Buffalo Creek - Again

Well, this is our favorite place to ride. We got some on Saturday, but it was a low energy day - a terrible ride for me. We got in 20, but I just wasn't up to it much. I thought I would post this picture of Tammi raging a bit. There are jumps everywhere - this is a small one and simply sweet, sweet singletrack.

Sandstone Creek

I was bantering with some Louisiana boys just the other day about the word creek. I say creek - they say kreck. There’s run and kill, stream, and many others, but where I grew up it was creek.

When I was small boy we lived on Gordon Road, just down the road from Tompkins Center and Sandstone Creek crossed the road just down the hill from the house. It was a dirt road then, the bridge was red, rusty metal with boards for tire tracks. In between the tire boards was space and water below. It used to scare me to death to cross the bridge - I thought for sure we would plunge headlong into the creek never to be seen again. The boards were just too skinny to support a car, or so I thought. I was terrified and excited all at the same time whenever we approached the crossing. It was replaced in about 1964.

Tompkins Center was a branch in the road and one store then. The store was every bit a country store and it too sat beside Sandstone Creek. You could buy nails and shovels and food and beer. Everyone knew my Grandpa, who used to take me there almost everyday while getting something (for my Grandma, who never drove, ever). I most often got a candy bar - Heath bars were my favorite. I would eat all the chocolate off then eat the center like a sucker. (Sucker is another one of those regional words) My Grandfather is buried just up the hill, about 100 yards from the store.

Sandstone creek ran clear; the banks were steep and generally sandy, always surrounded by trees edged with corn fields, and then small farms. The creek started at Minards Mill, just about two miles from our house. The mill was gone, many years past, and just a dam remained forming a shallow, lily-filled lake of maybe twenty-acres. Sandstone creek ran through the fields and farms of my youth and then into the Grand River. The Grand wasn't so clear, but the creek was glorious. Its clarity exemplified the times, my youth, and the country life as it exists in most people's imagination. The barns, the woods, and simple carefree freedom we enjoyed have now been replaced.

Just down from the store the creek cut steeply into the bank and someone put a rope swing. In the summer the water was cool and deep. If you swung too far the result wouldn't be very pretty. I would have to say the rope swings in the barns were far worse. I’m surprised we survived. I don't think anyone would ever allow a swing there today.

Although, Sandstone Creek is still there, I fear it is gone forever - changed by sands of time that our modern world blows too quickly away.

Puppy!

Well, the deed is done. Bridger's seen the puppies - now we're unquestionably getting one. Yes, news flash - I don't know if we're truly ready, but no going back now - we're getting a dog. They are little Airedales, just like Sabatchka. We will pick him/her up July first. The mom, Kendel, had 10 puppies and they are hungry little dudes too. We don't know which one we're going to get, we kind of want them all at this point, but $10,000 for new carpet doesn't sound too appealing either. So, it will be one. I'll keep you posted on the progress as I don't think we can stay away for too long.

Graduation!

I have to post about this - Tammi's done! With school that is, well at least the undergraduate degree. The news though is not that she is done, but in the style she did it.

She was three classes short of a double major, and she graduated summa cum laude. It was a huge class load and now a very long list. Summa cum laude is the highest possible category. She got two A- during school - one in some writing class and one in a painting class. Everything else was an A. This is with classes like; a year of Latin, physics, cell biology, advanced painting, two years of art history, chemistry, organic chemistry, and many others.

But, not only did she do this while being a mom to three kids (and a wife). She also was the most outstanding graduate for her college at the University of Colorado. Out of several thousand graduates, there were seven - one for each college. These seven did not go unnoticed at the graduation ceremony. This is her with the Chancellor and a Dean and holding the mace. (Just in case the Dean got out of hand)

At a separate gathering afterwards for the college , one of the faculty gave her a nice plaque and some very nice words, and everyone stopped her.

We're incredibly proud of her. She deserves more congratulations than you can possibly dish out. She starts her masters in environmental science in the fall and she is teaching two sections of environmental science labs in the fall.

Coffee table

I have some serious doubts about the coffee table design, and for the most part their are not aesthetic in nature. Although, I am still vacillating about a few things, they're minor. The most troublesome aspect is the tipping problem - despite my efforts at quantifying the exact magnitude of the the tip and weight required.

And, I've found out - rightly so. Fortuitously, Tammi & I have just run into a sculpturer through cub scouts who makes furniture. I popped him an email to see if he would give me some advice. Here's what he said - and this is great, "I am very learned on the subject of tippy tables, having built them almost entirely to the exclusion of stable ones." Tim is the perfect guy! He goes on to say:

"I do like the three legged idea, and the basically rectangular top that is responsible for those two overhanging corners that invite disaster. You might say I enjoy cantilever. I, too, have used ballast to achieve (or attempt to achieve) stability, including pouring molten lead into cavities in the wood, but in your case it seems to me that you could add additional, invisible or at least inconspicuous legs beneath the shelf, or a recessed base of a solid nature which would give you weight and an additional impediment to tipping. I hope you don't feel these solutions compromise the aesthetics of your design. It wouldn't take someone sitting on the corner of your table to upset it, indeed, leaning on one hand placed strategically would suffice. Believe me, I've gasped many a time as our kids have nearly upset the coffee table in our living room."

How perfect is that! His work, in part, is shown on his web site. Interestingly, Tim studied under several of the artists that have influenced Tammi - namely, Wayne Thiebaud & Roy DeForest. I look forward to getting to know Tim and seeing what happens with this little project.

So, I'm going to work on this a bit with Tim and hopefully we can come up with something unique and functional. At the very least, I haven't worked heavy sheet metal, or plate steel and wood together before so he will be a great asset on the connections that have worked for him. The joining of two , dissimilar items requires different kinds of connections.

Multa intersunt calicem et labrum summum.

Many things happen between the cup and the upper lip.

-Aulus Gellius (from a Greek proverb)

Wish I did this good in school

I don't believe this is 8th grade science, it's just a little too hard. It's a quick test - if you're a little older, ahem - like me, but are interested in all things science it's not too hard. If the last thing you read about science was in high school you might be in trouble. Have fun...no groaning.

A "D" or worse - no recess for you.

Spring

Spring has been slow in coming here in Denver, or at least our house. We sit high on a ridge south and east of Denver at about 6000 feet so spring comes at our house a bit later than even Denver. 800 feet make a big difference in terms of temperature and, in the spring, late snowfall. We received a lot of late snow (which melts in a day or two), and quite a bit cool weather. It's actually been nice to have a gradual temperature change from winter. The days have been in the mid-60's, so it might not be so cold as one might think; besides the sun at 6000 feet, whenever it shines, really puts out the heat!

Well anyway, spring is in the yard. The Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) is blooming nice big yellow blossoms. Perhaps, we'll get some small grapes in the fall. I love the red and green variations in the waxy leafs.

The xeriscape's first major group of flowers is Perennial Flax (Linum perenne). They're growing all over in nice blue patches. Its wiry, arching stems support a profusion of delicate, simple five petal, blue flowers which bloom for quite some time. And, it resists heat and will tolerate drought.

It seems the iris is up a bit early. I have a dwarf variety (Iris reticulata) in deep purples, mid-purple, and white. I have always been enthusiastic abut irises and remember them fondly in my grandmother's garden. These bloom quite a long time and the foliage isn't quite so large, so it doesn't dominate the summer garden too much. This picture reminds me of Van Gogh's Irises. It has the same qualities of the painting. Perhaps, it is just the purple. He painted a number of iris paintings after he checked himself into the loony bin. They were obviously the thing that caught his eye. Tammi says she wants to paint them too - perhaps I should keep out a close eye...

Of course, the grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) is up too. At least what the rabbits didn't get to - that's an on-going battle. I want to rain death and destruction on the jumping, fur covered, nasty, mass producing, bastards. I can't even get started on the little rodents - my blog would get black-listed.

As you can see, I like purple and yellow. I purposefully picked plants with these colors because they are complementary colors (opposite on the color wheel). A garden is most appreciated for its color, but when picking the plants and planning the garden people seldom pay attention to that color and how works together. It's like matching clothes, or painting a room - how the color works is very important to the artistic and ascetic quality. For example; red, purple, and pink just don't work too well though they are often lumped together in a group of plantings. Besides color, leaf type and size are important. Thinking about how the eyes moves across the canvas; that is creating "waves" and "flow", is an important consideration too. That effect can range from formal, to wave-like, and even into crazy - where the effect is somewhat jarring visually. The important point is forethought.

Anyway, it's nice to see the flowers. Soon, the mountains will be blooming too - that's the true show!

Buffalo Creek

Tammi and I managed to get up to Buffalo Creek again this week end. The weather was perfect for the most part. It blew up a bit of a storm during the last three miles, but no big deal. There was some snow left from last week's storm, but only about a dozen or so patches. With it, a little mud - but that only adds to the fun. We got in 18 miles of good, hard single track in good time - a good early season ride. The trail had a few blow-downs, but not like last week.

Otherwise, it was a typical week end - mow the lawn, clean the garage and all of the other stuff that gets in the way.

Stumbling...makes a new list!

The full shortlist for the 2007 Royal Society Prize for Science Books:

Homo britannicus, by Chris Stringer (Penguin Allen Lane)
Homo britannicus tells the epic story of the human colonisation of Britain, from our very first footsteps to the present day. Drawing on all the latest evidence and techniques of investigation, Chris Stringer describes times when Britain was so tropical that humans lived alongside hippos and sabre tooth tigers; and times so cold they shared the land with reindeer and mammoth; and times colder still when humans were forced to flee altogether.

In Search of Memory, by Eric R Kandel (WW Norton & Co)
Nobel laureate Eric R Kandel charts the intellectual history of the emerging biology of the mind, and sheds light on how behavioural psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and molecular biology have converged into a powerful new science. These efforts, he says, provide insights into normal mental functioning and disease, and simultaneously open pathways to more effective treatments.

Lonesome George, by Henry Nicholls (Macmillan)
Lonesome George is a 1.5m-long, 90kg tortoise aged between 60 and 200, and it is thought he is the sole survivor of his sub-species. Scientific ingenuity may conjure up a way of reproducing him, and resurrecting his species. Henry Nicholls details the efforts of conservationists to preserve the Galapagos' unique biodiversity and illustrates how their experiences and discoveries are echoed worldwide. He explores the controversies raging over which mates are most appropriate for George and the risks of releasing crossbreed offspring into the wild.

One in Three, by Adam Wishart (Profile Books)
When his father was diagnosed with cancer, Adam Wishart couldn't find any book that answered his questions: what was the disease, how did it take hold and what did it mean? What is it about cancer's biology that means it has not been eradicated? How close are we, really, to a cure? There was no such book. So he wrote it. One in Three interweaves two powerful stories: that of Adam and his father; and of the 200-year search for a cure.

Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert (Harper Press)
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert reveals how and why the majority of us have no idea how to make ourselves happy. The drive for happiness is one of the most instinctive and fundamental human impulses. In this revealing and witty investigation, psychologist Daniel Gilbert uses scientific research, philosophy and real-life case studies to illustrate how our basic drive to satisfy our desires can not only be misguided, but also intrinsically linked to some long-standing and contentious questions about human nature.

The Rough Guide to Climate Change, by Robert Henson (Rough Guides)
Robert Henson has written this guide to a pressing issue facing the world. The guide looks at visible symptoms of change on a warming planet, how climate change works, the evolution of our atmosphere over the last 4.5 billion years and what computer simulations of climate reveal about our past, present, and future. It looks at the sceptics' grounds for disagreement, global warming in the media and what governments and scientists are doing to try to solve the problem.

Yea!

This weekend Tammi and I got out to our favorite mountain biking area - Buffalo Creek. It was sweeeet to be out.

It's been a long winter. We usually start up Buck Gulch, which has a 1000 foot climb out of Pine Creek Ranch. Wow, definitely a long winter - I've got some work to do. All-in-all it wasn't horrible, but I definitely have some serious work-outs to put in.

There was only a little snow left above 7500 feet, but I think it was just about the first week-end the trails were rideable. But, the mountains got hammered yesterday, so I expect this weekend is out. The trails in Buffalo Creek are some of the best, and perhaps, arguably the best in Colorado and thus, just about anywhere. (There are some better sections - trail 465 in Crested Butte, Frutia, the Flume in Winter Park, but not whole areas) And, what makes them so good is just how rideable they are. Well, it's a mess up there now, at least Buck Gulch and Strawberry Gulch. There are hundreds of trees down and the usually wide open trails are now clogged with downed trees. In some of the burned areas the winter blow-downs are simply a spring occurrence, but good, healthy Ponderosa blowing down is something entirely different. I suppose the winds must have been once in a century winds because many older Ponderosa Pines were down - some of them more than 200 years-old. I'm sure it will get cleared quickly, and I wish I could help, but the shear number of down trees will take quite a mechanized effort.

One of the unique things about Buffalo Creek is the burns. The first burn, the Buffalo Creek fire was in 1996, the second; the High Meadows Fire was in 2000. The Hayman Fire, the big kahuna, didn't make it over Green Mountain, but is very close (the Hayman Fire is the largest fire in Colorado's history burning 138,000 acres and 600 buildings. It rained down ash at our house almost 50 miles away and I remember, the day was almost black as night in downtown Denver - the entire city was shrouded in a dense, black, choking smoke). These are all big burns. Most of the time, an area is avoided after a burn, but the Forest Service has created this special mountain biking area using the burns and I really enjoy ridding through them. The flowers are terrific and the wide-open space unparalleled. The tracks are smooth and fast.

I don't know how many miles of single track there are, but it's easy to do a forty-mile ride and never go down the same trail. I suppose there are about sixty to seventy-miles of excellent trails - there simply isn't any junk. Most of the climbs are between 800 and 1000 feet and a good rides will get you four good climbs. The down hills are pure joy. The important part to remember is that these trails were designed for mountain bikes so there are no blind curves, unrideable sections, or bad rutting.

Anyway, this is our big work-out room and we love it - it's good to be back in the saddle.

Happiness

Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Gilbert is an interesting guy. He is high school dropout and the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and he has a top-selling book. Amazon recently named Stumbling on Happiness their #7 book of 2006 in the category of Business, and their #1 book of 2006 in the category of Mind, Body, and Health. Both the Washington Post (in the US) and the Globe & Mail (in Canada) named it one of the best books of 2006. Stumbling is in its 7th hardback printing. I can usually boil down a book into some general ideas, but this one, for me, defies easy classification or some quick descriptive sentences.


Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favorite thinkers, is quoted on the cover (see Recent & Recommended), so I was interested right away. Steven Levitt obviously liked it a lot too and he is also one of those divergent thinkers who, along with Gladwell replace standard perceptions with compelling and interesting new ideas that tend to throw the status quo off a bit.

This book really isn't about happiness at all, at least not in the sense that you're thinking. Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human endeavor to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there. So, it's not about how to obtain happiness, but how we envision happiness between our two little ears.

Here's an excerpt -



What would you do right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes? Would you race upstairs and light that Marlboro you've been hiding in your sock drawer since the Ford administration? Would you waltz into your boss's office and present him with a detailed description of his personal defects? Would you drive out to that steakhouse near the new mall and order a T-bone, medium rare, with an extra side of the really bad cholesterol? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do in your final ten minutes, it's a pretty safe bet that few of them are things you actually did today.

Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it were your last, which only goes to show that some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor's witless jokes, read books like this one when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become. We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take responsibility for the welfare of our future selves, squirreling away portions of our paychecks each month so they can enjoy their retirements on a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so they can avoid coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty diapers and mind-numbing repetitions of The Cat in the Hat so that someday they will have fatcheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps. Even plunking down a dollar at the convenience store is an act of charity intended to ensure that the person we are about to become will enjoy the Twinkie we are paying for now. In fact, just about any time we want something—a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger—we are expecting that if we get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, minute, day, or decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us, honoring our sacrifices as they reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance.

Yeah, yeah. Don't hold your breath. Like the fruits of our loins, our temporal progeny are often thankless. We toil and sweat to give them just what we think they will like, and they quit their jobs, grow their hair, move to or from San Francisco, and wonder how we could ever have been stupid enough to think they'd like that. We fail to achieve the accolades and rewards that we consider crucial to their well-being, and they end up thanking God that things didn't work out according to our shortsighted, misguided plan. Even that person who takes a bite of the Twinkie we purchased a few minutes earlier may make a sour face and accuse us of having bought the wrong snack. No one likes to be criticized, of course, but if the things we successfully strive for do not make our future selves happy, or if the things we unsuccessfully avoid do, then it seems reasonable (if somewhat ungracious) for them to cast a disparaging glance backward and wonder what the hell we were thinking. They may recognize our good intentions and begrudgingly acknowledge that we did the best we could, but they will inevitably whine to their therapists about how our best just wasn't good enough for them.

How can this happen? Shouldn't we know the tastes, preferences, needs, and desires of the people we will be next year—or at least later this afternoon? Shouldn't we understand our future selves well enough to shape their lives—to find careers and lovers whom they will cherish, to buy slipcovers for the sofa that they will treasure for years to come? So why do they end up with attics and lives that are full of stuff that we considered indispensable and that they consider painful, embarrassing, or useless? Why do they criticize our choice of romantic partners, second-guess our strategies for professional advancement, and pay good money to remove the tattoos that we paid good money to get? Why do they experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation? We might understand all this if we had neglected them, ignored them, mistreated them in some fundamental way—but damn it, we gave them the best years of our lives! How can they be disappointed when we accomplish our coveted goals, and why are they so damned giddy when they end up in precisely the spot that we worked so hard to steer them clear of? Is there something wrong with them?

Or is there something wrong with us?

When I was ten years old, the most magical object in my house was a book on optical illusions. Its pages introduced me to the Müller-Lyer lines whose arrow-tipped ends made them appear as though they were different lengths even though a ruler showed them to be identical, the Necker cube that appeared to have an open side one moment and then an open top the next, the drawing of a chalice that suddenly became a pair of silhouetted faces before flickering back into a chalice again (see figure 1). I would sit on the floor in my father's study and stare at that book for hours, mesmerized by the fact that these simple drawings could force my brain to believe things that it knew with utter certainty to be wrong. This is when I learned that mistakes are interesting and began planning a life that contained several of them. But an optical illusion is not interesting simply because it causes everyone to make a mistake; rather, it is interesting because it causes everyone to make the same mistake. If I saw a chalice, you saw Elvis, and a friend of ours saw a paper carton of moo goo gai pan, then the object we were looking at would be a very fine inkblot but a lousy optical illusion. What is so compelling about optical illusions is that everyone sees the chalice first, the faces next, and then—flicker flicker—there's that chalice again. The errors that optical illusions induce in our perceptions are lawful, regular, and systematic. They are not dumb mistakes but smart mistakes—mistakes that allow those who understand them to glimpse the elegant design and inner workings of the visual system.

The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They too have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight. That's what this book is all about. Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you've bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why. Instead, this is a book that describes what science has to tell us about how and how well the human brain can imagine its own future, and about how and how well it can predict which of those futures it will most enjoy. This book is about a puzzle that many thinkers have pondered over the last two millennia, and it uses their ideas (and a few of my own) to explain why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become. The story is a bit like a river that crosses borders without benefit of passport because no single science has ever produced a compelling solution to the puzzle. Weaving together facts and theories from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, this book allows an account to emerge that I personally find convincing but whose merits you will have to judge for yourself.

Give it a try - it will change what you think about the future and if you think about it long enough change a bit about happiness.

Some additional stuff on Amazon.

Coffee Table

One advantage of making furniture is that you can match your existing stuff precisely in the way that you please. One disadvantage to making furniture is that you can match your stuff precisely in the way you please. The how becomes the question - a big question. The design becomes quite a laborious process fraught with false starts, bad ideas, and half-baked plans and quite a bit of uncertainty. With all the time and energy invested in the construction the design also dons a heavy mantel of importance.

Since I finished the nightstands our bedroom has improved quite a bit. We added a very modern touch to the whole room by adding brushed metal lamps, modern blown glass, and some modern sculpture (made by Tammi). We pulled off the mix pretty well, but I want to add a table in front of the couch - a coffee table that matches the antiques. But, I want to pull in a modern look too. I thought I would go through the design process a little and this design is fairly simple; that is, it doesn't have working parts, functionality, or other complications.

Off course, the Victorians didn't have coffee tables as such, but I could make a rectangular one with the same wood, construction, and finish. It would look like a coffee table, but match the old furniture. But, I think it might look a bit silly - kind of a fake antique masquerading as a coffee table. The form really doesn't lend itself to just anything you might expect to see. The obvious problem is; where's the "modern" in that? So, I thought about how to make it modern in more than just form - how about a brushed metal top with the remaining looking like the Victorian furniture? I thought about this for a while and thought it might look like a fake antique with a silly metal top. It simply needs something more.


Somehow, I need to suggest the shape and finish of the antiques without creating some goofy mix. While thinking about shape I started looking at pictures of purely modern furniture. This got me thinking about a incorporating some curves that suggest a certain style of modern furniture. One particular thing that bothered me was four legs. Everything has four legs and four legs seemed boring. What if I made the legs exactly the same as the antiques, but lost one and moved the third around close to the middle. This led me to draw this. In plan, the purple is the top and the orange is the shelve underneath. The legs and bottom shelve are of the same material and finish as the antiques. The top, metal, with a shape like the antiques. I thought I was on to something so I got started in CAD and drew and tweaked until I came up the proportions I liked.



Here is what that looks like. It might be a little hard to see, but if you double click I think you can make it out. The top view is the important one. You can see the bottom juxtaposed with the more traditional shape of the top and the location of the third leg. I intend to use wood under the metal top with exactly the same profiles as the antiques have. Thus, I have the same shape top with the same molding, but it is metal. I have the same exact legs, but there are three. The bottom shelve looks exactly like the tops, but it is a funky shape. Every element of the antiques is present, but no element is exactly the same and offers a bit of a surprise. It will be more like a modern piece that suggests the antiques and might blend the antique/modern look - maybe.


I think it will work, but I'm still not sure. Time for a model so I can see what it might look like. I printed out the CAD plan and used the printed version to scale a model. Out to the shop for a bit to make a quick table - a very little table. Now I have a bit of something to look at - shop if you will. Here are some pictures of the model. I think I like it, but I could have some problem with tipping as I located the middle leg off-center a bit. Even if it were centered I would most likely have the same problem. It, after all, is a three-legged table.


I decided I needed to do some testing on how much weight it would take to tip the table. When you tip this little scale model with your finger it seems to tip very easily. I took it to work and used the postal scale. The table weighs 1.1 oz. and it took 1.8 and 1.9 ounces placed on either corner (paper clips) to tip the table. A little math and an excel spread sheet produced the following calculations. (the calculation is - assumed weight/1.1 x 1.9 or 1.8) Thus, I can see (if I did things right) that if the table weighed about 40 pounds (I think it will weigh more, but I want to go low) a weight of somewhere between 62 and 72 pounds placed on the corners would make the table tip. That gives me a 20% spread on my calculations. I hope the calculations are right - I'm not known for being a math wiz! I think it unlikely that that much weight would be placed on one corner unless someone decides to sit on it. The most likely person to do that is Bridger, but he will most likely only do it once! As a last resort, if I did this all wrong, I can place some weigh under the bottom shelve located on the side with the two legs.

Now the question is; am I truely convenced the design meets my expectations and when it is finished it will really look good?

Passion, Age & Identity

"Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?"
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Passion is the mirror of identity and identity the mirror of passion.

Many people define themselves by what they do or how they relate to others - a mom, an attorney, a racer, a biker, a web designer, an executive, a husband, or an artist. And I would guess, that even those that might deny it most likely do so. This "self-identity" often contains more than one definition. Someone might see themselves as a racer and a dad, or an attorney and a biker or even an artist, a mom, and a biker. Actually, having many passions is healthy. (Too many might be a problem - gee never been there....) Intellectual pursuits, the pursuits of family, and physical pursuits, all in sync, are the mark of a balanced life and most likely a balanced person. Often these self-identities happen to also be our passions. Joesph Campbell in "The Power of Myth" called this following your bliss.

People are fulfilled and happiest when their passion is also what they do - be it a job or some athletic pursuit, hobby, or other things they spend their time on. Certainly, the pursuit of our passions fills us with deep satisfaction.

Sometimes age overcomes our passions - we change. Lost passion isn't necessarily a bad thing - sometimes we just move on. The difficultly comes in the letting go and not loosing our identities. I once defined myself as a climber - it was truly a passion. I still love it, but now it doesn't dominate my life. I've simply have other passions now, but I still am that climber and all that I learned is still with me. (see Recreating Ones' Self) Some people get lost when passion fades, and it does so naturally, just as it should. When this happens they suddenly don't know what they are, where they're going, and what to do. There is most likely some of this in a mid-life crisis. I would go so far as to say each new decade brings new passions - I guess the trick is learning to move on to new things while still keeping our personal perspective in place. That sense of who we are and where we're going is very central to everyday life.

It is also important that our passions define us in a healthy way. For example, some might define themselves by their beauty and as they grow old the vain attempt not to loose that identity presents the world with a sad picture indeed. I think it goes without saying that our passions need to be healthy. I'm really not discussing unhealthy pursuits - that's another topic altogether.

"One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested."
— E. M. Forster

"With out passion you don't have energy, with out energy you have nothing."
— Donald Trump

Painting by Tammi Brazee, Seeing Red 2006 (kind-of reminded me of many passions)

Night stand (final post)

Here's the final set -

Wikinomics

In the traditional business model a company dreams up a product, builds the prototype, develops the product through testing, accomplishes quality control and then brings the product to market. That paradigm is ending, or at least changing. This isn't just some new business theory - it a fundamental change in the way things are getting done. In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. Wikinomics is mainly about innovation and how web-based collaboration is driving it. Also, the book speaks to organizational dynamics and how the web is eating away at traditional hierarchies.

In the book, Wikinomics the , the authors document a new trend, a new way of getting things done that is changing traditional model in major ways. The word "wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian, and here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology.



























In Google News I ran across a story about a new product Adobe is putting out called Photshop Lightroom 1.0. The software was freely available as a beta version for just over a year during which Adobe used its market; the professional photographer, to develop the final version. They called it a massive collaborative effort. While launching the new digital photography software, John Loiacono, senior vice president, Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe, has said, “It’s an unlikely scenario that professional photographers would moonlight as software developers,” adding further that “Fortunately for us, they were willing to give it a shot. Everything, from image viewing and evaluation tools to time saving editing features, was developed with the help of photographers. This was truly a collaborative effort and we extend our thanks to everyone who provided invaluable feedback to help us deliver a powerhouse professional photography tool.”

Wow, how's that for a new way to do business - allow the users to develop the product. The company saves most of the R&D cost, creates a better product, perhaps a cheaper product, and it's exactly what the end user wants. The beta version expires at the end of this month and the new version is available now.

This is an interesting trend and I recommend the book. Now only do you begin to see a new business model, but a new societal shift. (Witness Adobe in the news just today) For those who loved The World is Flat, but got lost in the global scope, Wikinomics focuses on our real-time world. Wikinomics focuses on the impact of recent technologies, and on the way business must conduct themselves for the future, if they want to thrive.

If you study this graphic a bit you can begin to see the power of global mind - wasn't there an old Star Trak about a race who existed in one body - a giant mind? I digress - here it is...

Night Stand (post ten)

Well, the night stands are done. I spent about two weeks finishing the pair. Here's the process in thumbnail - first, I mixed a aniline dye and thoroughly covered the entire piece, inside and out. After some sanding (because the water raised the grain) I coated the pair in a coat of varnish thinned with mineral spirits. This sealed the dye and allowed me to then rub in gel stain. I used a mahogany gel stain which colored the deep grain of the oak in an even, dark color matching the aged appearance of the original pieces I attempted to match. After this was thoroughly rubbed in I then put on 3 coats of poly. I put a few more coats on the top sanding between coats to level the surface.

After this was all complete I installed the hardware.

Night Stand (post nine)

The last remaining items to build are the drawers. Drawers require a quite a bit of material and thus a quite a bit of milling. For the sides, I took a large board of Alder and cut it into 1/2" thick sections to produce the sides and back. I used Poplar for the bottom. These had to be glued up because of the 16" depth. All this milling and gluing took quite some time.
I planned out how I wanted the dovetails to look and then cut each part just a bit larger than needed to fit in the drawer holes. Going back and forth between the stand and the work bench and using various hand planes produced pieces that fit exactly into each space. The drawers will have no modern slides so they must fit very precisely in order to work and not bind.

Once this was complete the dovetails were cut using a dovetail jig and a router.
















The end result looks like this.

















After all of the pieces are milled and fit and dovetailed the drawers were assembled. As usual, the bottoms of the drawers float as a panel and are not glued. Once glued, the drawers are final fit into each drawer slot until they slide nicely.

Next, to finish.

Night Stand (post eight)

It has been a few days since my last post, but I had some redundant work to do - gluing up the second stand. After I removed the clamps from the second stand I finished the tops routing a 5/8 radius on the underside and hand cutting a radius on the front corners. I then attached them to the stands. Next, I milled a some small blocks that attach to the top and fit into the dado milled into the sub-top.










They are shown above and loosely fit into the groove. These blocks will be screwed from the bottom to secure the top. The top then fits tightly, but can move without either splitting and cracking or tearing apart the joints below.

Next, the four doors. These are similar in construction to the rest of the stand - mortise and tenon construction with a floating panel; however, I used a thicker piece of wood and raised the panel putting the raised section toward the inside.






















The center stiles are half-lapped with a beaded edge run down the center. The center of the doors are cut at 2 degrees off of 90 so the doors don't bind when shutting. This all was done on the table saw and the router table. You might notice I have drawn exactly what I need to do the end of the center stile so it can't get screwed-up. After many steps it really sucks to mess up and have to go all the way back through to recreate the piece.





After gluing up the doors they are fit into each opening. There are a couple of things I can point out with the proportions of the doors. (you may have to click on the picture to see this) Notice that the bottom rail is the widest. Although, you may not realize it, a door with all of the rails and stiles the same width looks odd. Also notice that the center stiles are each much smaller, but together make up about the width of a regular stile. Next, I start the drawers.

Night Stand - glue up (post seven)

I had a list of about half-a-dozen items to finish before I was ready for a dry run for glue-up, one of which was to put a small bevel in the front legs. Both of the pieces I'm matching have such a bevel; although both are a little stronger than what I want to make. This is accomplished on the table saw with a small jig I threw together from scraps. After beveling the leg the cut is cleaned up with a hand plane.












With all of the pieces cut and all of the miscellaneous items complete I'm finally ready for the dry run. This is the fun part as I now get to see what everything will look like and how all my joints fit. One of the important elements of the dry run is making sure that I can fit, glue, and clamp everything in the order I anticipate. This is something that can get screwed up during the glue-up, so everything has to be just right. Here's the final stack. What's missing are all the drawer and door parts.


















Many of the parts are numbered and identified either one or two (I'm making two), but not all; so as I fit each piece I will note inside/down, etc... so I don't have any unexpected problems and so any defects in the wood face in. Glue-up needs to go as quickly as possible. It took about 45 minutes to get to this. Now to take it back apart and glue it up.























Here's what it looks like all clamped.























Now, the only thing that remains during this phase is attaching the sub-top. It gets screwed onto the end of each leg. I don't have to worry about wood movement so screws work well. These four screws will be the only fasteners in the stand (except for the hinges). Tammi and the kids are coming back tonight so I will go much slower now. Next, is to glue up the other stand and start and the doors. I also need to buy the hinges so I can make sure, as I make the doors, that everything will work.

Night stand - the details (post six)

The first chore for today was to remove the clamps from last nights glue-ups and clean them up. The wood seldom, despite your best efforts, matches up flush, so a hand plane cleans up the joint. Notice in the picture you can see where the boards joined at the edge, but not in the middle. That's the goal - here's the picture.







Next, the panel is trimmed to size and a tongue was milled into each side. This will become a floating panel - similar to a door or the sides. I used the tablesaw.


















In the following pictures you can see the panel as it fits into the bottom stretcher (it has the tenon on the end) and in the second picture the way the tenon fits into the same groove or dado that the panel fits into. I won't glue these up until I assemble the entire stand.















I also need to put the half-round profile on the under-top glued up yesterday. This is done on the router table. It is very simple - insert the bit, make a couple of passes and the job is complete.


















Here's what it will look like.


















Now, for some hand work. The bottom shelve will fit into a recess in the back legs. This is done by hand - well mostly, I did waste part of the cut with a drill bit. The square is marked out, the center is wasted with a forstner bit and the remainder is chiseled out. The shelve will fit into the hole.










This is part of the "stack" - I'll soon be ready to assemble! I won't make the drawer or the doors until the stand is assembled so I can fit the pieces. I have the rough sizes cut, but before I do the dovetails I need the drawer front to be the exact final size.