The Inspect A Gadget by Mil Millington
Topic: Review
I first got hooked on Millington's website, "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" which is also the title of his first novel, and I didn't even knew he wrote for The Guardian until recently. He's teh funnay. The website is teh funnay. His books are teh funnay. Tech reviews are, generally, hardly ever teh funnay, but he tries. Examples following...
The musical knife
Mil Millington|Saturday May 27, 2006
I've set myself certain goals with these columns: one is to seed them with cumulative subliminal suggestions that will seep into the general consciousness and so prevent there being another series of Strictly Come Dancing. A second (and the hardest) is to avoid their featuring a tedious succession of mobile phones, digital cameras and MP3 players. Although those three account for 97% of all new products, I want to focus instead on less obvious items. But, every so often, a mobile, camera or MP3 player comes along that is different enough to earn the right to be written about. The Swiss Bit S.Beat is just such a creature.
The S.Beat is an MP3 player combined with a Swiss Army Knife. It has a blade, a small file, a pair of scissors, 1GB of memory, an LCD screen and a built-in USB connector. But such details are secondary. You can listen to Goldfrapp while attending to a hangnail if you wish, but it's the audio book potential that excites me. Imagine having the S.Beat in a bar fight: its edge flashes, while it simultaneously feeds your ears with Marc MacYoung's seminal Knives, Knife Fighting, And Related Hassles (ISBN: 0873645448). And how improved an experience the Duchess of Windsor's autobiography, Heart Has Its Reasons, would have been if, during it, I'd had the soothing distraction of being able to stab myself periodically in the thigh. The S.Beat is obese with potential.
The Mathmos lamp
Mil Millington|Saturday July 1, 2006
If doing this column had left me with any self-respect, I'd tell you that the Mathmos lamp is an amusing toy for children. Sensible amounts of shame would compel me to leave it there and let you imagine that I possess the mature intellect and sturdy psychological balance that is the sine qua non of everyone who works for the Guardian. I'd comment that it produces a soft, variable light from what resembles an apothecary's bottle. How it does this is diverting, in its small way, I'd say with a superior smirk. To turn it on, or off, you merely wave across the top of it. You don't touch it at all - your hand simply sweeps through the air in a vaguely papal fashion.
In a similar way, increasing or diminishing the brightness of the bulb is achieved by lifting or lowering a palm above the lamp. The feeling is not that you're in your living room putting on a light, but that you're at Hogwarts and have double Potions. "The kids will love it!" I'd add, identifying my irony with a silly exclamation mark.
But a friend was here the day it arrived. "That's pointless," she said with a shake of her head and a grown-up smile. She then spent the next 20 minutes waving her fingers about, becoming more Witches Of Eastwick by the second. The Mathmos lamp feeds your inner Saruman. All too soon, you're daydreaming that you have the power to smite nations with a lazy movement of your thumb. If this thing sells, it'll be like the Age of Reason never happened.
Posted by conniechai
at 4:41 PM PDT
Updated: Sunday, 15 October 2006 5:14 PM PDT