Archive for 2012

This post sponsored by Best Buy I’ve been a home theater buff since the earliest surround-sound systems came out back in the 1980s. Since then, I’ve seen my home theater transform from a 25″ Trinitron CRT with a Betamax Hi-Fi deck, giant speakers and a standalone Dolby processor to a razor-thin 64″ plasma TV with a Blu-ray player, a couple of game consoles and a 7.1 surround system.

I’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t yet finished campaign mode on Halo 4, but I’m gradually making my way through all of the missions. One weapon that I have yet to stumble onto (other than in Infinity multiplayer mode) this time is the classic energy sword.

Remember the classic Pixar animated clip, Luxo, Jr.? You know, the one with the pair of articulating Anglepoise lamps playing around, and shown with the Pixar logo at the beginning of their flicks? Well, in the latest occurrence of life imitating art imitating life, some guys have actually built an animatronic lamp that moves around like the one in the movies.

Earlier this year we saw a calculator playing Pokémon via a Game Boy Color emulator. Redditor Builderboy2005 has made something way better (or worse, depending on your expectations). Portal Prelude, a game for Texas Instruments calculators.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of the Wii because I want to play Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story. Datel’s soon-to-be-released adapter could prove handy for a longtime PlayStation gamer like me, because it allows one to use a PS2 DualShock controller with the Wii and the new Wii U.

I think back to the days of my old 8-bit NES console and when games came on cartridges. There were definitely advantages of the medium, in that you never had to worry about scratched discs, and they loaded instantly.

Now I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to draw on U.S. currency, but the way I see it, it’s your money and you should be allowed to do what you want with it. So while these hacked dollar bills are probably no longer legal tender, they are pretty damned awesome anyhow.

Portal is one of the best puzzle-solving games of all time, IMHO. That said, I’ve played through every level of both Portal and Portal 2, and really am jonesing for some new Portal goodness. While it may be a while before Portal 3 gets made, I guess I’ll have to fill that empty place in my heart with some empty carbs.

A baby girl named Hashtag. A fox that can answer calls and send text messages. And now birds that tweet? Now I’ve seen everything. Of course, these birds were only able to do so with the help of humans.

Humans are always trying to push the boundaries and extend technology, even in places where they don’t belong and to species who shouldn’t have to deal with them in the first place. Case in point: Lars and his fox texting experiment.

Taking care of babies is hard. You have to feed them every few hours, check them if they’ve pooped or peed regularly, and change them if they did. I stayed with my sister once when she just had her baby and all I can say is, it was a pretty exhausting ordeal.

While most of us will never get the chance to travel to far-off planets in a spaceship, that doesn’t mean we can’t fantasize about space travel right here on planet Earth. If you’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, then you might want to order your very own space helmet.

While I usually associate the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with unhealthy food like pizza, it turns out the turtles can also be used to encourage healthy eating. Assuming, that is, that you plant some delicious edible plants and herbs in these TMNT flower pots and don’t use them to serve slices of cold pizza.

While there are already a handful of displays on the market with 4K pixel resolution, they’re extremely expensive, and there’s very little content available for them. Now, RED Digital Cinema has announced a new video player capable of outputting 4K video without breaking the bank too badly.

When it gets cold, it’s not so easy to use your smartphone. Even though you can eventually get it to work after trying a couple of times, eventually you end up frustrated enough to simply pull off your gloves.

People seem to be coming up with all sorts of bizarre ways to get people’s packages to them. First, there was Cardrops, which is a start-up that delivers your stuff to your car trunk instead of your home.