Inspired by an idea in a recent book using RFID tags on all your items, my simpler idea would be to use barcodes instead. Say we have a series of drawers which will be used to store all our items (which have been issued with their own unique barcodes). Every family member too is issued with a card also containing a barcode unique to them. Drawers will only open when a users’ card is scanned and upon removal or adding of an item to the drawer, the user will be required to scan that too. This information can then be logged giving you a real time picture of what items are currently being stored (and in what location) and who has the items which have currently been removed.

I’ve been trying out a couple of database applications on my iPhone which syncs with my pc to help me plan out the infrastructure for this project and the first results look rather good - I can type in an item and bring up its location within the house. It would be nice to have a blinking light on the drawer’s face to indicate where the item is but to make things simpler, my next step is to bring up a floor plan of the room which shows my item’s whereabouts based on a series of stored images which can be referenced accordingly.

I can’t get over how tiny it is and how many hours of video one can record on the thing. As a means of testing it out I clipped it to the cat’s collar one evening as I wanted to see what adventures she got up to. The answer…not a great deal as she refuses to go outside this time of year so the footage mainly consisted of lots of feet.

There were a few interesting snippits though. Take a look at this clip of her positioning herself to get a better view of the cake. If I clip it to her again during the summer when she starts exploring the fields at the back of our house, I think it’ll be really interesting to see what she gets up to.

Trying out the lego app for the iPhone. The only good thing about it that I can see at the minute are the sound effects.

We thought we timed it well with his sleeps and food so that the boy wouldn’t be grumpy when his big moment arrived but sadly no, he decided to have a bit of a cry and only stopped when his head was wet. I have to say the acoustics are rather good in a Norman church when Charlie really goes for it.

Anyway, it was all back to ours for food and drink and to admire the splendid cake make by our neighbour.

Mildred has always been the smallest of all our girls and shes been with us for over a year now. She had a bit of a rough time being at the bottom of the pecking order but soon settled in and was getting into mischief. She even figured out along with her partner in crime that she could use the cat flap in the back door to enter the house and nibble our cat’s food.

She was always reliable when it came to laying eggs too though you could always tell which eggs belonged to her due to their funny shape and size.

Its horrible when pets are ill.

I pulled out a few of the more memorable items in my collection and photographed them. I then made a mini zine out of them and these will soon be hidden away in geology library books for the public to discover and hopefully enjoy.

If you would like a copy (or just a random zine pluked from the many I make) just drop me an email with your address and I’ll pop one in the post for you. Please pop by my new zine site, the Rusty Rocket for regular updates.

I would also be interested to hear what things you collect too.

Unfortunately the keyword still has to be hardcoded in but I’m working on it so you can chop and change whenever you feel like it.

Theres more…clicking on the bird image will display the top 5 most recent tweets with your keyword.

It even has an icon on my iPhone complete with the bird image which looks really nice.

UPDATE: Since posting this theres been a couple of realltygood suggestions from readers including an alert to let you know when the number of tweets about a particular topic reaches a certain level. This is such a simple idea but one which will allow my app to function a little better.