So several months ago I purchased a Buck Rogers pinball machine playfield. The playfield is just that, it’s the area the ball runs around on - no back, no legs, etc. Just the field and the accompanying electronics used for it.

After a lot of soul searching I decided to not use the lights that came with it. Why? The reasons were simple - the main wiring harness was a thick complex rope of wires that ran through the table - making it hard to discern which lights were what. So what to do? I just spent a whopping $4.75 to purchase 50 40,000mcd white LEDs on eBay. Those are more then I need, but better safe then sorry.  Not to mentionI know exactly how much voltage they need, how to build a harness for them, and other things - AND, I can do other things - like make certain lights blink with some arduino action. So that’s settled.

That leaves things like the top and legs and such. I can’t find it on their site but Target has these neat ‘Build your own’ furniture  kits - and there are some legs I think might fit perfectly for the occasion, I need to measure them though. The top will be acrylic from TAP and the surround will be some wood I purchase and stain later, not sure - I don’t want pine though. Maybe a nice oak?

I’ve also ordered parts for a brand new PC, a badly needed upgrade - they arrive this week.

I’ve gathered all of the supplies needed now for what I’m calling Project Note - I look forward to building that this weekend or so. I’ll take plenty of pictures, but it’s a gift for someone for Christmas so you won’t see it until then, sadly.

More later - it’s been a busy few weeks.

The above is the ad I was shown while checking my email today. In case you can’t read it, it says “Congratulations! - http://www.google.com/cmp?lex=&url - This is an ad with a complex URL [site:w3.org URL encoding] French”

Where does the link send you? To here.  Yes, to a Google search for “site:w3.org url encoding” and it’s in French.

This entry is short and sweet.

Microsoft engineer is here at work all week and as such I’m deeply entrenched in things you care not about - such as the Notification Workflow Solution Accelerator add-on for Operations Manager 2005.
And, for some reason, DNS is ‘teh suck‘ at home and can’t reverse my domain, even though the girlfriends Mac can, so I haven’t done an update from home either.

Either way, tonight is Thursday, and as such it’s yet another taping of ‘In The Loop‘ at MPR. This weeks topic is “Democracy - Is it in you?“, a look at the concept of Democracy. Although it looks good on paper, how well do we put it into practice? It looks like it will be a fascinating show and I can’t wait to watch it unfold. I’ll be there, of course, Nikon in hand. Hope to see you there!

Tomorrow we’re going to go see Urinetown, and I’m going to try to snag some primo seats for Spamalot again - wish me luck!

By the way, it’s finally good to see the Lions Tap restaurant in Eden Prairie get some press - they literally make the best burgers - they have to, it’s all they make!

While searching Microsoft.Com for ‘download powershell’, I came across not only the download I wanted, but a How To on how to download it. Says a lot about the user base, doesn’t it?

Although not as clever as the majority of ones at Ikea Hacker, I too have improved the use of some Ikea furniture!

Although they are no longer listed on Ikea’s online catalog and I neglected to take a picture beforehand, awhile ago I bought 2 DVD holders from Ikea. They each had 5 shelves, made out of metal, and neat concrete bases. I bought them before I lived in a loft, because I knew I wanted to live in a loft, the one we’re at specifically, and thought they would look great - and they do. Problem is, we have way to many DVDs - more then enough to fill both towers up to the brim and more! A few of them were larger box sets and I didn’t want a line of DVD holders stretched along the wall so I ran to the hardware store and came back with five 3 foot long boards. They are 6″ wide and 3/8″ thick and fit perfectly if you turn the DVD towers sideways. Now I can just buy longer boards if we have more DVDs to store - I think it looks great as it is, but with a little gunship gray paint I doubt you’d be able to tell these are wood from a distance. For added safety, bolt them to the stands, and then screw some angle iron into the wood to hold the DVDs and prevent sliding.

Here’s a few pictures - click to make ‘em bigger!

Here you can see the board on top of the old stands:

The finished holder, already filled out:

It’s time for the Pavleck.Com Weekend edition. A lot is going on and I’ll make you privy to it all!

First up, it’s that time once again - the St. Paul Art Crawl kicks off tonight at 6pm. I’ll be walking around my building checking out (and buying) some of the art the incredibly talented people in Twin Town can put together - will I see you there? I’m really hoping to!
See if you can find me or my work called “All my exes live on canvas” (A play on an old country song). It may or may not be there. The fun is figuring it out!

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So after using my 3G 20G iPod for the past 3 years, I decided I needed a new one - so I went and got it.

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I won’t tell you what I’m working on for my next project, but I will post a random picture for no reason at all. Heh heh.

Speaking of projects, the pinball playfield coffee table is still in the works, I’m now waiting on a few additional parts via eBay to come my way. I want the playfield to shine!

That? That’s my iTunes.
I’ve been using iTunes now for about 5 years, and realized the other day I never actually looked at much of the options. For me, it was simply a way of playing my iPod while docked, or a way to fill it up with more tunes.

But the other day I stopped and actually starting looking at some of the options available.
There are the typical options that you would expect to see in a DAP media center software - ripping type, syncing, downloading podcasts, etc. But what I found simply amazing was the avalanche of options available in the playback window - the one you’re normally looking at. The one that tells you what song is playing right now.

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