Another scale of the Universe

Another great "scale of the universe" animation. Apparently to scale. I really liked the reference to 70-light-years being the extent of our furthest radio transmission. An irrelevant spec in space. So much for the Seti project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&feature=player_embedded

Scale of everything

Great little flash zoomer representing the scale of pretty much everything. Very simple, very well presented. Worth your time to have a zoom :)

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

Christmas 2009 Toy Boxes

Found some utterly destroyed timber chests on the side of the road (yeah, hard rubbish scavenging again). The timber was raw, and heavily damaged. Lid hinges were sheared off, vinyl-padding on the lids were slashed and aged. There was evidence of sloppy-repairs with nails at some point in time, which I hate, but they seemed repairable. A shame I didn't get "before" shots yet again. So here's some "in-process" shots of a basic refurb job to make some sweet looking Toy Boxes for the kids for this Christmas !!

These shots are all taken after the lids have been removed, rubbish refurb-job undone, timber all re-seated and re-glued with sash clamps. It actually took quite a bit of work to get these to the point of "getting started".

The cheap timber joinery had no support at the top, so if you (kids) pulled the boxes towards yourself from the top, you'd shatter the entire assembly. Some reinforcement was needed.

I made some simple "L-beams" with some 20mm pine and formed a basic frame for the top.


The frame just drops in from the top, and then I fastened it with more brass screws from the inside-out.


The top rim is pretty sturdy now. Should support some serious beatings, and gives some meat for hinges to bite into.


One is stained Dark Mahogany, the other Teak. (it should be noted that dark mahogany always looks like rubbish before it's varnished.)


Some new Vinyl and brass tacks make the lids look like new again. Brass tacks seems to look good on anything.


Hinge on the ugly-side where there was some stain-bleeding. Not sure what happened here, but fortunately it was only on this one edge of this one toy box.


It works ! I'll put some sort of rubber stopper in so that little fingers don't get smushed in the likely event of a slam.



The kids chose their vinyl colors, so they should be happy with the final results :)

Dark Mahogany on the left. Teak on the right.

Something goofy with the lighting on this shot, but you get the idea.

Free Outdoor Table

Hard Rubbish strikes again. Found this outdoor table on the roadside. It's as faded as my deck, and a little flimsy.


The legs are pretty rotten at the feet.


The top shows promise though. Check out that sweet red timber after a little sanding


The center spar of the top was completely rotten. Smash n chuck.


New center spar. I don't own a table-saw so I had to create this slot freehand with a circular saw. Hard work. It'll work fine though.


The top is comming together. Needed some reinforcement.


Some of the top was a little more rotten than hoped. A few corners had to be dowled right through, not just butt-joints.


Top reconstructed, man that looks good.


Just another shot of the top. Love the look of red hardwood.


New legs ! I got them on the cheap. Bought garden-stakes, way cheaper than finished timber.


New legs in place. Old ones were bolted. I screwed these on with carriage screws.


A coat of oil, and all is good. Looks brand new. (it's quite red in the sun).

Free stuff: just add TLC

People throw away the most amasing things in their Hard Rubbish. I found an entire Queen size bed by the side of the road. It was painted a hideous mission-brown. Nothing a belt sander and some time can't fix.

Actually a lot of time. At least 4-5 hrs was spent sanding this thing down. Deceiving amount of nooks and crannies on these things!!

Teak stain looks great on raw pine.

More nooks n crannies !!

Brand new queen size bed. Just add a few dollars of sandpaper, stain, and varnish. Looks awesome :)

USB WiFi antenna

A friend was able to receive WiFi from their very gracious neighbor with a standard PCI wireless card in her PC, but a USB wireless dongle was unable to pickup any networks in range, even when standing outside the house! Primary differences being USB voltage/power and antenna capacities. Time to give this critter an upgrade. (blurry images, oops)

Step 1: Crack open your gutless USB wifi dongle.


Step 2: Find the gutless antenna; seen as the rectangular loop on the far left of this blurry image.



Step 3: Find some wire and construct a vague semblance of an appropriately turned antenna from random info you find on the web based on the wavelengths used in household wifi.



Step 4: Solder the antenna on. Hope you haven't destroyed anything in the process.



Step 5: Reassemble. Prevent pokey bits with something squishy.

This baby found two new networks not previously detected from my own home, and now my lucky friend has a solid connection to her gracious neighbor. Life is good.

Upholstery Happens: man-style.

Sewing Machine: check.
Manliness: check.
mad skillz: check.

Upholstery happens in the house of bachelor. You were warned.

Wonderflonium: Do not bounce

I bought these at the NQR store today...because of the sticker.

Highschool Coffee Table

A broken coffee table I built in highschool (exactly 20 years ago this year !!). Every join gave up the ghost to kids dancing on top of it. Dowel glue joins are great, but they just can't withstand the awesome might of 3yr olds dancing.


The original 9mm dowel joins were destroyed, so I had to bore them out and plug them with larger 20mm dowel


The top was initially screwed on with 4 wood screws, sunken through the entire width of this crosspiece.

Deep sunken holes for screws is not ideal. I'm not going to use these again. I'll use brackets or something instead.


Sash clamps to the rescue. You can see the pine strip I placed on the inside upper edge to screw the top onto. Much beefier. It'll get stain to make it invisible of course.


Dowels. Not my first choice of timber joinery...but invisible is the intention I guess.


Taking shape. More clamp action.


Hopefully I get another 20 years out of it. It has some deep dints and marks in the top from previous use, nicely sealed under the new coat of varnish. Looks pretty good. (can't really tell from this shot though) Junk on the top for scale reference.

Keyboard Well: more more

FINALLY finished the keyboard-well in my desk. The original rough-as-guts test was going to be for 2 weeks or so...ended up being 8 months. Shiny.

Still shiny.

Indoors. Varnished the monitor tray also. The larger shelf is in the shed so I can improve the height extensions, which were always an ad-hoc thing due to the ever increasing size of monitors over the years from my original 13'. So long ago.

Keyboard Well: more

A while back I cut a big dirty hole in my desk to drop the keyboard into. I'm happy with the functionality so it's time to finish up.

Nice clean cuts to house a pine timber frame.


Measure a few times, keep cutting till it sorta fits. That's how the saying goes right ?


Snug as a bug in a rug


Tray in place. Had plans for an elaborate adjustable base but abandoned it due to the steep parabolic curve of effort vs reward.


Redgum sawdust is perfect for making my own putty where dark-mahogany stain is used, the color is a nice match after it has the wet varnished look.


Redgum hardwood + glue = tough putty. This stuff needs power tools to sand down. Serious, don't bother hand sanding this mix.


For all you know I'm smearing poo all over my desk.


Dry stained pine embedded in varnished veneer. Looks awfull. Varnish has some pretty magical properties though :)


Varnish has a mild gooping/solvent effect like paint stripper, so it's fine to apply to old coats like this, the disparity between the currently uncoated, and coated sections won't show after the 3rd coat.

Will take another photo after it's done.