Recent Projects - Jan 2010
1: Coffee roasting chimney, 23 Jan 2010.
I described this in “How I Roast Coffee”.
2: A drawing board, 30 Jan 2010.
The kids like to draw with a scrap of paper and some pencils, but I feel bad letting them use a book as a flat surface to draw on. So this is a 1/2” thick piece of MDF (medium density fiberboard) that I painted with some old indoor house paint (acrylic latex) and keep in the living room to use as a drawing board. MDF absorbs water like a sponge and gets all lumpy, so I painted it in hopes that it would make it at least a little bit water resistant.
I find it useful since it’s always more fun to sit on the couch than at a table or desk. I made another one kind of like this a year ago, but it ended up as a shelf, so this is a replacement.
3: An easel, 31 Jan 2010.
I’m not a painter by training, but by necessity.
We had an old painting I pulled out of the garbage two or three years ago that my wife refuses to let me hang on the wall. So I figured I might as well cover it up and put something on it we actually like. Since I expect I’ll be at it for a bit, I built an easel out of scrap wood we had lying around. Sitting on the floor in front of it is working out fine, so I guess it’s finished.
This is after I already painted one coat of “Shell White” over it. The previous tenants of the house we’re renting left a lot of interesting colors of house paint, so I shouldn’t have to spend any money. I will also mention that it’s leaning against the main sewage line running out of our house.
4. Homemade kettlebell, my “burrito-bell”, Dec 2009.
Thirty pounds of sand + three garbage bags + 1/3 of a roll of duct tape + 10 feet of cheap rope = workout equipment for less than $10.
This is the device in my home gym:
Also known as the entrance to my basement. I can do just about anything you can do with a normal kettlebell, except when I throw mine in the air and it accidentally hits me in the face, I don’t have to go to the hospital. It’s more like a kettlebell / medicine ball crossover, maybe.
In “the gym” I have: a wrist roller with 30 pounds tied to it, a 15 pound barbell and 80 pounds of plates, and the burrito-bell. I pull the stuff out, lift it up and set it down until I’m tired, and then put it away. So far it’s been the most successful and productive weight based workout routine I’ve ever had. It’s pretty irregular, but life is irregular, so it fits.
5. The “light pen” - Jan 2010
The one is the smallest, but has made the biggest difference.
The background: our two oldest kids are three and four years old, respectively. Each night, when it’s time for bed (for the last four months or so), they get their pajamas on, they brush their teeth, we wrestle a bit, maybe read some books, then I turn off the lights and I stay in the room when they fall asleep.
Sometimes it takes 15 minutes, sometimes an hour. Either way, I can’t (won’t) leave until they’re asleep. Leaving all discussion of parenting methodology, most nights this is a waiting time for me. I don’t leave, I don’t make noise, whatever. It’s easy to be bitter about it, though. I get home at 6-ish and my wife hits the sack with our youngest around 10:30, so that doesn’t leave a lot of time to hang out, surf the web, watch a movie, work on projects, etc. So any waiting time, do-nothing time, feels kind of like lost time.
So I made this. I swapped the ultra-bright white LED from an old key chain flashlight for a dim red one I got with an old Arduino kit. Solder / desolder, the whole bit. Then I reassembled the light, duct taped the flashlight to a paper clip, and then the paper clip to a pen. I was concerned at first that the constant motion of the pen over the paper would make the gadget too difficult to use. It turns out, though, that the light is so dim that my eyes can’t really pick up the small motions. It can’t be seen unless you’re one foot away or looking directly at it, it doesn’t bleed light to the sides (which was a problem with the original white LED), and all I can see is the word immediately to the left of my pen and maybe three words on the light directly above.
The effect of this device has been huge. It’s hard to tell from the picture but in between my fingers are about 20 pages of a roughly 5” x 7” journal I’ve filled in the last three weeks. 2 sheets per page, 20 lines per sheet, around 6 words per line (with another 10 pages added since I took the picture, 48 hours ago). Let’s call it 7000 words.
Blog post ideas, poems, to-do lists, questions to myself, questions to other people, whatever random stuff I have left floating in my head after most of the day is done, all out of my head and on paper because a simple tool was combined with the right opportunity. It’s hard to state what a profound difference this has made in the last month. How I feel about the time I spend with my kids, what I keep bottled up, how easily I can express an idea or answer my own questions, how well I understand my own thought process; it’s all tied up in this light-on-a-stick. (I should mention I was slightly influenced by this blog post, too)
I might have to make more of these.
