Reviews

There are 143 posts filed in Reviews (this is page 12 of 15).

The stinky dishwasher

We were pretty happy with the appliances that came with our house. The stainless-steel finishes add a nice touch to our kitchen. We get a lot of comments about them from our guests.

Fortunately for they don’t get a whiff of our Bosch dishwasher. While its got a spiffy stainless-steel look and is one of the quietest dishwashers I’ve ever heard, it has a B.O. problem.

Due to an apparent design flaw in the Bosch models, water collects in the bottom of the dishwasher – where it festers to the point of being knock-you-over stinky. Even one day after running it! There doesn’t seem to be any real solution to the problem other than spiking the remaining water with some bacteria-killing concoction or replacing the unit altogether.

A Google Search on “stinky Bosch” shows thousands of hits on the problem (like this one, for instance). Be wary of Bosch dishwashers!

I can hear you, can you hear me? R.E.M. visits Raleigh

Here’s your official MT.Net #remnc review:

It takes an exceptional band to drag me out to Walnut Creek Amphitheatre. With its $6 per-person parking fees, $11 beers, TicketMaster headaches, Gestapo-like security checks, and in-your-face advertisements, the place screams corporate rock. No matter if my seats are reserved or on the lawn I always feel a little dirty after a show there. Fortunately, R.E.M. is one band worth seeing.
Continue reading →

Truman

I’ve become addicted to PBS’s American Experience series profiling the Presidents. Last night was the second part of their program on Harry Truman and it didn’t disappoint.

I knew of some of the important things Truman accomplished but the program really put them into perspective for me. Here was a guy who had been a farmer and a failed small businessman that was chosen to be Vice President. Less than three months later, he becomes President and has to pull himself up by the bootstraps as Roosevelt had basically ignored him.
Continue reading →

Three digit temperatures call for three dimensions

There are few places better to be when its sweltering outside than a cool movie theater. We took advantage of our Marbles membership and hot-footed it over to the IMAX theater for the noon showing of Bugs! 3D. We had cool prime seats in front of a five-story tall silver screen.

It was the Travis’s first theater experience, and Hallie’s second. For both it was their first time at a 3D movie. They had me laughing as they reached out and grabbed the butterflies appearing to fly right towards them.

We then moseyed over to the museum for an hour or two of play. All in all it was a great way to escape the heat.

(Incidentally, 3D movies are a great way of scratching the 3D itch I had.)

Hey makers! Check out the FlyCamOne2!

Remember the Neuros Recorder2, the tiny MPEG4 recorder I’ve raved about?

Old and busted! The new hotness is the FlyCamOne2. It is a gadget with 640×480 video and audio recording, built-in camera, and an infrared motion sensor. It records straight to an SD card. Heck, it even charges from a USB port! And the whole thing is just 100 bucks!

This thing might be small enough to mount on my mythical weather balloon project.

Update: Nevermind….the FlyCamOne2 is old and busted, too. That didn’t take long. The new hotness is the Oregon Scientific Action Cam, which apparently has better video (and the upcoming 3K release supports 4GB SD cards). The 2K model can be had for $92 at Circuit City.

Check out the videos [warning: self-playing flash] from the ATC 2K, including this cool model rocket video.

Mouthpiece success!

Before bed last night I went through the “boil-and-bite” procedure to fit my ..uh, “anti-snoring” mouthpiece to my mouth. I popped the mouthpiece into my mouth right after turning out the light just like the prosthodontist said to do and I waited in the dark to see how long it would take before I hurled it across the room and slept without it.
Continue reading →

Neuros Recorder-2: a pocket-sized digital VCR!

I wanted to get set up where I could easily record and digitize video, so I purchased a Neuros Recorder-2 this week from Buy.com. The Recorder-2 is a tiny MPEG-4 recorder which records video straight to a CompactFlash (CF) card. Its the size of a deck of cards and it is awesome.

Its designed to snarf video from any composite video source. This means it has no TV tuner in itself. However, hook it up to your VCR, satellite TV receiver, or video camera and it will compress anything its fed to an MPEG4 file silently and professionally. You can choose resolutions from 176×144 at 15 frames per second (fps) to above-VHS-quality 640×480 at 30fps. It records sound in 128Kbps mp3 stereo, too.
Continue reading →

First meeting of Raleigh Neighborhood College

I went to my first meeting of the Raleigh Neighborhood College last Thursday. I would’ve blogged about it that night but it turned out I was out later than I expected.

The classes are held at Peace College, incredibly convenient to my job. I arrived a little after five, walked into the dining hall, got introduced to Charlene Willard (one of Raleigh’s Community Specialists) and enjoyed a fine dinner while getting to know my fellow classmates. Twenty-five citizens from all over the city share the class. They’re a very energetic, friendly bunch, too, from what I’ve gathered.
Continue reading →