Star Wars Products that Never Were
Thursday, February 14, 2008 - 09:29 AM
A list of some rejected Star Wars merchandise.
It’s too bad these were never made, I really like some of them. Particularly:
- Bantha Slippers!
- The Death Star dart board with little X-Wing darts.
- The Galactic Game Trophies. (Although, I don’t think Carrie would ever let me actually put those up.)
- The Death Star grill. (If I ever get a Weber grill, I am so painting it like the Death Star!)
Really, the Bantha slippers are the best. I would kill for a pair of Bantha slippers.
PicLens
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 - 12:00 PM
I stumbled across this really cool browser plug-in called PicLens. Basically, it takes just about any photo website (Flickr, SmugMug, Picasa) and allows you to view the photos in a full-screen browser/slideshow.
The interface kind of reminds me of the full-screen view in iPhoto, with a little bit of "coverflow" thrown it (it’s definitely Mac inspired). It works with all major browsers, and even works with the Apple Remote (assuming you have a newer Mac that came with the Apple remote - I haven’t tested this feature yet, as I have an older iMac).
What’s really cool is that if you browse to a Flickr profile, say http://www.flickr.com/photos/9970718@N03/, and launch PicLens, it will load all of the photos from that profile (not just the ones on the first page). It does the same thing for tags (on Flickr, at least), making it extremely easy to browse, say http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/cat/ or http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/chicago.
It’s really easy to install, and doesn’t seem to take up much resources (although, I can see this being really slow on older computers).
My only complaints have to do with some usability issues. First, when you double-click on a photo to see it larger, it doesn’t seem to be doing anything. There is a thin little bar beneath the photo to indicate that it’s loading, but it’s not very noticeable. There really needs to be greater visual feedback as to what’s going on (even just making the bar a little bit thicker would help). Then, after the photo loads, it doesn’t enlarge right away - you have to double-click it again! (Although, this doesn’t seem to happen each time.) Third, after you’re done viewing the photo you have to double-click it to shrink it back down and return to the browser wall. I hit the Esc key to do this, which exited PicLens entirely.
Hopefully they’ll correct these minor issues in an upcoming release, but in the mean time it is still worth checking out.
R.I.P. HD-DVD
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 09:28 AM
HD-DVD has been on a rapid decline since the beginning of the year, but if the one-two punch of Best Buy and Netflix both backing Blu-Ray isn’t the knock-out blow, then I don’t know what is.
Ouch!
I guess it’s finally time to buy that Playstation 3.
Score!
Monday, February 11, 2008 - 01:43 PM
I finally got a Nintendo Wii (ordered, anyways), thanks to wiialerts.com. It took while, but I finally nailed it!
We rented one last week (we were tired of waiting for them to be available), but that just made us want one more.
Well, hopefully by the end of the week it’ll arrive. I can’t wait.