All posts by Yoav

About Yoav

Generating Happiness at Automattic

Same Ikea product, 30 years apart

Random, , , ,

While going through my Mom’s old toolbox a few weeks ago, I found this:

Ikea Patrul, from around 1980

Probably from around 1980, it’s the Patrull drawer safety catch from Ikea. The funny thing is that just a couple days before that, I bought this:

ikea patrull 2013

Same product, 30 years later!

It’s so interesting to see the two products side by side: the differences in style, packaging, and in the product itself are really telling. For example, notice how the old packaging has a textual description in a few languages, which I guess made sense since Ikea was only active in Europe in the early 80′s. Imagine if the current packaging had a description for every country Ikea operates in now!

The plastic itself has evolved quite a bit too – it’s much thinner now. The current pack contains 5 units, while the old one only has 3 – and in a much smaller package.

Makes me wonder how that product would look 30 years from now.

And on that farm he had a hippopotamus!

Israel, Jonathan, Random, , ,

I’m not sure what to think of this. Jonathan’s tractor toy has a hippo instead of a pig:

EE-I-EE-I-O

Here’s the original:
kidoozie fun time tractor

When you press the hippo, it still sounds like a pig though.

I guess we got the middle eastern version, pigs being considered impure and all.
I wonder if it’s also the version sold in large Seventh-Day Adventist communities.

Eisbach Wave Surfers

pics, Travel, Video,

Got a chance to watch the surfers this morning at Munich’s English Gardens. Air temp was around -4°C, but it didn’t seem to bother these guys.

To watch the opening race of the 2012 F1 season, I had to set up a VPN connection to a server in Italy (for Rai’s live TV feed), and a virtual machine running another VPN connection to the UK (for BBC Radio’s audio commentary). The VPN service only costs $10 a month, but I’ll pay 4 times that to get a proper legal direct feed, if anyone will sell it to me.