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If you read all the stories, I agree this the expression of the young girl at top right.
Sometimes the photos just are too funny with the Zite stories
Played this game yesterday with Jenn. It's cute, turn based, etc. My userid is the same as my twitter handle if another twitter peep wants to play. Check out this application on the App Store: Robot Entertainment Category: Games Updated: Jan 10, 2012
Check out Hero Academy
Hero Academy
464 Ratings
iTunes for Mac and Windows Please note that you have not been added to any email lists.
Copyright 2012 Apple Inc. All rights reserved
iPad 3
Every day in the tech news feed there is some speculation story or other about the iPad 3. Lately there have also been stories about the iPad 4.
Beyond the speculation that one is to be released in March and the other is supposedly in October, they are fairly useless speculations unless maybe you are in the market right now for an iPad 2 and are trying to figure out if you should buy now or later. Personally I'd expect anything bought from Apple to potentially be cut down a tier after 6 months and while not obsolete, certainly less shiny within a year. So if when the 3 or when the 4 are coming out mean something to you, you probably might want to reconsider getting on the Apple train anyway. It's a train that don't stop, and if you what to ride, prepare to buy a new ticket once a year.
3D Printing
There is a $1,299 3D printer available now. The Cube No assembly required. Considering that my first laster printer was more expensive than that, it's not too outrageous. I'm not sure my desire to print small widgets in plastic is quite at the $1,299 level though. Hopefully within the year they get the price down to about half that.
CES
I'm not sure I saw anything much out of CES that was that interesting but here are what few thoughts I have.
The Lytro camera was probably the coolest thing I saw mixed in with the CES coverage and that is hardly new.
Cheap 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich tablets should be plentiful later this year. At least if you import them, my guess, it'll be well into fall before any mainstream retailers start featuring truely useful cheap devices at a low pricepoint.
Makerbot had a cool thing on display with their Replicator announcement, but jacking up the price to $2K doesn't seem at all likely to broaden the dissemination of 3D printing to the masses at all. They seem to be doubling down on the more intense hobbiest.
Despite even more 3D TV stuff this year, I still have no interest at all in getting or watching one.
I was interested in the Dragon Nuance, and the perpetual Siri rumors that it looks like you will be able to talk to your tv soon. That moreso than 3D will be very useful.
I'm not sure what to make of Microsoft's Kinect for Windows either. Kinect for Xbox is $149, but Kinect for Windows is $249. For that price I don't think they are going to get much mainstream penetration for the device when people are routinely picking up desktops and laptops in the $300 to $500 range. Pity, because Kinect is a pretty neat thing.
All that said, I'm not sure exactly what I would have liked to see...
It would have been cool maybe to see some heads up glasses stuff. (There was some, but nothing that looked at all ready for mainstream.) Perhaps we'll have to wait and see if Apple has any future interest in iGlasses, since I imagine they'll have to likely be closely integrated with a smartphone to be useful.
I would have really like to see someone take a stab at a low cost 3D printer. Perhaps because most of these companies are geared toward solid state electronics, something like 3D printing is just requiring too much mechanical engineering to interest the ususal players and mass roll out of such a device may take longer than it otherwise would if we we're just talking chips and screens.
I'm kindof suprized that noone is really going anywhere with phone connected watches. With the interest in the iPod Nano and otheres, it seems like someone would have stepped up and found a way to roll something out by now, perhaps the miniaturization involved just doesn't let them do it for a price that would work though.
I think also there was only one camera announcement that was using Android. That's sort of suprizing, you would think Point and Shoot Camera makers would be all over integrating that OS, apps, and wifi into their devices.
There were a couple demos of some tabletop large touch monitors, but nothing that looked even remotely close to hitting mainstream, a shame since we are years now away from the first looks at things like Microsoft's surface.
Overall, it looks like we'll just have to wait now to see what Apple announces at their handfull of events this year.

Picture Jenn took. Veggies by her, Brat wrapped in bread by me, inspired by a Meijer video.
Post from Jenn's blog.
1026/365 - I Left The Apartment Today!
I felt slightly better today so we headed outdoors. And by outdoors I mean from the apartment to the car, and then the car to the grocery store. But hey! At least I left the apartment today, which is more than I can say for the last few days...
I've had an assortment of action figures piling up lately with no pictures being taken of them.
The new ones below are Young Justice Aqualad, DC Classics Stargirl, Factory Entertainment: Green Hornet and Kato, and DC Direct Figures of Blue Lantern Brother Warth and Green Lantern's Arkis Chummuk and Soranik Natu.
All in all a nice selection of figures.

Nice figure, lots of accessories that would work well with a Blue Lantern too.

Nice figure, works well in the DC Classics scale since she looks even more like a teen with the DC Direct Figures.


Aqualad, Superboy, Kid Flash, Robin, Artemis.
Just need a Ms. Martian now.

Nice figures. Not very poseable at all, basically their arms move and that's it. Not so much a problem for Green Hornet, but you're going to need some shelf space for Kato.

Up until the recent movie, Green Hornet was what everyone called Green Lantern, so I now finally have a Green Hornet figure for my case.

Batman and Green Hornet.

Brother Warth is just a neat looking figure, Arkis Chummuk however I was really happy to get, as a kid I never knew his name but I always referred to him Werewolf Green Lantern. Soranik Natu is a nice looking figure too, although I'm not too keen on how she is essentially a replacdement for Katma Tui.
War on general purpose and open source computing. It's hard to read in the above but the 3rd from the top bullet reads: "Apps from the Windows Store will be kept." and the 2nd to last bullet point says: "All apps you installed from discs or websites will be removed". That's some evil functionality.
That's a nice app you have there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.

Jennifer did alot of cooking Wednesday. One of the tasty things she made were these marshmallows. You can read more on her blog
Below is a post from Jennifer's blog about our trip to Flint to hang out with Adam and Comfort Tuesday.
1021/365 - A Day In Flint With The Uniques
It's Tuesday and the first official day "vacation" day of the work week. Today is the only day we really have plans (for the four days we're not working) and those plans are driving to Flint to see Adam and Comfort.
It wasn't long after we go there that Chris was demonstrating all the new magical apps he'd downloaded to his iPad recently.
After a little while we headed to downtown Flint to check out the much raved about Flint Crepe Company. It's a very adorable little restaurant with a hipster bistro feel. To top it off they're using iPads and Square to take credit card purchases.
They even sell Calder Dairy & Farm milk in fancy glass bottles. They remind me of the Shelter Family Dairy milk I fell in love with from up north (seriously, their chocolate milk is like liquid ice cream). Adam and Comfort really liked it.
We headed back to their place for some awesome entertainment ala RiffTrax. Seriously, they really do make horrible movies better.
Before we headed home we stocked up on Withers Mountain Honey Farm honey. I've also learned that there are early and late season flavors that taste very different. I really liked early season, but for cooking purposes I think the more robust and stronger flavored late season will go better with granola and the like. Next time I'm out there though I'm going to snag some early season too, just to have both (going into this I didn't even know there were different flavors - I feel like a whole cooking experiment door has opened!).
Mr Withers was even kind enough to gift us with an adorable little bear of Candy Cane Honey. This means a lot of my hot chocolate is going to be spiked with peppermint honey, and I'm ok with that (by the way, the bear comes with a delicious sounding recipe for just this sort of beverage).
It was a long drive home and the cat was very happy to have us back.