Ultimate 46 Inch Arcade Machine

Building home arcade cabinets has been an underground phenomenon for quite a few years now. There so much information about it on the net that with just a little plywood, an old PC and some open-source software, you too can construct your very own arcade machine that let's you play your all-time favorite video games in the comfort of your own home - yup, even Golden Tee! While many folks choose to go with the standard upright, bar-top or cocktail table designs, some truly dedicated geeks proudly exclaim "not enough!" and set their sights on a much loftier level of awesome when designing their own machines. And folks, I think I found our top contender so far. Check out the custom options on this massive, 4-player, all-inclusive 46" LED display arcade monstrosity up for sale on eBay!

• 46 inch LED HD display

• Full Body side art, front kick panel art and LED illuminated custom marquee art (configurable at purchase, you don't have to have Rocky on there)

• Powered by a Dell XPS 8500 with i7 CPU at 3.9GHZ, 8 GB RAM, 2TB HD, 1GB Video card

• Special Flight stick with an original authentic Blue Tron handle

• Discs Of Tron Push/Pull Spinner

• High power 46W PC speaker system w/subwoofer

• Dual top fire joysticks per player

• RGB Buttons - All buttons can have thousands of custom colors

• RGB joystick handles - Can have thousands of custom colors

• RGB Trackball - Can have thousands of custom colors

• Regular spinner control

• 6" Diecast Metal Racing Steering Wheel

• Special Custom Formica covered curved Control Panel base! (The only base like this in the world!)

• Dual wired light guns for arcade gun games

• 2 X-Box 360 wireless game pads coupled with special software that will give you the capability to play the newer home console games.

...and it plays around 30,000 games (but you have to find and install them yourself). Want it? Just cough up $7,995 and it's yours!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS ON THE 46 INCH ARCADE MACHINE ON EBAY

BONUS VIDEO: BUILD YOUR OWN BAR-TOP ARCADE MACHINE!

Bartop Arcade Cabinet - 720p movie (Weecade Clone) from Dave Filet on Vimeo.

Vintage Ad Browser

Most American geeks are, by nature, consumer-oriented, which is no real surprise as this is the kind of society we live in. Consequently, many geeks, myself included, end-up working in marketing or advertising. Personally, I've always loved ads of all kinds and the alternate reality they provoke within my flaky mind. In the world of advertising, everyone is rich, happy, sexy and has nothing better to do than worry about than their own comfort and security and the comfort and security of those around them. Now if that isn't the American dream I don't know what is. So imagine my excitement when I discovered a website that hosts tens of thousands of vintage print ads and makes them available for general perusal, some dating all the way back to the 1800s!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE VINTAGE AD BROWSER AND KILL SOME TIME WHEN YOU SHOULD BE WORKING

Pet Rock: Now With USB

One of the best and possibly the shortest fads of the 1970s was known as streaking the Pet Rock, which lasted for about 6 months. For those of you too young to remember, the Pet Rock was Californian entrepreneur and advertising guru Gary Dahl's answer for people who wanted to care for a subordinate companion but didn't want to bother with feeding it, cleaning up after it, etc.  The "pet" would arrive in a brown cardboard box complete with holes for air, some straw for bedding and a comical 32-page care manual that was replete with puns and jokes and even contained a section dedicated to training your Pet Rock (while the manual stated that tricks like "come here" and "shake hands" were nigh impossible to coax out of a rock, the command "attack" was  noted as being fairly simple to achieve, albeit requiring some assistance from the pet's owner). After the Christmas shopping season of 1975 helped push some 1.5 million units into the shag-carpeted homes of America (making Gary a millionaire in the process) the product experienced a quick decline in sales and was discontinued just a few months later. Gary went on to become a success in the advertising industry and eventually authored Advertising for Dummies in 2001.

If you're feeling especially groovy and have the urge to own a low-maintenance pet, that even your apartment manager won't mind, you can still get one of these amazing "creatures" today including all of the classic packaging accessories. Of course here in the 21st century we do things a little differently so the product has now been upgraded to include USB (I would have added Bluetooth, everything is better with Bluetooth).

CLICK HERE TO PICK UP A USB PET ROCK AT THINKGEEK FOR CHEAP

Star Trek: Into Whatever

So I went to see Star Trek: Into Dark Knight Darkness last weekend and as a lifelong Trekker all I can say is meh. I'd say the movie was 20% Star Trek (pointy ears) and 80% generic fill-in-any-action-hero-you-like-and-it'll-still-be-the-same-flick kind of stuff (Tom Cruise). Don't get me wrong, the effects were great, the action was non-stop, Alice Eve stripped down to her underwear, etc. but still...meh...they should have called it Star Trek: The Search for Plot. Anyway, one of the (many) things missing from this flick was some genuine humor. Oh there were a few attempts here and there, but I honestly can't remember any of them right now, which means they must not have been that good. So in celebration of the fact that Star Trek still exists in any form and the fact that it's Friday and we all could all use some laughs, I present to you: What's In Spock's Scanner Parts 1 & 2. Have a great weekend and live long and, you know...

WHAT'S IN SPOCK'S SCANNER PART 1

WHAT'S IN SPOCK'S SCANNER PART 2