Robot Claw – Page 10 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Microcosm in Macrovision

October 3, 2025

I got a new ~~camera~~ phone. It’s orange!

It was hellishly expensive, but my old phone lasted six years and I hope this one does as well. Even though the tech is generations beyond my old phone, the feature of this one I’m enjoying the most is the macro camera, since my old phone didn’t have one.

That’s a mini Chupa Chup. The photos above are unretouched, and presented in the same size they were captured.

A Lego piece. It looks a bit translucent when viewed using the macro lens, but it’s impressive how smooth the plastic is.

An Australian dollar coin, specifically the honeybee one from a few years ago. The detail on the bee and flowers is almost invisible with the naked eye, and I’m impressed they can mint them at this resolution! You can also see how some of the paint has scraped off, probably due to rubbing against other coins.

These photos are difficult to take since I don’t have a tripod and you have to both provide a lot of light and hold the phone very still! That’s a pill I was prescribed for my hands. I haven’t taken one yet 🙂

There’s an anti-counterfeiting test used on magic cards used called the ‘green dot test’ which traditionally required a jewelers loupe to do. The macro on this phone makes the test possible without one.

Speaking of trading cards, isn’t it interesting that the foil effect on this Waifu card is pixelated?!? I wonder why…

This diecast metal Zoffy figure is only 2 inches tall and one of my favourite possessions. When magnified using the macro lens we can see the paint application is precise, even with sub-millimeter lines.

Here’s a cloisonné pin, which is about 1 cm wide. You can see the paint has wicked up the edges. I wonder how they make these?

A Fantastic Four comic from 1976. Is the pink bleeding into her right eye an error by the colourer or the printer? Did they even notice?

A d20 from our youth. This came in our Dungeons & Dragons ‘red box’ and was from the era where the dice came with crayon to fill in the numbers. Yes, that white gunk is crayon I applied over 40 years ago! The die surface is very pitted, probably from having been rolled countless times over the years.

A dorito. Don’t they look delicious?

And last but not least an amethyst. The flat surfaces are easily visible with the naked eye, but even in macro you’ll see they continue to be extremely – nearly perfectly – flat. This reminds me that I’ve long been thinking about doing a blog post on ‘flatness’…

The orange of my phone is now hidden in a case, and I think it looks cool. As I was preparing this post I noticed the photos app now includes an AI option to remove items and I used it on the above photo. Can you see where something was removed?

Ramen 32: This Could Be Chicken Or This Could Be Hell

September 28, 2025

It’s been six months since the last ramen review post, and just when you thought your favourite series had ended it’s time for another installment!

Good (220 Calories, 6 g fat, 1700 mg sodium)

The package of this Vietnamese chicken ramen contains this phrase: “Experiencing smooth and unique feeling with mung beans added in vermicelli.” The contents looked attractive before I cooked them, but as usual I was put off by the little packet of oil.

When I was young I used to see ‘glass noodles’ on the menu at Asian restaurants and wonder what they were. It turns out they are a type of clear noodle made from mung beans, and while sometimes also called vermicelli are obviously different from the Italian kind (and the opaque rice noodles traditionally used in pho). This is therefore not a ramen product, but I’m the owner of this blog so I’m bending the rules (and not for the first time this series)!

As you can see in the photo, the noodles were extremely transparent. Alas they looked much better than they ate since they had the texture of electrical cables and trying to bite through them only partially distracted me from the taste, which resembled sadness and dirt. This was a wretched product, and shall never cross my lips again. Score: 0/10

Hao Hao (330 Calories, 12 g fat, 1830 mg sodium)

This was another Vietnamese product, and the package proclaims ‘Tasty Vietnam’ with pride. When I opened the bag the dehydrated noodles appeared to have the flavour impregnated in them, so I was surprised to see two additional flavour packets as well.

Cooking it was easy and unremarkable, except for the almost complete lack of any smell. This carried on to the eating, since the final soup was flavourless! As such I can’t say I disliked it – the texture of the noodles for instance wasn’t disagreeable – but it was so tasteless it was hardly worth eating. A strange ramen that’s difficult to score.

Indo Mie (320 Calories, 12 g fat, 1110 mg sodium)

This one was Indonesian, and while the noodles (before cooking) seemed average, the two flavour packets – bumbu sauce and chili – alarmed me. There’s no mention at all on the packaging about this being a ‘spicy chicken’ version (a common chicken subtype I do not cover in this series) and with my low tolerance for such things I cooked it hesitantly.

You won’t be surprised to hear I couldn’t eat it. I tried one single noodle and found it so spicy that I had the usual overreaction while KLS exclaimed it wasn’t hotter than black pepper! I’ll concede the noodle diameter and texture were positives, but from the heat alone it’s an instant 0/10!

I think we’re coming up to nearly 80 unique chicken ramen reviews in nearly 5 years of this series. I hope it’s not another six months before the next installment…

Antiquing

September 20, 2025

We visited an antique show and a couple of antique shops today. I’m feeling poorly and tired since I got my Covid shot yesterday but there was a lot of cool things to see and that energized me. Here’s most of what we bought:

The left is a (wooden) box of postcards that was tied in such a way you couldn’t see the cards. For $5 I (of course) took a risk and it turned out to be a good buy since it was about 20 cards that will all be good for postcrossing. The right was a set of 12 ‘hotel’ cards that only cost a few dollars and will also be sent via postcrossing.

We bought these great stickers from an artist that specialized in dark and hellish art. If you want one of these let me know. I probably should bought a t-shirt…

More postcards, in this actual autographed cards from DJs of a NYC radio station. They seem quite old (1980s?) and the guy on the left is well-known enough to have his own Wikipedia page! I’ll be sending both of these home next time we go to NYC 🙂

This lot of old (70s and 80s) comics cost me $20, which is a good price considering they’re all in good condition and are even bagged and boarded. I think the seller just didn’t want to carry them back to his car after the show! I’m especially looking forward to reading the Godzilla ones.

This is a photo of two guys in a field – from May 1980 – that has been printed on the back to be a postcard! I wonder who these people are, and how their private photo ended up in a random box of stuff at an antique fair? Even though it’s flimsy (as old printed photos were) I’m certainly going to mail this one day and see if it arrives.

Kristin purchased this silver ‘uranium glass’ ring. The girl that crafted this gets her glass from the Czech Republic and the ring came with a black light so we could appreciate how it glows (photo on right).

It’s quite a niche: specializing in jewelry using uranium glass. And selling it outdoors on a sunny day is its own challenge, but hers was a unique display and KLS likes it even when not ‘glowing’.

Look at this weird puzzle postcard! The puzzle is inside a shallow plastic tray which is sealed in plastic and has a space to address and write on the other side. It’s hard to believe this would ever arrive safely, but of course I’m going to put that to the test.

The same guy I bought the comics from had these ten RPG handbooks, and I was interested in the GURPs Horror one. When I asked how much he said he’d sell me all ten books for $5, a deal so insane I couldn’t open my wallet fast enough. I like reading old RPG sourcebooks and these will last me years.

Last but not least is this set of 10 postcards that the seller described as ‘Chinese propaganda’. Of indeterminate age, they cost me only $2 and they are all printed on the front with the label ‘female Chinese soldiers‘. I took the seller at face value, but when I got them home and opened them I’m really wondering what these actually are.

The back of each – they are all unique – seems to have a short piece of fiction printed on it. The above screenshot is a translation and I’m sure you agree this doesn’t exactly seem like propaganda. Whatever these are, they’re strange and I love them. Want one?

I’ll end with an item I didn’t buy: this laughably long matchbook from Santa’s Workshop, which is a Christmas-themed ‘theme park’ north of hear close to Canada. Look at the length of this thing! If it was a third of the price, I probably would have bought it just because of how silly it is 🙂

As I said this was most of what we bought. I also picked up a couple of gifts that will remain secret, and KLS got some vegan cake and a cookie 🙂