Gadget Guru
WWW.T3INDIA.COM MARCH 2019 T3 Tomorrow’s Technology Today 29
SIDHI RAMPAL LANKESH PAI
NOW PLAYING
NEW MEDIA
Guru finds the finest
media you need on
your various screensWINTERGATAN
A fascinating YouTube mix
of engineering, tinkly tunes
and marbles, as one Swedish
man spends literal years
building a machine to make
automatic music.DJESSE (VOL 1)
Office stereo points-scoring
has never been easier (or
possibly harder) than with
annoyingly-young Jacob
Collier’s pitch-perfect collab
with the Metropole Orkest.STAR TREK: DISCOVERY
Season two of the surprisingly
mushroom-focused nu-Trek
beams down onto UK Netflix- and the tantalising cliffhanger
from last time promises ties
to old-Trek, too.
Can I future proof my
hi-res audio player?
Help me improve
my putting!
This questions specifically
concerns that current
high-end hi-res player
might not support the hi-capacity
SD cards of the near future. And
Guru’s answer, reader, is that he
cannot know, because nobody has
yet sent him a 1TB card to test.
Techhaton,though:onpaper,the
currentSDspecsupportscardsup
to 2TB. Generation seven, coming
next, should up that to 128TB. So
presuming that your hi-res player is
up to spec and programmed for it,
you would probably be able to use
alargercardrightnow,ifone
existed, but no promises. Don’t
expectanyGen7support,though.Didyougeta‘convenience’puttingset
asgift?Gurudid,butnowhecanonly
putt when pulling off an ungainly squat.
There are better options if you’re after
properform,suchastheEyelineGolf
Groove,whichspewsoutagreencheat
laserthatcannotpossiblybelegalon
the links, or the SkyPro Swing Analyser,
which bolts onto your club and feeds
back swing info to your phone.
But. While it is well within the GaGu
ethos to attempt completely replace
effort with technology, in this case the
real driver’s going to be you. Practice,
practice, practice, then ask your local
clubprotoshowyouwhereyou’re
going wrong.A
The Eyeline Golf Groove spews out a cheaty laser
onto the green that cannot possibly be legal to use
on the linksWhat’s the best game controller
without thumb controls?
JAYESH PATEL
A
The gaming world is growing ever
more accessible. Even Microsoft –
which usually tends to decide what
you want without asking, then force it on
you like a rogue grandma with a pocket full
of hairy sweets – has dipped its toe in the
game with the Xbox Adaptive Controller
(`7,000). It’s completely customisable, so
you can wire in whatever sensors work for
your mobility, and it’s flexible enough that
third-party sensors also work without any
trouble. Collecting enough sensors, though,
is not a cheap exercise. GaGu presumes,
though, that you just have a problem with
thumbsticks. Depending on your game,
there are a number of other options that are
worth trying. If you’re on a PC then mouse
and keyboard is a no-brainer, since you
already have those, and Microsoft (them
again) are working on adding support for
Xbox One as well. If you’re not playingsomething that requires analogue input,
you could opt for an arcade stick like the
MayFlash Arcade Fight Stick, which is
around `4,700 and enables you to stick it to
the Incompatibility Man since it’s
compatible with just about every console or
computer.
If you can’t manage a joystick, it is possible
to fashion yourself a controller from just
arcade buttons. Sanwa and Seimitsu parts,
basically the only brands you should buy,
are readily available online, and easy to wire
up to a dismantled joypad if you’re not as
dangerous with a soldering iron as GaGu.
Alternatively, you could invest in importing
a Smash Box about `15,000 which has all
the appropriate controls already
wired together. It is, GaGu is told,
‘tournament legal’, so you won’t get thrown
out of your mate’s living room for using
performance-enhancing controllers.