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Colin Alsheimer – Editor / Author Kineticist and TWIP - Episode 22

JBS Show·podcast_episode·50m 27s·analyzed·Mar 30, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Kineticist founder Colin Alsheimer on building pinball media and community.

Summary

Colin Alsheimer, editor of Kineticist and This Week in Pinball, discusses his background in marketing, writing, and no-code development that led him to launch an independent pinball media operation in 2022. He reflects on his personal pinball collection, restoration projects, and the community challenges he's faced while building his brand as a journalist and content organizer.

Key Claims

  • Colin launched Kineticist in 2022 after completing a no-code development course during the pandemic and seeing opportunities in pinball media space

    high confidence · Direct statement from Colin about founding Kineticist in ~2022 after learning no-code development

  • Will Edding of This Week in Pinball approached Colin to contribute content, then offered him the opportunity to take over TWIP entirely around Expo time

    high confidence · Colin's direct account of how TWIP merger came about

  • The name 'Kineticist' is rooted in the phrase 'kinetic satisfaction,' possibly originating from or popularized by Keith Elwin as a pinball design philosophy

    medium confidence · Colin attributes the concept to Elwin but notes uncertainty ('I can't 100 attribute to him')

  • Colin's wife grew up with a Joker Poker EN machine in her basement, which helped kick off his serious involvement in the pinball hobby

    high confidence · Direct personal anecdote from Colin about acquiring the machine from his wife's family

  • Barrels of Fun kept their Labyrinth project secret for years within the Houston/nearby pinball community

    high confidence · Jamie (Wormhole host) and Colin discussing Barrels' NDA secrecy around Labyrinth development

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't necessarily consider myself a writer right it's not a vocation that that I do it's not something I'm trained for but but I've done writing kind of throughout my career um at various stages it's it's sort of something it's a, it's, it's kind of a tool that I have in my personal toolbox.”

    Colin Alsheimer @ early in interview — Reveals Colin's pragmatic approach to writing as a professional skill rather than innate vocation; frames his career trajectory

  • “Kineticist, I think I came across the word or name while I was combing through like all kinds of name ideas and word ideas and just like doing kind of classic branding exercise stuff. I saw it. It spoke to me. The domain was available. So I just sort of took it and ran with it.”

    Colin Alsheimer @ branding discussion — Explains the origin of the Kineticist brand name and his branding methodology

  • “I get way more satisfaction from building things that people use and engage with and in kind of supporting others to kind of help them reach their goals or put something out in the world that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise done.”

    Colin Alsheimer @ discussing article satisfaction — Articulates Colin's primary motivation: community building and enablement rather than individual article success

  • “I love a completely fabricated interview that we did with Flippy, the pinball expo mascot okay it was just like really just sort of like a a creative writing exercise and where we sort of imagined you know if flippy was was a real person uh and we did an interview with him what would it look like”

    Colin Alsheimer @ discussing Kineticist content — Shows Colin's preference for lighthearted, creative content that still has substance

  • “The whole experience is just sort of the the kind of polar opposite of what i think i'm trying to do uh you know how how i try to treat people personally and kind of the type of energy that I want to put out into the world.”

    Colin Alsheimer @ discussing community drama — References difficult interpersonal conflict within the pinball community (likely the Media Mixer incident); shows impact on his philosophy

  • “It's really for that company. To keep that a secret for years in this community. For years. Yeah. And, you know, they're sitting on the stream next to me.”

Entities

Colin AlsheimerpersonKineticistorganizationThis Week in Pinball (TWIP)publicationWormhole PinballorganizationJamiepersonWill EddingpersonBarrels of Funcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Colin acquired This Week in Pinball editorial control from Will Edding around Expo time; represents consolidation of pinball media platforms

    high · Colin explains Will approached him early on to contribute, then 'around expo, he approached me about kind of taking it over entirely'

  • ?

    community_signal: Unspecified but significant interpersonal conflict/drama in pinball community involving Colin; he references 'bologna and cheese' experience, considered quitting, learned hard lesson about 'road to hell paved with good intentions'

    medium · Jamie: 'I do not want to talk at length about the bologna and cheese that you went through'; Colin: 'The whole experience is just sort of the the kind of polar opposite of what i think i'm trying to do'

  • ?

    event_signal: Kineticist hosts annual Pinball Media Mixer event at Expo; Colin expresses positive sentiment about people making 'really good memories and connections'

    high · Colin: 'I think the media mixer for Expo, I think people had a really good time at that event, made some really good memories and connections with people.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball community (specifically streaming/tournament side) highly collaborative and supportive with technical knowledge-sharing; contrasts with less helpful side of community

    high · Jamie: 'that side of the community... we'll talk about the other side of the community in a second. Yeah. But that side of the community is so helpful'

  • ?

    community_signal: Wormhole operates Wednesday Tech Night providing community repair/maintenance support; volunteers help identify camera settings issues for streaming

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.151

0:00
Hello, you are listening to and are watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents, and today I'm joined by editor and author of The Kineticist and This Week in Pinball, Colin Alshimer. Am I saying that right? Alshimer, right? Alshimer. Yeah, it's very, very close and very used to mispronunciations. Well, my last name is Virtual, and I get Virkle, Virkel, Virkel. As long as you get within the realm of possibility, it's fine. No, it's got to be right. It's got to be right. So welcome to the Wormhole Virtually, Colin. How are you? Thank you. Doing very well. Excited to be here. Wish I could be there in person because I see pictures of your collection all the time, and I'm so jealous of it. I wish it was a lot closer. It is. It's just going to get bigger, too. We'll talk about that later, but it's just, you know, it's a labor of love, this place, and it takes a village. Yeah, no, it's super cool. I've been following your progress for a while. Wow, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I wanted to start it out really by thanking you for the recent mini documentary that Donovan filmed with Clint Warren and Travis Moseman about upgrading an original Magic Girl. So they filmed this. It's their first documentary, so cut them some slack, guys. Okay, the audio's not perfect. But, you know, it was really cool to see Tim's magic girl get upgraded like that. And thanks for putting it on this week. Have you got some time on it? Not since the upgrade. Now, I got to play when we unboxed it when it came from the museum.
1:54
And, you know, there wasn't much to it. But it was the art. You could see that it was beautiful. And this was two years ago or three years ago. When was the Banyan auction? Three years ago, I think. Oh, yeah, at least. I think it was during the pandemic, right? It was, yeah. Yeah. And so that's where Tim got it from that auction. And then once that documentary came out of the Europeans and what they had done with this, we just said, oh, my gosh, how cool would that be? And then two Aggie techs, two Aggies who have this mechanical engineering design idea, they went for it and went from there. Anyway, you can see it on this week in Pinball. Sorry, I don't want to dwell on it. but before we talk about pinball let's you've been writing for quite some time Colin I mean you yeah craft beer blog I mean how did that happen yeah so um it's it's it's funny I I don't necessarily consider myself a writer right it's not a vocation that that I do it's not something I'm trained for but but I've done writing kind of throughout my career um at various stages it's sort of something it's a, it's, it's kind of a tool that I have in my personal toolbox. Right. And I, I, I kind of use it more to accomplish a goal, um, or learn something new or kind of try something new. Um, and, and so the, the craft beer blog, the, the kind of story behind that, um, much earlier in my career, uh, when I was working at a marketing agency, I had started a couple of side projects with my wife at the time that were more like kind of focused experiments so we could learn some new things and explore some common interests that we had at the time. So we started like a happy hour and a nightlife website called Five O'Clock Dallas.

Jamie (Wormhole host) @ discussing Barrels of Fun — Emphasizes the effectiveness of NDAs in the tight-knit pinball community and Barrels' ability to hide Labyrinth development

  • “The road, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

    Jamie @ closing community conflict discussion — Jamie's summary of the lesson learned from Colin's negative community experience

  • “I'm really lucky. We're really lucky at the Wormhole that we have Wednesday's Tech Night. Yeah. And so we got Tech Night on Wednesday. We got a big board of grievances and we're only open three days a month, but we have a lot of the tournaments for three days a month, but we also have a lot of private events.”

    Jamie @ discussing Wormhole operations — Details Wormhole Pinball's operation model and community tech support infrastructure

    • Keith Elwin (Elwyn)
    person
    World Cup Soccergame
    Labyrinthgame
    Joker Poker (EN version)game
    Deadpool Premiumgame
    Star Wars Premiumgame
    Phil Grimaldiperson
    Steve Bowenperson
    John Spatesperson
    Flippygame/mascot
    Ithaca Collegeorganization
    Black Knight (Williams original)game
    Space Shuttlegame
    Central Trackpublication

    high · Jamie: 'We got Tech Night on Wednesday... I don't even know who it is. Thank you so much. God bless you. I love that spirit.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: World Cup Soccer backflip shot mechanics (particularly backhand flip) create balance issues in competitive play; Steve Bowen demonstrated dominance using this technique

    medium · Jamie: 'ball one... Steve Bowden beat Germany on ball one... he could backflip the final draw shot. You can backhand it. Yeah. That becomes too easy'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Barrels of Fun maintained strict NDA confidentiality around Labyrinth development for years within tight Houston pinball community

    high · Jamie and Colin discussing: 'To keep that a secret for years in this community. For years... It's really for that company... It's a small legal agreement sort of keeping you honest'

  • $

    market_signal: Colin's article content strategy emphasizes tutorials and lighthearted, creative writing with substance; sees potential for tutorial-focused content sustainability

    medium · Colin: 'I love all of the tutorials that we do. Like if I thought that we could just be sustained on tutorial articles alone, I could just do that because I think it's awesome'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Wormhole Pinball applied custom LED and LCD modifications to World Cup Soccer machine; brought enhanced machine to Space City Open tournament

    high · Jamie: 'we brought it to the wormhole, and we LED'd it and LCD'd it... we brought it to Space City Open'

    • 3:55
    It was really a way for me to learn how to build a website with a popular CMS that we used in my day job. um and then after that we started a what's a cms uh content management system oh okay like like wordpress or at the at the time this was on uh drupal okay cool sorry sorry software yeah no worries um uh and then uh we started a music blog after that uh kind of as a as a way to experiment with um content marketing and pr uh in some ways that would be kind of challenging to do for client work that we were doing as we were working in both working at agencies at the time.
    4:40
    And, you know, we both really enjoyed exploring bars and restaurants and going to shows. So the kind of accomplished multiple goals and the craft beer gig at the time, it sort of was an outgrowth of those two projects where I had met and become friends with journalists in Dallas who had started his own publication called Central Track.
    5:07
    And I was really into the kind of craft beer and home brewing scene at the time. So he had pitched me on doing a kind of weekly series for them where I would go in and review a local craft beer release every week.
    5:25
    And so I did that for a couple of years, sort of set the format and structure for some other writers. and I kind of pulled a lot from that experience I'm using today.
    5:36
    Wow, that's really cool. I should have had John Spates, one of the other wormholers, on with you because he really got in the craft beer space. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a crazy scene. I was covering it in Dallas when it was really kind of re-emerging in the early 2010s, I guess. and so some, like I don't know if you're familiar with like Petticolis, D. Bellum Brewing Company, places like that were sort of my beat at the time if you will. Okay, no, I'm not familiar with it. I barely drink. I drink Diet Coke, right? I drink bourbon.
    6:20
    But John was really into it and what's interesting with John now is, just to say quite quickly, off target, sorry, is that John is now an operator. Okay. And he started operating a few months ago, and it's because of his craft brewing contacts, because he was so into it, that he's going to these breweries, and he's got two or three breweries now where he's got pins there. Yeah, yeah. It's such a good combination, right? It makes a ton of sense. A ton of sense. It's a ton of sense.
    7:01
    Sorry, sidebar. That's what I do when my interview is calling. You'll get used to it. I go all over the place. I can't help it. Do you go to school for writing and communications? Technically communications, yeah. So I actually started as a film and photography major for my first couple of years, And then I transitioned into sort of a blended marketing degree when I realized that I wanted to actually have a chance at making money after school. So like writing and communications, it was a big part of both of those programs, whether that be kind of script writing for the film side of things or just doing like spinning up press releases or blog posts or whatever for the marketing side. And you were in college radio? Yeah, I did. So I went to Ithaca College and they have one of the top college radio stations in the country. So as part of the communication school, it was just something that you could try out and do and sort of volunteer. Right. For the college radio station. So I did that for the first part of my freshman year or so. And, you know, I think that's that's when I realized I preferred written communication to verbal.
    8:19
    that's where I miss my boat though. Yeah. You know, when you go back, cause I went to school for communications and they, they canceled the degree, my freshman, my freshman year.
    8:30
    And so I was like, yeah, but you know, I, then I fell in love with my fraternity and all that crap. So I just went to business, but you know, you go through it, it's fine. But I miss my calling. I think, I think I could have been pretty good on the radio. Yeah. No, you've got to get, you've got a good voice for it you've got a good uh rapport with people so that wasn't efficient for gobbledygook sorry but uh that's just what i wanted to do and uh this is kind of like scratching my itch right you know so when did you make the decision to okay craft beer i want to write about my new passion which is pinball yeah um so i sort of uh was poking around the edges of the pinball hobby and sort of what I could do with it, what I could contribute to it. Pretty much from the first day, I really took a deep dive into the hobby around 2017 or so. I started off really just by like, you know, learning as much as I could, playing as much as I could, kind of learning the ins and outs of the scene, kind of doing some volunteering work with a few local tournament series. and then during the pandemic I had gone through like a like a no code development course because I wanted to learn how to how to build digital things right sort of like the websites that I had done previously but I can't like write code I didn't want to go through a full coding program so I went through this I'm a recruiter so what code was it no code oh okay that's been it's all it's all like visual programming basically so it's like drag and drop interfaces, things like that. It's a little more sophisticated now than it used to be. And I've used Pinball, right? My passion for Pinball sort of is the inspiration for all my course projects. And then so I launched the first version of the site in about 2022.
    10:29
    And, you know, I had a lot of reasons for doing it, but really, I would say I wanted to kind of make a run at kind of building something of my own after, you know, doing a lot of work for other people, for agencies and startups for the last 15 years. You know, I had the passion for pinball.
    10:49
    I kind of saw some things in the space that I thought were opportunities or kind of worth exploring. So I remember thinking like, hey, don't like overthink the idea, right? Just sort of like do some of these things that you've done before building a website writing content doing marketing uh and and just kind of see where it goes um so i i built then just kind of a basic wordpress site um and just started writing and building um kind of to get established habits sort of build some momentum get some practice um and then it kind of started getting some traction and taking off from there that's awesome uh where does the name kinetesis come from uh yeah so it's it's kind of um so it's rooted in the in the phrase kinetic satisfaction right i'm sure you've heard people talk about that when they talk about playing games i pretty like i can't 100 attribute to him but i think it was an elwyn quote or at least that's that's where i first heard it where he kind of talked about that as is almost like a design philosophy of his um but but for me it kind of perfectly describes the the appeal of pinball right where like you you've seen the hobby some people they're they're rules people they like digging into the code and and sort of how the game plays uh some people are competitive or social or collectors um i i think that i mostly gravitate towards kind of the feeling of playing the game, right? Especially when you're able to play it well and kind of hit that almost flow state, right? And so when I was thinking of some sort of brand concept that we could build around I wanted it to sort of encompass that feeling of like playing pinball or kind of engaging with the pinball community in a positive way going out and exploring the world through pinball it's sort of like constant motion activity kind of thing and still be kind of open-ended enough to where if we wanted to say write about arcade games or you know something else related to pinball it would still kind of work in a way where if we had picked like a name like pinball central right it would be it'll be harder harder to do that. And so Kineticist, I think I came across the word or name while I was combing through like all kinds of name ideas and word ideas and just like doing kind of classic branding exercise stuff. I saw it. It spoke to me. The domain was available. So I just sort of took it and ran with it. there you go I I like it it's a great name I I mess it up my New York accent comes in sometimes it's like it's um it's hard to pronounce right it's not it doesn't like roll roll off the tongue um once you get used to it it's it's easier um so it's not like uh you know if I could do a do-over I would like to find something that um is easier for people to say but but it works for now no it works. It's got branding. It's got its brand now. It's distinct. It is.
    14:20
    You know, we haven't really talked about how we got our name Wormhole, but we quarantined here after quarantine, after like kind of loose in Texas was a little different, right? Yeah. Than most of the country. But there were just eight of us here, six to eight of us. And we get here at like three o'clock and I own a staffing current firm so there was no staffing going on in 2020 right yeah right so without ppp funds you know we would have lost our business yeah colin and so i was here you know because i only needed to put in maybe an hour a day i mean it's just to touch base with people so right we came here and i'd get here maybe at three in the afternoon and then at 12 or one in the morning it's time to go home. And I'm like this. And Tim was like, this place is a wormhole. And that was, that was it. That's like all it takes. And it doesn't make sense. Wormhole and pinball. Right. But it's just, it's just because.
    15:22
    Yeah, but it's, it almost, it almost doesn't have to make sense as long as you have a good story. Yeah. Right. And it sounds like you do. So I think so. I think it's a pretty cool story. So how did this week in pinball happen merger happen I mean how did that come about. Yeah, you know it's, it's one of those things I certainly was not planning for it. Last year, right. So it's it's it's kind of right place right time. So Will Edding had reached out to me pretty early on in the Kinetis' project about just sort of contributing to TWIP and sort of writing some components of the weekly updates for him, which I was really, you know, happy to do as a, as kind of a longtime reader of, of TWIP and, you know, just for the getting some, some additional practice reps and obviously the exposure for kinetesis help as well. And I think we kept that going for, you know, five to six months. And then around expo, he approached me about kind of taking it over entirely. I think he had some other things that, that he wanted to move on to. and I kind of jumped at that opportunity. I enjoyed writing the weekly updates previously, and I thought it would make just kind of a good additive component to some of the stuff we were already doing with Kineticist.
    16:52
    Yeah, that makes sense, right? It makes sense. That merger makes sense, right? So I always go back, and I was going to ask you this question about any articles that still resonate with you because there's still podcasts that and and streams that i do that still resonate with me so i mean yeah like do you say to yourself yeah that was a good that was a good article i just wrote or or yeah you know sometimes i do i was gonna actually sort of ask that back like um what what resonates for you about some of your prior work um so definitely the streams they're different because our Monday game streams where we're just fooling around I can say whatever the hell I want because it's just us and it's I'm letting people into a view of our clubhouse on those streams on tournament games days that are at the wormhole I can still be a little goofy and have a little fun so those really resonate with me but I do love those major tournaments man there's something about like the the larger audience or like the the sort of production uh required for the production is a real pain in my ass colin yeah but if you ever come here i'll show you just our little setup and all these these things it's just it's just amazing the amount of money we spent on it yeah but okay here's the deal i'm going to let you under behind the wizard boss behind the curtain i have anxiety and if anything goes wrong on a stream it blows my mind it drives me bananas yeah so i do everything i can to make sure that obs doesn't crash because it's going to crash by the way it just does uh when you watch smart streams so i prepare for everything yeah because i can't handle it if something goes wrong So we get it. You get it. Oh, yeah. No, no. Yeah. You I yeah, I am big about trying to reduce to reduce unforced errors. Yeah, I hate that. That drives me absolutely insane. Like they're they're going to happen and it's OK as long as you can learn from them. But I want to put it myself and the people that I work with in a position to succeed and look good. and part of that is sort of minimizing upfront mistakes right yeah i i kind of feel like i'm the brand a little bit of a brand ambassador of the wormhole and when i look to our first streams they weren't good enough for how great the place was yeah so i had to up it i had to up the game so i i i really leaned on looking at ie pinball jdo and all these in Fox Cities and said, okay, guys, what are you doing? And they were so helpful. Yeah. You know, because that side of the community, we'll talk about the other side of the community in a second. Yeah. But that side of the community is so helpful. Yeah. You know, the streamers. In all the forums with all the people discussing, Like in Tilt Forums, I think there's like how to stream threads and everyone's like, No, Colin, I went to that and I said, I'm having issues with my ZV-1s. Yeah. I don't even know who did it, but he said, give me an hour. And he went and he took pictures of every screenshot of every camera. Oh, wow. Right. And he said, these are the settings for your play field. These are the settings for your score. These are the settings for your player. Yeah. On the ZV-1s. I've had no issues since. I don't even know who it is. Thank you so much. God bless you. I love that spirit. I know we'll kind of get into that later, but it's awesome.
    21:04
    So anyway, let's talk about the articles that you wrote. So, like, it's for me with the articles, like, of course, I'm happy when, you know, I put out some work that I'm proud of that I think is interesting that reached an audience. But like overall with the project, I think I get like way more satisfaction from building things that people use and engage with and in kind of supporting others to kind of help them reach their goals or put something out in the world that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise done. um right so it's like i don't really step back a lot and and look at like an individual article and say like oh man that man that was a banger that was great right um uh but like when i step back and look at kinetesis as a whole and sort of the entirety of the output that we've done so far and sort of what we're building yeah i get that that feeling in spades right yeah um but like if I had to answer that question with something solid, like I love all of the tutorials that we do. Like if I thought that we could just be sustained on tutorial articles alone, I could just do that because I think it's awesome, but we need more stuff.
    22:36
    I love a completely fabricated interview that we did with Flippy, the pinball expo mascot okay it was just like really just sort of like a a creative writing exercise and where we sort of imagined you know if flippy was was a real person uh and we did an interview with him what would it look like um that's funny we did like a a scene by scene breakdown of the the rajas or rahas arcade scene from the last of us tv show adaptation which was a lot of fun. I love the article that we did with Darkroom Pinball about how to take better pinball photos and we got a crazy good response. It was a lot of fun putting together a more classic listicle style post of 10 pinball machines even weirder than you.
    23:34
    I need to read that again. It was fun. I like stuff that is kind of lighthearted and goofy, but, you know, still has some substance to it. I was going to ask you if there's any articles that you risked that you could revisit. Yeah, I mean, like, sort of all of them, right, in some way, because, like, I'm always sort of learning and trying to get better, so the work that I'm doing today is hopefully a lot better from the work I was doing two or three years ago, right? But at a certain point, it's more important to just sort of get work out the door and publish and in the wild than it is to sit and make sure it's 100 perfect okay right um so i would i would also say um uh like i think a lot of creatives too um i i struggle um going back and and revisiting some of my creative work once it's out there because inside I'm always like, oh man, that was just like total garbage. Yeah. Still cringe. Let's just move on and try something new. So it's hard. I'll tell you a funny story. I'm not going to tell you the podcast, but I did a podcast in the beginning and I didn't like it. Yeah. And we're only, this is 22, I think. And I call up John spades. And John notes that I'm, you know, I'm bananas And I like source podcast is terrible I was terrible I was just terrible I just going to scrape it And he like you not going to scrape You not going to scrap it You not going to scrap it You spent an hour with on talking to this person Yeah. And so I had to give it like the Abe Lincoln. You know, the Abe Lincoln story. Like when Abe, this is Abe Lincoln would write a letter to a general if he was pissed off, but he would put it in his drawer. Yeah. And when he died, they found. And if he woke up the next day and he still felt that way, he'd mail it.
    25:42
    So the next day he would, when he died, they found all these letters that he never sent in his drawer to generals or to, you know, secretaries or to whoever that he was pissed off at at the time. And so I just went back and I rewatched it a day later. And I was like, okay, you're being too hard on yourself. Yeah, it's the old school drafts folder, right? Yeah, it is. You don't have to publish it all. But, like, yeah, I mean, people have some grace with this stuff, right? So I think a lot of people see the intention and the effort, right? Even the executions and always 100% and are appreciative of that. So, yeah, sometimes it's better just to put it out there and try to build on it. And constructive criticism is good. Yeah. I love constructive criticism.
    26:42
    You'll see if you watch us, I'll go on almost everything. I say, how's my sound? Yeah. And I'll keep asking, how's it sound? How's it sound? How's the game? Yeah.
    26:53
    Because I want to know. Yeah. Because I want to make it good for them. I'm putting on a show for them. All I am is the keeper of the show. The producer, it's the players.
    27:06
    I'm a big believer in feedback and constructive feedback. In the past, I have said that I think I thrive on it, but it has to be delivered in the right way. Yeah, so let's talk about that. I think that's a good segue. That's a good segue.
    27:26
    I do not want to talk at length about the bologna and cheese that you went through. okay because you went well I've got a grandson now so I'm trying not to swear around the kid but did you ever just say f this I just wanted to spread pinball I don't need this crap uh yeah I think I definitely went through went through that phase um the whole I would say that whole experience without you know diving into the into the details yeah like um it did a number on me right uh and and i thought you know pretty long and hard about whether the sort of effort um was worth it and if it i should really be kind of moving on to other things right um i would say it's really uh the whole the whole experience is just sort of the the kind of polar opposite of what i think i'm trying to do uh you know how how i try to treat people personally and kind of the type of energy that I want to put out into the world.
    28:30
    Look, you know, I have this joke I was going to say to you, but I'm going to do it anyway. I was going to say, will you ever organize a happy hour or a party or a mixer ever again? Yeah, I think I would. Not right now. Right. It's not a priority right now. I think that I do enjoy a lot actually organizing things and bringing people together. I think that the media mixer for Expo, I think people had a really good time at that event, made some really good memories and connections with people.
    29:08
    But, you know, it just takes one kind of jerk to kind of ruin it all for everyone. So it will happen again at some point, just probably not in time. You know, obviously I'm joking, right? Yeah. Okay. But, you know, let's end that part of the conversation with this, okay? The road, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 100%. Learned that the hard way.
    29:33
    Can we switch to pinball? Yes. You know, you have bought, repaired, and sold a ton of different pins. Can you name a few projects that you might have worked on? Yeah. I mean, a ton is probably an overstatement compared to some people in the hobby, right? Oh, sure. Yeah. I would say, honestly, the weakest part of my pinball game is my kind of repair and restoration skills. That's just not really kind of how it works. But, like, I've bought a bunch of kind of light projects over the years just to practice kind of the basic stuff, like, you know, rebuilding flippers or fixing and cleaning basic necks. the first couple games I bought Williams Black Knight the original and the Space Shuttle I did a bunch of work on there were definitely players, conditions, machines I tried really really hard to restore Night Moves, the cocktail table but eventually had to give up because the electronics were just sort of wonky and beyond what I could do unfortunately and I've cycled through stuff like a Xenon. But I'd say I'm definitely at the point where I much prefer hiring more skilled people from our local pinball community to do this sort of big repairs on my games than trying to do it myself.
    31:03
    Well, yeah. We have to know our limitations, Colin. We can't. Well, it's like if I try to do it all myself, I have to go learn it, right? Do it. And then, you know, I'll never have the game to play, right? Because I just don't have that kind of time. Yeah. I'm really lucky. We're really lucky at the Wormhole that we have Wednesday's Tech Night. Yeah. And so we got Tech Night on Wednesday. We got a big board of grievances. and we're only open three days a month, but we have a lot of the tournaments for three days a month, but we also have a lot of private events. So they just get banged on. Yep. But we got great tech. So we're really, really, really lucky. Have you sold any machines that you want back in your room? You want back in your collection? All of them. No, right? No, I think once I move on from a game, I'm pretty ready to move on from it. Right. I don't have that. It's had its place, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like I've, I've, I've played it enough. I've like figured out, I've spent time with it and I'm just sort of like ready for something new. But like, I, I guess if I had to choose one, it'd probably be the Batman 66. That's just a really fun game. But like, yeah, I've like, if I didn't have to worry about, you know, a small New England basement and money, right? I wouldn't sell or get rid of anything and keep it all. What's in your current collection right now? So I have a Star Wars premium that is on trade.
    32:44
    Normally it would be a Deadpool premium that I have there. World Cup Soccer, Joker Poker, the EN version, which is actually the machine that kind of kicked it all off for me because my wife actually grew up with that machine in her basement. And we kind of took it on a few years ago when her dad decided he didn't want to, like, keep it around anymore.
    33:12
    Cool. I have – oh, and you said – didn't I hear you have a labyrinth? I have a labyrinth, yep, which is out on location right now. Okay.
    33:21
    So labyrinth is special to us here in Houston. Oh, yeah. Since Barrels is here. And, you know, those guys did it behind our backs. And we had no idea. I mean, some of my very closest friends in this community. And in life. It's really for that company.
    33:42
    To keep that a secret for years in this community. For years. Yeah. And, you know, they're sitting on the stream next to me. I interviewed Phil Grimaldi. He's doing rules for them. Right. And, you know, it's amazing what NDAs will do. I know, right? You have a small legal agreement sort of keeping you honest. And, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, but World Cup soccer, that was my first pen. Oh, nice. Okay. That's awesome. It's my only pen. Okay.
    34:14
    It's a great game. Yeah, I'm a huge soccer nut. I played all through up to college. I coached Tim's kids. Oh, nice. Okay. That's one of the ways we met.
    34:29
    We met before that, but I had to have Ethan on my team, and I coached the kids, and I was always Coach Jamie. And so I just love that game. And mine was really a private collector had it. Yeah, okay. It was in really good shape. And then we brought it to the wormhole, and we LED'd it and LCD'd it. Nice. we brought it to Space City Open and real quick, Steve Bowden beat Germany on ball one. Oh, jeez. Of course he would. That's awesome. Dude, ball one. I think he's good at that. I think I've seen him kind of like blow that up consistently in competition. Because this one was really playing, unfortunately for everyone else, too easy for him because he could backflip the final draw shot. You can backhand it. Yeah. That becomes too easy. And that's too easy for him. Sorry. No, that makes sense. I mean, it's a really wonderful game. It's one of the ones that my wife and I took kind of a shine to when we were exploring the hobby early, just because it's got such that sort of magical package to it between the art. It's sort of easy and fun to play. It's got the cool goalie neck. The call-outs are a lot of fun. So it's sort of got that kind of whole package to it.
    36:01
    And I hope to keep it a part of our collection for the foreseeable future because it's a great game to introduce casuals to. It's something that, you know, hopefully my son could play easily. When he gets a little bit older. When all else fails, shoot the goalie. Yeah, right? Just do that. That alone is fun. And, you know, striker will save those shots. Oh, no, striker's to the right. The goalie will save the shots. Yeah, it triggers the call-outs. Yeah, it's just a fantastic game. So when did you start playing and organizing competitive pinball? When did you go into that realm? Yeah, pretty shortly after I started getting into the hobby, right? So we had taken my wife's joker poker, right, into our house, started playing that a bunch. Obviously, I had played pinball before, but not with any regularity. and then I sort of found a local brewery, right, that had a collection of pins that also happened to be a regular spot for our local league, the New England Pinball League. Oh, cool. So I started playing in that, sort of realized that there was a competitive scene at all, which was pretty interesting to me. So I started playing in a bunch of tournaments and just sort of like I do, I kind of asked one of the organizers if he needed help with anything.
    37:43
    And kind of the rest is. That your fault Yeah it like well I can do I can do marketing I can do content I can organize things Do you need help with any of this And I just sort of started doing it more and more Where do you guys play?
    37:57
    So personally, yeah, we play all over. I love traveling to different locations. We have a lot of breweries and whatnot in the area that have kind of small collections. Also play a lot through League. league it's just some private collectors houses in the area so cool i love when i open those up isn't that just so lovely of them to open up their homes oh my god it's crazy people yeah i i uh they are they are saints all of them i know dude we just had a huge one up in north houston yeah tom o'neill shout out to the o'neill family and uh just it's just a beautiful collection thank you for opening your home to us. Yeah, it's just like, that's a big part of what makes our own like regional league work because we don't have in New England, I mean, we're in New York, you understand like space constraints of the area. So it's hard to have these big public locations, right? Yeah. So private collectors kind of fill in that gap vocally for us. And fortunately, they're all super nice people and like sharing their passion for pinball with others and sort of open up their houses to the unwashed masses. Right. I know that is that's it's really that's really awesome. It's really awesome. Do you guys have a weekly league? Yeah. So our main league is the New England Pinball League. We do eight week season, like three times a year. three times yeah yeah uh with the with the giant finals at the end of each season that's that's basically like a you know 200 300 person tournament right um wow yeah uh and then between league seasons a lot of the the local spots will sort of have their their like off off season leagues for their regulars so you can play a league almost so bowen plays up there right bowen karen's I think he is in the league. I think he was a founding member of the league a long time ago.
    40:17
    He's awesome. He's got me hooked watching his Deal or No Deal Island. Okay. Do you know he works on that? I've seen him talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've not watched it yet. It's pretty goofy. Is it? Okay. Yeah, but you can see the mathematician behind the scenes. Yeah. How cool that is. Yeah. No, he's brilliant. He's super brilliant. Yeah. Do you have any big tournaments coming up? No big tournaments. It's kind of tough with I've got a nine-month-old at home now, which limits my time for that kind of stuff. Especially long days, you know. Yeah. To do it right, it's like you've got to block off at least six to eight hours. I feel like, which is hard.
    41:08
    But I'm really jonesing to do one again. I just don't know when it's going to happen. It's super fun, aren't they? Yeah, no, it's great. You hang out. You play pinball all day. There's a competitive aspect to it, which is always fun. Yeah.
    41:23
    It's funny. You can see there's two types of people there, right? Those that want to really try to win and get those wild birds. and those that just want to party and just have fun yeah that's how ours are and i'm like right in the middle trying to get those offers but yeah and i just see where the day takes me if if the day is looking like it's gonna be a more of a party day then we'll we'll go with it yeah no i that's that's a good way to approach it right and just sort of see see how it goes and uh kind of adapt to the situation yeah some of our players like we got this kid jack revenue you know wesley for all these great players, they're going to beat Minana ten times. Yeah, right. Exactly.
    42:05
    So you got to find, you have to find some other way, I think. Right. I mean, I'm not going to beat Bowen Currens on Labyrinth. We have a Labyrinth here. If Bowen comes in, he's going to, you know, come on. Yeah. So before we leave you, anything you'd like to plug? Any cool articles coming up? Yeah. I mean, we're releasing new stuff pretty much every week now. I mean, particularly with This Week in Pinball, it's a weekly newsletter so we have updates every week so check out kineticist.co go to thisweekinpinball.com sign up for the email newsletter always as we discussed happy to take in feedback or ideas you know if you've got something cool that we can help you talk about or sort of bring to life definitely reach out happy to talk about it that's awesome we just had an article written about us on the Houstonia magazine. Yeah. That was awesome. It was a good article. You can check it out on their webpage, Houstonia magazine, I don't know, .com, who the hell knows. You can Google that, guys and gals. But I don't want to rehash the article, but I want to end at this piece. Yes. At the end of the piece, the hoods were quoted as saying, we have one rule at the wormhole. Now, you've heard me say this. If you've if you've heard me say this soon, I'll for a second. OK, but I think it's important to end this interview with this. OK, if that's cool. Our one rule is don't be an asshole.
    43:37
    It really first started with people coming into the wormhole and disrespecting machines, banging, banging on glass. personal collections of Tim and John, and I for sure am not going to tolerate anyone disrespecting or banging glass or shaking their machines, but it really grew into this don't disrespect the space and the community itself. So I'm going to give a quick shout out to the Space City Pinball founders and Phil Grimaldi, who just retired from it, Elizabeth Jone, Mark Gammons, Matt Quance, John Space, and David Pollack. They really set this foundation to a safe pinball place community, and they fought to really keep it that way, Colin. They really did. So, I mean, not every pinball league is butterflies and rainbows, right? It takes work to sort of set the tone and sort of demonstrate what's acceptable and what isn't, right? Yeah. So that you have that sort of safe and welcoming space for everyone. So I think it's great. It's awesome. Yeah. So that's exactly what we're trying to create at the Wormhole, is a safe place for all people to gather and spread our love of pinball. So we do not tolerate bullying. We do not tolerate meanness. I know it sounds very, very kumbaya and very maybe a pinball cult, but we're pretty serious about it. We have the same thing in New England, right? And I think if we didn't have that kind of community, you wouldn't still be sort of growing in such a vibrant place today. So I think it's pretty important.
    45:20
    It's wicked important. It is wicked important, yes. I like your use of words there. That's for you. I wore my Yankee stuff today. I should have decked out my Red Sox stuff. I wasn't trying to tease you. I forgot where you were from. No, it's good. My wife's a Yankees fan, so it's fine. Okay. Good. You know, bringing the family together. What is your son going to be? Hopefully a Red Sox fan. I'll let him choose. You're in Connecticut, right? No, I'm like 40 minutes outside of Boston. Oh, okay. He's probably going to be a Red Sox fan. He's going to be a Red Sox fan. That's okay. That's all right. We don't say 1918 or any of that crap anymore. It's over. I used to love saying 1918, though. Yeah. It was a fun rivalry for a while. I don't think it's there anymore. No, it's not. You know where I'm being in Houston? Yeah. Oh, they hammer me. I'm going to go. Yeah, particularly since the move to the AL, right? Yeah. And, well, they just kick our ass. You know, the Astros just kick. So I wear my Yankee hat here, and they just hammer me. Yeah. They hammer me. Yeah. All right. So, well, like, I'd love to invite you to the Wormhole one day. Yeah, I would love to come by. To the Houston Arcade Expo. Got to think about that one day. Okay. But our Wormhole East Museum is opening in 2026, and that is going to be a 14,000-square-foot building. Wow. With at least 125 pins, some of which that the world no one has seen. Yeah. you've got some like super rare stuff which is yeah I teased you with that a couple of weeks ago I was like hey check out where I am oh man that I just want to like see it in person for the ribbon cutting you will come and there'll be no mixer we'll just come to the ribbon cutting and it'll be totally totally awesome so you know Colin thank you for spreading pinball and growing our hobby. It's all we're trying to do, man. And that's what this podcast is about. It's just I just want to sit down and interview people in our community and talk about why they got into it and what keeps them going. So thank you for coming on this podcast. Please visit kineticus.co, kineticist, Jamie, that's co, and thisweekinpinball.com. And sign up for the email. It's awesome, man. You get it. It's a really cool thing every Friday when that comes out. Yeah, it's free. We try to put some good content in there. You don't try. You're doing it, man. Thank you, Colin, for taking the time to talk with me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It was fun, man. Thanks so much, dude. All right. Thanks, Jamie. Absolutely.
    48:29
    you I wanted to send a real quick also thank you for the enormous support that we have received from this community and everyone that has said yes to doing these interviews and has sat down with me for an hour or so, sometimes less, sometimes more. And just thank you so, so much. It means so much to all of us here at the Whirlpool to walk around TPF and see people wearing our t-shirts that I don't know is touching. And it really, really resonates with us. And thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Thank you for all that you guys do to support us. And I love you. Thank you.