Slightly old news… but I managed to track down the World of Warcraft Coke advert video.
It’s genius – combining Chinese pop starlets, an odious boss, some
‘scenes of fantasy violence’ and, of course, a good refreshing can of
coke.

I believe it was made to advertise the launch of World of Warcraft in China, where they are predicted to rake in the cash, as they have elsewhere, as they now have over 3.5 million subscribers globall (each paying about $10 a month, on top of the initial $40-ish purchase price of the game).

It’s
fair enough though, the game is brilliantly addictive… it’s completed
redefining what we think of as ‘mass market’ success.

My next problem was going to be dealing with the annoyances of the 8″ touchscreen I have.

They are:

• doesn’t turn on automatically when power comes on (starts in standby)
• no audio in ‘VGA’ mode – only in ‘TV’ mode

Now I was going to have to resort to some kind of horrible,
warranty-voiding and risky hardware fix. But happily, someone else on
the internet has already worked out what the hardware setup code is on
the remote control, and so I was able to fix these problems all in
software. Hooray!
So now I have sounds coming out of my monitor and it all just comes on when I turn the power on. GENIUS!

Hooray, the second engineer we called – ADTV of Surbiton – turned up
the same day and were very quick, and only charged me 23 pounds!

It was the work of only a few minutes, but it was just as well he
bought his very long screwdrivers with him to get at some of the harder
to reach screws. He even took the old tube away with him, which saves
me a trip to the dump.

So here we are:

Now I’ll transport all the bits home and get started on stuffing them in the case… wahey!!!

I think his (female) secretary thought I was some kind of loony, and
there was a long (and muffled) discussion with the engineer before they
said he’d come and take a look, but apparently he is going to turn up
tomorrow to remove the “screen of potential doom” from the old mac.

It’ll probably take them 5 minutes and they’ll say I’m a big girl for not doing it myself, but I’d rather not risk death, ta.

Anyway – blogging about it has succeeded in giving me the kick up the arse needed to phone and book the engineer. Hoorah!

Now it’s time to cram all that working electronics and software into the old box.

First we have to open the box – not that easy; we need a really long
Torx screwdriver. They’re a bit of a pain to find but after much
effort, the back came off. Sheild your children’s eyes, it’s a naked
mac!

Just one
problem: there’s a 9 inch monitor in the way. Even though it’s tiny,
that’s like a giant capacitor of doom and spikey hair electrocution
death. Eeep!

So we need to dicharge all that built-up electricity; fortunately I know a man who can do this:

It should make an almightly BANG when it dicharges… waiting for it… waiting…

Hey, what gives? No bang??

Ok, now I’m confused. We did what you’re supposed to do and it didn’t
make any noise or short out or anything! Grrr. At this point my
fearless assistant decides that he’s not so fearless any more. This
gives me the fear.

I’m not touching it, so it’s time to call in
the professionals… there may be a slight gap in the next update, as
I’ve caught up with the current progress! Still trying to find / get
around to sorting out someone to take the big electrocution death bits
out of the mac. Suggestions gratefully received! (apart from “get off
your arse and do it,” I’m aware of that one.)

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A like-minded mac modder has stuck a G4 cube inside an old Mac Classic – good work too!

Cute bits:

• iPod dock in the top
• additional controls on the side
• painted it white
• nice work adding extra metal to the original frame, to hold things in place – I’ll have to do that soon myself (eek)

I’m
tempted to paint my old mac but I don’t want to lose the logo – perhaps
I can use a transfer to put it back on afterwards? Hmm. I do kind of
like it to be dirty and old too!