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Nikko's 3D meat measurement system is enough to make James Cameron's butcher jealous (video)
Not getting the most out of your meat? Then you're clearly not using Nikko's multi-camera 3D meat measuring system. In an attempt to deal with the rising cost of seafood, the Japanese company enlisted the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which offered up a method for taking images of the backside of meat through gaps in a conveyor belt. The system uses fours pairs of stereo cameras to create a 3D image of meat as it travels down the line, helping to determine the best way to make the most out of the foodstuff. The company is attempting to drop the price of the system, in order to bring it to market within two years. You know you want to check out a bevy of 3D seafood images after the break.
Condiment transporting SWITL robot arm gets a gig moving meat, packing boxes (video)
Way back in March, we spotted video of the SWITL, a robotic hand with a penchant for picking up globs of condiments without changing their shape. Neat, yes, but what sort of applications might such a device have in real life, beyond rather inefficient cleanups of Burger King floors? Manufacturer Furukawa Kikou has put the electronic appendage to work, folding meat and packing boxes with bags full of sol-gel substances, without losing the shape of either material. The size of the company is prohibiting sales of SWITL machines overseas at present, but Furukawa Kikou is happy to discuss partnerships, should someone approach it for its raw meat and ketchup moving needs. Exceedingly unappetizing video after the break.
iGrill wireless thermometer combines meat, heat, iPhone
No two ways about it: the day before Christmas Eve is a sleepy, office mostly empty, finish your online shopping, take a long lunch kind of day. It would take a very special press release to break through the pre-holiday, here-comes-CES fog that's hovering over the TUAW home offices this week. I'm here to tell you, though, that one very special press release just arrived in our inboxes, and we're drooling with anticipation about this product. Literally drooling with anticipation. Yes, it's the iPhone peripheral that every red-blooded American male absolutely needs for next 4th of July: the iGrill. It's a meat thermometer... with Bluetooth... and an app. You set it up by your grill. You put the probe in the roast, ribs, steak or salmon. You walk away. You enjoy a frosty beverage and tasty appetizers with your guests and family, knowing your iPhone or iPad will tell you when the food is ready. The base unit operates as a stand-alone thermometer, but if you're within the 200 foot (optimistic!) wireless range, you can track the progress of your culinary effort remotely. The app will alert you when your food hits the target heat, or give you a readout of the estimated cooking time remaining. It also includes cooking tips, recipes and more content for the backyard chef. Got more than one kind of food on the grill? Fear not; the base unit has dual probe support, so you can track both target temperatures at once. The catch? Each probe is US$20, and when you add that to the $99 price of the main unit (which includes a single probe) you've spent a lot of dough on what is, essentially, a digital meat thermometer that serves the same function as a $10 manual unit. You can get a really simple or quite sophisticated remote-enabled sensor for well under $40. Even still. So very Jetsons. The same neural pathways that trigger hunger at the smell of grilling meat are telling us... we want. If you're going to CES, look for iDevices and the iGrill in the Dr. Bott booth. [h/t Engadget]
iPhone-shaped soap smells like sausage
Sure, an iPhone-shaped soap bar is fun as it is, but surely there's something else that can be added to make it even more enjoyable, no? Etsy user twoeggplants decided to answer that question with a resounding yes, and is selling an iPhone-shaped bar of soap that just happens to smell like grilled meats while you use it. I kind of wish my actual iPhone smelled like grilled sausage -- I wouldn't want the grease on it, but the scent would be fine to have around. Apparently the scent can be customized, so if you'd rather have a more traditional soap smell (like, oh I don't know, something which smells like apples), you can go with that. It's also out of stock at the moment, which is usually what happens when something cool on Etsy gets discovered by a few blogs. But just the idea of a sausage-smelling iPhone soap is pretty fun anyway.
An analysis of all the food and drink in WoW
Not long ago, a friend of mine from college asked me to resurrect his WoW account so he could get back into the game before Cataclysm comes out. The first week that he was back, he messaged me quite frequently with various questions about trends in raiding and PvP at level 80. I answered his questions without much thought until one afternoon, he sent me a different type of message. "Did you notice there is nothing but meat in WoW?" My thoughts stumbled over the question for a moment before he continued. "There is meat, fish and fruit, but no vegetables." (My friend became vegan since the last time he played WoW -- thus his sudden epiphany.) He then proceeded to tell me about a quest in Teldrassil where you gather spider meat for a kabob recipe. He said something along the lines of, "They're on a big freakin' tree, full of plants and they're eating spiders! Spiders!" I'll admit, he had a good point. Curious, I decided to start looking over the types of food in WoW to see just exactly what Azerothians eat.
South Korean iPhone users turn to sausages as a cold weather 'meat stylus'
Apple and HTC might each be trying to patent a fancy capacitive stylus, but it looks like the good people of South Korea have stumbled on a decidedly more low-tech (and delicious) solution to using their phones in the winter: sausages. Apparently snack sausages from the CJ Corporation are electrostatically compatible with the iPhone's capacitive touchscreen, leading many to use them as a "meat stylus" in the cold weather, rather than remove a glove. And it's not just a joke; apparently South Korean snack sausage sales are soaring. We don't know if anyone's managed to combine this bit of amazing hackery with the bacon iPod sleeve yet, but we do know that we just registered meatstylus.com -- anyone care to send in some local sausage test results?
Breakfast Topic: Where do you get your meat?
I'm still working on my Chef's Hat, and there was always one cooking daily which took more time than the others: Mustard Dogs. The wild mustard is easy enough to find in the grassy areas of Dalaran, but the Rhino Meat always used to give me fits. I would fly out to Sholazar Basin and kill rhinos until I was bored which was usually right at the 4 meat mark. After whining about it in Twitter one day, multiple people replied to me with their suggestions for rhino hunting grounds, with the consensus being Borean Tundra. The section of Borean Tundra in between Amber Ledge and Warsong Hold is home to roaming Rhino families. If you AoE just some of the members of a family, the rest of the family will aggro. So, if you are of sufficient level and have a good Area of Effect or cone attack, you can take down multiple families of rhinos in a very short time -- even if there is someone else there farming rhinos, too. The hard part then becomes making sure you've looted each corpse in a pile of enormous dead mammals. Now, if I'm out of Rhino Dogs, I just take a few minutes to go stock up and then take a dragon back to Dalaran, just because I can. Where do you get the meat you need to make the recipes you use regularly? Perhaps you know of where large families of Shoveltusks graze? Do you have any other tips for budding chefs looking to speed up their meat farming?
WoW Insider Show Episode 85: Appeasing the Ret Monkey
A good time was had as always on last weekend's WoW Insider Show -- Adam Holisky kindly stepped into the broadcasting booth with Turpster and I, and we answered some emails (including whether it's OK to give cloth drops to leather wearers, as long as it's an upgrade, and more on which tanking class is the best to take with you), and talked turkey on the biggest stories in the World of Warcraft. We chatted about what might be in store for the next content patch and expansion, what's up with WoW's numbers still going up, and what's new with Wintergrasp in 3.1. We also had a straight-from-the-scene report about the PETA event -- stay tuned for more about that later today.And we got some interesting Ret Monkey pictures -- the one to the right is by Hydralol of EU Magtheridon, and the other one in the gallery below is by Abbort from Hellscream. Both of these, and any other pictures that you can come up with of the Ret Monkey or any of us who work on the show can be eligible for our Fan Art contest, so enter that if you'd like.Finally, we have rounded 6,000 followers on our Twitter account, and we're headed to 9,000 -- as we say on the show, it would be great if we could hit that by our 100th show, and combine everything into one big party-down spectacular. So tell your twitterfriends, especially those interested in WoW, to give us a follow. They (and you) won't regret it.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
Murloc bento box looks strangely tasty
A "bento" or "bento box" is a prepared meal in Japanese culture consisting of rice, some kind of meat (often sushi), and cooked vegetables. The big image above is a Murloc bento, put together by a WoW fan with some excellent culinary taste. The Murloc itself is made of cabbage, dyed tofu, and red and yellow pepper stripes, the hut to his left is made of Thai turkey meatballs and steamed cabbage, and the treasure chest is made of tofu and seaweed, while the sun and flowers are eggs.Very interesting. It's still a work-in-progress apparently (though considering that it's all food, it can't take too long to make, can it?), as the creator still wants to get teeth on the Murloc. But it looks pretty ready to eat as is -- the hut and the treasure chest, especially, look pretty delectable. [via PixelatedGeek, thanks, jessE!]
Brew of the Month: Lord of Frost's Private Label
Ah, just the thing we needed in the middle of winter in Northrend! A drink to cool us down! Wait, what? Crap, that's not we need at all! Oh well, I guess we're out of luck. This month's brew from the Brew of the Month club is actually a drink we've seen before. It's the Lord of Frost's Private Label, previously only acquired from Lord Ahune's stash during the Midsummer festivities.What do this month's brew do? Not a whole lot. Like I said, it cools you down. Really. After drinking it, you can see your character's breath for awhile. Which... you probably won't notice in Northrend at all, because almost the entire continent makes you do that anyway. If you prefer getting your drunk on in Ironforge, this drink is perfect and you can pick some up in the usual places in Orgrimmar and Ironforge. If you're looking for a drink to warm you up on a cold Northrend night, go for a Northrend staple: Mead. It's all over the place up there.Edit: Apparently this drink can also proc an iceblock that you get locked in for a little while, but in my experience it must be pretty rare? I've gone through a stack and a half of the stuff and haven't had it happen to me yet, but many of our readers have mentioned seeing it. I think the booze is playing favorites.
The bacon iPhone sleeve: for discerning eyes only
Are you a classy sort of lady or gent? Looking for something understated and sophisticated to adorn your iPhone that says, 'Hey world, I've got refinement to spare'? You're in luck then, as German artist and rising accessories star Antje has created the bacon iPhone sleeve with which to adorn your precious, high-society gadget. It's the perfect thing to go with your meat iPod case, and your actual meat cellphone. Get them while they last for only €25 (or around $31), you foppish bon vivants![Thanks, Jesse]
Cellphone, USB drive gets modeled with meat
We deeply apologize to all the vegetarians in the crowd, but this was just too grotesque to overlook. We're not exactly sure of the whos, whats, whys, and whens behind all this, but apparently some butcher-to-be found enough spare time (and enough fresh meat) to create a wallet, a set of keys, a 3G-capable cellphone and a 4TB flash drive from raw, tender meat. We don't know what's sadder -- the fact that this isn't the first of its kind, or that there ever was a first of its kind.[Via textually]
Devilsaurs tamable on Wrath servers, Chimeras may be next
As of the latest build, Beast Mastery, the 51 point Hunter talent in the tree of the same name that lets you tame "exotic" pets, remains unimplemented. However, it looks a sneak preview of the talent may have snuck into the patch all the same: Devilsaurs are now tamable! The devilsaurs do shrink quite a bit, but are huge all the same -- I'd estimate the one I tamed was at least three times as tall as my dwarven hunter after taming. They also make a satisfying stomping sound as they run around behind you. They use the Ferocity talent tree (minus Charge for some reason), and eat meat. They come with all the basic pet skills, use Bite for their focus dump, and have an extra family skill called Monstrous Bite. Monstrous Bite looks slightly unfinished, as there's only one rank, and it only hits for 4-6 damage. It's not completely bad though: It also has a buff on hit that increases the Devilsaur's damage done by 5% and stacks 3 times (It should be noted that Monstrous Bite's tooltip currently claims it boosts AP instead). In addition, the buff makes the devilsaur larger. %Gallery-28679% It should be noted too that Wowhead now lists chimeras as a pet category, complete with a family ability called Froststorm Breath. However, I could not personally tame the chimeras in Winterspring or Azshara. [Thanks for the tip, Homelessbird!]
Are tanks the most drama prone?
My tanking corps rocks. They really do. I'm quite happy to be their officer representative. We all play our role as the meat shield very well, rarely do we miss a shield block in our rotation or forget to pop a health stone as healers make transitions in and out of the demon realm in Kalecgos. What is interesting about any tanking corps I've been apart of is the inevitable drama that comes up.Since I've been in a few different guilds with a few different tanking corps and this drama always seems to happen and happen the same way, I have to ask: are tanks the most drama prone?It's best to define what drama actually is. Drama is any whining and moaning from anyone about things out of their control. If they complain about things in their control, well, then they just fail miserably and probably should spend some time outside to recenter themselves. For instance, a tank complaining loudly that his healer always is the first to get constructs in Gorefiend and demanding that they get a soulstone before the fight even starts, is drama. A tank complaining that they need healers X, Y, and Z, in the raid or else they won't do anything but auto-attack Illidan, is drama.A tank complaining that they deserve extra guild repair money for their expensive plate armor, is drama. And since the tank is special, they also need their own rank to let everyone know this (but it's also practical because only they should be able to withdraw 300g a night in repair money).
Well Fed Buff: Dry Pork Ribs
Well Fed Buff serves up tasty dishes to boost your HP, stats and appetite – with that special WoW twist, of course. Whatever the Fourth of July may mean to you, I think most of us can agree that it's a great day for grilling. Amid the symphony of pops and bangs coming from my neighbor's fireworks of varying degrees of legality, I grilled up these splendid ribs for your reading pleasure. Expect a taste that's slightly spicy but delightfully tangy. Dry Pork Ribs are a low-level Cooking recipe and are edible by level five characters. They can be prepared at 80 skill. The mats for the in-game recipe are simple Boar Ribs and Mild Spices. It's nearly as simple in real life, just ribs and rub. Dry Pork Ribs restore 243 Health, and will give a 4 Stamina and Spirit buff for 15 minutes if you sit down and eat them.
iPod sleeve takes fashion to its logical, meaty conclusion
What's better than having a nice leather or cloth iPod sleeve to show off to your friends? If you're thinking one made of imitation meat -- you're dead right! Apparently, a company in Japan is under the impression that you want to wrap your music player in a grade A lookalike, undoubtedly to the thrill of your vegetarian friends and family. Of course, don't just get one for the shock value -- this thing oozes pure, sophisticated style. If you've got ¥6,800 (or about $66) and dignity to spare, it can be all yours.[Via DVICE]
