Category Archives: Geeky Stuff

Geeky Stuff, kids, tech

Beamz & Beaming Kids

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A great surprise in the mail!

My kids love getting surprise boxes in the mail!!! (ok, so I knew it was coming;) I first saw Beamz at CES back in January this year and thought was great! Beamz is a light based interface that lets you play musical instruments along with a song on a computer. I was stoked when I got a chance to review one with my kids.

Just take it out of the box and you are almost ready to go!

It is super easy to set up and play! You take Beams out of the box and plug it into your PC via a mini usb cable. Then pop in the cd, click to install and then add the libraries to your computer. You are ready to play!

On board controls

You can change songs, switch instruments, start and stop songs, etc very easily. You can control it on the computer using a mouse or using the on board controls. The kids found it very easy to control using the on board controls. And you don’t have to figure out what they are because you get a legend with the Beamz.

There are so many song choices in Beamz and there are new ones being added all the time! You can go through and chose songs by genre, including a kids genre with Old MacDonald. There are also multiple instruments that you can play with each song. It just takes a button push to change instruments and tempo. The kids also like recording their creation and then dancing to it on play back!

So much fun!!!!

It is so much fun that they can play it together! What you don’t see it their 2 sisters dancing;).

(“This product has been provided as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. While they provided the subject, all opinions are purely mine! #CBias)

Deals, DVD's, Entertainment, Geeky Stuff, Movies, Online

May the Fourth Deals

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To celebrate “May the Fourth” Amazon has some awesome Star Wars deals!

The all day Gold Box deal is Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) [Blu-ray] for only $78.99. They are also having Lightening Deals that become available through the day. Right now the deal is for the Old Republic video game for only $34.99! But that deal is only available until 10am (pst) and then there will be another deal.

Apps, Compensated, Educational, Entertainment, Geeky Stuff, Graphic Novels, history, kids, Kids Books, Reviews, tech

Who?Comics App

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Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates

As you all know, I am a big fan of reading and an even bigger fan of learning! So you can just imagine how excited I was to  receive the opportunity to use the who?Comics app on my iPad with my kids!

Who?Comics is a free app and it comes with 2 books. There are 27 other books available for purchase. Some are sold individually but there are also packs available.  Which of course, are a better deal;). So I got the Scientists pack (surprise, surprise;).  Right off we checked out Marie Curie and Thomas Edison!

Here is a little detail you should know going in. These comics are not the super quick, over view type comics. There are 150 pages of details about the subject’s personal life. Which means it isn’t a quick read! I was very familiar with Marie Curie and I learned so much! NerdPie and I even cried at 2 different spots.

So what is my overall feel? Well, I love the idea of having these on the iPad for easy access! The art is clear and the story line moves at a good clip. This isn’t going to be a situation where you can read the whole thing in the doctor’s waiting room and that can be a good thing. This app was developed over seas and so there are a few translation issues. Due to that and the fact that these really deal with real life situations, I would make sure you child is near you when they read them. I had to explain about certain illnesses and certain historical events that were mentioned in the books we read. There was an assumption that the kids understood everything but mine had quite gotten there yet. (For example, why and how Poland was being occupied By Russia and how they weren’t supposed to speak Polish.)

My kids thoroughly enjoyed these comics! My kids are even asking for books from the library so they can learn even more! Both about the people in the stories and the science they discovered!

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon

Geeky Stuff, tech

My Shopping List…

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 NerdDad and I have decided that we need a new desktop computer. We haven’t bought a computer since Windows Vista and that was about 3 years ago.

I have to say that I am a bit overwhelmed at all the choices that out there! I usually love Dell computers but I want to make sure that I am getting the most for my money but… I don’t want to settle for something that will be buggy later. If we aren’t shopping with Dell we usually shop reconditioned at CompUSA but we tend to have little issues with those later. This will be a computer we will keep for a while because it will probably become a media computer in a few years or a kid computer;).

So what are we looking for?

  1. A Windows machine (No, I am not buying an Apple. Period)
  2. Under $700
  3. Probably at least an i3 but probably more
  4. We want to run 2 screens!
  5. I want to Skype and stream video for a possible Web show.
  6. Want to play video games
  7. Blogging, of course but that is such a small resource demand
  8. Running a Virtual Machine for NerdDad’s projects
  9. Run VNC well (again, not a huge demand)
  10. Want it to run fairly quietly & cool (previous issues)
That isn’t really all that much. The challenge is knowing what is over kill versus a little room to grow. How much Ram should I get? How many cores? A little SSD? What level of a graphics card?
Ugh! So much research to do! Anyone have any wisdom?

Books, Geeky Stuff, Graphic Novels

Free Comic Book Day!!!

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Woot! Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow!!!! This is the 10th anniversary of Free Comic Book Day, are you going?

We went last year with all 4 kids and had a ball!!! Heroes here in Fresno had Darth Vader and Clone Troopers wandering the lines! The kids loved going up to them. NerdPud couldn’t figure out if she wanted to hug Darth or hide from him;).

Remember that this is aimed at kids so if you expect to see only hard core comics out there, well you will be disappointed! This has some points. 1) Get kids into comics! 2) Encourage kids to read. 3)Have fun!!!!