Screenshot of Murphy bed tutorial.
Thinking about DIY-ing a Murphy bed and I appreciate this straightforward guide. Nice to connect with alternate aesthetics in the cause of making stuff. From https://www.littlevintagecottage.com/2021/02/diy-poor-mans-murphy-bed.html
I wanted to document some of the work I've been doing at our house. I put up a bench seat + shelves + a sort-of sideboard in the living room in December. And I finally got our artwork up in a gallery wall a little after that.
Bench with custom dog cubbies and bookshelves. It's since gotten a cushion
The sideboard somewhat organized.
Screenshot of building a desktop from a broken fence
Enjoying Evan Monsma's Youtube channel. Featuring relaxed figuring-it-out-as-you go builds from salvaged scraps. Sometime I want to write about the connections between prototyping on the web and DIYing IRL.
okay, to start, an analogy: long ago, a sing le person could build the best video game that existed. Adventure didn't require 200 developers and 18 months to get out the door. as technology improved, so did expectations. Adventure was my goal. Today's kids' goal is fortnite. —@steveklabnik
One of the things I keep coming back to is the value of visible seams. The idea that you can look at something and develop a mental model of how it works or how it is made.
Screenshot of my desk with several computers out
Made some more wooden boxes. All the computers are out for some file transfer reorg.
I wanted my dock laptop to feel more like furniture - maybe nostalgia for the 'family room computer' from when I was a kid.
The box
It did feel different! But not too long after I went a pretty different direction for the room (less screen) and moved it down into the basement.
Embedding search now active on this very blog:
New desk backing, overhead camera setup and spot for extended monitor.
Clearer shot of the expanded overhead camera setup. It nees more light. Realized I could use magnets to attach light backing board. Will probably do more experiments with that.
Curious to try some digital/physical combos with the monitor-as-desktop
Tabletop used with a tabletop
Crop and download images from your webcam.
Tools hanging on tool stands hung on a french cleat.
I reorganized the garage space a bit and decided to finally try something I've watched many youtube videos on - a French cleat. In it's simplest form it's a board with one edge cut at a 45 degree angle. You can hang things on it with backers cut at the matching angle.
I love this kind of adjustability mostly because it cuts down on paralysis. I'm not sure how much I'll actually rearrange here (probably some) but the real advantage is I could make these tool holders without feeling like I'm 'locked in' to them or that I should deeply consider and optimize.
I've always liked building systems where the joints are visible: legos, Minecraft. Lately I've been thinking about the process of learning how to find the joints in systems where they're less visible. Of 'carving at the joints'.
Apparently Plato talked about "carving nature at the joints". I think my recent reference is the show Delicious in Dungeon, where they explain how to cut and prepare dungeon monsters into unlikely meals. The show has a lot of fun with the instructions reveal, where something that looks inedible is made appetizing through a precise set of steps.
Album art and artist info display
I've been listening to a lot of playlists lately and wanting a way to learn more about the currently playing artist without pulling out my phone. I put together a little raspberry pi setup to sit on our shelves and display info about the current playing artist.
I think this would be a cool fit for coffee shops or communal workspaces. Let me know if you're interested in getting something similar up and I'll try and help.
I've been putting todo lists in project directories lately. I think it would be cool to have a system that searches up parent directories for todos.
So you could do something like a todo command and see todos for your current directory as well as a parent directory like dev. So a natural hierarchy.
I guess search / grep is probably also fast enough you could pretty easily search through child branches as well.
Basement project table with sewing machine and marked off project section
I feel like these quick builds are an exercise in building intuition about "how wood goes together". And then using it is building intuition about "what makes a table feel good to use", that then feeds into the next build.
Book-to-soundtrack experiment - a projector setup where I send the book image off to Gemini for recommendations and then play with Spotify. Meant to be kind of like putting on a record but for objects. (I clipped out the loading times.)
Prototypes shouldn't look too nice. They should look like a work-in-progress. They should show their joints.
This keeps discussion at the right level of abstraction. You want to be talking about the capability, not the color scheme.
Bakeries and ceramics workshops
Screenshot of the UI for my MP4 converter web app in progress