The Louvre

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

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

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

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!

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...

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

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

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

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

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...