more chair

Stained Dark Mahogany. Kinda purpley. It'll look a lot better after it's varnished.



Low sun on a cold winter afternoon, about 10c. Not particularly good temps to start varnishing in, it kinda goes gooey instead of drying when temps get much below about ~7c. It's the first coat so I'm banking on the timber absorbtion sorting most of that problem out.

Chair Desk

The new 42' LCD represents the height of awesomeness for playing computer games. Decided I needed a command chair for some upcomming games. The current chair project has these awesome huge armwrests to support a giant tray. A large MDF board, and some vinyl should solve this problem

1.2m x 45cm MDF board. Round the edges with the belt sander, cut and tack some vinyl to suit.

Unfinished chair with the new gaming board on the armwrests. Feeding trough and drink glass in position to show the awesomeness.

Can't wait to finish the chair now :)

Ugly Sofa at the core

When I was stripping down the chair, there was evidence underneath of some alternate upholstery snagged on some staples. Most of the pillows are just raw foam inside, so I assumed the green covering was the original.



But today I was greeted by a horrific demon hidden beneath the evil green skin. The original skin, still intact thanks to its mumified protective coating. There is an ancient evil lurking in my sofa...

FINALLY finished sanding the chair. Think I'm gonna leave the armrests bare. You can see the old upholstered armrest on the couch in the background. Love to see timber.

Domino AND, OR, XOR gates demonstrated

Nice little visual representations of the base logic gates used in circuitry.

Ugliest Sofa set ever

Got a hold of the worlds ugliest Sofa set. A friend was throwing it out.

Avert your eyes.


Loved the heavy timberwork. The varnish and timber are heavily damaged though.


Throw away the upholstery, and apply a heavy dose of 3M stripping disc.


mMmmm, naked timber. Love it.


Varnish is easy to remove, but stain takes a LOT of sanding. I'd estimate a good 6+ hrs was spent stripping the chair down. Fortunately I only have one chair and one sofa.

I really like the color of unstained timber. Not even sure what kind of timber it is. The grain is very different to pine, and it's lighter and softer than pine. Dunno if I'll varnish this bare, or apply a dark-mahogany stain like the rest of the furniture I've done over the years.

Will take some more photos after I decide how to coat it. Then there's the upholstery challenge. The padding and covering will all have to be done from scratch, the existing goods are too horrible to reuse.

1.21 Gigawatts !!

About 18 months ago I went through the house and documented every 240volt device. I dug around on the net to find power consumption values for these items in their POWER-OFF or idle state. It accumulated to the 200 watt range. That's insane. 200W, 24/7, with everything in the house TURNED OFF. Design at its worst.

So I made these:


It's a $6 inline switch, wired into a 2 meter extension cord. I made 5 of these, and put them at the major device hubs around the house. Each PC Desk, the TV corner, etc. Each switch has a piece of velcro on the back, and is placed in a subtle but reachable location at each hub. It's connected to the quad-adapter, or whatever you've got back there. So I flick the switch (which is easily reached), and that whole corner shuts down, really off, not just idle-mode. One switch fully turns off the entire group of devices: The TV, VCR, DVD, Stereo is one block for instance.

I should note, that even if a device LOOKS OFF, it may not be the case. The washing machine has a low voltage touch panel that is always active, despite no lights. There is a 240v to 6volt transformer running 24/7 behind the scenes. This sucker needs to be turned off at the wall. Phone chargers, plug packs etc, these are all the same deal.

We ditched our LED clocks (mains power, traditionally found as bedside clocks) for LED battery clocks. There's now 3 battery powered clocks in the house. Each of a different type. 1 LCD, 1 desktop analogue, 1 wall analogue. Each uses 1xAA battery; 2500mAH rechargeable NiMHD. I know from the past, that the analogue desktop clock lasts 2 YEARS on this battery. Interestingly, rechargeable batteries have an inherant voltage decay over time in the range of 1 to 6 months to fall significantly below 1.3 volts. So this makes the power consumption on these battery devices even more impressive. They run by magic. The Wall clock is still running on the same battery after a year. The bedside LED is still going...who knows when that will run out.


This quarters useage. Awesome!! $140.aud bill for 3 months, 2 adults ,3 bedroom / 2 bathroom home. Previously the cost for this duration was in the range of ~$200-$320.

I had a bit of a dig around. The average single / double occupant household seems to use in the realm of 18 to 24 KwH per day. So the figures you see here are awesome. (I'm at ~6.9KwH / day)



I've been using the switches for close to 18months, and they're clearly working. In conjunction with turning devices like the microwave and washing machine off, the only thing that runs 24/7 is our refridgerator. There aren't even any compact flurescent bulbs in the house, which would see a drop in daily consumption even further.

edit: a couple average use indicators. Strangely I couldn't find local ones.
http://www.washingtonelectric.coop/pages/understand.htm Some smalltime power company in the States.

http://pinchthatpenny.savingadvice.com/2007/10/02/average-daily-electricty-usage_30740/ A penny pincher, single occupant, who's using in the realm of 3 times more than I am. Makes me feel good, plus there's heaps more I can do to further reduce use.

edit: Some answers to global climate change sceptics. I'm a little tired of their (sceptics) rubbish stories quite frankly. http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html

The best graph in the Universe

This is the best graph in the Universe. Period.

Originally spotted this amongst the Manpollo project videos, but I'm sure it has an origin somewhere. Good stuff.