Sparkle Zone color. There’s a reason why we call this room of our house the ‘Sparkle Zone.’ +1
October 10, 2023
Daily Life
October 3, 2023
Testing, testing. One, two, three — Two outpatient visits to the hospital today for some tests. Ultrasound in the morning, and my annual cardiology checkup in the afternoon. All my results were good. In a little experiment, I used AI to obfuscate the personal information in the image. It makes a nice change from pixelating it.
October 1, 2023
Bowed — before I threw away the bowed worktop I’d set aside as a workbench top, I decided to check how bad it was: 5/16-inch over 36 inches. No, I wasn’t going to be able to use it for anything, so into the trash, it went.
September 30, 2023
Small Product Photography Setup — Once we’ve been using it for a while and know what we like and don’t like, I’ll tidy away the cables and power supplies. Until then, it’s going to be a bit messy.
September 23, 2023
Harbinger — The yellow light at sunset is a warning of the incoming storm.
September 23, 2023
Lanie’s been in Europe since December. It’s been my job to give her car a run out every now and then while she’s gone. One has to do these things in style 🙂 +1
September 19, 2023
Table saw cart — completed (for now). That’s another job finished. As I hoped, the dust collection seems to work well. I also made a zero clearance saw blade insert for the saw. +1
September 11, 2023
Building my table saw cart. One-minute read, +4
September 8, 2023
New workbench storage — I have finally updated the storage area above my workbench. There used to be five plastic cat litter boxes on the shelf. I made these five wood boxes in an afternoon, so the finish isn’t furniture level, but they fit the space well and look much better. +2
September 8, 2023
Hitachi C10FR Table Saw — My next project. It’s a very well-used worksite jobbing saw I’ve had for a few years. I’ve spent time setting it up, so it is accurate enough for my purposes. However, it is time to make some improvements. I’m going to replace the base with a wheeled cart with adjustable height to match my workbench. The saw sprays sawdust around when it is running, so, most importantly, I’ll be adding dust collection. +1
September 1, 2023
Hibiscus — Hollywood. Our hibiscuses have generally been a bit ‘Meh’ this year, so this one stood out. The blue tinge is due to reflected skylight, not coloring.
September 1, 2023
Doorstop — another test shot to get a feel of the workflow with the new storage and table.
September 1, 2023
Knife — A quick test of the new photography table. Jim gave me the knife a few months ago, I’m not sure where he got it from. It’s more for decoration than anything else. It’s very heavy and made, I’m told, from surgical steel. I suspect it’s from India (the maker’s mark has been removed). The piece of driftwood was sent to us by a friend of Ginger’s in Sweden. It was washed up on the Baltic coast and is amazingly lightweight.
September 1, 2023
Set up for a quick test — I used a small hand-held fill in light for the test pictures. It has finely adjustable color temperature and brightness.
August 31, 2023
Sparkle Zone Storage Center, Stage Two, almost complete — Some final adjustments to the bottom doors to be made. There is still some minor work and finishing touches to be completed. Apart from that, all done. +5
August 30, 2023
A costly mistake… At $70 per door, and I ruined two doors before I realized my error. I forgot to allow for the Inset panel (at 3/16-inch) when selecting screws to mount the doors on cross braces. That brings my ‘Cock-up Account’ up to $200 in a couple of months (don’t ask).
August 26, 2023
Sparkle Zone Storage Center, Stage One, almost complete. Now for the fiddly bit of the end panel and the ‘fill-in’ panels. That big gap — that’s a special space, and will be Stage Two!
August 26, 2023
It fits — Carcasses fitted to the wall, this, and fitting the doors is the easy bit.
August 26, 2023
Will it work? Dry fit. Just eyeballing it to make sure we like the use of space, and checking I hadn’t messed up my size calculations.
August 26, 2023
Boxes — I was going to custom build the Sparkle Zone Storage Center, but we realized we could save a lot of time (but not $$$ — the doors alone were nearly $700) by bringing in ready-made units. I volunteered my friend Tom and his pickup to help me collect the boxes and the large 8ft by 3ft end panel. The truck’s bed was full to overflowing.
August 26, 2023
An empty wall equals storage potential. Recently we’ve been on the lookout for more storage space. We have also been looking for somewhere with space, that we can use for small product photography. The south facing windows of the ‘Sparkle Zone’ offer good light and, we realized, space for storage of our photography gear — and more.
August 25, 2023
I finally found a use for one of the few small rock samples I have collected over the years.
I also tried out some new (to me) technologies in creating this post.
August 19, 2023
Rumpled — I loved the play of light, how the duvet mimics the shapes of two people lying back-to-back, and the stories implicit in the folds and wrinkles of the duvet and sheet.
July 31, 2023
Backpacking gear to the rescue — Making breakfast and charging my phone while the power is out. We were lucky, we only went without power for 21 hours. +1
April 23, 2023
Nightstand. Lighter, knife, and wallet — Little quirks that may be missed when I’m no longer around. And yes, I do lay them out like this every night.