The Best Android App in the Galaxy

Before there was Star Wars, there was Star Trek. On Star Trek, the science officer and other crew members would use a device called a tricorder to access medical and environmental conditions.

The tricorder on the original Star Trek TV series didn’t have much of a display, but when Star Trek: The Next Generation came about in the 80′s, this hand-held device (the new tricorder) sure looked cool.

Star Trek has finally met reality with a real tricorder (at least it turns your phone into a real tricorder).

The most awesome thing of it all…it really works! It’s an open source project and is available for free in the Android Market. Search tricorder and choose the one by moonblink.

What can you do with the tricorder:

You can monitor the acoustics around you measuring decibels (cool for a sports events). Try whistling and watching what happens.

You can monitor the Electromagnetic Spectrum (wi-fi strength and cell signal strength):

You can monitor your local gravitational field and your acceleration:

Some of the coolest screens are the UV index and Sun monitoring. Click the sun on that screen to see different views of the sun. You’ll also be able to monitor sun flares (this info is feed to the phone via the Internet).

The magnetic field detector is awesome. Run your tricorder (I mean your phone) over your computer and you’ll see a spike in the field because your hard drive and speakers have magnets in them.

The app’s website states that the tricorder doesn’t work perfectly on all android phones, but it sure is cool.

Who Ordered the Clones?

You know, sometimes it’s okay to watch cartoons (usually better than anything else on TV baring the Discovery Channel and the History Channel).

The Clone Wars animated series has jettisoned to top ratings in its previous season, and it looks like the 3rd season starting on the 17th will be even better:

Here’s the original clip from StarWars.com: http://www.starwars.com/video/view/001074.html

Saving our Sanity, Our Favorite DVD Storage Album

DVD Storage Album

Our DVD collection isn’t huge by any means, but it used to be a big mess. The plastic DVD cases were like magnets to the kids and somehow they’d get tossed all over the floor (the DVD cases that is). We ended up running out of space for storing DVDs real fast. The DVDs were stacked two deep and our entertainment center was bulging at the seams.

Since we had only a few DVDs, and we know that a lot of people have 10 times the DVDs we do, we thought we’d post about what we did to bring a little organization to our entertainment center (and our sanity).

With a number of the DVD storage albums by Bellagio Italia Leather Company, we were able to make quick work of our DVD cases. In fact, we sent them straight to the recycle bin (after triple checking that the DVD discs weren’t actually in the cases.

I think we have about 10 ten now (so much for the “we don’t have a lot of DVD’s thing” but we really don’t). We’ve categorized our DVDs in the albums or binders so that there are a couple for the kids’ movies, church, action adventure, and three binders dedicated to the past 15 years worth of super bowls…that’s a joke.

What we’ve really found them handy for is for storing home movies that we burn on DVD. Since those don’t come with any case (generally), it’s great to have a place to store them all and take them on the go when needed.

Just be careful not to turn the binders upside down or the discs might spill out. There is a little tab to pull over the top of the discs to keep them in, but we usually don’t do that and so if the kids (or us) put the album in the entertainment center upside down (the album that is), the discs can fall out.

We have both the brown and the black binders which help us keep the movies in their dedicated binders. There is a space on the spine of the albums to write a note about the genre of discs in the album, but we haven’t written that yet.

So anyway, if your DVD situation is similar to how ours was, hopefully, these will help.

Who Says they Don’t Make ‘em Like they Used to? – Star Wars Silent Film

My Favorite Cooking Channel with the Swedish Chef

Swedish ingenuity is incredible.

Who knew that making popcorn shrimp could be so awesome.

Note, if you click through and watch it on YouTube, click the CC button to view the captions.

Time for Textbooks

We’ve got a lot of family members getting ready to head back to school.

I remember the long checkout lines at the college books stores. Waiting in line so I could fork over $300-400 for text books wasn’t all that much fun.

Towards the end of my college run, it was becoming increasingly easier to purchase books online.

I would get text books from different sites on the Internet, but the clear leader that emerged was Amazon.com.

We now have a yearly membership with Amazon to receive free, 2-day shipping on items we buy from them.

I recently noticed that Amazon is offer a deal for students to receive free, 2-day shipping. That’s pretty good! I remember having to wait a couple of weeks in some cases to receive my books from sellers.

Now you can them like lightening!