Ideal Home Show, Earls Court

["Rob Mouser" <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

Thought I'd post a quick infopost about the Ideal Home Show in London
currently on. As now seems to be tradition Liz and I spent a few days in
London and spent a day trawling the stands. Imagine my excitement this year
when I read that there is a Men's gadget zone! http://tinyurl.com/4ecwd

Wow! It was bad, no really really bad! A handful of gadgets (I think I
counted 8?) all nicely encased in glass stands so you cant play with
anything. OK, the bikes and car were there to play with but that's about
it.
Oh and don't expect anything from Sony or an Aibo the picture is purely for
effect!

Simply the funniest thing is the T3 Toilet (They are pushing this as major
attraction!). They couldn't even be bothered to make that look good! I've
listed below a "how to build your own" T3 toilet:

1) Build a "bog" sized box out of ply, make sure its not too well
made and
paint it with some white emulsion.
2) Make one of the walls from Perspex (Again don't finish it too well!
That's what decorators calk is for!) so your guests can look in but touch
nothing!
3) Fill it with some home hi-fi and a Xantech MRC-88 multiroom amp
http://www.xantech.com/mrc88/
. Don't build anything too neat just a hole in
the wall at floor level will do everything stacked one on top of the other.
Don't forget to put the MRC88 at the bottom of the stack as they get real
nice and hot!
4) Mount a 17" LCD into the wall. Again don't go to too much trouble a
standard LCD just sunk into the plywood stud will do. Finish it neatly with
some nice pine cornice.
5) Mount a Xantech LCD on the wall http://www.letsautomate.com/10955.cfm
(OK, I admit they are really nice!) but just use a few standard buttons
scattered around the screen for effect. Oh and one colour is fine even
though these babies will display 64k colour!
6) Mount some speakers (Surface mount please!). Any will do (I cant
remember
what they were I was too busy laughing by this point.)

Now for the big finish!

7) We all know about those lovely iPod docks http://tinyurl.com/5hlyv for
your wall now but hey don't worry just make another hole in your ply wall,
frame it nicely (Well nearly) and then plonk your iPod in its standard dock
in the hole. Remember to leave a few cables visible for that "can't be
arsed
to do it properly" look.

In summary? Well they didn't get any advice on this list about what's hot
and what's not! If it was a DIY install at low budget then I would be very
impressed. But come on they spend millions putting these stands together!!
Take your wife enjoy your day but don't get too excited about gadgets!

Rob

P.S. I did see a stand somewhere with 2-3 Roomba's running around the stand
but as they appeared to be the old models I didn't even look too hard.