So, it’s been a month since I’ve worked on any video project. And
there’s actually a number of reasons for that.
For one I’ve been working towards the launch of the Commander X16,
as well as the launch of Petscii Robots for MS-DOS. I’ve also been helping my brother
a lot to repair a ton of arcade machines, as he has decided to open his own arcade. There
will be more info coming on that later. I’ve also been working on an X16 port of Xixit,
which was one of my favorite MS-DOS games from the 90s.
Oh, and not least of which, during December, I was sick for a week with COVID-19. How fun was that?
But also, I just got back from Las Vegas, and that’s what I’m going to talk about in this video!
Remember when I did that video about adding solar panels to my studio building? Well,
EcoFlow wanted to invite me to CES to have dinner with them and see their booth. I’ve never actually
been to CES before, heck I’ve never even been to Las Vegas. I’ve always imagined what CES would
have been like back in the 1980s or 1990s. But I was a bit skeptical what sort of things I might
see being that most consumer electronics have been replaced by the smart phone.
Anyway, I decided to take them up on the offer, especially since they were fooling
the bill. This is actually my first time on a plane since the start of the pandemic.
After flying over the middle of nowhere, I did get to briefly
see Lake Mead and the Hoover dam from the plane, despite being a bit cloudy.
And here we are in Las Vegas. The first thing I noticed that took me by surprise
are the mountains. I thought Vegas was in the middle of the desert and always
imagined it as being flat. But the second thing I noticed was all of the gambling
machines in the airport. I mean, why even bother going to a casino, right?
Anyway, the city looked more or less like I expected from
what I had seen in movies and TV shows.
We were staying at the Treasure Island Casino. Fortunately, I was not paying the bill.
Obviously the bottom floor was full of gambling machines. Honestly,
I just don’t find these interesting in the least. I feel like they are games for people that are bad
at math. It’s mostly random chance, with the odds favoring the house, and there’s little
to no skill involved. I’d honestly have more fun sitting in front of a toilet and flushing dollar
bills down the drain than playing one of those. But at least a Casino is honest about what it is,
unlike other forms of gambling like crane machines, or extended warranties.
Anyway, that night we had dinner with the EcoFlow
team and they put all of the YouTubers together at this table. Of course,
these guys are from channels that cover a very different kind of content from mine.
The next day I went to CES. Strangely enough I was walking around wearing a badge that said I
work for EcoFlow, which lead to some awkward encounters here and there. Anyway, The place
was huge. I mean, an order of magnitude bigger than I was expecting. It took 30 minutes just
to walk from the entrance to the EcoFlow booth. At which point I met Jenny, their head of Marketing.
And we talked a bit about my experiences using the Delta Pros in my studio. She said they had
already made a few changes based on feedback from my video, which I was surprised to hear.
Then various reps showed me some of their new products like a lawnmower and an air conditioner.
But after that, I was pretty much free to do whatever I wanted in Vegas. My wife and
I spent the next 8 hours or so walking around CES looking at things. I saw the new electric car from
Sony. I’m not quite sure what I think of it just yet. I did see some interesting retro-style gear,
like these boomboxes with cassette decks, a whole booth of record players, both modern style and
vintage style. I kind of liked this one that had a record player, CD player, and cassette deck all
in one. But I also rather liked these little mini boomboxes, which play CDs and cassettes.
Oh, and they had boomboxes with actual televisions inside. These actually receive
over-the-air programming, but couldn’t get any signal inside the convention center. Anyway,
they sort of remind me of the boomboxes from the 80s and 90s that had a little
black and white CRT television built in. I always wanted one of those.
And believe it or not, they’re still making walkman style cassette players.
I did try out the “Holo Panorama” but I have to admit I was rather underwhelmed by it.
I was much more impressed with these spinning fan-style holograms,
but I had a hard time getting my camera to agree with it. But I found if I
manually adjusted to around 25 frames per second, I could get a decent video clip.
I think I found Professor X’s wheelchair.
And we got to travel to other parts of the convention via the underground
Tesla tunnels. Whatever your opinion is of these from a business standpoint,
you have to admit it is pretty cool to drive through.
As we were leaving the convention, I ran into Kyle Connor from Out-of-Spec motoring, one of
the channels I watch in my spare time. He looks a little bit like a younger LGR, but not quite
So, after leaving CES, I figured, you know, since I’m in Vegas there is something I’ve
always wanted to see. You see, 99% of the gambling machines around are these modern
style that use cards and tickets. But I remember seeing slot machines that used actual coins,
such as in this episode of Get Smart. Or better yet, this episode of Deep Space Nine.
Well, unfortunately, virtually no casinos use coins these days, but I was told that
at least one Casino still has some in use, which is Circus Circus. So, I went there to have a look.
It’s just a small area of the Casino. I’m not even sure what time period these are from. I’m guessing
the 1980s or 1990s. But they do take dollar tokens. And you can tell by looking at these,
they are very well worn and used. Anyway, let’s give it a try. I put $20 in the token machine.
It’s still a pointless waste of money. But, I have to admit this had far
more enjoyment for me than the modern machines. In fact, after the 5th coin,
I actually won a small jackpot of 20 coins. Of course, I put them all back in the machine,
and as you can imagine by the time I left the $20 I started with was completely gone.
Later on, we visited a Wax Museum that was next to our hotel. Even though we have one
of these in Dallas, I’ve never actually been to one. Honestly,
they didn’t look all that real up close. But it was interesting nevertheless.
If nothing else, I was surprised to see how short or tall some of
these famous people are, which you don’t really notice on TV.
And they last place we visited was the Grand Canal Shoppes,
which is an enormous shopping mall, which has a canal going through the middle of it. And
the part that is really amazing is that the sky is not real. Yep, this whole place is indoors,
but it is designed to look like it is outdoors. It was actually really impressive visually.
And so that’s it for Las Vegas. To be honest, it wasn’t all that terribly exciting for me,
because I’m not particularly into gambling, or drinking, or strip shows. But, CES was
kind of interesting, at times. But honestly, I felt like a lot of it, probably 90% of it,
was just not that relevant. Because, even though it’s called the “Consumer Electronics Show,” I
felt like most of the booths there were not really showing off consumer electronics. They
tended to be like sub-contractors who were really advertising their services to other manufacturers
in the industry, so as a regular consumer walking through there, I just found a lot of it to be not
that interesting. And I also think there is such a thing as a convention being too big. I mean,
we were there for like 8 to 10 hours the first day. You know, our feet and backs were just
killing us after walking around all of that time. And you know, I think in order to see all of the
convention you’d have to be there for 3 full days. And that’s just not something I wanted
to do. So what’s coming up next? Well, I have a number of projects coming down the pipeline.
One of the videos I’m hoping to make is kind of a documentary showing how we’re going to produce the
Commander X16 in large numbers. That’s something we’ve been working up towards the last few months,
and I think you’re going to find it interesting. I also have a number of reviews I want to do. For
example,I have here with me a “wee-cee” which is a tiny little MS-DOS computer. I’m going
to be reviewing that. As well as, I don’t know if this is E.V.O. or EVO 64, which is kind of like a
replacement motherboard for the C64. I’m going to be showing that off as well. And I might even do a
short video, just kind of explaining some of the interesting challenges about porting Xixit from
MS-DOS to the Commander X16. So hopefully there will be a little bit of something for everybody
in one of the upcoming videos. But that’s it for the moment, so as always, thanks for watching!