LATEST ADDITIONS

My 13-year-old son is an avid skier, skateboarder, and longboarder. From time to time, he’ll document his activities with a Flip camera.

There are two issues with the Flip, however. First, you have to hold it in your hand. Second (and more important), Flip is out of business.

Produced by Blue Sky Studios, the computer animation house behind the successful Ice Age franchise, Rio’s story line doesn’t feel all that promising at first. But it grows on you. While 2011 hasn’t yet equaled 2010 for potential entries in the animation hall of fame, a chameleon, a panda, and now a macaw are more than enough to keep the current golden age of computer animation firing on all cylinders.

Maybe back in the 1920s, when Sound + Vision was called Superheterodyne Journal, we might have reviewed some giant tube amplifier that put out 2 watts at full blast. But other than perhaps some forgotten device from audio’s days of yore, this storied publication has never tested an amplifier so small, so weak, so limited in utility as the Qinpu Q-2.