Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

See through pinball machine

Pinball machines are cool. I keep looking around, trying to find a decent machine locally at a price I can afford. I pretty much always fail, but I still look. So when I saw this see-through pinball machine highlighted over on boingboing, I just had to post about it. This is a machine I wish to have in my house.

bb-see-through-pinball.jpg

Michael Schiess – -proprietor of the legendary Lucky JuJu Pinball Arcade in Alameda, CA — has with the help of a few friends transformed a 1976 “Surf Champ” Gottlieb pinball machine piece by piece into a completely transparent pinball machine. The machine will be part of a science center exhibit he’s developing around the science of pinball machines. This thing is beautiful.

Of course, I’ll never have a pinball machine that awesome residing in my house. But I can tell everyone I’d like to have one like that. And someday, I’ll hopefully have some kind of pinball machine at home.

More images are available at the linked site.

[tags]Pinball, Lucky JuJu, Pinball Arcade[/tags]

New guilty pleasure – Top Secret Recipes

You’ve been out to eat. You had a great meal. You think how wonderful it would be if you could just make it yourself – then you could eat it whenever you wanted. But how could you ever figure out how to make it without just getting the recipe from the restaurant? Discover the recipe cloning that comes from Top Secret Recipes.

todd-wilbur.jpg

Got a recipe you want to find? You can search for it to see if they’ve broken the secret yet. The search is straight-forward, and results are pretty quick to comb through.

top-secret-recipes_search.gif

Some recipes, as you can see above, are free while some cost. The few recipes I’ve looked at were all 79 cents, but I don’t know if that price carries across to all payment-required recipes or not. Unfortunately for me, the queso recipe I was looking for isn’t there. For recipes which are available, Top Secret Recipes has ratings by users along with comments on how closely the prepared food matches the target item.

[tags]Top Secret Recipes, Recipes, Top Secret, Food[/tags]

30 years of very stupid monsters

As I began reading this long eassy on many of the stupid animals in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, I really wanted to hate it. The article begins with a two-paragraph long wall of text. I don’t care much for the font, text-size, nor color combination of the page. The background is too busy. His dismissal of Dungeons and Dragons comes off as snooty. But damn if I didn’t find the write-up quite entertaining.

stench-kow.jpgDespite the clever misspelling, you’re looking at an evil cow that stinks. Even better, read the first sentence there. “Cattle of the Nine Hells.” Smelly cows from hell. Awesome.

. . .

Sometimes, when its your job to be creative, you really don’t want to be. Take Werewolves for instance. Every fantasy game seems to have them. But after a while, an author wants to leave his mark. He wants to add a twist that no one’s thought of. In Dungeons and Dragons, this is often see by simply reversing the word “Werewolf” so that it cleverly appears as “Wolfwere”. Since this was done a long time ago, later writers would have to add their own novelty to the were-act. So in come were-foxes, were-sloths (no kidding), were-bears, and other fun little crossbreeds. And then people thought they’d be original and call a wolf that turns into a man a “Wolfwere”. That only started someone onto the path of doomed…well…check this out:

Continue reading “30 years of very stupid monsters”

It’s good to get wood

I love wood. There’s something good about having some sturdy wood all day, you know. The look of good wood in your hands is really memorable. That’s why I’ve been thinking about getting wood for my wife.

miniotiphone

Of course, since we don’t have an iPhone, we can’t use this particular wood replacement cover, but I’m thinking about trying to find a wood case replacement like this one for her iPod.

iwood

That looks much better than these (admittedly cool but not as cool) wooden iPod cases, doesn’t it?

icase-wood

So, all kinds of choices, but I have a feeling that to give my wife some good hard wood, I’ll have to do all the work myself.

[tags]iWood, iPhone, iPod, Wood is good[/tags]

Crazy news items

Just a handful of news items (some old but still interesting) that might make you ask WTF?

  • A special kind of stupid – drug dealer style:

    Federal agents thought there was something fishy about Leroy Carr. On four occasions since last December, Carr either crossed the Canadian border or was found near it with thousands of dollars in cash, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court. He also sometimes carried night vision goggles and a GPS device programmed with coordinates for a well-known drug-smuggling trail.

    But Carr refused to speak with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and they let him go – until he called to ask if they had seen his cocaine.

  • A southern-style ass-kicking sans arms:

    Police are investigating the death of a man who collapsed after he was head-butted by an armless man in a fight over a woman.

  • An apparent question of insufficient medical expertise and examination:

    A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

  • Cookies design to make your breasts grow:

    Ladies, are you self-conscious about your breasts? Do you think they need to be bigger to get you attention from guys, or at least from guys like Charlie White? Well, you could have expensive and gross breast implant surgery, or you could just grab some F Cup cookies from Japan. These sure-to-be-effective cookies apparently make your breasts bigger when you eat just two a day, while most cookies will just make your ass bigger. See a close-up of the box after the jump.

  • Emotional trauma from not winning the lottery? Try actually buying a ticket, dumb-ass:

    A Dutch woman who claimed she suffered emotional damages due to not winning the lottery missed the jackpot in court too.

    Amsterdam District Court judges Wednesday rejected the claim of Helene de Gier, who said she was traumatized by not winning the country’s National Postcode Lottery, which she didn’t enter, while her neighbors did.

  • One of the worst dog bites you can suffer – at least, if you are extra stupid:

    A naked man was bit in the genitals by a police dog while being arrested for running nude and entering homes in a Minneapolis neighborhood.

    . . .

    While the officer was ordering the suspect out of the house, the suspect began hitting him, police said.

    The dog, which was still leashed, bit the suspect to protect the officer.

And honestly, this is the kind of posting that could be put together every day, and with a greater number of entries, and we’d still only see a handful of the stupids that we suffer through in this country.

[tags]Stupid, WTF, Crazy news[/tags]

New source of fact-checking

I’m not blind to the bias in all sources of news. Such is the nature of people that I would question any claim of an unbiased news source. That said, when a new fact-checking operation comes around (to compliment the FactCheck and PolitiFact sources I currently use), I’m interested in seeing what I can learn from the source. In the case of the Washington Post’s Fact-Checker, I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to use the site when researching my own political rants and spews.

Now why would I think after just a first look that I might be able to use WaPo fact-checker? Well, one of the first news items they cover is contrary to the normal WaPo political stance – they are debunking moveon.org’s criticisms of General Petraeus’ Iraq status report. I haven’t checked the Washington Post home page, but I’m pretty sure if you look around you can find some criticism of Gen. Petraeus from the newspaper, so when the fact-checking section takes steps to defend the General, it at least offers some hope that the writers for the section will do a good job.

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts.
While some of the facts and statistics cited by General Petraeus can legitimately be questioned and debated, MoveOn.org offers only partial support for such a sweeping accusation. The data they do cite is itself open to challenge.

The fact-checkers continue to break down the MoveOn.org criticisms of Gen. Petraeus, pointing out a number of flaws in their claims. The entire disection of the anti-war status claims is worth reading, no matter what side of the war debate you fall on.

I hope the site can continue to provide worthwhile analysis in the future. I know I’ll be checking back to see how things roll in the future.

[tags]Washington Post, WaPo, Washington Post Fact Checker, Fact checking[/tags]

RIP Marcel

mime-noose.jpgA morning news item of interest to few in the US, and probably about someone most don’t even know. Sadly, Marcel Marceau, the great mime (and tangential contributor to coulrophobia in the world), has passed away yesterday at the age of 84.

Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, French media reported Sunday. He was 84.

France-Info radio and LCI television said the family had announced the death of Marceau. No other details were released.

To learn more about Marceau, consider buying his CD Marcel Marceau speaks, which oddly enough is not just a 60 minute selection of silence with periodic interruptions of applause. If the audio method of insight doesn’t catch your fancy, you could also check Bip in a Book to see more of Marceau’s work in printed form.

[tags]RIP, Marcel Marceau, Mime[/tags]

Rock, paper, scissors – the next generation

rpcguide_clip Play much rock, paper, scissors?  Well, you might if you had access to all the super-advanced play options in what can only be deemed Rock, paper, scissors – the next generation.

And there’s more where that came from.  Oh so much more.  That clip is but a small sample of the full-blown guide, so get over there and see what your RPS game is missing.


[tags]Rock/paper/scissors, Advanced RPS[/tags]

American Gladiators is back?

If you don’t know American Gladiators, you don’t know the meaning of pure eye-candy television.  And now, you’ll get your chance to see it real soon now.

NBC is getting into the ring with “American Gladiators,” which has been revived by the Peacock for midseason.

The competition skein — which featured players with names like Nitro, Turbo and Laser in its campy, early ’90s syndie incarnation — will be updated for the 21st century with new technology and twists. MGM TV, which was behind the original hit, is producing along with Reveille.

. . .

Plestis said he was particularly interested in the original U.K. version of “Gladiators,” which focused even more on the characters and the behind-the-scenes stories of common folk going up against the show’s powerful stars. The new “Gladiators,” he said, “will have the scale, scope, different characters and family drama that the U.K. version had.”

So – look for it soon.

[tags]American Gladiators, Televised eye-candy[/tags]