A bit of Pugilist Movember Face care?

Pugilist Brand - I got the Pre-shave Oil and the Shaving Soap, both in the Citrus Grove scent.

I've a goatee, so I'm not really doing anything for Movember this year, but did fancy a treat when my shaving soap was about finished and I've had this a few weeks now.

The boring stuff first. Package arrived quickly, in a couple of days, as pictured, in a bubble wrap envelope with the oil in a ziplock bag and a plastic shrink wrap cover over the lid. The oil container didn't have a pipette lid as the website pictures, but I don't think that's a problem. There's also a receipt and thank you type note which is a nice touch.

The pre-shave oil, it's lovely and does a great job of helping to improve the shaving experience. The scent is subtle, not to over powering like the few others that I have tried, this also applies nicely with just a few drops in the palm of your hand and rubbed onto your face, without leaving a slimy or sticky feel.

As I'm lazy and shave every other day, with a double edged blade, using Persona blades if anyone is interested, this product has been great. I'm not sure if it's entirely needed if you're shaving everyday and not a hairy monster mind, as the shaving soap is rather awesome. That said, a few weeks in and it hardly looks like I've made a dent in the bottle, so this should last quite a while so the initial cost shouldn't seem all that bad at all.

The shaving soap, loved this too. It fits a standard shaving cup/container, mine happens to be an old Crabtree and Evelyn tub. This also has a nice, yet subtle citrus scent which isn't over powering if you used a aftershave on top. This lathers up very easily and applies great. The lather doesn't get overly bubbly and keeps it's consistency on your skin for the duration of the shave, which is a balance I've not found in a few of the other soaps I've tried and something I really like about this. It's nice to get a soft feeling lather, yet still be able to see what you're doing when you shave. I've also yet to make a dent in this soap, so can see this lasting a long time too.

Another nice thing about both of these products seems to be the fairly minimalist ingredients used, sure it's a soap and chemicals are needed, but these do not seem to have an entire chemists lab used in the make up that many of the commercial brands seem to be.

The real question is, do I venture into the other scents next time, or stick with this one, that's just lovely and refreshing?

Nappy Codes?

Huggies v Pampers

So you've been buying nappies and noticing that they have a sticker on the inside with a code you can redeem for prizes, with the flyer being able to win a years supply of nappies and wipes, how awesome!

Well not exactly...but you've nothing to lose by trying.

Once you've set up a user profile at both sites, you can plug your codes in. Pampers certainly make this a lot easier to do, as you can add more than one code at a time and if you're anything like me, I just keep them in a draw and do a bunch at a time when bored some evening, and gives you a chance to check out other prizes being offered.

Huggies, you have to enter and submit a code each time and also select a store where you bought them from a drop down menu, which is more hassle.

On the other hand, to enter the year supply of nappy and wipes with Huggies, it only costs you 5 points per draw and you can enter as often as you want. Pampers cost you 20 points to enter their monthly competition.

They both offer many other prizes that you can enter for. Huggies have a instant win thing where the prizes are smaller and use less points, but you find out straight away and they also have small monthly prizes such as a box of nappies that you can enter and wait till they draw a winner. Pampers allow you to spend the points on products, toilet seats, toys, that kind of thing as well.

One nice thing about Pampers, they have a chart showing how many points you'll likely earn for each product, because different type of nappies, sizes and number count get different points ranging from 10 for wipes or a small packet to 180 for a large box for instance. Huggies doesn't appear to do this and the points ranged from 4 I'm guessing for the wipes, to 25 for a packet of nappies.

At the end of the day, you've got nothing to lose by keeping the codes and doing the programs, but they probably aren't worth the extra cost over getting a store branded box of nappies, especially if they had a coupon you could use.

Mark Binder - Author and Entertainer

Mark Binder

An author of children's books. He bills himself more as a story teller though and if you get a chance to catch him doing a book session, you really should!

He has read at a lot of libraries and it was there that I managed to catch a show, which went on for 45 minutes, stories and a little bit of music, just enough to entertain and keep little minds in tune for.

Binder, has a collection of around 6 traditionally printed books, of which "It ate my sister" and "The bedtime story book" are particularly good collection of stories. He also has a collection of audio books and e-books. The audio books would be great to collect as he has such enthusiasm and energy in his story telling. Of which, is't a strict reading of his books, but a collection of age appropriate stories, some of which are based on the written tales but many being based off of stories you might recognise, that have either been updated or merged with similar stories, all with great amusement and audience participation.

At the end of the reading session, he did have a collection of audio CD's and books you could buy, offering them for $10 each instead of the regular $15, and if you bought two, you could get a third for free. These were all signed and personalised. He accepted cash, cheque and credit card, so you don't have to worry about being caught short if you wanted to buy a book after a showing.

For a list of his free readings, of which seem to be mostly in MA and RI can be found here.

Aqueduck Bathroom Faucet Extender - Review

Aqueduck Bathroom Faucet Extender

This product is made by Peachy LLC

For anyone with toddlers who are potty trained or getting that way, this is a really useful product!

You've got a toddler up on their stool, trying to wash their hands and they just can't reach and you don't want to be lifting them up every time, especially when they're starting to get a little heavy.

This is a simple, plastic piece that has a rubber attachment on one end which holds this onto the sink faucet and the plastic folds up creating a tube. Easily attaches to a variety of sink faucets.

Simple, easy to use product that'll help your kids out.

Best place to buy this seems to be on Amazon for $13

Ni Hao, Kai-lan Discovery Game - Review

This game is aimed at children 3 plus, so we got it for our 3 year old. I don't recommend it, certainly unless the child is much older.

The dice popper, which I thought would be fun for our little one is incredibly hard to pop, I struggle to push it hard enough as it is.

The little pieces are really cheaply made and the card board inserts to the plastic base of the pieces just slide about and never stay put. There is also no box to this board game, so it's really hard to keep all the pieces together without losing them.

The instructions, if you actually want to play this properly are also not printed on the underside of the board, which is a really flimsy piece of cardboard, which is such an over site. The plastic that sits on the board is also rubbishy, weak and within minutes was cracking at the corners and falling apart.

Not very impressed with this game, which is a shame because it is very cute.

Toddlers and Toothpaste

So we've started to use some Toddler Training Tooth Paste by Orajel.

Seems to work a treat, doesn't have fluoride so safe for the little one is she swallows a little bit of the stuff.

Not sure about the flavours that they offer, we got the girly variety, which is "pink" flavoured, bit general and don't have a clue what they mean by that.

Best thing about this though, it gets rid of bad breath and after the amount of yoghurt and cheese our little one goes through, that's a really good thing!

Well worth checking this out, but look for Orajel coupons first because you can usually find quite a few online as well as in the usual newspaper flyouts etc.

Game Sauce - Free Developer Magazine.

Game Sauce

This is a new game developer magazine, the second edition has recently been sent out and has roughly 20,000 users, mostly developers with a couple thousand journalists. It is a free magazine and with that in mind and the fact that it is new, the thin nature of the magazine can be over looked, certainly for now.

It has a different approach to development, a lot of stories from those involved with development, talk of casual games, projects being cancelled and in depth interviews from people behind some game franchises.

What this magazine doesn't have, tutorials and in depth talks in code base, art work or tools reviews. I don't think that is a problem though because there are plenty of other magazines out there which cover this.

Also unlike some other free magazines, this isn't over loaded with advertisements which is quite refreshing, but that could also be because it has quite a small readership right now.

Either way, it is worth checking out and you aren't losing out as it is free, so check out the signup link up top.

Munchkin Two Snack Catchers Reviewed

Snacks and car seats, always a mess waiting to happen, so there are plenty of little containers designed to hold the snacks whilst providing easy access to little hands.

I got a double pack of Munchkin Snack Catchers. They range anywhere from around $4 to $8 for a pair depending on where you get them.

They look great, they are dish washer safe which is a huge plus and generally they get a great review.

The reality is, they're a bit shit.

The actual container is so flimsy even with the lid on that it can be squished quite easily, which results in all the snacks falling out. The opening in the lid is way to larger and flexible that anything slightly small for a snack falls out and the flaps don't hold anything back from falling out when little hands reach in to grab at stuff.

For all the good these things do, you really wouldn't notice any difference between using a normal open container but at least something like that you can put a lid on so they don't shake all the contents into your bag if your carrying it around which this will do as it squishes together.

Find something else would be my advice.

Logitech MX Revolution Mouse Review

Well after years of service, my old MX1000 Logitech finally died.

The replacement, a MX Revolution.

At $100, it is pricey, but figuring how much time spent on the computer it was money well worth spending.

The construction is very good, the mouse looks nice, has a good weight to it and feels nice. The ergonomics make it very comfy in the hand and the buttons are right there at your finger tips as well as having a nice feed back when you press them.

One of the unique selling points was the fast scrolling wheel which does feel a little surreal but quickly becomes appreciated. It allows you to free scroll at speed for those long documents but intuitively applies a break that slows the wheel down for that click, click type of scroll depending on the application. So far this has worked really well.

The mouse software does allow you to customise the mouse well and one recommendation was using the thumb rocker button as a volume control instead of the default of scrolling back and forth between apps, which is currently what I have left it at. The downside to the software, which you do need to install other wise the middle mouse button click doesn't work, is that it is 58mb and took me a half hour to install, seriously, wtf?

The battery life is very good and the charger is nice and small, certainly compared to the old mouse and more importantly, it doesn't need to be plugged into the back of the computer as there is a small usb receiver for the wireless aspect. This works fabulously well, I was able to use the mouse across the room with out any problems. There also isn't a need to select a channel, search for the mouse or anything that potentially was a hassle with my old mouse, just plugged it in and it worked.

To summerise, this is a great mouse for someone who sits at a computer a lot, very easy to use and set up but the software install really needs to be streamlined and you better be right handed.

Because of that, I'll give it 4/5

3D Stimulus Day

The Digital Northeastern Artist group as part of Great Eastern Technology held a day long art event today called "3D Stimulus Day" at the Ida Mount College in Newton, MA. The host of the event was Brad Porter.

The free event had talks about success in animation, which was more of a selling event for the person giving the talk of her books and the classes she taught and wasn't that useful for many there.

Intro to 3DSM Mental Ray Rendering was next, this was about architectural rendering and covered the basics to global illumination and final gather and was pretty informative and the talk was very amusing, given by Ted Boardman, who has a good blog which has many tutorials and good information here. It was also a chance to see 3DSM 2010, which had a new user interface which is a bit different to previous versions though how good that is I didn't get to see. The main things of note were the simplifying of Mental Ray for the basic features and how quick it was to get them working to make good quality renders and yet still have all the tweaks you would expect. Also the new Quadify modifier looked pretty nifty too, which as it suggests, quadlifies your model rather than the tessalate feature.

Elliott Mitchell did a talk about realistic Mental Ray Skin Shaders in Maya, showing off Maya 2009, which had a few issues of stability, but compared to 2008 and below seemed to have simplified the whole process of creating shaders that work by automating the setting up of them, though there was still a lot of tweaking and rendering to get a good result.

Gael McDill of Digizyme Inc, talked about molecular and cell visualisation in Maya. This was very interesting showing how they are able to use custom scripts using Python to help them make tools as well as using cloth and hair adapted to show cell interactions. Molecularmovies.org was a really good resource they created to share the knowledge of what they do and includes a lot of videos and tutorials that can be applied to many aspects of art and animation.

Michele Bousquet, from Turbosquid talked about how you can maximise your sales and make money from using the service. Most of the things were comon sense such as providing good quality thumbnails and a good description of your work and what is included in the sale as well as how to best price your work by comparing to other works on the subject and looking through the highest priced pieces to gauge your price point.

Following this talk was a raffle of goods from the vendors who sponsored the event, the highlights included a new Wacom Intuos 4 tablet, a licensed copy of ZBrush 3 and one upgrade. All these things were being demoed during the breaks and especially the lunch break as well as a 3D scanner.

The last part of the day was a SIGGRAPH animation festival screening.

Seagate Barracuda 1TB Hard drive review

The Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB Barracuda

A sata 7200rpm drive with 32MB cache and 8.5ms seek time and a 5 year warranty.

It's a great drive, really quick and also very quiet which is lovely. This being an OEM box, you don't get any screws or any cables nor instructions though which probably isn't a problem for most people. Do jot down the serial number before installing it though as it's a mare to get to other wise and you'll need it for the warranty.

Amazon ship it in one of those "Ready to Ship" boxes, which means the box they send it to you in is the box of the product.

Smartparts 7" Digital Picture Frame Review

7" Digital Picture Frame from Smartparts


Digital frames these days are very popular, they are everywhere, but stores usually only have the larger brands, but there are bargains to be found. This would be a pretty good buy for the lower end of price range and it works really well if you were to place it on a desk.

The pluses to this -
Good price point.
Picture quality is very good and sharp, not as great as the more costly units but still very good.
Has an internal storage of 128MB, which is good to get you going and also if you give this as a present to put your photo's on there before wrapping it up.
It doesn't use much power and you can set the times for it to come on and off.
The frame is a nice wood and feels sturdy, it's a great looking digital frame.
Many slideshow options.
This can read the high capacity SD cards and MicroSD cards used in an SD adapter, so you can have more than 2GB cards.
Can be wall mounted or the stand can place it landscape of portrait.
The power adapter has a small foot print.

The cons to this -
There's no internal battery, so you do need it plugged in at all times to work.
The frame doesn't auto rotate if you set it to portrait, so the pictures unless you've set them as landscape will be shrunken to fit in landscape and be slightly cropped, though it does do this well if your running a slideshow of pictures, using the PC software should correct this for you though.
There's no USB slot for a thumb drive.
Memory slot is a bit close to the edge of the device and no easy way to remove the cards once they are slotted in.
The control buttons are on the real, are small, feel cheap and aren't all that intuitive to use as they are in reverse to what you see on the screen.
There's no remote control, this isn't a big thing though.
There's no option to load photo's in a random order, it goes through them in alphabetical order, you also can't display both internal memory images and images on a memory card, it's one or the other.
The power cable gets in the way if you placed this in the middle of a coffee table, or on a window sill, so having it at the back of a table/desk is really the only good place to keep this.
You can't change the frame style like you can, though this isn't a bad thing for me personally.

Over all - This is a great little gift, it's a nice size and very simple to use. You don't need to use the computer, just stick a memory card in and your good. The software is basic if you do plug the frame into your computer, but it does the trick, optimises the images down to size to save space and sets orientation if needed as well as saying if a photo isn't a good option for the frame such as the resolution or the size. It'll then transfer the images onto the frame for you.