Projects, hey?
I'm good at deciding something needs to be done right and embarking upon making it that way. The majority of times I do this because it's something that's quite big (e.g. has a lot of data, etc.) and will streamline my working processes ten-fold, if I spend twenty-fold the time making it right before I begin.

Unfortunately I'm very lazy so throughout my life I've ruined quite a lot of things by doing this and getting bored halfway through and giving up. However as I get older I'm getting to know how likely I am to do this, so either choose not to do it at all, or actually follow through which has it's own rewards.

Some of the projects I've taken on over the years:
- Wolf 3D MapEdit
I had the full version of Wolf3D but the map editor for only the demo version (the first chapter). There were a lot of objects in the remaining 9 that weren't in the first chapter, so it resulted in my borderline-OCD youthful self loading the map editor, placing about 5 objects, saving and closing, opening Wolf3D, looking at and jotting down what they were, closing Wolf3D, opening the map editor's .txt data file and editing it, save and close, rinse and repeat.

I did finish that one but by then it was about 1996 and Wolf3D had been surpassed by many, many computer games. I also found out the map area wasn't in fact big enough to make a floor plan of my school (small as my school was), and the decor of my school looked nothing like that of Castle Wolfenstein anyway, so you'd only have known if someone had told you.

-mp3 iD3 Tagging
I refused point blank for years to get an iPod. This was largely due to a tongue-in-cheek PC vs Mac feud I had with one of my best friends growing up, but even now I don't buy into the whole pomposity I view apple users to be. Even though I did buy myself an iPod last year but ONLY because they're the only device with over 80GB hard disks in them. The first mp3 player I ever had was a Creative Zen. I quite liked it but soon realised the importance of tagging files properly as it was quite hard to find stuff if it wasn't. Also, that Creative player had a major fault in that if your mp3s were, quite logically, tagged with track numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,...19,20,21,22 etc., the player wouldn't recognise the first 1-9 so would play 1,10,11,12,13,...18,19,2,20,21 etc. Pain in the arse. Especially if you listen to a lot of mixtapes like me. So I found en editor and set about renaming the files, and renumbering them 101,102,103 etc. The I found a program which could do whole directories of songs with one easy push of a button, instead of doing it manually, one by one. I remember thinking 'there must be a program that makes it easier' but the insane thing was I never looked until I was up to date with it at the time (about 40gb) and found one instantly! I really, really pissed myself off with that and it still haunts me a bit!

- Built some boxes to fix my Technics turntables
OK fast forward some 15 years and I buy myself a pair of 1200 mkIIs for $150 off someone on Craigslist. I think he mugged himself off a bit really, but I definitely screwed him over a bit as he'd asked $250 in the ad, I knocked him down to $190 and when I got there one wouldn't turn on so I hummed and hawed until he dropped the price in a 'OK, as long as you get the f*** out of my house NOW' kind of a way. The thing about Technics, that anyone who's ever taken one apart will know, is that the top plate is the base for which all the components are attached; the black rubber bottom is actually the first thing you remove to expose all the bits inside. The problem with this is that the tonearm is then bearing the (rather considerable) weight of the whole table. Some people online suggested placing them on a pillow, but I went one better. Down to the DIY store I go and buy some 2x4's and make some frames to hold just around the edge on. It's not like I made them with dovetail joints or anything but I am proud of the things. I also put some pegboard over the top so now I turn them over and it gives me some extra height to the turntables which is definitely needed with my 6'3'' stature. You never really realise how low pub tables are until you have to lean over them playing records all night. I painted them and they may not look like the finest woodwork ever, but they're pretty bloody sturdy and I'm actually really proud of them!

- Master Keying my Houses
I manage vacation rental homes near Disney. 35 of them to be exact, and the more homes I took on, the more completely ridiculous my key ring was getting. Over the past few years it's gone from a key ring to me buying a length of chain to keep the keys attached to in a linear fashion - with a couple of links in between each home's respective keys - to me trying to make another of these with just one key to each house, to me now having a carrier bag full of the buggers. Needless to say I let it get a bit out of control. Not to mention the danger that if I ever lost this bag o'keys (for instance, if my car ever got stolen (knock on wood it won't)), I'd be completely screwed. Like last Christmas eve when I locked them in a house by accident just as a call came in saying one of my guests has snapped his key off in the lock. Took $270 to get them back, which stung a bit. I spoke to a(nother, more reputable) locky who said he could master them for me for $10 a lock. Bearing in mind I have 35 homes, most of which have 2 locks on the front door alone, means it could be up to $700 or more I'd be spending on something which was a bit of a luxury. Screw it I thought, and taught myself to do it. Brought the kit off eBay of pins for 2 main types of locks and have been steadily rekeying all the locks for the past few weeks. You'd not know the relief of knowing all I need is this one (well, two actually - one for Kwikset one for Schlage) locks on my car key key ring!

- Tidying the house
I work from home and am not the cleanest person. I'm not dirty by any means, but often I'm in a hurry, so I will take all the crap out of the car, put it in a box and fling it in the garage. Meaning I had bags and boxes full of petrol receipts, notes from the pool guy, pizza menus, empty rizla packs, small tools I forget to put back in the tool box, napkins, half empty rizla packs, etc.

If it kills me (which hopefully it won't) this house is going to be completely spotless, tidy and 100% organized BEFORE 1/1/12.

- Spare Room
I'm also cleaning out the spare room (read above, except this also included me emptying the dryer full of clothes onto the spare bed and taking things when I need them). I've decided I'm going to make it into a Rumpus Room (I'm only calling it that to piss my mate off, although I know he'll never read this). He (my aforementioned friend) is getting rid of his sofa set so he said I could have it, I recently acquired a 50" flatscreen which I need to fix (another project) and I'm going to move all my records into there. One project for this room is that I'm going to build a cabinet/shelving unit which will fit all my records underneath, as well as being the right height and sturdiness to keep the turntables on top of. I'm thinking of being a show off and seeing if I can build it completely without screws or nails and just use proper joints like dovetails, but the fact that the only thing I've built since my GCSEs - DT being my lowest grade at a D after I built the worst bit of crap imaginable with wood and then covered it with black cloth to try and cover the bad joints, but in the process getting the cloth covered in PVA glue making it look worse - is the Technics frames as I've said above, and also that this is the second time in this post I've mentioned wood joints and can only come up with dovetails, am thinking this may be a little ambitious...

Actually, none of those above went unfinished - some I'm not up to date on as are works in progress and will never finish (unless, for example, I stop downloading music) and some I've not started yet, but this has made me feel a bit better about myself. Thanks, B3ta!

Length? Probably too long and may have been a bit boring but I am quite tired and about to go to bed so maybe I'm being a bit rambly. Sorry, B3ta! :)
(Mr_Lew, Fri 18 Nov 2011, 5:08, 6 replies)

Woah, cool story there brother.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Fri 18 Nov 2011, 7:13, closed)

^ This
was inevitable.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 18 Nov 2011, 9:57, closed)

Someone posted here
a story about how he made his house work off of a key fob remote.

Not that it'd work for you, but it is a really good story, was hoping it'd pop up here. The whole thing sounded totally hare-brained, but at the same time utterly convincing.

Can't remember when or where it was. Maybe someone else does, if so, link pls.
(username failed moderation, Fri 18 Nov 2011, 9:25, closed)

dchurch is the fella
www.b3ta.com/questions/technohacks/post504506
www.b3ta.com/questions/technohacks/post504586
( Pig Bodine., Fri 18 Nov 2011, 10:48, closed)

That's the one
proper propellerhead. Good stuff.
(username failed moderation, Fri 18 Nov 2011, 11:10, closed)

The Wolf 3d reminds me of my great Half-Life map plan.
I wanted to make The Cube from the movie of the same name -- turned out the object limit (not the term used, but what it ammounted to) was far, far too low. I did try to start it in Unreal Editor, but gave it up as too much hassle.
Now I'm wondering if I can do it in OpenSim.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 18 Nov 2011, 15:52, closed)