The best part about blogging

is updating it when you know nobody reads this thing.

In short: I’ve written two episodes of Voices From the Inside. Started working on a Nevada Film Board screenwriting contest in which a screenplay is written that’s pretty much a big commercial for Las Vegas, and uh my minimame project has me so frustrated that I’ve decided to take an entire new direction with the thing.

I sort of got so mad at the fact that I can’t cut a straight line to save my life and did a little smashy smashy on a power tool. Oh well, it was fifteen bucks and now I suppose I have an AC electric motor to go in my saucer model.

Oh and I’ve not done a damn thing re: tactical gear. Basically I’m feeling like a big huge stupid failure right now.

Yay blogging.

Input Anguish

= ROUND TWO =
I lost some sleep last night about my input problem. I was in a light panic mode that the frontend I’d intended on using (EasyMameCab) wouldn’t accept input from a gamepad source, thus sort of putting the kibosh on my plan to use modded PSX/PS2 controllers as the main input device.

So, it’s back to trying to order the Ipac2 boards. Which are out of stock. And just had a price increase. and take at least 21 days to ship. Piss.

My friend at Stellar TV in Gardnerville stated that the Ipac boards look an awful lot like a keyboard controller board outfitted to a screw-type wiring interface. Upon doing some research of my own, I find myself agreeing with his assessment.

I did a bit of googling and discovered that it is in fact possible to replicate the Ipac’s functionality by cannibalizing the control board off of a PS/2 keyboard and doing a little hardware hacking.

Since this blog is all about me overcoming weaknesses in my constitution and bolstering my physical and intellectual toolsets, you’d better fucking believe that I’m going to take the hard road to Tipperare and teach myself to microsolder, operate a multimeter and do all the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

So, after fingerfucking my new sexy hardware, I took off to one of the local computer recyclers and scored a few PS/2 keyboards and a few handfuls of IDE cable (perfect gauge wire for this sort of work). Total cost: ten bucks.

Then I moseyed over to Sandy’s Electronics and picked some brains there. While I was fighting with neckbeards for the clerk’s attention re: motherboard jumper switches and LEDs, my eyes caught something.

Arcade parts. Everywhere goddamn! Pegboards full of spring switches and pushbuttons! Granted, a button/switch combo is $4.50, two bucks more than from either Happ or Ultimarc, the buttons are right here right now, thus saving me on shipping fees and (most importantly) my time. I can’t say I’m too fond of spending twelve dollars S&H for four dollars worth of parts, personally, so I’ll glady eat the two extra dollars.

If only they had the sweet Atari volcano-type button collars, then this project will elevate itself from “merely rad” to SUPER TURBO BITCHIN’ OMEGA SWEET.

While at Sandy’s, I had in my hand a couple of credit card sized prototyping breadboards for five dollars each, when the clerk saw what I had in hand and heard about my project, he said “uh we like have a box full of used breadboards here, fifty cents each.” Awesome~ I ditched the packaged boards and gathered up a few used breadboards, some desolder and other essential bits and traveled home to do some more reading and research on this keyboard project. Hopefully, this week is kind of slow at work, so I’ll be able to at least do a little multimeter probing and desoldering during the slow hours (instead of you know, writing the fucking screenplays I have rattling around in my head like angry bees.)

UPDATES AS EVENTS WARRANT

COULD THIS BE, THE DREADED ~ABOUTPAGE~?

Q: Who in the fuck is Tome and why should you care about him?

A: Tome is the e-cyber-online handle of one Steve Van Pelt – creative genius and intellectual narcissist with a heart of gold but an inferiority complex that’s huge but man it could stand to be a little bigger, you know how it is with inferiority complexes.

In March of 2000, he graduated from art school with a degree in television production, then went on to work as a creative developer for a company in Pasadena called Actionfliks. While employed by Actionfliks, he developed numerous properties, responsible for creating characters, stories, situations and wrote a few pilot episodes as well as teaser trailers and ad copy. One show he’d worked on, Xiaolin Showdown was picked up by Kids!WB and ran for three seasons. He was paid a measly thousand dollars for his efforts.

After burning that bridge, Steve spent the remainder of the decade completely embittered toward Hollywood and The System. In recent years though, he’d found himself enamored with a small production and distribution company called The Asylum and has pretty much devoted his life to working for them in some sort of creative capacity.

As for “why should you care?” Fuck you, that’s why. Dude doesn’t need you to care.

Q: So then why does he post as Tome of Finland?

A: Back in 2001 when he came up with the handle, it was a pretty clever and unique name. Then for some ridiculous reason, other people started using it and registering it everywhere. On AIM and here on WordPress, he’s Tome of Finland, on IRC he’s Sinistome (run coward), on a couple of message boards he’s Mean Steve. Why ‘of Finland?” Dude’s got a mad love-on for some crazy Finnish gay fucky comic illustrator. Ain’t google your best friend, look it up fuck’s sake.

WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN

Tome Versus – An Introduction.

For the last year or so, I’ve had a bug up my ass to actually create an exciting and new web page paradigm in which I discuss and detail the various challenges that I find myself beset with and my enduring desire to overcome them. Ergo – Tome Versus.

At the risk of sounding like a hackjob observational comic: So? What’s the deal? Why do this now and not a year ago or two years ago or however long ago it was that I first had the damn idea to do this page? The answers are pretty simple and straightforward.

1. I always had the feeling that nobody cared about me, my interests, desires and goals; let alone how I overcame the obstacles that stood in the way of my achievement. So I let that feeling fester and overferment until it became skanky malt liquor. I guess now is the time to flush out the vat full of 211 and replace it with a fine, full-bodied microbrew alehouse whatever. Goddamn you, Scott, for putting that analogy in my head.

2. Work ethic – or lack thereof. I find that as long as I’m distracted by certain obligations (work) or other weird noisy things (television, coworkers, internet) I find that I really can’t be pissed to put fingertips to keyboards, let alone even try to write coherent paragraphs. Earlier this week, I was reprimanded by my immediate supervisor for always maxxin’ relaxxin’ chillaxxin’ in our tech room with the television on. Thankfully, my supervisor is a lazier man than me and out and out refuses to fire anybody, for fear of the stacks of paperwork that go into processing a new hire. Which explains the quality of work performed by our swing shift, but that’s another gripe for another entry. I’m digressing here like a motherfucker.

2a. So, I’d gotten in trouble for slacking. Ain’t like a dude never got in trouble for slacking before, everybody slacks in their own way. One coworker slacks by sitting in front of the office computer with a copy of National Geographic, others slack by puffing reefer in the air handlers, I slack by staring blankly at my laptop while the 24-hour news-entertainment feed is on, keeping us up-to-date regarding the status of Barack Obama’s butthole (it’s still pink and puckered but the day is young yet and that status may change at any moment, keep your web browsers tuned to CNN dot com for up to the minute podcasts and Twitter feeds!). The main issue here isn’t the quantity of my slacking, it’s the quality. Sitting in the tech room with the TV on when any old supervisor or coworker can wander on in and see my carcass plonked down at the soldering station with my computer open and gaze fixed on that damned ticker with its glacial pace is a pretty crummy idea. I ought not do it anymore. Thus: the search for a perfect slack spot ensued.

2b. Since some of my fellow coworkers oftentimes slack in a relatively secure (meaning, security clearance is required for access) location, I took the time to scout out a decent location for myself to nest down, a command center as it were. I found it right underneath the Awesomedome’s second laser platform. Platform Two is exactly 180 degrees removed from the Dome’s entry porthole. Platform Two also spans the trench between the Dome’s outer wall and the Ring, the fixture of lights that shine out onto the Rig, the massive animated sculpture housed within the Dome. This location is perfect, as in the event a coworker finds himself up on the Rig, he can’t see me, I’m camouflaged by the laser platform. Fuckin’ awesome!

Why am I saying this? Since I’m effectively invisible as is at work – I’ve been here for almost two years and some of my own supervisors don’t even know my name – I’m fairly confident that nobody with the power to hire and fire possesses the requisite intellectual capacity to even operate a web browser, let alone to troll WordPress blawgs for the goings-on of their employees.

2c. So, now that Mega Crap has Get Equipped with Sweet Hiding Place, he can go back to putting fingers to the board and actually fucking write something.

3. Readers that haven’t immediately dismissed the above with a strained “tee ell semicolon dee arr” may find themselves asking “So the uh, what’s the fuckin’ point?”

Simply put, this site/blog/vlog/wiki/wog/whateverthefuck I decide it’ll be is simply a chronicle of my ongoing journey, my continuing fight against all the damn obstacles in my way and most importantly: how I defeated them.

I hate introductory pages goddamn.