Being a student myself I found this to be really amusing. I don’t know why it’s amusing though, because the Eatmecrunchy Bowl has solved a great problem - soggy cereal.

The Eatmecrunchy Bowl is made from Melamine and is dishwasher safe so no need to worry about it being just a “novelty” bowl. A lot of these things are great for the first few uses, but after a couple of washes they start to fall apart, or they’re just not safe to put in the dishwasher.

The Eatmecrunchy Bowl works by having a shelf inside that covers 70% of the bottom of the bowl. You put your favourite cereal in as normal and pour the milk on as normal but, and here’s the clever bit, 70% of your cereal stays on the shelf  and 30% goes in to the “well” at one side of the Eatmecrunchy Bowl where it gets mixed with the milk. How cool is that. As most inventions, it’s a blazingly simple idea that works exceptionally well.

The Eatmecrunchy Bowl has got to be one of the best non technology gadgets that I have seen for a very long time. Simple idea to a great problem. Not only is it an extremely great invention, but it’s cheap too - only £4.95 for a single or £7.95 for two. A great bargain if ever I did see one.

Now all they need to invent is a disposable version for us students so that we don’t have to do any washing up.

I was browsing the Internet for something completely different when I saw this nifty little gadget. The WoodStation is a motion sensitive LED clock and weather station the likes of which I’ve personally never seen before.

Made from wood with a laminated finish, the WoodStation displays the weather in a cool and instantly recognisable way. You won’t have to do this by studying numbers on the WoodStation’s surface, oh no, this displays actual graphics so that you can see at a glance what your day is going to be like.

The WoodStation can be placed on a table top or hung on the wall and has quite a few features:

• Barometer: weather symbols; sunny - partly cloudy - cloudy - rainy / snowy and stormy
• Temperature (interior)
• Humidity (interior)
• Hour
• Calendar
• Alarm / snooze

There is a drawback to this glorious device and that’s the price. It’s not cheap at nearly £90 but if you’re in to your novelty items then this would be a great addition. The WoodStation would also be a great gift to anyone who’s interested in the weather.

I don’t know if I’d buy this personally, because I’m not that into the weather, but though it would be a good thing to post about for the benefit of you guys. I’m sure that someone will find it useful. To be honest, it’s hardly done anything but rain over the summer and I don’t fancy looking at the rain clouds on a piece of wood that’s sitting on my bedside table.

As promised, here are my thoughts about the BT Freestyle 750 Twin Cordless Phone. I have to admit that the phone looks great in its new home (which is next to the new router). What’s even better is that the BT Freestyle 750 Twin Cordless Phone fits in with the surrounding of the flat perfectly. I mentioned briefly in another post that I wasn’t sure if we actually needed two phones (one for the living room and one for the bedroom) because of the cordless nature of the BT Freestyle 750 Twin Cordless Phone. Well, it turns out that I was wrong. Having two phones is great because we no longer have to run to the living room when it rings.

The BT Freestyle 750 Twin Cordless Phone has a built in answering machine in the base station too, which is great if we’re ever out. Obvioulsy living busy lives as we do, we’ll sometimes miss a call. Having an answering machine is a new thing for me. I’ve never owned one before, which is weird for a guy who is gadget mad. I’ve just never found the need. The BT Freestyle 750 Twin Cordless Phone also has a 50 name and number memory for you to store all your contacts and you can transfer calls from one handset to the other with the touch of a button.

I’m really pleased that we got the BT Freestyle 750 Twin Cordless Phone and not another model. It has definitely made things easier around here.

Whilst I was looking at the bolt-on packages that O2 have available to me as a customer, I came across their “family bolt-on” which allows one person to pay £7.50 a month but up to 5 people can benefit from the one bolt-on. This led me to the O2 Joggler.

The O2 Joggler is an organiser for the whole family, but rather than things being written down on post-it notes and stuck everywhere, this is digital. It means that everything can be kept in one location that’s easy to access by the whole family.

The O2 Joggler connects to your WiFi network (or through an ethernet cable (supplied) if you don’t have WiFi) to get all the latest news and weather reports for you. The O2 Joggler has been designed to be easy to use for the whole family so that nobody misses out on anything, and there are loads of things that the Joggler can do.

O2 have Apps available for the Joggler that allow it to do various things: there’s a calendar to help organise the family appointments and memorable dates, you can share photos, music and videos, play games and as I mentioned earlier, get the latest news and weather reports.

Another thing that stands out about the O2 Juggler is its ability to send and receive text messages. A great feature to help keep your household ticking like clockwork. To do all of this, the Joggler is equipped with a touchscreen, and as a lot of you regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a fan of touchscreens.

I like the way that O2 are leading the way with these new and innovative gadgets. May it long continue.

Well it’s finally here. The broadband has been connected and we’re browsing (and working) on the internet at high speed. This probably isn’t a new thing to most of you, it isn’t new to me either but being able to connect at broadband speeds both at home and in the flat is great. It means that I can do my work here (in the flat) without having to constantly struggle with the Vodafone dongle that I was using to send files. It makes life so much easier too.

It was meant to be connected today officially, but we’ve been using it since about 1pm yesterday. The phone had been doing some funny clicking noises the night before and during the morning so I decided to plug the router in and hey presto, the green “internet” light lit up. This was doubly great for me because there was an event going on in the actual real world that was being Twittered and blogged about in “real-time” that I wanted to be a part of. Unfortunately, that event didn’t quite go as expected because of the denial of service attack that Twitter experienced.

The broadband supplier we chose was Plus.net and this was mainly because of the reviews and word of mouth praise for the company. Originally we had decided to go with O2 Home Broadband, but it wasn’t available in this area. From what I’ve seen and experienced of Plus.net already, they seem to be a great company. Their online tracking system is the best one I’ve seen so far with regards to keeping the customer informed in an easy to understand way. The Thompson router that they supplied (the day before the broadband went live) was easy to set up too. So, if you’re thinking of getting broadband then I’d definitely recommend Plus.net as a supplier.

When I was younger I had to wait until there was a carnival or fair in town to have a go on a bouncy castle. Nowadays, as you’ll see from this post, people are able to buy these for their own back gardens.

The Halsall Spiderman 3 Bouncy Castle is just that. A bouncy castle you can set up for your own kids to enjoy when ever they want (dependant on the weather obviously). The Halsall Spiderman 3 Bouncy Castle. This one is based on Spiderman 3 (obvious really from the title).

The Halsall Spiderman 3 Bouncy Castle is for the younger kids in the family though, so no adults allowed. Which is a shame really because we have so much fun on the trampoline once we’ve finished the barbecue.

Measuring 152 x 160 x 185cm, this is great for any child (3 or over) who aspires to be a super hero in their own right. They’ll have hours of fun playing out their fantasies on the  Halsall Spiderman 3 Bouncy Castle. This bouncy castle is great because it costs under £20, which is great on your pocket and will keep the kids quiet.

As I always say at the end of most of my posts, PriceGrabber have scoured the internet to find the best deals available, so that you don’t have to.

Tomorrow I’ll write about a great addition to your cooking utensil range, and one that is specially suited for this time of year.

Well there are only two days to go until a BT Phone Line is installed in the flat. That doesn’t mean that broadband will be available on it on Thursday though. That’s a real shame because I’m really excited about it all happening now. Most of you probably don’t know what it’s like trying to do your work over a slower than dial-up connection. I have to admit that I had become accustomed to the high speed that was available to me.

The broadband will undoubtedly make things easier for me when I’m staying at my girlfriends house. My work has been slipping recently if I’m honest. Well, not slipping as such. I’ve just not been able to upload the files over the dongle. Trying to do web design work over dial-up is a real struggle on my patience. Recently I’ve been creating graphic intensive sites, so the need for speed (so to speak) is essential.

Anyway, I’m sure that you’re all wondering why I’m waffling on about this new phone line. Well, with every new phone line you need a telephone to connect to it. The one that’s going to be arriving here is the BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone. The BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone comes in a twin pack, which is ideal because we can have one in the living room and one in the bedroom. That means that we don’t have to run to the living room every time the phone goes. I know what you’re thinking. The BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone is cordless, so why do we need a twin pack? It’s quite a big flat, so having two makes more sense. Not rocket science really.

I can’t write a review about the BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone yet, because I haven’t got it, but I will when they arrive.

I know that I wrote the other day that my posts were going to have a summer holiday theme to them and they will. I just wanted to let you all know about the phone line (and eventually broadband).

Well, it’s definitely that time of year again because there are literally hundreds of kids playing and shouting around this area.

The schools closed last week so it is now officially the summer holidays. Six weeks off for the children and even more for the students. I remember when I was younger when we’d go away for day trips on the train to various parts of Wales. We never got to go abroad for our holidays as my parents were always working and couldn’t get the time off during the summer. We did go to London for a week once though. That was fun.

What I intend doing on this blog over the coming weeks is write about gadgets that will appeal to both adults and children alike. Obviously they will have a summer based theme. Although having said that and looking at the window, you’d think it was winter. There are heavy showers here at the moment.

I’m not actually going away anywhere this summer (or at least I don’t think I am) because of me relocating to another country. Don’t worry though, I’ll still be in the UK. I’m just moving from Wales to England to continue with my degree.

I hope you all enjoy what I have planned for this blog and that you find some inspiration for keeping the kids amused over the coming weeks be it sun or rain. There will always be a post here for you to look at, and hopefully be able to find something that catches your eye.

I’ve just bought the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer for myself and I have to say, I’m impressed with it.

I needed to get a scanner, but instead of going for a stand alone device, I decided that a multifunction device would be a better option in the long run. I know that I’ve posted about getting a Brother DCP-6690CW, which I still want, but at this time the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer suits my needs.

It scans, copies, prints and faxes. In addition to that, you can plug a whole host of memory cards in to it, which is great. I have SD cards and Sony Memory Sticks all over this place. I’ll list the exact cards it takes in a minute. I wanted to write about setting the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer up on a MacBook, or at least my experiences with setting it up on the MacBook.

I installed the drivers for the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer on to my MacBook as directed, but it wouldn’t work. It kept telling me that I hadn’t installed the printer on my laptop. I clearly had, so I decided to uninstall it and get the latest drivers from the Lexmark website. I started the whole process of installing the drivers for the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer again. This time the printer installed, but I was getting an error about the colour tables not being installed correctly. I tried uninstalling and re-installing the drivers again with no luck.

I contacted the Lexmark support team via their UK website and through Live Chat. This was a new experience for me. I was talking to one of their technicians who tried to guide me through the process of finding out what was wrong with the installation, but he couldn’t sort it out either, so I was transferred to a Mac Technician who took over control of my MacBook and had a look at the problem remotely. This was fascinating to watch. Apparently I’d downloaded the wrong drivers and needed to get some other ones which he sent to me. This process took a little bit of time but wasn’t the usual kind of customer service I’ve received.

I have to highly commend the good people at the Lexmark Technical Support centre for their amazing effort in getting my Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer working properly on my MacBook. It now works flawlessly.

So, back to that list of cards that the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer can handle:

• SmartMedia
• CompactFlash
• Memory Stick
• IBM MicroDrive
• MultiMediaCard (MMC)
• SD Memory Card
• xD Memory Card
• Memory Stick Pro

Quite an impressive list.
My experience with using the Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer are nothing but good up to now. I’ve successfully printed off documents and pictures and sent faxes. The quality of the output is pretty good too for what I want this particular printer to do.

I’m really happy with my Lexmark X5495 Multifunction Colour Ink-Jet Printer and I’m sure that if you get one, you will be too.

I made the decision this morning to do some work away from my nice and fast WiFi connection that I have at home and use my O2 Mobile Broadband dongle. Some of you may recall that I blogged about it on this blog a fair while back now.

As I am writing this blog post, the dongle is trying to upload a picture to a blog. Now, the file size of that image isn’t very big to be honest; it’s about 48Kb or so. The trouble is that here in Wales, where I live at least, we don’t have 3G coverage. There are only a few places in Wales that actually have a good 3G coverage.

I’m not placing all the blame on O2 here because it seems that all the networks are the same with only the larger cities having some sort of coverage. This is all well and good, but I live in a rural environment. The 2G network coverage here is excellent though.

I really want to be able to use my O2 Mobile Broadband Dongle to it’s full potential, but having such restrictive connection speeds is hampering me from doing so. There’s an opportunity for O2 (and the other networks) to make some money from upgrading their network too. Obviously I understand that It’ll cost the providers money to get the 2G network updated to 3G, but in this age where information, and the speed at which we get that information, is so important to people, the providers should really be able to provide the service that is required.

I feel that once again the majority of Wales is missing out on the high speed links that most of the UK are enjoying at the moment. I currently have 8Mb broadband at home, which is great. It’s nice and fast and seems to be able to cope with the majority of things I throw at it. But, having said that, 24Mb broadband is being rolled out in other parts of the UK. Yes, you’ve guessed it, in the larger cities of the country.

Come on O2 (and the other networks), let us in Wales have the same service as other parts of the UK. Don’t leave us behind. Thanks