The T3sk3y Defenestrator

I’ve been doing a lot of photo editing lately.. and I wanted to share a few tips with all of you.

The flash is your best friend and your worst enemy. It can make a bad picture look better, and it can ruin a perfectly decent one.

For example – when in doubt, turn it on outdoors. If your subject is in any kind of shadow – including their own (i.e. when the sun is behind them) – turn on the flash. It lights them up and makes it look a lot more natural.

Indoors – it’s a bit of a given. If you are using a point-n-shoot, there isn’t much you can do about it – you’re going to get the “deer in the headlights’ overflashed look. If you’ve got a flash with any kind of bounce – like on an external flash – aim that baby at the ceiling and let the light naturally reflect down. We are, as humans, very accustomed to the light being from above rather than straight on.

Here’s a quick example to show you that I think will convince you all. It’s the same picture taken with flash and without flash – I think you’ll see the difference.

Comparison of Taking a Picture With Flash and Without Flash

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Okay, I’ll spill the beans on how I did the “Funky Fresh Look at Eastern Europe” remix.

I ran across a website called Animoto over the weekend – I think I saw it on Digg.com or something.� Animoto works like this:

Upload your pictures

Upload your song (or select one of theirs)

It detects the beat of your music and it spits out a music video that is music synced.

You can get a 15-second short for free – or it’s $3 (with unlimited remixes) for a longer format video like the Eastern Europe video that I did.� It’ll even suck pictures directly from all the popular photo hosting sites (like Smugmug!) saving all the upload time.

The video couldn’t have been easier to make.� All in all, I had maybe 10 minutes of work preparing the Eastern Europe video – and that was mostly picking the songs.� So far, they only have the small format embedded videos – but they claim that larger format downloadable videos are coming.� I can’t wait!

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Here’s a video remix of our trip to Eastern Europe last year. I’ll ‘splain the technology in an upcoming post..

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After a hard month of work, I put the finishing touches on my restoration of my 2003-built Simpson’s Pinball Party. The final chapter actually started about three weeks ago when I moved the playfield back in to the cabinet. My lovely assistant (and wife) Heather helped me move it from the rotisserie to the cabinet. Over the rest of the evening, I reconnected all connectors and routed them back through their cable stays. By about 10 PM, I was ready to power it up.

The fully restored Simpson’s Pinball Party

As expected, things weren’t exactly perfect. They never are. I put a pretty good gouge in the cabinet as I lowered the playfield in. I also had a few switches that needed adjusting. Once these were resolved, I was able to play a few trial games. Again, I found a few things that needed work. The schoolbus kickout hole plugged the ball into the plastic guard and often wouldn’t make it out of the hole. Probably most seriously, the couch release plunger stuck open.

I fixed the couch plunger by tearing the mechanism apart. I realized the coil stop was broken off and the plunger would go in too deep. Since a new weldment with the coil stop is about $45, I decided to make my own. This involved a big washer and a rubber stop mounted to the weldment. It worked perfectly! The kickout hole issue was fixed by adjusting the clear plastic to give it a little more room.

The last issue resolved was the plunger. It was worn to the base metal and the compression spring was partially embedded in the knob. This made it pull very rough and it made the plunger stick out too far. Since it stuck out too far, the autoplunger only barely touched a waiting ball giving it a very wimpy launch. I solved this by buying a new shooter assembly from Pinball Life for $18.

The finished playfield

All pictures from the restoration can be found here: TSPP restoration pictures

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