Pattern Names

It's hard to search for something you don't know the name of, like instrumental songs or these (usually fabric) patterns.

Gingham https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingham

Also known as the pattern on Pizza Hut tablecloths

Asanoha

It's a popular Japanese pattern, with triangular symmetry, said to be based on the hemp leaf.

Seigaiha

I used to call it the Wi-Fi pattern. I actually first saw it as a pattern polished into a steel tabletop:

https://www.mirrormetals.com/products/decorative/circle-cd/...

Belts

Klik Belt

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01B24TYO0
lol what? "Horrible design. Huge disappointment." https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1IBQEIF7Q2S2R/
You have to remove the buckle to put on and take off the belt. What terrible design is this? It also loosens by itself. What? Seriously? This is a worse belt than a piece of string.

Carbon Tactics' Cinchy

Originally a Kickstarter project https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/520589318/cinchy-20-carbon-fiber-belt-system
Now regularly shows up on Massdrop https://www.massdrop.com/buy/carbon-tactics-cinchy-cti
Very simple design, basically just a solid monolithic buckle. Unfortunately it seems the strap is too stiff and uncomfortable: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/carbon-tactics-cinchy-cti/talk/588858

Grip6

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018I1NP9U
Like the Cinchy, just a strap with a solid-state buckle. No one's mentioned this, but it also looks difficult to tighten. You know how all other belts have the excess belt on the outside so you can easily tug on it to tighten your belt? Yeah this belt has it on the inside, between you and the rest of the belt. It looks nice and seamless on the outside, but hope you have a strong pinch.

Update 24 Jun 17

New belt on Kickstarter by Carbon Tactics:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/520589318/ti-hook-the-titanium-edc-belt-you-never-knew-you-n

I'm backing this one since it seems to solve the problems of the Cinchy and Grip6. The buckle hooks onto a loop at the end of the belt, and you only need to move the buckle when adjusting the belt size. It saves your position. 

Tiffany T Wire Bracelet

Insider tip: they said "bracelet" refers more to the flexible chain type, and "bangle" is the hard type. I'm only talking about the hard types here, using both "bracelet" and "bangle".

There are 3 thicknesses. The 2 thinner ones flex. The thickest one has a hinge.

Narrow (thinnest one), small, white gold: SGD1850
Medium, small, white gold: SGD2500
The flexible one with diamonds (I think there may be another one with hinge and diamonds): SGD5000

There's a sterling silver one that isn't available in Singapore.

Sterling silver single infinity bangle: SGD655
Sterling silver double infinity bangle: SGD815

Nike Air Zoom Structure 18

I never paid much attention to shoes, but I just got these:

Lots of better pictures out there, so I won't compete.

• Why is there a Texas shape on the front?
• I never noticed shoes had well-defined names and release cycles, like, say, iPhones. They say this is the 18th year of this series. I guess it's not surprising, since they put so much effort and research and marketing into these models, I just never thought about it. I wonder if branded clothes have proper names or just article numbers.
• I just started noticing shoes have started coming in different styles like barefoot, neutral, extra support, etc. I'm pretty sure it's a new trend, but apparently this is its 18th year so I don't know where I've been.
• Catering to different feet is great. I should pay more attention to the fit of shoes. Previously my requirements were: loop on the tongue for laces to pass through to hold it in place, and a loop at the back to help pulling the shoe on. None of which this has by the way.
• Queensway is for real. I knew they sold cheap shoes, but I thought they only had older stock. Nope. You can expect 30% off the normal price, that's like saving 50 bucks for these. It was very crowded for an old, out-of-the-way shopping centre that only sold shoes too. Oh and they also sell Casio G-Shock and Baby-G watches for about 20% off.
• The trend in Nike shoes now is Flyknit. On paper it sounds great. A seamless, single-piece of fabric that can have tailored density and elasticity in different areas, like unibody for shoes. Less waste during manufacturing. But, they're SO UGLY. Flyknits have a face only a mother, or obsessive blogger, could love. They look like my old sofa's covering. On another note, you'd think variable density was a job for 3D printing, but very mature technologies like weaving and knitting can do it too. Looks like 3D printing has a lot of stiff competition.

I love this review:
http://www.solereview.com/nike-air-zoom-structure-18-review/
for its technical details like the types of foams used.

Geeky Cufflinks

Previous post: http://mbni.blogspot.com/2011/09/nerdygeekyscientist-cufflinks.html

In the end, I found these cufflinks made of real Pentium chips, by Intel:

The text reads: "Intel Pentium Processor. This is an actual Intel Pentium processor computer chip, the "brain" behind the world's most powerful PCs. The different colors are caused by light reflecting from the tiny electrical paths that connect over 3 million transistors. The Pentium processor is so powerful that it can calculate the multiplication table, one through ten, 100,000 times per second. So not only are Pentium processors fast, they're attention-getters."

I think they're perfect because they're geeky, look great and hard to find. I estimate they were originally sold in the 1990s, and found this pair on eBay. The cost USD20 + $30 postage. It's a pity Intel stopped selling these products. Actually, these are clip-on earrings, I couldn't find the cufflinks.

Unfortunately, I didn't end up using them, as they were too hard to put on and one of the chips fell off as I was putting them on, so I used a backup pair of cufflinks instead.

Nerdy/geeky/scientist cufflinks

Since I've found my ideal cufflinks, I'm sharing what ideas I had for geeky/nerdy/scientific cufflinks here. I'm a materials guy, so many of these focus on materials I like.

• Gold - as pure as possible. Gold is a fascinating material. From Theodore Gray's The Elements, "Diamonds are a fraud, but gold is the real thing, richly deserving the adoration it inspires." Remarkable properties and treasured by everyone. Too bad the only gold cufflinks I could find were old-fashioned and quite expensive ($400). At least its value is permanent.
• Titanium - another exotic, high-tech metal.
• Carbon fiber - I found this nice carbon fiber and titanium cufflinks online.
• Liquidmetal - an amorphous metal, as opposed to crystalline, that has high strength, hardness and corrosion resistance. Unfortunately the only cufflinks I could find of this material were made by Mont Blanc, so who knew how much they cost? Also, they never mentioned how much of the cufflinks were actually made of Liquidmetal. I considered casting my own for a while.
• LED - Think of all the technology in semiconductors required to make these, that we take for granted now. And they produce their own light! And they're easily available online!
• Laser - But nobody's ever tried putting lasers in their cufflinks. Or at least tried selling them. My idea was to have a magnet in one and a switch in the other. Tap them together and the laser comes on. Tap them again to turn it off. Imagine the lasers being powerful enough to cut through things. Add your own sound effects.
• Ceramic - Not the conventional kind used to make plates and vases, I was thinking of zirconia, the material used to make ceramic knives. The interesting property of this material is, like ceramics, it's usually brittle. It's made tougher by stabilizing the tetragonal phase down to room temperature (like compressing a spring). Any cracks destabilize this phase, transforming it into monoclinic and applying a force to close the crack! I suspect this is used in ceramic knives, but I haven't checked. However, if you search for zirconia cufflinks, you'll find the cubic phase instead.
• Stone - It might be nice to have cufflinks made entirely out of granite or something.
• Atom - Not very special, just an atom symbol.
• Borosilicate glass - Borosilicate glass is stronger than ordinary glass. They might have these, but not for the entire cufflink, which is what I wanted. They have fiber-optic glass cufflinks too.
• Tritium - a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. It produces electrons when it decays. People put this inside sealed glass vials, paint the insides with phosphors and it glows by itself, like glow-in-the-dark toys that don't need to be recharged. Used for watches (Luminox) and gun sights. Hard to find by yourself and not easy to see the glow in the daytime though. Oh, and it has to be man-made, and it's used for experiments in nuclear fusion (easier than regular hydrogen).
• 3D printed - a true engineer would make their own, and what better method than the new technology of 3D printing? Unique and totally customizable. I'm not very good with CAD though.
• Circuit board - my favourite in this list, it has the right combination of uniqueness, geekiness and ease of findingness. Being recycled, they're environmentally friendly too. I especially like the red/purple ones, since you don't see these circuit boards very often.

As to which cufflinks I finally settled on, I'll reveal that at a later date.

Ironman 2 T-shirt

I bought this Ironman 2 T-shirt from FCUK (I didn't know they had a collaboration) at DFO South Wharf on the last day of 2010. It was only $30. It has this special metallic print, but from my experience these kinds of prints don't last long.

I don't know why, I don't really like Ironman, but I keep getting Ironman decorations.

Tee Meets Art T-shirt

I bought this T-shirt from a T-shirt boutique in Guangzhou, China. A few people have complimented it.

Besides looking good, I bought it because the colours on front actually contain the hexadecimal codes for those colours - a useful reference! I wonder what is it about the T-shirt that people like?

UV-VIS of 3D glasses

More UV-VIS tests!

This time, I tested 3D glasses: those cheap red and blue ones (anaglyph) and the cinema ones.

These are one of the first things I bought on eBay. They're really cheap, about $1 a pair including delivery. They're also how I found out about the website Buyincoins. The red lens absorbs blue light and vice versa, as expected. Neither lens absorbs UV light, so I wouldn't recommend wearing them outdoors. After wearing them for a while, when you take them off, your eyes see in opposite colours - the eye with the red lens sees things more blue (cooler).

These are the 3D glasses the cinema uses. I think they're polarising, but they don't cancel when I put 1 lens over another. Weird. I really should test them at different angles, but that's a bit difficult.

UV-VIS analysis of eyewear

I ran my Oakley sunglasses with black Iridium lenses, Tomahawk safety glasses and King's safety glasses through a UV-VIS machine to see if they absorb UV light.
The 3 glasses are remarkably similar. The curves of the 2 safety glasses are nearly superimposed on each other. The shapes of the 3 curves are so similar that I think they are made of the same material. They all absorb strongly at 370 nm, meaning they protect from UV light. The Oakley sunglasses start absorbing slightly earlier - at 396 nm, in accordance with their claims that the glasses absorb hazardous blue light. The safety glasses do not absorb in the visible region, which is why they are transparent. The sunglasses absorb slightly in the visible region. Surprisingly, they do not absorb uniformly, meaning they should result in a colour cast.

Oakley sunglasses

They're not exactly electric, but I want this blog to be a review site of sorts, and they ARE a form of technology.

I got a pair of Oakley Radar sunglasses with Iridium lenses and I'm quite disappointed with them so far. The features seemed very attractive - water and oil phobic, antistatic, especially the impact tests. However I find the lenses scratch ridiculously easily. I guess to make the lens withstand impact, some sacrifice has to be made in terms of hardness (hardness and toughness are usually opposites - think of glass), but this is unacceptable.
Using a bag as a cleaning cloth seems like a good idea, but it picks up sand easily, which will scratch your lenses (my lenses were not scratched because of this).