Saw ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ last night at Newham Showcase Cinema after discovering that a “Power cut” has left Ilford Cineword disabled of any service for several days??!
‘Charlie’ was excellent, I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I’m 25 years old – perhaps because I’m so fond of the book.
Tim Burton, I believe, faithfully captured the spirit of Roald Dahl’s writing , which Johnny Depp nailed it as Wonka! Still –preferred the children in the original Gene Wilder film version.

Anyhow – we got to the cinema a little early, and I decided to kill some time by looking at the arcade machines, just to see if my project was moving in the right direction.
I was amazed at how close my design plans matched the real thing – from the shape of the cabinet to the scanlines on the screen which I faithfully simulated on my computer monitor.
However what struck me as good idea was the fact that the sides of the arcade had some form of plastic moulding on it to provide a smooth and professional finish. If I implemented this on my Arcade it would make it look all more authentic while easing the burden of excessive sanding of any uneven edges. Seemed a generally inexpensive option too, as the moulding could be laid flat with some sort of wood adhesive. Great stuff!

and the Cutting begins!....

My Dad came round in the early afternoon to help me start cutting the sides of the Arcade Cabinet. I had the template already drawn out on one piece of MDF, so all we had to do was fire up the jig-saw and go!

The first obstacle we came across was an elementary one - what should we use to actually place the wood on for cutting? I didn’t have a work bench or DIY table and didn’t fancy shelling out for one. Solution? - The coffee table! (Covered/protected in many layers of plastic, of course!)



We took the coffee table outside the flat as I did not fancy MDF particles clogging up the air inside with the little one about.



The Jig seemed easy enough to operate, although there was an initial confusion as to which correct blade (supplied) to use on the 3/4" MDF.



Initially we used a very fast cutting blade, which although went through the wood with easy, the fast movement of the blade made things very difficult to see and thus difficult to control, resulting in a few uneven cuts.



We then tried a slower blade, which although tested out patience a little, it DID seem to work a treat. More accurate cuts were made, and we even went back and refined some of the earlier flawed cuts. All in all results were satisfactory and left us in a good position for sanding.





As you can see,to achieve an accurate cut of the second piece of wood that is identical in mesaurement to the first, we used a simple 'tracing' technique







So here you see something that actually resembles an Arcade Machine! This is highly exciting. Hard part is over! All that is left now is to cut simple rectangular measurements of wood (B&Q can do this for free) that will form the back, top and base of the Arcade Cabinet!





Now I’m off to reward myself by going to watch 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'!

Watch this space!!

Jeeeez! - Work on this Arcade Cabinet never seems to end! Just as I thought I was satisified with the current selection of games on there (we're talking almost 15,000 in total!) I decide to go and test a 3D game using the Zinc emulator, just for the heck of it to see if the Arcade PC could handle it with its Graphics Card.
The game I tested was my favourite 3D fighter, Streetfighter EX Plus, and guess what? - worked perfectly at full speed/framerate.

So for the sake of being a ROM completist, I am going to formally add Zinc games to my Arcade setup. Not all games work full speed, some require minor tweaking here and there which is what I am setting to do tonight.

Also I have found a rather nifty application which I also plan to implement tonight -CPViewer.
CPViewer is an add-on for MAME. More specifically for the MameWah front-end used to launch the various games. It uses a file called controls.ini to lookup the controls for a particular game. It then displays them on the screen so I will know what buttons and movements perform what actions in the game that is currently highlighted in my MameWah front-end. Handy for when one decides to sitdown and to try a NEW game, which can usually be a pain as I often ask myself, "What buttons do what?" Well if the game has been documented in the controls.ini file, this won't happen again. By simply pressing a hotkey (one of the X-Arcade Buttons) a graphic of the control panel will be displayed with all of the character movements or button assignments displayed so I know what buttons perform what actions.

Spoke to the people who supplied my 21" monitor today. They claim the monitor was tested and was in full working order - missing the point of my complaint entirely that it although it did work, it produced a dull and non-vibrant image.
I even tried a second SVGA cable yesterday which didnt seem to work at all.

However they did promise I could exchange for another of my choice (may have to trek it down to Thurrock myself just to test things and ensure all is okay) however they have run out of Black monitors and only have beige ones left *dang!*.

Another bit of Arcade-related news, I have found out that it is indeed possible to run Snk Vs Capcom: Chaos on a hacked version of Mame.
Excellent news! I will be working on adding this to my exisiting Mame setup tonight when I get back from the Gym.

Just finished marking out one of the pieces of MDF for the side of the Arcade Cabinet. The idea is to mark one side with a pencil, cut and draw around the cut piece to trace measurements for the second side so that they remain accurate.
And accuracy is paramount here, as it seemed like it took an age to measure and measure again before drawing onto the wood.

However, I feel a little more confident now and am ready to take the plunge and just cut this damn thing! Probably be next weekend though - my Dad has reluctantly agreed to give me a hand! *Phew!*

My brother Stephen picked up the Black IBM 21" monitor yesterday for the Arcade project.
I plugged it in and was amazed at how awesome Streetfighter looked - at last a size a little closer to Arcade authenticity! The sprites were large and chunky as they should be.
However what irked me a little was the immediately noticeable fact that the monitor simply wasn’t as bright and as vibrant as the 17". I don’t quite know how to explain it but the picture has a softer look that doesn’t bounce the images from the screen even after fiddling with the various picture settings.
I emailed the e-bay sellers and am contemplating returning (or swapping) it, however the look is much easier on the eyes and, truth be told, I am kind of getting used to it.
I'll think it over some more and try a different VGA cable on it today.

Pictures below..








I know I said the picture was soft, but its not as grainy as these photos suggest!

Lets face it, my 17 inch monitor isnt going to cut the mustard for my full-sized Arcade Cabinet. So tonight I completed the e-bay purchase of a 21 inch IBM PC Monitor with Black casing (should blend in nicely with my completed Cab which too will be painted black).

**TOTAL COST £25**

My Brother will pick it up from a warehouse in Thurrock tomorrow.

Pictures to follow...

So now's i've gots my Power Tool, all I need is my wood.
I head to B&Q and get them to cut down two sheets of 3/4" MDF as far as my plans will allow them in order for me to fit them into the car.
I cut two 190cm x 120cm pieces and keep any scraps, confident that they will slide right into the car boot (we're talking a Vauxhall Vectra Hatchback here).. NO CHANCE!

Rather than give up or shell out a ridiclious £20 for home delivery. I literally nick one of their Timber Trolleys and simply wheel the Wood home!
Luckily I live right across the street and I did take the trolley back, HONEST!

The wood now sits outside my front door in my flat foyer, with a note telling the neighbours to keep their nosey mitts off!
It waits for me to draw out the basic template of the Arcade Cabinet sides, ready for me to cut to shape with the jigsaw.







**TOTAL COST £24.99**

The Arcade Insanity continues!

I've hit a snag.
My local B&Q can cut Timber, but their machine will only make STRAIGHT cuts end-to-end and not at any angles.
This has scared me shitless, simply because it means I will be forced to use a *gasp!* jigsaw! I have got NO wood work/carpentry experience at all and am NOT certainly a DIY handyman.

However, in terms of expenditure, I have reached the point of no return with this project, and the show MUST go on.

I take a deep breath, head into Robert Dyas in London, Victoria and purchase one of these:



**TOTAL COST £19.99**

More on the Arcade:

Now that I have the technology to run the games, I need the wood to house the technology. I need to start thinking about actually building the cabinet.

Considering that I am using the x-Arcade as a control panel, I have decided to base my cabinet on the following plans from ArcadaPC.



Seems simple enough eh? - with mainly straight cuts, especially considering that my local B&Q has a free timber-cutting service.

I intend to use 3/4" MDF.

More on my Arcade project - I've setup the PC with MAME emulator and ROMS (games). All is working fine. I have even put the X-Arcade on there for some pre-cabinet Streetfighter sessions, which my little Boy, Jaden, is proudly demonstrating in the picture below.



Also picked up the following Wireless 802.11g PCI Network Card for the MAME Arcade Cabinet PC. This will enable me to make changes to system and game configuration wirelessly from my Master Desktop PC (in my bedroom) without dragging the tall Arcade PC tower out of the cabinet.



**TOTAL COST £12.99**

Swooped some deals to progress construction of my Arcade Cabinet.

From e-bay I got the following:

Athlon XP 1800
768Mb RAM
32Mb Graphics Card (MAME is NOT Graphics card intensive)
DVD-ROM/CD RW Combo
17 inch CRT Monitor
Creative 5.1 Sound System (with cabinet-mountable volume control!!)
Keyboard
Wireless Mouse






**TOTAL PRICE £100 (£12 postage)**

From a Seller at BYOAC forums I bought a two-player X-Arcade Control Panel. This is a quick and easy solution to recreating the authentic joystick controls of an arcade machine without building (and wiring!) a control panel of my own. Not only did this purchase save me a lot of time, but it also saved me a lot of £££s as I managed to get this at half the RRP at a bargain £50!



**TOTAL PRICE £50 (£10 postage)**

The arrogance of 'O'

If the subject of events wasn't so serious, this would be funny..


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050707/325/fmw5r.html

London Terrorist Attacks

I'd just like everyone who knows me to know that I and my family are fine. Unfortunately I had already arrived at work when this happened so I am stuck in London Victoria. I will try and find a way home though. I think they are arranging cars to take staff home.

Anyone else currently in Central London/ The City, please try to find a way out and get home as soon as its reasonably possible.

Really, Who Cares??!

So London wins the Olympic games! - Gee, Wiz! - I guess I can look forward to an unavailability of tickets (as all the backslapping VIPs would have taken them up), increased congestion around East London, the public transport system crippling under pressure (as always) and a hefty rise in my council tax bills to actually pay for these wonderful new Olympic improvements within the M25.

Can we even deliver major projects on schedule and within a budget? - remember the Dome??!

Its also funny how London or more specifically, the British, have already started to show the World their 'Olympic Spirit' by choosing to celebrate the successful bid not through dignified jubilation, but rather to concentrate on sneering at the French with total conceited arrogance.
Emails are being circulated showing a limp Eiffel Tower and a French woman flogging half price Paris 2012 T-shirts, radio DJs are calling Parisians "hairy Frogs", and the nation revels in jingoistic references - I mean WTF does Napoleon and Trafalgar have to do with the Olympic games??!!
I thought the Olympics were supposed to unite the world, not aggravate age-old feuds between nations!
If the IOC initially saw this (typical) behaviour of the British (i.e., they are sore-winners as everything seems to revert back to wars and xenophobia) then I'm not so sure the Capital would be celebrating today.

London 2012 - who cares??!!
Oh yeah, and remember that thing called the G8 that we were all so concerned about when our favourite Rock bands were playing Hyde Park last Saturday? - Funny how Africa's plight has now been relegated from the front page...

I have a dream!... and it's an ARCADE CABINET!

I had always been inspired by the folks who had taken the plunge and built their own Arcade machine. Although one would be a fitting addition to my 80% complete Living Room/Home Entertainment Centre area, the idea of doing any sort of wood work/carpentry in building the cabinet itself always seemed like Mission Impossible. This difficulty and my total lack of DIY skills had deterred me from embarking on such a project one too many times in the past.
However after seeing some of the inspired examples at BYOAC of how this CAN work, I decided to bite the bullet and just, go for it.

To simply throw money at this ideal and BUY a ready-made Arcade Cabinet would cost me over a Grand, so the only way I could achieve this was to BUILD!

In order to run the arcade games I would need to emulate. This would be easy to execute as I was already familiar with MAME.
MAME (an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a computer software program for personal computers. The purpose of MAME is to faithfully and precisely emulate as many arcade games as possible, with the intent of preserving gaming history and preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten. Donkey Kong, Galaga, Ms Pacman, Streetfighter 2 - all the classics are there and FULLY playable!!

So what needed to begin my Arcade project would be a dedicated PC fast enough to run MAME and some sort of control panel (keyboard, mouse and gamepad just don’t cut it) to play the arcade games in somewhat of an authentic fashion. My first job would be to setup the equipment, get it fully operation in working order and build the cabinet around it.

Oh well.. to e-bay I go!

Live 8

However you may be following the events today, be you at Hyde Park or in front of your television sets, please remember why this is happening..

This isnt about your favourite Pop Star, your favourite Band. This isnt about egos, back-scratching, shameless promotion or vanity.

THIS IS ABOUT AFRICA and helping the greatest continent in the world and the birthplace of civilisation become great again.


It has already become apparent that certain 'acts' participating in this gig are more conscious than others. So in no order whatsoever, props go out to:

Bob Geldof
Bono
Dido
Youssou Ndour
Bill Gates
Kofi Annan
Ms Dynamite
Will Smith (over in the USA)
Annie Lennox
Mariah Carey

Keep the focus people...

Funniest quote of the week!

By TheKing of allhiphop.com:

So I was at a bar last night, and basically everyone there was white and in college (seeing as I'm a college student), and there is a juke box or whatever...and someone actually put on Eminem's "Ass Like That" and there were all these fucking homo looking kids singing along to it like it was fucking "Juicy" or some shit. Like it was some sort of party anthem. People were acting like Hip Hop Hooray came oin. It was disgusting.

Now, I like party music, I like 50 Cent, I like Eminem too, but for anyone to ever act the way basically EVERYONE did to "Ass Like That" shows that white people really are to blame for what is wrong with rap music today.

R.I.P - Music will miss Luther....

Famous for providing the world with decades of unforgettable hit songs such as "Here and Now," "Give Me the Reason," "Never Too Much," and "Dance With My Father," R&B singer Luther Vandross died today, July 1, 2005, at the age of 54.

According to hospital spokesman Rob Cavanaugh, Vandross died at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, N.J. No details as to the cause of death were released. Vandross had suffered a stroke on April 16, 2003, and since ceased making public appearances.

For years, he had battled with his weight and suffered from diabetes and hypertension, ailments that ran in his family. Complications claimed the life of his father, Luther Vandross, Sr., when the junior Vandross was only five.

In 2004, Vandross won accolades, including a Grammy award, for the bittersweet, yet sentimental ballad "Dance With My Father." He had garnered three earlier trophies in the Best Male R&B Performance category in 1990 (single "Here and Now"), 1991 (album "Power of Love"), and in 1996 (single "Your Secret Love).

Vandross was arguably the most celebrated R&B balladeer of his generation. He
sold over 25 million albums, and penned and produced several songs for both himself and other artists. His distinctive tenor became part and parcel of romantic interludes and such festive events as weddings, earning him the love and adoration of music lovers of all ages.