Choose Your Allegiance

There are some battles that are worth fighting.

And there are some battles that cannot but be fought.

The Uncontested Highlight Of Our Trip To Stratford

For more of the important stuff from our holiday, see Chrissy's blog.

Let The Memory Live Again

I am sorry to tell you that my mobile disk died this morning. It had a good innings - my dad had it for a good few years before he passed it onto me (as attested to by its general massiveness), and it survived being put through the washing machine at least once in that time. But all good things, and most rubbish things, must come to an end, and today the plastic casing finally came apart completely and the circuitry within slid clean out, leaving the rather useless little shell you see to the left.

Now, as I looked at my inadvertently-dismantled disk, a few options presented themselves. I could wrap the whole thing up in a cocoon of tape, and, in fact, I nearly did. If we had any proper bodge-job looking duct tape, this post would have ended here. But thankfully, we only had parcel tape, Sellotape and insulation tape, none of which would really have given it the right aesthetic.

While searching for some decent tape, however, I did find an unused box of plasters and some bandages. That had to look good, surely? A broken mobile disk, held together with medical supplies like a real boy? But it seemed a bit silly and wasteful, and besides, plasters are rubbish and don't stick to anything.

Andrew, helpful as ever, suggested wrapping it up in Sellotape and leaving it at that. It would have looked interesting, certainly, but considering that it has all my important work on it I thought I could use something more substantial. So we decided to do the sensible thing and install it in another object.

But what?

A matchbox? Too easy. A thimble? Too small. A miniature box of Celebrations? Too bloody stupid.

And then I saw the light. Because, nestled away in the summerhouse, we had a big cardboard box of old videogame paraphenalia, and among it was a long-knackered NES controller. It was small. It was mostly hollow. It had a little hole to run a USB cable out of.

It was perfect.

And so, I assembled an Elite Crack Super Team.


Sort of.

Now, as I'm sure you're aware, the first thing to do when you embark on a project like this is to take everything apart into as many pieces of possible and generally make a great big mess.

Here, you'll observe the dismantled controller, the dismantled mobile disk, the screwdriver we took the pad, the USB extension cable (kindly donated/sold by Paul), the little knife we used to cut off some bits of plastic that got in the way, and some little bits of plastic that got in the way. You'll also observe, though they are rather less important, a placemat, a table, a chair, another chair, part of yesterday's paper, the set that we took the screwdriver from, and a refill pad (which we did actually use, as a source of card to brace the buttons, having taken out the printed circuit board that used to hold them in place).

With a bit of fiddling about, we came up with a basic arrangement that we thought ought to work.

It's really rather cunningly organised. I think Paul came up with it, with a little tweaking from the rest of the Elite Crack Super Team. Note how the disk also braces the D-pad so that it can be pressed convincingly.

Now, all that remained was to put it all together so that the back would actually go on. Which was an absolute bastard, because the mobile disk was unnecessarily huge, the end of the USB cable was unnecessarily huge, and the screw-posts had been positioned (in a remarkably forward-thinking move) so that they would obstruct anyone who attempted to convert the pad into a mobile disk. But we battled, and we battled, and we went and fetched a pair of garden secateurs to trim some bits we couldn't get to with the knife, and finally, triumphantly, we screwed the thing back together.



Truly, a thing of beauty.