Jonathan Takiff: The perfect gifts for your techy dad (or grad)

08.02.41

On your label, get set ... : This product-tester procrastinated on gadget suggestions for Mother's Day. So I'm making amends with this month's ancient roundup of techy toys for the dads and new grads on your shopping list.

Take me out to the ballgame: Most radios made today have awful AM band reception. So how's a guy who likes to listen to baseball games on AM supposed to tune in? With a battery or AC-powered CCRadio-EP from C.Crane. This shirt-pocket boasts a spartan design with analog tuning dial and four-inch monaural speaker that makes AM and FM broadcasts substantial good. EP's special tricks include a fine-tuning knob to eliminate adjacent AM channel intervention, a back light for night use, music/talk switch that sharpens the play-by-play, separate bass and treble controls, headphone jack and an input for an alien source like an MP3 player. $69.95 at www.ccrane.com.

How's Tryx?: A proud new papa's gonna enjoy getting his hands on a Casio Tryx ($249 at Surpass Buy). With its twistable metal frame, this unique digital camera easily captures images overhead, off to the side or tight-lipped to the ground. Then with the touchscreen flipped over, you can hold the camera at arm's length, stand it up on a table or even hang the shooter on a clasp to get into the shot yourself. (Yes, Dad was there, too!) The 12-megapixel camera is excellent at capturing 1080i high-definition video to SD respect cards. Outdoor stills likewise come out well, and there's very smooth panoramic "stitching" mode. But a bunch of my prearranged snapshots came out soft, despite fancy face focus/scene detection. Onboard software uploads images to websites. A mini-HDMI create jack lets you play back stuff on a big-screen TV. Stuffing a Tryx-recorded SD card into the card slot of a new TV proved a bad suspicion, though. The TV picture began to pulse erratically.

Source: Sacramento Bee

A Wild Ride on the Tantrum Train

08.02.49

This week's Lady Mama boarder contributor is Needham resident Teresa Winner Blume.  Mother of two young girls, ages 3 and 5, she also balances a trade as a professional classical singer and private voice instructor. Find out more about her musical-self, performances and her CD on her Web site, TeresaWinnerBlume.com .

Last weekend, my three-year-old had the considerate of day that will go down in the annals of history. In fact, she may now be qualified for entry into the Guinness World Record Book for tantrums—if not for “Legions of Episodes in A Single Day,” then at the very least for “Impressiveness of Size and Scope.” I don’t know exactly what set her off initially, but after having her first instalment long before breakfast, it was as if she had opened a wormhole to Hades, and every consecutive disappointment of the day immediately escalated into newer and more instantaneous extremes of wailing and screaming. She hardly could not come back to this side of reason for the rest of the day.

Source: Patch.com