Stuff you never actually use

[Consignia]

I'm going to go against the grain here, and say I really liked Mouse Trap as a kid. Never bothered with the actual game, but setting up the contraption was great fun, even when it didn't work half the time.

I also get a lot of use out of my consoles, sometimes they fall out of favour depending on what's available, but I don't think there's one I haven't got my moneys worth out of.

I suppose the thing I don't really use much is my Android tablet. I bought it when I was travelling a lot, so it was going to be handy little network device, but I've been more at home recently so I never get chance to use it, since I prefer to web browse on a proper desktop.

[Neil]

LA Noire is quite shit. Never finished it. Not yet, anyway.

Sandwich toasters aren't really that bad to clean, if I remember correctly. I used to live off egg toasties, and it never took long peeling egg or cheese off, then cleaning the rest of it. Whereas the juicer is a major undertaking, equivalent in effort to, ooh, packing an awful lot of things into a suitcase, or raising a child.

[23 Daves]

I may just get a hand-blender next, one of those would be good for making curry pastes and also one fuck of a lot easier to clean.

I hate to sound like a marketing whore for Worrall-Thompson, but the blender I have is actually pretty easy to clean, and has been designed to be so - you just unclip the blades and the "bucket" (or whatever you're supposed to call it) together from the main unit, give them a bit of a scrub under the tap with a washing up brush, and leave it to drain.  I generally quickly make a smoothie in the morning before I head off to work, and the cleaning process takes far less time than the making of the smoothie itself does.  No complaints from me. 

You need to give it a really thorough scrub and soak after making curry pastes or spicy sauces, however, I admit.  I found that out to my cost after trying to make a smoothie the morning after a particularly strong curry.  Yeeuch. 

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Mousetrap was redesigned recently, you might not know this.





I spotted this and was curious about it for a while, and ended up buying it when Woolworths was going under and it was cheap.

Surprisingly pleasing.  Not as much a fiddle to set up (at least after the first assembly), which helps, and as a board game more is at stake because there are more "traps" throughout.  While the only time I ever got it out was last Christmas, when I played it with people in their twenties and thirties who were all as curious as me, if I was kid I imagine it'd be less one for the "can't be arsed; disappointing" pile than the previous version.

Noticeably, the diver (which was a great feature) has gone, replaced by a rather satisfying loop-the-loop with a gap in it that the marble jumps.  Otherwise the trademark trap remains, as do a number of the key features (eg the staircase - now a bookcase - and the drainpipe) that are now spread about in different ways.  Instead of one long trap, there are three separate ones, so three corresponding squares where you're in danger.  You put a marble into the toilet at the top, and when you flush it the marble is spat out randomly into one of the three traps.  You can also pick up a spanner that can be used once to block the trap you're in.  It's really not bad.

Some people might consider it awful to tamper with such a classic, but to be honest the classic was such a pain in the arse that doesn't really remain outside of memory anyway.

I like this box.  Let the world still look like this, please:

[Blue Jam]

I hate to sound like a marketing whore for Worrall-Thompson, but the blender I have is actually pretty easy to clean

Thanks for the recommendation, I may go and shoplift one.

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Mousetrap is also pretty annoying but it was at least more fun than this:



It's like Jenga's retro-futuristic older brother, only even more of a pain in the arse to set up and not much fun to play.

I knew it looking more like this, so not even that futuristic:



Setting it up wasn't too annoying, as you could do it socially, unlike the original Mousetrap, which also had the annoying tendency to keep going off whenever you touched the board.  But with Kerplunk I also have the fond memory of those last days of school before the holidays, when you didn't really need to get bored with a game because you could just drift off to a different one.  See also:  Battleships, Downfall, Hungry Hippos, Connect 4 etc.

And this:






Ah, sorry for the off-topic board game rant everyone.  Fun to reminisce though, I hope.

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Double post

[QDRPHNC]

It's like Jenga's retro-futuristic older brother, only even more of a pain in the arse to set up and not much fun to play.

FUCK YOU. Kerplunk was amazing.

[HappyTree]

Tried it a couple of times. I'm useless at it. I can't do keepie-uppies with a football either. When I stayed in Stockholm for a while I used to hang out with friends outside record shops and they'd all be playing the hacky. Fairly quickly I got asked politely to sit it out as I always broke the chain. "My talents lie in other directions, Gordon!" as Hugh Laurie once quipped.

[wasp_f15ting]

Near towards the end of my dvd collecting I went mad and got 100s of the buggers from special editions from Korea and sales in HMV.. now I have massive boxes of them. I should really take them to oxfam or something. They are the most useless things I have.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Isn't it that it'd be nice to be shown your own wedding photos before they get shared with the public at large?  First it's that everyone thinks their photography is genius art now, so this is more important than the subject being "shared" whether or not they like it.  On top of that, facebook has conditioned people to "perform" to the people who'll see their stuff; there's something about being "the one who shared something" that beats sharing it privately with the few people to whom it means more.

That's pretty much the top and bottom of it and I can't see why people can get so worked up over a triviality. I've witnessed plenty of such examples over the years - emotional explosions of soap-operatic proportions - and have always had trouble seeing it as anything but a first world problem. Probably makes me some sort of emotional cripple, but it's all a bit 'meh' to me.

[BlodwynPig]

Still shed tears for this one. Played once with my sister....played a few more times on my own (didn't want it to be left out). Not as good as the computer game - in fact, redundant if you owned the computer game.

[Hangthebuggers]

An ex girlfriend bought me a dictaphone once.  To 'record my ideas'

Never used it because I hate the sound of my own voice.

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Donkey Kong Board Game

These two can be quite annoying but this is still worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_GDyP-VfYw

The same pair have also done the board game version of Pac-Man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Lx_g47kKs

And Turbo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzvEUnwG5T4

[Replies From View]

That's pretty much the top and bottom of it and I can't see why people can get so worked up over a triviality. I've witnessed plenty of such examples over the years - emotional explosions of soap-operatic proportions - and have always had trouble seeing it as anything but a first world problem. Probably makes me some sort of emotional cripple, but it's all a bit 'meh' to me.

Well obviously to them it's not a triviality is it.  Just stop winding people up on purpose.  If someone says "Would you please remove that photo of me being pissed, it's horrible" and you care about them, you should remove it.  If you take some photos of some people you care about and it was a small gathering, try sharing the photos with them personally before you turn it from an intimate event into a massively public one.

In general, if people really are upset by something, why not respect their problem and stop upsetting them unless it's a massive upheaval?  "Not understanding it" is no reason whatsoever for continuing to upset them.

[Replies From View]

Near towards the end of my dvd collecting I went mad and got 100s of the buggers from special editions from Korea and sales in HMV.. now I have massive boxes of them. I should really take them to oxfam or something. They are the most useless things I have.

Yep.  DVDs I never watch.  With you on that one.

I love David Attenborough to bits but I could probably get by without the DVDs of what seem to be his entire life's work sitting unwatched on my shelves.  It wasn't even the big massive boxset I got, either.  I picked up every series as they came out, at the most expensive they ever were.  What an idiot I was.

[Depressed Beyond Tables]

I got a battery powered pump from Aldi many years ago. It's rubbish.

[Beagle 2]

This:



Looks fun eh? Couple of drinks, get a few mates round, good night eh? Nah. This is the most complicated game ever devised. Played once for three head scratching hours before giving up and locking it in a cupboard. It makes no sense. 40 quid down the shitter.

[Too Many Cochranes]

should have set fire to the cunt and chucked it out the window.

[Sherringford Hovis]

Sandwich toasters aren't really that bad to clean, if I remember correctly.

I've never cleaned my entry-level Breville - I thought you were meant to 'season' it, like a decent wok or cast-iron frying pan?
Like so many other things in life - just a quick wipe with kitchen roll, and you're good to go next time.
I've had it since 1994, and now hardly even need to marg the outside of the toasties any more for perfect shell-like bready envelopes of mouth-mangling magma.

Things I never use? Desktop computers. I keep spending tons of money on building shit-hot geek wet-dream rigs every couple of years, yet do 98% of my everything on a 2004 PowerBook G4 on the sofa.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

You blame whoever invited the person to the wedding.

I just left a room full of stuff I don't use. The garage is full too. Tuther day someone I hardly ever see but have known for twenty five years asked me if I still had a bike. I said "I've still got the same one (from twenty two years earlier, the time he'd known me for cycling)...but I've not used it for years." Many years. And for years I've been saying I'll put it on the car, take it camping in the south of France. Family camping with bikes, punk's not dead.
Near the bike is lots of camping stuff, last used three years ago. Among camping stuff last used ten, fifteen and twenty five years ago.

I wouldn't like to think I'll never use any of it again. And there's another reason we keep stuff, that you hope you won't have to use but, y'know, just in case. I'm that way wrong too. Odd folders, bits of plastic sheeting, offcuts of wood, sacks of shredded paper (makes great kindling - I last used the open fire in, er, 2009) countless boxes (for resale value - I've never sold anything second hand in its box). Half cans of paint. Tiles. Dried out bits of tubes of filler. Crap plastic plant pots.

I wear about 10% of my clothes. Like a complete fucking twat I instill them with some kinda personal worth because of the effort it required to get them. I've got a seventeen year old attachment (that blocks certain water borne viruses) for a hand-water pump. Could save my life. Would it work, thirteen years past its Best Before? Is it likely I'll ever been thirsty in sub-Saharan Africa, have this with me, and the hand pump, and stumble across some perfectly contaminated ditch saviour?

Maybe that's the other thing. Stuff with links to that former swashbuckling romancer y'once was. Hmmm...I feel a bit more confident about chucking some stuff out now. And getting rid in generaql. I've never sold anything on eBay, keep meaning to. I'll have to charge up that camera I've not used for over a year.

[edit - 3 words]

[Dusty Gozongas]

In general, if people really are upset by something, why not respect their problem and stop upsetting them unless it's a massive upheaval?  "Not understanding it" is no reason whatsoever for continuing to upset them.

Well of course. Personally I wouldn't tempt a bad reaction in such a situation but that doesn't stop that type of upset from being irrational.

[Too Many Cochranes]

Hovis, I'm with you on the computer thing. In my time I've built a couple of monster machines for personal use: £200 on the latest motherboard, £250+ on a graphics card and then what do I use it primarily for? Internet and music/films.

I finally saw sense and went the opposite way. I'm typing this on a mini-ITX PC that runs off a Dell laptop power brick and it does me fine. Very small, quiet, almost silent and nippy enough when it needs to be. It cost me about £300 to put together a year ago.

I can actually hear music properly because there's no incessant whirr of the fans and it doesn't heat the room up like my old PC.

[Icehaven]

George Foreman grill. It's great for a few things, but I find it hard to know if meat is cooked through or not. Also a bugger to clean.

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Well of course. Personally I wouldn't tempt a bad reaction in such a situation but that doesn't stop that type of upset from being irrational.

Well it's something else to get wound up about other people's irrationalities.  Live and let live.

[small_world]

I use my Formby grill every day.

EVERY FUCKING DAY!

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I use my Formby grill every day.

EVERY FUCKING DAY!

I imagine you solemnly singing this song as you do so:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHpvJScb1k  :-)

[Dusty Gozongas]

Well it's something else to get wound up about other people's irrationalities.  Live and let live.

Hmmm. Nobody getting wound up this end. You seem to be spoiling for an argument.

[Buelligan]

I know I am.  Not really.  But I totally understand the photo thing.  I am a private person, I'm not a Facebook person or a twitterer, I've never uploaded a photo of myself onto the big internet.  I want to keep it that way, I would be quite[nb]very fucking, more like.[/nb] annoyed by anyone who decided I didn't have the right to make that decision for myself.  So there.

[momatt]

The egg slicer.  It seems to have disappeared from my kitchen cupboard, actually, and was probably discarded in the last house move

I love egg slicers!  Never use them to actually slice eggs, but they make a great mini-harp.  I used to like strumming them dischordantly as a child.  Must get one.
Edit: Fist-pump to Cerys.

I know loads of people who bought Wii Fiit or Kinect games in order keep fit (same goes for the piles of workout DVDs still sealed I see on friend's shelves).  These NEVER get used.  So when my girlfriend demanded one for Christmas I just laughed in her face and told her to go for a jog.
She was well miffed with me.
The delusion that you need to buy loads of shit to make you thin (in the place of actual effort) is a constant source of irritation for me.