Arcadia, a great arcade in a small town

A few weeks ago I took a trip to Arcadia in McLean, IL. My girlfriend, Katie, knows that I’m always looking for pinball machines out in the wild. When we go out anywhere I will run to any pin that I see. Knowing this, Katie found Arcadia on the Internet and I had no idea that it even existed.

We loaded up on a Saturday and spent a nice afternoon there. The games were reasonably priced and the place was not maned at all. On the bill changers there was a sign with a phone number that there was someone close by that would come out if there were any problems. I really enjoyed the vacancy that not having an employee there provided. At times, we had the whole place to ourselves. Every once in a while, a couple people would pop in and play a little then leave. The pinball selection is good with awesome games like Medieval Madness and Addams Family to not so great titles like Super Mario Bros.

As well as lots of pinball machines, they had even more video games, including a Terminator 2 that I remember playing at the mall as a kid. They have a very interesting game there called Time Traveler by SEGA. The video on it was “holographic” and it was one of those machines that integrated live action into the game play. Not that there was much game play to speak of. The player mostly has to either duck or shoot some costumed moron running at you. The game was cheesy and I liked it a lot. One play lasted quite a while and it was fun. It was very different than any other game I had played in a long time and I enjoyed that.

The tab on a soda can does not have the same amount of Al as the can

I have heard from a few people that the tab on top of a soda can contains as much aluminum as the can itself. My guess is that this rumor got started because of chairities like the Ronald McDonald House collecting tabs to raise money. I finally decided to test it with my postal scale at work. The tab didn’t even register so it is less than a tenth of an ounce. The can was 0.4 oz.

       

Shrinking the electronics on Daft Helmet

IMG_2609My brother decided that the original Rabbit board we were using was not purpose based enough for the project so now we are re-making it. This new board should use less battery and will be smaller than the original design. My soldering worked! We powered on this little guy and Jesse started programming it. Once we are done, the whole thing will be inside the helmet with no external controls or battery pack to hide in my pocket. I will post the completed project once it is done.