Bunker Project Log

I picked up this groovy table and chairs set from my favorite place… Unique Thrift Store, for $100. They were beat to hell. I spent this weekend taking them apart, washing the… DNA… or whatever it was encrusted all over them, buffing and polishing, and finally reassembling. One chair probably won’t make it, unless I whip out the JB Weld.?

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how they came out.

In other news, I got the PS3 Eye of Judgement during an Amazon DotD a month back. It will be out and ready for play from any nerd nerdy enough to try it out.

For those of you not in the know, Eye of Judgement is a CCG assisted by the PS3 Eye doodad. When you play a card, it actually instantiates the character on the card. Here’s a video review.

It’s been a long stretch of months. I’ve spent a lot of time in the hole tearing this thing apart and putting it back together. Now it’s time for the reveal of the ultimate grayness… Bunker 2.10.0!

Thanks to a very fortuitous Craigslist listing back in November, I procured two more Dell E521’s. In order to accommodate them, I pulled out the surface on the back wall and moved it to the right. there are now five machines. On each side. If we were organized enough, we could balance our team games so that a single team were on each side.

My Pa came out and helped with the wiring and gave me ideas for the in-wall panels. Ultimately I chose this groovy thing with a door so I can open and close it at will. Jammed up in there is the USB hub and all the excess wire.

Closed.

As exciting as this is, the real upgrade for _me_ was the removal of the FRICKIN CABLE BUNDLE!!!

For whatever reason, this really bugged me. I had actually gotten the entire ten machine upgrade finished, when the OCD kicked in. I wouldn’t feel right until I ripped it all apart again and got rid of that thing.

Now, everything is routed up to the ceiling and over, then drop down the right-hand wall. I still haven’t gussied up the exit.

That shouldn’t be a big deal… I just haven’t gotten around to it.

So, Ma and Pa are out, watching the Illusionist (which was lame, btw, and can’t hold a candle to “The Prestige” which was teh awes0m3z.)

Next thing I know, Pa is running out saying… “uh son… I think there’s something wrong with yr projector… there was this ‘pop’, and it all went dark.”

$300 later:

Doh!

Change is painful, folks. This is the sixth day of the attack of PA.

Expect coolness… to be revealed later!

More carnage.

I’ll be vacuuming for weeks.

In the comments for IGN: Ultimate Setup XLVII, I’ve been harshly criticized about the general blandness of the Bunker. I quote:

“This is a bit much for me…….maybe he should get a life? Does look cool but really designed poorly just because all the walls are white and really plan I mean pimp out the room with some posters or paint the walls, but who ever uses a whole house for gaming is either insane or needs to lose their virginity…..…” – LadiesLoveCooLJ

“Screw this. Sure he’s got a lot of cool stuff, and wastes way too much money on it, but the execution of the setup is completely dry and style-less. It is disgusting.” – raineisdead

“Alot of stuff, but it all looks too messy to me. If it was me I’d spend some more on getting nice furniture and get the rest of my house/gameroom looking stylish. Seems to me like he’s just pumping as many electronic devices into a house as he can.”– Panoz-Esperante-GTR1

I don’t know if I would go so far as “disgusting”, but I definitely agree with “completely dry and style-less”, mainly because it is by design.

First, the DDR room is painted “Spa White” it was designed that way to fulfill two purposes. One, the wife (Mrs. G) loves the EyeToy, and the only way that damn thing will work well is with a completely white room lit by a 680K Candlepower lighthouse lens. I know this because the room is completely white and is lit with 4 75 Watt bulbs, and it still seems dark. The second reason is, Mrs. G is a Yoga freak, and I wanted the room to completely transform into a calm, serene place where she can navel-gaze without a bunch of garish speakers or other electronic junk distracting from her Nirvana quest.

At one point I wanted to get a bunch of wall decals like this? but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had made that space for Mrs. G, and I didn’t want to spoil it.

As for the theater room, yes, it is grey. Really grey. In fact, I often look at it and go… “wow this is really grey.” (Actually, the paint is called “Silver Screen”.) However, it is very rare for anyone other than me to see the Bunker with the lights on. We had an “incident” at the last Bunker party, where we had to clean up a lot of Pottse’s blood, and a bunch of people said “I’ve never seen this place with the lights on.” What you can’t see from the pictures is that this place is pitch black except for 9 LCD monitors, and the Projector. On top of that, it is loud as hell. Either there is J-Pop bumping out from DDR, or “John the Fisherman” from GHII, or someone warbling out the words to “Take on Me” on Singstar. Any other “style” would cause your eyeballs to bleed a little harder. Seriously, when you leave the Bunker at 4am you are full-on sensory-overloaded.

As for non-gaming, theater use, I am always amazed when I see a theater with posters in the viewing area. I hate distractions when I am watching movies. (Hence the no-pausing rule, and the monitor in the bathroom.) Posters are glossy unless you matte them, and they will reflect the screen like a supernova. My philosophy is, you are there to watch the movie, not the walls.

That is not to say that I don’t admire the setups that have gone all-out for style, quite the contrary. Those are the ones that inspired me to build the Bunker in the first place. For those of you looking for truly gorgeous setups and gear, make sure you hit www.avsforum.com. You will be amazed. The Bunker is child’s play compared to what the guys have there.

As for being messy… the Analog Room definitely is. There are board games stacked everywhere, and half-finished games all over the place. I would like to deal with this, but that would require some major cleanup in the Bunker Storage room, and that makes me afraid.

What no one notices, mainly because I think I failed to pull it off, is that the bathroom was supposed to convey the look of both Yavin IV from “A New Hope” and Boba Fett’s color scheme all at the same time. The floor tiles are stone and staggered to give it a feel like the temple at the end with the victory ceremony. This was supposed to blend in with the general jungle green of Yavin… and then to the greyish greens from Boba Fetts armor. At one point I considered etching one of the Mandalorian symbols into the glass of the shower door, or just hiding it somewhere painted red near the toilet roll or something. If there is one place I would consider putting up posters, it will be in there, and probably Star Wars related.

So, the Bunker was designed to look the way it does for a reason. Unfortunately, those reasons usually are only tangentially related to aesthetics.???

Before and After

?

So, the entire IT department is Wooting Off, and this rrreallllly ugly mouse comes up for 5 Bucks American… and I’m wondering, do I buy it? And all the douchebags are bitching about it not being a Bag of Crap instead of telling me whether it is worth it or not… And I’m still wondering, do I buy it? Because, a Tangathon is going on at the same time and the wife is going to rip me to shreds if she finds out that I’d bought another version of Carcassonne… and… two different versions of Settlers of Catan… and should I buy the damn mice? It’s running out… they’re running out of stock… and I’ve got 7 machines on The Lan that could really use a groovy gaming mouse with variable DPI and all that jazz.

So, I say, screw it, I’m going to spend the 20 bucks and I’m going to do this thing, and hey Pottse, you order three of them too, I’ll pay you back… and now I just need one more sucker to convince to buy 3 more of which I will pay for 2 and prorate the shipping… and I do find the sucker, but he’s having some kind of existential dilemna about how his girlfriend is going to rip him to shreds if he buys a $6.66 mouse… I mean geez man, c’mon… she’s still yr girlfriend not your wife. Just grow some stones and click the damn button and stick your card # in there… Gangrene needs some mouses.

So it sells out, and weinerboy still hasn’t clicked, so I’ve only got six to go around.

Since I could find virtually nothing about these things on teh intarwebs, and it is very likely that Woot… not to mention Yugster will be offering these guys up again and again and again, I thought I would give a little back.

Here’s how they look.

The Lynx-Q5’s best side…

It’s?rough, and this is as good as it gets. Those buttons too small and require too much force to press them.?They are also too far back?to press them comfortably (but I?have?big hands.)

The mouse has the usual scroll wheel,?which is very responsive,?with very slight?graduated steps. I?will have to put in some?real play time?before I can say whether this is a good thing for gaming. The interesting parts?are the two arrow buttons on the top and bottom of the scroll wheel. These?toggle the mouse?between 800, 1200 and 1600?dpi. For the 1337 gamer, this means better sniping and… whatever. I am not 1337 enough to know, but I can say I have adjustable dpi gaming mice in my Lan so it’s all good.?

Yes… they are ugly, and that shape looks lame. It certainly isn’t an ergonomic looking thing. However, when they arrived and I pulled the guinea pig out, everyone who laid their hands on it said it felt “really good” and “slidey!” The are pretty slick. I don’t know whether that is because they are new, or have an extra number of little teflon feeties.

Oh noes!!! Don’t hack my serialz!

Not that it matters, but this is the first optical mouse I’ve experienced that doesn’t have an overly designed… almost vaginal optical sensor hole, if you don’t believe me, check out what’s on my desk:

“Love me” (the sensuous Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical)

“I will?swallow you whole and?smother you in honeyed darkness” (the man-eating Logitech MX-510)

“Whaddyou want?” (the very diesel?iOne Lynx-Q5)

Ahem… well, back to the… rambling…

Setup was a breeze. I was surprised to find that the variable dpi function required no driver support. Apparently there is a downloadable software suite for this thing, but I ain’t touching it with a 10-foot pole. I’ve never had good experiences with custom mouse software. What little gaming I did was “successful”. It “seemed” better. For $5 at least.

For now, I’m going to reserve judgement until the Bunker chimps show up and start playing DOTA or whatever newfangled whoziwhatsit the kids like these days. I’ve upgraded four machines, and left the other four alone, so we’ll be able to make a good A/B comparison on these bad… ummm… girls, and I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Today alone,?I got about 1200 views from xbox.com.?In the forums,?I got a lot of “that?must cost a lot” types of posts.

However, one of the goals of the Bunker Project Log is to show that there are lots of cool things you can do with a little work, and hopefully less money.

Since I’ve just managed to dig?a few pictures?up, and have been promising them elsewhere, here are some shots of?Bunker 2.0 in it’s infancy.

Here is the underside of the platform that the second set of seats are bolted down to. It is 9″ high, which is just enough to see over the recliners in the front row, without blocking the view from the Lan (not that people are looking at it much.) The wood for this cost around $80, IIRC.

I’m not going to say that the platform is square, nor perfectly engineered, but it is really heavy, and those chairs aren’t going anywhere.

The chairs themselves came from an eBay action, $40 each… shipped. I bought seven so I would have a spare just in case. I feel very lucky to have gotten in on that deal. I think my general lack of luck in games (I always lose) is made up for with finds like this.

The chairs came out of the box?smelling a little moldy smelling, but once they had aired out for a week or too (and a little Fabreze), they?are just fine. They are also surprisingly comfortable. At least, no one seems to mind sitting back there.

Finally, I wrapped the platforms in this synthetic outdoor carpet stuff you see here. I think this came out to about $25 with the adhesive. This was actually one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the install, because it barely fit, and I had to goop the entire thing up with the adhesive and lay it out just right.

?Of course, I took the chairs off the platform before I glued this stuff down.

All totaled, the second row of seats cost less than $400. That’s less than one of the Berkline Recliners that went in the front row.

Here is a picture where you can see them in the hubbub of a bunker party.

??

And here is one of the few pictures I have where you can see these occupied (sort of)… by the H-man, all by his lonesome.

??