Remix Review

I've been using the photos remix tool quite a bit. The younger says I'm a Facebook mom with it, that's fair. I figured I'd do another “instant” post with some of the pictures from the past year re imagined.

To start off, I took the picture of the Simian Button Man from the cover artwork of Down at Flathead, from the literary stack post. Looks like it changed 'em into a rodent Button Man!!! I enjoyed the read, but it felt like it lost the thread and found other threads. When we were on Catalina, I asked a few of the locals if they knew the author, I wanted to ask him what happened to the moon buggy!!!

I'd made mention of having gifted a stuffed Alan to a friend, who now has it on her shelf next to a plastic Perry the Platypus. Since platypuses are already a strange mix, remixing the picture made him into a duck!!! And Alan looks a bit like a dinosaur.

On the same post, I'd shared the X-ray of my broken metatarsal. It got the break fairly accurate, but I'm missing my second toe!!! It's hard to believe that it's been a year since I broke it, it's mostly fine now!!!

I'd made a post from a couple of events, the belated Valentine's Day dinner, and our trip to a Kings game. From the first, I took the picture of my wife with her chocolate malt, and it changed her into a Disney mom!!!

I took the picture my wife took of me doing the re creation of the burrito and quesadilla attacking pictures, and... well, it took it from a side view to a front view, and less of an attack on the food!!! Also, now that I think about it, kind of made me into a Disney dad!!!

And, the selfie of us in the stands at the Kings arena...

And Bailey waving the Kings flag!!! I'd done it as a claymation look, too, and it changed him into a human!!!

I did a lot of car stuff this year. Most of it was on the Studebaker and Kutcher. The main thing that I accomplished with Zonker is to get her to pass smog!!! At some point in there, I'd decided that I didn't have nearly enough pictures of Zonker with the top down, so I took some time on a sunny afternoon and drove over to a local park and took a few shots. As always, the drawing look of remixing the picture yielded a nice result!!!

Another shot, it made it into a hard top!!! As far as I've been able to tell, only the Pontiac sibling came as a hard top. There have been a couple of companies that have done hard top conversions, but you know what??? I don't think I'd want it as a hard top!!!

Had the engine rebuild and swap done on Scruffy, as well as replacing the battery and getting some junkyard parts (including that very cool instrument panel!!!) for her. More on the engine swap to follow...

Another thing that I did a good amount of this year was going to the beach!!! I had been thinking of going there today, for New Years, but it was drizzly most of the morning. Anyway, I did another line drawing of the composite picture I'd done of the younger and friend at Horny Corner, and it came out pretty good!!!

Did a second of the same picture in the claymation style, and it came out funny!!! Looks like they're buried in the sand!!! To be fair, the original was only from the waist up.

Did the picture I took at Grill 'em All of Surrogate giving his sister the side eye. Not bad. Funny, it put a boat in the background with an umbrella instead of a sail!!!

And a shot of the sunset at Santa Monica beach as a painting!!!

And the inheritance of the Studebaker... has ended up taking up a good amount of my time!!! I have yet to finish the intended upgrades to the fuel system, and once I do hopefully it will be fairly roadworthy!!! Remix made it into a cartoon!!!

And in the drawing style, it came out great!!! Also got the Falcon in the picture!!!

The Gaslight Anthem and Counting Crows concert was a great show!!! The drawing of Adam came out great...

The claymation look rendering of the same picture, not so much!!!

I love the way this picture of the Casino from Descanso beach came out in something of an art deco style!!! This is actually an older picture, because we never made it over to Descanso beach this year. I had done a drawing style of a picture I took from the ocean side, and it came out pretty good. Then I did the same picture in the claymation style, and it came out looking not the same... it showed the front side, with a sign on the top, “Avalon Casino”.

I love the way the picture I took of Surrogate making breakfast came out!!!

Not shared, but one of the pictures I took while we were on the Casino Tour was of one of the restrooms. It looked very period correct, and upscale from what you see today. If I ever do manage to do a full post on that, it may be included, but for now, here's a selfie of us in the mirror, remixed as a drawing!!!

And the picture from when we bought our hats in 16-bit!!!

And from the ridge tour we went on...

And Sid!!! Can't forget the world's greatest cat!!! Here's how he'd look in his tube in 16-bit!!!

The picture I took of the guys in their Halloween costumes came out looking great, they look considerably more menacing in the remix!!!

When I had the engine swapped, I'd asked the guy to hold onto the engine he took out (which, if you're keeping track, was the one that originally was in 3). I'd not followed up with him afterwards, and had figured he'd probably recycled it by now, but he called me about a week ago about it. I asked him if he could break it down and give it a cleaning, and I'd pick it up. This Monday I picked it up, and it's much easier to move around when it's in pieces!!! As predicted, the crankshaft is scored, but he says it'll clean up no problem. Anyway, I stored the block, head, and crankshaft in a basement corner and took a picture before I put the box of covers and internals on the top, and remix came up with an interesting take!!!

And that time that Sidney was curled up in the trash can!!!

From our trip to the fondue place on our anniversary, I actually had AI modify the picture. I asked it to change the pot to a cauldron full of a questionable green liquid, and put a hooded cloak on me!!!

Keeping in the same theme, I took another picture from years ago, our crow friend on the iron chair, and it remixed it to be quite Halloween-ey!!

Instant Art

I've once again picked up a few shirts, and have been taking pictures to share them here.

This is one of them, a Christmas shirt from King's Hawaiian. This was the shot of the front, it has a Christmas tree with the King's Hawaiian logo on the top. Could be a Christmas sugar cookie.

Photos had done one of their “pop out” effects, and I'd been planning on using that when I posted about it.

I enjoy King's Hawaiian, and have always liked the Bing Crosby classic, Mele Kalikimaka, and it has a Hawaiian themed snow globe with a plate that says Mele Kalikimaka on the base. That's probably got a lot to do with what sold me on the shirt!!!

Today, photos offered to do a remix of a photo. This was a new one to me, I'll take a look. It's got several styles to re imagine the picture. The one that looked best to me was the drawing style, so I gave it a try. Came out pretty good!!!

That came out pretty good, I'll try another!!! This style looked nice, but it came out with an outdated Halloween theme!!! Not bad, but I feel like all it kept was my face!!!

Next I tried a 16-bit style one, it also came out pretty good!!! I noticed that it actually kept the Christmas tree, but flipped it to the other side and swapped the King's logo for a star!!!

This one was the last I tried, I feel like it kept my face pretty close, but semi cartooned the rest of me!!! And what's with the arm tattoos???

OK, that was fun!!! Let me see what else it can do... Not long ago, Sid was balled up on the perch, and I went to take a picture. Of course, he doesn't cooperate, but I got a decent picture of him peeking over the edge. Let's see...

Tried the illustration kind of look, and even not seeing his lower part it got the markings location right, but the color was off.

Since I liked the style it had done for me, I tried it as a drawing on lined paper, and once again, it came out pretty good, even though he lost his original pose for all of the generations.

Finally, I had it do it as a claymation kind of look!!! The colors are still off, but I still like the result!!!

Good times!!!

Missing

The printer that I recently bought, as mentioned, is WiFi connected, so I'm able to use it to print from multiple devices. I set up my wife and the younger's phone with the app to print from. This is the image my son used as a test print.

It's a friend of his that he plays Xbox games with, who lives in Arizona. He makes up some random memes from pictures he takes. A while back, his family was out this way for a wedding, and he visited for a couple days and slept in the basement.

I noticed that it was similar to the missing poster for Walter White in season 2 of Breaking Bad, so I updated it with the joke text that Walter and Walter Jr. find on his Aztec, borrowed my son's phone, and took a scan of it for him!!!

I'd forgotten about it, until I needed to do another scan. It's too good to toss, so I taped it up in the laundry room leading to his bedroom. A few of his friends came upon it, and found it to be hilarious!!!

Do the Dew Review

When a company comes up with a special edition or alternative recipe of one of their flavors, it piques my interest. Some of them just sound bad, and I usually won't try it unless I hear otherwise. Other times I'll think it sounds good, and I'll have to try it!!!

The other day I was at Little Caesar's picking up some pizzas, and they had a new Mountain Dew flavor. This reminded me of the time I was there last year, and they had pineapple Pepsi in their cooler. I had to get a couple to try them out, and let the younger try it as well.

It was... different. It wasn't great. It had some pineapple flavor to it, but it was mostly Pepsi flavored to me. Ah well, I gave it a try.

This time it was a mango flavored Mountain Dew. Apparently, Mountain Dew has previously had a mango flavor, Mango Gem, but this is Mango Rush. It's supposed to have some spice to it, but I wasn't feeling it. It has the mango flavor to it, which is pretty good, and pretty sweet. Much better than the pineapple Pepsi, but I don't think I'm getting any more. I bought three cans, one for myself, and one for the younger and surrogate son, and for three cans you spend about as much as you do for a pizza at Caesars.

Here's one I've tried that I really liked, Mountain Dew Baja Flash, that has a pineapple coconut flavor!!! Yes, I like Piña Colodas!!! I know I got it when we were vacationing in Running Springs at the store there, and I think I got it again somewhere else.

While I was looking through for Mountain Dew pictures, I happened on this picture from Christmas 2021. Another collaboration, this time between Pringle's and Halo, Moa Burger flavor!!! I picked up a tube for both myself and the younger. As I recall, this was another hit, meaty and salty flavored. This was also the year he'd asked for some Spamton glasses, which he's wearing for the picture.

There's a web sourced picture of both sides of the can, since my picture came out a little fuzzy. I like that Mr. Pringle got a boom mic headset!!!

Anyway, the mention of the Spamton glasses reminded me that I'd found him a Spamton T-shirt for Christmas 2022. I'd taken a shot of the graphics on it, most likely in anticipation of making a post, and never used it. Here it is!!!

Big Mac Birthday

McDonald's has recently been engaging in some revisionist history. For years, Grimace has been something of an oddball background character. I've heard he's supposed to be a giant, anthropomorphic taste bud, and when he was introduced, he was somewhat analogous to the Hamburglar, where he'd steal people's shakes.

This year, for whatever reason, McDonald's has come up with the story that Grimace is huge on birthdays, and June 12th was declared his birthday. In celebration, they came up with Grimace Birthday Meals, featuring either a Big Mac or 10 nuggs, medium fries, and the special signature item, the Grimace Birthday Shake.

Don't know if I've made mention here, but a couple years back they built a Wingstop not far from our home. On Mondays and Tuesdays, they started off with $.50 wing night, sold in either 10 or 15 packs, with 2 flavor choices. We like their flavors, and it's a pretty good deal, so we've made Tuesday Wing Night. The price has gone up, first to $.60, then to it's current $.70, but it's still a pretty good deal. A couple weeks ago, I was out, first to the store for a couple items, then to Wingstop to pick up our order. In the same lot as the store, there's a McDonald's, so, being curious about the Grimace Birthday Shake, I stopped in to pick up some for the family to try. Got there, and there's a guy waiting at the counter, but no one helping him. I step up to kiosk to try and order one there, but it's either not there, or it's impossible to find, so I get in line, now grown to two, and now with a worker. As I'm waiting, the guy at the head of the line attempts to order a shake, and it met with the classic McDonald's reply, “Our ice cream machine isn't working”. Made my wait shorther.

The next weekend, we decide to again head to McDonald's for a second attempt. McDonald's is one of those where we rarely go there. I like the sausage biscuit with egg, but almost never make it out for any breakfast, and my son is a fan of the Shamrock Shake, so that's the one thing we end up going there for a couple time a year for. There's one it the area we're in that we've never been to, so we head there. We're able to order the whole Grimace Birthday Meal from the kiosk. The place it pretty nice, and for a change, it has restrooms where you don't need a key or code to use it!!! The workers bring out our chow, and they're friendly and on the ball with ketchup for the fry dippin'. Big Mac is a classic, and I ordered mine with the right extras.

The shake is... interesting. You can tell it's based on the vanilla shake, but with some berry flavoring. I'd read a review where they likened it to a cereal flavoring, along the lines of crunch berry or Fruity Pebbles.

Around the time I was almost done with the Big Mac, the worker came out again. Apparently, they'd made up a second Big Mac to my specifications, and since they couldn't give it to an unsuspecting customer, they gave it to me!!! Bonus Big Mac!!!

Dean Domino Update

I made mention of meeting this fine looking fellow a while ago. He kind of stuck in my head.

About a month back, I headed back to see if the King of Swing was still hanging around the muffler shop. We pulled around back where I'd seen him, and got out and looked around some. Saw another cat, but Dean Domino was nowhere to be seen.

I was getting ready to head off, when my son said since we were already there, I might as well inquire with the guy from the muffler shop, so I headed in. The guy says, “Oh yeah, the lady at the shop on the end has been taking care of him!!!” and he escorted me over there. He tells the lady why we're there, and she, indeed has been taking care of him!!! She had him behind the counter, and he was curled up on a blanket, snoozing away his best life!!!

She already has several cats at home, and this little dog (I'm not sure if he was a 'shop dog' or if he goes back and forth with her) so Dean stays at the shop. She wasn't keen on taking him home, too, and said she may find someone who will give him an actual home.

Who knows... that someone may be me!!!