Products I wholeheartedly endorse

[monster]

yeah I looked at Exploding Kittens. We got PoloGirl organ Attack for her birthday because she likes the Awkward Yeti cartoons. She went to a signing on her birthday, but it was too crowded so she didn't get it signed. She says the game is pretty good

[BigV]

I got a game/toy/???? for myself for Christmas.

It's called Dropmix. It's a technological tour-de-force. It'a music "game", not unlike Rock Band or Guitar Hero. In fact, it's produced by Harmonix, the same people that made Rock Band, but it's marketed by Hasbro. It doesn't come with little plastic toy instruments, but it does come with a "board" and some cards.

The board has five spaces for the cards to be placed, and a "Dropmix" button. Also, there's a little notch to hold your smartphone. The computer is your phone. You download the app to your phone and it does all the computer and music playing. If you like can you can send the output to a speaker for better sound. The cards, there are a few hundred, all have unique artwork and have the name of a song and artist and a specific subset of the given song, say the vocals or the drums, etc. Inside each card is an NFC/magic token that is picked up by the reader in the space on the board, it sends the code to the phone and the phone plays that track of that song.

I said there are five spaces on the board, yellow/red, red, red/blue, blue, blue/green. Yellow cards are lead vocals, red cards are melody, blue cards are and rhythms, and green cards are bass and harmonies. There are also special cards (wild cards of all/any colors) that can be played in any slot and black and white special effects cards, also playable in any slot.

Now add magic.

When you place a card on the board it starts to play that track of that song. When you place another card, it blends the second card's track with the first card (and so on for third and fourth and fifth cards). It matches the beat and the key *flawlessly*. I mean, it's just math, right? And math is a computer's specialty. Really though, it's magic. Let's check out a video.


Thanks to 21st century witchcraft...

or a couple playing straight out of the box....

Here's the first review I watched/read after seeing the title on a Gizmodo gadget gift list.

I don't know how to explain it to you. I'll say that I brought it out for the young adult children and their friends over the holidays and it was a SMASH HIT! It's portable, so when you run out of room at the kitchen table, you can just carry the whole fuckin party to the living room (thank you battery powered toy!). I suggest you check out the videos -- there's a zillion of them -- and look at the mixes. You can change the tempo and the key and the relative volume of each card/track. And it *never* misses a step.

*MAGIC!*

[Flint]

Exploding Kittens is from the guy who does The Oatmeal web comic. We bought an expansion pack for Exploding Kittens at Goodwill, but I'm not sure if we have the base game. We have a lot of games.

[glatt]

The expansion pack isn't much use without the base game.

[Carruthers]

I try to keep the use of canned foods to a minimum, but there are times when it's handy to have a tin of ham available for a quick salad lunch, as today.

My culinary skills are nowhere near those of Gordon Ramsay, but I have (silently) given him a run for his money when it came to the use of colloquial language when wielding the tin opener in the past.

Neither of the openers I had were much good, and if you didn't start the opening process near the vertical seam of the tin, you were doomed to haunt the kitchen for all eternity.

Never did I manage to open a can neatly or smoothly.

I have come within a hair's breadth, on more than one occasion, of performing an accidental amputation of a finger or two such was the jagged nature of the steel before me.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so last week I bought a stainless steel can opener at Marks & Spencer.

It was a hefty £7.50 (a smidgin under $10) but worth every penny. Minimum effort required to produce an A1 result.

That's my 'can do' attitude at work. In a manner of speaking.

[Gravdigr]

I have a machine that does that for me.

[Glinda]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

I have a machine that does that for me.

Me too, and they don't make 'em like they used to. Mine is from the 1960s. Still works like a charm.



After my mom gave me this beauty years ago, she went through another five or six that were all shit.

[Gravdigr]

And it's in better shape than mine.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I had an electric one until the spring that holds that handle up got weak enough to let the damn thing turn itself on. After an unknown period of time it filled the house with smoke.

[Glinda]

Oh, jeez!

[Gravdigr]

A buddy's brother had a toaster short circuit while they were away. Burned their house to the ground.

I never leave the toaster plugged in. Ever.

Now, with your can opener tale, I can never leave the can opener plugged in either.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Have to remember millions of toasters and can openers don't combust.

[Gravdigr]

It's not those I'm worried about.

[captainhook455]

I had a Black and Decker worked great and when it died I bought another. It wasn't so good as it left the can lids ragid. So we were yard sailing and found a 60's type for 2 bucks. We have had that one for at least 17 years. Still going strong.

[Pamela]

I use a manual opener and a P-38 army opener in a pinch.