@apzpins@mstdn.games
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apzpins

@apzpins@mstdn.games

A pinball addict. I tend to enjoy working on pins as much as playing them! Owner of Hopeakuula Arcade, apzpins on Twitch and YouTube. Also: cats! 🇫🇮

This account is all about casual and tournament playing, streaming, restoring, repairing and owning pinball. Other casual nostalgia and retro stuff might also sneak in. Feel free to ask me stuff.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ramin_hal9001, to threads
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is / using the old 4-E strategy strategy to destroy Mastodon:

  1. Embrace: what they are doing now, launch a competing but compatible service with that of Mastodon. The vast majority of users, most of whom don't care about the privacy and intimacy of the Mastodon network will go with the brand with the most name recognition.
  2. Extend: attract users to their centralized network with features like search, which they have the resources to do but the rest of the Mastodon network does not. But also include features for tracking and advertising, sell this as a good thing, "a better place to grow your perasonal brand, your business."
  3. Extinguish: after attracting a critical mass of users large enough to decimate the user base of the competing Mastodon network, queitly remove compatibility with the Mastodon network, this will effect only 10% of Mastodon users because the other 90% will be on Threads. "Who cares if we lose contact with that tiny minority of old Mastodon users, they should have just joined Threads by now anyways, they still can. It has search, and more people voted for it with their patronage it, and you don't have to think about what instance to join, its easier!"
  4. Enshittification: without any real competition to keep people from leaving for an alternative, start exploiting users for more and more content for ad revenue, exploit advertisers with ever-increasing costs of ad revenue.

They are scared to death about losing control over the Internet that they had gained over the past 15 years or so, and they are fighting to take that control back for themselves. We built this, but now a corporation like Meta/Facebook feels they have the right to exploit it for all its riches until it is destroyed.

Don't let it happen. is the only way to protect our home-grown community from corporate take-over.

apzpins,
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@ramin_hal9001 So many younger people out there who didn't experience how the web went from universally accessible into IE-extension rotted hellhole back in the days. There were massive campaigns, with anti-IE messages with banners and buttons, to the extreme of nagging to IE users.

Ironically the hero that ended that is now the villain.

apzpins, to random
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At times I feel like understanding is a lost art. A running joke for loose coil wires has been "it should be wireless so this won't happen". As a gag I cut of the wire lugs from a dead coil and printed a custom Bluetooth wrapper for it. I posted that on social media.

The amount of "it can't work", "scam!" and calling me incompetent and/or stupid was just unbelievable. Some took time to explain why this can't possibly work. All this after all the PCB repair work I've posted.

apzpins, to InitialD
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Bram Stoker's Dracula's "magical" levitating ball never gets old for me! Over 30 since this game's release, it still blows new players' minds.

Video demonstrating Dracula pinball machine "levitating" a ball magnetically across the playfield.

apzpins, to InitialD
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Twilight Zone, Bally 1993

This insanely complex game for its time still holds the ipdb.org's highest rating. It features a magnetic miniplayfield, working gumball machine, mechanical clock for mode timing and a lot of magnetic trickery. Oh, and there's one ceramic ball too!

Playfield of the Twilight Zone pinball machine. 3 bumpers at mid left, a miniplayfield above them, a gumball machine in back left and a mechanical clock on the back right.
Playfield closeup of the mini playfield. It it has a hole on the top and bottom, with two magnets acting as flippers.
Playfield closeup of the mechanical clock.

apzpins, to random
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Hello people, here's my
I go by the name APz almost everywhere, this is my pinball/gaming account.

I'm an IT guy by day, but I moonlight as a hobbyist arcade owner.

I restore pinball machines to their former glory and try to keep them that way. What I have, I let people play once a week for a token fee to support the hobby.

I'm a long time tournament player and I have visited a lot of countries chasing this hobby. I also stream at random, with the same nick on Twitch/Youtube.

apzpins, to Cats
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And since it's , here's our bigger dumbass Wäinö. Hand raised from kitten, he's extremely human friendly and insists on being held and cuddled. He soon turns 14. He has the most unique voice I've heard, a very loud, raspy meow.

A grey and white cat sleeping curled up in a oval shaped white cat bed.
A grey and white cat's face closeup, the cat is just about to fall asleep.

apzpins, to Cats
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I'd like to go to sleep already, but this little dumbass is purring like crazy on my lap.

apzpins, to bbs
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(1/7) Since it's apparently "baud day" in a wonderfully American fashion in dates (3/12/24), let me tell you a bit of something I did in the 90s.

i saw my dad use a modem for the first time in the late 80s and I was extremely intrigued by the concept of just "calling" onto another computer. It wasn't until 91 or 92, when I got my first own modem and started foraging for information in the BBS world.

It was however something that literally changed my life.

apzpins,
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(5/7) FinBox got a 2nd line at some point and as Internet connections appeared, it also got multiple telnet "lines" aswell. It was a pretty well equipped BBS: a lot of file storage, local and echo-mail discussion areas, networked games, free e-mail for users and so forth.

In its heyday I was among the big ones in Finland. As you can probably guess, people slowly migrated to Internet for things they'd call a BBS for and eventually I had to downscale until I had only one line left.

Two mini tower PC computers stacked on top of each other, with two 14" computer screens on top of the table, two modems under the monitors. The PCs are running DOS, with PCBoard BBS system's call waiting/SysOp quick actions screen shown on both screens. There's one desktop PC partially seen on the left.
A screenshot of a BBS system. There's a huge ANSI-color/ASCII-graphics text saying "LOGIN" on top, with options for various "login experiences" below, ranging from normal to quick.
A full tower PC with a QIC tape drive, ZIP drive and two CD drives, an UPS next to it. On a small shelf there's two screens, one showing Windows NT 4 login screen and another next to it showing OS/2's lock screen, but the computer running it isn't visible. Below the displays there's an inkjet and a laser tiny laser printer.

apzpins, to Cats
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Hi there!

apzpins, to random
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A pro tip from the 70s, found inside a pin. If you turn the machine off, it won't work.

apzpins, to random
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One more ! Big Guns' multiball start is so damn satisfying to watch!

Playfield closeup of Big Guns pinball machine. Two catapults shoot balls across the upper playfield onto a wire ramp in slow motion. The action is seen from player's perspective and in reverse point of view.

apzpins, to random
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RIK, the happy new owner of his first EM game, playing his first game after we debugged why it didn't reset. Just listen to those EM chimes!

A man playing Top Score electromechanical pinball machine. Video shows closeups of various points of interest, such as the score reels, bonus unit and the playfield.

apzpins, to tech
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What appears to be an impossible trick is one of the coolest practical effects in pinball. A huge magnet is driven along a reversible screw. It's powerful enough to move the ball through the playfield.

Under the playfield video of Dracula pinball machine. There is a huge reversible screw and a carriage with a huge magnet travels along it across the playfield.

apzpins, to Cats
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When the scritches hit just right!

A cow pattern cat receiving scritches and showing a very content expression

apzpins, to Cats
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The old geezer yawning.

apzpins, to random
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Well, looks like after stabbing it for a day, Rob Zombie (somewhat) lives again.

Video moves around the cabinet and playfield of the Rob Zombie pinball machine.

rohad, to retrogaming

Speaking of , I played a little bit of both titles from 1989 tonight on in

There were two at the time; one based on the game (left) and the other on the (right).

Both lots of fun and equally hard. I couldn't get very far! 😂

pixel graphics of a side scrolling video game. Leonardo is in the sewer.

apzpins,
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@rohad I still have PTSD about the underwater level in the NES game.

apzpins, to random
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Can you think of more epic error message than this? And yeah, here's the 13!

Picture of me, holding 13 pinballs in my hands, with couple of pinball machines behind me.

apzpins, to Cats
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Digging through old Youtube videos, I found this one of my first cat, Bastet. She grew up with pinball machines around her and never missed a chance to investigate an open machine or removed playfield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvTfHLFCpc

apzpins, to InitialD
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I love creative toppers from 80s and 90s. This one from Strange Science (Bally, 1986) was one of the most memorable ones from a darkly lit arcade of a local amusement park.

It's a real neon tube.

Video of Strange Science pinball machibe. It has a topper where a neon tube has been bent into a shape of arcing electricity and it flashes purple.

apzpins, to random
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We have nowdays one electromechanical pinball machine. It's entertaining to watch when someone who's never seen one presses starts and has this "oh no, what's happening?!" reaction to its reset cycle.

apzpins, to InitialD
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Jaws launch party and many smaller tournaments tomorrow. Been a ride doing many larger overhauls for this one.

Four smaller clips of camera panning inside an arcade with over 30 pinball machines. The games are ordered by their era into 4 rows, featuring 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s-20s games. The place has colorful LED lighting, currently showing red-purple-cyan shading.

apzpins, to InitialD
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So what does an full of machines sound like? Put on your headset, hit play and close your eyes!

apzpins, to InitialD
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Twilight Zone's power ball is so damn pretty as new! A worn out one on the right and a standard steel ball on the left.

For those who haven't played it, the game features this special, lighter than normal ceramic ball. It's noticeably faster than a steel ball.

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