Ari [APz] Sovijärvi

I've had pinball leg mounted drink holders since early 2000s, although those were pretty crude DIYs back when consumer 3D printing wasn't a thing. My very first take was just a piece of steel bent into a shape on L with holes for the leg bolts and then a ring big enough for a soda bottle welded onto that. As my collection grew, somewhere in early 2010s the Pingulp was released. Not that it was an unique idea even then, but it was a good product. I own around 30 of those. At that point I had migrated from energy drinks to coffee and got used to having my coffee mug there. Over the years the product got revised, the version 2.0 no longer fit the mug perfectly and by the 3.0 it was useless to me. I had made my own variant when learning OpenSCAD back in the days, but saw no point in 3D printing something that was cheap and readily available. Until now. So here's my version resurrected and redone with #freecad. It's intended to be cheap, customizable via color painting in slicers and easy to print. After some prototypes I think I have a model that works in arcade use as well. If you need one, here's the model: https://www.printables.com/model/1841594-pinball-drink-holder-fits-cans-bottles-and-coffee #pinball #3dprinting

Apparently the weekend's trip still keeps on giving. My bank Nordea decided to block my card because it had "suspicious activity from abroad". Which was taxi charges from all the moving around we did in Belfast. It's such a shit system where they can just decide "LOL, no more card use for you!" and there's no way to unblock it myself. First I had to talk to a fucking piece of shit chat bot that jerked me around with the FAQ answer stuff until I finally got to talk to a real person who instantly saw what had happened. After dealing with the problem they started selling me some saving packages and suggested I get another card from them. Yeah, I prefer to have my backup credit card from another bank so I won't be left stranded somewhere when Nordea decides to have a system malfunction or just not to play ball that day. And absolutely fuck any service provider who has a support line where I'm forced to contact them and then them starting to push their products or "a quick call so we can chart which of our products would benefit you!" #frustration #rant #bank

Street Fighter II (Gottlieb, 1992) and its car crush mini playfield. I think it also may have been one of the last ones, if not the last video game based theme on a pinball until Fallout this year. #pinball #streetfighter

Inca Kola: The Golden Kola. The choice of golden shower professionals. No, wait. That wasn't the slogan. Anyway, I spotted Inca Kola in a 0.355l can, I think I tried this earlier this year because the candy-like taste is very distinct. Seems to taste about the same as from the glass bottle and I'm very fond of this stuff. One of the weirder takes on colas. #soda

Top Score had the distinct smell of coil wire lacquer. Had a hunch something got toasted bad. #pinball #pinrepair #techgore #retrotech

Some pieces were falling off Jackbot today. A slingshot star post ended its life. No worries, I have a boxful. #pinrepair

Plenty of early solid state pins play a sample and some music as a part of their sound card self test. Robo has one of the coolest ones IMO. #pinball #robocop

Here's a slot machine reel for WhoDunnit pinball machine I printed earlier with my Snapmaker. It has a lot of wear in the jackscrews, which shows in a print like this. I'm hoping this a lot fresher Prusa MK4S can make me better ones. #3dprinting

@root42@chaos.social I got to play that for the first time last weekend thanks to the @basearcade@mastodon.social folks. It was actually pretty good a game.

Apparently KLM decided delivering my suitcase where I was flying to was optional, so here I am in Belfast with no clothes other than what I have on, no toiletries, chargers for anything and so forth. Seeing all the angry people at the luggage belt it seems I wasn't the only one. My suitcase has an Airtag in it, at least I know it's in Amsterdam.

After the fun at Base Arcade's popup arcade, we went to a Boundary Taproom for some brewskies and more pinball, because there's no such thing as too much pinball. I finally got to play Stern's Pokemon. The quick first impression was that the playfield was rather simple and the graphics pretty plain. But then I got to grind it and damn, it's actually one of the better releases for a while. I can instantly see the playfield simplicity as a huge bonus for the new audience the theme is bound to draw in, but at the same time for a pro player the ruleset was pretty interesting and especially the ramp shots felt really satisfying. I really enjoyed making pints magically go empty and putting some games on this thing. They also had the new Xmen, which I may also have to check out later. #pinball #pokèmon

Hopeakuulan 15v taipaleen johdosta Kouvolan Sanomat teki meistä jutun: https://www.kouvolansanomat.fi/paikalliset/9806028 #kouvola #suomi #lehtijutut

@DJGummikuh@mastodon.social The game always calls it a ball. Another fun trivia is that what you think is a pinball machine is actually a flipper pinball machine. A pinball machine does not have flippers, but the distinction got muddied over the years and now most people haven't even heard of what passed off as pinball for a long time.

We finally reached the Basearcade! #pinball #belfast

Yeah.

@colorblindcowboy@mastodon.art @AncTreat@sunny.garden I remember well when I saw her IRL for the first time. She just walked on the stage, looked down to her boopage, gave 'em a squeeze and said "Yup, they're real".

@reconbot@toot.cafe It's Godzilla by Stern Pinball (2021).

Lovely. This hotel seems to be some kind of a Faraday's cage and the mobile data barely works inside. They offer free WiFi, but you have to sign up for their bullshit mailing list for that. Not a problem, I have plenty of send me all your bullshit e-mail addresses just for that, but their signup form fails every time at the point where I try to post it. #rant

First attempt with the MK4S. It's already better, but it warped a bit.

@DJGummikuh@mastodon.social I make functional playfield parts out of ASA and PA. ASA is good for mechanisms that get hit by the ball but not the printed part itself, PA seems to be fine for more direct hits. A pinball ball is 1 and 1/18" in diameter and weights 80 grams.

@DJGummikuh@mastodon.social They can be and FDM printer is enough for opaque ones. They are however so cheap that it's usually not worth the trouble for machines that are still getting spares. For a rarer old machine printing would be viable option. Or making some temporary ones if the exact shape isn't at hand.

@ceephax@mastodonapp.uk This thing has pretty decent Yamaha YM2151 rendition of the Robocop tune too. Actually its sounds are among the best of the late 80s pins. #chiptune #robocop

@chaotic_evil@jorts.horse "It's better on the app because you purposefully crippled the web version."

@gsuberland@chaos.social The connection at Amsterdam was a real fustercluck for us too. Long walk but 1 hour to get there. Well, until they could not get us out the plane as the jet bridge malfunctioned and we just stood there for 35 minutes. Then jogged across the airport to get on the connection with 1 minute to spare. I guess something went wrong with the luggage too at that point.

@valoisa@eliitin-some.fi En ole ikinä nähnyt aidosti hyvää argumenttia jollekin ääliötasolla toteutetulle valvonta- tai rajoitussysteemille minkä pitäisi "suojella lapsia". Jo 2000-luvun alussa tapasin erään suomalaisen järjestön edustajan, jonka mielestä Internet pitäisi kieltää ettei lapset pääse katsomaan tissikuvia. Fakta: me katsottiin tissikuvia aikana milloin ne ladattiin nauhalta tai lerpulta.

@GandalfDG@indieweb.social That'd actually make a pretty decent looking wall clock!

DHL's import charges payment portal literally looks worse than most of the "a package has arrived and you need to pay some import changes" scam sites I've seen. #infosec

...

I removed the old solder and resoldered it. No dice. It has 5, 12 and 43 volts present and we have speaker hum, so now starts the hunt of what failed on the logic side.

@Tutanota@mastodon.social If a service needs this kind of steps, it's only a matter of time before the option is taken away. There's plenty of sites that started with it being optional (but default on) for the user content to be used for AI training. Then it disappeared either completely or behind some paid tiers.

@tuneJabber@mindly.social I get the service center workers are probably given some kickbacks from what they manage to push onto the callers, but I've also found it very off putting when I call about their fuckup, get to talk to their voice chat bot piece of shit thing, wait 30 minutes in the queue and then get given half-assed solution, on top which they ask if I'd like to subscribe to their streaming services, for you troubles you'd get 1 month for free! (exact same deal as for any random person walking into their store and subscribing to it)

So far I've greased my MK4S' and Mini+'s axis rods with a q-tip, which is a bit annoying as there's always possibility of getting some on the belts in the X-axis. So I made this simple tool. It can do both sides of the rod without making a mess. Just put a tiny amount of grease on both sides of this hook, push it against the rod and move sideways, then pull and do the other side. Takes just seconds compared to messing around with a q-tip. I'll probably make a larger version for the Z-axis too in the near future, I'll probably add it under the same item as this 8mm version. https://www.printables.com/model/1799276-greasing-tool-for-3d-printer-8mm-rods #3dprinter #prusa #tools

@boyago@mastodon.social Aww, they made a soda that tastes like Finland!

@freecad@social.freecad.org Oh it's #freecadfriday already! Well here's one for the "must you 3D print everything" category. Our arcade's new toilet has this tiniest of the tiny sink. We've had the soap dispenser on it awkwardly behind the tap while I've been hoping to find some kind of a wall mountable solution. All I could find was those flimsy suction cup mounted ones that you'll find on the floor after a while. I measured the the space between the wall and the sink and then made this. It fits there snugly and holds the soap bottle where it's actually easy to use from. #3dprinting #freecad

@GandalfDG@indieweb.social Yeah, makes cradling ridiculously easy.

@cpi@mastodon.social wow, early Sega pins!

Another Hello Kitty #soda today, Kuromi. As the previous one I got, this one's made in Sweden under a license. it's grape and blueberry, which is actually a pretty decent combo. Too bad this one has the same problem as the Hello Kitty one: nothing in the taste is real. Again it's apple juice that aromas in it to give it a crude approximation of blueberry and grape, but not a great one. Also artificial sweeteners. I need to get my hands on the Japanese version to see if it's any better. Or even related in any way.

@Erdrandbewohner@social.tchncs.de "Good info, thanks!"

@reconbot@toot.cafe It's an absulote killer of a game. Respected designer, easy to get into but difficult to complete and it's very faithful to the source material. To a point where it lets you to change the language to Japanese before starting.

@basearcade@mastodon.social Damn! We missed one of our favorite co-op shooter!

@SecretAntelope@covertcreatures.xyz Hey, I only play it for the plot! 😝

@npub147fp2j606qpfysp38phhzvempt7ewsdqwm6uww9uycp6tdvavu0s5paq44@momostr.pink Both are pretty rare to see on locations. We've had the Batwatch on loan, almost all of them need a LED replacement for the huge plasma screen at this point. Street fighter is pretty meh as a game, just as many Gottliebs of the era. Not that Baywatch is a rate gem in that deparment either, but at least there's some modes and typical 90s Data-East/Sega cheesiness.

Some late night purring time. #cat #cats

@Jross@toot.community There's this tiny tunnel that connects UK and France and it seems to have worked out well, especially thinking how long ago it was built. Everything in engineering and construction has since evolved so adding 30km on top of that is just work, not impossibility.

On the second though, it's always the cracked solder joints, isn't it?!

What kind of retort is "you must be fun at parties" is supposed to be? Am I supposed to feel completely pwned by it? I was having a conversation about specific NVR HDD brands and a nameless Internet person claims their beloved brand does not use brand X. I tell them they definitely do in some products. They reply that they have been in the business for 5 years and they know that brand is not used. I reply I've been 20 years in business and here's a picture of an opened brand new device with brand X HDD inside. "You must be fun at parties". I guess backing up claims with proof makes me a party killer. #frustration