Category Archives: personal

Ukrainian Easter Eggs

Like many people, growing up, my family used to decorate Easter eggs, Only our eggs tended to be decorated like Ukrainian Easter eggs, or pysanky. My mom learned how to do this from a friend of hers, that truly an artist at it. Every year, we’d break out the beeswax candle, heat our styluses and attempt to draw deer or weave patterns, dots, or crosses on the eggs. Some years, we’d even bring out a hypodermic needle and a syringe and extract the yolks so we could keep the eggs for years.

I decided that I wanted to decorate eggs this year, but all we had was the crayon and dye that’s in a Paas kit, and the new dye containing cotton swabs. (Using the swabs are pretty fun.)

I pretty much resigned myself to not decorating eggs with candle wax for many many years, since I had no idea where to buy the stuff you need. Then for some unknown reason I checked out Make’s Top 10 Easter Themed Posts. In the list was a Ukrainian easter eggs. Following a couple of more links, I found out that that The Caning Shop in Berkeley sells everything. Hooray! Surprisingly, the book about how to make the designs my mom has had all my life is still in print.

imlibsetroot

Way back in 2004 when I was still using a multiheaded Linux box as my primary machine, I wrote a command line utility to change the background picture of my desktop. I gave it the catchy name imlibsetroot in the vein of other similar utilities, such as xsetroot and Esetroot. The main difference between my utility and these others was that mine allowed you to set different pictures on each monitor.

I posted it on my .edu account and must have made an announcement on Freshmeat, and figured no one else would ever use it. I mostly forgot about it. The program was pretty much complete, so it just sat there in “maintenance mode.” I used it regularly for a couple of years, added a single trivial enhancement/fix, and soon after that, I stopped using it when I switched to a mac.

I’ve thought about it from time to time. Mostly whenever I’m forced to deal with Apple’s horrible desktop background preference pane. Then today, while engaging in a vanity google, I found this.

Not only was there another user of imlibsetroot, but apparently he was a long time user, and fixed an actual bug, and then started hosting his fixed version himself.

Wow.

What else could I do? I downloaded his version, patched my version and then emailed him a new copy.

Just in case there’s someone else out there using it and will stumble across this, I’m posting it here, along with original imlibsetroot webpage, but with a link to the newest version.

Enjoy imlibsetroot 1.2!

Update: Wed Mar 31 17:27:02 PDT 2010
I got off my ass and wrote a wrapper script for MacOSX. (I don’t think multihead is supported on MacOSX.) imlibsetroot rides again!

imlibsetroot

A Xinerama Aware Background Changer

imlibsetroot is pretty much Esetroot, but much more feature rich. This program was originally designed to set backgrounds on individual monitors in a multihead setup. Then composition was added so that it could be used with webcollage, but webcollage has its own program that does pretty much the same thing, so that was pretty much a waste of effort. Alas, I only checked how webcollage actually worked after composition was added.

Anyway, this is what I use to set my background in sawfish.

imlibsetroot requires Imlib2.

Enjoy!

Synthetic Plants

I’ve been thinking more about solar plants recently. I like how these projects combine both form and function. I’ve been thinking about what I’d like in one of these, and how one would be made. First, the power being collected by the solar cells needs to go somewhere. It could just feed back into the device, which is exactly what happens with plants, but part of me likes the idea of having the sculpture(?) have a practical use as well. If I want practicality, then USB ports for charging an iPod or a phone that I don’t have would be nice. At least one port, but four would be more than plenty. I’m leaning towards the solar cells charging some li-ion or nicad battery coupled with something like a Minty Boost.

The second feature I’ve been hammering the previous electronic plants I’ve looked at is the movement, specifically heliotropism (i.e. sun tracking). It’s an interesting feature, and it would increase the power to the photovoltaics. I don’t like the idea of the hearing servos move, so that means nitinol wires, which also have the quality of more closely resembling natural motion by simply expanding and contracting. The next question then becomes, what form would the motion would take?

If rigid photovoltaics are used, then panel could be mounted to a universal joint with the two outside corners independently controlled by nitinol. The other idea is to use flexible photovoltaics and hopefully no hinges and joints.

Another interesting idea is to think about deployable structures, which would seem to imply the use of flexible photovoltaics. It’s not exactly the heliotropism I was thinking of, but it would be cool if the “leaves” opened up in the day, tracked the light, and then closed at night.

Doing all of this nitinol might be kind of difficult. Heating nitinol causes it to contract in the 3 – 5 % range, doesn’t seem like much. This also means that for a deployable structure, it needs to collapse when the wires are extended,

Will I actually build this? Probably not, but it is something I’ve been thinking about. Perhaps it would give me an excuse to visit Noisebridge.

Wall of Boxes

Since previous project, I’ve been thinking about creating a new cabinet. Something lots of little drawers. Sort of like either a Chinese pharmacy cabinet or a secretary cabinet.

The problem with secretary cabinets is that they’re not useful as furniture today. They used to be used as the nexus of all bills and correspondence of the house, but now the laptop has replaced this. I kind of like the look of an open secretary, but it’s completely useless due to the specialized nature of the furniture.

I think what I like about the Chinese pharmacy cabinets is that mystery they project. All the drawers look the same, but no matter what ails you, the pharmacist can open up some seemly random drawer and give you a potion to cure you. As a design per se, the cabinets are just more stylish filing cabinets.

I have no idea what I would do with a drawer cabinet, but I think I want one.

After the jump are some cabinets that I’ve been trying to draw inspiration from.

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Media Cabinet

DSC03429

A couple of years ago, just before I moved to California, I made a cabinet to store my CDs and DVDs. Ironically, I never took it with me.

I grew tired of my CDs and DVDs simply sitting a shelf, and appearing nothing but a big wall of media. I wanted something that could store the CDs behind a door, but not use those individual slots, since they can’t handle double CDs, and keeping CDs in order when new CDs are purchased is just too annoying. This meant I needed shelves, but I didn’t want huge shelves. I solved this problem by creating a series of bins, each of which can hold either 20 standard CD jewel cases, or 8 standard DVD cases. (8 DVD cases are almost exactly the width of a CD case.)

This cabinet has 24 bins, for a total capacity of either 480 CDs or 160 DVDs. The bins are wider than a standard CD jewel case, so that they can store the widest CD case in my collection, Johnny Cash’s Unearthed Box Set. (My other box sets have to sit on top due to their book-like formats.)

Below are the initial plans I made for the cabinet, along with photos of the final project.

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How I Spent $15 on Two Cups of Coffee

Today I had to go to SF to pickup my visa and my custom timbuk2 bag, and so I decided to spend the day, and check out the nation’s only $20,000 coffee maker imported from Japan at Blue Bottle Cafe (66 Mint, near Moscone Center, NOT the kiosk in Hayes Valley).

I went in thinking, “So how much is this going to be? It can’t be more than four bucks. If it’s ten, I’ll laugh and leave. It’s brew for crying out loud!” I went up to the counter and and saw the prices for the siphon bar. $10 for something that I can’t remember (I thought “Libertine,” but that’s not on their website) and $11 for Ethiopian Gololcha . I got the Golocha. (So much for laughing.) Total with tax: $11.94

I got a number and sat at the counter in front of the $20k siphon machine. The machine consists of a metal box with 5 halogen lamps with metal light dampening filters over them to keep people from being blinded by them. A small glass Florence flask is filled about half way with hot water and brought to a boil. Once the boiling starts, an open cylinder with a long tube at the bottom containing a spring loaded paper filter connected a ball chain, and the ground coffee is lowered into the flask. As the chain touches the water, the water begins to rapids boil (I have no idea really why. The chain isn’t heated or anything.) The cylinder seals the top of the flask, and the water boils up through the tube and into the cylinder. The barista stirs the coffee a bit a with a bamboo paddle to ensure good mixing. As the water cools, it flows/dribbles back down the spring and chain into the flask. Once complete, the they serve you the flask (along with the stand used to hold it over the lamp), two clear coffee cups, and a cloth napkin, and two caramels. The the flask holds about four cups, so I guess it’s more like $3 a cup.

So how was the coffee? The first sips, when the coffee was still very hot, you could really taste the oils in the grounds. As the drink cooled, the it developed a fuller taste. It was a very very smooth drink. Not harsh like an espresso, more like a pressed coffee, but there almost no particulates in the cup, unlike a french press. It was good. It was interesting to taste, especially how the flavor changed with the temperature, and it was interesting to watch it brewed. But as I told two women who asked me on the way out how it was, I’m not entirely sure it’s $12 worth of interesting.

Still, I think you should try it, but go with a friend and split the bill. Perhaps bring two friends.

The Blue Bottle, also has a “Kyoto Style Iced Coffee Machine”. (Actually, I guess they have two. No word if they were thrown in with along with the siphon bar.) The machine looks like a really tall titration setup. There’s a large sphere half filled with water and condensation at the top. The water drains down through a metal funnel into another much smaller sphere that then drains to two independent valve controlled drip spouts. Each spout has some sort of gauge on it, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Maybe it was a thermometer, I don’t know. The water then drips down into a 1.5 liter cylinder below. When I asked the barista about the machine, she said it took 8 hours to fill the cylinders. I guess you have to call ahead, because I seriously doubt they serve day old coffee, but placing an order for coffee the day before sounds absurd.

The two women I met at Blue Bottle, suggested I try the other new fancy coffee machine in SF, the $10k, single cup, clover machine at Ritual (1026 Valencia, in The Mission). I drove across town, and gave it a shot. There, I ordered the Nicaraguan La Union for a much more “reasonable” $3 (including tax). It was much more bitter coffee. Harsh, perhaps is too strong, but I’d call it raspy. The clover is supposed to give a smooth cup, but I wouldn’t call it a smooth drink. Maybe the beans was just the wrong choice, I don’t know. For all the coffee I drink, I know pretty much nothing about it. I’m not a coffee snob. As long as the milk and grounds aren’t scorched in my latte, I’m fine. (As seen in this review of my favorite Cali coffee shop, The Perg. Of course, that guy is a pretentious asshole, as illustrated from his decidedly lukewarm “top tier” reviews.)

What I really look for in a coffee shop isn’t the coffee, but rather the atmosphere. Of these two places, Ritual wins. Blue Bottle has a very pretentious feel, which I guess isn’t surprising given that it has a $20k imported coffee maker in it. Blue Bottle is also a small place. A very cleanly decorated place. White walls, light oak bar and tables. It just has a very clean look to it. Ritual is similar, but they have local art on the walls. The current art are cartoons from Paul Madonna, including this one. Still, neither really have quite the vibe I look for in a coffee shop. Ritual is much closer, but really, I want something with crappy furniture, and some indie art on the wall.

The verdicts: Try the $20k siphon bar, to say you’ve tried it. It’s fine cup of joe, but if you have to choose one to hang out at, hang out at Ritual.

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

“Handmade in San Francisco”
“Quality Shit Since 1989”
“Special Limited Edition” (1 of 1)

I needed a new laptop back since my old one developed some tears. (I think it was caused by the D-clip I hooked on to it.) After seeing that Timbuk2 was allowing people to custom order bags, I drove up to the retail store in SF, and made one just for me. A week later, it was ready. It cost $140, just $10 over the normal price.

I think it turned out pretty nice.