The Cupboard Conversion

In a bid to create some more space in the attic Mrs-MaFt had this crazy mental idea to convert a cupboard on the landing into a computer area. I had this crazy mental idea to agree and actually pull it off!

First task was to get everything out of there - a set of drawers and a bunch of coats and other random crap. I did find my Voice Of The Mysterons badge though! And once that was done I got measuring - ya know, to make sure it was feasible and so that I didn't have any nasty surprises later on...

Phase 1.5 was to drill a few holes and stick some cables in fr the power. Phase 2 was to stick up a load of brackets for the shelves to sit on:


Just look at the lovely aqua coloured walls...

To cut the shelves I hired a magical saw that cut them itself without any kind of human intervention. As you can see from the photo below, I'm not telling porkies - you can clearly see that there are no hands assisting the saw.


The magical 'self-cutting' saw.

With the drawers cut to size and their perfect fit(!) confirmed I went about painting over the garish aqua with a nice, plain white.


White wash!

The next step was obviously to fit the shelves and then get those painted too. For the keyboard tray I just robbed the rollers from my old computer desk and used those - no point reinventing the wheel eh?


Shelves in place...


...and painted in matching white.

It was then time to move in. All was going well until I tried to put the monitor in... Erm... My measuring clearly wasn't up to scratch as it didn't fit... Neither did the 15inch monitor I swapped it for with Nephew-J... Damn, I'm going to have to buy a nice 19" Widescren TFT monitor. What a shame that will be :D For the meantime I'm using TightVNC to control my PC via the laptop. Works well too!

Anyway, here it is in all it's glory (sans monitor):


Ta-Da!

MaFt

Update

I'm not ignoring you all, I've just been busy with trying to get stuff sorted at home! I've been busy converting an old cupboard into a computer hideout but my monitor doesn't fit in there so I can't really use it yet (hence the lack of updates).

So, once I'm sorted and can pull a load of pictures off my phone I'll get the blog updated!

Cheers

MaFt

Steven Spiel-MaFt

Blimey, I've let a week slip by again without any posts... So, I'm not sitting here with a pint of Wells Banana Bread Beer bringing you up to speed.

So, basically I've been getting lots of work done - both paid work and unpaid work. I've been a busy bee getting a load of video editing done but have hit a potential stumbling block... Disc space, or rather the lack of it. Never the mind though as I've worked out a way around it - it took a lot longer to work this out than I believe it should have though... I'm just putting the finishing touches to the bonus disc of the Punk Worship DVD I'm doing so once that's burnt I can get rid of the raw footage which will free up enough space (about 30GB) so that I can finish off my wedding video and Brother-A's wedding video.

Once those are done I'll have enough free space to do the main disc of the Punk Worship DVD set, for which I'll need about 45GB just for the raw footage. Then when that's done I can get cracking on Mini-MaFt's First Year DVD and a tonne of other odd little recordings I need to sort out.

It's scary to think that I can happily sit and manipulate 20GB files when only 7 years ago my first computer had a (then) massive 6.4GB hard drive. Big Brother-T said at the time "you'll never need all that space but if you've got the money you may as well have it". Well, now I have 18GB free space out of the 320GB I have available - and I cleared about 10GB the other day just from odd video files knocking about...

Space, the final frontier - I'll never have enough...

MaFt

Vegetarian Haggis

I'll try anything once. Well, maybe not anything, but most things. When Dougsy the Scottish Beast came down for PW2 last month he brought with him a gift. That gift was a Vegetarian Haggis made by Macsween of Edinburgh.



The other day I finally got around to cooking and eating it. After removing the outer packaging and inner packaging I was faced with this:



The instructions said I could either oven it for 45 minutes, boil it for 45 minutes or microwave it for 8 minutes. Being both a modern man and a lazy man I opted for the microwave approach. This involved having to cut the haggis up into slices:



...slapping it in the microwave...



...and, after 8 minutes, removing the now cooked haggis:



Then came the scary part. Actually eating it! It was quite nutty and stodgy although I think I only managed to finish one slice of it... Don't get me wrong Dougsy, I certainly appreciate the gesture but vegetarian haggis is one thing that is being put on my "I've tried it once, and only once" list. Cheers though!

MaFt

New Year, Old Jokes

Yesterday we decided to take all the decorations down and rearrange the living room. While we were taking the tree down we realised we had not pulled any crackers! We'd put them on the tree as decorations but owing to us eating out on Christmas day (if you were about to ask, it was pretty crap) and being at various family members' houses for the rest of the week we never had time for them.

So, in case you were wondering on the quality of the gifts and jokes that we had, here is the run down of all 12 jokes and all 12 gifts (in no particular order):

Gifts:



1. Fiddly Metal Toy Thing - one of those little things you fiddle with for hours on end and then finally manage to complete it, only to discover you can't get the thing back together...

2. Wax Crayons - set of 4 (yellow, green, blue and red) wax crayons. Presumably for use with #10. Small, fiddly and hard to hold unless you're a mouse.

3. 'Purple' Pen - a low quality, purple-plastic pen that actually writes in blue. Has a smooth click action for extraction/retraction of the nib. Good, all-round use and can also be used along side #2 with #10.

4. Whoopee Cushion - more of a 'squeek' than a 'parp' but then it's easily portable due to it's small size. You can't have everything, can you?

5. Green Plastic Hair Clip - one for the girls I guess, but I find it hard to imagine an outfit that it would go with. When I do manage to imagine an outfit it may go with it's a truly hideous one...

6. Tape Measure - A whole 60 inches / 5 foot / 150cm. Useful for measuring things less than 1.5m. Not many other uses really.



7. Set of Marbles - 6 marbles in a stunning red bag. Pretty useless really as the rules of marbles clearly state that you need 13 in the middle of the ring and then you need ones to play with... Still, it could be used to add to your marble collection (if you have one).

8. Whistle Lips - simply pop it in your mouth and blow it to make a noise like the secret Thistle Whistle only not as loud and without the Scottish Sea Dragons...

9. Playing Cards - small pack of cards for mouse-sized hands. Crackers seem to cater for very small people. I'm presuming it's a full set as I've not been bothered to open them yet to check; I doubt I ever will either.

10. Notepad - small (mouse-sized?) notepad with special 'silver reflective cover'. Contains 50 sheets (well, I got to 27 and figured I was roughly half-way through) and suitable for use with items #2 and #3.

11. Pink Water-Pistol - holds approximately 7ml of liquid and has a range of around 6 foot (180cm) depending on the Strength-of-Squeeze Factor and other GCSE Physics constants.

12. Star Pencil Sharpener - sharpen pencils and other objects of similar girth. Not suitable for use with #3 but will work with #2 (although no guarantee is given).


Now, onto the 'jokes'. It will soon become clear why I have put the word 'jokes' in quotes... Each 'joke' had a number in the corner, presumably so the monkeys packing the crackers did not duplicate a 'joke' in each set of crackers.

1. What lives at the bottom of the sea and shivers?     A nervous wreck.
2. What do you call a crate of ducks?     A box of quackery.
3. Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?     The breast stroke, sir.
4. Why can't you play cards in the jungle?     There are too many cheetahs.
5. What do cannibals play at parties?     Swallow my leader.
6. How do you get down from an elephant?     You don't, you get down from ducks.
7. What would happen if pigs could fly?     Bacon would go up.
8. How do you get two whales in a car?     Over the Severn Bridge.
9. Why does a giraffe have such a long neck?     Because its feet smell.
10. How do you start a bear race?     Readdy, teddy, go.
11. What's sweet and swings through the jungle?     Tarzipan.
12. Why did the jelly baby go to school?     Because it wanted to be a smartie.

Boom boom! That's the noise the writers of these 'jokes' will be hearing if I ever met one of them... Not that I own a gun, or condone the use of violence...

Happy 2007!

MaFt