Just as we were about to exit the car and head into the market I turned to my lady and asked if she had any gum. It turns out she did. Now I know why ladies carry a purse and I’m be honest I’m a little jealous. I could never have this kind of variety in my pockets. My pockets are occupied with gadgets and cigarettes.

Eddie Izzard did a great bit about the death stars canteen. There is a few of these video out there, most of them are done with legos but this live action one is great. Its a bit old but still makes me laugh

So when I got the email stating that I was invited to the Diablo III Beta I didn’t believe it. When I went over to battle.net I was very surprised that I did indeed get a real beta invite. It plays great so far and the music and controls are awesome.

Next time you’re at the sushi bar hint to the chef that you’re a Star Wars fan. Or if you happen to be in Japan go find Okitsugu Kado. He is the creator of these fine recreations of Star Wars characters. After of hours of carving various vegetables he usually will display them instead having his customers eat them. Besides, could one put a price on such items and who would eat them? Not I. Clearly this sushi chef is a hardcore fan of Star Wars.

via [obviouswinner] full gallery and video

Enter the Doritos taco. It’s new to us today. Get it while you can, Taco Bell will only have it for a limited time. Basically it’s the regular hard shell taco but instead of the corn shell it’s a nacho cheese Dorito shell.

It’s no blackjack taco but it’s pretty good. Best part is that it comes in a fancy sleeve. Makes driving while eating much neater. It will set you back about $1.29 plus the aftermath.

Here’s a fun iOS tip that has been around for a while and has been missed. If you’re someone who has a broken home button you’ll love this trick.

Open settings go to general>accessibility>assistive touch. Now turn that on, you’ll see a transparent button pop up on the screen. You can move it where ever you like. When you touch it you’ll get a menu. With lots of features that usually are required by pressing buttons. You can even create your own custom gestures.

Go ahead have so fun with this.

I thought I’d share with you a fun tip. Did you know that you can add shortcuts to your keyboard on your iThing? It can be very useful and fun.

open settings>general>keyboard>add new shortcut…>

From there you want to make “phrase” the actual text you want to have and “short cut is what ever you want. Just make sure it’s something that you can remember. Also remember this trick when you see a suspecting iPhone around….

Roku XS

Earlier this month I saw over on the twitter that Roku had their flagship streamer on sale for $10 buck off with free shipping, this brought it to my door for a just $89. With free shipping I expected to get it in about a week. Oh no I was wrong. About two days later it was in my possession and working hard to bring me video content from the web.

I had a Roku prior to this one. The reason I upgraded was for the USB port. I have quite a few movies and tv shows on my mac. In order for me to watch them in the past I had to grab the laptop and hook it up to the tv and use the mouse on the couch to navigate. The resolution never looked right. Plus I was going from an apple display port to VGA. Now I can just drag those movies onto a flash drive and plug them in. Well the only down side was that I had to convert a lot of them from .avi to .mp4 that took a while.

This model does the fancy games. Not a big deal for me but I must say Angry Birds looks and plays great on the big tv.

So head over to Amazon check out their deals.

I work the 3rd shift so I was asleep for most of this blackout. I ask you this, how did it affect you? Did you learn something new today? do you understand the issues here?

What to learn MORE?

2011 gave us all some great app for our iDevices. It also gave a few people brand new iDevices. I’d Like to highlight 7 great app you should get that came out in 2011. So for fun and some for reference.

Flipboard was only available for the iPad. Now its on the iPhone and iPod Touch for FREE. Basically it will personalize news for you. You can add all sorts of news and social networks like Facebook, twitter, Flickr and instagram among others.

Roku If you own a Roku you’ll love this app. Not only is a remote control for the Roku but it lets you browse the channels and has a keyboard in it. it’s FREE

PicFrame This is that app that let you place multiple pictures into one. We see this a lot on instagram. Lot of borders and patterns are there to choose from. Lots of sharing options including email, twitter, Facebook and instagram. cost $0.99

Instacast  This is a great audio/video podcast app. If you like to watch or listen to any podcast you know that you can’t download them via iTunes when you’re not on wi-fi. This will solve that.  It also has show notes to follow, background play and a large library to browse. cost $1.99

Jetpack Joyride  This is one of those addicting games. Easy to play, just tap the screen to jump around. There are so many goals to meet that you’ll have a hard time putting it down. Basically what you do is see how far you can get with out crashing. Lots of fun power ups and skins to buy with the coins you earn in the game. Just when you think you are finished with the game it just keeps going. It’s a great quick game to play while waiting around and its FREE!

Temple Run This is another one of those quick games i love to play. It looks like Indiana Jones  except that you are being chased by scary monkeys because you stole their golden idol. You guide the guy thought this maze of obstacles like pits, fire and narrow paths. It uses the tilt feature to move from right to left. If you collect enough coins you can improve power ups and collect characters. right now its FREE.

Can I Stream It  This is a very useful app if you’re to stream movies on your tv or computer. Just type in the movie that you’re looking for and it will show you if it’s available on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, Amazon Instant, VUDU, Crackle, YouTube and Blockbuster. (Wow there’s more service around than I thought.) It will also show you if you can rent and buy them as well. You can also set up reminders and push notifications.

So there it is my favorite released Apps of 2011.

Cheers!