More scenes from a love affair

So while I'm gushing about the wonders and joys of iPhone ownership, I came across this little gem this morning.

I have been a loyal reader of The New Yorker for more than 25 years. Probably more than any other single influence, The New Yorker has helped to shape my sensibilities, my sense of humor and standards. Since 1925, the New Yorker has been at the forefront of contemporary thought, criticism, art and literature. Besides, I think the magazine's hilarious. Sort of a Mad Magazine for the English majors of the world.

Well, every week, The New Yorker features new, original art on its cover. This week's cover is a finger painting by Jorge Colombo. Yes, a finger painting. However, it's a finger painting done on an iPhone using a $4.99 application called Brushes. Brushes has a free, companion application called Brushes Viewer and Brushes Viewer will allow anyone to capture a video of the process of drawing in Brushes. Here's the video of Jorge Colombo's creation of this week's New Yorker cover.

Colombo has made the iPhone his new medium and prints of his work are available for sale on his website. Again I ask you, what's a Blackberry?

An amazing new design tool for the iPhone

I love my iPhone. I am more satisfied with it than any other electronic device I've ever owned. I have been an iPhone fan for more than a year, so this is no honeymoon. Every electronic breakthrough since the wireless radio has promised to make life easier. So far as I'm concerned, the iPhone is the first such device to deliver on that promise.

I use it for everything and I've equipped mine with everything from a plumb bob to a line level to a carpenter's calculator to a metric converter to an Italian phrasebook. The iPhone has changed how I navigate and changed my whole relationship with the information age. If it's not already obvious, I am a big fan.

Well, I'm about to become an even bigger fan. On June first, the iTunes App store is rolling out a new, free application called ColorCapture Ben. This app was developed by Benjamin Moore Paints and ColorCapture Ben will allow me to take a photograph with my phone, then zoom in on any part of that photo and color match the photographed object to any one of Benjamin Moore's 3,300 paint colors. Unbelievable.

As if that weren't enough, the app will then use the iPhone's on board GPS to locate the user and then find the closest Benjamin Moore retailer.

All I have to say is "What's a Blackberry?"

How NOT to have a give away

Amerock, the hardware people, are having a contest to generate some interest in their collection of rather pedestrian kitchen hardware. The grand prize, according to their website is this kitchen.

They're not kidding. They are giving away the kitchen in the photo. Not a version of it to fit the prize winner's home, but this kitchen. This pre-existing kitchen that's now sitting in some one's showroom no doubt. Here's the fine print from their entry rules:

One Winner will receive an existing, custom, pre-built kitchen, including custom medium brown maple cabinetry, Amerock Revitalize decorative hardware, Elkay Lustertone gourmet undermount stainless steel sink, Elkay pewter Oldare faucet, Zodiaq “Giallo Michelangelo” island countertop, and Zodiaq “Black Forest” countertop. Kitchen does not include internal plumbing fixtures and hardware or appliances. Sponsor will be responsible for the cost of delivery of the kitchen to the Winner. Winner shall be solely responsible for all costs of installation. Sponsor reserves the right to substitute the prize with a prize of equal or greater value due to availability of featured prize. No other substitution or transfer of prize is permitted.

What a curious thing. The fine print goes on to claim that this used kitchen is somehow worth $50K US and $61K Canadian.

Hmmm. It's not hard to rack up a $50,000 list price for a custom kitchen, but custom kitchens only have any value when they go into the room where they're intended. What makes a custom kitchen a custom kitchen is the fact that it's custom-made. Duh.

Outside of their intended rooms, custom cabinetry and counters has painfully little value. Try to sell Used cabinetry some time on eBay and see how far you get with it.

It's not that there's something wrong with giving away an old display, but what a strange contest.

Sweet, sweet subversion

I love these plates.

I mean, how can you not?

Clever and deliciously subversive, aren't they?

These plates are the handiwork of an artist who calls herself Trixie Delicious. Aukland, New Zealand-based Trixie sells her wares (and ships worldwide) through a website called Felt. Felt is the Kiwi version of Etsy, a marketplace for a group of independent artists and artisans to sell their work.

Ms. Delicious takes vintage plates, platters, saucers and bowls and hand paints her messages of good cheer on them directly. She uses non-toxic, heat-fused, ceramic paint. This means that these delightful, heartwarming iconoclasms will last forever. Imagine the joyous faces around your table when you serve a Thanksgiving turkey from a Crackwhore Tray. That noise you hear is the sound of my heart growing three sizes from the thought alone!

Many thanks to Leona Gaita and her great blog Gaita Interiors for the tip off to these beauties. Spend some time this weekend getting to know Leona, I like her perspective.

How to care for and feed your dishwasher

Thursday's New York Times contains their weekly Home and Garden section. It's always worth the peruse. Always. In that weekly section, there's a recurring column called The Fix, where a Times staffer fields a reader's question.

This week's installment of The Fix was written by Arianne Cohen, and she tackled the question, "Why isn't my dishwasher cleaning my dishes?" Ms. Cohen did a great job with the answer and parts of her column were news to me. Adding to my store of appliance knowledge is something I'm always happy to do and I'm going to excerpt some of her more interesting points here.

“Pre-rinsing dishes is a big mistake,” said John Dries, a mechanical engineer and the owner of Dries Engineering, an appliance design consulting company in Louisville, Ky. “People assume that the dishwasher will perform better if you put in cleaner dishes, and that’s not true. Just scrape. Pre-rinsing with hot water is double bad, because you’re pumping water and electricity down the drain.”

It’s actually triple bad, according to Mike Edwards, a senior dishwasher design engineer at BSH Home Appliances in New Bern, N.C. “Dishwasher detergent aggressively goes after food,” Mr. Edwards said, “and if you don’t have food soil in the unit, it attacks the glasses, and they get cloudy,” a process known as etching that can cause permanent damage.

It’s also important not to use too much detergent, he said.

How much do you need? That depends on how much food soil there is, he said, not how many dishes. “If you have a light load,” he said, “don’t fill the detergent cup all the way.”

Powder detergent is preferable to that in liquid or tablet form, he said, because it leaves dishes cleaner. But store it somewhere dry, not under the sink, where it can absorb moisture and form clumps.

That's an interesting note about pre-rinsing dishes. Who knew that when a detergent doesn't have enough to do, it goes all renegade.

Mr. Dries offered a final tip: stick with the normal cycle. It’s the one consumer organizations conduct all their performance and energy tests on. “Manufacturers know this, so it’s the cycle that the most work went into,” he said.

The pots-and-pans cycle is rarely necessary, except when you have baked-on foods, he said, nor is the heat-dry function.

“A trick you can use is called flash dry,” he added. As soon as the dishwasher shuts off, open the door. “Dishes are at their hottest point and give up water moisture the fastest. Within 5 to 10 minutes, your dishes are going to be completely dry.”

I love this kind of insider information. The bit about all of the engineering of a dishwasher getting poured into the normal cycle is really go to know too. And flash drying, who knew?