An obsessive collection of moist towelettes from around the world. Be sure to play the game of memroy while there.
Link Thanks, Button Monkey!
Amazon Mechanical Turk: Solve Easy Problems and Earn Dough
Amazon has begun a service called the Mechanical Turk. What is a mechanical turk you may ask? See an answer here.
Many problems that seem easy for humans to solve are sometimes extremely costly in terms of computing time or even worse difficult or impossible to solve, such as transcription of audio or translation of text. Sure, those tasks can be done automatically at the moment but usually with a high error rate, especially if the software hasn't been “trained” first. Amazon is taking a different approach by paying you to solve these problems that are easy to solve. For example, Amazon offers you 2 cents for identifying the artist or band name from an album cover image. It's easy, mostly. You can convert the earnings into a deposit or Amazon.com store credit.
Link. Thanks, Russ!
MAME Cocktail Cabinet #2 Begins
After the successful building of our first MAME cocktail cabinet, we've decided to build another one. The first cabinet was built to look as close as possible to a Ms. Pac-Man cocktail table. The next one will be the same style, but we're loosening up on the graphics, creating a custom underlay and control panels and artwork to allow other games to be played. I have reserved a PowerMac 7100/120 mobo for the task.
The underlay has been designed and needs to be printed and laminated. It's a combination of Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Galaga and Q*Bert. The control panels will have a set of three fire buttons on both sides of the stick (since I'm opposite handed).
Some useful links for you if you're interested in building one yourself.
Arcade Depot, precut real wood cabinets and control panel hardware.
Two Bit Score, good source for cocktail table glass and other authentic replacement parts.
Kyle Lindstrom, source for really good do-it-yourself cabinet plans.
Happ Controls, good source for SVGA 19″ shelf mount monitors, coin mechs, doors, joysticks and buttons.
Library of Congress Collection of Images
The Library of Congress has an extensive site they call American Memory. In it are some fascinating images, most with high quality versions in TIFF format. I've printed a few of these as 11 x 17 images and framed them. Someone, please, help them with their user interface. It's very klunky and is hard to navigate. It would be killer if someone spidered their site and created a faux user interface for it… hmm..
Quiz: Guess the Movie from this Still Frame
Ok, I'm going to start a new category. Try to guess what the name of the movie this still frame belongs to. (Click it for a larger version.) Post your answers in the comments. I have no prizes to give other than fame and notoriety.
UPDATE: It might have been mean of me to choose a rather obscure, missable movie, but it IS my blog. Anyway, the movie is Eraserhead by David Lynch. Read up on the movie before renting it– you may be setting yourself up for a huge disappointment.
Ford Ruins Childhood Memories with Advertisement
The choice of music accompanying the new rash of Ford advertisements was in poor taste. For those that don't know, the music used was “Linus and Lucy” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio; this is better known as the theme music to all of the Charlie Brown TV specials. Now, whenever I hear this song on the TV I'm going to associate it with this advertisement. Bah!
BTW, the real holiday favorite Charlie Brown Christmas will be on this Tuesday, Dec 6 at 8pm.
Worst Album Covers of All Time?
Here's a site that claims to have a collection of the worst albumm covers of all time. I've seen a fair share of album artwork before, so I can recognize a bad one. I have to disagree with of them, but it's worth a look nonetheless. Especially the one featured here– a good reason spell checking was eventually created.
Link. Thanks, Al!
McDonalds Simulator
In the spirit of the good old Infocom “choose your own adventure” comes a McDonalds simulator. Don't sleep in or you'll be in trouble!
Link. Thanks, Al!
Hats of Meat
Ever wanted to don a hat made from meat? Good, apparently there are others like you that also want to. My favorite has to be this picture on the left showing a lovely lady talking on her cell wearing a hat made of pork chops. And it's good to see an appropriate use of the word “meat” for a change.
Link. Thanks, Button Monkey!
Play Video on Your Older iPod
The guys at the iPodLinux Project are one step closer to making your old iPod not feel so left out. You can now install a video player that will play specially crafted .AVI's, even on grayscale screens. There are some audio sync issues so it's not quite ready for prime time. But fun none-the-less.