Boys and their toys

Feminists look away now! Stereotypes incoming!

There are a few truths in this world that are self-evident. For one, women like makeup and hairdos. And men like gizmos and gadgets.

Being male, I am no exception. I do love cool stuff.

So when Mr Dennis Viau, an American YouTube influencer I follow (and previously wrote about here and here), bought himself a new Vitamix heavy-duty blender and started using it in his videos, I was captivated by its amazing Bluetooth app smart control feature.

SmoothieTube

His new channel SmoothieTube teaches viewers how to make smoothies, which are supposedly healthy yet delicious drinks. If he were Singaporean he could go tie up with the Health Promotion Board and take a lot of money from the government but sadly the sleepy backwater of Santa Barbara, Southern California has no such government body. No offence to people with links to that place! A couple of my professors were from the University of California, Santa Barbara and they are lovely.

Anyway, I found his new blender endlessly intriguing as it comes with the capability to pair with an Android tablet through Bluetooth. An app called Perfect Blend, when installed on the tablet, can give users step-by-step instructions on how to assemble various recipes. This is done using a special weighing scale which detects the amount of a certain ingredient the user has added and triggers the tablet to make a sound when there is enough of the ingredient in the container. Once all the ingredients are in, the user transfers the container onto the blender which then blends the smoothie together, automatically adjusting the duration and speed of the blending without any input from the user at all.

This video shows the process in action.

If that is not the height of awesomeness then what is?

Dead spot be gone

The master bedroom in my house had long suffered from poor WiFi coverage as the radio waves were unable to make the sharp 90-degree turn from their origin in the living room router.

As a result, everybody's phones would lose the signal once they passed the doorway of the bedroom. For my parents, it was a minor inconvenience that they could simply solve by leaving the room. But I like to relax on that bed and play a bit of Old School RuneScape Mobile before sleeping. So the situation was unacceptable and I decided to do something about it.

Enter Lazada. My mother is very experienced in using that online shopping platform, having bought innumerable useless ornamental items off the site. I, on the other hand, was an online-shopping virgin. I did not, and still do not, have any means of e-payment to my name whatsoever, because I am a child.

But I work around this obstacle by using my mother's PayPal and Lazada accounts to make purchases, after which I reimburse her with good, old cash. The government wants to go cashless, and I want to spit on their face. Give me hard money that I can see and touch any day, rather than some digits on a screen that, for all intents and purposes, do not even exist in the real world.

So to get rid of the pesky problem of the WiFi dead spot once and for all, I went onto Lazada during the 11/11 sale and got a TP-LINK RE650/AC2600 WiFi Range Extender at about 25% discount. Including delivery, it cost just under $110.

The RE650 is one of the more expensive TP-LINK extenders but it is rated for up to 2600Mbps, which means that it can relay the full speed of your WiFi signals if your incoming internet connection speed is within 2600Mbps. Given that the standard fibre broadband speed in Singapore is 1Gbps and some choose to pay extra for the 2Gbps connection, the RE650 can smoothly handle all these connections without bottlenecking. If you get a cheaper model, it may not be able to relay the WiFi signals fast enough and you will lose some of the speed that you are paying your internet service provider for.

Setting up my new extender was easy. All I had to do was follow the instructions in the manual. Once I had it up and running, the master bedroom was bathed in the rich glow of glorious WiFi, and all was right with the world.

Now me and my parents can use our phones while relaxing in bed, with a strong and stable internet connection!

Roaming robots

A decade ago, it was almost unheard of to have autonomous cybernetic beings roaming freely amongst humans. The robots that shuttle file cabinets and meal trolleys around the KK Women's and Children's Hospital were cutting-edge technology back then.

We are far from reaching the advanced sophistry of C3PO, the protocol droid in Star Wars who was designed to facilitate human-cyborg relations and could translate between more than seven million forms of communication, but our progress over the past few years has nonetheless been quite remarkable. Now we have robots acting as porters in hotels, delivering items directly to guests in their rooms upon request, as I discovered during a recent staycation at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront. These robots are packed with navigational sensors that allow them to find their way around the building independently while avoiding obstructions and humans, and wireless communication antennas that allow them to control the elevators and in-room telephones throughout the hotel.

And we are even allowing robots into our very own inner sanctums: robotic vacuum cleaners, which are basically vacuum cleaners that move around by themselves using artificial intelligence, are now fairly commonplace. They keep our house floors clean without us having to get off our lazy backsides, bringing much relief to overworked mums everywhere.

My mum is one such poor overworked soul. In addition to her day job, she does all the usual household chores that women do, and takes care of the house rabbits too. To help lighten her load, and because I was flush with success from my purchase of the WiFi extender, I decided to buy a robotic vacuum cleaner for the house.

As usual with technology products, my family is late to the game. The majority of middle-class Singapore families already own a robotic vacuum cleaner. So I had plenty of people to consult about buying one. One friend even took a video specially for me, to show me how it does not pose a threat to pet rabbits, which she also has. Hers was a Xiaomi Roborock 1, and she was satisfied with its performance.

I went onto Lazada again, and compared the various robotic vacuum cleaners on offer. The Xiaomi Roborock 2 impressed me greatly as it packed the most amount of features yet went for the lowest price. Anybody who is familiar with the smartphone market will know that this is typical of Xiaomi. My phone is a Xiaomi and it is badass!

But I still had slight reservations. Even though it was relatively cheap, and this year has been a bumper harvest for me economically due to my earnings from freelance writing plus the SG Bonus, it was still going to cost me a few hundred dollars. Then one day I went downstairs on the way to the car for an exam on campus and saw, in the trash heap, an empty Xiaomi Roborock cardboard box that someone else in my block must have discarded the previous day. And I was sold. Like I said to the abovementioned friend: "It must be a message from the gods!" And, perhaps a little annoyed by my incessant pestering, she replied: "Just buy it lah!" (Note: lah is an expression in Singapore English which is added to the ends of sentences to make them more emphatic.)

So when the 12/12 sale started on 10 December, I ordered the Xiaomi Roborock 2 in a combo deal that included refill packs and accessories for the various protuberances on the device. The machine itself was at a markdown, buying the accessories as a bundle came with some small discounts, and I instantly earned and redeemed a $10 voucher for spending above $500 in a single transaction, so I saved about $50 in total. Including delivery, I spent roughly $550.

Unlike my friend's Xiaomi Roborock 1, which is an older model, my Xiaomi Roborock 2 has an additional water tank so not only can it vacuum away dust, it can also mop the floor! All you have to do is fill up the water tank and slot it, and the cloth attachment, into the robot. The robot finds its way around your home on its own and is even able to detect cliff edges and stop itself from falling. One of the steps in my house is of an odd height which is too low for the robot to detect as a problematic drop, but too high for the robot to climb back up once it has fallen. But the designers thought of that too, and created some magnetic tape that you can stick to demarcate forbidden zones that you do not want the robot to enter. And when its battery is low, it will return to the docking station by itself, where it will recharge before going back to the spot where it left off and resuming its work from there! It truly is a "fire and forget" solution to your cleaning needs.

You control the robot's settings using the Mi Home app which you must install onto your smartphone. The first time you use the robot, you will have to use Bluetooth on your phone to communicate with the vacuum cleaner to get it to connect to your home WiFi network. Subsequently it will detect your home WiFi network automatically. Once the robot and your phone both have internet connections, you can use the Mi Home app to issue instructions to the robot, such as telling it to clean the whole house or just a specific area. The robot uses lasers like an insect uses its feelers to map out its surroundings, and will bump gently against obstacles to see if they are solid like the side of a bed or can be passed through like a curtain. It draws out this map live as it moves around your house and you can see the map, which looks like a radar plot, being created right in front of your eyes on the app. You can use the app to schedule regular cleanups too, meaning that the robot will activate itself at specific times of your choosing, and return to the docking station to recharge once it has finished its rounds. Through the app, you can also adjust the mode of the vacuum, such as making it quieter but sacrificing suction power, or stronger but noisier; or set it to use the mop function. When the robot has something to tell you, like "Finished cleaning. Going back to the dock.", it will verbalise the message in its default female English voice, but you can change the voice pack in the app too. There are options for Spanish, German, Italian, French, and many cartoon-inspired Chinese ones.

The yellow dot shows the position of the robot in real time. The green lightning symbol shows the location of the docking station, which is where the robot automatically returns to when it is idle.

How does the robot perform at its function of keeping the floor clean? Marvellously well. One round of my house by my robot produces a ball of fluff in the dustbin roughly the size of an adult's fist. The mopping ability is handy too, but it does run out of water fairly quickly and you will have to keep an eye on it and top up the water when needed. It also does not do as thorough a job when mopping as it does when vacuuming, so it cannot totally replace a woman with a stick.

The rabbits in my house are slowly getting used to the robot. At first they were slightly alarmed by the sound, and a little freaked out by the sight of a plastic contraption moving on its own, but now they have made an uneasy peace with it and are content to keep a wary eye on it so that they can walk away if it comes too close.

Here you can see the rabbit adopting a classic attack posture towards the robotic vacuum cleaner. It has placed its weight on its front paws to give it more power when it lunges; its ears are flared wide open and pointed directly at the target.

Speaking of the rabbits...

Bun Lightyear

These fancy pet carriers are also from Lazada, imported from China. But they were not bought by me, but by a friend as a Christmas gift.

What sets this design apart from that of a bog-standard pet carrier is that the big bubble window in front allows the animal inside to see out. It is also shaped like a backpack so instead of holding it by a handle like normal carriers, you strap it over your shoulders.

The inside is spacious enough for one rabbit to lie down comfortably, or two rabbits to stand side by side with wiggle room left over.

Perfect for a leisurely stroll in the great outdoors, when the rabbit gets some much-needed sunlight while travelling in style, and the human being carting them around gets some much-needed exercise!