We Can Rebuild It

CHRISTMAS PRESENT: Between their West Seattle-based classes today, we hit a Barnes & Noble at Westwood Village. There, the kids had no trouble finding items to buy with gift cards they received for Christmas (thanks Renee & Jim!). Guess who chose the pink unicorn? It will look cute in her My Little Pony room.

LIKE IT'S 1985: As I've noted on these 'pages,' recently CJ has renewed his interest in his retro gaming consoles in a big way. Unfortunately, a little over a week ago, his Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) just wouldn't work any more. It was glitching, blinking, or just filling the screen with snow.

In reading up on the consoles, we learned the number one trouble typically causing these types of issues is the 72-pin connector inside the units. It's the receiver for the game cartridges, and often the pins get bent and dirty over the years.

So, CJ hopped on eBay and we found a new 72-pin connector for under $10, from a guy in West Virginia. CJ estimated it should arrive yesterday. It didn't. But today, it did! He was a very happy boy!

I told CJ to find a tutorial on YouTube showing how to change the connector. He found a clear, concise video showing just that. First, he watched it by himself, and when Christian got home, they watched it again, together.

Confident they could make the swap, they started dismantling the NES.

It amounted to removing about 15 screws with a Phillips screwdriver, and then lifting out the circuit board/connector combination. 

They cleaned everything up before installing the new 72-pin part, pictured below.

Then they put the screws back in and it was time to test it out. Bingo! The Zelda cartridge CJ inserted fired up just like brand new! Sweet!

He and Annabelle proceeded to play a number of titles, including Super Marion Bros. 3 and Turtles II the Arcade Game.

ROTTEN APPLE: Reason number 326 that I may NEVER be done with the pony mural - Annabelle's exacting standards.

Yesterday, I was summoned into her room so that she could share with me her displeasure over this apple, held by the (zombie no-eyed pony) Applejack.

I was told the stem was wrong, wrong, wrong. Too green and too big. Wow. Keep in mind, to give you a sense of scale and her attention to detail, this is about a half a square inch on a mural project of about 290 square feet.

Of course, the thing is, she is right, and I knew it and already had plans to remedy it.

The good news is, she's SUPER happy with the pony chalets. ...

And today we actually started painting some of the sky!

FROM SCRATCH: In his Scratch programming class today, CJ came up with this cute little thingie ... In the project notes he described it as "Probably one of the most rAnDoM projects I will ever make on Scratch."
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Annabelle recently completed her first ever animation on Scratch.
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In order to do it, she used General Zoi's Pony Creator on Deviant Art to make a pony that she thinks looks like her dad. She created the pony in several different posses and took screen shots. Then, she imported the screen shots into Scratch and connected and looped them so that it would be animated. Pretty cool!