Red Bull Illume 2010 Promo

It's time to talk about the Red Bull Illume photography contest once again. The promo from a couple of years ago was pretty awesome, this year's was actually better. It's kind of interesting in a way to see the pasts analog promo up against the new digital promo. I think it just goes to show how all professional photography has really turned to digital. This year they partnered up with SanDisk to give away USB Card Readers and 4GB Compact Flash cards. Pretty awesome promo items to go with the press release. Of course, the press release and other data including 10 images from the previous years contest (which I have added to my wallpaper collection) were on the CF card. It's actually a very nice card reader too, which is good since my internal one goes on the fritz every now and then. It has 4 slots that take microSD-HC, SD-HC/MMC, MS/MS-Pro/MS-Duo/MS-ProDuo/xD, and of course CF. For some reason it is really hard to find a card reader that supports HC cards, so I was surprised this accepted them. Then again this was made for professional photographers who only use HC cards and the press release was on one. It's connected by a standard mini-USB wire and sits on a magnetic base that says SanDisk on it. As you can see it sports the Red Bull Illume logo down the side as well. The card reader is very small and light weight so I guess you can take it on the go if you needed to. The packaging was nothing really special but it's cool still.

(Yes, that is a papercraft of Gir and a Piranha Plant from CubeeCraft.)

The Beginning of my Arcade Cabinet

So for the longest time I've always wanted an arcade cabinet of my own. I've always played the games from normal home consoles on my computer. A couple of years ago I found out about an emulator called MAME which is used for Arcade games. Figuring it makes more sense to have a computer than an arcade, I ignored my urge of having one giant game in my house. About a year ago, I came across a couple of sites where people have put together their own arcade cabinets using old computers to run everything off of it. I've finally decided to make my own a couple of months ago when I was thinking of what to do with one of my old computers that were just lying around. I was originally planning on designing and making my own housing from scratch until one of my friends knew someone getting rid of a couple of cabinets. Of course, I jumped on the opportunity and gutted it for my own equipment. I have a ton of old TV's lying around as well, so thankfully it fit perfectly into the monitor bracket already inside the cabinet. Instead of creating my own control board like most people do, I just bought two USB arcade sticks. This is still a work in progress. I still need to build the controller housing, keyboard and mouse draw, wire a power button, get two USB PS2 style controllers, and get two lightguns.

As you can see I just left the PC in it's casing and threw it inside. The computer is hooked up to a RF Modulator using an S-Video cable which is then connected to the TV. I wired up the original arcade speakers up to the PC using old computer speakers. You can see the volume knob taped to the wall in the middle picture so you can still change it. I may splice the wires longer so I can move the volume knob to a more suitable position. Everything is powered by an Energy-Saver power strip that cuts the power to all devices unless the PC is on. So once you turn the PC on, everything else turns on. The computer is loaded with loads of Emulators and Roms, but I'll elaborate more on the programming stuff at a later stage in this progress.

Windows 7 Burger

Wow, I'm fat!To celebrate finally upgrading to a Full version of Windows 7 from the RC, I'll be talking about the infamous Windows 7 burger. I really don't understand how this abomination came to see the light of day and why Burger King wanted to do something like this with Microsoft. Unfortunately, Burger King only released this beast in Japan. There are tons of sites out there that tell you how to make one in the US, as if you really need instructions of how to clog your arteries. Most of those websites are actually really funny and worth peaking at. As you can see this burger really is BIG. And on top of the burger I had a Medium fry with a bonus onion ring and Diet Dr. Pepper (like that actually helped).

As you can see I went a little out of the way instead of just getting a bunch of Double Cheeseburgers and throwing them together with one less patty. I spent $10.19 on this life-shortening meal. The top was a Double Stacker with Bacon starting at 570 calories. The next 2 layers were 2 Double Cheeseburgers without the buns. These came to 320 calories a piece. The last patty of course came from a single Cheeseburger since I didn't want to waste anymore food than I had to. The whole sandwich came to a whopping 1,380 calories. This was another 170 calories. The entire meal came to a belt-busting 2,020 calories of Burger King fatness. That's almost an entire day's worth of calories in one meal.
To my surprise, I didn't feel that bloated or sick afterward even though I thought I was going to be. I wouldn't recommend doing this, but I would say it actually is pretty tasty, in a grease-dripping, how-the-hell-do-I-eat-this thing kind of way. There's no way to get your mouth around this thing so I basically had to just take bites of the top half, then the bottom half.

Green Arrow's Chili

I finally got a chance to make Green Arrow's Chili. My friend Matt told me about this recipe a while ago and I've always wanted to make it. The real name is "Ollie's Stupendous Chili" but some call it Green Arrow's Chili. This was originally printed in Green Lantern Vol 2 #85 (August, 1971). The recipe and image can be found at DC Comics Database. As you can tell from everyone's' reactions this chili is supposed to be really spicy.

I couldn't find the three types of chili powders it called for so I just substituted them with three others. The recipe didn't call for them but I decided to add a tablespoon of Chili Pinquins. They're tiny hot peppers with 140,000 heat units (a jalapeno pepper is about 7,000). This chili is very flavorful and delicious. As to be expected it is also very hot. Too hot for some people and some people like me, loved it. I say give it a try if you love spicy food. But be warned, it's hot and delicious.