Nice

Another way I would of done it
I would of built it with No Holes to drill
Make your cubby holes 2 or 3 inches shorter than the entire cabinet
at the back of the cubby holes attach a Black Cloth then just cut a slit along the botton of each cubby hole
hang the cords though the slits

here’s the round up of reviews on “we own the night” from rottentomatoes.com —

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/we_own_the_night/

critics were pretty much split 50/50 - some loving the style, others saying it looked like the director saw one too many scorsese films (in keeping with you comment about comparing it to “the departed”).

all in all, i say a great first choice for a film sponsor. now can you maybe get fox searchlight to make “the darjeeling limited” a sponsor? wes anderson and owen wilson are from texas, doncha know? ;o)

@ yuetsu, I’ve been paying attention to reviews for WOtN since I saw it. My two favorite movie critics, Roger Ebert and Peter Travers liked it.

It’s hard to explain, but somehow it felt like a continuation of Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix has the X factor.

I would love to have Fox Searchlight as a sponsor and hopefully they would pay more than Sony. :) I’m just glad that I liked the movie because I was scared to death I wouldn’t.

Yes, that charging station is Nice. The first one was an interesting proof-of-concept, but didn’t quite get me moving to make my own. This one just might. And I totally identify with the sense of, “Oh-oh, empty cubby holes, better hit the tech store.” After yesterday’s Brief I heaved a sigh of resignation and accepted that there’s probably an N810 in my future, so that’s one more cubby filled. Just a few more to go!

Love the show, been watching since I got my first iPod. OK, I’ll admit that was only a 3rd gen nano - for the things that were important to me, I’d never felt that Apple “got it right” until then. But you’re the first podcast I check for after I sync.

Anyway… I like the idea of a tidy charging station. I have a 6 way extension block sitting in the corner of my office with a spaghetti of tangled wires mounded up around it. However, there is one advantage to having, say, 4 sockets and switching adaptors in and out of the sockets as you need them and that’s power consumption. When you hit 20 gadgets you’ve got 20 power supplies sitting there eating electricity 24 hours a day. Even when they’re not in use, a lot of these adaptors are quite hungry, drawing power and dissipating it as heat. It’s not a heck of a lot per adaptor but multiply it by 20 and by 24 hours a day 365 days a year…

Some are more efficient than others - my PSP charger is cold when it’s not in use, but the chargers for my Palm E2 and Logitech MX Revolution are very warm.

Feel all your power bricks - maybe you’ll decide that it’s better to keep some of the less efficient chargers unplugged unless they’re actually in use.

I’m getting concerned about the fact that I’m having starting to have trouble differentiating between editorial comments about a product or service and what is part of paid sponsorship. For example, I took your comments about the new film as editorial until I saw the film add that immediately followed. Then I decided that your comments must have been part or the paid sponsorship. You need to make a clear distinction between the two lest you start losing credibility. Otherwise, good show.

Nice looking upgrade. I’m not sure I’d be willing to shell the money for that though.. I’d probably try my hand at building a custom one.

My only problem is… my ipod stuff needs to hook up to the computer, phone is my alarm clock, camera batteries can go anywhere (but one is a direct to wall charger). Basically, centralizing it would suck for me. But it looks good :)

wow ok, so I just decided to sift through the video archives to see how long I’ve been watching the brief for, just out of curiosity - I was originally guessing I started in march or april, but apparently I’ve been watching since january 23rd!! haha, the first brief i remember seeing is 122, and I don’t remember any of the ones before it. That’s nuts, clearly you have kept me entertained for the past 10 months, so I felt like leaving this comment to let you know!!

Thanks for all that you do!!
-David

What?! You have a Palm Centro!

You simply *must* do a review!

Obviously, *I* will be buying an iPhone, but my Palm-obsessed mother is looking very heavily at the Centro, and I need to know what the GIA Head thinks of it ;).

Jon J, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the power charging station was also how much power this was going to be drawing. I am pretty anal about electricity use in my house. We have our whole TV, DVD player, etc setup plugged into a surge protector that we turn off when not in use (except for the TiVo which of course has to be always on), as well as our desktop computer setup. Not that the electricity is really that expensive or anything and we buy enough green power blocks for all of our electricity usage, but we try to be as green as possible in all of our decisions.

Cali, you should get one of those kill-a-watt type power meters and check to see the power usage when the adapters are in use and when not in use but still plugged in if you are concerned about the power usage. It may even make an interesting episode for a brief, or at least part of one. I’ve found that some of our adapters are better at limiting power consumption than others when not in use as well.

Hey Cali, I love the show, but I’ve never commented before. I also know this is a little late, but you should get a Nintendo DS Lite to fill in one of the spots. When I was younger, I had a Sega Genesis, a Sony PlayStation, and eventually a Sony PlayStation 2. I never had a Nintendo console until I received a Nintendo Game Boy as a present. I later bought a Game Boy Advance, and last Christmas received the DS Lite. It’s a ton of fun, depending on the games.

Considering you have a Sony PSP, I highly suggest you try the other side of the spectrum. Yeah, it may not have fantastic graphics, but it really is a fun little device. Check it out.

I really like the charging cabinet, very excellent use of a wine rack! And it just so happens I have a space in my room that needs filling and my gadgets are scattered all over my apartment. A couple of birds are about to meet a stone :)

A couple of questions/thoughts: what did you use for the power adapters? Just a regular power strip from Radio Shack? Something with a battery backup or surge protection? Also, did you use cable ties to keep the cords from moving around and how well do the cables stay in their cubby holes when the gadgets aren’t there?

Love the show, keep up the great work! Enjoy your time off, you certainly deserve it :)

We’re using a Squid power source. It actually needs a couple of them to power every slot. The Squid has surge protection.

Because of the size of the holes we drilled, it doesn’t really require cable ties on the inside, but they would be nice on the outside to standardize the lengths. We don’t use an UPS because it wouldn’t matter if the power went out for these gadgets.

Makes sense, thanks for the info :) I’ll probably order my cava wine rack this weekend and charge up my drill too.

I asked about the ups because I’ve actually lost a couple of gadgets from power outages - not so much the power going out, but coming back on is what nuked them. One was an mp3 player from creative and I think the other was a cell phone. Probably more the fault of the el-cheapo surge protector from cvs or wherever I got it :/

My wife recently began commenting about our cluster of cords and wanted to find an attractive solution when I recalled this episode and showed it to her. She thought it was a great idea. A photo is on the blog I referenced. Thanks for the “Designing for the Sexes” episode. Maybe you and Neil should pursue a series on HGTV? Just kidding, thanks for the idea though.