My Reward

I figured out what my problem was with running the Pinball Locator locally this morning... the table that stores all the pinball data didn't have all the right fields with the correct names and types. There are some subtle yet irritating differences between how my machine and the live server work, and I'm having a really hard time believing that it's because I have a newer version of PHP. For now I've just got an ever-growing set of includes to deal with the differences, so we'll see how that goes.


As a reward for getting the core functionality of PL running locally, I treated myself to some time reading Pinball News' Iron Man rule porn, which was just published today. And it's just like real porn, because 90% of the rules they talk about are unattainable to schlubs like me. ^_^

I Contribute to the Pinball Community!

OK, this isn't about T2, but this all happened kind of without warning.


About two weeks or so, I was on RGP and there was a post complaining about the Stern Pinball web site search function. Well, when I went to look at it, it was none other than the good ol' Pinball Locator. I defended it as best as I could, then fired off my semi-annual letter to Ken at PinballRebel.com offering to fix some glaring issues. To my shock and awe he responded positively. This time I took a different tact: Rather than honestly conveying my skill set (I don't know PHP because we use Javascript and JSP at my work), I just told him I know PHP. This was apparently what he was looking for, and after a brief negotiation he sent me the Pinball Locator source files.


Well, yay for our team! It took me a couple of hours of monkeyin' around to get everything up to the point where I could run the site on my computer. Mac OS X comes with the Apache Web Server, but you have to turn it on and activate PHP. Then I had to install MySQL and a program to monitor and query MySQL. Then I had to figure out what the heck PHP was doing (honestly, it's nothing surprising... after 34 years of programming in a dozen or so languages there really isn't a lot that can shock me in a programming language). The biggest problem ended up being that I can't seem to access the database from PHP... it doesn't give me an error message when I run a query, but it doesn't do anything either. 


Anyway, I fixed the glaring issues and sent the files back for review. I'm really anxious to see how it works out... just in the past week I've come up with about 10 neat new features, and I'm sure Ken's got a bunch as well. Fun!

Time Out for Fun!

The Terminator rebuild is proceeding like gangbusters, but since there's a lot to write about and it's really late, I thought I'd post this cool stuff that I just got.

A few weeks ago, Boing Boing had a post of cool video game propaganda posters. I thought they were pretty amazing, so I ordered them as soon as I had some free money from our larger than expected tax refund (plus Zazzle, the printing company selling them, was doing a Tax Day 10.40% off sale... I've since found that they have better sales, like 40% off, so be patient).

The artist, Steve Thomas, has put out more since I bought these, and he's also got some cool Solar System travel posters that my wife really likes. 

I framed them with cheap frames on sale from Michaels and hung them in our living room just before everyone arrived for my daughter's graduation. I opted for the pretty big size, 2 x 3 feet, for maximum impact. Of course most of our family didn't realize what they were, but my wife and I like them for their sublime blend of extreme subtlety and awesomeness.

Here's the Joust poster, which was the one pictured in the Boing Boing post and pretty much immediately sold me. I loved the Joust video game as a youth.

I put the Donkey Kong poster over the couch in the most prominent position, not because it's my favorite but because it's the one that most people will be able to figure out. 

Dig Dug is, in my opinion, the least obvious, as evidenced by the fact that my daughter thought it was Speed Racer. Why would Speed Racer be pumping something and have a Pooka reflected in his visor? I believe this reflects poorly on the quality of the education that we just paid so dearly for.

There are a bunch of other posters... some I didn't care much for (like Tron) and some I like but just came out, and I've pretty much used up my free wall space. If he comes out with a Crystal Castles poster (unlikely, I know) that would be an auto-buy, but otherwise I'll just wait until he finishes the series and decide then.


OK, next time T2 rebuild stuff for real.

A hollow voice says "PLUGH".

Yes, a title that's a bizarre and/or obscure 70's/80's pop culture reference means it's Tech Tip Time!

While my Dad and brother were here for my daughter's graduation, they were casting about for something to do on an off day (funny/irritating story: My Dad said he wanted to take a Dan Brown tour of locations around DC featured in The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, No. 3). There didn't appear to be any pre-made tours, so I bought the book from Audible [yes, I know, it was infected with DRM] and listened to it, taking detailed notes about locations in the book. When I was done, I wrote up a pretty-much complete list, sent it to my Dad, and blocked out an unused day for the tour. So when my Dad gets here, I asked him what he wanted to see. He told me he didn't want me to go through all the trouble, and that he only wanted to go on an actual packaged tour. So since we didn't go on the tour, we had an off day.) and I happened to mention that I was planning to splice a power cord with a legitimate 3-pronged plug onto the European plug attached to Terminator 2. My brother scoffed at that, saying we can just pick up a plug a The Home Depot that he can attach in five minutes with just a screwdriver. We did and he did, and it was pretty easy. After they left, I decided to do the same thing to Paragon, because the ground had been cut off by a previous owner and it's been on my list to do for quite some time (and as I've mentioned before my wife and daughter were grounding it themselves for a while until they learned not to reach back while they're watching TV).


Here's the original plug with the ground cut off. You can see that I helpfully label all of my power cords to avoid confusion at the power strip.

So first, I cut the old plug off and teased out the three wires. Since this vintage 70's era plug didn't use the traditional black-white-green wire color scheme, I made note of which identical black wire went to which side of the plug, even though I don't think it makes a huge difference.

I pulled the back off the new plug, which exposes the connectors. This is a really good time to feed the power cord through the back of plug before you attach the wires (I was feeling pretty smug for not forgetting it this time, but when I changed the plug on T2 again I did forget and had to detach the wires). Then I stripped the ends off the wires.

With the back of the plug on the power cord, I attached the wires to the business end of the plug. There's a little gap that you can feed the stripped wire into, then you just tighten the screw to close the gap.

Put everything back together and we're done! Look at that beautiful three-pronged outlet... just look at it.

And as a special bonus...

RARRR!

This was super-easy and fast... so much so that I didn't hesitate to change the plug on T2 for reasons which will be benounced later. Things are moving apace on T2, so I'll have a lot to discuss if I can find the time to blog this weekend.

He Powers Up... And It's Good!

As usual, I'm kind of constipated with news. But the good news is that I've assembled T2 to the point where the power driver board is getting power, and nothing blew up. So yay.

Tonight was the optional Week 0 of league, but Mrs. Entropy made it clear that I would not be honoring our nation's fallen soldiers by going to a stinky old bar and banking pinball scores.

I did sneak out yesterday and play a few games of NASCAR at Sole d'Italia. I'm kinda bummed that they got rid of Family Guy... I'm finding that although I liked NASCAR when it first came out, it's not holding my interest. And why does the garage not work on any of the games I play? And why doesn't the software see that the garage is disabled and give you the awards for, say, hitting the test car a bunch of times? Or maybe it's awarding them and I didn't notice. Anyway, I played for a while and by the end I was kind of hoping I wouldn't win any free games.

Anyway, I honest to gosh mean it when I say that the next post will feature some for real pinball fixin' stuff.

The End of an Era

My daughter graduated from college last weekend, which means one thing: I won't be going to Pizza House to play pinball any time soon.

Graduation Weekend was hectic, as we should have expected. A bunch of plans (cleaning the house, making gift bags for the family, etc.) came off a little half-baked. Family members cancelled (my brother, somewhat predictably), did stupid-ass shit (my father-in-law, who had my bro-in-law drive him 10 hours across the Midwest despite being sick, which made him more sick, so he spent the weekend in a hospital with pneumonia), and did stupid-ass shit that cost us money (my goofy sister-in-law, who ignored all the emails, Facebook posts and phone messages about the plane ticket my wife bought for her and purchased her own, which we only found out about the day before she left, by which time it was too late so we ended up donating $300 to the Richard Branson Naked Supermodel Water Skiing Fund). But Zoe Entropy did graduate (.02 grade points away from honors :( ) and moved out of her campus housing for the last time.

I didn't get to play any pinball during the weekend, but I had to drive the SUV up to pick up the last of her stuff on Monday, so I took the opportunity to make my last visit to Pizza House (at least for the foreseeable future). Happily, the high score that I set on NASCAR three years ago is still there. I put a dollar into Austin Powers and played four or five games until I was replay percentaged out. Then I put a dollar into NASCAR and played eight or nine games... every time it upped the replay beyond my score, I would match or get a special. I finally played my last two games and walked away, and as I opened the door I heard it match, but I kept walking. I kind of would have liked to go into town and play a game of The Champion Pub, but I had to get home.

I remember when I left school -- I remember it very well, since I did it three times in the 17 years it took me to get my Bachelor's degree -- and I felt the same wistfulness when I left Pizza House for the last time. Now granted, only a little of it was because of the pinball... Gettysburg College was this place I'd been coming to for four years, and now I was going to stop coming to it.

And THAT got me thinking about the time my Mom was at UCLA Medical Center about 8 years ago getting surgery for the cancer that eventually killed her. While she was under the knife, I got tired of waiting and took off, exploring the buildings that I'd attended class and goofed around in 20 years before. Of course I ended up at the arcade, a shadow of its former self but still with a couple of ratty old pins in the corner. There was a Getaway, maybe a South Park, and a few others that I don't remember. It was comforting to play pinball in a familiar surrounding.

I really don't know where this is going. Usually I can tie this all up with some kind of clever narrative thread, but I can't, so I'm just going to stop.

Well, enough of this. Next time I'm going to write about an actual useful electrical technique that I learned from my brother while he was here for the graduation (the reliable brother who actually showed up, of course).

Disparate but not Serious

I've been pretty busy lately, but the pinball is taking the backseat to life. Mostly it's cleaning and getting the house ready for my daughter's graduation -- yesterday I spent about 2 hours cleaning bathroom floor grout -- but I'm also serving as Mrs. Entropy's surrogate daughter, since her own is spending Mother's Day on a Senior Trip to the beach. So I had to make breakfast, make dinner, do some gardening (which, to be fair, I was going to do anyway), and watch Fringe episodes with the wife. These are all fine things, but not really pinball things.

However, these are the pinball things that have happened. In league I got into the VA playoffs by having a pretty good final week. Since I was in A division, the playoffs were kind of a foregone conclusion, but I did my best. I even did some practicing in Visual Pinball to learn the rules of the games I was weakest in a little better. My weakest game was High Speed II, and I was happy after a few VP games to have gotten 300 M on it, almost 10x my highest league score. Then in Allentown, I played one that was there and busted out another 300 M, and on a real machine to boot! I felt I was ready. So what happened? Nobody picked that game against me. So much for pathos. Anyway, I had one 4 point game of WHO Dunnit and three third place finishes for a third place overall. That ended up being OK because I got the prize I wanted, a copy of Pinball 101 (and a new toolbox). The guy who finished third in B got the same DVD, so obviously we intend to study up and improve our games. But, ya know, it was fun. The end of the season party was last night, and this time it was only about a half hour drive away. The guy hosting had a great selection of games, including Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom, which I played a few times as a youngster and co-did a VP adaptation for, but have never played as an adult. There was a pinball scavenger hunt and a get the closest score contest, but I didn't do well in either. I did have the most frickin' awesome game of High Speed, scoring 3.5 M and getting multiball twice, which is really good for me since I have trouble getting the ramp shot. There was one of the nuttiest games I've ever seen called The Wiggler. The steaks for dinner were good, too. And one of the guys in the MD league who got a full set of 6 digit Bally displays for free brought one for my Paragon, which has a display with a segment out. Good times.

Allentown was OK. I went on Sunday, because Saturday was our anniversary. Sunday kinda sucked. There were half the games and half the flea marketers, and none of the vendors had much that I was looking for. I had my aforementioned awesome Getaway game, played some Iron Man (which was good... people say it's just the Austin Powers playfield, but the game feels different enough to me). I chatted with a guy that I'd met at the Fairfax Open. I was happy to see that the guy with the Future Spa with the messed up playfield finally fixed the gate (I had left a note suggesting he fix it a few shows ago... maybe he took my advice). There were a few more games that were pretty interesting... I'll probably mention something about them later.

I did talk to the guy who sold me the LEDs for Quicksilver, and the LED manufacturers as a whole apparently worked with the Alltek Systems guy to solve the flickering light problem by either a) soldering a diode on every feature light, or b) buying a new lamp driver board. I wasn't aiming to buy a new lamp board, but the guy offered to sell it to me for 20% the $100 list, and since I hadn't found much else at the show to buy I went for it. This, of course, is waiting until after graduation...

Not much progress on T2, aside from selecting a line filter and teasing out the wires to install a new plug. I used my new tiny camera to see why the speaker panel wasn't fitting correctly, and it turns out that just bending the brackets was all it needed. I ordered some parts for it, including 3 of the 4 ribbon cables from Great Plains, still the best price on cables by a dollar each.

I've having very good luck with my Fish Tales playfield. It was missing its reel, and I was kind of disparing finding a new one. But a guy posted the reel and motor on a Mr. Pinball classified and only wanted $60 for it, so I yoinked it up. Then I posted a WTB on RGP and Mr. Pinball for the brackets that held the optos, and I got a response from a guy who had parted out an FT who still had the brackets. We're currently negotiating, but he sends me only one email a day... why is no one as eager to finish these transactions as I am?!?

More as I have time and remember all the stuff I was planning to write...