Gadget lust

Gate TViX M-3100U Media Player - Gizmodo

If you’re looking for a media player unit that just plays back a whole bunch of video formats and you don’t need TV recording functionality, there’s the TVix M-3100U. Put a standard 3.5” hard disk inside and it will play back the media files inside as long as they’re in MPEG1/2, DivX, XviD, DVD Video, MP3, OGG, WMA or JPEG formats. Upload files onto it with USB2.0 then connect this to your TV with Component, Composite or S-Video (sorry, no HDMI here).

Best of all, it’s only $177! Available to order from Japan June 9th

(from Gizmodo. The product page is here if you read Japanese.)

An unexpected (sushi) party

As of the end of last week, we were fully expecting our Younger Daughter to be repeating 8th grade: her last report card had two F's and three D's, and her teachers assured us that there was no way she could get out of the hole.

That was before she apparently aced several of her finals. She probably won't get to keep her transfer to the San Jose district, but at least she'll be going to High School. We've promised her sushi, the usual reward for good grades, in spite of having gone out once this week to reward the chaoswolf for a successful midterm.

We're going to have to do a lot of work on attitude and study skills over the summer, but I'm awfully proud of my super_star_girl right now.