The Gadgets Page

I found a bunch of old Atari 2600 commercials on YouTube the other day. I especially liked this one:

I love the words to the song:

Way down deep inside of every man,
There’s a little boy: an Atari fan.
And without any doubt,
That boy will Breakout
When he plays a game from Atari.
Have you played Atari today?

It seems like they were advertising Atari to adults as well as children. I know my mom loved to play Breakout with us, but the more complicated games like Adventure and Pitfall were just too much for her.

Just watching these commercials makes me want to load up my Atari Anthology on Xbox and play some of the old school games. It has been awhile.

VH1’s Best Week Ever made a parody of the I’m a PC and I’m a Mac commercials. Finally! The PC is saying exactly what I would have said!

It’s nice to know that there are people out there who were irritated by the I’m a Mac guy as much as I was.

Mac: “That’s cool, but you can’t capture your family’s vacation on a pie chart.”

PC: “Right… but a podcast about your hoodie as an independent film won’t help you pay for that vacation.”

Mac: “No, that’s what my trust fund is for.”

They turned the tables on those commercials so perfectly that I was cheering for the PC at the end.

Via: adfreak: Dweeb takes down twit in VH1 spoof ads

This is the office setup I want. A computer powered by me walking on my treadmill. Why can’t I buy this?!

Click here to see the full comic:

• PC and Pixel: 07-09-06

I almost always have something to read on my Treo, but I don’t use an expensive program like Adobe Reader for the Palm. I just use the extended Memo functions that come free with WordSmith.

Here’s how I put a book on my Treo:

• Download and Install WordSmith: You can download WordSmith from the Blue Nomad website here: Blue Nomad Software: WordSmith Download. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The editing software is not free and will stop working after 50 editing sessions, but the reader is free. I chose the biggest possible installation and it took 2.6MB of memory. If I I hadn’t chosen the thesaurus and big dictionary, it would have taken even less space.

• Find a book in digital form: This can be the most difficult step because you’re not going to easily find the best sellers online. My favorite place to find free and legal classic novels is Project Gutenburg. With over 18,000 books to choose from, your only problem is sifting through the choices.

• Download the book in “Plain Text” format: There are several formats for the books available on Project Gutenberg, but to transfer to the WordSmith Extended Memo Reader, the easiest to use is the “Plain Text” format. It will be named something with an appendix of *.txt. Right click on the download link and choose “Save As…” to save the document instead of opening it online.

• Change the .txt appendix to .doc: WordSmith doesn’t recognize .txt files, but you can change a .txt file to .doc and it will recognize it. It might not be formatted nicely, but it will work. You don’t need MS Word to change the name of the file.

• Open WordSmith and add your file: Run WordSmith on your computer. The dialog box shown on the right will come up. Choose the “Add” button and select your document. As you can see here, I downloaded the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, changed the name from ash12.txt to ash12.doc and have now uploaded it to WordSmith.

• Sync your Palm and Enjoy: Once you’re finished syncing your Palm, choose WordSmith on your Palm Applications. The book will be filed under the doc tab. You can choose it and open it. You have the book on your Palm. You can read to your heart’s content and it will remember where you were last when you close it and reopen it later.

I used to just copy and paste text files into the Memo on the Palm and it would automatically create several memos, each holding part of the book. That feature went away and now the memos just truncate, so now I use WordSmith as my reader. It doesn’t take up much space on my Treo and it was free. I hope you enjoy reading on the go as much as I do.

This Sanyo VPC-HD1 camera looked so appealing to me. It’s small. I could carry it around in my purse without a second thought. I could catch really good video wherever I was with its HD picture quality.

Why didn’t I buy it?

Two Letters: SD. The “film” or memory storage is an SD card slot. Right now, the SD cards max out at 2 gig. At the HD quality video, that’s less than five minutes of video. Five minutes… I just want more than that.

I want to be able to film the entire birthday party, not just five minutes of it. Sure, SD cards are starting to get bigger. Panasonic has announced that they are working on a 4 gig SD card, but ten minutes is barely better than five.

This camera has a great handheld form factor and it is very sexy, but it can only last five minutes in the sack. I need a little more time than that…

Apple has helped making home movies and video that much easier by providing video and step-by-step tutorials on their website.

• iMovie Tutorial: Introduction

If you are interested in putting video on your website, weblog or even just creating a DVD to share with your family and friends, Apple just made it easier for you.

Of course, Microsoft has had tutorials of this nature online for a LONG time and no one bothered announcing it or even noticing it. If you are using a PC with Windows XP, you have Windows Movie Maker already on your computer. Here are some tutorials to teach you how to use the software and create videos of your own.

• For Beginners: Create Digital Home Movies with Windows Movie Maker and Windows XP

No matter what operating system you are using, you can document and share your life better than ever before. It’s a great time to be alive. Get out there and share it!

Via: Apple releases iLife video tutorials – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Another game I’ve been playing a lot of lately is SSX 3 for the Xbox. It’s a snowboarding game. I bought it because I thought I could play it with the DDR dance pad. The truth is, you pretty much can. You don’t need trigger buttons, so you can play this game as long as your dance pad has the arrow keys and the letter keys (A, B, X, Y). One of my dance pads only has A and B, but you need the X button to recover.

I haven’t been playing it with the dance pad, however. I’ve just been playing with the normal controller. It’s not an aerobic workout by any stretch of the imagination to play SSX 3 with the dance pad, so I thought I would make it easier on myself and just play with the controller. You can’t do some of the tricks (like sliding on the poles) if you only have the arrow keys.

This game allows you to race for speed or compete by doing tricks. I like the speed racing right now because I haven’t mastered the tricks yet, but I’m sure the longer I play, the more interested I will be in the more technical things.

The funniest thing I’ve noticed about this game is that it makes me want to learn how to snowboard in real life. I realize I won’t be able to snowboard with such aggression as the game shows, but I really enjoy the pretty scenery and learning how to master the board. I imagine learning to snowboard would be the same, except it would be cold. So many people blame video games for childhood obesity, but I think they actually promote the idea of learning a sport in real life. For me, this game has been enjoyable and made me want to expand my real life experiences.

This is the time of the year where all of us do-it-yourselfers are trying our hardest not to alter legal fireworks to create something a little more impressive. There are lots of websites out there willing to tell you how to “hack” your fireworks, but we are more interested in you having a safe holiday.

Flickr has a group of interesting firework photos here:

• Flickr: Photos tagged with fireworks

This year, instead of trying to hack your fireworks so they are more dangerous than the state-allowed ones, try taking pictures of the “boring” fireworks that you can buy out of the box. Photographing fireworks ia a lot more difficult than it seems and getting the perfect photo is a challenge more worthy of your attention.

Here are some tips to take good firework pictures and video:

• You MUST have a tripod. Fireworks are lit at night, which means your exposures need to be longer and the camera needs to be still to really get a good shot.

• Be patient. Getting those shots might take a few times to get it right.

• Include your family. Somehow the picture of a child with a sparkler is far more interesting to me than the sparkler alone.

• Large scale fireworks look more interesting with a building or tree in the foreground. It shows scale (how big they are).

Instead of making the fireworks more dangerous to make things interesting, concentrate on capturing the moment. Have a safe and happy holiday.

I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on my Xbox for the last couple of days. I’m not finished with the game like some hardcore players could do in as much time. I usually don’t like fighting games, but this one was enjoyable somehow.

I tried to play some Star Wars games and I really hated them because one joystick controlled me and another controlled what I could see. Somehow my two hands weren’t able to get in sync and I was never able to see what I needed to see. Plus, I kept chopping C3PO’s leg off and he was hobbling around, nearly useless to me. I don’t want to have to worry about friendly fire when I’m trying to have fun.

With LOTR: Return of the King, I don’t have to worry about accidentally chopping Legolas or Gimli in half. I can just fight my hardest. The fact that I can’t control my view is bothersome at times because the game will have my character running straight toward the screen and I can’t see where I’m going, but that’s the exception more than the rule.

I have failed the missions MANY times. I’m new at computer fighting games, so it is taking me a while to get through this game. The worst part of failing is that I need to hear the whole story over again. I haven’t figured out a way to skip it, so I’ve seen the tree people pick up the hobbits so many times that I don’t ever want to hear about the Ents again. With all the repetition, you would think that I would hate the game, but I just get a drink of water while it replays. It’s bothersome, but not enough to make me hate the game.

I don’t like first-person shooters and I would classify this game as that except the only projectiles I shoot are arrows and super magic power stuff when I’m Gandolf. Somehow, I enjoy this game. Part of it is because of the story. I’m not much of a Tolkien fan. I’m not much of a fan of fantasy, either. Somehow, this game has roped me in and I’m liking it more than anything I’ve played in a while.

The cool thing is that it’s a pretty old game now, so you can get it used for a lot less than the poor saps who bought it when it was new.

This month’s Wired Magazine has a “Found Artifacts from the future” that I can’t wait to exist. Imagine contacts that will give you all the information you need right in front of your eyes.

Click here to see the full size image:

• Wired Magazine’s Found July 2006 – by Sean Hamilton Alexander

Someday, we will be able to easily access all the information we want. I don’t know how it will happen. Maybe it will be on our cell phones. Maybe it will be in a chip in our head. Maybe it will flash before our eyes on our contacts. I’m excited for the future to come.