ok,
I had some interest in understanding the process of creating the Lightning Effect on my MAME cabinet, so here is the quick process.

Paint:
Transparent Black
Transparent Royal Blue
Transparent Red
Royal Blue
White

Layer 1:
Paint: 80% white, 20% Royal Blue mix

Technique: Begin airbrushing the lightning out from the center (origin), I began with heavy/soft lines 1/2" at their widest narrowing down to 1/8" at the tips. after completed go back and add glow/haze to the lightning, the thicker the beam, the more the glow. be generous.

Notes: This step is the least critical, you basically are forming the branches as you want them to look, it helps to have smooth erratic lines, keeping in mind the electro-magnetism you are rendering, if the lines get close, in reality, they will join, try to replicate this phenomena.
it helps to do a few quick searches on the internet to decide your desired style before you begin.


Layer 2:
Paint: 75% transparent Royal Blue, 25% transparent Red

Technique: In the previous steps you airbrushed vague beams of lightning, in this step you will go back in and add the purple (blue/red) tint to the glow. this will add depth and allow you to *block in* the light areas to focus the energy(bright part) of the beam to its center.

Notes: This step is important to add depth, you are providing the electrical atmosphere around the beams. it also allows you to *work* your beams narrower.

Layer 3:
Paint: 75% transparent Black, 25% transparent Royal Blue

Technique: if you have areas that you over sprayed the colors , you can tint them out with this mix to taste.

Notes: This step is optional and allows you to clean up your work and ballance the shape of the beams.

Layer 4:
Paint: 85% White, 10% reducer

Technique: with your bolts defined and glowing, its time to make them pop, airbrush your beams in clean sharp lines (with some amount of shakeyness) from 1/4" out to 1/16" at the tips.
the paint should be reduced enough to flow well for fine lines, yet not too reduced to lose opacity.
If required, you may need to shoot it twice, just be careful to keep the line crisp.
as you reach the end of the bolt, pullt out quickly to wisp the ends.

Notes: This step is the most critical as it requires a sharp line to convey the electrical pop.

if all goes well, you should have some nice bolts of lightning, ready for clear coating!.
hope this helps.

...The Saga Continues

OK, So I planned to finish up this weekend and came very close. (a couple minor things left..)

First thing to do was cut the speaker holes, and finish up some airbrushing on the cabinet.

I cut out the coinbox over/under hole and then the marquee speaker holes.

then carried the Lightning theme airbrush work over to frame the coinbox..

total time only took about 20mins to paint, 5 mins to dry

and finally the full cabinet view ready to assemble the components..

first to go in was the side neon rings.

the layering was first the neon ring, then plexi, then art, then 1/4" plywood veneer.

from the inside it looks like this...

from the outside, turned on they look like this (in broad daylight)

(also notice, only 1/4 of the circle is fitted with t-molding, I came up short and had to order more)

next thing to tackle was installing the 6" speakers and sub woofer.

using the Creative 2.1 remote control, I wanted it easily accessible so I decided to notch out the lower marquee retainer and have it easily located in arms reach.

in the picture below you can see the marquee bulb and the location where it will be mounted. to the right you can see one of the 6" speaker holes.

after taking apart the sattellite speakers, I will save you the joy and show you the contents below, it was quite un-eventful, however required as this is the wire that I will use to connect to the 6" car speakers.

with the wires disconnected and holes cut, it installed quite easily.

I mounted the volume controller, re-installed the marquee. then I soldered the sattellite speaker wires to the 6" (new) speakers, installed them in the cabinet and voilla!

looks nice, and works great.

(although you can see groove for the t-molding that has not been installed yet)

The next step was to finish the monitor placement and bezel.

First, I decided the easiest aproach would be to block the monitor into the exact location.

the cabinet was designed for any monitor and did not want to structurally limit it from upgrades, otherwise I would have designed it as a more permanent solution.

neverthe less you can see how the configurable blocks leverage its shape to bind the monitor(21"). (as seen through the rear access panel.)

with the monitor now fixed in its final resting place, I needed to get rid of the tan monitor face...enter the black paint.

I simply masked to the edge and airbrussed the monitor frame with the same black paint used for the cabinet (Black Magic, latex acrylic)

ok, remove the mask, clean the screen and move on.

while it dried, I modified the bezel.

the bezel was 5/8" thick and with the hole cut for the monitor, it did not look right playing through a "thick window" hole of a bezel. so I decided to rout the back side of the bezel to 1/4" thick the area that the monitor touches, so that the monitor would only be behind a 1/4" thick face plate, reducing the tacky factor. below you see the end result is quite nice.

now with the bezel done, monitor in place, I could mount the bezel artwork and place the plexi-glass screen..

below the monitor bezel, you can see the subwoofer where it will reside.

I tried with and without tinting on the bezel to see what I liked better, I ended up going with clear.. although here it is with tint..

now it was time to wire the control panel, I had been postponing this because I expected it to take a while(due to the fact that I was also lighting each button) so I finally got started.

after drilling a hole in the bottom of each of the buttons, inserting the LED and routing wires, it looked like this. (I used the MALA Hardware due to its simplicity and integration with MALA frontend, well worth the price, you can get one here)

once the lights were all ran, I routed and wired the switches to the I-Pac unit(yellow wires)

with the Control Panel wired and finished, I mounted the lid back on the Control panel box using the piano hinge and 15 screws.

next thing I did was set my control panel on the cabinet to make sure it all looks ok, before final wiring of the cabinet..

here are a few photos of that.

Its starting to make it all worth it!!

going to have to wait a few more days for the coin box to be delivered, for now, there is alarge hole...ugh..

below is pretty much a picture of the rest of the day, playing, configuring and playing some more. (notice the side neon rings have power... :) )

A dream come true, for real, scratch one item from the todo list, special thanks to my Father(and his tools) for all the hard work, Expert Advice and patience!

(...starting to sound like a  fathers day card.)

I am really loving it so far, hope you like it as well, cant wait to share more!!

Who has time to keep up with all of these hobbies?

my latest tangent has been to design and build a MAME arcade cabinet. for those of you un-familiar, MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

• what is it?
  • it is a software application that runs on a PC and emulates the hardware that used to reside in arcade machines.
• what does it do?
  • it plays the rom files that have been extracted from the memory chips on the arcade machines.
• where can I learn more?
  • http://www.mame.net/

a lot of undocumented planning and work has occured and after 3 saturdays of working in a wood shop and painting, I have reached a point where I have something meaningful to show, the semi complete arcade console..

A modified Lucid cabinet design (http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/) with a recessed neon side logo (Idea from Knievel Kustoms, http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,31417.0.html) and my own custom airbrushed Lightning to set it off.

when completed, the system will play over 1900 original arcade game roms.

I plan to include Daphne(http://www.daphne-emu.com/), the Laserdisc emulator to be able to play "Dragons Lair" and "Space Ace" as well.

this weekend, between chores and standing responsibilities, I will be doing the following:

• installing the speakers (Creative Labs SBS 2.1 350, retrofitted with 6" 3-way car speakers and the included subwoofer)
• final assembly on the control panel (29 buttons, 2 player console, 2-8way joys, 1-4way joy, and a 3"backlit trackball)
• wiring of the control panel, every button on the panel is backlit using MALA Hardware (http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/hardware.html)
• wiring up the marquee and placing art
• airbrushing lightning around the coinbox opening and screen bezel
• build a PC and configure the hardware/frontend (MALA)(http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/index.html)
• needless to say my saturday will be busy and long
• more pics and documentation to follow...

hope you enjoy the pics.

the controller box will sit on the ledge you see in the above photo, to the right hand side of the cabinet.

below is the top view image of the controller graphic.

the colored dots represent the color of button that will reside in the location, with the exception of the large blue dot in the center (which will be a 3" glowing trackball) and the dots in the center of the stars(which represent the color of joystick handle).

other than that, imagination is key...

Why do I see a message prompting me to “click to activate and use this control” when I roll my mouse over a Flash animation?

This is a result of the latest Internet Explorer update.

Microsoft recently lost a legal battle with a patent holder about the way Internet Explorer displays OBJECTs and EMBEDs in webpages.

because of the rulling, Microsoft released an update to Internet Explorer with changes requiring user input to display and activate ActiveX based media.

This affects all Flash animations but also other files such as QuickTime, RealPlayer, Java and Adobe Acrobat among others. It means users have to click the object first in order to activate its functions.

There are ways for website developers to modify their website so that the user experience is not impacted by Microsoft’s changes. Samples with the fix

To fix the problem, modify your web sites using these steps:

1) Just below the last <object> in your HTML page, insert the following Javascript:

<script type="text/javascript" src="ieupdate.js"></script>

2) Open a new document in Notepad or your HTML editor, and copy & paste the following content into it:

theObjects = document.getElementsByTagName("object");
for (var i = 0; i < theObjects.length; i++) {
theObjects[i].outerHTML = theObjects[i].outerHTML;
}

3) Save this file as ieupdate.js

4) Upload both files to your webserver, and the problem should be solved.

To read more about this issue and see other solutions available, please visit:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/activecontent/articles/devletter.html
http://blog.deconcept.com/2005/12/15/internet-explorer-eolas-changes-and-the-flash-plugin/

Task: Use the 2005 "Copy Database" function to copy the SQL2000 databases to SQL2005. The ultimate goal is to copy all the live databases from SQL2000 to SQL2005, check everything has upgraded ok, then uninstall SQL2000.

Error #1: First option I tried was "Use the detach and attach method". Using Windows authentication. Selected the databases, tables and object to copy. Create package name. On the "Schedule the Package" screen only option avail is "Run immediately". The "Integration Services Proxy Account" option is greyed. Upon hitting "NEXT>" I get a popup "Proxy account has to be selected to proceed further." That's as far as I can get with this option.

Error #2: Second option I tried was "Use the SQL Management Object method". Using Windows authentication. Selected the databases, tables and object to copy. Create package name. "NEXT>". Immediately at the "Schedule the Package" screen a popup appears: "The specified @subsystem_name ('SSIS') does not exist. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 14262)".

Solution:
A common situation more and more are coming across getting aclimated to the *new* sql agent architecture.

you will need to install SQL integration services which may not be installed by default. (you can run the install package again and add it) the service is required to execute the package and the missing / reuired proxy account is created during the Integrtion services installation.

HTH
David Johnson
www.davidjohnsondeveloper.com

There are a lot of variations of this unique way to provide guest interaction to your web site, and recently I have had the need to explore some the google map api capabilities.

this GuestMap is the side effect of some of the research I did. I will compile some documentation to the solution but, all source code is only a proof of concept and provided as-is. feel free to extend it how ever you like just please provide a link back to this site in the source code.

I would be glad to help anyone make this work for their site.

the solution is developed in ASP.Net 1.1, javascript and HTML, leveraging a SQL back end.

.

I began to develop Flash Admin UI's to overlay the google map to provide configuration screens, but the additions were beyond the scope of my research.

If you would like some ideas on that feel free to ask.

source code download

check out a working demo

Tutorial will be available soon.

p.s. I am so excited. been working with the final Visual Studio Team System 2005 bits all weekend, nice speed improvements over June and August CTP's. more on that later!!

have a great day!

50 degree w/ rain here couldnt be better development weather!

What?

OK, we have all seen it, when its used properly it can create some real compelling web content interaction, or when done wrong, it can just annoy. but one thing its for sure to do is wonder how it was done! actually its very simple and below is what you will need to do in your flash movie to do the same, just dont abuse it!!

How?  

1) In your flash movie set the movie size to the size of the targeted web page.

2) export your movie (swf file)

3) Open your web page html

4) Add a layer over the top of your webpage to host the flash.

   a) example:

    <LAYER width="200" height="300"></LAYER>

5) insert the code for the flash movie in the layer you created.

   a) example:

  <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase=" http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0 " width="32" height="32">
  <param name=movie value=" http://www.flash.com/movie.swf ">
  <param name=quality value=high>
  <embed src=" http://www.flash.com/movie.swf " quality=high pluginspage=" http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash " type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="32" height="32">
  </embed>
</object>

6) modify the object tag to include this attribute after the second <param> attribute:

   a) example:

   <param name="wmode" value="transparent">

Why?

Well this will allow the movie window mode to be transparent and show the web content through the blank areas of the movie. now the real question will be why you want to?

you will come up with all of the great compelling reasons, so have fun!
just dont scare off your visitors by abusing it..!!

As part of a series of tutorials, I have decided to decompose an application that I have developed named Diet Partner.

the tutorials will be broken down by by components of the architecture:

1) Data Access Layer
2) Application caching architecture
3) Software License handling
4) Rendered UI controls
5) custom Graphing engine

the tutorials will be geared towards intermediate developers interested in designing highly graphical interfaces using the compact framework.