Power Up

This year I staffed the UK biggest ever LAN (to date, circa August 2013). just over 3000 people brought computers and another few thousand turned up each day for the Minecraft UK Expo which ran in tandem to the LAN.

Safe to say we went all out making this happen, here's my view from the back of the stage manning the long camera shot. There's 1000 seats and behind and to the sides it was standing room only, probably another 700 or more at least.

However, one of the more interesting things that most people don't see is after the LAN, all of the power distribution boards were stacked together. One of the guys counted roughly 5000 Amps of supply, although not everything was used on every board, that's still quite a bit and I haven't actually counted it myself. Certainly a solid number 2 on all time biggest power projects I've worked on.

Banana for scale.

Someone said that when we do the event, the power grid are alerted so they can manage the supply effectively. 3000 PCs suddenly browning out makes for unhappy gamers.

Ties that bind.

After redoing a good deal of the wardrobe storage with some shelving, the hanging space was reduced somewhat, and what went from an acceptable amount of space for everything, diminished to 'enough'. This makes getting anything in or out a bit of a pain. Yes, i guess I could get rid of a few of the more colourful shirts (hah, what am I thinking) I do actually wear just about everything in there enough to justify it.

What does take up a big chunk of space is a load of trousers I've got for work/smart dress and ties. Apparently I have a lot more than I thought and getting them in and out on one of these multi rail hangers has got to the point where they usually slide off.

One can stay and replace all the individual trouser hangers to save some space, the other is going to move to a more useful space on the back of the door.

The hanger comes apart fairly easily into two parts. The plan is to use the ends of the normal hanger to hold the lower part and allow it to swing out.

Trimming the ends off gives two nice sized pieces to screw into the door.

And by turning the pins around on the end of the frame the pegs will hold into the frame of the door, not the panel.

Finally, rubber bands twisted around the rails allow the ties to be gripped much better and avoid slipping when the hanger is lifted.

The hanger installs on the back of the door and lies flat.

When you need a tie, lift the bottom and all the ties can be removed easily without pulling the others off the rails.

(Yes there are also some awful ties in here, blame fancy dress parties).

The Big Desk Move - Pt 8: Hanging around.

Now that a few things are finding homes on the desk there are a few unforseen improvements which need to be made.

One of them is the laptop and it's power brick. Until now i've just moved the laptop around wherever there was space, but now that it has an hdmi hookup to the TV and a wired ethernet plug it can have a specific home to the right of my mouse (I don't know why, but having it on the left never felt comfortable).

The problem with this is mostly the power brick dangling down behind my tower and one of the 6 ways attached to the legs, which the brick isn't even using. This means the brick either gets lost behind the back and isn't that easy to extract, or it sits on the desk and will inevitably get tangled in my headphones (which will be in the odds-and-ends post later).

The 240V supply in comes across the underside of the desk above my legs and then goes to the right most screen pillar. Thanks to a spare clover-leaf power cable this one car be left there and the brick attached when needed. But it still doesn't help with the brick being in the way, or worst of all, falling off the desk and yanking the cable if not hitting something else under the desk.

In the previous incarnation of this desk there were some metal hooks from $DIY_Store which held the network cables, some power cables and USB cables up and out of the way of my feet. With a new, more organised layout of the cables, these were redundant, till now.

Two of the hooks attached onto the underside of the desk at the back fit the brick almost perfectly, its not quite flat, but its enough that its out of the way.

And better yet, it cant actually be seen from above, but it's still within easy reach when the time comes to disconnect it. 

Annoyingly it actually took longer to find 4 screws which were short enough to not pop through the top of the desk and find the hooks, which i'd put somewhere foolish (under the bed in a box, instead of in the misc bracket box in the DIY cupboard) than it did to fit them.

Five Guys At Last.

I'd love to think of a witty titles for this, but I really cant. I'm just happy that they've arrived and they're near enough on my doorstep.

when I was in Florida last year I had Five Guys burgers a number of times, and every time it was fantastic. I just cannot praise them enough for making a fast food* burger with texture and flavour.

That * up there is important, because unlike McDonalds or Burger King, every order is cooked fresh no matter how simple it is. there's nothing waiting for you on a hot shelf, you have to wait. And in reality, waiting 7 minutes for something that really looks like the picture isn't that much of a hardship is it?

While I was there, I said to the guys while I waited how much I wished there was one in the UK and it'd be a long disappointing time before I was back to Florida or anywhere on the East coast to get another. I joked that if I could get a franchise for over here, I would. Don't I feel stupid now...

A few months ago however, Five Guys opened a branch in Covent Garden in London, queues went round the block and all seemed well and very similar to the states. But its London, and not only that, an annoying bit to get to for just a burger, so I resigned myself to having to wait until I happened to be there to get a fix.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this in Reading, all of about 20 minutes from home:

After being away for a few weeks I was in Reading again last week, and sure enough:

This time, with an opening date. September 3rd. (Go on, look at the date today, i'll wait).

Yes. That is today (well, yesterday now). I'm sure some people went in at Stupid O'Clock to be there first, but I am not one of those people.

I got there mid afternoon and it was reasonably quiet at the counter. Behind the counter they'd obviously thrown people at it to keep everything going smoothly. 

Service was quick and pretty much identical to when I was in Florida, probably in aprt due to a number of guys from the US being there keeping it running the same way.

Two things are of note here. Firstly, the drinks machine is incredible. Aside from there being 17 different options on the main page, half of them then had another page of flavours and types.

Fanta and Diet Fanta plus their Still variants each had 7 options, the Cokes also had half a dozen types as well, including raspberry which works SO well. Seriously, this stuff needs to be bottled and sold here. Those 8 drinks alone make up nearly 50 options.

The other thing which is also great and exactly what I'd hoped they'd keep is the liberal portions of fries. We ordered two regular and one small fries and this is what we got.

Not bad at all, obviously potato shaped, decent thickness chips overflowing the cup. Whats awesome however is that when they make up portions of fries, instead of having portions sitting around for more customers, they'll give you the extras so they don't go to waste and just chuck them in the bag. Good for you (more food for your money) and good for them (happy customers, and less wastage). So in out bag, this is what we had in addition to the cups.

Obviously they go through a lot of potatoes, there were plenty of 25kg bags proudly labelled with their origin in Yorkshire. The name of the farm was on the walls too, but I've forgotten which one it was (sorry whoever's farm that was).

Finally, as a fringe benefit, the extra fries we took home reheated better than just about any I've had from a fast food or restaurant in the past. Not floury or soggy, they were just really good fries, even after a second heating.

All in all, it's not the cheapest burger around, McDonalds and Burger King have them beaten on that, but the burger is MUCH better than anything they do. I mean, I love a Big Tasty or an XL BDC, but this is just better on every level. Whats more is it actually looks like you expect a burger to, not a crushed mess in a box, more an explosion of stuff loosely held by a bun.

Yes i'm enthusiastic about this, and no i'm not ashamed. I expected to wait a lot longer than 11 months for another one of these burgers and to have to travel a lot further than 10 miles. It might be the death of me, but it'll be a hell of a way to go.

TL;DR, GO HAVE A BURGER AT FIVE GUYS.

The Big Desk Move - Pt 7: Putting Your Feet Up

One of the final pieces the desk requires is something it rest my feet on. Previously, I used an old box I made for storing drives, but after a lot of use, it's pretty much dead.

The new one will sit over the top of the sub, ideally this means it wont get quite as beaten up as the previous one did (before i used the box).

Fortunately theres a good deal of spare plywood from modifying the desk. A few cuts later the top is ready

I was pretty sure i took a picture of the legs before they went on, but apparently not. I'm sure you can probably picture three pieces of wood in a pile, not too dissimilar from the one above.

Either way, here it is screwed together, next to an empty crate of Warsteiner.

It fits! The sub sit nicely underneath and I can prop my feet up and not tip the sub over when I move. Success!

There's another one which needs to be made for Sue, but that needs storage for things. it'll probably take some time and planning rather than a rather simple thrown together affair like this.

This is actually getting really near to the end of this project with smaller and smaller things being done. I'll probably save a few up for later and post them in a larger multi-point post. For now, just one more to go.