I read with interest about the new EU packaging directive the other week — among other things, there’s stuff in there about using as little packaging as possible. That is, the box you ship stuff in shouldn’t be bigger than necessary, which I think most of us will like — I think we’ve all (at some point or another) received a 60x60x20cm box containing a 0.5×0.5x4cm USB stick, right?
Anyway, today I was rudely awoken by a UPS guy who gave me the box above. It’s about the same height as I am.
Guess what it contains.
Yes, exactly — a few yards of fabric.
But I mean — I do appreciate that there are no folds or anything, so I’m probably whining unwarrantedly. I read a German article about the directive (can’t find it now) about how the directive was going to ruin all smaller businesses who didn’t have the requisite machines to pack things minimally…
I’ve always had a dream of having a proper workbench — a place where all the tools are in a handy drawer right next to me, and the bench being totally solid and not wobbly at all, and not having to be careful about the surfaces, and being able to just have a place to let half-finished projects just sit there and not having to be tidied away.
It’s a beautiful dream.
But I’d never thought I had room for something like this. Until I realised that I don’t really use my home office any more — I do all my computing on a laptop now. Which meant that I could put a workbench into the home office half of the guest room! No more crawling around on the floor when I’m woodworking and stuff! Whoho!
Reader, it was no whoho.
After deciding to do this, it took me a year and a half to get the bench.
First of all, almost all the companies that sell professional benches — the ones that are impractically big and heavy and solid — only sell to companies, because there is no market for this sort of thing. Second of all, I live on the upper floors of a building with no elevator, so even when I found a company that would sell to me, they said it was impossible to get somebody to carry it up the stairs.
Finally I found a company that would 1) sell one to me and 2) organise a moving company to take the bench from their manufacturing unit to my apartment, and then install it here.
Then, of course, that company lost the bench plate.
After three weeks of prodding them, they found it again, and now I have a workbench! It’s so solid! It’s so heavy! I can’t move it a millimetre even though I probably should move it lots of millimetres to the right! Whatever! I NOW HAVE A WORKBENCH
Behold! Organisation! Deeep drawers!
No longer are all the tools spread over four different cupboards!
But… it does look slightly more industrial than I’d like? Seen from this angle. So I wondered whether I could cover it with something…
How to vinyl wrap a cabinet door - step by step tutorial!
Hm…
And I’ve got this nice painting by Gary Panter…
Tada! I scanned the li’l painting and got a vinyl wrap company to print it. Is that against the law or something?
Well, that’s better. But, hm… aren’t the colours kinda more tealish than they were in the painting?
The colours are definitely not the same — Panter’s cats are green, while the vinyl wraps are teal. Or something. Is that my fault? It rather looks like they forgot to print one channel or something.
Yup, the scan is definitely green.
Oh, well.
I used Myposter… so I guess I can’t recommend them? But except for the bad colours, the printing seems nice, and the turnover time was one day or something.
I almost didn’t buy anything this month (after the bumper crop last month).
Let’s see…
Team Dresch - Growing Underground (Official Video)
The biggest news is, of course, that Team Dresch have a new album out! Almost 30 years after the previous one! And it’s good!
Charli xcx - No One Lasts Forever | Charli xcx at the BBC
And I finally got around to buying the new Charli XCX album. And… I love it? Yes. It’s both very funny and very touching at the same time. And it’s got a great flow — it just reminds me so much of the feeling (more than the music) of post punk albums from like 1982. And it’s so short that you just have to play it again after listening to it.
Chat Pile - PEN I S MALL (Official Music Video)
The new Chat Pile album is good, and it sounds very much like Chat Pile. But after a few listens, I don’t think it has a clear stand-out like Why, so I’m a bit disappointed.
Dean Blunt, Joanne Robertson - 6
And people were tweeting about Cross Bones Style (the Cat Power track from the 80s) saying that it sounds so much like Dean Blunt (twenty years later), and then somebody pointed specifically to this album, which I’d totally missed. Because it was only released as a zip file on Soundclound or something.
Sempra - Wicked N Ruff (UYA011)
Oh, and there’s another nice EP from Up Ya Archives. Drum’n’bass 4 Ever.
Ordering this fabric sample has really helped me with my decision as to whether to buy this fabric to use as curtains here, Svenskt tenn. Thanks! A lot!
(This is what the fabric looks like if you’re not only interested in the birds’ legs. Perhaps they assumed that I was a bird leg man.)
I’m also impressed with the “protect textiles from direct sunlight” warning here… super reassuring when we’re talking about a textile meant to be used as curtains.
I get annoyed with something, and then I go “I’ll buy/build this gadget, and that will make me less annoyed”. Which is true — I’ll be using the gadget for a while and almost every time I use it I’ll think “well, this really fixed that annoyance”. Success!
But then the gadget invariably breaks down, and I have to fix it.
And when you are so easily annoyed as I am; i.e., you have as many gadgets as I have, it seems to happen almost constantly.
Like this week — I had some electricians in to get some more juice in, and also replace some ancient downlights, and fix some issues, and etc etc. Which means taking the electricity for the apartment, and then flipping it on and off again a few times at random.
So I’m careful to switch all my actual computers off for real before they arrive, but I forget about some gadgets — like this box I have in the kitchen that plays music for me.
So after the electricians left, the screen was semi-dead, and after rebooting, the screen was totally dead.
*sigh* Time to do some debugging.
The thing is a Raspberry Pi 4, and after fishing it out of the box, it had a temperature of about 60C, which seems high? And it’s a Pi, which is notorious for having flaky HDMI, so is the problem the Pi or the screen?
The nice thing about Raspberries is that you can just put the SD card in another Pi and then boot up, and…
No, still the same problem, so it’s not the Pi.
But! Then it fixed itself!?
It’s alive! So it was the Pi!
And then rebooting again and…
So it’s not the Pi!
The screen is a Japanese Comics Screen 2, which was one of the very early small screens that were launched on Kickstarter, so…
But what if it’s the power supply? It’s USB powered, and powering via the Pi is perhaps just a tad too little juice? Even though it’s worked perfectly for two years?
So let’s get a USB wall wart in?
Yeah, OK, with the power directly from a USB wall wart it seems to work reliably?
Yes indeed — I’ve now rebooted it ten times, and it works every time.
So… either that was the problem, or it’s just something that’s going to reoccur in a couple of weeks.
It’s probably the cable.
I love debugging hardware!
In conclusion: I should probably get more gadgets to fix the problems I have with my gadgets.
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