Friday, January 26, 2024

More Woodworking (and Revealing the Secrets!)

  I decided I needed a couple little cabinets...


...in the bathroom, so I whipped up this pair.



They're only eight inches deep but they will free up some space in a storage closet that I need for other things. In a small house you have to get creative with storage


So How do You Get a Nice Balanced Photo in Such a Small Room?

It ain't easy.

First you take about a million shots...





I don't have fancy professional lighting, so a couple cheap lamps have to suffice...


Why is There no Camera Reflected in the Mirror?




First I took a picture of the mirror from an angle. Then using Photoshop's wonderful "Distort" tool, I dragged the corners until it was square. That's also how I get rid of parallax in the main photo.



Then I cropped that new mirror and simply pasted it over the old one.

Pretty tricky, huh?


Speaking of the need to get Creative...

All I have is a crummy phone camera, and it only measures exposure from dead center. Unfortunately, dead center of this shot is a mirror, so it darkens the cabinets.




So since I was going to replace the mirror anyway, I gave the camera something dark to look at.


Like a real photographer would tell you...

Anything for the shot!




Saturday, July 22, 2023

Staying Cool

 

100 Degrees is no fun

I'm so lucky to have an air conditioner out here, but it's not "central air" -  it's a mini-split in the front of the house that does a good job on the living room but doesn't always make it to the dining nook at the other end of the house. And if I'm baking in the kitchen, forget it.

So in my eighth year here, I finally got around to installing a small unit in the dining room.


 Installing these things is not terribly difficult, but the last step requires some special equipment, so most folks hire a pro for that part. When I installed the unit for the shop, I decided that rather than pay big bucks to somebody else, I'd just go to Harbor Freight and buy the tools. So I was ready to go this time.


The special tools were the gauges and a vacuum pump - the thing with the red handle next to the yellow bucket.

Also sprung for the cover kit to hide the pipes and wire.


 So now the house is cool, but you could bake a cake on the dashboard of the poor truck.

 

Shade for The Chief

This would probably be considered tacky in the city, but city folks have nice two-car garages...







 

 

Somewhere in there, a break for an outdoor concert with friends:


 And a couple new cabinets for the shop.




 Stay cool!

Saturday, May 20, 2023

Muzzy is Finished! (more or less...)

 Walt Disney is supposed to have said that Disneyland would never be finished as long as there is imagination left in the world... That could be true of van projects too.

 


 

In case you don't remember my last post on the subject, Muzzy is the Dodge van my daughter Jami uses for work travel and to get away from work when she can.  She rented one just like it during Covid and had Old Dad throw together a removable interior for an epic 6000-mile trip across the country.  Muzzy was her grandmother's nickname.

 

Van 1.0 "Betty"


 



Over the last couple of years she has left the van here for anywhere from a weekend to three months, and after the last sprint, we are declaring her finished.  Except for that imagination thing...

 

Muzzy got a solar panel

A new home-made toilet covered in white plastic

And a half-door on the bathroom

 

We had originally planned a full door to match the closet door, but decided it would make the van too claustrophobic.

 

Original plan was for a full door on the bathroom

 

A half-door is enough privacy for a solo..

..But there is a pull-down shade


 Also added what every van needs: a roll-top desk.
Since most of her travel is (unfortunately) work-related, we decided to give her a place to work. Big enough for a monitor and a laptop, but compact enough to fit in the limited space.
 
 
 The desk also supports the upper bunk on that bearing.


Swing-out monitor bracket and pull-out keyboard tray

Home-made roll top


The Star Wars theme lives on...

The bunk pivot got redesigned so the top bunk can now be a backrest.







Happy trails Jami and Muzzy!









Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Burning Man

 

Yes it's true... this old man went to Burning Man. So is it a wild orgy of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll? Not exactly. It's an enormous dead-flat lake bed filled with art, music, and 80,000 dancing and bicycling people, 98 percent of whom were half my age. 

Didn't see any sex or drugs, unless you count several scantily-clad folks, many of whom probably shouldn't have been, and that one good-grief parade of naked men on bicycles I had to get past to return to camp one sunny day. Not really sure what that was about, but just chalked it up to kids having fun, as Crocodile Dundee once said.

Having fun is mostly what it's about. Outlandish clothing is expected and "House" music is everywhere. Everyone camps, either individually or in organized camps, arranged in 7-square mile semi-circle surrounding a central "Playa" that is 5000 feet in diameter.  

Internet photo

 For a so-called hipster event, it's remarkably structured and organized. Camp spaces are assigned on a system of streets; the radials are hours on a clock (i.e. the street running south is called 6:00) and the circles are lettered, "A Street" being closest to the center.  Our camp address was 7:00 C.

It is a Leave-No-Trace event. Everything that is brought in has to be hauled out, including all trash, and even grey water. Nothing can be bought or sold, and no advertising or branding is allowed.

It is a gift-giving economy, and a large number of the organized camps give things free for the asking, including food and alcohol. Everyone carries their own cup, and a copy of your driver's license needs to be taped on it, because camps offering alcohol require ID of everyone, even 77-year-old dudes.

Drugs? With 80,000 happy dancing young people? Without doubt. But I suspect they were mostly of the "enhancing-the-experience" variety (I'm no expert) and I personally never saw anyone obviously under the influence of anything.

There are police and other emergency services there, but their presence is low-key.

 


The Man is located at the center of the circle, a huge wooden structure lit up at night with gaudy lights. This event started in 1986 on a beach in San Francisco when a bunch of friends added a nailed-together "Man" to their bonfire.  The official explanation for this is apparently "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

 


The Playa, the circle surrounding The Man and separating him from the rings of camps is littered with randomly spaced art installations from the simple to the mind-boggling.  Since I was trying to resist seeing the event through the lens of a camera, I didn't take a lot of pictures of the art, so I'll include some from the Internet.

From the simple...
















...To the amazing

That's not paint; those are individual inlaid pieces of wood






Our camp was called Hotel California. It was solar-powered and vegan. The camp provided two meals a day to about 60 people. We were in little ad-hoc teams (there were five of us in the group I came with) and each group provided and served the meals for one day.

Hotel California

In addition to meals and a shady place to hang out, the camp provided music and even showers, in the form of sun-heated bags of water. One day they even served breakfast and gourmet coffee to anyone passing by, as part of the gift-giving tradition.



Good buddy Brian was my sponsor, champion, and guru, and he and his sweetie Nikki took good care of me. Also in our group were Brian's friend Jesse, and Jesse's dad, Ramesh.



Jesse decided to shave off his beard, but not
before Nikki had some fun "sculpting" it.

Nikki, Jesse, and Ramesh

 

Burning Man is a whole different place at night, and the kids stay out all night. I stayed up one or two nights until about 3AM, riding my bike around the Playa with Brian and Nikki.







At 12:00 on the Playa, north of The Man, they built an elaborate structure called The Temple. This was the serious part of Burning Man. A beautiful building built of wood, The Temple is a place for remembrances and reflection. Markers were provided inside for people to write personal notes to lost loved ones, memories, apologies, or whatever they were moved to write on the boards making up the building.  People hung photos, drawings, and other mementos personal to them, and it all went up in smoke on the last night of the event.




Volunteers hung lanterns on these posts every night

On Saturday night, with loud music, fireworks, pyrotechnics, and cheers, they burn The Man. He's actually ignited with an explosion in the middle of the fireworks display.  Quite a spectacle.

 

And on Sunday night, the last night, they burn the Temple. No fireworks, no explosions, no music, and with thousands of people standing around watching, not a word. Not a sound. 


It was an amazing experience, but it wasn't all fun and games. The dry lake bed is not dirt or sand, it's alkaline sediment from the ancient lake water and it's like moon dust. When the wind comes up, so does the dust, and it gets all over everything and everyone.  Sometimes there are actually whiteouts when you can't see anything.  Ramesh and I tried to hide out in my trailer whenever that happened.

 

 


Getting in and out is an eight-hour process as 80,000 people have to funnel to a single-lane road. We left Reno at 9:30 at night because the gates opened at midnight.  We got to our camp at 5:30 the next morning. Same thing on leaving day.  You really have to want to come to this event!



As far as the eye can see...

 

For this old man, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I'm glad I went and I'm very grateful to Brian Anglin for making it possible.