Gekko gets his geek on

With his better half away at work these past few Saturdays, Gekko has found himself with a newly rediscovered freedom to explore his inner geek. Here's just some of what he's been up to:

DEVASTATOR

Having clung tenaciously to many of my childhood toys, I recently had the idea that some of these might make pretty decent ornaments.

The pride and joy of my quite large Transformers collection was the complete set of Constructicons -- the six Decepticons that combine to form the gestalt super-villain called Devastator.

Twenty years in cardboard box limbo has left many of the moving parts loose and prone to flopping all over the shop, so some judicious use of modelling cement was called for to keep everything in place. Also, his right elbow joint had been severed, so I decided to carry out some reconstructive surgery using modelling putty, which was touched up with purple paint.

The end result is quite cool:

For those who may care, the Constructicon team is made up of Scrapper (the captain; right leg), Mixmaster (left leg), Scavenger (right arm), Bonecrusher (left arm), Long Haul (torso), and Hook (head/shoulders).

Bonecrusher actually belonged to Big Brother initially, and was once torn in half by an angry young Gekko during some dispute (I've forgotten the details, but I seem to recall that this act had been pre-empted by some scrunching/tearing up of paper). Scavenger was the second acquisition (both of these were while we still lived in St Mary's in Sydney's outer west). The remainder of the set came on Christmas 1986 (by that time, we had moved up to Gosford on the NSW central coast) -- one of those classic childhood Christmases where your eyes just pop out of their sockets when you see the presents arrayed under the tree (I also got Galvatron and Metroplex -- so it was quite a harvest that year).

It's amusing to reflect that Devastator now resides roughly halfway between these two original points of purchase -- having travelled to the other side of the planet and back again in the meantime...

PRACTISE RIG

With the recent revival of my guitar playing, I've taken the trouble to set up my practise environment to be as convenient as possible. Here it is:

You'll recognize the good ol' Ibanez RT650, still going strong. For amplification I'm using a 15 Watt Marshall MG Series together with a Zoom G2 effects pedal.

Notice the curly guitar lead (by Bullet Cables) --- it was a little pricey, but it's so much neater than regular cables and very low noise. You wouldn't think it, but it stretches out to something like 9 metres.

Also, note the customized powerboard: I added a little switch so that with a single touch I can turn the whole setup on/off. This is particularly useful because otherwise the pedal transformer would continue to draw power even when the pedal is switched off.