back to article Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin

My wife is radioactive. I'm terribly excited about this, to be honest. It's like living with a superhero or a 1950s B-movie starlet just before she grows to 50ft. And while the house may be host to the occasional randy spider on the lash at night, my wife was not bitten by some escaped bug from a science exhibit. Radioactive …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Best of luck for a speedy recovery for the missus. As for controlling computers, writing reports. Could you hook up a laptop to the tv and control it via a cheap wireless mouse and keyboard which you bin when she ceases glowing?

  2. Badvok
    FAIL

    This article sounds like it was written last century, before modern voice recognition systems and Kinect like devices.

    1. K
      Thumb Down

      ok MR Expert...

      Over to you to show us how the pro's do it....

      Sign

      Mr "Waiting patiently for your YouTube video"

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      With most voice recognition systems, don't you have to press a button to get it to start? And you can't use it in a noisy environment, or even with the radio playing quietly in the background. Kinnect ought to be good for the hand-wavy stuff though.

  3. NotBloodyLikely

    Gloves?

    Tried surgical gloves? Used all the time in laboratories where there are also PCs. Not sure about touch screens but everything else works OK.

    1. Stoneshop
      FAIL

      Re: Gloves?

      Yes, gloves will definitely stop radioactive radiation coming out of her throat area.

  4. neal clewlow

    To the Family Dabbs

    I have been reading your articles for a while, and I find them amusing, interesting and intelligent . I thank you.for this

    May I wish your wife a short half life, and a long life for all.

    Keep writing,,

    Neal

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I especially liked....

    .....the fact that your wife has to sleep on a matress on the floor; did you not offer to take the floot?. Nice to see galantry isn't dead after all :)

    1. HMB

      Re: I especially liked....

      Well hello Mr Jumping, can I offer you some conclusions? :P

      Did you not consider the possibility that they might want to keep the marital bed free from increased radioactivity?

      1. Robert E A Harvey

        @HMB Re: I especially liked....

        Very short half-life. Decays rapidly. the marital bed, I mean.

  6. darkith

    Fondle-bag?

    How about putting an iPad/tablet/eReader into a thick plastic bag? People do it when they want to surf/read in the bathtub and want to avoid accidents. Touch works reasonably well through plastic bags.

    So long as the bag(s) was careful disposed of and she was careful where she put it down, I'd think it would keep the radiation localized...

    D.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Fondle-bag?

      Devices with resistive screens seem to be better suited for this kind of thing (you can wear gloves and prod at them with the pen and then bin the pen and gloves).

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What immediately springs to mind

    ..is a wireless keyboard and mouse, and HDMI out to a large 1080p TV.. That would at least cover the ability to fiddle with a computer and do officey stuff with the minimal of arsing about with marginal tech.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What immediately springs to mind

      My first thoughts too. Wireless kb/mouse sets are everywhere and cheap, so it's not too traumatic to bin them afterwards.

      My second thoughts were wondering if you could use her to power a steam turbine; but it *is* Friday.

      Wishing Mrs. Dabbs a speedy recovery. Good luck.

  8. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
    FAIL

    Excessive precautions?

    Depending on just how she's leaving radioactivity around the place... if it's her natural physical exhalations, that's one thing. If she's irradiating everything that she touches, then that's awfully complicated. And it kind of rules out the "tablet/netbook in shrink-wrap (except over the heat vents)" idea, unless you can verify that the radiation doesn't pass through shrink-wrap. I'm told that alpha particle radiation is absorbed by tissue paper. So:

    http://basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2010/1/13/how-to-explain-what-the-hell-you-are-doing.html

    On the other hand, she may be emitting anti-matter. In that case, disposing of he mattress, and chairs, may be a self-solving problem.

    1. Graham Bartlett

      Re: Excessive precautions?

      But surely he can reverse the polarity of the forward deflector dish...?

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Excessive precautions?

        It's always the bloody deflector dish! Want to kill a marauding space alien? Re-route primary power through the deflector dish. Want to preserve all life on this planet we found? Reverse the polarity of the warp core and re-route it through the deflector dish. Want some popcorn? DEFLECTOR DISH!

        ... actually that one might work pretty well.

      2. HelpfulJohn
        Unhappy

        Re: Excessive precautions?

        "But surely he can reverse the polarity of the forward deflector dish...?"

        Only with verteron particles encoded on a triaxilating frequency with the warp core EDN conduited.

        My lady had a similar issue with anti-cancer drugs. Luckily, she could not exhale the molecules as they

        were quite large. Otherwise she would have had to have been isolated in an air-proof bubble. Which

        reminds me: should Mrs. Dabbs not be using a filter mask? Or would that be taking precautions to

        a ridiculous degree? Iodine is a small enough atom to exhale, I think. Certainly it can dissolve into

        exhaled microscopic droplets of moisture.

        My lady's issue with the possibility of contaminating others with anti-cancer molecules became a

        non-issue a couple of weeks ago, but I don't use her cups even after washing them. I'm slightly

        nervous that she may return to claim them.

        1. dogged

          @HelpfulJohn

          That's a shame. My sympathies for what they're worth.

          1. dogged

            Re: @HelpfulJohn

            Oh, my stalker strikes again. Downvote for offering sympathies to a bereaved poster. That's a new low.

        2. dssf
          Joke

          Re: Excessive precautions?

          Will this be SKINtiLLATING or SCENTelating?

          Speaking of verteron particles, if applied to a male, would it be vertiFORM CITY end which the male GOES to TOWN?

          Speaking of verteron particles and thinking of Vertiform City, this reminds me of Data, when he tried to append to the Bridge Crew's humor:

          Data: There ONCE was a woman from VENUS whose FOREHEAD was shaped like a...

          Picard (Annnoyed): DATA!!! Another TIME, perHAPS!

      3. Dan 55 Silver badge
        IT Angle

        @Graham Bartlett

        Will that work if you just want to eat your cornflakes out of it? Could be worse if you have to bin an entire set of forward deflector dishes.

        On more practical note Ikea sell individual dishes (and plates, forks, etc...) that Mrs. Dabbs (may she have a speedy recovery) may bin when all this is over. Actually how do you bin this stuff, is it classified as low-level radioactive waste and do you have to do something special with it?

        I'd also like to echo dogged's post. It seems the C word has most of us on its on its list, the bastard.

  9. John Savard

    Over-Cautious

    I Googled radioactive iodine treatment, and found that anti-thyroid drugs exist as an alternative treatment... and that while doctors strive to minimize everyone's exposure to radiation, so as to minimize the risk of cancer, radioactive iodine treatment poses no real risk to one's family - at least according to the Thyroid Foundation of Canada website.

    Hence, your wife may have been inconvenienced more by her doctor's solicitors than by any real necessities deriving from her therapy.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Over-Cautious

      IT'S RADIATION DAMMIT!

      Haven't you seen that Japanese documentary about it? I think it was called Godzilla.

    2. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: Over-Cautious

      You are new, I take it , to Mr Dabbs journalistic stylings?

  10. Stu

    Everyone must have seen this by now, surely -

    www.leapmotion.com

    Perfect for not actually having to touch anything, exremely precise and lag free.

    Initially looked a bit fishy to me, but now it's been demoed in 'the real world' so to speak, pretty effectively -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYgsAMKLu7s

    Oh and the other thing, unlike all those demoed in the article, the leap controller looks like it might actually make it to an actual product come the new year.

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      Re: Everyone must have seen this by now, surely -

      Not sure you could accurately order the groceries from Ocado by waving yer limbs about.

      1. Stu
        Facepalm

        Re: Everyone must have seen this by now, surely -

        Oh and a floaty metal ball is!? Or giving it a chance at least - is a floaty metal ball a better solution than the Leap?

        I'm not going to justify the Leap controller to someboy who's too stupid or ig'nant to see its potential, I'm also not going to 'big-up' the controller, or blow it out of all proportion like some might try to do.

        Suffice it to say, out of all the lame assed conceptual non-products demoed in this article, the Leap is actually being marketed, soon. And doesn't look like some strange control device you might find in Barbarella or any weird 60s sci-fi.

  11. JohnG
    Gimp

    Have you or your wife considered...

    ...a gimp suit or possibly, a cat suit? I guess the Lycra ones would be useless for your purposes and you'd need something in rubber or wet look PVC.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Surely you ignored the Doctor!

    Everybody else does! No alcohol with those antibiotics? B*****ks!

    Not every day you get a chance to shag somone so hot she's radioactive! I say go for it.

  13. Epobirs

    This whole business sounds absurd on multiple levels.First of all, for this woman's exhalations to be anything remotely like a threat to others she'd have to be carrying around such a dose as to make her death assured. Her skin should be sloughing off by now.

    People have been given a ridiculous fear of anything that can be described as radioactive, no matter how minutely compared to natural sources we life near our entire lives. This has made for some really intensely stupid coverage of the situation in Japan in which the reporters rarely mention the vast gulf between detectability ands levels that might actually have an effect on a person.

    Further, a cheap keyboard and mouse cost what these days? You couldn't spare a few quid to let the lady get on with her life instead of feeling like a contaminate spewing freak? Even a low end laptop can be had for remarkably little these days. Though if her husband is this silly of a person she might want to think about the cost of entirely separate living quarters on a permanent basis.

    1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      Death assured

      How isn't? It's only a matter of time...

  14. Turtle

    "Electronic skin"?

    "Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin"?

    Could give new meaning to the word "resistor".

    1. dssf
      Joke

      Re: "Electronic skin"? havin' a blast...

      A doozy and oozy for the hard wear de part ment

      Could give a (w)hole new(d) meaning to havin' a blast "Bustin' a CAP in his (or, if you purr fur, herrr) asss". (No, not related to cattle prods....)

      Could give rise to (w)hole new t(h)erm called "CapASSisSTANCE", and could be a new way to test how long a man could "stand" to the heat or haunched on twos.... Taking the rear.. Uhh, standing at the ready.... (that's assuming this is a new form of chASStity belt..."

      Could give rise to a new scale in the Ohhhhhmmmm meethur meter.... Evern thermo meters as flux gives absolute rise to gauss... But, would the gauss be gastronomical or astronomical (missing a couple of "s" in those two words).

      Butt, umm, but, a cat suit would probably drive the Doctor BATty or CATatonic.... S/he might moan, "Just purrrrr fekt.... Dahhling..."

  15. dssf

    One more... Would make Austin Powers say....

    "YAHHHH, baby, YAHHHH... Sh*gaDELIC, BABY!"

    (Couldn't resist considering El Reg and some other UK publications energize my urge to share some "creative" moments...)

  16. Dropper

    Night Light

    When my wife took her nuclear pill several years ago she used to get mad at me when I'd turn off all the lights at night to see if she really did glow in the dark..

  17. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    Don't get something here...

    If your missus is 'radioactive' and it doesn't harm her, why is it considered a danger to you?

    1. Hollow
      Holmes

      Re: Don't get something here...

      Why do radiographers wear the big lead aprons and stand behind blast shields when taking an X-Ray, yet you get to sit there in your Jeans and T-Shirt right infront of the big nuclear camera? It's called essential exposure, you don't expose yourself to radiation unless you have to. It's why you stand there for the X-Rays without protection (Because you need the X-Rays), but the radiographer takes those steps for protection. I'd say Mrs Dabbs needs this radioactive treatment, but I'm guessing Mr Dabbs and the little Dabbs don't and so are advised to take measures to avoid exposure.

  18. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Not the kind of spec that I like to code to...

    "...At home, we have to limit our proximity to her to no more than one metre for nine days.."

    Surely 'not LESS' ?

    Mistakes like these may have unfortunate results. See the Hubble Telescope....

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