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Game Table
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Saturday, 09 May 2009 22:49 |
The idea is back in my head, and not coincidentally, now that my garage poker game is back on.
And the issues with my current table have come to the top of the deck.
The fabric is no good, and the table itself needs to be stabilized (chips and drinks are always at risk). How about another table to stabilize it? Get a beat up old dining table from Craigslist & throw my top on.
And, it may make for some interesting play options too. A big problem with tournament play, as far as seating arrangements, is that the number of players slowly drops as people are put out. No one is keen on changing seats due to superstition, but it's also a pain to deal from opposite ends. How about if a leaf were removed from the center, and the ends slid in.
The seams might be a bit of a bother to play around, but not huge if cut right.
And not that it's terribly hard to store, but once it's out, it's a pain to put away. Having it live out of the way on the ground would be optimal.
So there's the plan in a nutshell: A transformable poker table
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One Offs
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Saturday, 25 April 2009 01:24 |
 This was a simple little project -- even with my weak soldering skills, it was all finished in under an hour.
The lizard was given to me as a housewarming present, and I immediately nailed it to the fence in my back yard. The solar lamp was removed from the back patio at my bar, and being the pack rat that I am, stored in my garage.
The intent was to give the gecko more personality, not to provide illumination (that's what the flood lights are for), so I went with a yellow LED over the high intensity blue that the lamp came installed with. The solar light, free to me, can be purchased at a hardware store for about $10. They'll come with the PV panel, rechargeable batteries, an LED (or grouping of LEDs) and a light sensor all tied into a simple circuit board. I'm sure if you know about such things you could make the same from scratch.
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Arcade Cabinet
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Monday, 20 April 2009 00:25 |
 There were some really great Linux distros I played with, but the sheer frustration I encountered over the monitor issue (which was obviously the deal breaker) will keep me away from Linux for at least a year. I started installed Windows XP, and was playing games in under an hour. The tweaking took a little while longer, and will most likely be a continual effort. And the monitor, a 27" RCA, connected perfectly via s-video; no special drivers required.
I went with MALA for the front end, and I'm quite happy with it. It's much simpler than GameEx, and that's exactly what I need.
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Arcade Cabinet
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Thursday, 19 March 2009 21:53 |
 The frame of the cabinet was in place, and being an impatient kind of fellow, I decided I wanted to start playing as quick as possible. Time to make the control panel.
Actually, I decided to go ahead with it as soon as I realized I'd be using an old copper-topped table from my bar. I have a few sitting around, They are just big enough, and come complete with embedded memories. Much nicer than dissembling them and selling the copper for scrap.
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Arcade Cabinet
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Saturday, 14 March 2009 00:00 |
 It's been a hell of a long time since I've played on my arcade machine, and now that I've finally cleaned out my garage from some projects I was working on for work, I have the space and the time (although I have an endless supply of excuses). I also ended up with 2-1/2 full sheets of MDF that looked a whole lot like a cabinet trying to get out. It was certainly time to pick this project back up.
I started with the cabinet itself. I looked though some of the great plans and examples readily available on the internet, but ended up eyeballing everything as I went. I'm thinking about finishing the machine in hardwood veneer, stained moulding & copper, but the box itself will be the same as any other machine out there.
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One Offs
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Friday, 20 February 2009 14:22 |
This is a simple job I tried to make more difficult. A few months ago, in an attempt to cover up the A/C unit (the one I just finished building a box around), my mom purchased some lattice panels which she briefly had surrounding it. The pieces weren't big enough to do the trick, and it didn't work visually. So she took them down and waited for me to arrive.
She asked me to hang them on the back-yard fence to be used as a rose trellis. The bush that would train to it was leaning heavily to the right, growing towards the morning sun, and needed to be corralled. Her idea for the trellis was to just provide an anchor space to attach the rose to. She wanted them flat against the fence, but that seemed a little too boring to me.
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