As a huge technology and gadget geek, you might be surprised to hear that on the organisational side of things, I can tend to prefer a more off line approach. Especially on my social side. So I thought I would share with you a few products I’ve come across recently that I just love!

Filofax Metropol – Price: £21.00

Mode Personal Organiser – Price £23.00

And with every awesome Filofax, you need a decent pen to go with it! Stationery is a complete weak spot of mine. I can spend hours looking at pens in a good stationers. One place that pretty much hypnotises me is The Pen Shop. When I worked in Liverpool Street, I spent many a day, glued to their shop window, admiring pens that I probably would never buy (I was temping at the time and at £10 p/h, I had to prioritise!). But there is something very personal and special about penship. You just can’t beat a hand written letter!

The Lamy Dialogue Retractable Fountain Pen – Price £195

Porsche P3140 Pocket Ballpen – Price £82.50

Fisher Space Pens 400 Blueberry Ball Pens – Price £27.50

These beautiful pens from The Pen Shop aren’t exactly what you’d call cheap, however, they are articles of beauty. In my opinion, The Pen Shop sell some of the most beautifully crafted pens in the market. The Lamy is my favourite by a long shot. This pen is sexy, sleek and oozes class. It glides across the page effortlessly and is a total joy to use.

The Porsche and Space Pens don’t have the same appeal to me as the Lamy, but they’re still quality. According to Wikipedia, the Space Pen “uses pressurized ink cartridges and is claimed to write in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, over wet and greasy paper, at any angle, and in extreme temperature ranges.”

So for all of you who really don’t believe in writing anymore… Pens and paper goods can be just as attractive as a new shiny gadget.

Who said the pen and paper were dead!

Back in December, Bamboo launched a competition for Girls’n’Gadgets readers to have their handwriting analysed by leading graphologist Ruth Myers. We had many entries and it was very interesting to read what Ruth uncovered about your personalities from the way you crossed your ‘t’s and dotted your ‘i’s. Two winners were selected for a more in-depth analysis of their handwriting. Ruth has spent time looking over a specimen of both Matilda Burgess and Joe Johnson’s handwriting and here is what she has to say…

What Ruth said about Matilda’s handwriting…

Matilda has the ability to focus on her goals without giving in to distractions.  She has a very good intellect and has an interest in the sciences. She also has a very good imagination.

She is a deeply emotional person, but hides her feelings and exercises enormous self-control. As a consequence, she allows no intrusion into her inner life.

Matilda has a strong will-power, drive and ambition. She can motivate others with her enthusiasm and zeal, making her a great leader.

Matilda has great dexterity and an ability to be resourceful when she needs to be. She has a strong personality, is direct in manner and can resist authority. Alert to any injustices, Matilda can be defiant when challenged.

However, Matilda is self-conscious – anxious to avoid ridicule and sensitive to criticism. She is friendly and eager to present a good image to others. Although she may appear sociable, mood swings prevail. She can be cold, defensive and unresponsive to others having a strong self-interest.

Matilda appreciates the good qualities in life and is conscious of sensory impressions – enjoying tone, flavour, fragrances and all forms of beauty.

What Ruth said about Joe’s handwriting…

Joe has a very good intellect. He is ambitious, competitive and disciplined. His drive to succeed is enhanced with good motivation and enduring determination. He seeks perfection, likes order and sets a high standard. Joe pays attention to detail, needing accuracy. He seeks recognition, praise and appreciation.

His enthusiasm and ideas can inspire others. He has a direct nature and likes to take charge, yet he listens more than he communicates. Joe can be subject to mood swings and has a tendency to be on the defensive.

Joe has a broad perspective of life.  He takes in and absorbs all he sees, which fuels his artistic and creative flair.

He has a philosophical attitude to life. Joe absorbs all forms of beauty and culture – enjoying good living, good food, wine and music.

He has excellent timing and can think smoothly and consecutively.

 
What is Bamboo?

Bamboo is the first interactive tablet combining multi-touch and pen input. Providing a simple and spontaneous way of using computers at home or work, you operate it by either using your fingers or the digital pen provided. It is the perfect tool for self-expression and personalisation when communicating through social networking tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, or for producing everyday documents like presentations. It enables anyone to be creative.
There are five models in the range – Bamboo, Bamboo Fun, Bamboo Pen, Bamboo Touch and Bamboo Special Edition. Each one comes with Bamboo Apps, which are an ever-increasing series of small but useful tools that enable you to do anything from digital doodling and sketching, to adding handwritten notes to a map or playing addictive little games in your lunch hour.  The Doodle application allows Bamboo users to freely draw, sketch or write short handwritten notes.

This Valentines day, we know what you’re thinking. What do you get the portable storage enthusiast that has everything? Well, this novelty USB stick might be the answer. If the relationship isn’t that serious, that is.

Let’s take the idea that a novelty Flash drive might not go down too well on Feb 14th, package it up in a neat little heart-shaped gift box, add a pink bow and put it aside for the time being. Now, let’s have a look at the device. The exterior casing might look a bit silly but at 4gb, this is actually one big heart – perhaps it does make a good Valentine’s gift after all. Measuring roughly 4cmx4cm (as much as you can measure a heart shape), it’s also easy to carry round, for a novelty drive.

But should you give this to your Valentine? We’re not sure how romantic of a present a Flash drive can be, but this is definitely a cute gift nonetheless. It’s also got loads of storage space. But maybe give a box of chocolates to your other half, too.

Priced at £17.25 and available from www.qvcuk.com

Robert Llewellyn

Robert Llewellyn accepts that he is possibly best known for his role as Kryten in BBC’s Red Dwarf and as presenter of Channel 4′s Scrapheap Challenge. A self described amateur nerd, Robert has always been interested in technology and engineering but due to his chronic dyscalculia had to accept he was probably better at talking about it than trying to measure something and then build it.

It instantly took me back to when I was about 14 years old, pure awe and excitement at seeing what this incredible little machine can do. I can remember opening mysterious boxes when I was a kid to find a model airoplane, or my favourite, a model tank with working tracks, that went over carpet hills in my childhood home. But the Parrot AR drone knocks spots off all of them, it’s a four blade miniature helicopter you can control from an iPhone, iPad, or through a browser on a Mac or PC.

I assumed it would only work indoors, in a room where you had a wi-fi network and judging from the comments on the AR drone app page on iTunes, I’m not alone in that. However the AR drone has it’s own wifi network built in, you can fly it anywhere. Okay, you can fly it anywhere as long as it’s not too far from you iPhone.

When you switch it on the wifi link appears on the list of possible connections in your settings screen. You open the app, ‘AR Free Flight’ and stand back. Okay, now you can sit down because the first time you use it the app takes a moment to work out the communication protocols, but then suddenly, your iPhone screen shows you the view from the front mounted camera. I saw my feet, I moved my feet and if there was video lag it was very slight.

AR Drone

The screen not only shows you the image, it has the controls superimposed. On the left, a button to over ride the built in auto pilot and on the right, a direction button to allow you to rotate or raise and lower the scary little fellow.

But here’s the best bit, you use the iPhone’s accelerometer to steer it, lean the phone to the left or right, the drone re-creates the movement. It’s remarkably sensitive, which means in a nutshell that if the machine survives your first attempt at flight you’re doing well. It will crash, it will zip across the room and whack into something. When this happens the in built motion detectors in the drone kills the motors and it crashes to the floor. If you remember to take your thumbs off the screen, it sorts itself out very quickly and just hovers at a safe distance from danger.

So if it’s that hard to fly, how on earth do you land it safely? This was another feature I loved. If you can gently steer it over a safe flat bit of floor, you just press the landing button and it lowers very gently down. Once it’s landed the motors stop and it’s only then you realise how unspeakably tense you’ve been while it was flying.

Taking off is also simple, you press the take-off button and the 4 tiny electric motors start up, spinning the rotors to a blur and it just lifts off the ground and stays remarkably static in mid air. It is almost insect like, a big scary insect that looks at you menacingly with it’s single eye. It hovers at about a meter off the ground without you doing anything.

AR Drone Colour

The AR drone’s downward facing camera (which you can also switch to on the iPhone screen) is connected to an image measurement unit which judges movement and distance, that’s what keeps it steady in auto flight. Damn clever.

If you look at the iPhone screen when it’s flying, it’s very important to remember that this is not a virtual machine, it’s a real machine that can hit things, it can crash and it can break. Break as in not work again. You can’t just re-boot it if you’ve broken it, more on that in a moment.

It’s only when you apply your thumbs to the control buttons that it gets frighteningly confusing for someone who didn’t grow up with game consoles. Someone like me. However, once I took it outside, it was utterly fantastic and I soon become far more in tune with making it climb, bank and turn. I found exterior flying much easier and more fun.

The drone comes with an indoor kit and an outdoor evil flying beetle kit. The indoor one surrounds the rotors with moulded foam, the outdoor one leaves the rotors free and it felt to me like this gave far more control. I managed to steer it very well, I sent it surprisingly high up and on two occasions I landed it very carefully exactly where I wanted it to land. On about 35 occasions I didn’t, but it was over grass so it wasn’t catastrophic.

So, all in all this is an amazing toy, there’s no point pretending it serves any useful purpose, but it’s truly great fun and fascinating to watch.

So the breaking thing. The second time I tried to fly it indoors I sent it smashing into a kitchen cabinet. It fell on the stone floor and a little bit of plastic shard flew off. It was a section of one of the gear wheels below a rotor blade. My heart sank, I’d only flown it twice for about 40 seconds and I’d seriously mashed it.

I got out a tube of superglue and with the deft use of my Leatherman glued the broken wheel back together. I took it outside, pressed take off and to my delight and pride up it went. I’ve now clocked up a couple of hours flight time, that’s many battery re-charges as the batteries last about 15 minutes.

There is really only one drawback, the inability to record the footage coming from the cameras. The AR Drone is fitted with 2 cameras, one front facing, one downward and you can switch between the two on the fly. However, being able to record this footage would make this a 5 star gadget toy. I’ve heard there are 3rd party apps that make this possible, but to have it built in would be a sure fire win. Hopefully a software update could make this possible.