My son's new DSi and other geeky topics


My son is a middle school boy which means he likes geeky video game stuff, so he just bought himself a Nintendo DSi. Personally, I did not see the $169 value in the device since he already had a DS Lite, but since his DS Lite's touchscreen had a few problems and he loves stimulating the economy, we let him waste some of his own money. The new DSi looks astonishingly like his DS Lite with two cameras added and an SD card slot. I just received my latest free copy of PC World (more on that later) and they spelled out their likes and dislikes on the updated handheld gaming device. I cannot believe it has a built-in audio player that only accepts AAC formatted audio and not MP3. Luckily it is simple to convert from MP3 to AAC using a free utility like dbPowerAmp music converter, but to convert the 400 songs from his iPod Touch would still take a long time using dMC. Since every other device known to mankind uses the MP3 format, why couldn't Nintendo follow suit?

One thing I have always hated about iPods is how Apple requires you to use iTunes to add media to their devices and made it very difficult to pull files off of them. Once I tried using an older copy of MediaMonkey with my daughter's iPod Touch and due to an MediaMonkey incompatibility it ended up wiping the whole library off the Touch (luckily my daughter didn't mind since all the crap on the iPod was from her younger brother anyway!) I had found some software before that let you access your iPod files, but they all cost real money, until I saw the article in the new PC World about SharePod. The actual application is simply one binary file that downloads in a ZIP file along with a readme. That is it. I tested it out on my son's iPod Touch (of course, he has one now since his older sister received one first!). SharePod is not as fancy as iTunes, nor as pretty -- but it works! It lets you pull files from your iPod and put files on simply without using the massive application known as iTunes. Another great free application made available to the public, this time brought to my attention by the folks at PC World.

And if you were wondering how I received a copy of PC World for free I got it through FreeBizMag.com. The vast majority of the IT magazines they offer for free are incredibly boring, but every now and then to entice IT professionals like myself to sign up for the boring ones they offer a free "fun" magazine like PC World or ComputerShopper as an enticement. Of course, the fact that I consider PC World or ComputerShopper to be the "fun" magazines tells something about myself. Another way to earn free magazine subscriptions is to answer endless surveys at e-Rewards.com.

And while I am on my soapbox, I was looking for my freebizmag.com e-mails in my Yahoo! mail account, and I must say, their "search" function on their web mail interface works horribly. In comparison, GMail's search capabilities are a wonder in finding old messages, but Yahoo's search offering does not find anything. If they ever want to compete they truly must fix their search so that is actually returns something.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions
Read more