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Written? Kitten!

A fantastic new website, where you write a few hundred words, and get a new kitten picture.

What’s really crazy is that, I just started writing… and managed to hit 100 words exactly. It was all drivel, but 100 words! Without planning it out. Makes very little sense, but it’s all correct and everything…

Once up on a time, there was a guy. This guy was like, hey, look, a webpage where people can write stuff into this here text box and get kittens! So this guy, right, he started writing.

And writing.

And writing.

He wrote and wrote and wrote, until he reached about the 100 word mark, in order to get a new kitten. Please, he begged the masters of the kitten counter, please, he just wanted to see a new kitten once he reached that special 100 word mark. Only ten more words to go, said he, and there it was.

Scary.

Citizens, I need firepower!

You’ve seen Mulan, right? That one scene where Mushu dons a scary costume, jumps into a fireworks box, and asks the attendants for some serious firepower?

One of my many (varied) vices is that I’m a bit of a Nerf enthusiast. Only a little bit, mind you, but that’s enough.

I now own the vast majority of dart-firing Nerf N-Strike toy guns, and I can count the models of same that I don’t own on one hand. I’ve imported Nerf toy guns from the US (thanks Amazon!) to get them just that little bit earlier, and when I saw that Nerf had introduced some new, disc-firing weapons (the Vortex series), my curiosity was piqued.

That being that, and having just started holidays, I decided to acquire some of these disc-based toy guns. My usual source (Target) didn’t have any of the new disc-firing Vortex series, much to my disappointment, so I decided to venture out to Toyworld.

Bear in mind the last time I went out to Toyworld was easily 10+ years ago, back when I was a young ‘un. My church was not too far from there, and sometimes, after the service on Sundays, a friend and I would venture down and explore the sheer excitement that was the huge, massive assortment of toys.

I went back to Toyworld today, and it was like nothing had changed. Every wall was packed full of toys. LEGO. Assorted water and sporting goods. Model cars. Model trains. Toys for girls, toys for boys — and most of all, Nerf toys.

I picked up all three Nerf toys Ben Kuchera recommended in his piece for Ars: the Vortex Praxis, the Vortex Vigilon, and the Vortex Proton. I might have even picked up the full-auto Nitron, but Toyworld didn’t have stock. That particular model will just have to wait.

Vortex Praxis: love the shotgun action. Pump-action handle better and more comfortable than the similar style on the N-Stike Alpha Trooper, and the 10-disc clip ejects like the magazine of a real assault rifle. Totally my style, and very fun to use. Only downside is the slightly non-too-sturdy stock — two thin arms are all that support the buttstock.

Vortex Vigilon: five round, with the same cocking action as the N-Strike Maverick. Instead of a rotating barrel, the Vigilon has a sort of “chamber” where you slot discs in. It’s not bad, but I probably wouldn’t trade my modded Maverick for it.

Vortex Proton: single shot, single disc. I absolutely adore the loading mechanism on this: pull the tab, slot a disc into the slot that appears, then hit one of the “slide return levers”, which retracts the tab you pulled out, and readies the gun for firing, all with a satisfying noise and action. Yeah, it’s only single shot, but it’s really, really cool to use. Plus, it’s the most compact of the new Vortex series — perfect for execution-style killings.

Range on all three disc-firing Vortex blasters was much improved over their dart-based cousins. Where the darts have pretty severe “bullet drop”, the discs kind of “catch” the air. The downside of their epic range (roughly 1.5x that of my best N-Strike blaster, the Maverick) is that because the discs are spinning, their accuracy isn’t as great as the darts (and they don’t whistle, or glow in the dark, or stick to things). You could probably expect to (accurately) hit a human-sized target about 12, perhaps even up to 15 meters away, but then again, a dart could do that kind of distance as well.

My only other gripe with the new Vortex series is that they’re pretty darn bulky. I’m not quite sure if it’s a mechanism thing for the discs, or whether Hasbro are just going for a new style, but seriously, although some of the space in front of the trigger is where the discs are loaded, pretty much everything below the Vigilon text is empty. There’s no way the Vigilon needs all of the bulk in front of the trigger, and neither does the Proton. The width I get — the discs are about 5-6cm in diameter — but otherwise, I’m pretty sure all that bulk could be cut down a little.

Overall, these new disc-based Vortex blasters aren’t bad.

Now I have to hunt down some of those clip-based water pistols… but that’s for another time. 😉

HP TouchPad, Part Two: Hardware

Let’s be honest here: as many have said time and time again, there is no tablet market, only an iPad one. For reasons unbeknownst to myself, I (still) don’t own an iPad. It’s not that I don’t want one, it’s that an iPad is a pretty sizeable outlay1 for a product that has an unknown usage ratio. Irrespective of the reason I don’t (yet) own an iPad, I do own just one tablet; the HP TouchPad.

After what can only be described as a particularly enthralling acquisition saga, it was time to delve into the TouchPad itself, and — perhaps more importantly — its operating system, webOS.

The TouchPad is a pretty basic tablet, really. No fancy bells or whistles here. It looks almost exactly like the original iPad does, only with a few more curves at the edges instead of the bevelled edge of the iPad 1, and with a few side ornaments re-arranged.

If you’re holding it in the correct portrait orientation (home button on the bottom of the face of the device), the speakers are on the left hand side. Yeah, speakers, as in plural: the TouchPad features two speakers with Beats(TM) audio. I’m not entirely sure whether the Beats(TM) audio is a hardware thing or a software one — perhaps even a combination of both — although my suspicion leans towards the latter, due to the presence of a toggle in Sound preferences to turn Beats(TM) audio on or off. In any case, the resultant audio emanating from those tiny but stereo speakers is pleasant enough, even above-average. Like all small speakers, they lack only in any real bass; more than capable of getting the job done, certainly, but no aural pleasure device. I wouldn’t go so far as I call the sound quality of the TouchPad “tinny”, but it’s definitely nothing to write home about.

The rest of the TouchPad is pretty standard: there’s a sleep/wake switch on the top right just like the iPad, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top left, also just like the iPad. On the right side (when held in the correct portrait position as before), there’s even a volume rocker, just like the iPad. Notably absent from the TouchPad is a physical silent switch.

What’s interesting is that the side with the volume rocker has an equal-spaced slot on the bottom part of the device. Pushing the slot in pops out some little sliding tray — presumably this is the SIM card tray for the mythical 4G version of the TouchPad that never saw the light of day (officially, anyway).

Moving on to the front of the device: up the top you’ve got a truly mediocre front-facing camera (that, somewhat surprisingly, ranks in at 1.3 on the megapixel scale), something Apple didn’t think about putting in the iPad until the second version. A peanut-sized “home” button (which actually glows when you’ve got new notifications on the device, acting as a notification LED — something no iOS device has) and a 9.7-inch, 1024×768 resolution LED-backlit IPS display (pretty much identical to the display on the first iPad) round out the front of the most discontinued tablet with the shortest availability period by the company with more misdirection than not you’ve never seen.

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CSI: New York

Alternative title: what I’ve been up to so far this holiday period, part one.

For starters, I’ve been watching *a lot* of CSI: New York. Before any of you start some epic tirade about how it’s crap television and whatever, that’s cool, you’re totally entitled to your opinion. CSI: NY is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, but oh — what a pleasure it is.

Note that I don’t watch it for the crimes that are investigated. I’m not actually sure why I watch it — perhaps it’s a combination of the characters, crimes, and the science — but it makes for some good entertainment most of the time.

I *adore* the little snippets of character development here and there, too. Hawkes (played by Hill Harper) is the brilliant ME-turned-CSI that is impossible not to love, and Danny and Flack (Carmine Giovinazzo and Eddie Cahill, respectively) are both excellent characters who exude charm. It’s really, really good.

The crazy thing about CSI or any other long-running TV show is that it’s not all action, not all glamour, certainly not all of the time. You make your way through more than a few mind-numbingly boring episodes (by comparison), and then — boom! You’re hit with an episode where Danny is suddenly a hostage, and the lab is hit by people who just want their cocaine back. Mac rigs up some explosive which ends up blowing up half the lab, and it just keeps coming.

An episode where one of their own is found dead in a car.

An episode where Hawkes reveals a mistake he made.

An episode where one of their own is shot and killed, in one of the most explosive and action-packed (possibly my favourite) CSI:NY episodes of all time, which screws up Flack for quite a few episodes.

Most of these episodes I’m describing are mostly season episodes, yeah, but that’s just the thing — CSI: New York is good TV.