Innova OBD2 Code Reader Model 3100

Pretty well every car and light truck sold in the western world made in 1996 or later has a common feature – a bit of plastic hidden somewhere in the passenger compartment called an OBD2 port. OBD stands for “on board diagnostics.” It’s an interface to the computer that manages the engine and innumerable subsystems in contemporary automobiles.

Aside from fiddling the ignition timing and reminding you to change your oil, the computer module in your vehicle is responsible for running a suite of diagnostic procedures. It will tell you if something’s amiss with your car.
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Ovation Legend 1777LX Guitar

Ovation guitars are unquestionably an acquired taste – they’re based on somewhat more technology than may seem appropriate for an instrument with several hundred years of tradition behind it. The conventional wooden back of a guitar has been replaced with a polycarbonate bowl, perhaps reminiscent of a still more traditional instrument, a lute.
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DeWalt DC925 Cordless Drill

It’s not at all obvious why a software company would need a cordless drill – we’d be at a loss without one. Assembling office furniture, unscrewing computer cases, affixing things to walls and the periodic and unenviable task of maintaining our satellite Internet uplink, which lurks beyond the realm of extension cords, all conspired to bury the previous office drill. Admittedly, the previous drill was cheap when we bought it, and it lasted for the better part of a decade.
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iPod Nano Second Generation

Having given the matter considerable thought, I find myself wholly comfortable with an iPod that plays music and a cell phone than rings when someone wants to talk to me. Combining the two seems about as sensible as attaching a blender to a rhinoceros.

The second generation iPod Nano is unquestionably the best portable music device available in this half of the galaxy – aside from its truly ludicrous price, I can’t imagine buying anything else. That price is a bit of a kick, however – a four gigabyte iPod like the one we got lists at $199. Players with less cool names are available for half this.
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D-Link WBR-1310 Wireless G Router

Wireless network routers can be somewhat mysterious at times – and eight hours into the installation with nothing more to show for your efforts than some opened, non-returnable product packaging and a selection of cryptic error codes, they can drive the unwary to thoughts of homicide or illicit substances.

Some of the earlier generations of these things were clearly designed by sadistic gorillas.
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Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

If you spent five years at the dawn of the third age of mankind – or better still, watched the original five year arc of Babylon 5 on DVD – you’ll probably enjoy Babylon 5: The Lost Tales. A curious little production, it does almost nothing but it does it very well.

The CGI in Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is breathtaking – it’s improved considerably over the then state of the art that graced the original Babylon 5 episodes. The dialog is witty and arguably worth the price of admission all by itself. The opportunity to spend an evening with three unforgettable characters from the original series is a treat.
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Stargate Atlantis Season 2

Easily the best science fiction on television, watching Stargate on DVD will make you appreciate that it’s really wasted on TV.

The second season of the second incarnation of Stargate is pretty well the most fun you can have with your clothes on. While its special effects are well wrought, its television budget clearly precluded its relying upon them – its creators have had to fall back on sharp writing, talented actors and clever plots.

Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of these episodes on DVD is their continuity. Viewed on the SciFi channel, they were incessantly interrupted by some of the most obnoxious commercials yet devised by the trolls of commerce – even fast-forwarding through the breaks disrupted the flow of the stories considerably. Watched in their entirety, they’re perfect micro-movies.
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Sherlock Holmes

With Hollywood having largely forgotten how to make entertaining movies, we’ve found ourselves mining the past for DVDs. Ancient television shows have proven to be a remarkably productive vein in this regard.

Grenada Television’s impeccable recreation of nineteenth-century Victorian London as the haunt of the great detective is only one of the outstanding elements of this series. The actors portraying Holmes, Watson and a gathering of villains, maidens and Dickensian scoundrels are a treat to watch.

Grounded upon Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories but not mired in them, the episodes move at an approachable pace.
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Plextor PX-EH25L High Speed NAS Device

A network attached storage device is effectively a large hard drive with an Ethernet connector glued to the back – and some intelligence to drive the whole works, of course. Correctly configured, it can behave like a local file server. Multiple users on a private network can store and access files on it.

Unlike USB hard drives, a NAS drive isn’t hosted by a specific computer on its network, and as such, it won’t care which machines are powered up, or how their security is configured.
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AVG Anti Virus 7.5o

Having ultimately given up hope of ever getting McAfee’s VirusScan 11 to behave itself – as chronicled in an earlier posting to Storm Gods – we began a brave and valiant quest for a suitable replacement. There’s a growing pantheon of security applications available… because there’s big bucks in paranoia.

We settled on AVG Anti Virus 7.5 by Grisoft, a developer in the Czech Republic. AVG Anti Virus 7.5 offers a powerful suite of security tools, an aggressively updated virus checker, advanced user controls and software support that actually supports their products – the latter being somewhat unique in the arena of security products.
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Linksys WPS54G Wireless Print Server

When we built our current digs, we had conduits buried in the walls to allow for all the cables and connectors that computers invariably need to communicate with each other, and with their innumerable peripheral devices. To date, not one of the outlet boxes for the conduit network has proven to be where it was needed.

Wireless print servers are designed to address instances of demonically poor planning such as ours. Assuming that some or all of your internal network runs on a wireless router – or that you’re prepared to blow fifty dollars on a new router to avoid having to duct-tape cables to your floor – you can locate your printer anywhere you like, subject only to the availability of electric power.
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DigiTech RP150 Modeling Guitar Processor

Honesty bids me say that had I been charged with designing a guitar effect that cranked everything up to ten and included every feature even tangentially related to playing a guitar through a box, I wouldn’t have come up with half the stuff in the RP150. Elegantly structured and flawless in its performance, the RP150 is a roomful of effects in a single pedal and a trained monkey to run it.

Beyond its high-end features and numerous additional gadgets, the effects available through the RP150 sound superb – by no means a common condition amongst effects pedals. In shopping around for something to make guitar noises more interesting, I tried several pedals that cost a lot more than the RP150 and sounded a good deal less sophisticated.
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Washburn Rover Travel Guitar

One of the inescapable concerns inherent in guitars is that they’re relatively large objects, and encased in enough wood or polyethylene to survive an airport’s baggage handling system, they become quite a lot larger still. If you find yourself traveling under circumstances which don’t avail you of unlimited space for your belongings, you might find yourself compelled to leave your guitar behind.
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Lexmark C532n Color Laser Printer

There are a lot of color laser printers, and perhaps not surprisingly, a great many of them appear to have been beamed into our time-space continuum by a race of extraterrestrial technology salesmen with the intent of driving humanity mad and softening us up for an invasion. In doing the research for this purchase, we passed on enough turkeys to serve thanksgiving dinner to the entire population of Texas with plenty of leftovers for late night sandwiches.

The Lexmark C532n is a remarkable color printer, especially considering its competition, and while not without its flaws, it was the best such device we encountered. It does what it says on the box, does it well and it doesn’t even cost very much.
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Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

A quirky little British film with bags of promise, Tristram Shandy turned out to be a crushing disappointment. Based on the 1759 novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne, it – like the book from which it borrows its title – spans the eternity between the initial birth pangs of its protagonist and his emergence from his mother… with innumerable digressions. In the case of the book, Tristram Shandy digresses upon Locke, Swift, Pope, London society and European politics. As portrayed in the film, he digresses upon the film.
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The Reduced Shakespeare Company

The finest comedic work since the last Canadian federal election, we actually bought this CD several years ago and then managed to lose it behind a great many other discs. This is clearly a shame – Shakespeare has never been presented quite like this. Three versatile thespians perform all of Shakespeare’s works – including the sonnets – in about an hour and a half. A few details are omitted. Minor liberties are taken. Serious Shakespearians might take offense at Titus Andronicus being turned into a cooking show. Hamlet done backwards is arguably a bit questionable. The death scene in Romeo and Juliette is… actually, it would be criminal to spoil it.
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The Abduction of Figaro

You’re probably thinking of The Marriage of Figaro, an opera by Mozart. This isn’t Mozart. Performed in 1984 by the Minnesota Opera Company… betcha didn’t know Minnesota had one of those… this impressive mounting of P.D.Q Bach’s opus will leave you humming the tunes and trying to remember the names of all the characters. Especially the pirate… betcha didn’t know Minnesota had one of those, either.
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Sharp LC26SH20U Flat Screen Televsion

Mid-size flat-panel LCD televisions are ubiquitous – we bought this one at a local supermarket. Even the bad ones are good, and the good ones will blow you away.

This is one of the reasonably good ones.

We bought the LC26SH20U television as a display monitor to assist in developing video software, but perhaps predictably, it has seen itself put to additional tasks. It can display off-the-air video, as well as composite, S-VHS and component video from whichever boxes you can find the remote controls for.
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Panasonic SDR-S150 Digital Camcorder

Video tapes are so twentieth century. They’re heir to data loss, they’re noisy, they break, they don’t work well in extreme environments, they’re bulky and they’re annoyingly linear. They make an interesting noise when you step on one, but so do cats.

The Panasonic SDR-S150 camcorder doesn’t use videotape. Bypassing the whole mini-DVD and micro-hard drive circus, it stores its video on SD memory cards. As a result, it’s tiny, quiet, rugged and cool as hell.

About the size of an adult’s palm, the SDR-S150 will fit into an adult’s jacket pocket. It has almost no warm up time. Its view screen flips out of one side of its case and it’s ready to record.
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Highgear Altitech 2 Digital Compass

Originally bought to assist in aligning our satellite Internet uplinks, the Altitech 2 proved to know more tricks than a liberal in an election year. All things considered, its tricks are better, and a lot less likely to get it indicted for corruption.

The Altitech 2 looks like a digital watch on steroids. In keeping with its rugged nature, it has a carabineer clip rather than a strap. Playing with its buttons will reveal that it’s an altimeter, barometer, digital compass, thermometer, watch and a stopwatch. I don’t think it knows how to make tea, but you can never be sure any more.
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