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Speed Dating

malc — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:46:00 +0000

Nope, not the sort where you have a 5 minute chat with a bunch of desperate women (not that I've tried it, I've been *told* that it's actually quite fun) the type of speed-date-ing that happens when you write a blog post to cover April to October!

Well, I went on my travels, thru Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Amazing places, lots of sites, really enjoyed the temples and countryside, Chichen Itza was impressive but touristy, some of the other sites, e.g. Tikal, are equally as impressive and you're far less likely to be stuck behind a tour group. Our group was great, myself, Lori, our tour leader Caroline and 3 other ppl. I took about 1 zillion photos, even taking my camera on an expedition to Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) Caves in Belize, 45 mins hike thru the jungle, then a 2 hour caving expedition in water up to your chest (or your neck, in Lori's case) - check out the photo's here (if you make it thru all 60 pages of photos, drop me a comment, you may win a prize!)

After hols back to the daily grind, summer seemed to pass quickly, but did make it out to a bunch of stuff:
Glade Festival - an electronic dance music festival held in a field at a secret location somewhere near Newbury. Cracking weather and choons, lots of dancy and smiley happy people all dressed up to dance the night, and day, and next night... away ;-)

Wroughton Classic Car Show - was so local (and free) we thought it would be rude *not* to go. I still feel that one day I will own a Morris Minor 1000, or a Traveller.

Westonbirt Festival of the Tree - despite the new politically correct name (I'm guessing they god bored of my annual sniggering at Westonbirt Festival of Wood) this seemed to have expanded this year, with not only the amazing wood carvings, but a whole tent of Bonsai, which were fascinating. They raised a ton of money selling the sculptures by auction, and we had our customary stroll thru the Arboretum.

Come to think of it, we had a pretty decent summer weather-wise. Which was especially good for our Alton Towers trip (no photos... even I'm not stupid enough to take an SLR on nemesis... tho one day I intend to ride it with my bulletcam strapped to my wrist, so that we can re-live the 60s of being hurled about. Despite air and rita, Nemesis remains my all-time favourite coaster, I
could seriously ride it all day. Oh, and unless you're 5, don't bother with the new Charlie & The Chocolate factory ride...

Summer officially ended when my good friend Stu left Sonus and Swindon for the sunnier climes (and cosier bed) of Barcelona. The emigration to live with his gf put an end to almost 7 years at different companies where we have sat in the same cube. A proper send-off was called for, so we all dressed up in a Top-Gun theme and headed out on the town... nuff said about that ;-) Luckily he's been back a few times, and I'm heading to Barcelona for a long weekend next month. Look for more photos appearing soon in the gallery.

Visited brum for the 2nd Nokia-sponsored (thanks guys) - UK Pinball Show. It was even bigger and better than the previous year. *So* much hard work is put in to get 170 machines set up and playable for 2 days. I didn't see anyone leave without a smile on their face. (I also got very drunk and tried to take muttman the dog for a run about 1am around the hotel grounds... rather, he took me for a run... but I'm sure it was an amusing site for the onlookers.

Had a wedding and a stag weekend. No, not mine, though I am *still* moving into Lori's... Chris and Kim had a great day at Malmesbury Abbey and then later at an old haunt from my previous job, the Rosie pub down the road.

And here we are in October, planning Christmas already, how time flies. I did a bunch of other crapola, but none that anyone would be interested in (really, ice-skating, getting promoted, spamalot the musical, survived without a haircut, dressed up as a cow superhero... if you really care, comment and I'll elaborate) not that you're interested in the above really, I mean, only Jishot is gonna read it (or he damned well better after nagging me to update!). On the update front, I've fixed/added some links over there ===> be sure and visit them. Mr mcawilliams.com has a new camera, his creative powers are now unbounded by technology, who knows what he'll create. Inside the mind of an idiot needs a new tea-cosy... I'm pimping this one, if you can knit, get to it! Oh, and props to Cutielis for discovering the Cuddle Party - sounds not unlike the morning after the night before at the Glade festival...

Listen to: Shpongle / Younger Brother
Watch: Clerks II, A Scanner Darkly
Do: Something different.

Until next year ;-)

malc. xx

Time flies by...

malc — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 21:18:00 +0000

When you're the driver of a train.... (name that tune ;-)

It also flies by when you're me, apparently... no excuses for the lack of updates nothing interesting to report, really...

January was Snowboarding - a week in a Chalet in Alpe d'Huez - excellent fun, and my home-made snowboard repairs held up well to the abuse. Here's Stu, Me, Lori and Muppet (the gay skiing one..) on top of a mountain.

After that most of Feb was spent in detox... it's a wonder any of us survived a week of free wine in the chalet, and Desperados on tap in the local (by the pint!)

The Ides of March passed by once more, and I made it to the ripe (old) age of 31 on St Patrick's Day. Which I celebrated with mexican food, margaritas, desperados, much real ale, tequilla, and a solo rendition of 'The Wild Rover', performed with a (drink induced) swagger akin to the scruffy Gallagher, strolling thru the pub tables, mic in hand, like a glorified lounge singer. I followed up with a Guinness (or 2) and claimed my (now customary) hat.

April is upon us - and thoughts of holidays - booked to go to Mexico for 3 weeks, on a Mayan Adventure :D We'll travel thru the country taking in beaches, volcanoes, cities and Mayan ruins... should be enough material there for me to start posting some interesting pictures again.

Gig-wise it's been quiet - caught Jerry Bewley (guitarist with Kangaroo Moon) in the 'hive for an entertaining evening. Next up is Anna Page an old school freind of a mate of mine - scheduled neatly for the pre-easter Thursday booze up - should be a messy night ;) Oh - and got tickets for the glade festival - can't wait.

Multiplicity

malc — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:00:00 +0000

So, 2 weeks since the last update (well I started one - but never posted it - consider this a bumper update), in that time I've:

i) Had my photo on page 3 of the newspaper ;-)
ii) Attended the highly successful UK Pinball Show
iii) Failed to do any Christmas shopping.
iv) Started work on the Super Mario Pinball...

So newspaper article was suitably embarrassing - luckily they don't archive the photo they published. Horribly misquoted and ribbed the whole weekend of the show about 'playing all the machines from Swindon to Brighton'.

The show was a great success, with 143 machines for people to play, for free, for a mere 5quid entry. Had a great weekend and the event raised ~3grand for MENCAP. (As of writing you can still buy t-shirts in aid of mencap here.)

I've made one attempt brave town for Christmas shopping - managed to buy myself the ludicrously expensive remote for my camera (15 quid for a 1 button IR trigger...) but it means I can have fun like this:

Using the tripod and multiple shots rather than extensive photoshop post-processing is pretty cool. I plan to experiment with this some more... the remote allows you to do really long exposure shots (like 'bulb' setting), but without the need to keep a finger one the shutter release, thus shaking the tripod (click once to open shutter, then again to close.) Lots of fun to be had creatively there too - so far limited to shooting a darkened empty room, whilst I figure out exposure...

Super Mario is gonna be a long-time work in progress - it basically lights the general illumination and not much else - I've started work on the cpu board, having ordered the motherload of spare parts which arrived the other day.

Most of the rest is the mundane work/drink cycle that is too dull to report - mostly work.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten I owe one of you a post with details of my digital photo-frame project. It's coming... and so's Christmas :D

Pinballers Anonymous!

malc — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:41:00 +0000

So I finished the TZ shopout - and Nick came to collect that and Addams for the show in Brum on Saturday. If you're in the area and fancy a game of pinball, the Holte Suite at Aston Villa leisure centre is the place to be - more info here. I'm off there tommorrow, all the pinball you can eat for a fiver - bargain.

In order to promote the show, your shy and retiring (ha!) author has been interviewed and photographed for the local rag... I posed (clothed :P) in a number of random and uncomfortable positions around the machine. I'll post a scan for your delectation and delight if it gets printed.

Other than that - not much happening.

Keep flippin'
malc.

Filth!

malc — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 01:43:00 +0000

Nope, no pr0n... more pinball...

Got the tricky bits off, gumball machine, mini-playfield, plastic/metal ramps, metal lane guides and troughs, the list goes on... The machine is filthy, it's probably never had a decent clean in it's lifetime, as you can see in the next pics.

Next up is cleaning/polishing duty, gonna take a while.

Halloween party was a blast, everyone made such efforts with their costumes, some were more scary than others...

I think the prize for 'most effort' had to go to 'The Corpse Brides'

Head on over to my gallery for the full rundown of the preparations and the party itself. (Warning! Completely unedited snap-happy drunken rubbish can be found there ;)

Stay tuned!
- malc

Twiglet Zone

malc — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:44:00 +0000

In progress...

I've practically run out of tubs already...

So some way to go (all the complicated bits), but I guess I'm about halfway (I already did some under-playfield parts too).

I finally finished my digital photo-frame project. Bastardized an old laptop, removed unnecessary components and pcbs... seems to be working quite well despite a small mishap where the heatsink fell off (it's passively cooled, and totally silent once booted from cd into ram.)

Oh, and hallowe'en is coming, we're costume-partying on Saturday... expect scary photos sometime over the weekend once I sober up.

Back to the pin-grime I go, take it easy.

KT Tunstall and the Twilight Zone...

malc — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 08:19:00 +0000

Saw KT Tunstall in Bristol last night. Surpisingly good (although it had to be, her parents were in the audience..., she quipped that she had to prove that the fortune they'd spent on piano lessons was a worthwhile investment, I'd say 500,000 sales of her album proves this!)

What a talented, yet surprisingly diminutive, individual, not only does she have an amazing voice to accompany her guitar playing skills, but the also hit's the ivories pretty good, and gave us some impressive beats on the drum-kit. Her band were pretty acomplished too, not often you see a double-bass and a cello at these gigs... (Except maybe when Lemon Jelly's Fred Deakin takes up the Cello on-stage.), by the end, the drummer was drumming with a pair of maracas, I sight which caused us great amusement for some reason... maybe it was the Grolsch.

Decided to rip up the Twilight Zone pin at the weekend, it's fairly grimy... expect pics when I run out of nature ones from my recent trip.

I love this rock, the colourful lichen, and the pitted holes, LJ crouched down to look thru at me laying on the floor trying to get a good angle. (As an aside: I have been reading a book called "learning to see creatively", so far, from what I can gather, I need to crawl around on the floor in the dirt... I think I need to read more chapters... :) Anyhow, she peeped thru at me and I had to take a pic.

I love trees, so hard to take an interesting photo of something everyone sees all the time, I've taken some before at Westonbirt Arboretum, laid on my back, trying to emphasize the scale. This one's beautifully twisted, all the way up, like some force was tweaking it as it grew up.

Those of you who know me of old, will know that I used (ha!) to be a maths nerd, well into my chaos theory and other stuff - I still love to see mathematical shapes in nature - so heres an example of subdivision/recursion and of spiral.

I'll go full circle back from nature to KT Tunstall, by pointing out that she's a great beleiver in carbon neutrality. At it's simplest level, planting trees to offset the CO2 emmissions made by creating the album and flying around the world to promote it. I'm not gonna go off on a green-rant here, though I urge you to google if you're interested.

I'm off to hug a tree... Peace Out
- Hippy-Malc ;)

Waylands Smithy

malc — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:19:00 +0000

Took a walk along the ridgeway from Uffington castle last weekend to one of my favourite neolithic monuments after Avebury, Waylands Smithy. The burial chamber as it stands today is dated 3500BC, but excavations have shown an earlier, much smaller burial chamber pre-dates this.

The entrance was originally dominated by 6 larger sarcen stones, 2 of which are sadly missing today. These things are huge!

Whilst the chambers inside of the barrow, laid out in the form of a crucifix, are barely large enough to crawl into. The mound itself stretches some distance, originally flanked by 2 ditches (thought to have been dug out to create the mound itself), the ditches are long gone, but the stones outlining the edge of the mound remain to this day.

More photo's to come... stay tuned.

Stick 'em up punk

malc — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:18:00 +0000

... it's the fun loving criminals! Huey returns as a 3 piece with a UK born drummer - who's birthday it is today - co-inciding with the lovely Alicia (see links, aka cutielis). Amazing gig - Huey is spot on as always - highlight for me was the variation of 'I've got supermodels, on my D, like Pete Doherty'. I personally think the media has been harsh on Kate Moss - why it's Radio 1's top story is beyond me, and feck knows why they need to keep ringing her employers to ask if she's been sacked. Jeez, if my peers did that every time I committed a misdemeanour - I'd be on my 200th job by now!

No pic today - too post-gig drunken to focus on quality - and I think I'd be skinned alive for posting the Alica version of my fish-face pic. So - imagine it for yourselves!

I've pretty much given up on nokiagame due to it's buggy nature and lack of linux support (and yes, I tried playing on windows - bleurgh - go here to play 20lives.com, and check out the helpsite 20lives.co.uk which as always is full of useful advice to get you thru the game.)

It just remains for me to re-iterate Happy Birthday Lis! and to dance off into the night in search of Scooby Snacks ;)

Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle.

malc — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 21:06:00 +0000

I'm not a fan of mobile-phone-cameras, but sometimes they capture a moment... what fun! Today our 'summer fun packs' arrived from our US office - these blow-up fish were really for the children - but we swiped a few for the 'bigger' kids... this is me 'impersonating' one of them, as captured by Stu.

The other reason for this personal public humiliation, is because - shock horror - I shaved off my beard - which has been with me for a good year and then some. Needless to say, I'm finding having a chin quite a novelty right now.

It's done!

malc — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 02:08:00 +0000

Well - almost - it's now fully playable again - and great fun it is too. Fresh rubbers (ooer) make for an interesting hike in the difficulty level as the balls (fnar) are somewhat more lively(!!). [schoolboy mode over...]

Got a couple of tweaks left to do - but for now I think I'll enjoy the fruits of my labour.

G'night!

Life is a rollercoaster

malc — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 00:02:00 +0000

Wheeeee - been neglecting the blog of late - had a weekend away at Alton Towers at the start of the month. Excellent fun - stayed in the AT hotel so got into the park before general admission, and had ridden Nemesis 4 times by 10am (my full english breakfast stayed down, somehow... ;) Rest of the day was great - rode 'Rita - queen of speed' twice - 0-100kph in 2.5s is quite a thrill!

Almost finished TAF - spent very little time on it - but have finally broken out the dremmel and made a new chair bracket from a metal offcut I had lying about. (Busted orig bracket on the left)

Very quickly learnt that I need a better dremmel - my no-brand rechargeable one no longer holds enough charge to do even the simple cutting/drilling required for this job. Gonna invest in a mains powered one... Eventually finished - here's the bracket in all it's glory before the electric chair toy was mounted back on top.

Still haven't managed to make it out to take any 'proper' photo's. So here's the kids on the log flume (where logs are now replaced by bathtubs...) from AT.

In other exciting news... Nokiagame is back for another year - register at www.20lives.com - the NokiagameElite crew are working hard behind the scenes to bring you their usual high standard of hints and tips throughout the game, which runs from 19th Sept. Check out the site www.20lives.co.uk or find us in #nokiagameclues.com on Quakenet.

And finally - to quote StarWars 'Look at the size of that thing!' - I got a new monitor - isn't she lovely? 20.1" of widescreen viewing pleasure. (And yeah - next job is to tidy the cabling under the desk ;-)

The Louvre

malc — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:25:00 +0000

Exhausted from BBQ'ing (excellent food courtesy of Hefin and Annie) and gardening (filled 3 large recycling sacks with waste from my jungle^H^H^Hgarden ;)

Here's Paris' famous Louvre museum. Hope you like it (and the new logo, a small step in tailoring the blog template... more to come, Enjoy!)

Charred Hearts

malc — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 17:04:00 +0000

Stumbled (literally) upon one of Swindon's longest running punk bands last night, The Charred Hearts, who in spite of the guitarist having some equipment issues were pretty good. The Vic made for a welcome change from our traditional bank holiday crawl around heaving 'tarts'-bars with brain-pounding dance/r&b...

So, from Charred hearts, to the city of love, Paris. I have tons of typical, unimagnative photos of the Eiffel Tower, so last time I was there I took a stroll along the far side of the river to try to find a different view, this was the result.

The Beach

malc — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 22:05:00 +0000

Bank holiday weekend is coming, so why not take a trip to the beach. This was shot in Brighton back in March, my first foray out with the D70.

Pinball Progress

malc — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 21:37:00 +0000

Well - apart from a number of drinking expeditions, I managed to find time this weekend to do some plumbing (LJ now has a working dishwasher, I got an impromtu shower - TIP: If trying to tighten joints when the water is back on, be damn sure you know which direction is 'tighten' ;) But mostly I spent time on the TAF rebuild - as can be seen below. Up first - the newly polished metal hardware was reinstalled, along with fresh bulbs.

Then the playfield plastic parts were added along with fresh rubbers...

Finally, after rebuilding the pop bupers (and replacing the broken metal-linkages under the playfield) we have all the parts in place to install the new ramp. Lovely!

Still some way to go - but it's taking shape - stay tuned.

\o/ That friday feeling!

malc — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:06:00 +0000

Made it thru the week, just... So, what's new?

Saw Crash on Wednesday - great film! A thought provoking look at racism in modern society with a lot of interesting viewpoints, a star-studded cast, and some funny moments to lighten the mood. Well worth a watch.

Todays picture comes from the Westonbirt International Festival of Gardens (which is coming around again soon). This is from the 2003 show, they get ~10 garden designers to make and install a garden in the grounds of the Arboretum, it's a fun day out. This was a huge stainless steel tree with glass baubles, unfortunately an overcast day, but I think I captured the refraction of light in this snap.

That's all for now, beer of the week comes from St. Austell Brewery, a tasty cornish number called Tribute. Currently guest beer in my local beard-and-chunky-sweater-pub The Beehive, a place I wholeheartedly recommend. :-)

Take it easy.... malc.

All in all it's just a'nother brick in the wall...

malc — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:43:00 +0000

Well the webmaster of mcawilliams.com has been badgering me to post regularly - so here's an archive shot I took on holiday last year. (This was pre D70, my pocket sized Olympus C40z seems a distant memory now, but I get a few decent shots with it, it's still über-handy when I don't want to carry a camera-bag around.)

Nothing interesting happened today, really, woke up, went to work, came home. The End.

Layer Cakes

malc — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:31:00 +0000

Busy weekend, went out birthday drinking on Friday and met a lot of ppl who I hadn't seen in a while... needless to say - we got very drunk and I don't clearly recall a lot of the evening. Saturday was a bit of a recovery day - polished all the remaining metal parts from the pinball machine, cleaned some plastics, and settled down in the evening with Layer Cake, a fast paced British gangster movie, which tops even Lock Stock, and Snatch. Sunday I set about one of the more daunting tasks of the pinball restoration, transferring all the old hardware from the old, dirty, broken plastic ramp I'd taken off the machine - to the shiny new one LJ had kindly carted back from the US for me.

Daunting not so much because of the individual tasks, but because of the cost of a fuck-up (pinball parts, esp. repro ramps, are expensive). Much grinding out of rivets, (de-)soldering, metal polishing - and then putting it all back together - I applied the decals and it looks good, don't you think?

So now all that's left to do is to clean up a few more of these parts...

And fix them back on here...

Much like a layer cake - the table is built up in parts, you can't just chuck the pieces on willy-nilly - thankfully I have tons of notes and copious close-up photos of each part.

Speaking of close-up, I was shown closeup photo's of Linsay Lohan's 'assets' today - in order to prove that there was scar tissue and they were not real. (Sunday night pub discussion...) Fake or not, I really enjoyed Herbie - Fully Loaded last evening. Went in not expecting much - but it was a thoroughly amusing romp, espeically for big kids who grew up with the classic Herbie series. Fairly predicatable plotline, plenty of Herbie-provoked slapstick, and probably the main attraction for most blokes, Lohan, who plays Maggie Peyton, the daughter of the now-failing Peyton race team. All in all, well worth a giggle on a lazy sunday afternoon.

Fear and Loating in the Chocolate Factory

malc — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 22:07:00 +0000

So I saw Charlie and the Choclate Factory last night. It was excellent!

[*WARNING* rest of entry may contain spoilers!]

Tim Burton does an amazing job of recreating Willy Wonka's magical world, and Johnny Depp does an even more amazing job of populating it. He really carried this film, there were (I thought) some small nods to Fear and Loathing, (not least when Wonka is in the jungle wearing a very similar british-colonial style hat to the one in F&L). Some of Depp's facial expressions also reminded me of that movie. What I didn't know before I walked in was who had written the score - none other than Danny Elfman - I've been a long time fan of his since he scored the original (& best?) Batman movie, which has a cracking orchestral soundtrack. (The other 2 scores in my top3, if you're interested, would be original Star Wars and LOTR).

Obviously a big part of the appeal of C&TCF are the Oompa-Loompa's songs, so, mixed in amongst Elfman's trademark big orchestral score, you'll find (most of) the songs you love. Roald Dahls original lyrics are accompanied by some inspired up-beat pop from Elfman, and to top it off, choreographed dance-routines from the oompa-loompas! This movie is hilarious in parts, Depp making slapstick look beleiveable for the character. Charlie and Grandpa Joe are also bang on the money, and although the ending deviates from (my memory) of the book, it's not overly offensive. In short - a must-see film.

The Addams Family Shopout

malc — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 22:16:00 +0000

So - here's one of my babies, The Addams Family Pinball - shot here shortly before I took the screwdriver in the foreground to her - this was a few weeks back - but I'm playing catch-up here.

You'll see in the next pic, with the apron removed, the amount of grime that can be found on your average 12 year old pinball machine. It's easily cleaned off with Novus plastic polish - and the end result is a shiny playfield.

Mr First Blog Entry

malc — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 20:16:00 +0000

Well - been meaning to do this for a while, not that anyone will care, but I'd like to share a few thoughts and photos with the general population - keep notes on my pinball machine restoration projects (which should contain some useful insights to help others avoid my fuck-ups ;-) - evangalise about gentoo linux and rant about stuff that pisses me off!

Today has been a long day - luckily broken up by a trip to the pub for lunch, which almost makes up for my having to take a 9pm conference call with my US colleagues. Hungry now, wonder if the chip shop is still open...