Artiphon Instrument 1

The computing power in the iPhone is absolutely astounding. It is incredibly adept at music, but the ergonomics and sound capabilities of the iPhone leave a lot to be desired. Enter Artiphone, stage left. It hooks up to your iPhone and offers stereo sound, an ergonomic hardwood body and a whole new way to create music. Check it out: http://www.artiphon.com/

The World's Most Expensive Video Game

Feast your eyes on the cover art for the world's most expensive video game. This is not a game for the feint of heart or the light of wallet....this video game will set you back a whopping $190,000.

The Grid 2 BAC Mono Edition does have some drool-worthy extras. First, you get a PlayStation 3, the game disc, a tour of the BAC racing factory, a Bell Racing Helmet, Nomex racing gloves, a Nomex driving suit and Nomex driving boots.

But here's the best part: the game also comes with a street-legal BAC Mono race car...the perfect vehicle to rattle off zero to sixty times in the sub-three second range. Get yourself one: http://us.bac-mono.com/index.php

The Chillsner

Meet The Chillsner (yes, rhymes with pilsner). It's a slick little metal device that you stick in your freezer and then in your beer. It makes certain that each bottle of El Pacifico you quaff on a 90º summer day stays ice cold from start to finish. The mouthpiece fits over the top of the bottle and you actually drink your beer through The Chillsner. It's $29.95. Check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00B5EDXMM/uncrate-20

Vulcan Humor for Audi Fanboys

Automotive Art from Ridley Scott

Gibson Self-Tuning Guitars

It's been decades since I quit playing guitar. While I still have about six of them sitting around the house, they are more for decor than generating music. When I did play, there was one absolute rule that applied universally: any guitar you pick up will be out of tune.

"Perfect pitch" was not a gift my parents had imbedded in their gene pool, so keeping a guitar properly tuned was always a challenge for me. Now Gibson Guitars has brought the gift of perfect pitch to whomever has the dough to buy one of their new, lithium-ion, self-tuning guitars.

To tune your guitar, you just hit the master control knob and lightly strum the strings. The digital brain kicks into gear and using the motors built into the tuning keys, perfectly tunes your guitar to digital perfection. The lithium ion battery is good for around 100 tunes until it needs to be recharged.  You'll need at least $799 in your wallet to bring one home.

iPR: Digital CrossFit Log

Just like dinosaurs, horse drawn buggies and transistor radios, paper is going bye bye. Happened again this week when CrossFitMN announced that our paper notebook journals were being killed off. All those paper notebooks were taking up valuable space that could be better used for new equipment. Makes sense.....I'd rather have new state-of-the-art lifting racks and pull-up bars than paper.

After four years at CrossFit, I stopped recording my daily workouts ages ago. However, I did use the notebook to track my personal records (PR) for lifts and times/reps for The Girls and  The Hero workouts. Necessity is the mother of invention, so I climbed onto the iTunes App Store to see if I could find an app to replace my notebook.

Low and behold, I instantly found a gem of an app called iPR. It was created by a fellow crossfitter to track all of the key lifts and workouts at CrossFit. It is so simple and elegant, you'd swear that Steve Jobs designed it. Entering lifts is a breeze, both for a one rep max and all kinds of variations like 5 rep max. Here's how the summary looks:

It is also incredibly easy to enter and manage your times and reps for The Girls and The Hero workouts. It also has a slick little button where you can note if you did a workout Rx or did it scaled (most helpful for myself, The King of Mod):

So while it is sad that our notebooks must die, it feels good to get my CrossFit journal into the digital age. For just 99¢, you can do the same by buying iPR in the iTunes App Store.