I’m 26 and it’s my birthday.

I’m in class and surrounded by 17 year old students that are taking macroeconomics as a Summer Scholar course.

It’s a pretty sobering way to realize that I’m now some old guy.

Woo! Yeah!

My boss, Kevin Brennan, made mention of airline bottles a couple of months ago for a project that we were considering, and since there were two boxes at work I decided to build a minibar to check the aesthetic. It also gave me a chance to try out a new shelf design.

I wanted to do this as a simple “construction material” piece; I wanted it to be raw wood that looked elegant with no finishing. No shellac, no sanding, no wood glue or clamps to close natural gaps created when fitting pieces together. This shelf system can be built by anyone in twenty minutes. And to prove that Vitra or Droog should hire me as an outsider layman designer the entire production can be dissasembled and packed into a cardboard box that’s 12×6x21 inches, and the only tool needed for assembly is a hard soled shoe.

I constructed the display shelves from a single ten foot 2×12. Each shelf was produced by making a single cut in multiples of 3 from the end of the source material. The first shelf is a piece 3″ high , the second is 6″ and so on until 21″ is reached. This gives us seven tiers on which to lay bottles. The prototype was assembled with 1.50″ drywall screws for their small threads and lower aptitude for grain distortion, but in hindsight it would have been much more authentic to use 0.50″ wooden dowels in two point five inch lengths.

I am pleased with the results, and it has been received very well. I’m calling it the 3x shelf system. [Read: Three times shelf system]

Also, installed a Bouroullec algues screen from Centro in Rita’s apartment this Sunday. Rita chose to do the screen in dark green with some white accents, and it came out very well. We were forced to immediately change the lighting around in her living room to accomodate the fluid lines of the screen. This piece looks best with soft even light on both sides of it. Any lighting that can be classified as “striking” will ruin the effect.

In the interest of kids with guitars everywhere I’ve decided to show off some of my poorly recorded songs. Everything here was done in front of my computer with a $3 microphone. You’ll notice both kinds of music here: Country and Western.

Arsclan Forever - A love song for #arsclan

Fifteen Men - The Standard Pirate Song

A Gospel Medley - 3 chord hyms

Good Guys Don’t Wear White - Originally recorded by Minor Threat, a great song about being out of step

Happy Birthday, Calvin - A little song I threw together in five minutes for Calvin’s birthday a few years ago

Devil to Pay - Originally done by Johnny Cash. A great song about trying to warn someone about a lifestyle of destructive behavior

If you’ve got a guitar, record something. No one cares if your voice is a bit off, or if you only know three chords. Just do SOMETHING. Try. You know why The Ramones made thir own style? They weren’t good enough to play anything on the radio.

Some of you may remember when the Internet Archive first allowed you to get all kinds of public domain films. Educational, instructional, crazy - They had it all.

Just stumbled across one of their newer projects: The Live Music Archive. It’s exciting because this is a chance to hear shows that were happening back when I was just a wee lad. A 1981 Minutemen show? 1984 Billy Bragg? I’m in and I’m on it.

The selection is seriously decent though heavy on bands that never acheived VH1 status due to the obvious legal issues.

Some favorite bands of mine:
Billy Bragg
The Minutemen
Mike Watt
Fugazi
The Toasters