Tag Archives: hobbies - Page 9

Maker Shack

Posted by anachostic on February 4, 2015 No comments

Radio Shack has been on the decline for a very long time and now is bankrupt. The sad thing is that Radio Shack is missed out on a new and upcoming market. I’m not the brightest and most visionary person out there, so I’m amazed that no one else has really considered this.

I think most people agree that Radio Shack lost its way when it started focusing on cheap consumer electronics because its sales of raw electronic parts was declining. Then it got into mobile phones, like every other electronic retailer. And then it lost whatever it was that made it different.

My proposal would be for Radio Shack to return to its roots as a hobbyist store. Yes, it’s entirely likely that being in that market space means a number of stores will have to close. But, if you want to be successful, you need to stand out.

The stores should stock all manner of hobbyist, DIY, build/maker gear. There’s no shortage of it now. You have Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Makey Makey, LittleBits, and more. Plus, 3d printers are talked about a lot, but no one really talks about where to buy them. Have an advertising blitz that establishes Radio Shack as a source of 3d printers and DIY kits and you have brand recognition. 3d printing=Radio Shack. The old logic was that if you wanted to build something electronic, you go to Radio Shack. That thought can be brought back.

Of course, you can keep the electronic parts around. Actually, there needs to be another competitor in the PC parts arena. Best Buy is everywhere and their prices suck. Tiger Direct is much better, but has far fewer stores. In fact, Tiger Direct has exited the retail space.

The next thing that needs to be done is something that I’ve been hearing about with stores like Macy’s. Turn the retail stores into warehouses and distribution centers. Ship online orders to customers and replenish nearby stores from other stores. Stock levels can immediately be determined, so why not? It will keep your staff busy, too.

There needs to be an easy way for a customer to find something, whether it is in the store, a nearby store, or further away. Then the customer can choose to go to the other store to buy it, or have it shipped.

And although this isn’t really part of the plan, why aren’t companies, especially tech companies, doing something with youth to promote build/make? Home Depot has children workshops, why can’t Radio Shack? Why can’t a representative visit schools and give a talk or presentation involving building and creating your own things?

But, aside from the company now essentially out of business, I recently read an article (and article comments) that indicated Radio Shack had a toxic corporate culture that would not be easily fixed. So I doubt my idea would work right out of the gate. There would have to be massive house-cleaning, then the rebuilding of employee trust.

Can’t Get No… Satisfaction

Posted by anachostic on January 28, 2015 No comments

I’ve been what I would call a professional for quite some time. One of the benefits of being a professional is that my income is pretty good. I have read – and I agree – that once your income covers all your basic needs, more money doesn’t really make your life better. Sure, you drive a nicer car, you eat at better restaurants, maybe you stay at nicer hotels. The old problems of “I wish I could afford to…” kind of go away. Then it becomes more of, “Should I…”

But something else changes. You start looking for ways to make yourself happy by seeing other people happy. You start spending your excess money on other people, because, well, you’re taken care of already. This manifests itself in many ways. For my part, I’ve gotten involved in activities that required investments and purchases for the benefit of everyone in the activity. And that was fine for me, because everyone had a good time.

But, there comes a time when it doesn’t seem as fun, when your effort and contributions don’t seem to make as much as a difference. And more importantly, you are not inspiring others to step up their involvement. And then it’s not just about the money, but the money is what seems to matter the most.

2015 has been named the year of no-involvement. It is a year of rebuilding for me, both financially and socially. For the last couple of years, I’ve tried to get involved with projects, with the hope that they would take off and be something great. A lot of times, I provided a lot of financial support to boost the timeline or the project’s presence for it to succeed. But it just seemed in the end that the people involved or the people benefitting just wanted to go along for the ride.

You want to be inspiring and set a good example. A totally made-up scenario would be like having a group that enjoyed beaches and boating and such, so I would rent a boat for the group and we would all have a great time. I would hope that it would inspire them that if they could all put in a little more into the group, then we could do this all the time. But, sadly, that’s not how it would turn out. There was never a “That was awesome, what do I need to do to help make that happen again?” moment.

In some ways, it’s like I want to be a venture capitalist, providing startup money for something that would take off. But I don’t exactly need to see a return on my investment, I just want to see things succeed and see people happy about it. It hasn’t happened yet. So I guess I need to improve my business sense and invest more wisely in the future. 2015 is going to be a great year. 2016 will be my chance to try again.

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.

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