Nirvana, Soundgarden, Special Forces

Then in the midst of all the confusion in his life, he came to the realization that he had to make a change. He knew he didn’t just want to be a guy in his 15th band, the guy talking about his time in Nirvana and Soundgarden 20 years later. He wanted to do something, he said, something impossible. “I was in the cool bands,” he told me in the cabin. “I was psyched to do the most uncool thing you could possibly do.”

Jason Everman, the man that paid the $606.17 to record Bleach, became US Army Special Forces

Henry O. Studley’s Toolchest

I’ve looking at toolboxes recently, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Henry O. Studley’s toolchest. Built in the 1920s, and designed to hang on the wall, it is 40 inches square and 4.5 inches deep when open (39 x 20 x 9 closed). Made of mahogany, rosewood, walnut, ebony, and with ivory and mother of pearl accents, it features fitted slots for each tool, and multiple lifting trays to store even more tools. (See video below for a better idea on how the tools fit inside.)

The part of me that loves secret panels and unfolding compartments, but I can’t help but think that it’s a bit cumbersome. To get to some tools you have to move three panels just to reach them. It’s more “art” than “tool”, but that does not diminish craftsmanship or beauty of the piece.

Let Them Take Uber!

BART Strike Shows Privatization’s Dark Side:

Just compare these two reactions to the BART strike. One is from an executive of a ride-share company called Avego, which allows drivers to open up their cars (for a fee) to strangers looking for a lift:

“All you need to do is book a trip from San Francisco to wherever you’re going home for tonight or every day this week there’s a strike,” Paul Steinberg, director of Americas for Avego, said in an interview on “Bloomberg West.”

And another is from a working-class Oakland resident who uses BART to get to work every day:

Ilysha Kipnis of Oakland expected limited BART service, not zero service. Because buses and ferries were jammed, she decided to take a bus back home to wait out the traffic.

“We’re so reliant on public transportation,” said Kipnis, who works at a salon in San Francisco. “Hopefully, (BART directors) understand how much we need the trains to run. … I really need it.”

Notice the split here. The tech executive assumes that people who are stranded by BART can simply arrange for an alternative way of getting to their destination. (Incidentally, his company is also the one running a helicopters-for-commuters promotion to take advantage of the BART strike.) But the Oakland resident doesn’t work at Google or Facebook, where free shuttle service is provided, and she can’t easily get herself around by car. For the tech executive, a BART strike is an annoyance. For the salon worker, it’s a threat to basic existence.

DIY Electric Lifting Desk

“Loren” (no last name given) of Canada designed and built his own electric lift standing desk, with integrated computer. I do like this. He’s mostly managed to create a desk that I like, while at the same time doing some tricks that I normally think are cringeworthy.

It’s a corner desk, which I don’t tend to like because of they’re inflexible layout, but I do appreciate how they maximize of surface area that’s in reach. It has a glass top, which always seems a bit cold (both physically and aesthetically), to reveal an embedded computer. I’m kind of torn about the embedded computer. Part of me thinks that it’s a bit too gamery, yet I do like how it frees up floor space, and it does simplify the cable runs when raising and lower the desk. Even with all these touches that I don’t really like, the top does look nice. It’s the the legs that I can’t stand.

The legs are very amateurish. He’s using very thin (what half inch, if that?) single board trestle style legs. They’re absolutely horrible. They are literally two boards nailed together in the shape of a tee. The desk just doesn’t look stable. He’s added some simple boards for mounting some linear actuators, but the mechanisms are still exposed on the other three sides. The legs are really a disappointment.

The real find for the desk are the linear actuator arms. HARL-3616+ arms from SuperPowerJack. 18 inch extension and can lift 500 pounds on 36 volts. The real feature is that he could find them on eBay for $50 to $100. They don’t have limit switches though, but those are simple to wire up.

Still, an electric lifting standing desk for mere hundreds of dollars instead of several thousand is a huge win!

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Printing Press Drawers as Shelves

As I said perviously, I do like the drawers for movable type, and I do have a fascination with furniture that serves no purpose today, and so it’s not surprise that I perk up when I see a movable type drawer used as shelves. I think it’s the combination of the regularity and irregularity of the cells that appeals to me. Yes it’s big, and it fills up a wall, but the individual cells are pretty shallow. Probably less than six inches, but definitely no more. I don’t know what I would actually want to show off in it. When you see pictures of these utilized, they end up being filled up with crappy trinkets, and that doesn’t really fit my personality.

Previously. Previously.

Angler Fish

Michigan sculptor Justin LaDoux, is selling his his angler fish sculpture. A collage of knives, shovels, bicycle parts, and other found pieces of metal, the sculpture is four feet wide, five feet long, and five feet tall, and features motion activated lights.

I don’t know really anything about this artist. I do know that this piece was originally part of a set displayed at the 2010 ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In an interview during the ArtPrize, you can see a similar loose jaw fish and a squid.

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Lead Type

I’m a sucker for movable type. (The lead blocks, not the software, I have no opinion on the software.) The idea of assembling little blocks to make words and sentences makes my heart flutter. I don’t know why. I guess it’s sort of like legos. I love the large trays holding the letters, and I particularly like how the bins are different sizes depending on the character distribution of the language. As I read about how movable type was used and evolved over the years, I gained a greater appreciation of typography. Ligatures, kerning, why periods go inside quotation marks, and why it’s as irrelevant today as the creation MLA’s parenthetical citations 30 years ago.

I don’t think I would have the patience to use movable type. Laser printing is just too easy, and hot metal typesetting seems like cheating. Although in the world where movable type was common, U certainly would have used it instead of carving individual presses for every page.

via Dark Roasted Blend: Intricate Japanese Movable Type Sets

Oblique Strategies

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Brian Eno has released the sixth edition of his and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies. Limited to 500, this edition contains some new cards. When I read about this, I immediately ordered mine. I know it’s bit lame, especially since it’s the sixth limited edition (well I guess it’s actually the fifth limited production run, with the actual fifth edition being unlimited) of cards dating from mid-1970s, that you can download from the Internet, but I still wanted my physical artifact.