Tag Archives: hobbies - Page 9

A Bottle Sling Design

Posted by anachostic on January 27, 2015 No comments

Many years ago, I was at Disney’s Epcot and I purchased a bottle holder lanyard. I was fascinated by its simple design. It’s just a string and a plastic sliding lock to hold the bottle in place. I searched for a similar lanyard and I was surprised you couldn’t get this design anywhere else. So I figured I would search for the parts and make some myself and maybe sell them. Then I found out you couldn’t buy the plastic lock anywhere. So I put it out of my mind for a while.

Every once in a while, I would look for bottle holders and was always dissatisfied with what I found. One day I was out on a hike, with my Epcot bottle holder over my shoulder and the idea came to me. It was such a simple design, I have no idea why I never thought of it before.

I got home from the hike and started prototyping it. The holder worked very well. I could make one or two for myself and be happy. But at the moment, the bigger challenge to me was, can I make them quickly and consistently? Like if I wanted to really sell them? So that led me to thinking about automation and harnesses. The first step would be to make a manual harness for assembly.

Of course, the next day, I decided to search online for my idea and there’s plenty of comparable designs out there. Not exact, but similar in design and functionality. So I’m not going to bother with any selling of these. I may use them as giveaways in geocaches or something.

So, if anyone wants to manufacture these items in quantity, here’s the plans for my harness and instructions on assembly.

To make the harness, you need a block of wood at least 8 inches long, two small headless nails, two small binder clips, and a large paper clip. Drive the first nail 7.5” from the edge and the other nail 2.5” from the edge. That leaves 5” between the nails. The harness is done. The other pieces are assembly tools. Bend the paperclip into a J hook. Use the smaller hook for the J.

To make the slings, you need: a length of paracord, a spool of polyester button/carpet thread, a strong needle (curved if you can get it), and a length of .25” shrink tubing.

To assemble a bottle sling:

Cut a length of paracord to 7.5”. This length is from the edge of the harness to the far nail. This is the benefit of a properly-designed assembly harness, it’s also your ruler. Melt the ends of the cord to prevent unraveling.

Wrap the cord around the nails leaving an equal amount of cord on each end. Hold the cord in place on the nails using the binder clips.

Stitch the cord together, creating loops at the ends. You shouldn’t need more than 3-4 stitches to have a durable sling. Keep the stitches close to the end of the cord to allow a large loop.

Cut two small pieces of shrink tubing – about .75”. Make a mark in your harness for consistency.

Feed a piece of shrink tubing over the J-hook paperclip tool.

Hook one end of the sling and using the paperclip as a guide, slide the shrink tubing over the sling’s loop. The shrink tubing should cover the stitching and the end of the cord.

Shrink the tubing over the stitching and repeat for the other end.

Loop the sling around the neck of the bottle and tuck one loop through the other.

Clip carabineer through end loop to secure sling and attach to anything.

Ask No Questions, Get No Answers

Posted by anachostic on December 30, 2014 No comments

I performed a brief social experiment today that gave me some surprising, and yet unsurprising, results.

At work, our break room has a TV. And during break time, invariably, someone wants the TV to be going. Sometimes, it’s HGTV, or sometimes sports, and one time, it was Jerry Springer. Since I’m not a fan of TV in general, I’m annoyed.

Today, with no one around, I changed the TV to a dead channel. I thought that would annoy other people. I speculated that someone would immediately grab the remote and change the channel. Instead, people just assumed the cable was out and didn’t even try to change it. Some people were mocking the cable company, some people speculated that it was the weather. No one ever looked to see if any other channels worked.

I like this and may do it often in the future.

Hard Drives

Posted by anachostic on December 22, 2014 No comments

If there’s one thing that’s true about me it’s that I drive a lot. I drive a lot. Like on the order of at least 30k miles a year. So cars and driving have always been part of what I do. I have no issue driving an hour to get some food. Lately, I’ve been evaluating how much time a day I might be losing to driving, but that’s for a different post.

It was in May, 2010 that I got my roadster and it didn’t change my driving frequency at all. I still drove all over the place; I just enjoyed it more. But the car did open up a few different doors. It introduced me to the social aspects of having a specialized car.

The first thing I got involved with was an enthusiast club. People who all owned the same make of car and just got together to hang out and talk car stuff. I’m not exactly a social person, but I tried for a few months. I’m also not really a gearhead, so I couldn’t really get into the conversation topics they liked. So eventually, I drifted off.

One of the things they did discuss at the club meetings was racing. And those discussions introduced me to autocrossing, which is a timed solo race on a closed track. Autocross is less about speed and more about technical precision. So I got involved in that and performed averagely. One of the biggest things it did for me is allow me to answer “yes” when someone asks me about my car and asks if I race it. That usually isn’t what they expect to hear. It also educated me on the limits of my car’s ability, which proved to be far above what I would have imagined.

While participating in Autocross, another idea was tossed around – the road rally. And this weekend, I was finally able to participate in one. The rally wasn’t like what you see glamorized through insane photos of cars in midair or bashing through the countryside; it was simply a scavenger hunt done through vehicles. Now of course, having a nimble sports car will help you when you need to stop immediately or do a quick 180 to go back and get a required photo, which did happen. But yes, it did also happen that at one point we were driving 68mph on a 2-lane back road and another that we were driving 87mph and got passed by another team who was behind on time. In the end, it was a rollercoaster experience, thinking we were most likely going to finish last in points and ended up coming in first with a 100 point lead.

So now I can say “yes” with even more confidence when asked about racing.

The Contributors and The Creators

Posted by anachostic on December 3, 2014 No comments

Well, it’s been a year of lessons for me. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I am on the board of a non-profit organization. And after a little over a year of operations, that organization is shutting down. The experience that I got out of it has changed a lot of how I view the world, especially towards the end. The net take-away for me is that being a contributor to society doesn’t really have any payoff, either monetarily or emotionally.

Let’s look at the beginning. When you start a business with a group of people, you might all be excited that you’re all building something great. Don’t believe it. Everyone has their motives for the creation of the entity and one or more people involved will only happy to be receiving the benefits of the existence of said entity. The assistance you get from them will be minimal at best.

As time goes on, because of the lack of contribution, you will find yourself picking up the slack, through donations of time and money. You will convince yourself that the business just needs to get over the hump and it can become self-sustaining. As the excitement wears off for the others, you are left more or less alone. Don’t believe in any “build it and they will come” dreams. You’re going to have to drive people to your cause, and probably will have to do it alone.

Then, as you’ve put so much time and effort into your creation, and it actually seems like it might be stabilizing, you might be fortunate enough to be the recipient of an attack. That attack could be in any form, whether financial, betrayal of a corporate officer, character defamation, or something even worse. Maybe you can survive it. Maybe your supporters rally to your cause and get you through it. But, maybe, it just changes your entire perception of why you built the business in the first place. Is it worth playing in the same playground as the bullies and the attackers?

And then, as time and negativity set in, there is no one left that believes in the cause. The ones that were originally in it for themselves have already left. If you’re lucky enough to have fresh members who you hope would feed the excitement for the cause, they may falter and leave. What do you have left? Start from scratch again with all the time and money investment that goes along with it?

The ideal life of a non-profit is like crowdsurfing at a concert. The original people holding the surfer can’t keep doing it forever. It needs to be passed on. But when there’s no one available to pass on to, there can only be a collapse.

But anyway, back to the the title. People may think being a creator is easy, since you just have to think the idea, get it started and off it runs. That’s not always how it works. Think of a for-profit business. Sure you can run that until it explodes in a torrent of money or disaster. But when you create a non-profit, you are not an owner. There are NO owners. You are a creator and a perpetual contributor until someone chooses to relieve you. That time may never come.

Cleaning Up

Posted by anachostic on October 30, 2014 No comments

At this point, I’m solidly in phase 2 of my music enhancements. Phase 1 was ripping my CDs to a lossless format (with a .1 of acquiring a specific label’s full catalog). Phase 2 is scanning the album covers in high quality.

Phase 2 is a MUCH more labor-intensive process. The scanning part is easy, the cleaning up of the scans is tedious as hell. I’ve been doing this for four days and in those days I managed to complete 21 covers: 5 the first day, 2 the second day, then 6, then 9. It takes about 15-30 minutes per cover. I’m getting better and learning more time-saving tricks as I go, but still, 750 covers is going to be ~250 hours of work. Being able to put in only a couple of hours each night, 5 days a week, I’m looking at almost 6 months of this work. That’s pretty insane.

Sometimes, I think I should only focus on the covers that are unavailable online or are rare or out-of-print. Other times, I think I need to represent my entire collection. Sometimes I think I need to focus on the MCA Master Series, so I can move on to phase 3 – framing.

So, what is my process? I scan the cover at 1200 dpi, which gives me a 10mb, 5700×5700 jpg. I take that into Photoshop and run a descreen filter on it. This blends the “dots” into a more-or-less solid color. Then I do cleanup of the stains, dust, and scratches. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is extremely difficult. Then I add an adjustment layer for Levels, in case I want to tweak the black point or contrast. I save this to a PSD file, which ends up being 80-180mb in size. This will be my “master” from which I will do further refinements and resizing. When all is said and done, I’ll probably have near 100GB of cover images.

Looking at my post history, this conquest has been going two months so far. All I can hope is that another unexpected obsession doesn’t appear in the next six months.

In Time For Thanksgiving

Posted by anachostic on October 28, 2014 No comments

I’m starting to make some steps forward with phase two of my CD collection plan – scanning the artwork. I did a couple trial runs on an old scanner at the house and it was way too much of a headache. So yay, I get to buy more stuff. A new scanner, but not such a big expense. $65. I can’t believe how cheap that tech has gotten.

While preparing for that effort, I researched communities that I could benefit with my efforts. I found one that was appealing, if just a touch elitist. When I went to sign up, I took the time to read their terms of service. I didn’t like what I read.

In summary, when you upload to their site, they become the owners of the content. Further, they insist that they will be the only source for that content. You can’t post your artwork anywhere else.

First off, let’s just make it clear that it’s very odd to be discussing who “owns” owns a replica of a copyrighted work. But, ignoring that for a moment and moving to a secondary “IP market”, let’s think about what this ToS means. I “created” the work with my effort of scanning and cleaning and when I upload it, I effectively lose ownership of that work.

Yeah, yeah, it might be standardized language. But there’s other standardized language that is more lenient. Something like: By uploading, I am granting an unlimited license for the site to use my work however they want. In that case, I retain the original rights (yeah, of a copyrighted work; just ignore that…).

So my problem with the site is that they are taking my work and making it their own. It’s Christopher Columbus on the Internet. Why should I be outraged? Tons of websites have a similar model. Or do they? The first thing I’m thinking of is Huffpost, that site that pays people in “exposure”. But even there, after reading their ToS, you grant them rights to use your submission any way they want, even through derivative works. And, you still own your stuff.

That thinking and research made me start questioning the entire publishing for exposure model. If you create something awesome and it gets posted on HuffPost, and gets scooped up by multiple news outlets (licensed? paid-for? maybe.), what do you get out of it? Your name is attached to it, but does that really help you? There’s just so much happening. You would have to repeat that success over and over to get recognized as consistent talent.

I’m much more agreeable to the “toss it to the ether and let other do what they want with it” ideal. So, my choice is not to affiliate with any artwork website, but to use Flickr. Hypocritical? All I’m doing is providing great content to a huge corporation. Yes, but, all I want from them is hosting space. If someone wants to use my cd scan for an ebay auction, great! I would encourage that. See, it’s not about just making your world better – which I’d already have done for my own cd collection – it’s about making everyone’s world better.

Time, Money, and Music

Posted by anachostic on October 22, 2014 No comments

Here’s an update to my music label collection: I am down to six remaining CDs. This leads to the questions, “what’s next?” and “and then what?”

Well, the next thing is CD cover scanning, so I have pristine artwork for all my CDs. Over time, reissues and re-releases will change the cover artwork, usually to the album’s detriment. For example, all the Ozzy Osbourne covers got some massive, dumb border around them, with the actual album artwork in a tiny box in the middle. Who came up with that stupid idea?

So, yeah, I want my album artwork to be exactly like my CDs. And, I want some album artwork framed and hanging on my walls. But then what? I think the next step is owning a real listening stereo system (again).

What’s up with that graphic? That was the image I got when thinking about owning a high-quality stereo system. Right now, I can get by with my home theater system, but there is a certain appeal to having a real stereo, with dedicated speakers and amplifier, and components. Why? I have a computer with every CD ripped to lossless format playing through studio monitor speakers in my office. Why this?

Let me first explain the graphic. I think that owning a dedicated listening stereo is the realm of young, single men and old, retired men. Exceptions abound, but bear with me. The graph illustrates the likelihood of owning a stereo between the start and end of your adult life. Yes, I had a great system in my 20’s. I got into a stupid relationship and sold it all off for pennies at a garage sale. Now, 20 years later, I am reconsidering the purchase again. I’m not sure now is the time though. Maybe a little later. When I thought of why now might not be the right time, my rationale illuminated why the parabolic curve makes sense. It’s about time.

Being young, single and free, you have the free time to indulge in nothing but music. The same freedom applies once you are an empty-nester or a retiree. You can also apply this to book-reading or really, any hobbies you had to give up because of the rat race of life. For me, I’m not sure I’m nearing the end of the rat race yet, but I want to slow down, definitely. I can say I haven’t exactly disliked any point in my life so far. I sacrificed some things at certain points that may or may not have been wise. But overall, life’s been good to me.

Now, about that stereo. Why is that something to desire? This sentiment would probably be shared by many hobbyists who have had their hobbies “stolen” by modern convenience. There is an effort you must make when using older, dedicated equipment. One might go so far as to say there is a ritual involved. It’s the performing of the ritual that matters. If you don’t do it right, the results won’t be good, or said another way, the more precise you are performing the ritual, the better the results will be. And you can take pride in that.

Sure, the ritual of listening to an album involves choosing a cd, placing it in the tray, pressing the play button, then sitting down. But that’s more than using a wireless remote to scroll through a huge list of albums, then clicking one. Book people, you understand.

Status Update

Posted by anachostic on October 4, 2014 No comments

After returning from a refreshing vacation, it’s time to jump back into the collection plan. The current status is: of 42 albums, I now own 26 and 6 are in transit, leaving 10 left to purchase.

My current mantra is, “Why am I not listening to music?” There’s a ridiculous number of times that I catch myself just working in silence. I’m spending a good amount of money to complete this music collection. At the very least, I should be listening to it. Geez. But, I have found some very good music that I am glad to have.

And I did get most of my music ripped to lossless before the vacation. I say most, because I used Exact Audio Copy and there are some discs that had some errors in ripping and some discs that I had to skip complete tracks. So, there’s going to have to be a second round of ripping to recover what I didn’t get the first time.

And then somewhere in the future lies the CD cover scanning, which I will use for artwork, both digitally and physically.

The Next Big Thing

Posted by anachostic on August 24, 2014 No comments

Surprise obsessions are a difficult thing for me. I started last week on a sudden quest toward a dual purpose. Like many other inspirations of mine, it’s a race to finish the quest before the desire runs out.

I’m actually not sure where the spark came from, but it’s been something lingering inside me for a very long time. The end result will be this: to own a complete collection of albums published under the MCA Master Series label and secondly, to create framed artwork of the album covers for my walls (copyrights be damned).

Let me explain the history of my experience with MCA Master Series. When I was in my impressionable youth, I had acquired a home stereo, which had the new-fangled tech of the day – Digital Compact Disc – and I was building a CD collection of my own. My stereo was monstrous, like most probably were at that time. A full component system with receiver, dual tape deck, CD player, and the requisite 4-ft tall, 15”-woofer stereo speakers.

Around that time in my life, I was trying to figure out “who I was” and “who I wanted to be”. One thing that I thought I wanted to be was “high-class”. That didn’t necessarily equate to “rich” but more about appreciating art and music beyond the standard radio fare. Let me quickly find an image that sums up my youthful vision…

…well now. That was not a quick search at all, and this isn’t even what I think I originally had in mind, but:

That’s more or less what I imagined, reclining on crazy-modern couches and listening to… what? Something ~~pretentious~~ classy, sure, but what was that? I hadn’t found it yet.

As luck would have it, around that time, the MCA Master Series was releasing albums, and because I lived in a tiny dump of a city, no one would ever buy that stuff, so it ended up in my music store’s bargain bin – my default shopping section. The first album I bought was Edgar Meyer – Dreams of Flight. I was incredibly attracted to the cover art, because it looked as modern and abstract as I imagined my future listening room would be. The music was clean and clear, jazz/classical, and I grew very fond of it.

Also around that time, I had read some articles mentioning the band Acoustic Alchemy and I noticed they were on the same label as Edgar Meyer. A nearby pawn shop supplied me with these and many more of the MCA Master Series catalog. All were enjoyed (except Booker T Jones, which is the only one I now regret throwing away) and are in my current collection.

Fast-forward to recent days and I’m finding a nostalgic desire to have that innocent dream of what my future could be – relaxing in a modern sofa (which I do have, now), listening to New Age/Jazz/Classical on a high-end audio system, maybe reading some e-books.

My adult sense of appreciation enjoys this music label for another reason. When you put all the albums together, you have a incredibly cohesive marketing design. There’s really something to be said for that, and it’s something that I feel might be lacking today. Because I know the MCA Master Series is all high-quality, I can scan a rack of CDs looking for their consistent design and find something in a flash. Using the same fonts on every album, with a dash of color for uniqueness, was a genius move. You can see the same marketing technique if you are a Telarc or Rykodisc fan – just scan for their logo in the spine. Windham Hill is another example, as well.

Back to the story, I’ve been hammering online sources and local sources for these really old, out-of-print CDs (yes, 30 years!). I don’t want any reissues, if they exist. I want these albums for the original artwork as much as the music. Less than a week into my mission, I have purchased six missing albums. Right now, I have 13 out of out of 43, with 4 en route, leaving 26 left to find and purchase. I’m estimating at least $150 to finish out this collection.

What will that mean? I’ve talked about collections again and again in my blog. And the truth is still there. This collection will mean nothing to anyone else but me. But let’s discard that fact and think about phase two of the plan. Scanning the album covers and getting them printed and framed as artwork. Granted, some of the covers aren’t really suitable for framing, but many of them are. Framing 43 covers? Gah!

I’ll have to post some updates as I progress through this collection growth.

Random Pieces

Posted by anachostic on July 10, 2014 No comments

Recently, Flickr, which is part or Yahoo, decided they were going to do away with integrated authentication (OAuth, SSO, whatever you want to call it), meaning you had to have a Yahoo login instead of logging in with a FaceBook or Google account. Curiously, Microsoft Live wasn’t included in the SSO program, even though Yahoo has a good working relationship with Microsoft. But none of that matters now.

Predictably, people are up in arms that they have to have a Yahoo login. I’ve had a few Flickr accounts over time, two still current, but will probably drop down to just one. That remaining one was integrated with FaceBook, so I had to go through the process of creating a new Yahoo account. I didn’t like doing it, but what I do like is having 1TB of free picture hosting that I can access via API. Let me explain that value a bit more. Hopefully, Yahoo doesn’t read this post and figure out how to stop it.

I have a virtual server with GoDaddy that I can use to host whatever web sites I want. It’s certainly not the fastest server in the world, but then again, I don’t host the biggest sites in the world. As part of this bare-bones plan, I have about 30GB of drive space, 20 of which is used up by OS and system applications. So, space is definitely at a premium.

If I’m going to host a web site that has a photo gallery, which I do as part of a side project I’m involved in, things get a little tense. But, with a little clever coding, I can host all the photos on Flickr and use their API to display the albums and photos on my website. You’d never even know the images are on Flickr unless you look at the URLs, and what normal web user does that? So, even with a free account, you can have 1TB of photo hosting – with no advertising. Sounds a little too good to be true. But I’m grateful.

And for that one reason alone, I can tolerate having a Yahoo account. And I’d have to tell any of the people all upset about having to create a Yahoo account: You’re late to the game, guys. Flickr used to have its own login before Yahoo bought them and before SSO became a “thing”. Would you have been upset that you had to create a whole new Flickr account to use their service? Of course not. Get over it.

In other news, for the afore-mentioned side project, I just purchased a vinyl cutting machine and heat press machine. It seemed like a good purchase at the time because of all the team jerseys that were always needed on short notice. And also, I am a big proponent of doing as much myself as possible. When you control everything from end-to-end, your costs and timelines are more predictable. (It’s almost like dropping login support for other parties and doing it all yourself, eh, Yahoo?) Outsourcing the printing of the jerseys had previously resulted in different costs, sometimes due to rush jobs, sometimes due to the printer’s whim. One job resulted in an incorrect name printed, with no time for correction since we paid out the nose for rush processing and shipping anyway. So bringing the shirt printing in-house was, to me, the best solution. Par for the course, both machines had to be rush shipped so we had enough time to print jerseys for the next game. Even so, buying entry-level equipment only cost about $600.

Now that I own this equipment, there is a serious potential to make that money back and then some. I have to say, the setup and operation of this equipment was really simple. If you can: use any graphics program, print a document, follow directions, and count, you can probably run a t-shirt business. And I have to say, watching a vinyl cutter, which is just a plotter with a knife instead of a pen, is mesmerizing.

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