Wow, I didn't realize how old that pic was. That is a hippo, but she has since been moved to my 120, now there is a baby powder in her place. sorry for the confusion.
As for the soft start, well, I'm a Aeronautical Engineering student, and for one of my elcectricity classes we actually had to build a project, and I built the wavemaker. I'll try to get pictures of it, but basically all you're gonna see is the box and a whole bunch of elcectrical componets. But yeah, it works great. Maybe one of these days I'll actually sit down and draw a diagram for it.