It’s never too early to start lining up options for carving the pumpkins. For all you BSG fans out there, what better way to display your carving plus soldering plus LED skills. The drawing is not too intricate, but I’d need help with the other stuff.

From India, promise of an amazing product, one that could indeed change the world.

Using photographs, Callaghan blends mundane objects such as utility boxes into their environment.

Clam-shell packaging, while an effective deterrent against thieves, works equally well against buyers. Now, Amazon, Sony, Best Buy and Microsoft, among others, will be offering less intimidating containers, and consumers can begin to put away their pliers, screwdrivers, wire cutters, table saws, drills and other tools necessary to get at the goods. But keep them nearby, not all companies are following suit.

Now, if only the food industry will come up with more friendly ways to present blueberries, tomatoes, and other produce, plus bakery items.

A family member was searching online for unique plates and other dinnerware for his apartment over the weekend. While looking for completely unrelated material, I found this edgy solution for the well-appointed urbanite.

Using the stuff of daily life - drinking straws, styrofoam cups, paper plates, fishing line - she produces jaw-dropping works that remind the viewer of clouds, land patterns and bacterial growth. Some of her art can be seen here.

One day this strange, but aesthetically appealing vessel appeared in one of my plum trees. No one knocked on the door to ask permission to put it there. It has liquid and a few dead insects inside.

When I remember to look again, it is usually in another spot. One of the branches was broken off one day.

Is it an experiment? I never hear a truck or vehicle stopping by, and have yet to see anyone with a ladder. I could call the city and ask. But that would kinda take the fun out of it.

Are you going to line up at the Apple store tomorrow for a new iPhone? Do you keep the packaging that Apple products come in because they are so well designed? Did you know that packaging for said iPhone is made from potato starch?

I won’t be there, although the heat is supposed to ease off, and even though I know there is this device in my future. But I do keep the boxes of all things Apple.

Info via Popgadget.

A whole week of temps in the high 90s brings joy to the heirloom tomatoes that are suddenly towering up to seven feet. However, those of us who are not fruiting vines cast a wary eye outside and note that it’s going to be hell if you aren’t in air conditioning. Especially with more fires murking up the already bad air quality.

There is one a/c unit here, but this being an open-plan house, there is no way to seal off rooms for maximum cooling. It makes the heat a bit more bearable, and keeps the laptop cooler, but that’s it. Nights can be stifling.

With mostly floor-to-ceiling windows, where to put a new a/c becomes a big problem. I will consult with the handyman who will be here tackling the dry rot problem later in the week.

In New York, they are hard at work designing ways to hide your unit.

I’m sure there were many preorders for the MacBook Air soon after it was announced. For a few minutes I thought about doing it myself. Such is the power of hype. Now that things have settled down a bit, some, like Paul Boutin at Slate, are saying the Air should have some of the features of the iPhone, including its ability to access the web with tremendous ease.

My old G4 Powerbook is showing its age. I need something that will process my ever-increasing photo processing needs, so I’m going with the 17″ MacBook Pro. The smaller screen of the Air would mean I would have to spring for a separate monitor. Don’t want to lug around a monitor from room to room.

It fits in a mailing envelope, and weighs three pounds less than my current Powerbook G4. Mighty tempting. Mighty. Tempting.

If the future isn’t here now, it’s coming very soon. The price? Why, compared to the Mercedes SLR McLaren (just under a cool half mil), it’s a steal. While some might argue that the Mercedes does indeed fly, we are talking flight in the aeronautical sense.

Buyers are apparently lining up. In case you’re reaching for your wallet, make sure you have a pilot’s license.

After enduring the ad, you will meet the artist, who creates her own world of hybrid animal creations.

Obviously not the usual bright stars and Christmas tree variety of cookie, but fascinating.

Today is to be spent making various cookie doughs of the normal holiday kind, so they can chill overnight. Tomorrow will be spent making a huge mess with glittery colored sugars, red, green and white icings, sprinkles and all the other fun things that can go on dough and still be edible.

This year’s gingerbread houses will be more ambitious, although the idea goes against the wishes of family members who love to pour on the candies. Later, there might be pictures, depending on the outcome, and how much more shopping and cooking has to be done.

Looking for some for either gifts or for you? I’ve got ‘em over at cafepress.

I’ll be uploading more images soon, maybe even before Christmas, but meanwhile, there are several designs to choose from.

Looking to cross a few items off your list re headsets? Here’s a review of some of the top choices, courtesy of Slate.

So you think your workspace is cramped and airless. (Mine has termites chewing through the ceiling above my head.) Check out the 12 winners in the Wired News Saddest Cubicle Contest.

The Andy Rubin phone perhaps.

An NYT look at the career moves of the man at the helm of the Google phone development .

One of us moved to Seattle. One of us is sick with a bad cold. Two of us didn’t really want to mess with Easter eggs tonight, missing one of the more critical elements all these years, the family member in the Pacific NW.

But the silk dye method sounded fairly simple, kind of a do-it-all-in-one pot kind of thing. And this year, I actually have an enamel pot.

Plus I have a box of old scarves from going through my mom’s and sister’s things. We spent a bit of time cutting up and wrapping, then left the eggs to cook. In less than 30 minutes, we had a pot full of wrapped mysteries. The other family member found he couldn’t wait till the eggs cooled off. Results will be revealed tomorrow. Look at the clock, it’s way past my bedtime.

Perhaps it is more correct to called them ‘exploding rats’ since only dead ones were used.

Agents of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) had many other tools, including cow dung bombs and fake logs full of grenades.

Of course, all this was before Q’s time, back in the days of WWII.

That’s the name given by U.S. intelligence to the Russian ekranoplan, a behemoth of a plane based in the Caspian Sea during the Cold War. It reportedly had the capacity to carry a staggering 1000 tons, and relied on the ground effect for flight.

Thanks to Google Earth, the folks at The Register have spotted a Chinese Sea Monster. Also discussed is the monstrous Boeing Pelican.

The obligatory video (lengthy) at YouTube is here.

How and why a fan of the game built a court in his backyard.

When my laptop gets hot, I elevate it on large juice bottletops at each corner. Not exactly a good match for my Powerbook, but it’s hard to find titanium lids. A son uses those large flat erasers. But when he actually uses his laptop in his lap, I start muttering about the genetic dangers of such a practice.

Enter the Lapinator, which weighs less than a pound, and is much cooler looking than bottletops. Plus it will help insure that there will be future generations.

The sexy look of a high heels plus the comfort of a flat. In one shoe. You’re kidding, right?

An idea whose time has definitely come, and one that should be implemented on the majority of high heels.

Designed for use in hospitals and nursing homes, it looks like a Gund bear, but has cameras in its eyes, microphones in its ears, and a PC within its stuffing. Huggable can interact with its primary human, and give important information on its human’s condition to doctors and other caregivers.

I generally eat breakfast and lunch while working, and have so far managed to keep the keyboard relatively free of crumbs and other debris. Now there’s a product to make juggling food, drink and typing a bit easier. Well, for some anyway.

Seems to be fine for conventional desktop work, but maybe not so great for laptop users since the tray, while transparent, will still block part of the screen.

Their plans for the widebody jet are highly unusual, but now the aviation designer hired for the job has been released, with much talk of lawsuits.

There’s the kind you and I may have done back in elementary school, and then there’s the complex kind that Robert Lang does. He is currently perfecting software to ease the laborious folding of extreme origami.

Who does he look up to? Satoshi Kamiya, who can envision a finished piece, then unfolds it, bit by bit, all in his mind.

The device came about when Ken Armitage, a geophysicist, and his wife Anne, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, were hurrying to a pub that served an excellent cream tea. Because she walked so slowly, Ken worried they would miss the tea.

After putting his backpack on Anne, he attached one end of a bungee cord to the pack and the other to her foot.

Result? They made it for the tea, and MuSmate was born.

A variation of the idea might be of tremendous help to the elderly.

The new version of LuckyOliver rolled out June 1. It’s not your stodgy, old-fashioned stock photo place, but a peppery, high-energy and somewhat irreverent site where you can sell or buy photographs.

Is this a commercial? Well, yeah. If you like my photos, some of them, possibly many of them will be up at LuckyOliver.

Baseball or watchcaps with LEDs powered by 9-volt batteries are a great idea out of Finland.

Guys, listen up. The handle’s bigger, the dial’s much simpler (is that an insult?) and it has a racing stripe. Who could ask for anything more?

Wrinkle-free clothing is better than sliced bread, when you get down to it.

The gas canister goes where the water bottle holder is. The special wheel fits in the front fork of the bike. It will work on any 26-inch bike. Not available till 2007, 200 mpg, $400.

Who needs a car for running errands?

A patent for gesture control of devices has been filed. The day is fast approaching when we can simply wave a few fingers in the direction of our increasingly intelligent small machines to direct their functions.

After examining 100 writing systems from all over the world, scientists conclude that humans base their writing on features of the natural world, including trees, the moon and waterways.

They also point out that if there is alien intelligence on a planet akin to ours, their writing system would be based on similar features. More details here.

Those of us Americans who find wine selection somewhat daunting seek out labels with something familiar, say, a monkey or a fish.

So what did I advise my sons to get when they were invited to a party not that long ago? Yellow Tail, which has a wallaby on the label. Reasons? Good reviews, for one. And at $5 per bottle at Trader Joe’s, they could get a white and a red for a song.

Jaguar is out with its Pedestrian Deployable Bonnet System (PDBS) to soften the impact.

In SF, we stopped by the Hanspree store. So refreshing to see new concepts in ordinary products like tvs. There can’t be too many well-designed, playful items in our world.

We didn’t get to spend nearly as long as we would have liked, and the tower line was too long. We’ll see it next time.

From this angle, the building reminded me of my kids’ transformers.

It is accusing Adidas of stealing the technology behind some of their shoe designs.

Designed to give barefoot freedom, but with the protection of a durable sole, their look is everything.

LiftPort Group builds a cable that stretches a mile up, strong enough to allow robots to climb up and down.

It is the dream of artist Heinz Julen, this project to build a hotel almost 4,000 meters up. An observatory is also part of the deal. His hope is that the hotel interior will be pressurized to ward off altitude discomforts.

He is currently seeking financing.

Bracing the city for a possible future Category 5 hurricane means taking a good look at some innovative solutions. They include air-filled flood gates, amphibious houses, and replacing canals with an underground drainage system.

His palette is made up of the stuff of nature - fog, wind, tornadoes, turbulent fluids - and frequently involve the viewer’s participation. Fog works can be seen here. Click on ‘Portfolio’ for lots more.

The makers, Ugobe, Inc., took their inspiration from a one-week old Camarasaurus. Pleo expresses happiness, fear, aggression, and sadness. He can also sneeze, sigh, cough, snore, hiccup, and yawn.

He is engineered to learn from his environment. If only he had been around when my kids were small.

The SHIFT bike, designed for young children learning how to ride, eliminates the need for a parent to hold on at the rear.

The bike appears to have three wheels, but the two rear wheels merge into one as the rider learns to balance.

They’re working on a vehicle navigation system said to be 3-D, very realistic looking, emphasis on city driving, with accurate size ratios between car and surrounding buildings.

Via Briefing.com.

It is obvious to the modern eye that the seaplane had design issues. Not only was it way too heavy, but it also lacked fuel efficiency.

The first link shares a page with a very funny teaser sequence of a granny and her mastiff for a video clips service.

It comes with an Xbox 360, a cell phone that is also the ignition key, a display that attaches to the rearview mirror for a monitor, and obviously is aimed at the young gamer. The one who can’t leave his latest favorite at home.

Before parents panic, the Xbox can only be used while the car is in park. The Urge’s steering wheel, pedals, and shifter can double as controls for Xbox racing games.