Atlas Pasta Machine
If you love to cook and if you love pasta, you will definitely love having an Atlas pasta machine. Your pasta will be fresh every time and you will be surprised at the difference it will make in the taste.
A simple recipe includes flour, eggs and salt. You simply combine the three ingredients and work them with a fork until the mixture can no longer be stirred. At that point, you will need to work the flour with your hands. This is a simplified version and you will want to experiment with your own recipes. Of course, recipes (and pictures) come with every Atlas pasta machine so it will be quite easy to follow one of theirs as well.
Atlas is well known for manufacturing the best electric pasta machines that are available. They make both a manual (hand crank) version and an electric version. They come in several different colors so they will easily fit in with any kitchen décor. Before you purchase either machine, you will need to decide what features are the most important to you, if you prefer making pasta the old fashioned way and how much you want to spend. If time is an issue for you, you will want to purchase an electric Atlas pasta machine as it is capable of churning out a lot of pasta in a short amount of time with minimal effort on your part, and the machine will do the kneading for you.
However, if you enjoy the fun of kneading your own dough and turning the handle and watching the noodles churn out, then the manual Atlas pasta machine will work best for you. If you have children, they will enjoy watching and joining in the fun of making their own homemade pasta. If price is an issue, the manual machine will cost you approximately eighty dollars while the electric machine will cost you approximately one hundred ninety dollars.
An Atlas pasta machine is becoming a common appliance in many households as more and more people realize how much fun it is to make their own pasta – not to mention how much more fresh it tastes. Many professional chefs use the manual and the electric machines and they know a great cooking machine when they use one. A nice feature of the Atlas machines is the ability to change the thickness of the dough sheet. You can make round or flat noodles and you can also control the noodle size by rotating the dial for a total of nine different positions. These are sturdy machines that are made to last. Marcato makes the Atlas pasta machine and they have been in business for more than sixty year and every machine is made in Italy.
If you are in the market for a pasta maker, you really cannot go wrong with a Marcato Atlas pasta machine. The only problem you may find that you have with their pasta makers is that you and your family will want to have pasta for dinner every night of the week!
Tire-Pressure Nozzle and Gauge
I have always hated inflating my tires. It's always a struggle to keep the inflator nozzle pressed against the tire valve stem while alternating between inflating and checking the tire pressure.
I recently got one of these clip-on tire inflators. It lets me quickly and easily inflate my tires without needing to remove the nozzle to check the pressure. You clip it on, and your tire pressure appears on the gauge. Then you just pull the trigger to inflate. If you over-inflate, you can easily bleed off pressure.
It's an inexpensive addition to your air compressor and well worth the $9.
-- Mike Polo
Tire Inflator and Gauge
$9
Available from and manufactured by Harbor Freight Tools
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App of the Week – Risk
Platform: Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch
Price: £2.99
There's something about board games that makes them perfect for mobile devices. Scrabble, Monopoly, Boggle, Settlers of Cataan and now Risk are all way more fun (and about ten times faster) when you don't have to fiddle with little bits of cardboard or worry about Aunt Irene slipping herself a few extra armies from the bank.
This is pretty much a clean port of the old Hasbro classic, woefully outdated in this age of aircraft carriers, biological agents and asymmetrical warfare, but no less fun for all that.
Totting up your armies is done automatically, and fighting can be either old-school one dice roll at a time, or with a speeded-up 'total war' option that lets you string a proper blitzkrieg together. 
The map is static (you can't zoom in) and on the sluggish side to respond, but fighting and moving your troops around is easily done. What's less rewarding are the cards and missions: you can't see what cards you win or are holding, and only real Risk-heads will have all the mission bonuses memorised.
There are pass-and-play and Wi-Fi multiplayer options but no online battling - a wise decision as nothing would be more boring than waiting for someone in Kyoto to finish up a long game. The computer AIs are pretty good, although let's be honest, Risk's military tactics aren't exactly Sandhurst difficult: conquer South America and Australia early on, then just sit there until everyone else is dead.
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Philips Home Control DUAL remote gives your internet-connected set a QWERTY keypad
For years, one problem home theater enthusiasts with an PC hooked up to their HDTVs have wrestled with is just how to go about controlling a computer from across the room. Logitech has a series of remotes that try to tackle the problem, while other accessory makers make wireless keyboards with built-in trackpads to help, [...]
View full post on Geek.com » Gadgets