All posts in Quincy

Laptop Wall Mount Design

Improving my home studio is somewhat of a hobby. I recently designed a custom laptop wall mount as shown below to reduce desktop clutter. When looking around for available products I found very few options. The best I came across was a vertical desk stand for Macbook Pros. The trouble with this design is it would take up precious desk space. So, I chose to design something myself.

What you see below is a collaboration between my father and myself. I provided the preliminary design concept and he made a few adjustments and built it in his workshop. It’s a functional design and perfectly suited for my needs. The materials include Peruvian Walnut, aluminum with felt padding to protect the laptop from scratches.

I do wonder if others have a similar need and am considering trying to create and market it as a product. Thoughts?

Laptop Holder

Laptop Holder

Laptop Holder

Macbook Wall Mount

Cole Elijah Web Studio

Snowpocalypse 2011

So it snowed big this year. In fact it was a Tulsa record. 14″ of snow in a single storm. Fortunately we didn’t loose power or anything overly traumatic. We were trapped inside for almost three days (at present) before things even started to regain order. Schools were closed, roads unpaved and general shutdown for the entire city it seemed. Here are a few photos I shot the morning after. These are around the Swan Lake district near Cherry St. Tulsa.

Man-Zone Update

A much needed update on the basement. I’d been excited to get back to the basement project and finally made some time to do so. Since completing the electrical and partition walls I am finally getting the paint knocked out. I thought the “mid century orange” would give the room some life. It’s definitely bright but it makes the space seem much more enjoyable to me. I’ve still got one more light coat to go but the Behr paint I used (with primer in mix) covered amazingly well – I would highly recommend. I’d also been without water downstairs since I redid the plumbing with PEX. I had run the lines but had a very hard time figuring out the faucet situation. Being vintage cast iron built in sinks I could not find any type of faucet that would fit the pair of holes. I could have made the sinks work with hose bibs (like you see on a garden hose spigot) but I didn’t think that would be all that attractive and it would have been a hastle no doubt. I opted to craft my own faucet out of copper. This way I could convert over from PEX to copper as well as reduce down to one faucet rather than two. The head swivels to power either sink. I also built a wooden cutting board of sorts to cover one sink if not in use.

What’s your Walk Score?

Where can you walk from here? This website will not only tell you what is within walking distance of your location but will also rank you based on their 100 point scale. Pretty cool if you are into Walkable Urbanism. Also, I respect this as a developer being that Walkscore has utilized Google’s content in a very beneficial way. I believe they have taken the Google Maps API and integrated this into their own app. I’m always a fan of utilizing existing technologies rather than reinventing the wheel.

http://www.walkscore.com

My address scores 82/100 (very walkable). I knew moving in this address had a lot to walk to but its nice to see it rank well.

My work address scores 94/100 (walker’s paradise). Wow! As long as you are not there at night there is a lot to walk to.

They also have an iphone app that is pretty neat. Same data but it fits nicely on the phone and will tell you the score of your location as well as display the interactive Google map with hotspots for all the local destinations. This will be really handy when traveling I think.

Electrical Work Underway

As with any 89 year old house there are a few updates necessary along the way. In our case there have been far more than a few but I happen to enjoy that kind of thing. We are currently upgrading the electrical panel. Since we built the much nicer, taller deck the overhead lines are a little scary. Combined with the dangers of old wiring and the inconvenience of having fuses not breakers and so few circuits this upgrade will be a huge step up. To my surprise there was a huge discrepancy between pricing. I had called four electricians with varying legitimacy all of which wanted between $2000-6000 to do the job. I couldn’t believe the cost and was determined to do better. I ended up finding not one but two great guys of of Craigs List and had my choice of men able to do the job for $1200. This seemed fair considering the other bids I’d seen but did leave me responsible for digging the trench to accommodate the underground line.

I rented the trencher, then rented a couple of laborers and got the job done. Along the way a baby possum fell out of the tree right next to us, which you will see below. Additionally we found that a large snake living in the backyard. One of my daylabors was certain it was a rattlesnake but I can’t be sure yet but will think twice about going outside barefoot or digging around on my hands and knees. Eek!