I didn't have quite enough disposible camera shells to complete the job, so I stalked a few photo labs in town, begging for shells.

On my 9th try, I hit gold. I got a big box of cameras from this Walgreens on Sunrise and Greenback in Sacramento.

After extending the switch with a six-foot wire, I wrapped the circuit boards in foam sheet. This would hopefully reduce the number of shock victims at the parties I visited.

And finally, I hot-glued the plastic parabola onto the flashes.

Flashes.

I mounted the flashes with duct tape and started troubleshooting them.

One problem was that I had shorted the flash charge activation switch on many cameras. I thought this would make charging simpler, but it drained the batteries. I re-soldered those with activation switches.

Running the wires through the PVC pipes was too much trouble. The curves were too sharp, and many had screws through them. It was a lot simpler to zip-tie the cords to the side of the pipes.

Flashes onboard. All the flash switch wires were routed to my shoulders, where the would soon meet up with the rotary switches.

Flash Test!

Encased in some wire loom, the cables were bundled and ran into my ketchup bottle switch box.

Here I met a new problem.

I hadn't kept the color coding consistant. Some of the cameras used a red wire for the charged half of the switch, some used a green wire. I needed all the ground wires to meet in the center of the rotary switch, but I couldn't tell which was which.

I panicked for a moment, dreading having to rip open all of my foam flash bundles, before I realized I could sort it all out with a multimeter.

By the time I got to the second switch, I was having trouble focusing, but this was the part I was most afraid of failing at. The heart of the difficulty.

When it came together, and actually worked, I was ecstatic.

I've got three contests lined up this weekend:

Friday night is "One Scary Nite" at the California Auto Museum, hosted by Flavor Flav. Saturday night is the "Exotic Zone Ball" in Sacramento, hosted by Sasha Grey and Sunday night is "Howl at the Moon" at Thunder Valley Casino.

Wish me luck!