Casio makes all manner of things at its multinational headquarters in Japan, including mobile phones, cameras, and watches – and, hey, they brought us the first electric compact calculator back in the late ’50s, so there’s yet another thing they’ve got going for them. But what indie musicians most revere Casio for are, of course, their keyboards. The brand’s newest models, the CTK-6200 and CTK-6250, arrive with all the polyphonic bells and whistles – over 700 tones, a couple hundred rhythms, and digital effects. A sequencer, rhythm editor, mixer, and both an SD card slot and USB/MIDI capabilities. And Casio is quickly catching up to Yamaha in the affordable-digital-piano-sounds department with its new Privia PX-5S, which features Casio’s proprietary AiR sound source. Yet the truly coveted Casio models aren’t new at all. The SK-1 is leading the Casio trend pack – and it’s almost 30 years old. But far from having a midlife crisis, the SK-1 – a four-note polyphonic mini-keyboard with a simple 8-bit sampler and 8 (yes, only 8) preset voices and a few envelope shapes – is the cool kid in the class, and has been used on tracks by the likes of Beck, Blur, Portishead, and Fatboy Slim, sometimes in its original form, and sometimes extensively modded and circuit bent. Plus you can burp or have your dog bark into the sampler, and since the memory storage shuts off when you shut the keyboard off, no one will be the wiser. Wonder what Casio thinks of all this? We did too. So we went right to the source – Vice President of Consumer Products Peter Brinkman. PYXIS: So Peter, how do you feel about the revamped popularity of the “classic” Casio models, such as the SK-1, for use in new...

It’s that time again, Charlie Brown! Time to pick your yearly pumpkin, the one that will finally be your best jack o’ lantern ever. But a good pumpkin picker is an informed pumpkin picker – so allow us to throw a little pumpkin history and pumpkin-farming science your way, plus some pumpkin options you may not have heard of – hey, who ever said a Halloween pumpkin has to be orange? First things first – pumpkins aren’t a vegetable – they’re actually a fruit. Their name originates from the Greek word pepon. The word moved through cultural shifts in language, into the French pompon, the British pumpion, and the word we know today, the American pumpkin. And they’ve been around since around 5500 BC – although they weren’t carved into Jack O’Lanterns until the early to mid 1800s. The traditional color for a pumpkin, as you likely already know, is orange – and the typical size ranges from a pumpkin so tiny that you could tuck it into your jacket pocket, to pumpkins that tip the scale in the hundreds of pounds. Most of the pumpkin itself is edible, and is often a staple of North American autumn menus. They’ve made plenty of appearances in popular culture, too – some of the most familiar being Cinderella’s carriage, the Pumpkin Juice beverage from the Harry Potter movies, the pumpkin atop the torso of the headless horseman in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and of course the cartoon Peanuts’ yearly visit from the esteemed Great Pumpkin. But this time of year, it’s mostly about the pumpkin as that perfect Halloween accessory. Grown at farms across the country, picking the perfect pumpkin is a yearly custom that most of us look forward to – never mind that Jack...

  Talking with Mythbusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman is like trying to have a conversation with a packet of Pop Rocks. Both of these witty men, despite the ridiculously early hour of the interview, bounce and sass with all the obvious appeal of two guys who are more than enamoured with their job. A job that (the day prior to talking to them for this story) had them working with scaffolding, cranes, explosives, and giant bins of water, among other things. But since they’re currently on the road with one of their big and uber-cool tours, we figured what better time to chat them up about all things Mythbusters? For those of you unfamiliar with the Mythbusters programme, it’s a one-hour show on which Savage and Hyneman take a closer look at many pop culture urban legends and misconceptions both ancient and modern by staging authentic, often scientific, experiments that put those tales to the test. Former co-conspirators Grant Imahara, Kari Byron, and Tori Belleci are no longer part of the Mythbusters team now – they were somewhat unceremoniously dropped this past August after ten years with the show – but Savage and Hyneman, always the core, are moving forward, and are just as wildly popular as ever with geeks, science nerds, and fans of speculative experimentation. Have you always wondered if dropping a penny from a tall building is as dangerous as you’ve heard? If the unaided human voice really can shatter glass? If duct tape can save  you on a deserted island? How you could survive a zombie attack? Or – in another universe – how much of Star Wars is actually plausible? Well, Jamie and Adam are definitely your go-to guys to get those answers. And they’re not your...

One of the quietest environmental problems of our era may very well be light pollution. You may only notice it on certain occasions – when the neon lights at the mall make it almost daylight-level in the parking lot. When you go for a nice summer nighttime walk – and realise you can’t see any stars. Or when your awesome neighbor decides to leave his high-wattage porch light on all night, and it shines through your window right onto your TV right as you’re trying to watch Game of Thrones. A new book by author Paul Bogard, aims to inform and enlighten (pun intended) on the topic. End of Night begins, as he puts it, “in some of our brightest places, and concludes in some of our darkest.” Along the way, he talks about the threats of light pollution and the perhaps unexpected value of darkness, which he traveled across America and Western Europe to seek out. “I was inspired by learning about how light pollution has robbed us of the night sky, and from there, I learned about how artificial light is impacting life on earth in major ways,” Bogard explains. Bogard’s colleague, Mary Stewart Adams, is the program direction for one of the official International Dark Sky Parks (her territory being north of a quaint small town in Michigan, U.S. called Harbor Springs.) Dark Sky Parks have to be properly certified, to show that they are, first of all, in an extremely dark location that’s conducive to brilliant viewing of the night sky. But these unique parks also work to preserving that atmosphere and environment, as well as educating the public in what kind of work needs to be done to preserve our “dark skies.” Adams also considers light pollution a “huge...

Chicago’s Millennium Park is one. Detroit’s Ford Rouge Factory is another. So is Nintendo’s American HQ in Redmond, Washington. We’re talking about green roofs, a remarkable way to help conserve energy, lower roof temperatures, clean the air, reduce noise inside the building, create mini-habitats for wildlife, manage stormwater, and extend the life of the roof itself. A green roof in Singapore – the Sky Garden House by Guz Architects Green roofs are definitely worth the effort. But you can’t just chuck a few bags of dirt and grass seed on a roof and call it a day. This endeavor calls for quite a bit of planning, and consideration of local weather and environmental conditions. The window of opportunity to “plant” a green roof is a more narrow one in Northern climates than in, say, California or Singapore. But it’s still a possibility in a wide range of places. “In terms of the technical aspect, there’s a bit of a fallacy about not being able to have a green roof in colder climates,” explains Steven Peck, Founder and President of Toronto, Ontario’s GRHC (Green Roofs for Healthy Cities) organization. “I don’t think anything about the north poses any significant challenge to having a green roof. Yukon, Alaska is quite far north, and there are green roofs there. There are some great environmental things happening everywhere.” Peck points out that there’s vegetation growing everywhere in the world. “You just have to choose plants that can survive frost/freeze cycles,” he says, “we collect info on green roofs from Hawaii to Alaska.” Sod or moss roofs are perhaps a couple of the simplest forms of green roofs, while others are called “intensive” or “extensive,” depending on the depth of soil needed, the complexity of the plants, and the...

Make an impact in your flat, on your balcony or patio, or in your garden with solar lighting! In addition to being energy and cost efficient, solar lighting offers plenty of stylish options sure to make a statement at your next gathering. We talked with one of our favourite solar light purveyors, Allsop Home and Garden, to find out what’s new and cool in solar lighting options. They’re right on the cutting edge of decorative solar products, so they had plenty to tell us. Founded by the equally-stylish Jamey Allsop (now president of the company) and her father a decade ago, Allsop – hailing from the U.S. locale of Idaho – focus on creativity and uniqueness, qualities that shine through (pun intended) in their gorgeous solar lighting collections. They’ve been featured on NBC’s Good Morning America, in the Wall Street Journal, and feted by that paragon of preppy style, the one-and-only Martha Stewart (but don’t let that scare you away). “Ten years later, we are still inspired to create the best, most innovative, and conscientious products possible,” Allsop says, “everything we create is designed by us, is unique to us, and we hold numerous patents on most of our products.” While strings of solar lights and solar lanterns are becoming de rigueur in plenty of boutiques and even hardware stores worldwide, Allsop’s designs are distinctive in their glasswork and in their designs, which somehow manage to be simultaneously sleek/modern and bohemian-colourful at the same time. “I have always been inspired by Chihuly’s glass art, and wanted to find a way to incorporate the concept of beautiful, hand-blown glass with the green, efficient technology of solar power,” Allsop explains. “Our first solar line, the Firefly Garden Stake, was born from this concept. Because of my...

We’re back with our favourite solar shoppe for the holidays, to show you how you can light up the season in an environmentally-friendly and beautiful way. Well, several ways, to be exact, if you’re shopping at Allsop Home and Garden. Located in the U.S. state of Idaho, Allsop was founded over ten years ago by Jamey Allsop (now Company President) and her father, in a bid to create what Allsop calls “the best, most innovative, and conscientious products possible.” A decade later, we’d agree that they’ve done it – Allsop’s solar lanterns, light strings, and other gorgeously-designed lighting products feature both durable materials and festive colors, plus new, cool designs just often enough to make these modern-meets-bohemian lamps collectibles, too. For this year’s holiday season, Allsop once again sent some of their great products to our new Pyxis Mag offices, so we could try them out in-person. First up were the Soji Solar Red and Solar White – a peppermint-fresh combo for Christmas in a more traditional round shape. Both lanterns popped up easily, and attach to a simple metal handle for hanging – a terrific new option for this style of lantern is Allsop’s additional plastic base, which enables you to use the Soji Solar as a tabletop lantern, too. Similar to the Original Soji Solars are Allsop’s distinctive Soji Printed Solars, which also accordian open, but are printed with unique designs – the one we tested, Dandelion Seed (top), featured a crisp blend of white, lime green, and olive green, and looked great next to the red in a more abstract, contemporary version of the usual “Christmas colours.” “The Soji Original and Soji Printed lanters are constructed of heavy duty nylon for outdoor use, and each lantern is equipped with two high-powered...

Each year, after the summer season is over, the leaves morph into stained-glass colours as a visual gift of sorts before winter sets in with its dull grey tones. But how does that recurring profusion of reds, oranges, golds, and browns happen each year to signal the start of autumn?  Why do leaves change colour at all? We’ve got the leaf science scoop. Leaves are green in the first place because of chlorophyll, a pigment that captures solar rays and utilizes the sun’s energy to create a sort of ‘food’ for plants – simple sugars of water and carbon dioxide. In the warm summer growing season, chlorophyll dominates the makeup of the leaf’s chemistry, masking out any of the other pigment colours that may be present, and causing that summer-green brightness. Once colder temperatures and fewer daylight hours begin to arrive, chlorophyll – which is sensitive to the cold – slows its production and dwindles, leaving room for the other colour pigments called carotenoids. Add in secondary pigments called anthocyanins, both start shining through the diminished green tones of the average leaf, and you’ll have your range of autumn foliage. It may not be a very romantic explanation when compared to the views that have inspired many an artist, poet, and musician (see: Van Gogh, John Keats, Simon and Garfunkel, Yo La Tengo, The White Stripes) – but this complex interaction of pigments and environmental influences is still a fascinating seasonal recurrence. Now, here’s a little mystery to temper with all that technical info above: Scientists are still not completely certain about the function of the colour change and the subsequent dropping of the leaves — they’ve sorted the how, but not necessarily the why. The most widely-accepted theory is that deciduous plants are...

Since we last spoke with Professor Goodge in March of 2012, things have only continued to deteriorate for our planet. “At the time the article appeared in your magazine, I had no expectation that 2012 would be such a dramatic year,” Goodge says. “The stories are everywhere in the news – 2012 was the warmest year on record in the US; there was major flooding on several continents, yet more than half the US was in drought; Australia had an unprecedented heat wave, triggering massive fires; and Arctic sea ice melted to its least summer extent ever. Those who experienced Hurricane Sandy can testify to the changes. Extra heat in the oceans not only adds power to storms in the atmosphere but also combines with rising sea level to generate more dangerous storm surges. Counterintuitively, in Antarctica the sea ice expanded to a record in 2012, probably because of more moisture in the atmosphere due to warmer oceans and the unique circumpolar wind patterns around the southern continent. So what will the future bring? A continued pattern of record-breaking seems to be telling us something about the direction we’re going.” Thank you for your latest insights, Professor.  And we agree – in our opinion here at Pyxis Mag, that direction doesn’t seem to be a good one for Earth and its residents. All the more reason to take action now. ______ John Goodge is a Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and is also one of the New York Times’ Scientists at Work, in which accomplished scientists share notes on their work in the field. Part of Goodge’s concern – and Pyxis Mag’s, as well, which is why we were so happy that he took the time to speak with us...

Whether you’re in the car on a road trip, waiting in an airport, or simply lounging about at your flat, games are a necessity on your iPhone, wouldn’t you agree? But much like everything else, there are some great ones (Plants vs. Zombies, Cut the Rope, Contre Jour, Fruit Ninja) and some not-so-great ones. We’re just as guilty of wasting 99 cents as you probably are on a game that looked terrific… and carried the distinct scent of digital rubbish once you actually tried to play it. The same gaming philosophy applies to iPhone word games. For every well-designed, fun to play Scrabble or Words with Friends, there’s another Whirly Word or Ultimate Word Search, the latter of which uses so many different fonts in its design it looks like a website from 2003.  Ugh. We’ve done an informal poll here at our PyxisMag offices, and have lined up what we think are the top five must-have iPhone word games available today (the aforementioned popular two not withstanding – they get enough publicity and are probably tired of the paparazzi anyway). Just don’t blame us if you lose more than a few hours to each of these – we’re not claiming responsibility for anything except your increased vocabulary. BOOKWORM | 2.99 USHelmed by the game’s host and mascot, the grinning, squeaky (but surprisingly non-annoying) Lex (a bookworm, of course – what else?), Bookworm is pretty much perfect for fans of both words and books. The basic premise is to link letter tiles together to make words, but it’s how the game is designed (as well as it’s terrific ‘library’ theme) that makes it far more interesting. In addition to the regular tiles, which vanish and shift as you eliminate them with your wordy creations,...

Sure, there’s plenty of enthusiasm for March’s “big” holiday, St. Patrick’s Day. And we’ve already put together some great music and movies here on Pyxis Magazine to help celebrate those most green of festivities. But if you want to celebrate a more cerebral March holiday, how about Pi Day?  No clue what we’re talking about?  That’s because for the average person, math pales in comparison to green beverages, hopping leprechauns, and giant corned beef sandwiches – but if you prefer your holidays on the more thoughtful side, Pi Day could be just the ticket. Pi, which is the Greek letter ?, is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, or the relationship between a circle’s diameter (its width) and the distance around the circle.  Pi is also what’s known as an “irrational” number, which means it will continue infinitely without repeating – this has proved to be fascinating to many people, and many attempts have been made, both by human and computer effort, to find a simple pattern within Pi. Despite much effort – and supercomputer calculations that have factored Pi out to over 1 trillion digits – that pattern has yet to be found. (The most digits that Pi has been factored out to date by a human are 22,514 decimal digits, a feat accomplished by Daniel Tammet in 2004.) So what does Pi – to most, nothing more than an obscure mathematical term (well, “mathematical constant,” technically) – got to do with a March holiday? Plenty. Pi is 3.14. March is the third month. So March 14th is… aha! Now you’ve got it. But who cares about Pi, and what are you supposed to do on Pi Day, anyway? First of all, Pi is part...

John Goodge is a Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and is also one of the New York Times’ Scientists at Work, in which accomplished scientists share notes on their work in the field. Part of Goodge’s concern – and Pyxis Mag’s, as well, which is why we were so happy that he took the time to speak with us – is climate change, and the effect that the diminishing ice in Antarctica is having on the rest of the planet, as well as on the wildlife that lives in that beautifully desolate, icy, windswept land. It’s an ongoing challenge to decipher the many mysteries that Antarctica holds, and it’s an even bigger struggle to properly educate the public on what some of those mysteries and climate dangers are. One of Goodge’s main research interests is at the root of the problem – in the tectonic (think earthquakes and volcanos) evolution of the continents. It’s all about how the continental crust (the layers of rock that form the continents) is generated, how it’s deformed, how it’s transformed, and the rates at which these things occur. “I’m particularly interested in the growth of continents over time, the formation of mountain belts, and the assembly and breakup of supercontinents,” Goodge explains. “One of the most intriguing time periods is at the end of the Precambrian, when multicellular life forms were just beginning to take off at the same time as big changes were taking place in the positions of the continents.” “And one of the most interesting aspects of this is the formation of the supercontinent Rodinia about 1 billion years ago, which resulted in vast mountain ranges, big changes in seawater chemistry, and the emergence of macroscopic marine organisms.” Antarctica, Goodge points...

Roku 2 XS | MSRP $99.99 This tiny black box is a mighty box as far as entertainment choices go. (And we do mean tiny – it fits in the palm of your hand) While it’s not perfect just yet (we’ll outline its flaws in a moment), it’s still a reasonably-priced way to stream HD shows to your TV, with a few extras you might not expect. Running off of a modified version of Linux, Roku’s operating system does have a few bugs. While the unit we reviewed was brand new out of the box, it started acting up fairly shortly after installation, stalling on channel selections and occasionally freezing up entirely. That’s not to discourage you, though – that’s merely the plight of the early-ish adopter. None of our friends had even heard of Roku yet, although plenty either owned or knew about the similar but different-featured Apple TV. The Roku 2 XS arrives with a few channels installed, including the most welcome Netflix (which has a modern, easy-to-use interface), but you can go to the Roku channel store and download plenty of others, some free and some for a fee. That said, a lot of the free channels are … well, you get what you pay for, we’ll just say that. Some of them are excellent (TwitTV, Amazon (from which you can stream movies), Pandora (through which you can access your already-existing Pandora music account or start a new one) and several of the Weather Stations), while some of them are just not worth the effort it takes to use the remote. And we could do without the gazillion sports and religion channels that we have to sift through to get to all the other stuff, but perhaps that’s just us. An...

The year 2012 is poised to be a lot of things.  A leap year, for one. The year of the 2012 Olympics, for another.  And the year that will see the landing of the new Mars Science Laboratory rover on Mars. But the thing 2012 is most known for (besides being the namesake of an unfortunate John Cusack movie) is that it’s forecast to be The End of the World. Whether that takes the form of all of our technology being knocked out by the solar maximum, the Earth’s poles magnetically reversing, a collision with Planet X, a doomsday scenario as (not really) predicted by the Mayans, an invasion of zombies, or absolutely nothing, no one knows. Yet. What we do know is that it can’t hurt to be prepared. Not necessarily for Doom itself, but for the mere fact that if anything even minor happens this year, the general populace is likely to overreact and start, as Morrissey says, panicking in the streets of London, Birmingham, and everywhere else. So we’ve put together some apps for your iPhone that should prove useful when the lava’s blocking your street, the zombies are chasing you around the block, and you can’t find your last can of beans. AGH! I CAN’T SEE! You won’t need a virtual lighter or a series of disco balls in the apocalypse (well, not unless you’re trying to appease a zombie with a cigarette or a little vogueing.) But you will need to be able to see your way around, whether you’re in abandoned buildings, the countryside, or your own powerless house. Flashlight by Henri Asselly is a great free one, as it’s also free of irritating ads and opens quickly. The iHandy Flashlight ($1.99 and free versions) has a few...