Tech Dad Central

The Virtual Resort Vacation

Given time and $ constraints this summer, there was no way that a resort vacation was going to happen. But if you can’t play some beach Frisbee while sipping a tropical drink, the Wii Sports Resort game is a stay-at-home alternative.

First some hardware; this game requires the new Wii Motion Plus sensor to be added to your Wii controllers. It’s a $20 add-on that attaches to the end of your standard Wii controller. The Motion Plus extends the controller about two inches but in return you get unbelievable accuracy and nuances when playing any game that is built for the Motion Plus. Unfortunately, these new games require ALL of the controllers to be upgraded to Motion Plus so a four-player game will set you back an additional $80.

The Motion Plus, however, makes things extremely realistic. Playing ping pong with this new controllers allows you to impart serious topspin and backspin. You can even “angle” the paddle to go for corners and edges.

Now for the software, the Wii Sports Resort game includes 12 different resort "activities" where you can compete against friends or the computer. They include:

•   Basketball
•   Canoeing
•   Golf
•   Wakeboarding
•   Archery
•   Bowling
•   Swordplay
•   Power Cruising
•   Air Sports
•   Cycling
•   Table Tennis
  

Given my mastery of Table Tennis (bet you can’t beat me), I’ve focused on that activity the most and I’m hooked.

After a long day, I decided to “escape to the beach” and play some Frisbee. I was having a great time until I spilled my frozen margarita all over the living room floor. Oh well …. I’ll just move on to canoeing and wait until the waves wash it away out the front door.

Grilling with the Grill Daddy

Happy July 4^th weekend! In honor of the time-honored tradition of backyard grilling, TechDad Central tests out some unique technology for this weekend … a novel approach to cleaning your grill.

Behold the perfectly named Grill Daddy, a standard grill cleaning brush with a built-in water tank. When used on a hot grill, the water seeps out into the steel bristles of the brush and turns into steam as it contacts the grill surface. You are actually steam-cleaning your grill.

I gave it a try last night after grilling BBQ chicken. This particular dish is, in my humble opinion, the toughest to cleanup after. It always leaves the grill a total mess and if you don’t remove it right away, if hardens to a diamond-like material that will remain forever.

So I filled up the Grill Daddy and gave it a test scrape. I was laughing when I brought it outside as it reminded me of filling up water pistols as a kid. I was now about to “super soak” my grill and I was more than skeptical about this “high tech” grill appliance.

I laughed even harder when the charred chicken remnants disappeared without my usual high-pressure scraping. Yes, it worked great. I quickly had a sparkling clean grill (it even removed stuff from a few meals ago) and I didn’t risk tennis elbow from heavy scraping.

A cool tool for a hot 4^th of July.

Photos without cables! - Panasonic LUMIX TZ50

If you’re anything like TechDad Central, you have way too many cables lying around the house … and you can never find the one you need when you need it.

This cabling conundrum has always been one of my biggest complaints in dealing with digital photography. I’m always searching for the connection cable to upload the pics from the camera. I usually get frustrated and just leave them on the camera until the media card gets full and then finally spend the time cable-searching.

I recently saw an advert for the WIRELESS Panasonic LUMIX TZ50 and went into immediate “search and acquire” mode to get my hands on it. What exactly was a "wireless" digital camera and would this be my cabling panacea?

I’m not a digital photo snob so I won’t drone on about megapixels and the benefits of manual versus optical zoom. I can safely say that the LUMIX Z50 takes great photos, decent movies (in video mode, when needed) and has auto-stabilization to cancel out your usual shakiness. It’s an excellent digital camera

But that’s not why it makes TechDad Central’s “must have” list. It’s all about the wireless!

This camera includes an easy to set-up WiFi capability along with a free year’s subscription to connect via T-Mobile hotspots (that’s right …1 year for FREE). In practical terms this means that in my home or office, I simply upload my photos via the wireless network. I don’t even need to be near a computer to move the photos. On the road, any time I’m within the range of a T-Mobile hotspot I can upload the photos wirelessly straight from the camera.

The pics get uploaded directly to my Picasa Web Albums account and from there I can edit, catalog and distribute the photos to my heart’s content.

So no more cable safaris either at home or on the road … and one less cable for me to lose.