Ten bits of Christmas crap

Well, have a look at your local store and you can’t miss that it is Christmas time. It’s the biggest gift buying season so I have prepared a list of techy goodies for you. Well these aren’t goodies more like baddies – stuff I couldn’t imagine anyone would want. (I know – I only have six bits of crap – I am sure you can add another four in the comments 🙂 ) . But seriously, just buy some gift cards for your family and friends, it’s easy and they will love them.

G-Mouse: The G-Mouse is the ultimate gadget for all those who want to add a little fun to their boring life. You can play your favourite games, surf the net or use all your office applications with the G-Mouse computer gun shaped mouse. Crap!





 

PC EZ-Bake Oven: Now the computer savvy among us can relive the fun of having your very own personal mini-oven with the PC Ez-Bake oven! It fits in a 5 1/4″ drive bay and plugs right into your power supply with the included Molex connector. Also included is “PC Ez-Cook”, the open-source oven controller software with a fuzzy-logic cooking control system to precisely measure the doneness of your cake or cookie. Crap!


Electronic Rock Paper Scissors: Based upon the traditional “rock, paper, scissors” game, this electronic version will randomly display one of four pre-set patterns. It’s an ideal gift for the extremely lazy or indecisive. Crap!


USB fan cooled seat cushion: Just what people need on hot Summer days (well, Christmas time is Summer over here in Australia) … a USB powered, fan cooled seat cushion. USB powered anything is getting to new heights (or lows) with this I think. Looks like it’s the new 2007 model – that’s a bonus! Crap!


USB pole dancer: The USB pole dancer is designed to be plugged into any pc USB port, of course, and comes complete with her own silver pole to dance around, as well as multi-coloured lights and disco music to “recreate an authentic nightclub atmosphere”. Once she is switched on she goes through a gyrating routine with the help of a pre-installed backing track. Just lovely. Crap!



 

Bad breath meter: Measure how stinky someones breath is. What ever you do don’t give this as a present – it may give the person a hint to take some mints butI guarantee you won’t be on the receiving end of a thank you kiss – maybe a slap on the face but not a kiss. Crap!

New version PS3 – cut down but super cheap

Sounds like Sony is going to release a new model of the failing PS3. I have read around the traps (that refer to JB hifi, a major retailer) that Sony will sell a cut down version of it’s PS3, with a smaller hard-drive, fewer ports but still with the BluRay drive – for around $300 cheaper than the current model – AUD$699!

This makes it within reasonable buying distance from Xbox and Wii and I am sure will take off in sales. AUD$1000 for the PS3 was just too crazy for our market and sales, or lack of, proved that. No mention of it but I wonder if the console will look different? And in reality, with our exchange rate to US dollar, the current 60GB PS3 should only be around the AUD$560 mark anyway, making this cut down version seem expensive. Sony is price gouging again?

Another thought – Would this be the same as the cheaper model the USA had but , of course, with a 40GB drive? Is Sony trying to dump unwanted older models on us?

As I mentioned, the new 40GB PS3 will have fewer features than the current 60GB with two USB 2.0 ports instead of four, no backward compatibility for PS2 games and no multimemory card port. Is lack of backward compatibility a problem? I don’t think so as I never player PS1 games on a PS2 so I would doubt I would play older games on this newer PS3. What do you think?

(I have just read that the Michael Ephraim, Managing Director SCE Aust. and New Zealand has confirmed this as well – looks like 11th October is the date!)

– Update, I have to say I still think it is over priced. With our exchange rate the PS3 should be around $200 cheaper!!

Face Training – on the DS

The Nintendo DS is a great little game system – I have two of them and although I don’t really play games (except a long while back) I occasionally will play against my son – wirelessly between the two DSs – or play Sudoku. Playing against another person makes game playing a lot better I think. A friend has the Brain Training cartridge that, amazingly, trains your brain. Whether it does, who knows – it is fun though.

I have just found a new, weird game for the DS – Facening de Hyoujou Yutaka ni Inshou Up: Otona no DS Kao Training (I think) . Basically this is Face Training!

What is face training? It is pretty much pulling funny faces that in turn strengthen the underlying muscles and this is then meant to help make you be more beautiful. 🙂 Does it work? I don’t know… I am lucky, I don’t need it 🙂

The game has a camera as well so you can see on one screen the exercise and on the other screen yourself doing it. Looks like Japan only but I am sure if you really wanted it you could understand what to do.

Blue Screen of Death, Spiderman style

My son got a Megabloks Spiderman toy the other week and inside Green Goblins Lair there are three computer screens.

I just had to take a photo – have a look at the one in the centre – that’s right, poor old Goblin has got a Blue Screen Of Death 🙂 Well , I thought it was funny, the toy designers must have a warped sense of humour!

(click for the full photo)

And speaking of little block characters, Lego has got a great range of Star Wars Lego minifigures set. Have a look at these Lego minifigures, aren’t they fantastic?

Who had one of these? – Intellivision

Memories… I remember saving my dollars and buying, what I thought was, the best Console available.  I think it cost me around AUD$300, not sure though, whatever it did cost it was a tonne of cash back then and heaps more than the Atari.

The Intellivision was introduced a few years after the Atari and was the world’s first 16-bit game console. I loved  the controllers and their built-in keypad. The games came with an overlay that slid in and covered the keypad. The graphics and sound , wow, there wasn’t anything better.

Here’s a couple of photos (all pics are clickable to full size) of the system and three games that I remember I had, Baseball, Night Stalker, and Space Battle. I am sure I had a heap more but they are the ones I must have played the most. The games shown below are the Overlays for the controllers, the boxes and links to youtube videos of the gameplay (geez, youtube has everything!) . A site, Intellivision Lives, even lets you download around half a dozen of the games free and have even made a Nintendo DS version (although no company has picked it up to sell).

Intellivision – the PS3 of the ’80s !

(BTW, if anyone sees one of these for sale on the Gold Coast, let me know. I would love to have one again.)

   youtube Baseball

youtube NightStalker

 

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Thanks to Duncan , Coach , Benedict , Homemom , Goldy , BlogOp for all the comments on previous posts.

Heroes

Where are these heroes now? I bet they were the coolest of cool back in the day but now, I wonder.

Bill, the guy in front of the Centipede game, looks like he could be in porn movies , the others…who knows. (click for bigger pics)

Thanks to Swollen Pickles (great name) and Chris for recent comments in previous posts.

Cat’s Arse Sharpener

Amazing! I will just quote from IWOOT site as I couldn’t write it any better.

This is a bold statement, but I think we can go so far as to say that this is the silliest, and doubtless the most tasteless piece of desk paraphernalia that we have encountered.

Introducing the Cat’s Arse Sharpener. Sigh. There are no words that readily spring to mind to soften the blow. It’s a cat, you stick your pencil in its derrière, it meows, and it sharpens your pencil. Your feline friend stands in his own litter tray that catches your pencil shavings.

No animals were harmed in the making of this product. Don’t try sharpening your pencil in a real cat if you value your life.

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Transformers – robots in disguise

Is this the ultimate in advertising?

This transformer, which is a collaboration between Tomy toys and Nike, turns into a half-scale mini-runners of Nikes model Free7.o. Cool as.
Gone are the days when Transformers just turned into cars. Next thing they’ll be turning into delicious 3-course dinners, or rabbits you can keep as pets.

These go on sale in Japan for about Y2600 (US$22).

I am guessing there will be a whole lot more Transformer products coming out leading up to the release of the new movie soon.

info from- mainichi daily

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PS3 for AUD$349

Target Australia has just released PS3’s for a great price of AUD$349 – remember these are normally close to AUD$1000!

Only a limited time and you must mention me to get the discount … that’s right, I did a deal with the chain.

More detail next page.

New Xbox360 soon – silly price assured.

Just quickly.

It seems that maybe Microsoft will go the same way as Sony with consoles.

They are releasing a new xbox360 – it has HDMI and a bigger hard-drive (120GB) and will be only about US$30 less than the PS3. That is in the US so I am guessing it will be $899 here, way too much. And no mention that it has HDdvd built-in…

crazy prices me thinks, how much extra would a larger HD and HDMI cost, just about nothing.!