Over 2 years ago, my friend Chad Draheim was contacted by HGTV for a show they were doing entitled “Man Land” (they found his ‘casino basement‘ blog post). After the long wait, it was on HGTV last Saturday! Even though it is episode #2, they played it as the premier episode.
Since most people aren’t watching TV @ noon on a Saturday, (and it’s nowhere to be seen online) I decided to rip it from my DVR. I edited it down to 7 minutes which is just the part featuring Chad and Kitt’s Basement:
In the clip is Chad, Kitt and Keely Draheim, the host George Gray, Chad’s brother Brian, Apollo Marquez, Matt Griswold and me! It was a lot of fun to film, and it was interesting seeing how much time, effort and footage goes into just 7 minutes of television (i.e. they edited my interview down to about 7 seconds, which is probably a good thing since I don’t really remember what I was talking about).
Man Land is available in HD on HGTV and looks like it will continue to be on Saturday’s at 1PM eastern and pacific, noon central. Enjoy!
Artist: Silversun Pickups Album:Swoon Wikipedia Genre(s):Indie rock,Dream pop, Shoegaze Matt’s Fav Tracks: Panic Switch, Growing Old is Getting Old, Sort Of # times listened: Moderate (10 - 25 times) Matt’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars Album:Amazon MP3’s: Amazon non-DRM
I was introduced to Silversun Pickups a few years ago listening to XM radio, of all places and really dug their album “Carnavas“. With the 2 obvious hits on that album, it was a little more inconsistent than I would have hoped, and I ended up putting the 2 tracks on playlists rather than listen to the entire album.
I’m going out on a limb saying that Swoon will be one of the best alternative albums of 2009. You listen to it and you instantly know it’s Silversun Pickups, but it still has a great newness to it. The songs are more solid, yet explore the familiar, dreamy territory that is all their own (with a sound that Smashing Pumpkins wish they could have morphed into).
I was afraid that after the success of Carnavas that SP would mellow out, but am quite glad they didn’t go that route. While some quieter moments exist on the album, other parts sound good REALLY LOUD. They rock out with the best of them, and even with ‘indie’ as one of their genre labels, they don’t wuss out like too many other indie bands do on their sophomore album.
Lead singer singer Brian Aubert still has that off-beat, androgynous voice that works well with their sound. Many of the melodies and guitar solos are quite simple, but unbelievably catchy (like the main riff and baseline in “Panic Switch”). They’ll be running through your head all day after just a few listens. SP is really good at the distortion-noise stuff too, if you are into that.
Check out the video for “Panic Switch”:
If you are bored with much of the music out today (who isn’t) grab this album (it comes out April 14th, 2009) for a fresh look at a genre nearing it’s 20th birthday. It’s close to 5 stars for me, but giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars until it grows on me a little more.
As a rookie father of 2 months, one of the more hilarious books I’ve found is by David and Kelly Sopp called “Safe Baby Handling Tips“. Check out the do’s and don’ts of taking care of your little one:
Ahh, arcade games. Last summer, I posted my “What’s your top 1% video game“, and it got me thinking that I haven’t played too many games lately…
Over 6 years ago, I decided that I wanted to build an arcade cabinet that would play all the old-school arcade games. While my MAME (Multi-Arcade-Machine-Emulator) machine has gone through at least 3 rounds of iterations, it has been out of commission for over a year (after some hard use at my last Karaoke party… kind of a long story). Until last week… I finally got around to putting in an old workstation that would update the CPU hardware for the first time in about 4 years and get everything else back working.
It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been messing around with MAME for over 10 years. Growing up in a 12-machine video game arcade at my parents campground in the 80s was a dream come true. Today, it would be too hard to figure out which specific arcade game to buy, so in the 90’s when MAME came out, having the ability to play many games on the same machine had huge appeal. How many is many? As of early 2009, how about over 6500 working games!!
While there are many paths to going and getting one of these machines running, I’ll tell you what I did:
1) Controls ($200 or less) - Back in 2002, I purchased an X-arcade Joystick. This is arcade quality, and if you just want to use MAME with a normal computer it works well. If you plan on having a cabinet, a better way to go would be to simply buy the controllers and build your own board. I ended up ripping up my X-arcade and put it in a custom board. I’m lucky that my good friend Cory was able to make me a board and layout. Check his modern arcades site for more of the cabinets he has built!
2) Computer - (cheap/free?) Many people have an old computer lying around. The one that is usually in my MAME cabinet is what typically becomes of my primary workstation after I upgrade (typically every 2-3 years). While some games don’t even work with the newest hardware, you can easily play over 4000 of these games with almost any machine. Remember, these games are from the 80’s, so emulation of them isn’t that intensive. The first computer I used was a 486 running Windows 95 and it easily played all the early 80’s classics like Galaga, Pacman, etc. Today I’m using a middle-of-the-line Athlon 3800+ with 1GB of RAM and a 256MB Radeon HD 3450 video card which also works quite well.
3) Cabinet - ($varies, mine was $175 delivered) The biggest commitment is the cabinet. Rather than try to build my own, I went to a local games distributor and asked if they had an old cabinet. They did, and I ended up with an old Zenophobe cabinet (it had been later turned into Combattribes). If you know of a game vendor in your area, chances are they have old stuff around in a warehouse that can be had for cheap. Check craigslist too. You might find a working machine that you could convert fairly easily.
4) Monitor ($varies) - I used a computer monitor that doesn’t look the best in my cabinet, but there are a lot of options. With LCD’s so cheap, taking one out of the case and mounting in a cabinet may work well for you. You can probably get a CRT almost free these days.
5) MAME Emulator - It’s free, just download it. This is the program that acts as the hardware for all the different games by using your computer. It’s been in active development for over 10 years and continues to improve. I use the MAMEUIFX32 as it has some features over the official builds (like high-score saving).
6) ROMS and CHD’s - These are the actual games and use use the MAME emulator to play them. While the copyright on many of these games has expired or the potential interested parties are no longer interested, you will officially be entering a grey area playing any of these games. There are groups of individuals that have been around for years that will get the roms to you for cost of the media. Doug Burton is one of these guys. You also may also consider bittorrent. Please don’t ask me–I’ll just direct you to this post.
Recently, the size of all the games has grown astronomically with the addition of CHD (compressed hard drive) files. I mentioned before there are 6500 working games (about 7500 total that don’t all work). If you sort by size, the first 3000 games only add up to 90MB! But they go up from there… To get to 5000 games, you need 611MB of disk space, and to get to 7400 you need 17GB! Finally, if you include a couple of hundred games with the CHD files, the archive grows to almost 150GB!! Drive space is cheap these days though, so even at that size it shouldn’t be an issue.
Check this Youtube video of me playing M.A.C.H 3, an old laser disk came from 1983. While emulating Galaga and Pacman isn’t that hard, MAME has come a long way to be able to emulate old laser disk games too.
Recently, my wife’s old Toshiba Satellite A15-S157 laptop finally bit the dust, and it was time for a new one. She wasn’t interested in a netbook (too small), and we weren’t interested in spending a ton of cash since it’s mainly one of those ‘lounging around the house’ laptops.
I was about to pull the trigger on one of those cheap Office Depot type specials you often see for around $500, when I realized it wouldn’t be much better than the 6-year old Toshiba it was replacing.
Using my tried and true buying site, BensBargains.net, I found some deals at the Dell Outlet, where you can get either refurbished or scratch-and-dent re-certified computers. I opted for a refurbished Dell Studio 15. To get the best deal, here is what I did:
1. Dell Outlet - First go here and get familiar with the site, the options, how the selection works, etc. To get the best deals you won’t be buying just yet, but you want to see what’s available and know how to ‘quickly’ buy one of these. For the Studio Laptops, you can even choose from EIGHT colors, and typically there are a lot of options out there to meet your needs.
2. Dell Outlet Twitter - Often, Dell puts out 20% off coupons on these already cheap outlet PCs. The best way to find out when they come out is to follow their twitter account. I even put them on SMS update, so when the deal came out, I got a text message right when it happened. This was important, because when the 20% off coupon comes out, the selection goes FAST. Deal sites usually post this, but if you get the tweet, you are getting it the same time they are.
We’ve had the laptop now for a couple weeks with no issues. It comes as it was new (nice boxes and all), and you would never know it was refurbished. It’s re-plastic wrapped and totally clean with a fresh install of Windows Vista Home Premium SP1. Here are the specs:
Studio 15 (1537) Laptop:
Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 (2.00GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
250 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
3 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
Dell Wireless 1510 802.11a/g/n Draft Mini Card
Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Web Camera
Fingerprint Reader Touchpad
Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
8X Slot Load CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
15.4 WXGA LED Laptop Screen Display with TrueLife
Multi-card reader slot, HDMI & VGA output
eSATA, 3-USB, Firewire, PCMCIA, 10/100/1000 LAN
6 Cell Primary Battery
Plum Purple
1Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, Mail-In Service after Remote Diagnosis, 24×7 Phone Support
Usual bundled software (that I uninstall)
$539.00: Cost (Pretty good price–’new’, this would be around $800)
- $107.80: 20% off any refurbished Studio 1537 (this is the twitter outlet coupon I used)
Subtotal: $431.20
Shipping and Handling: $19.99
Shipping Discount: -$19.99 (coupon had free shipping too!)
Sales Tax: $23.72
Total Amount: $454.92
To get this laptop with a decent processor, wireless-N, bluetooth, webcam, the color you want and a nice sized hard drive for $450 is impressive. Used on eBay you’d easily pay more and not have a warranty.
If you are in the market for a new laptop, don’t be afraid of refurbs. I’ve purchased a lot of refurbished electronics and have had great success. Usually you can save 30-40% from new, and you often can’t tell the difference.
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