This week on Facebook there are loads of those ‘what I do, what friends think I do, what my parents think I do …’ picture collages going around. Some are funny, some simply try too hard. There are always a bunch of comments which I can summarize to save you time:  ”haha … so true”. (you’re welcome) I caught this one on a guitar-centric site this week, and what was amazing was not so much the image, which is just another mildly amusing stereotype at play, but the discussion. If you look at the core of the image, there are two potential separate messages as well as the combined one.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I was checking out these JayBird Bluetooth stereo headphones on the company website and figured I would watch the promotional videos. One was so creative… and funny… that I just had to share.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My father-in-law Mark is a contractor (yup, he is a Jewish carpenter) and he lives by the maxim “Measure Twice, Cut Once”. After all, once you cut a board there is no going back so it makes sense to double-check the before you saw. It is good advice when cutting wood, but it also applies if you have a subscription to Hulu+ or Netflix. Here’s why …… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Digital textbooks are a bit like alchemy. Everyone wants to find the magic formula, but the experiments just come out as useless lumps, rather than shiny bits of gold. Even iBooks 2 has many skeptics, despite Apple’s deep pockets and impressive publishing contacts. But the best illustration of how tangled and inefficient the eTextbook market is can be seen in the fight between Cengage (a publisher) and Kno (one of the 49,000 services trying to cash in on digital learning).… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Admittedly, this winter for Ohio has been a bust where snow is concerned. However, living where I do winter inhabitants are occasionally bedeviled by ice storms or significant ice accumulation. Late January for me was one such episode where we received between 0.25″ to 0.5″ of ice accumulation and a dusting of freezing sleet. Walking in such weather on untreated or partially treated surfaces can be very tricky. Fortunately for me as a Christmas gift I received two pairs of Snowtrax 2 slip-on cleats that made all the difference on that treacherous day. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Watch how my thought process goes … 1. We have a Beta fish named Brad; he lives in a goldfish bowl that sits on our credenza, and every chance she gets, our cat Avah likes to drink water from his bowl. She’s not trying to eat Brad, or at least we haven’t seen her try, but she seems to love his fish flavored water. This bothers me, because she has been known to lap his water down to less than half a bowl when we have been away. 2. In order to really see Brad I have to bend down, because the credenza is counter level and not eye level. This means I don’t enjoy his fiery colors nearly as often as I would like to. Those are two of the arguments I’m using to justify purchasing the Synthetik Park Wall Aquarium. Pretty convincing reasons, right?… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I was driving in the car and a tune came on that was awesome. It wasn’t familiar and I wanted to make sure I could hear it again so… at the stop sign of course, I pulled out my iPad, fired up SoundHound, and I searched for the song.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

 “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” -  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Yes, space IS big, but that is only one side of the coin of the known Universe—there are items known and believed to exist that are incredibly small. Cary and Michael Huang have created a fascinating web page, The Scale of the Universe 2 that permits the scientifically voyeuristic to view a large number of items in the Universe to scale relative to each other. Think electrons are small? Think your house is large in the scheme of things? Think again!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Sometimes it is the little things that make all the difference. That’s the case with the Bones Link II. Let me back up a bit. The other day I ordered a 16GB RAM upgrade from Crucial for my new iMac. At under $100 it was a great deal. When I went to check out I was offered the opportunity to buy the Bones Link II iPod/iPhone adapter at half price since I had purchased RAM. Normally it is $11.99 so at half that I figured why not and ordered one. The adapter  is described this way … Here’s a great way to recharge your iPhone or iPod – the Bones Link II. No more hassling Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This is a sponsored post, all opinions written here  are mine. Make Calls, Save Money Have you tried Vonage’s new mobile app? It lets you make free calls to other people using the Vonage app. It lets you save 70% over the major mobile carriers and 30% over Skype’s rates. It works over WiFi, 3G and 4G wireless data networks worldwide, with WiFi being the most economical method of all. And it is simple. The interface is familiar, you can add calling credit right on the device itself themselves in increments of $4.99 and $9.99 and the call quality is great. Best of all, in order to get people using… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Are you a fan of shooter-style games – either first or third person – like the Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto games? Well, AppSpire.me has put together a list of the ‘top 10′ shooter games on the iTunes App Store in the form of a cool infographic. While I’m sure there is a reason for them pushing certain games, all I know is this – the list features games like Grand Theft Auto III, Modern Combat 3 and ShadowGun, which are definitely three of the top shooters available for the mobile platform! Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Players who purchased a Battlefield 3 online pass can now try out the demo for Mass Effect 3, the highly anticipated sci-fi role-playing (RPG)/third person shooter game that is being touted as “the final chapter” in the popular game trilogy.

Despite my reputation of being very clumsy, I have worn glasses for over 20 years without breaking them. Until last week’s vacation, when I left them on the bed and smashed them. Oops.   To be fair, being at sea apparently exacerbates my natural klutziness, since I also went flying off a water tube, fell off a chair, and walked head first into a tree branch. So I guess I should be happy my glasses were the main victims.   However, this did mean I needed new ones, and I apparently picked a good month for it! Costco has a coupon for $30 off frames, and best of all it is unlimited use, meaning you can buy more than… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

You can only sling so many angry birds at chortling pigs before your mind goes numb and you want something … different. Sometimes the simplest things can captivate the imagination; a case in point would be this lovely low-tech and natural puzzle made from a slice of cypress. The puzzle is made from the wood of Cypress trees, that died naturally and it does keep me wondering about the history of the tree and its surroundings. Unfortunately I didn’t find this object too near to the region of the Patagonian Andes lakes, where it actually comes from. I simply never been there, although it is said to be an incredible area. I came across the ‘Time Rings’ puzzle while switching planes in La Plata, Buenos Aires, almost 1000 miles up north. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Paramount Pictures and video game publisher and developer NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. will release their collaboration video game project in the first quarter of 2013 near the upcoming film sequel from J. J. Abrams hitting theaters on May 17, 2013.