Visit the Shaks

Were you one of the lucky folks able to snag a Nintendo Wii before they all sold out in minutes after delivery?  I was not, but I know some of you out there were able to, and I know you need some new accessories to go along with your new toy.  Check this out.

To do anything on the Wii, you pretty much just swing your arms around and pantomime your bowling throw, your sword swing, or your gun blast, right?  Well, if you need a little help with your imagining, then you might want to check out the Wii Weapon Kit.  It contains 8 foam pieces to turn your Wiimote into a wii-pon of warfare, from three different knife attachments, a sword attachment, an axe attachment, a shield attachment, and even a gun handle for those breakneck sessions of Resident Evil:  The Umbrella Chronicles.

I know that if I had a Wii I'd have to have something to turn those harmless Wiimotes into more fitting gear for a foolhardy warrior fighting off zombie hordes.      

This holiday season, I ordered most of my gifts from Amazon.  Normally I don't have a problem with Amazon, as it's my preferred way to buy gifts for folks I don't live near.  I order my gifts about the same time every year, but for some reason, this year, I had not one, not three, but at least 5 gifts that, while ordered in the middle of December, won't be shipped until well after New Year's Day. 

I didn't think there'd be a huge run on Altered States and Saturday Night Fever, but maybe there was.  Considering the gifts were all in stock and had ship before Christmas dates when I ordered them, I don't know what happened.  Did anyone else have problems with Amazon running out of gifts, or was it just me? 

So the holidays have come and gone for everyone who celebrates some sort of big winter-based gift-exchange festival (so far as I know, anyway).  So how’d you guys like your holiday?  Did Patrick Swayze leave you lots of great gifts down at the Road House this year?  I sure hope you were good this year, because Patrick Swayze doesn’t leave coal in your stocking; Patrick Swayze leaves you beatings if you don’t put out his lite beer and stretch pants. 

Now I didn’t get everything I want.  I didn’t get Blade Runner on DVD, my enemies weren’t struck down by lightning bolts, and I didn’t get my Track Racing Grannies from I Want One Of Those.  Which is a shame, too, because I really felt the need.  The need for elderly speed. 

Ah well, there’s always next year, I guess.

I don't know about you guys, but I think I have a project for next Christmas.  The hard/fun part is drinking 1050 bottles of beer!

I have a friend who is the biggest Peanuts fan ever, but I don't think even she would fork over $2700 for an underpowered Peanuts-themed laptop from Epson.  I mean, it's cute and all, I guess, but... for that much money I could buy a gaming laptop that would absolutely eat this thing's lunch and get as many Peanuts stickers as I could possibly want to decorate it.

Hopefully it's just a really old spec.  Otherwise the Japanese are crazier than I thought, and I thought they were pretty crazy.  I can definitely tell you they're crazy about Peanuts and Hello Kitty.

We here at Shakadoo would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and friendships. Each and every one of you have brought us to where we are, and inspire us daily. Thank you for all of your suggestions, comments and loyalty. It has been a pleasure getting to know so many of you, and we look forward to the opportunity to make even more friendships through out 2008.

We wish you a joyous and safe Holiday and of course a prosperous New Year!

Kathy, Kathylynn, and Bill

Now, there are a lot of people who like to multitask.  I'm doing three things at once as we speak (watching TV, typing a post, and chatting on messenger), so I'm definitely in the target audience.  However, the one place I don't multitask is the one place everyone else seems to love to multitask. 

That's right, boys and girls, I'm talking about the head.  The loo.  The potty.  The outhouse.  Crapula's castle.  Dr. Stinkenstein's laboratory.  Game Daily has a list of games they feel are toilet-appropriate, either because they're easy or they can tie the game/its objectives to toilet humor. 

I can't speak for anyone else, but the thought of someone playing video games on the toilet is kind of gross, but not as gross as someone leaving a stack of magazines by the potty, someone leaving the newspaper in a bathroom stall, and even worse, someone on the phone while in the midst of bowel evacuation.  Seriously, the only thing worse than talking to me while I'm trying to do my business is hearing someone else talking on the phone while they do their business. 

What is wrong with people that they can't even bother to poop without some sort of distraction?  If you're on the toilet so long you get bored, then put down the PSP and pick up some freakin' fiber!

So, you've got this friend who absolute loves his or her World of Warcraft characters.  I mean, they won't shut up talking about their level 70 Dwarf Warrior or their Blood Elf Paladin or whatever glass cannon clothie of the week they've leveled to 70.  What in the world could you possibly get someone who spends so much time in their game that they, you know, neglect the important things, like TV and the high fantasy novels of Robert Jordan?

WoW Insider has your hookup, with one of the longest and most complete lists of WoW-related swag on the internet.  If you hurry, you can probably get that present on their doorstep by Christmas.  Failing that, you can always drop a little cash to buy them something in-game, if you're so inclined.  I, personally, could use 5000 gold for an epic flying mount, and possibly a Blinkstrike.

Image:  MysticlyClear

This is the perfect marriage of the digital age and old school. There's a person on eBay selling, well, I'll let them tell you:

You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.

Here is the arrangement:

I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.

During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.

These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.

The postcards will not be coherently signed, leaving your mark confused, guessing wildly, crying out in anguish.

"How do I know this person? And how does he know I had a ferret named Goliath?"

Your beloved friend or relative will try in vain to figure out who it is. Best of all, it can't possibly be you because you'll have the perfect alibi: you're not in Poland. You're home, wherever that is, doing whatever it is you do when not driving your friends loopy with international prankery.

Your target will rack their brains in the shower. At dinner. During long drives. At work. On the golf course.

"Who did I tell about the time I got fired by a note on my chair?" they'll ponder,  "And where the hell is Szczeczinek?"

Ah, if only I had the address of my arch-nemesis. That's, I guess, where the digital age fails me. I mean, how do you google the address of someone named Serr8d*?

*just kidding, Serr.

HT: The beautiful, brilliant Jag

Everyone who buys a laptop needs a cool bag.  Nobody wants to carry around some plain old black sack like everyone else, and not everyone wants to dedicate a big chunk of backpack which won't actually protect your precious lappy in the event of a mild jostling.  Those computers are both delicate and expensive, after all.

Now, I use Alienware's AlienArmor briefcase to protect my laptop, but that's because I have a 17-inch laptop that would cost me two arms, a leg, and most of my toes to replace (also, whenever I go anywhere with it, I feel like a spy... which is a great feeling).  It generally stays on my desk next to my faithful desktop, and it usually only goes with me when I travel somewhere or when, for whatever reason, I need to be away from my desktop but still wasting time.  I actually don't boot it up that often, because I'm so used to the way my desktop is laid out. 

If I was carrying around a little 15-inch Dell or something for my daily business, or back and forth to classes at school (I can type faster than I can write, and I can actually read my typing, but I could never afford a laptop when I was in college because I had to budget most of my money for pizza and beer), I'd probably pick up this awesome-looking Halo 3 Messenger Bag.  It's a good daily use bag, as it holds your laptop, 2 text books, and various accessories.

Plus, did I mention it looks awesome?  Because it totally does.   

It's one of the tiniest PCs I have ever seen. And at $99 (when you buy their $15 a month service plan for 2 years), the price is not bad, either. Zonbu has a really neat design for their PCs and laptops- they're eco-friendly, using less electricity than most PCs, and they are loaded with geek-friendly (but user friendly as well, they claim) Linux Zonbu OS.

Sounds fabulous, but I wish they had a brick and mortar store so I could try before I bought. The price is great if you go with their 2 year service plan, but you end up paying about as much as you would if you bought a lower-end Dell. I dunno. Has anyone had experience with these?

I have an electric blanket, and I swear that it's changed the way I sleep.  No more bundled up beneath several blankets and sheets.  No more sleeping in sweaters, long pants, and two pairs of socks.  I can sleep how I want, for as long as I want, so long as I set the dial to the right number to keep me toasty warm.  When my blanket is on, it stays on for a few hours, and once I'm asleep, presumably it turns itself off.

In the days previous to the invention of the non-scalding electric blanket, people used water bottles.  Basically, you fill up a rubber bladder with scalding hot water, put it in your bed at your feet, and hoped it didn't leak and burn you.  Thank goodness for the microwavable heated teddy bear from GadgetShop.  You can heat him up when you need warmth in the summer, freeze him down when you need coolness in the summer, and cuddle him when you need someone to love on those lonely nights.

He's as much fun as a real bear, and you don't have to worry about him ever eating your face!

HT:  PopGadget

Blade Runner is the most influential science fiction film of the last 25 years.  Yes, I'm including Star Wars (which I love) in that list.  However, there's been a small problem with the film:  Blade Runner was never properly finished.

The studio constantly interfered with the shoot, which was long, expensive, and unpleasant for everyone involved.  But now, 25 years later with the release of the massive Final Cut edition, this seminal science fiction classic is FINALLY ready and Ridley Scott can finally say he's finished with the film.  The film has seen a limited re-release in theaters, which my colleague at Den of Geek, Sean Hogan (not related to me, though I love his last name) reviewed here.

I'll be ordering mine from Amazon shortly, and if there's enough interest I'll review it here, but if you 're wanting to know what's been changed from the 1982 version you know and love (or any of the three other versions that are included in the new boxed set), check out Martin Anderson's in-depth review of the changes made here. 

For the record, I do write at Den of Geek, but I'm not linking these columns because of that; I'm linking these because Martin's the most passionate Blade Runner fan I've ever seen and Den of Geek has the most coverate of the new Blade Runner release on the Internet right now, including an interview with Vangelis.  You expect that sort of passion from Star Wars or Star Trek fans, but apparently there's at least one Blade Runner fanatic out there.

This one has been everywhere today, but it's too cool for me to not join in on the posting bandwagon and share it over here, too. 

As you can see by the picture to right of your monitor, it's a giant NES control pad.  Inside that control pad is a fully-functioning (albeit mediocre) computer.  Who cares if it won't play Crysis, it's a giant NES controller!  That's cooler than any HP Blackbird or Alienware laptop.

Check out the picture gallery here!

My daughter is the exact demographic UbiSoft is aiming their new line of video games designed for preteen girls. The Imagine series has games like Imagine Fashion Designer, Imagine Master Chef, and Imagine Babyz.

As you can, heh, imagine, the Fashion Designer game is highly coveted by my clothes-obsessed, "I want to be a fashionista" daughter. Before buying the game, however, I looked for reviews and was not terribly excited by them. IGN gives it a 3 out of 10 rating, calling it frustrating and repetitive; GameFly's users have rated it a 4.9 out of 10 with no actual reviews- people don't generally seem to be impressed by this game.

My best friend and I were talking last night and she said it seemed as though I had skipped a generation. Girl gamers in my age group are a whole lot more rare than girl gamers in my daughter's age group. While it's good to see the game developers are coming up with games aimed at girls, producing soulless tripe is not going to fool this bright group of girls.

Fortunately, there are plenty of games that are not specifically aimed at girls that do draw big female audiences, like Harvest Moon, Cooking Mama and Animal Crossing. These are good games with depth that keep the kids playing for a long time.

Now, if we could just get a fashion designer game that's actually fun.

NifNaks has the true story of Christmas, featuring the presence of both the Flying Spaghetti Monster and my personal hero, Cthulhu.  As we all know, pasta deities and soul-eating octopus dragon monsters never get along, and on one fateful Christmas, they clashed memorably.  There were also pirates involved, if you're into that sort of thing. 

You can read all about the exciting event here, and then follow the handy-dandy links to recreate the carnage and terror of this battle of intergalactic titans (as opposed to Tennessee Titans) on your very own Christmas tree in felt ornament form!  Reenact the epic battle, or change the outcome of history as you see fit!

You know, most of my life I thought crafting stuff was lame, like for grandmothers and people with too much time on their hands but who didn't like to read books, but now I'm kind of coming around and wishing I'd learned to knit, so I could make little fuzzy monsters of my own.

Now this looks like a pretty decent stocking stuffer.  A Millennium Falcon controller featuring Star Wars games that look suspiciously like sections of the awesome old SNES Star Wars games for only $25 (and cheaper at Amazon, if you believe Wonderland)?  I'm totally there!

Even if the games are awful, and they probably are, that's still one of the coolest-looking things you could ever have taking up space on your shelf, especially if you can get it on the cheap.

Well, I hate to say I told you so, but last week I went around to my friends and told them in no uncertain terms that CompUSA, the venerable mediocre retailer of overpriced electronics, was going to go under soon, so to be prepared for the bargain rush.  And now, it's official.

I won't say I'm sad to see CompUSA go, because they were mostly awful stores that were difficult to navigate, full of people who didn't know their backsides from a hole in the ground, and had mostly mediocre to poor-quality stuff inside, but at least once a month you could buy spindle packs of CD-Rs for pennies after the rebate.  I always wondered how they could make money doing that. 

Apparently, they couldn't.

Image:  ArsTechnica

I've been looking at several different Wii trackers, and I have found the best one. This one has mobile alerts, email alerts, and an RSS feed. It also covers many different stores that some other Wii trackers don't.

Yes, I'm still on the hunt for a Wii. I think Target is going to have them in their Sunday ad, though, so I'll get to stand out in the cold and (probably) rain waiting for one. But it'll be worth it, I think.

Wocka wocka wocka wocka, happy holidays! Wocka wocka wocka...

H/T:  Engadget

Right now there's a woot-off going on on Woot.com. Normally Woot sells only one item per day, usually at a substantial discount. Once a month they hold a woot-off where they sell items one right after the other until they are sold out. The deals to be had are amazing! Last year I did most of my Christmas shopping during a woot-off. Be sure to check it out, the woot-off lasts a limited time!

You know, I’m a big fan of those cheesy 1950’s science fiction movies.  Stuff like Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth… Something about all that big, clunky technical equipment running off vacuum tubes, even to this day, is so much cooler than some unimpressive digital computer deal.  When I saw this Wired article about The Black Hole,  a military surplus store in Los Alamos, New Mexico, I immediately ran to their official website to poke around.

This is probably my favorite thing:  an authentic S-site badge from the Manhattan Project.  For those not abreast on their science fiction or science fact, that’s the project that spawned the first of the atomic bombs. 

Of course, when I saw it, I sent the link around to pretty much everyone with some appreciation of geeky stuff.  And the response was uniformly uninspiring.  Sigh.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think this badge is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen for sale, and I’ve been an eBay user for years.  It’s a piece of American history, and more importantly, the A-bomb ended a war, lead directly to the creation of Godzilla, and spawned hundreds of thousands of science fiction and alternate history movies!

If you don’t think owning a piece of Godzilla history is cool, then, well… you have my pity, because obviously you’re a Gamera fan.

What I really wanted for Christmas: a new digital camera, since mine is horrible. What I'm going to get for Christmas: a new dishwasher. Fun for all, I know.

The knob on my dishwasher has stopped turning. And, while I'm a fan of repairing things instead of buying new, the dishwasher my house came with has always been terrible, so rather than spend the money to repair a crappy dishwasher, I'm just going to buy the cheapest one I can find that still has good reviews.

This is the one I think I will buy. What do you guys think? Out of 6 reviews, it has one bad review and 5 positive ones.My biggest problem with it is that it isn't energy star compliant, but at this price range, I've kinda got to take what I can get.

Merry Dishwashermas to you all!

Made By CrystalIcing.com

(Via)

Picture this, cats and kittens.  Grooving at the Gear Diary jazz club is a cool cat by the name of Nicky-baby.  He’s got a stylin’ red suit, a fly red hat, and some hep black boots.  He’s got a crazy-wicked beard, and some wild ideas, man. 

Who is this smooth dude laying down the tick-tocks like Gene Krupa?  It’s the Ninth Wonder of the North Pole, the Claus man, and he’s here to pull up a groove and get fabulous. 

Dig on this video, hipsters. 

This beat machine is powered by your computer’s USB ports (and generous quantities of reefer).  He knows four songs by heart, man, and he plays them with heart and soul.  If you need the beats, he can provide and play along with whatever you feel (or play on the radio).  He’s available for any gig you want, home or office, and he’ll play as long as you want for the low, low price of $16.99 from the groovie ghoulies at USB Fever.

I jokingly sent an email to my dad about this, telling him he totally needed a GlucoBoy- a standalone glucose monitor that hooks into a Game Boy Advance or DS to give you reward points for managing your diabetes. I suppose he'd want one if the test strips were really cheap.

It's my mom that's the gamer in the family, not my dad- Dad never has figured out the difference between a 1 up mushroom and a starman.

My family aside, I can see how this would really make a difference in the lives of children and even adults with diabetes. This is a prime example of using positive rewards to get a kid to do something they otherwise don't really want to do.

The GlucoBoy is currently only available in Australia, but hopefully soon this will make its way to America.

via

Vaporware is something of a tradition in every industry that thrives on publicity moreso than actual products in hand. What is vaporware? Vaporware is anything that is announced—software, hardware, movie, book—that is given a release window and never actually released.

Wired has announced, for the 10th year in a row, its annual vaporware awards. They’re accepting nominations now, and unlike most of the titles listed, they’ll actually release their awards. I’ve fallen victim to a lot of vaporware over the years, and here are some of the best ones.

Duke Nukem Forever: Announced in 1996, expected to be released in 1998. Still expecting to be released in 2008.

Guns ‘n’ Roses Chinese Democracy: How long have Guns ’n’ Roses fans been waiting on this album? Almost as long as Duke Nukem Forever, if not longer. Still, Beach Boys fans have been waiting for Smile for 37 years without much reward.

Starcraft: Ghost: Blizzard is famous for announcing titles, then delaying them until they’re ready. Both Diablo II and Warcraft III were dismissed as vaporware and eventually released to glowing reviews and amazing sales. Starcraft Ghost has been pending for 5 years now. Will it eventually come out? Who knows.

Windows XP Service Pack 3: Snort, yeah right. Someday, maybe, if people continue not buying Vista. Then again, Bluetooth was dismissed as vaporware, too.

The 1994 “Fantastic Four” movie: Roger Corman, my personal hero, made it as an ashcan copy so the developers could hold onto the rights. It disappeared into the ether shortly after. Rumor has it Marvel Comics chairman Avi Arad bought the film and all available negatives and burned it. Other vaporware movies are “Ghostbusters 3” (announced in the late 90s), and “Ender’s Game,” based on the famous sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card.

My haircut: I’ve announced for, oh, four months now that I’m planning on getting a hair cut. It’s officially trapped in development hell.

Image: PocketPC Thoughts