I feel bad for the poor soul singing the national anthem at any of the Dallas Stars games. The US National Anthem has the word star twice in the lyrics. The fans have made it their own and yell STARS each time. I don’t know how you practice for an arena full of people yelling STARS while you’re trying to sing but alas the singers manage to do it. The video here was shot October 25, 2008 vs. Washington Capitols during which game the Stars lost 5-6 in Overtime.

I’m not a person that buys Wii accessories like the sports pack (tennis racket, golf club, etc) but when I saw these I could not resist. I’ve seen the Wii branded swords and while they are cool, they aren’t quite as cool as these.

Thrustmaster Glow Saber Dou Pack

Thrustmaster Glow Saber Dou Pack is a Star Wars Lightsaber Wii accessory. $34.99 from Amazon for the two-pack which is $5 above the price of a single Wii branded sword. Each saber detaches from the handle, one sword red and one blue. The lights are sufficiently bright to be seen in the brightest of light or in direct sunlight. I was a little worried they would be cheap plastic accessories but I was pleasantly surprised to discover they are actually quite sturdy and will withstand a number of blows on the couch, ceiling fan, bystanders, children, dogs, chairs, lamps and anything else that might be in the way. Normally I don’t use the Wiimote wrist strap but felt compelled to do so while playing The Force Unleashed, fearing a flung sword through a window or *gasp* the TV.

There are a couple drawbacks to the swords, which the geek factor far outweigh, the handles are thick enough that it buttons on the remote are too easily pressed. Playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed today, I eventually had to remote the remotes when playing Junk Titan. I continuously pressed one of the buttons pausing the game, usually at the wrong moment. The second drawback, which is less important once playing this particular game, the saber completely blocks the IR port of the Wiimote.

Despite these two draw backs I can’t wait for Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels to be released November 11. Oh, I almost forgot in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed the Wiimote makes lightsaber sounds adding to the effect of the saber. Hopefully Thrustmaster will offer replacement sabers or color options. For now blue and red will suffice as I wait for Clone Wars next month.

Sling Media released their latest Slingbox two weeks ago, the Slingbox Pro-HD. The unit looks sharp with the glowing red signature N on the front.

Setup of the Pro-HD was easy enough. Not that I actually read the manual, the manual gives you enough instruction to get going. On an environmental level and as a recovering packrat I’m glad Sling Media doesn’t include a CD in the box and instead directs you to their website to download it. Commonsense dictates someone buying a Slingbox suggests they also have a high speed internet connection sufficient to download the 92MB file in short order.
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Day one (part 1, part 2) wasn’t without a glitch or two but I did have a visitor from Sweden. I started off talking about Ovi. Moh (pronounced MOO like a cow makes) asked about politics. We learned he is an iPhone user for more than 2 years now. Won’t you join me on Monday morning between 7:30 and 8AM CDT (-5GMT).

Good morning, morning here in Texas nevertheless. I want to try an experiment using Qik and my N95. Every morning (Monday through Friday) I have 20-30 minutes while driving to work, why not do something interesting with that time? Every morning during my drive I’m going to start streaming via Qik and talk about something of interest, likely mobile or tech related. Here’s where you, our reader, comes in? By visiting my Qik Page you can ask questions that will appear on the screen. To ensure the stream is as live (not delayed) as possible and so I can read your messages I’m going to be using the forward facing camera. The downside of course is the quality is going to be less than the N95’s VGA quality capability. Please join me a few minutes past 7:30 CDT (-5 GMT) until just before 8:00 AM. Come join me, ask a question or chat about something of interest.

via Darlamack.com

Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duel

Now that I have seen the movie this game is even more appealing to me. Between Clones Wars: Lightsaber Duel and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed the Wii should see some serious lightsaber action in the living room. Between these two games I’m leaning more towards Clones Wars for its entertainment value however, I’m definitely going to give them both a try.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

I’m going to have to start saving for this one now. Admittedly I have a couple webcams around here somewhere but they are lame USB model and I’m a sucker for anything wireless. Throw in a Star Wars theme with the ability to control it remotely and I’m sold!

The recent upgrade to Wordpress 2.6.1 caused an unusually high load on the server CPU. The high load temporarily cause my site to be disabled. My posts should be reloaded in the next few days.

I arrived home yesterday to little yellow flags and spray paint markings decorating the neighborhood. On first glace I began thinking about all the apparent digging to ensue for these are the flags and markings indicating natural gas lines and various other buried items.

Technorati Tags: Verizon, FIOS, Internet, TV, Charter, AT&T, U-Verse

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Everyday the N810 seemingly replaces my laptop in yet another way. Transmission, a simple yet powerful bitTorrent client, is another example of a fine Maemo application that adds more versatility to this already versitile platform.

I recently wrote about some of my favorite Maemo applications and I can see Transmission quickly earning its place among these applications. Granted Transmission is a little light on features compared to its PC bitTorrent counter parts but is stable and does the job well. The options you really need: bandwidth throttling, port configuration, among others are there, to satisfy your bitTorrent needs anywhere.

-Written via Nokia N810 using MaemoWordPy

Technorati Tags: transmission, bittorrent, maemo, N810