Episode 1095

Wacky Alarm Clocks
Dick has covered a number of wacky alarm clocks for the hardy sleeper, including the Clocky Walking Alarm Clock (Episode 306).  In Episode 328 when he covered the Flying Alarm Clock, he mentioned another example of the same genre, called the Rude Awakening, which is today's warehouse gadget.  It would blast out rude wake-up calls such as:

"Listen, you good for nothin' couch potato!  Drag your fat, lazy ass out from under those ... sheets, now! ... Do you wanna be flippin' burgers for the rest of your life?"

"C'mon, I said get your lazy ass out of bed, right NOW!"

"Listen, lazy bones...it's time to get your butt to work, NOW!"

Rude Awakening

Ramen Spork
Forrest from Loomis, California has been listening to DGW since the days before “I’ll be here” was introduced into the public consciousness.  He remembers fondly about the Titanium Spork (Episode 182) which became a big hit, and reports that the Japanese have made their own adaptation of the Spork for eating Ramen noodles, called the Ramen Spoon/Fork, also available from the Museum of Modern Art.

Ramen Spoon/Fork

Spknork
Dick was sent a pack of sporks with serrated edges, probably better called spknorks.  They look like the ones from Episode 294, which a listener wrote about.

Sporks from Light My Fire

Variations on the Theme of Sporks
Past shows where listeners wrote in to talk about various iterations of sporks are too numerous to tabulate, but here are some examples:

Episode 282 - knork

Episode 294 - the spork to end it all (the same spork that Dick shows in the current episode)

Episode 297 - the Nyfork

Episode 325 - the Spork Restaurant in San Francisco

Episode 587 - the Spork Family Tree cartoon

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Episode 1094

Streaming Live Events on TWiT
The success of TWiTLive’s coverage of CES and SXSW has spurred Leo on to stream more live events.  TWiT is going to lease the LiveU (Episode 1052), which gives them 30 hours of live-streamed programming every month.  Coming up will be:

E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo for gaming) in Los Angeles in June.

In July Leo hopes to cover the Maker Faire in Detroit and the Ford plant.

In September there will be the sci-fi/comic strip Dragon Con in Atlanta (with Tom Merritt and Brian Brushwood).

For October, if things work out, Dick and Leo might do Episode 1200 somewhere together.

In December Leo will be off to Paris for the European tech conference LeWeb.

Digital Tea Dunker
Marion McGrath heard in Episode 1076 about the Breville One Touch Tea Maker which dunks the tea into the water, and lifts it up, for you.  Marion has a simpler, and cheaper, solution.  She makes a smart playlist on iTunes with songs that last between 3 minutes and 3 minutes and 20 seconds.  Any song on the list will act as a timer for her tea making.

Gift List
Marion also thanks Dick and Leo for giving her gift ideas: the GizWizBiz Cap for her pilot brother, and the Pill Grinder (Episode 1074) for her dysphagic father.  She can’t wait to get the Rock Guitar T-Shirt (Episode 986) for her teenage nephew.  Last but not least, she got herself a new Ford Focus.  She hopes one day soon, they’ll give her a gift idea for her technophobic husband.  Dick suggests the Card Keyfinder from yesterday (Episode 1093).

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Episode 1093

Order for Induction
Leo has just received from the President an Order for Induction to the next Lasertag War on 31 May 2010, organised by Ziggy Tomcich.  Leo has been drafted for the war.  For an account of the last lasertag war Leo joined, in September last year, see Episode 916.

Order for Induction to Lasertag War
Wow, I Need That !!
Andrew Darlow, loyal listener since Day 2, occasional correspondent and editor of Imaging Buffet, finally gets to watch the recording of the show live now that it’s moved to Saturday.  Leo seems to love everything Dick covers on the show and Andrew decided to conduct a survey of all the DGW shows using a robot.  For 63.4% of Dick’s gadgets, Leo explains, “Wow, I need that!” For 21.7% of them, Leo explains, “Wow, I need that,” finds it online and buys it immediately.  For 12.9% of the gadgets, they’re no longer available on the web, but Leo goes off to his local Best Buy to get them anyway.  The remaining 2%, Leo already owns.

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Episode 1092

Video Show?
Troy Peterson from East Syracuse enjoyed Leo’s round up of iPad Cases in Episode 1082, but would have enjoyed it more had he been able to see the products themselves.  When will the Daily Giz Wiz be released as a video podcast?  Soon, Leo promises.  With the departure of Colleen, the schedule of rolling out video podcasts may be slightly delayed, but Ken Sheppardson will step in.  In the meantime, the videos are available on YouTube’s TWiT channel.

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Episode 1091

Dick’s Demo
You can watch Dick’s demo of the MyTDriver at the Hardware Show on Dick’s madmaddest channel on YouTube.

A Wrong Righted
Leo was saying on the show (Episode 1076) that his Breville Variable Temperature Kettle (Episode 947) was defective.  He never returned it, but now he’s been contacted and given a replacement that works.

Musical Chairs
Life Of Zin writes to complain that Leo didn’t play the Punk Letters Jingle, not even once, in the entire month of April.  Michael Jackson was played 4 times.  The recently discovered 60’s Letters Jingle was played only once.  10 days elapsed before Santana was played again.  Please play the Punk jingle this month, in honour of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols (who was born in May).

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