Tool Silverware

Who won’t stop tinkering long enough to eat dinner?

Oh Gizmo points out,
"Perfect for enjoying your steak and potatoes while changing the oil and of course avoiding your family."

The ‘tools’ are made from 18/10 polished “drop forged” stainless steel.

A single set of Tool Silverware is available from Everythingcarz.com for $24.99.

Outlet decor

Maybe, just maybe, an electrical outlet might require emphasis.

CNet's Crave site says,
Adrien Gardere's vinyl wall-outlet surroundings make charging your gadgets or powering your PC a little more interesting. Jack right into a pig's snout, a puppy's nose, or even the sun-don't-shine area of a cow or elephant.

About $40

New garden watering method

AccuRain is a new and economical water-efficient garden irrigation solution.

Less cost than traditional automatic lawn sprinklers or drip irrigation systems.

Does the the work of many sprinklers or emitters.

One head can water 15 different zones of almost any size or shape, each with their own unique watering requirements.

Just point the stream of water where you want it; tell AccuRain how much and how often, and it does the rest.

Water anywhere in a 60-foot (18 m) diameter circle.

The AccuRain system can be easily adapted to use solar power.

Rent solar power

Delaware-based Citizenre, a renewable energy development group, will rent solar panels to US residents on a per-kilowatt basis on a one, five, or twenty-five year contract. With only a $500 deposit, paid back at the end of the contract WITH interest, homeowners can easily and inexpensively make the switch from local utilities to solar power. What’s more, Citizenre acquires all necessary permits for residential installation, making the process easy as pie.

via inhabitat

Electricity finder

Fluke VoltAlert

Just touch the tip to a terminal strip, outlet, or cord.

When the tip glows red, you know there's voltage in the line.

This is a non-conductive (plastic), non-contact voltage sensor that glows red and/or beeps in the vicinity of an energized conductor. In other words, it lights up near a "live" wire. You don't actually have to make contact to see if the line is hot. It lights up even if there is no load on the line, since it senses the electric field, not the magnetic field. It's much easier to use than a contact indicator light or meter. It works for AC line voltages. Also it only lights up when near the "hot" line, not the ground or neutral, so you can immediately see if an outlet is wired backwards. Works great for finding the dead Christmas light bulb on a series string of lights too (not as easy though when you have two or more strands braided together.) I always rub it against my shirt first to see if it is working. Static discharge sets it off. A number of vendors besides Fluke make this type of device, but Fluke is a high quality name brand. -- Bruce Bowen

Fluke Voltalert via Cool Tools, about $24

Manure board

From inhabitat:

While some may look at cows as sources of meat, dairy, or leather, researchers at Michigan State University have found a more sustainable (and abundant!), yet equally useful bovine by-product: you guessed it, manure. Surprisingly, the material, when sterilized, is entirely odorless and offers some wonderful characteristics for the production of a variety of fiberboard building materials. The manure essentially replaces the role of sawdust in the production of particle boards, which would cut wood usage as well as posing a creative solution to the huge problem of agricultural waste disposal (1.5 to 2 TRILLION tons of you-know-what per year!)

read more

Great DIY cardboard furniture

Swiss architect Nicola Enrico Stäubli’s FoldSchool furniture.

Chairs-for-kids (or for the kid in you) are not products for purchase, but rather downloadable FREE patterns from his website.

via inhabitat

Snorkel saves money

a “snorkel” in the yard can cool and heat the house up to ten degrees without using any energy.

found at inhabitat
posted at the AIA

Hearing loss tip

In a new study in animals, University of Michigan researchers report that a combination of high doses of vitamins A, C, and E and magnesium, taken one hour before noise exposure and continued as a once-daily treatment for five days, was very effective at preventing permanent noise-induced hearing loss. The animals had prolonged exposure to sounds as loud as a jet engine at take-off at close range. Link to story

Water usage update

Seattle officials studied water reduction while remodelers installed water-saving toilet fixtures.

The average toilet in the study homes before the retrofit program used 3.6 gallons of water per flush and study residents flushed an average of 5.17 times per person per day. After the installation of the new toilets, the average flush volume was cut by more than 50 percent to 1.4 / 1.6 gallons per flush.

Interesting note:
Folks appeared to flush more frequently after the installation of new fixtures.

U.S.A. average seems to be the range of 30 flushes per day. Many studies presume four flushes per person per day; many others presume the average person flushes a toilet eight times per day.

The average household seems to use 200 - 350 gallons of water per day - in the range of per capita indoor water use of well over 70 gallons per day. The primary exterior demand for water is for watering lawns.

Take pioneering steps:
The Humanure Handbook
A Guide to Composting Human Manure

Older measurement - 4.5 billion people produce 'excretal matters' at about 5.5 million metric tons every twenty-four hours.

Let's assume that the whole world adopted the fresh water sewage philosophy: defecate into water and then treat the polluted water. What would that scenario be like? Well, for one thing it wouldn't work. It takes between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of water at various stages in the process to flush one ton of humanure.

Wireless blocking paint

Wi-Fi stays in with this paint:

EM-SEC Technologies will sell a coating costing $4 to $5 per square foot (in small quantities) that can block electromagnetic transmission to create secure rooms in buildings. I'll be curious if people who have self-identified as electrosensitive will use this paint to keep signals out?

via Wi-Fi Networking News