Left Turn at Albuquerque

Apparently Mario & Luigi AKA the Mario brothers are done saving the princess and have decided to open up competing take-out joints in Manchester, United Kingdom. On top of the names, the colors of the stores are also the same of the Nintendo characters. Mario typically wears red and Luigi wears green while stomping on Koopa Troopas. Almost too many similarities for this to be a coincidence. Coming soon: Toad’s Tavern.

More @ Google Maps.

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There’s something special about driving to work in the morning and sipping on your cup of joe while knowing that the vehicle you’re riding in is getting it’s energy from that same magical ground up bean. Okay I’ll probably never own a coffee car but there is a real one in England that will be driven 210 miles between Manchester and London powered only by roasted coffee granules. In total, the trip will use the equivalent of 11,760 espressos, and the team will have to take ‘coffee breaks’ roughly every 30 to 45 miles to pour in more granules. Don’t get too excited though. Running a car on coffee costs between 25 and 50 times the cost of running a car on regular gasoline.

More @ Daily Mail.

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It’s been 10 years since the PlayStation 2 first came out in Japan. It is the best-selling console of all time, having reached over 140 million units sold as of September 30, 2009. New games are still being released on the system later in 2010. Kotaku made a nice little timeline of the PS2 history.

More @ Kotaku.

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Over the past couple years Facebook has really taken off to become the online resource for keeping up with your friends. It’s not just for college students anymore. My mom, sister, borther-in law, girlfriend and just about everyone I know is on it whether I want to be friends with them or not. Just like in real life there are friends that are annoying and do annoying things.

• Don’t become a fan of stupid things like Waving at security cameras or Stopping the microwave before it hits 0:00 to avoid hearing the “BEEP”s. (Yes those are really Facebook fan pages and I know people who are fans of.)
• Stop sending me group invites. I don’t want to join your group a protesting a Wal-Mart being built in Shaboygen, Wisconsin. We live in a capitalist society and you need to get over it.
• Don’t have 20 siblings listed in your profile. If you really have that many siblings then your mom is a prostitute and you shouldn’t admit it to your friends even though they probably already know.
• Don’t post status updates every 10 minutes telling your friends what you’re doing. I know it just snowed two feet and we’re all stuck inside for a week straight but we don’t need the constant updates on how bored you are.
• If you post updates that are TMI, you’re history. Just because I met you that one time at a party and will probably never meet you again doesn’t mean I want to know about your rash or gyno appointment.
• If you play Farmville, Cafe World or the Mafia game and post game updates then I’m not your friend anymore. I know there’s a way to turn off specific status updates but I don’t care, deleted.
• Don’t post duplicate pictures. If you do then you don’t deserve to be my friend.
• Stop adding people you met online as your friends. As much as you want it to be, it’s not a popularity contest and you don’t really know 1,043 people as your Facebook profile suggests. If you do then you don’t have a real life and I don’t want to be your friend anyway.
• Wow you made a baby. Good for you. Stop begging for attention by posting 43 pictures of him with a puppy.
• Facebook, stop completely redesigning your site. A tweak here or there is fine but it’s annoying to get to relearn where everything is when you update the look every six months.
• And last but not least: DON’T ever, ever, ever,Poke me. Poke me, you’re gone. Not only will I remove you from my friends list, I will also block you so there’s no chance I will ever communicate with you over Facebook again.

More random stuff I hate:

• Stop IMing me in Facebook chat if I enable it for 10 seconds.
• Stop posting weird obscure updates that no one understands.
• I don’t want to have a Facebook pillow fight.
• I don’t know any of my friend recommendations.
• Stop getting in verbal fights with random people over random comments.

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Mr Yoshi Akai built a pretty awesome Lego sequencer which to get working in itself is an amazing feat but it goes even deeper. The different coloured Lego pieces each have their own sound and the higher the Legos stack, the more complex the sound. There are many more music related instuments on his website. Now Mr. Akai just needs to provide us with some step-by-step instructions on how we can create our own Lego sequencer at home.

More @ Yoshi AKAI.

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This iron is special because it won’t lay flat on the table due to the weight of the handle which forces it to stay upright. This makes this one of the safest irons I’ve ever seen. In addition to not starting house fires it also helps you prevent leaving an iron on clothes for too long and singing them.

More @ Yanko Designs.

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Although the release date is still unknown, Tecmo is soon to be coming out with a remake of Tecmo Bowl available for download on PSN and XBOX Live. Hopefully the gameplay will be as addictive as it was for the NES and SNES versions of the games released years ago.

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We all know that the mail never gets delivered on Sunday but now Saturday may be a no mail day as well due to less demand for snail mail. In addition to this there may soon be an increase in postage and postal office closures. The Postal Service experienced a 13 percent drop in mail volume and lost $3.8 billion last year.

More @ The Washington Post. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

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Back in late 1987 Bandai released Stadium Events, a game part of the Family Fun Fitness series. Early the next year Nintendo bought the right to the series and re-released it as the the Power Pad. The two Family Fun Fitness-branded games that had already been released, as well as Bandai’s version of the running pad accessory, were pulled from shelves and destroyed due to Nintendo’s new Power Pad brand. In that time period there are believed to have been only 2000 copies of Stadium Events created and out of those only 200 sold to the public. Stadium Events is possibly the rarest game for the system that turned around the home console video game industry in the late 80’s which has been booming ever since.

Recently an Ebay auction popped up featuring a serious video game collectors dream, a sealed copy of Stadium Events. A copy of the game with the box included can go for over $10,000 but a factory sealed copy which was thought to not exist just sold for $41,300 in an Ebay auction.

Here are the words of the seller:

This was bought over 20 years ago so my memories are fuzzy (we have over 175 games – which, btw will be going up for auction in the coming months - all with boxes! – some unopened).  What I remember is that we bought it thinking that we could play it by itself and then realized that we needed the pad (?).  Somewhere in there it was recalled so the pads weren’t available when we went to purchase it.  We never got around to returning the game…lucky us!

More @ ebay & Wikipedia.

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To celebrate Missile Command’s 30th anniversary, Atari has released a remixed version of the game for the web. The website says it best: Chock full of power ups, tricky enemies and intense boss battles, Missile Command by OMGPOP has the makings of a modern classic. This game actually has some amazing control with your mouse or laptop trackpad. You can play the OMGPOP updated version of the game or the original Missile Command.

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Send the hit game Peggle Nights to a friend or relative — absolutely free! All you need to do is sign up for the PopCap Passport, your first-class ticket to fun! You will also receive exclusive offers, game previews, contests and more! Peggle Nights is a very fun, addicting game that usually costs $20. Not sure how long this offer is good for so you may want to act now.

More @ PopCap Games.

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I know that it can be difficult to find an outlet when you’re at an airport or bus station and desperately need to charge your cell phone or laptop. This concept is a chair that the user sits in a and rocks back and forth with their power plugged in to the built in power chord in the chair. Instead of taking electricity from the building, that chair actually transfers the energy you’re creating by rocking into the gadget you’re charging. Hey rocking is fun anyway so why not kill two birds with one stone.

More @ Inhabitat.

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Code Organ let’s you type in a website URL of your choice and it will play music based on the code of that website. It will actually analyze the code of any website based on what’s inside the <body> tags and will based on an algorithm, define chords, synth style and drum patterns. The music results are surprisingly and randomly catchy.

More @ Codeorgan.

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Following the 2009 bicentennial pennies that were released last to celebrate 200 years since Lincoln was born, the U.S. mint is releasing an updated penny with a similar look to what we’re used to. Not much changes on the heads side. The tails side gets a slight redesign but also looks somewhat familiar.

Specifications:

• Composition: Copper-Plated Zinc: 2.5% Cu, Balance Zn
• Weight: 2.500 g
• Diameter: 0.750 in., 19.05 mm
• Thickness: 1.55 mm
• Edge: Plain

More @ usmint.gov.

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