and the awesome name for the catalog in the form of an arcade game, the arcadalogue! what a wordsmith erin is. i also commend her for her fine choice of nickname for me, sudo. really it says it all. and note my fine stamp/temp-tattoo in the picture below (on me head!). that’s commitment! so really i love the whole arcade thing. i always wanted to build me a mame box into an arcade of my design. now jonny carson is doing just that! and jonny is very hip to the graphic-rich action games and all the professional bits like the joystick and big buttons. it’s just well done. so the arcadalogue was sort of an orphan all along. i’m not sure exactly how it came up because i don’t recall talking to lee about it. jonny says it was on the table since last winter but i can’t tell if it was an offshoot of the arcades or if fitting it into an arcade came along later. either way jonny had enough to do so lee asked if i had ideas about how to go about it. jonny pointed out that big hurdle was in making an elegant and rich interface that media saturated audiences expect. of course we’re all thinking about flash or a web site = too much code to produce in just a few days, at least with everything else going on. leep really wanted this to happen. it definitely fits with the idea of the project with all bits of data hanging out to dry but we didn’t want this to just be a blob of data with a plethora of tools to navigate through it. nor did we want an application that guides you through it. it needed to be randomly accessible. throw in that it could very well be the big ticket item and i was sold. from catch all tech helper and network guy (not to mention exec producer) i turn into a puzzle solver. we had to keep it clean and simple so i thought about a catch all type of media player that plays everything and could be customized (open source of course). but kaffeine and vlc didn’t display stuff like pdfs and spreadsheets. that was part of the mix. lee was happy to forgo those but i wasn’t satisfied. so i looked into kiosk mode for kde so that i might hide the fact that multiple applications were being used. it got better. turns out every single file type i’ve got to deal with there is a player/reader that can be embedded into konqueror, the kde browser. so we’re back to browser based but not a web site. and with a rich interface that feels like a data access tool (well, it is) rather than a multi-media application while being just as comfortable to use and pretty, i didn’t feel i was compromising anything! now about the gun…

there were only enough joysticks and buttons for the 3 arcades we were building. it was late to order more and besides, the joysticks didn’t necessarily map to mouse movements (could be done i guess). i had to find something else, and local. i probably spent more of my time on this part than anything else but it paid off. after initially looking for a trackball we can modify (still need external buttons) i found this cool 3D type large knob-like device that looked super slick, like a video editing jog-wheel. at the same time i was chasing down this old school arcade trackball really ripped out of an arcade (fry’s had it on their site). neither of these panned out. the 3D thing needed drivers (none for linux) and the arcade trackball was no longer available (update your site fry!). so i went to fry’s with lee anyway (checked that little computer store in the hood too) and there were a few smaller trackballs, pads, etc. we could rig up. but lee scored big when he took note of the gamer’s gun. we had to get it. gone was my idea of the click built-in feel of the ball, replaced by the kitsch of an icon. it’s just too cool. you move the gun and click to “shoot” the object you want to explore. i’ve got it working nicely. most everyone is giving it the thumbs up. i get so sick of seeing guns in movies (too easy) but this where it belongs. i’ll be jealous of the person who buys this piece. it will be a full archive of everything that went into the project all in a beautiful arcade enclosure, itself a work of art.

i got a lot other work done tonight like the projector station, the 3rd arcade computer (and set up lee with linux), some network improvements, no go on dynamic dns (don’t know what is up with that), tested projection (thanks, alex), tested sound, helped map out seating placement, poured on that spicy salsa verde, bumped all of lee’s camera data for him… very nice day. i’m cranking. everybody’s cranking.

tomorrow i get to show it off to angela when she arrives. she’s been watching the web cam. it was on me when the scaffold obstructed the room view and i get a flattering txt msg from angela. some txts went on and i blew her a kiss. i had to get back to it to clean up, blog, and get to bed. lee had to take over taping up the seating placement. i didn’t want to mess up david but we just couldn’t stay longer to do it tonight.