{"id":4507,"date":"2018-01-23T22:47:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T02:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.etotheipiplusone.net\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2018-01-23T22:47:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T02:47:54","slug":"charles-ces-2018-insanity-tour-part-iii-deck-the-halls-with-chinesium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etotheipiplusone.net\/?p=4507","title":{"rendered":"Charles’ CES 2018 Insanity Tour, Part III: Deck the Halls with Chinesium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sup everyone! It’s now like a week and some after CES, and I clearly couldn’t be bothered to post about it as soon as I got back. Maybe it’s because I don’t get paid to write clickbait articles for the millennial divisions of aging news publications. Nah, I’m here to write postmodern shit-takes on the nature and origins of barely-functional demo products!<\/p>\n

Or rather, I turned right around from CES and helped run the 9th-ever MassDestruction<\/a> literally the morning I landed<\/em>, and then proceeded to go back to launching my vaping company.<\/p>\n

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\nDIS YA BOYS YUNG MODULUS AND M.C. MASTER-CARR DA KING OF DA CHARLES RIVAH CUZ THEY NAMED IT AFTER ME
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There’s an interesting story about that actually – I designed the new MassDestruction arena in the roughly week and a half before CES, leaving all my friends to scramble to build it in the week thereof, making me the most deadbeat possible dad. I went to Vegas to get shitfaced and party instead! Okay, to be entirely fair, I also scrambled to make sure the materials and supply\/tool chain were in place, but they did all the physical labor – of which there was a lot!<\/p>\n

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I’d like to write up the full arena design pretty soon, since I think the construction technique was pretty innovative.<\/p>\n

Back to CES! This post covers basically the adventures of Wednesday and Thursday, and is basically the extent of my exploration at CES minus a breeze through the “Normie Hall” (aka Central hall where all the huge consumer companies set up).\u00a0 I was particularly excited for Wednesday, because I wandered the depths of what is basically Chinesium Alley:<\/p>\n

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\u00a0They called this the “Design and Sourcing pavilion” but really it’s where they scooch all the Chinese (and other countries, but China by vast majority) vendors. It was in a massive tent set in the south parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Inside is Chinesium of every possible composition you can imagine.<\/p>\n

You know what? I can come to CES just for this<\/em> and be happy. It’s not even an industrial\/commercial trade show and there was this much Chinesium. Y’all know me – I skip right over the 8K fruit rollup TVs<\/a> and smart toilets<\/a> and prefer to see the behind-the-scenes clockwork instead. Like, seriously – you guys are an industry trade show, not open to the public, and I am an industry attendee who knows maybe just a little more than the public. Stop trying to sell me<\/em> the magic.<\/p>\n

If there’s one lesson that can be taken from my website (somehow), it’s probably that nothing is actually made of magic and even the best-planned products always fail in some way first. To come from an environment where I tried my darndest to have my students understand that, to one where the wool-pulling is not only expected, but automated and internet-connected with its own app, means I probably have a more abrasive approach to the show than most.<\/p>\n

But the Chinesium hall was honest<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Maybe, uhh, a little too honest.<\/p>\n

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Possibly even blatant at times.<\/p>\n

What I mean is the vendors here had no face to lose if if their pre-hyped smart home product failed to smart<\/em> in front of an Afrojack concert knockoff and left their CEO a rambling mess on the stage. They brought products and services, and they were there to trade information if you were looking for it. If anything, isn’t this<\/em>\u00a0 what CES should be about?<\/p>\n

(ok, not literally Maserati-stickered scooters, but you understand my perspective, no?)<\/p>\n

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Chinesium does beget some pretty Chinesium names, though. Some of them were pretty entertaining, including this one.<\/p>\n

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Chinesium marketing was in full force here too. So you named your three small outrunners after historical Chinese warlord kingdoms? What does this make the 150 and 200mm outrunners<\/a> then!? We’re getting into some Yuan Dynasty and Mongol Empire shit now….<\/p>\n

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Silly scooters of all kinds abounded! Interestingly enough, there were some products I recognized from the main convention center floors. I wonder which came first…<\/p>\n

This one in particular I can welcome, but the wheels are really and truly too small for the design, especially with those long forks. I actually walked up thinking it had no<\/em> wheels at first and was just a frame, like a sample of what the company constructs for an OEM of the actual scooter. Nope – those are the wheels, the same 8″ generic scooter rims I’ve used on a dozen builds.\u00a0 I’d still rock one though.<\/p>\n

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Some kind of Pharah Simulator. I didn’t wait to try this one, because at this point, I had already almost wrecked one VR simulator…<\/p>\n

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