This is a surprising thing to hear considering the robustness of console's build. Unfortunately, there's no way to do a poll that isn't a leading question on the issue, and one support staff's comment on the issue is not proof enough, but if you've got strong feelings about multiple PS3 failures let me know in the comments.

Urawaza is a term that originated in Japan to describe a secret shortcut or method in a game. Housewives adopted the term to describe any unconventional and surprising tricks to making, curing, cleaning, or improving one's life without breaking the bank. There aren't geeky hacks here for gadget lovers, but there is something kindred in the spirit of putting together a wi-fi antenna with a pringles can and solving a stuffy nose by shoving scallions up your nostrils. Here's the link to the book. Lastly, I'd like to say that I was partially moved by guilt to write about this book (it's rare) because when she was writing it, I was too busy at Giz to read her draft and give her feedback. I know, she is patient with me then, and now, as I work late. So Giz owes her this mention.

And, although I've been spending most of my time the last few months scaling up Giz, training people and hiring folks, and planning things, I found myself really starting to dread Mondays. And I figured out it was because I was not doing enough writing. Ah the selfish, egotistical joy it brings. So, here I am.

Enough about me. How about YOU. Just a heads up that the banhammer has been seeing some action as of late. Lots of stupid or unfunny or unhelpful comments are getting into the system, so I've been paying more attention as of late.

Originally designed to help Alzheimer's sufferers remember things, of course their potential appeal is much wider. The 1mm thick devices are made using similar circuit printing techniques as used in musical greeting cards, so they're pretty low cost at about $2 each. They're reusable, and you won't have to worry about battery life since they apparently last up to a year.

The designers hope they'll be on sale in 2009. Better put a note up to remind you to look out for them, then. [Telegraph]

Most people were from around the bay area, Reno and Tahoe area, but Christian came all the way from Dallas. And Mike Zhao, only 16, spent I think his milk money to afford the trip. And then Randy, ski patrol at Alpine, gave us a pretty good tour of the place. About 50 people came in total everyone was the type of person I'd hang out with outside of work. I'd always said that gadgets aren't just for nerds, and here was the proof.

Of course, special thanks go to Kevin from JBL, Brian from Zune, Joe from Nokia, Mike from Olympus, Derek from SPOT, Greg from Smith Optics, Racheal from Alpine and Hagen from Vudu for giving away prizes.

We'll do it again next year! If you came and took photos, send em over so I can upload em.

P.S. Brian from Zune has some skills on the snowboard!

• Nokia is bringing a ton of N95s for us to use.

• Smith Optics will be bringing some of their new hot swappable goggles and fan driven turbo goggles to test out, along with a bluetooth helmet and I think lots and lots of headbands. (Slope style counts.)

• JBL is giving away headphones.

• VuDu is giving away a box.

• I'll have a Garmin Colorado preloaded with Ski trail maps. Overkill compared to a paper map, but potentially useful for off-piste adventures and worth checking out in person.

• Zune'll come along with a few loaners preloaded with Gizmodo approved snow shredding tracks and those custom Giz Zunes to give away.

• I'll have one loaner of the Vholdr outdoor camcorder.

• Nacski might be setting up a bus ride system from SF.

• Silverado Systems is going to bring a pair of RED One cams to document the day

• I'll bring a Dash GPS.

• Olympus is sending a water and shockproof 1030 to test.

If you want to come as a reader or as someone who wants to demo some gear, drop me an email. It would be great to meet in person.

[Photo by Planetxau — Some rights reserved]

• Nokia is bringing a ton of N95s for us to use.
• Smith Optics will be bringing some of their new hot swappable goggles and fan driven turbo goggles to test out, along with a bluetooth helmet and I think lots and lots of headbands. (Slope style counts.)
• JBL is giving away headphones.
• VuDu is giving away a box!
• I'll have a Garmin Colorado preloaded with Ski trail maps. Overkill compared to a paper map, but potentially useful for off-piste adventures and worth checking out in person.
• Zune'll come along with a few loaners preloaded with Gizmodo approved snow shredding tracks.
• I'll have one loaner of the Vholdr outdoor camcorder.
• Nacski might be setting up a bus ride system from SF.
• Silverado Systems is going to bring a pair of RED One cams
• I'll bring a Dash GPS.
• No camera companies have stepped up to participate with batches of loaners of outdoor cams cough*olympuspentaxsanyo*cough, but I'll keep trying.

If you want to come, I will welcome you with open arms as you spray fresh spring slush in my face. It will definitely be T-shirt weather by then, even more so than now. If you work for a gear company with outdoor gear, let me know if you want to bring some to show off.

Email me and I'll put you on the list with more details.

More to come.

Joe Pugliese, the same guy who shot El Jobso minutes after his iPhone announcement, shot me, Adrian and Chris in my apartment. I love this place, but as you can see in the not too different from real life shot, it makes for cramped conditions and I'm moving today. Ya, I'm still packing too, because someone broke the embargo on the Dash GPS and Wilson and I had to hustle to get a review together. Anyhow, I am digressing like mad because I've been up 20 hours so far, and the day is not close to being over.

This piece is kind of strange and meta because before I worked at Giz, I worked at Wired, where I was low man on the totem pole. I really learned a lot from the 15 or so senior editors there, but I didn't ever get to do any real work. So to be honored in the pages of my still favorite magazine, well, I never thought I'd see the day. Some people were concerned about bias, but I'm pretty sure they got both the praise and hits in pretty square.

For instance, there is such heavy emphasis on the admittedly interesting and bizarre CES prank. Meanwhile, there isn't one mention of the Gates interview. First time the guy admitted on record that Vista was not so good. I mean, come on, thats's interesting. And ok, Blu-ray coverage at Giz was second to none, but of course, that's too boring to mention. All we get described as is juvenile. Well there's a reason why I insist on Gizmodo being lighthearted, and it makes a lot of sense. First of all, we don't write about cancer. This is not a serious topic, even if the work is taken seriously. If you can't enjoy yourself writing about what are essentially man toys, well, I feel like that is utter lack of perspective on life.

Secondly, there's that great William Gibson quote hanging over the wall at Wired—"The future is here, its just unevenly distributed." That may be the case when it comes to purchasing technology or having access to it, but when it comes to media, especially free media, there's no reason to keep technology in the hands and minds of only the nerds or the rich. So we write for the common people. There are plenty of Giz readers that aren't hardcore geeks but love technology. I'm happy to dress up the tech in humor to get the point to more people, and the let the medicine go down smoother. Not everyone gets that.

(BTW, this is why I love Pogue videos. Funny thing, in the story, the man who sings songs about TiVo is quoted in the story as saying that gadget bloggers have to figure out what they want to be when we grow up. For me, when I grow up, I want to do exactly what Pogue does, but I am not musically gifted. I wouldn't call that growing up, though, Dave. I'd call it staying young. A good thing.)

On the other hand, Dan Lyons, Fake Steve, who is like some sort of Giz big brother at this point, totally gets what we do. Or he flatters me with his faith. Either way, I trust in his insight, so to be understood by him and misunderstood by so many others, well, I'd rather have Dan on my side than a bunch of commentards. (Not you guys, the guys we already banned and other twits in the press.)

But I'm nit picking. I don't think anyone can call the story anything but fair, generous and fun. And again, I'm pretty flattered and grateful anyone would think to write a feature on our little corner of the internet, let alone my favorite magazine where all my old mentors work.

OK, I gotta pack. Moving van is here in 3 hours and I have like a dozen boxes to go.

Did I mention I'm going on vacation next week, too? Can't come soon enough. I need to recharge the batteries!

Rambling is a late phase of exhaustion. [Wired]

I'm not sure what I can do to change a goddamn thing — maybe some of you can help me figure that out — but as a purveyor and filter of consumer crap, I'll own up to my piece of the protest and make the simple declaration that I'm going to avoid buying any electronics made in China for the foreseeable future. (READ: PRETTY MUCH ALL.) I've been getting my updates via the NYTimes and Boingboing, FWIW.

Personally, the main point of this is to hang out and hit the slopes, so I won't be fiddling with mine too much, but I will be taking some photos. And maybe some videos, if I can rig a helmet mount. (1-step: Duct Tape?) P.S. That's Chris at the top of Homewood's Quail Face moments before he fell into a lake. Anyone else feel like they can make the day? Please email me, and I'll add you to a distro with more details. This is going to be fun.

I was thinking of putting together a meet-up, with some outdoor-ready gadgets, at some mountain in Tahoe. Instead of the normal reader meet-up where you sit in a bar and stare at each other's ugly mugs and drink beer and play with gadgets in the back of a dark room, this would be a chance to test out waterproof cameras and new cellphones in the field. The hard part is figuring out how many people would come. We've got a big readership, but the event would be local, and I'm not sure how many of you would be interested in skiing/snowboarding. Drop me an email if you're interested.

We've covered some of the videos, which are released sometimes years after the original talks, from people like George Dyson, Philippe Starck and others. One of these days, I'm going to go. To cover it a little, yes, but mainly to listen. Unlike the trade shows I'm used to covering, these people are generally not trying to sell you anything. But maybe ideas. I can deal with that. For once, I'll be able to let my filter down.

Although only some of the conference's talks directly relate to what we cover at Giz, I think a lot of the speeches are worthwhile anyhow. Mark from BoingBoing has been liveblogging it, so if you're curious, check it out.

The iPhone SDK. I don't know if it'll be done by a week from now. But I never stop wondering how it'll be implemented. Full-on corporate software sale via iTunes, or a channel for grassroots devs to distribute their wares.

I am stuck in a cabin, slowly being buried alive in snow. It is making me a little bit crazy. I am in all likelihood going to miss my flight to Vegas tomorrow for Sony's line show. I'll get there, but it'll take a bit more time than I expected.

Last week, Adam Frucci and Matt Buchanan were promoted to Associate editors, and Jesús was promoted to Senior Associate Editor. Well deserved.

Since we posted very quickly on the two biggest stories of the show, the Xperia and Android hands ons, you'd figure we were organized. No. We booked hotels late, and apparently, Barcelona doesn't have too many of these accommodations relative to the size of Mobile World Congress. Rooms were going for 1000 Euros by the time we went hunting, so we ended up with a room in a place about 45 minutes outside of the city. At least in theory.

Our cabbie just wouldn't shut up. Later, Jesús told me he wouldn't stop bitching about his wife divorcing him. But while we were driving, all I could notice was that he was talking a lot more than he should have been, especially venturing outside of the city without a GPS or map. He overshot our exit by 30 minutes. And because it was getting late and he was sleepy, he insisted on turning the A/C off. It was freezing, and winding through the mountain roads, in the fog, exhausted and cold, I got motion sick or food poisoning set in. I puked a river at some random junction.

When we got to the hotel, turns out it was a quaint little monastery. To my American eyes, used to strip malls and 100 year buildings at the oldest, the place just looked incredibly similar to the scenery in Resident Evil 4. (The best zombie games of all time. Fact.)

At this point, I was so sick and exhausted that I swore I kept seeing things moving in the dark corner of the room and got an hour of sleep. It sucked.

In other news, Nigel from Red Ferret hit 10k posts. And Adam Frucci is Geek Sugar's "Geek we love". Fine achievements on both their parts.

See you Stateside, hopefully with some Airtight package of Spanish Ham smuggled into my suitcase. Shhh!

The food has been incredible, even if I don't know what we've been ordering. I love the style of the city, which has a lot of old world materials and signage, but plenty of modern designs too. Jesús and Addy live on the ground floor a few blocks from some big park, and although they're in the middle of what looks like a mixed work/live district, they somehow have a backyard.

Before tucking in for the night, I put my hand under a pillow and found a spare lego block. Regular readers of the site shouldn't be surprised. (Falcon bits.)

Today we went to their favorite tapas place for lunch, where you apparently stand up and eat and throw your trash on the floor. Just like home! On the way over, I noticed this TV tower that reminded me of Jesús's art style, a bit retro, colorful and lively.

That Valentine one radar detector I bought cost $400. Initially, I was upset because I heard the Bell STi was many times more sensitive than the Valentine One, according to a wonky radar detector test site. Last night, I drove back to SF and avoided two tickets. And on the way to Palo Alto to meet with some industrial designers for a future project, I avoided two more from the state troopers on highway 280 that seem to flip their radar on and off for split seconds before pacing and pouncing on their Silicon Valley prey. And I realize that I don't need to know when cops are more than a mile away; the Valentine's sensitivity is fine. The Bel would drive me crazy with its sensitivity. And the V1 paid for itself in less than 24 hours. (Not that I'd pull a Bill Gates and get pulled over multiple times in a single roadtrip.)

I'm headed to Madrid tomorrow to see Jesús and Addy for the first time. From there, we'll get over to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress for some cellphone action. You guys excited for the show?

How much wear should a keyboard endure before being thrown out? Before a laptop was my primary machine, I swapped keyboards regularly. The work machine has seen two CES shows, two Macworlds, and a bunch of other live events, not to mention all the day to day, and the A, S, D, F, L, C and E keys are all worn down to a dull grey metal where the fake silver was. I think those are the keys I hit with my finger nails. And I hit them hard when I'm stressed and typing to post first on a story. Another curiousity on my Macbook Pro is the fairly rare pitting you might read about on forums, on the wrist rest. I've only seen it in person on another Macbook once, and that was on Ryan Block's Macbook Pro. Could be the stress turning our sweat into acid.

I had dinner with some good people in tech last night, and we got to talking about geeks these days really being nowhere near as competent as geeks who founded the industry. That's a trend likely to continue as we go forward with the mainstreaming of computers, cellphones and internet usage. I can't help but feel we could help delay the situation by spending more time on tutorials, how tos, mod projects by people, and other general weirdness that the mega corps and mega trade shows aren't pushing. Sounds a lot more fun, to be honest. Not only for reading, but for writing, too.

I'm still up in Tahoe. Saturday night, we got a lot of snow, and I ended up shoveling out Chris's car to have it be recovered the next day by a great storm. The plows were late yesterday, so I ended up hiking a mile to the nearest mountain. At the lodge, I overheard that two skiiers were missing at Alpine Meadows. Surprisingly, the two kept calm, must have built a snow shelter, and were found three days later, miles away from the resort. Generally, high tech outdoor gear doesn't do crap for you when you're lost like that, but these guys could have used that new GPS SPOT gadget that can send help messages with location to 911. The rescue would have only taken a few hours. Then again, who goes to a fancy ski resort expecting to get lost on the map?

I'm going to Spain next week for 3GSM or mobile world congress or whatever its called. It's my first, and I hope to see a number of things, like Nokia's Touch UI and a fleet of android powered phones, but you never know. A few schools, including UC Berkeley, are running classes around programming for Android. Can't say the same about the iPhone, not until that SDK and its rules are spelled out in February. It'll also be the first time I meet Jesús and Addy, which should be pretty awkward for a few minutes and then pretty cool. What's weather like in Madrid and Barcelona this time of year? I guess I have to not bring an iPhone abroad, or risk those gnarly roaming charges I always make fun of people for. Anyone going?

Today, Jesús Diaz brought up an interesting idea when it comes to using digg badges on stories. Whenever we're not doing original reporting off of big stories, we should maybe help out the source we're linking to by inserting their digg badge into our page. Might be a good way to spread the link love, especially when it feels like fewer people are clicking through to the source page.

Saw that old hamburger phone circulating the blogs last week, and finally figured out why when I saw that Juno movie. I actually was supposed to see Rambo, but upon going to my local theater it had been taken over by Sundance. The guy behind the counter looks pretty annoyed when I asked if they had Rambo, and Lisa quickly pulled alongside and ordered up two tickets to Juno before I could wiggle out of the situation. I really liked it.

Off to Tahoe, have a good weekend.

Chinese tradition involves burning fake money for the deceased to use in the afterlife. In recent years, that's expanded to other material goods like this benz, phone and laptop. I found some of these in a little shop in Chinatown, two doors down from the funeral parlor. What a racket, these guys charge 15 bucks for a paper notebook, but who is going to argue when grandpa needs to send email from hell. (Traditionally, there is no heaven in the Chinese afterlife, only hell. Oh look, Windows 95!) Adam, my brother, shot these photos, and I told him that when I passed, he should send me off by loading my ashes into a model rocket and blasting them over the ocean. We had a good laugh, and when the casket was closed, between the silence, and sobs from my mother, a musak rendition of How Deep is Your Love came on, to which I started laughing almost uncontrollably. I am not one of those freaks who has to laugh at tragedy every time, but I just didn't have the energy to let my guard down between the monster trade shows. If I did, I probably wouldn't have been able to function.

That's life, weird, difficult, sad and confusing at times. But at least my job is fun, and I've got a bit of good health left. I'll call that lucky.

But back to the product spam. How should we cover all this junk at trade shows? Pass on the little things entirely? Maybe. Let me know.

I'm also increasingly impressed with the Canon 40D I've been using. Most notably, the 40D's got far less grain at higher ISOs than the 30D. When I asked a Canon rep what happened to the noise, he quickly replied, "We gave it to the competition." Such a bloody battle, that camera war.

A few days after CES, Charlie White, the Giz editor with a record tenure of 2 years, resigned. The place feels a bit less wild without him around posting things like Pencil sharpeners shaped like women in sexual positions. But Charlie is also really knowledgeable when it comes to AV tech. A solid guy.

What else? I'm growing to enjoy the Macbook Air more with each use. Instead of lugging the Macbook Pro to Lisa's house, I just take the Air. And the weight does make a difference. (Especially for a out of shape blogger.) Speed hasn't been a problem when using it as a casual computing machine. But that's all it is. I notice a strange problem. Because it is so light, I don't treat it with the same sort of TLC I do my big notebook. It begs to be tossed around, like a magazine, and I've just stopped myself from doing so several times.

At about 2am on our late Thursday drive, I glanced up from my radar detector and GPS didn't see him in my rearview mirror for a minute longer than I should have. When I turned around, I found Chris and Adrian at the side of the road looking at the fender of their car. He had a bit of bad luck, hit some ice a little too fast and pinballing around a tight corner on rt 89 near Homewood. Even with AWD, the all season tires on his Subie and slightly-too-fast speed didn't keep him on the road. We were only 2 miles from the cabin, too. Even better than winter tires would have been those Qtires with retractable ice pins. Reminds me of The Animal, that toy truck with claws that pop out of the wheels. You know what I'm talking about. Trying to push the car out of the drift after banging out his severely dented and scraping wheel well made me think I needed more emergency supplies in my own car. Could have done with a few more bottles of water, a lighter, to go along with the weather radio and hand crank cellphone charger. (Rest in Peace, James Kim.)

The next day, we went for a short ride, and luck didn't improve. Since the snow was so thick, Lisa and Chris, really both better-than-decent at skiing and snowboarding, convinced me to traverse to the steepest slope at Homewood and take a dive. Meanwhile, I flopped my way down, avoiding snow wedgies only by virtue of some 3 layer gore tex high top pants. Chris bombed the hill, not noticing that there was a snow covered lake at the bottom, which he ended up having to hike out of. Later, we think it was his blue goggles that kept him from seeing well in the cloudy conditions. Gear matters, but not always the kind we write about on a daily basis. It's a pretty good story, though, you have to admit.

One last thing: If you guys have a moment, I'm not too ashamed to ask for some votes over at the bloggies for Gizmodo. We're nominated in a few places, but I don't recommend you vote on us for Design. Kotaku and Jezebel are there, too, as is Consumerist. I'll probably put up a proper beg post tomorrow, but for now, the few of you who made it to the bottom of this rather pointless post could make this editor pretty happy with a few good clicks. [Bloggies]