Hasta La Gadget!

It seems like there’s a tragic story in the news every year about an athlete who couldn’t take the strain of working out in the heat and humidity. It can be difficult for a coach to tell when conditions turn dangerous, and that’s why there’s the Extech HeatWatch heat alarm. Armed with one, a coach is immediately notified when heat indices go from uncomfortable to dangerous.

The alarm costs $40 and looks and performs like an ordinary stopwatch. It has already been endorsed by the National Health & Wellness Club for offering an objective measurement and audible alert to signal when the heat index becomes potentially harmful. Besides coaches, Extech is targeting the watch at anyone who works outdoors, such as landscapers and construction workers.

Japan is experiencing a massive Ryo Ishikawa craze at the moment. The young golfer is on seemingly every TV commercial and perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised to find him represented at the Tokyo Toy Show.

What better way to admire your favorite sportsman’s form than to own him in 1/6 scale? That’s the idea behind the Ryo Ishikawa Digital Grade Master, a highly realistic replica figure of Ryo, right down to his clothes and impressive swing.

We also like how they even took the trouble to re-create his, ahem, unique mascot-cum-driver head cover!

Only in Japan could you, in a pro golf tournament, use a head cover for your driver modeled after yourself.

Not only that, but not alienate your fans one bit (quite the contrary), and make a bunch of extra cash by selling seasonal versions with interchangeable outfits that match what you’re actually wearing.

Somehow Tiger’s harem of head covers doesn’t quite impress me as much as Ryo’s muppet version, but maybe a Trojan sponsorship can replace all of that lost Nike money?

Do you hear that? The hideous, piercing dirge of a B-flat drone that is the unfortunate backdrop to every single World Cup match? It’s the vuvuzela, a stupid plastic trumpet that has infested the temple of the beautiful game with an incessant buzzing that is a cross between a traffic jam in Naples and a giant, booming mosquito. We’re going to tell you how to kill it.

If you have never heard a vuvuzela in person, you won’t know quite how loud it is. I hear one every time Barcelona plays a game, and my neighbor expresses his over-excitement by forcing his asthmatic breath through the thunderous plastic horn.

It is deafening. It literally makes my ears hurt, and it is the most annoying thing I have ever heard. Now imagine a football stadium filled with these things, and you have an idea of the fun going down in South Africa right now.

At home, the problem is less severe, and we can do something about it. B-flat has a frequency of 466.164 hertz, which is unfortunately close to the frequency of human speech, and the main reason that the frequency isn’t more forcefully blocked at source by broadcasters. You can cut the drone almost entirely, though, by filtering at home, blocking 466 hertz along with other harmonics. The easiest way is to drop the 300 hertz bar on your TVs EQ, which is close enough to make a quick-and-dirty fix.

If you have a more capable setup, like a home-theater receiver, or are prepared to run the audio through a computer, you can get even better results. First, use your EQ to drop the 466 hertz band by around 20 dB (remember to apply it to both channels). Then do the same for 235 hertz. This, as you see in the video above put together by LifeHacker, cuts out pretty much all of the incessant drone.

If you’re using a surround-sound system, you might try turning down the left and right speakers, which broadcasters use for crowd noises, and turn up the volume of the center speaker, where commentators’ voices come from.

You could, of course, employ the simplest and fastest filter on your TVs buzzing output: Hit the mute button.

Vuvuzela filter [Surfpoeten]

How to Remove Vuvuzelas From an Audio Recording [YouTube via Lifehacker]

Can you block out the blare of vuvuzelas? [BBC]

How to turn down the volume on those World Cup vuvuzelas [Consumer Reports]

The recently relaunched ESPN3 online portal is coming to Xbox 360 , as just announced during Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference. Trey Wingo and Josh Elliott from SportsCenter are on stage demonstrating with footage from a USC / Ohio State game, and of course it has built in Kinect controller support. 3,500 live sporting events, instant replays, highlights, polls all at your fingertips or by the sound of your voice. The PiP stuff will be familiar to fans who have already indulged online, but with the new control aspects (and of course, HD streaming) it could give a reasonable alternative to the existing channels. The usual requirement of Xbox Live Gold just like Netflix, Facebook, etc. is present, but beyond having a TV provider / ISP that’s signed up for the package, there’s no additional charge.

Update: Wondering if you’ll have access? Check the list of ESPN3 affiliates to see if your ISP is playing ball.

Continue reading ESPN3 comes exclusively to Xbox 360

ESPN3 comes exclusively to Xbox 360 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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