere that this infringes”. The trouble is, any other candidate codec has the same issue – it’s practically impossible to prove the non-existence of a patent that covers what you want to do. Ogg Vorbis and Theora are the best candidates out there, and will probably remain so – they had great difficulty avoiding the known patents, and there are now newer patents that restrict what can be done even further.
Reading between the lines, Nokia seems to prefer one of the widely-used (but patent-restricted) video codecs – one of the MPEG variants, for example. The trouble is, these can’t legally be implemented in open source software – in fact, you’re basically stuck using pay-for player applications developed by corporations large enough to afford the costs. (Hell, for a lot of them you have to pay to even distribute content using them, and that’s after paying for software to encode the content in the first place.) Unfortunately, their requirements are carefully worded to ensure that only one of these codecs would pass.
In fact, since Nokia want a codec developed in a collaborative manner by major industry bodies, approved by a standards body, and with wide industry support it’s inevitable that the codec would have lots of patents covering it. I think the main trick to this sort of thing is for everyone to get as many of their patents into the standard as they can. Even if Ogg Vorbis and Theora took off massively overnight, Nokia still wouldn’t accept them.
Nokia also require that any candidate codec supports DRM, which is basically a total non-starter for obvious reasons.
It’s quite nice to see Microsoft not being the baddie for once. After the IE6 issues I still have to battle on a daily basis and it’s dark ages attitude to CSS in emails it’s refreshing to see Nokia and Apple doing their bit to make developer’s lives that little bit more hellish.
Tim Berners Lee must be pulling his hair out.
Yep, they’re looking at H.264 and AAC. They’re fairly decent from a technical point of view, but have some moderately nasty patent licensing terms. The reason Nokia wants these is that they already have an investment in them – I bet Apple is the same.
Of course, since Nokia is claiming that H.261 is close in performance to Ogg Theora and ADPCM is close to Ogg Vorbis, I’m not sure exactly what they’re thinking. They may have a point with H.261 – it was quite decent for its time and Theora wasn’t too great, at least initially, though H.261 is probably horribly unsuited to internet video. However, Ogg Vorbis is a sophisticated perceptual audio codec that’s still competitive with everything else out there quality-wise (and that includes AAC).
As something of a connoisseur of the geeky, I thought you might like to know that the style “phrases compressed with UpperCaseLetters” is known, rather delightfully, as CamelCase.
What’s more, there is UpperCamelCase and lowerCamelCase…
Aside from the age-old practice of using it for some surnames (largely involving orange-bearded Scots), it gained significant popularity in the 70s in computer programming circles, as it could be used for variable and subroutine names without the spaces screwing the parser up the arser. The only real alternative was the relatively clumsy, hard-to-type and ugly underscore_between_each_word method.
FYI.
Top blog, keep it coming. The blessays are the best bits.
Many thanks!
Thanks for inviting us in your bathroom Mr. Fry… that has been refreshing
)
WambaughWambaugh: Flash isn’t so great if you are e.g. making a web browser for a game console, and have to pay royalties to Adobe to be allowed to include a Flash player. It’s even worse if Adobe decides they don’t like you and won’t port the Flash player to your device. Giving one company control over the whole web is a bad idea – open standards are necessary so that users won’t lose out in these situations.
More generally: There has been a lot of misunderstanding the video codec situation, and unfortunately this article seems to be spreading a bit more. So, some more attempted clarifications:
The issue is the Theora video codec, not the Ogg container format or the Vorbis audio codec. Many companies (including Microsoft) have already published software with Vorbis (and Ogg) and not been sued over it, and Vorbis is competitive in quality to alternatives like MP3 and AAC, so nobody is greatly concerned about audio.
Theora’s patent situation is much less well tested by people who are worth suing, and Theora is significantly lower quality than alternatives like H.264. Given the quality, people might not use Theora even if it was distributed with every web browser, and so companies like Nokia and Apple would be taking on the risk of infringing as-yet-unknown patents without any compelling benefit and without saving the world from proprietary Flash video formats.
“Nokia claims ownership of some elements of Ogg” is, to the best of my knowledge (and several others’), simply untrue – Nokia has said nothing like that. (Their recent position paper is one place that doesn’t make those claims.)
“Apple doesn’t like the idea of its QuickTime not being the baseline video codec” is also mostly wrong: Apple has expressed a preference for MPEG4, which was originally derived from QuickTime’s .mov format but is no longer controlled by Apple. This post from an Apple developer lists some reasons for that preference.
Also see this (from Apple) for a good explanation of many of the difficulties in finding a decent solution. It’s a hard problem, and Nokia and Apple have valid points, so we need to find a way to address their concerns – unfortunately it can’t be solved simply by the HTML 5 specification saying “web browers should support Ogg Theora”.
@makomk:
As a member of both the WHATWG and the HTML WG, I can say that we looked at H.264 and AAC for about as long it takes to say, “Oh, they have known patents fees that make it impossible to choose for the spec”. In other words, they won’t be there (in part as there is no realistic way for any free (as in beer) software to supply decoders for them.
Nokia holds patents on H.264 and AAC; Apple holds patents on the ISO base media file format (which is derived from QT’s container, which is why it is hardly surprising they hold patents) — this information is freely available from MPEG-LA’s website. Apple haven’t got anything to do with the actual codec development, apart from being implementers (and that only due to the technical advantages and their popularity in the market).
It is probable that Vorbis will be recommended in HTML 5, IMO, though not within the Ogg container. Vorbis itself has widespread usage already by major companies — it’s used in both GTA:SA and UE2.5–3.0; whereas Ogg does not, making a patent risk (as any holders of any submarine patents will wait until a multi-million/-billion dollar corporation breaches them before suing). Theora, like Ogg, has no major implementations.
Dirac has the advantage of being developed by a major corporation (the BBC), so that has a major submarine advantage, though I don’t want to try and guess what video codec will be chosen (as there are many more factors which make video codec choice more complex than of audio).
The Concept 2 rowing machine has a simple little fish game on it:
http://www.concept2.com/us/motivation/games/fish_game.asp
I also play Dance Dance Revolution as a workout sometimes. Very fun, although my toddler keeps getting all up in my grill when I’m trying to play. I should try laying down the second dance pad and see if he’ll examine that one for a while.
I think you can play FLAC on iPods, can’t you?
A few time ago, I was wondering what was the point of all that digital, meaningless, brain-wasting thingies just as the toothbrush you’ve so convenient described avobe. Now I know: their point is to be fun. It is precisely to take something boring and tedious and make it fun. You gave me the answer and I like it. Actually, I prefer to waste my money in something fun, smart and lovely (a smiley? Hahahaha) rather than in something useful but boring.
And about internet plug-ins… I don’t have the english skills, neither the time, to make an accurate description of how profoundly they bore me. Let’s say that I just don’t know enough about them, so… good night!
I’d buy that treadmill if it’s got a built-in Playstation 3. Oh, and a built-in computer a la Apple iPhone.
Stephen…. following the disintegration of my previous one, I have the same brush. If you follow the obligatory two minutes with at least a minute of gum massage, the built-in Tamagotchi winks at you. Enjoy.
brings a whole new meaning to bluetooth…. btw way can i just say I love my Firefox and its built in spell checker has saved me many embarrassing online mistakes
That’s funny that you mention the video screen for the treadmill. As a runner, it’s actually something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit. I almost think that a better product is actual goggles that have specially designed screens within them, though I’m not sure it’s possible to do that without making the person wearing them sick. People with better engineering minds than I can probably work around that problem, but I’m envisioning something similar to the kinds that are being developed for surgeons and pilots, etc. I’d like to see a realistic landscape of virtually any city in the world while you’re on the treadmill. If you want to run in London, up pops a London landscape that you run through with all the appropriate sites, etc. Or if you want Rome, same thing. I can’t speak much to actual video games because I don’t enjoy them, but for people that really like walking or running in different environments (but without the ability to get further away than their treadmill) there must be some virtual options. Must be.
Thanks again for updating this blog. I love it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, Mr. Fry!
Incidentally, Stephen, you might like to know that I recently discovered that this business of using capitals within words like SmartGuide has a typographical name. As we have upper and lower case, this sort of type is known, I’m told, as Camel Case. Because of its humps. Nice, isn’t it?
If you really would like Ogg Vorbis support on your iPod, along with a few other handy little utilities (like uploading music without having to use iTunes) then have a look at http://www.rockbox.org
I haven’t used it myself, but the idea seems good.
I have this terrible image suddenly of a SmartGuide hiccuping and the smiley face failing to appear…some poor guy is found in his bathroom dead from exhaustion, surrounded by dozens of empty toothpaste tubes, with the words “I did my best” scrawled on the mirror in shaving foam.
Well, I suppose you can’t really “scrawl” words with shaving foam, but still.
So from what you write, am I to suppose that the codec fight has developed into a full blown bellum sacrum a lá Unix wars of the 80’s?, or other similar “mine is better than yours” computer software tantrum?
As for the toothbrush, I’ll pass on that. What I want is a porcelain goddess that appreciates the amount of time I spend with her; that is, never ever run out of loo paper, provide an unending stack of interesting and amusing things to read or puzzle over and in an air hostess like voice, charmingly inform me how much she has appreciated me using her services, which will of course count as Frequent Flyer points towards an upgrade.
Oh well, you know what they say, silly things…..etc. and I very much doubt this will get read, but I will wish you seasonal greetings/merry Christmas. Hope you have a rest and some fun.
I want to wish everyone here happy holidays (I think this is the PC term at the moment), be as it may it is a wonderful community and I wish you all the best…
Oh and the latest installment of Stephen Fry Appreciation Monday is up, all I will say the lengths I will go to tssss
http://www.couchslobs.com/2007/12/24/stephen-fry-appreciation-monday-or-how-i-made-linzer-tart-fry/
Merry Christmas Mr. Fry we really appreciate you
AxmxZ – you wish to chase the yellow jersey? You can! What is more, you can do so using your own bicycle and your own computer ( ‘though I believe it is PC rather than Mac software). Tacz and Axiom both make turbo trainers for indoor cycle training with a number of plug in computer software programmes simulating real life or imaginary lands. There is a Tour de France programme and the software feedback to the trainer even mimics the freewheeling descents.
Take a look at the following links. GB £’s and not cheap, but how much is cessation of boredom worth?
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/q_and_a/Turbo_training_article_164221.html
http://www.evanscycles.com/product.jsp?style=10988
http://www.totalcycling.com/index.php/product/parts_accessories/turbo_trainers/TT_ELITE_REAL_AXIOM.html
http://www.ultimatepursuits.co.uk/products/list.aspx?ref=14798&vertical=1
Merry Christmas, Mr Fry.
I make it a rule never to let anything smarter than me near my mouth, and that definitely goes for toothbrushes. I can’t understand why companies keep churning out stuff we don’t need instead of making things we do; and I’m even more baffled by the way folks (self included) rush to the shops to buy them. I just put it down to it being “market forces” in the same way people in Star Trek say “reverse the polarity”. Makes no sense, sounds clever, job done.
There should be one company – just one would be needed – which sold only //useful// stuff. Such as a GPS locator for my keys so I know where they are at all times. Ditto for my car when it’s in Tesco’s car park. I want a combined microwave/freezer where the user puts the food into individual compartments and presses a button on the front to receive perfectly cooked food in 30 seconds. Better yet, have it automatically turn on when someone says the words “I’m hungry” within 60 feet.
I suspect such a company would be relegated to selling it’s wares in tiny catalogues which fall out of the Sunday supplements though.
Such is life.
Oh dear, hate doing this….sad old geek who crawls the web on Xmas day (bah, humbug, pfft), and will be seen as nuisance caller, but realised too late that an earlier comment about nice virtual reality software for cycling had url links which would need to be moderated ….which would not be done until after seasonal respite (or rest bite as so many people so annoyingly seem to write it these days).
Anyway, for other sad old sods like me, you can get great computer virtual reality games on your own computer or an interactive tour de France and many other interesting amusements for using with your own bike on a turbo trainer. Just googlify Tacx and have a look at their website.
The model name “Oral B” has long troubled me.
Is this, Braun’s supposed dental miracle, a relative of the Spelling version or the Common version? I’d say it’s a pertinent question, with the projected ramifications of the answer!
Furthermore, if this is the model “Oral B”, what happened to “Oral A”? Why was it never on the market? Is this some zealously industrious, German cover-up? Was it a massive, steam-powered prototype, built during the second world war and prone to exploding in a glorious cloud of dental shrapnel?
Since my childhood accident with the automated spaghetti spork, I have had a considerable aversion to sticking suspiciously marketed electronic doodads into sensitive areas of my frail host body. Before letting anything like this slipperily Freudian Orifice-Insect-slash-Traumatic-Recital near my maxilla, I demand answers, by Mohammad’s molars!
Through the Great Oracle (B?) of Wikipedia, I have been enlightened to the post-war American origins of the “Oral B” system. This is unsettling! Was I right in my hypothesising on the particulars of the precursor model, only to be wrong about the locale? Will the intrigue never cease?
I must leave you at this junction, to brave the open realms of the scheming masses in search of sustenance. If I’m not back by midnight, CET, please alert the mothership.
Good Lord, I love the idea of an interacting treadmill. I’m terrible about exercising, unless there is an element of fun. Perhaps a Choose Your Own Adventure game. (Anyone else read those books as a child?) Should you go in the cave, confront the gold smuggling villains, and save your best friend Lizzie? Touch the “yes” or “no” button on the screen. Or should you find the sheriff so he can round up a posse to flush the smugglers out? Or should you just ride your faithful pony Lucky home so Mom and cook you a nice supper? You choose!
I think plug-ins can be a hassle also, some I don’t mind like a flash player, but I don’t want to have to add a lot of them. I found out how to add the themes to Firefox, and I think they are neat, I like the fact the add ons and themes and such are free. I will have to check out that new fangled toothbrush Stephen is talking about. My younger brother I believe has one or similar to it, he said it did such a good job when he last went to the dentist, the dentist didn’t have to do any cleaning whatsoever, it had done such a thorough job. Now thats a good toothbrush! I also will have to check it out because my husband thinks you need to replace your toothbrush every month.. I think he might hold on to that one for at bit.
I just wrote a comment on here but I dont see it does it take awhile to appear? I dont want repeat what I said..
Dude. Holy cow.
*waves arms*
HEY EVERYONE!! Every person who had been thinking about immersion 3-D videogames and treadmill activity. Put on a drool bib and watch this video!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
You think that it’s love, Mr. Fry, but it’s just infatuation. One of these days you’ll want to brush the other side first, just to, you know, do it a little differently for once, and it’ll go all pouty-face and refuse to brush until you do it its way. Before you know it, you’ll be sneaking out in the morning and coming back a few hours later with suspiciously clean teeth; you’ll try to disguise it with curry and imperial stout, but the Oral-B will know what’s going down, oh yes it will. No more grins in the Fry household.
This thing hooks up to your PC for exercise purposes and can even control the walking function in something like World of Warcraft. If you’re into that sort of thing.
Ok here is not the greatest question in the world but I carry two cell phones all the time, one for me one for the business my husband runs besides his usual jobs ( computer repair) When he is at work I take the calls. Are there some cool but handy cases I can buy to put them in that wont make look like John Wayne gone techno (phone at each side ala holsters) I hate trying to dig them out of my purse and such.. any ideas? Stephens talking about Nokia made me think of this…