IKEA Hack finished: Värde Doggie Housebench

As detailed on these pages back in October, I started our first real IKEA Hack project at the tail end of the kitchen renovation. We wanted a bench for the dining room and a place for our Bichons to sit while we ate. In October, I did the first part of the project—building the carcass of the bench from two 27 inch Värde wall cabinets, fastened side by side, and six Capita legs. And there the project sat while we finished the kitchen and took care of some other work around Christmas. I did manage to trim down a section of a Pronomen countertop, which had been in temporary use in our kitchen before we started the project

This weekend I finally got around to finishing the project, which entailed fastening the countertop to the bench base with 1 3/4 inch #10 Phillips screws. If I had to do it over again, I would have laid some felt down between the countertop and the bench carcass, because I notice an occasional squeak from the bench. But overall it’s a pretty functional unit, and it’s rock solid. And the dogs love it—we put in 24″ dog beds and now if we’re in the dining room, they’re in the bench. If they’re not begging, that is.

Photos from both stages of the project, now including the finished bench top, are on Flickr.

A new Nick Drake tape

Since Nick Drake is basically the patron saint of obscure, beautiful, depressive singer-songwriters—the proto-Elliott Smith, if you will—hearing that a new album of Nick Drake rarities, none of which have ever been heard before, is a little like hearing that the Police are going to reunite: one is both excited and a little afraid to hear what is coming. The late Mr. Drake will be playing SXSW—or so it would seem, with a documentary, panel discussion, and set of tribute acts scheduled to show up.

All of the above is not bad for a guy who was legendarily unknown even to his record company: in the press release for Drake’s final album Pink Moon, the Island Records guys said:

The second time [we saw Nick Drake recently] was a week or so ago, when he came in, smiling that weird little smile, half-mocking, half-bewildered, and handed over this, his new album. He’d just gone into the studios and recorded it without telling a soul except the engineer. And we haven’t seen him since.

The point of this, is this: Nobody at Island is really sure where Nick lives these days. We’re pretty sure he left his flat in Hampstead quite a while ago…

But all of this bull is just the hype machine turning for an artist 35 years dead, right? Well, except for the music. And if you listen to the unreleased track on Stereogum, “To the Garden,”, do you begin to understand why people are willing to mount (parts of) festivals in this guy’s honor so many years later? Er, with some difficulty. The sound quality is poor, the speed of the tape seems too slow (or else Drake’s voice changed radically during his career)… And yet, it’s quintessential Nick Drake, that mix of melancholy and lyrical melody that is at the core of his latest recordings. Makes me wish he had recorded a clean take, and makes me very curious to hear what else he has up his mouldering sleeves.

Obligatory Nick Drake cross-reference #1: The title of this post is from a Clem Snide song, “Nick Drake Tape”: That Nick Drake tape you love/Tonight it sounds so good/As brown as leaves can get/And sleep is what you should.

Obligatory Nick Drake cross-reference #2: Christopher O’Riley, previously having released two albums of classical piano Radiohead covers and one of Elliott Smith tunes, has been doing Nick Drake songs in concert. I look forward to reviewing that disc when it comes out….

Random 10: It goes to 11 edition

It’s been a long week and I haven’t been online very much. Rest assured, I haven’t been slacking.

Today’s random 10 is sponsored by Spinal Tap, who would have taken it to 11.

  1. Boston Symphony Orchestra (Seiji Ozawa, cond.), “Herr Gaensefuss, Frau Gaensekraut” (from Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder) (Gurrelieder/Chamber Symphony No. 1 and 2)
  2. Johnny Cash, “Mean Eyed Cat” (Unchained)
  3. Cornershop, “Coming Up” (When I was Born for the Seventh Time)
  4. John Cale, “Mailman(TheLyingSong)” (blackAcetate)
  5. Dexter Gordon, “’Treux Bleu” (The Complete Prestige Recordings)
  6. Hilliard Ensemble, “In te speravi, per trovar pietà” (Josquin: Motets & Chansons)
  7. Nick Drake, “Parasite” (Pink Moon)
  8. Thomas Dolby, “She Blinded Me with Science” (The Golden Age of Wireless)
  9. Peter Gabriel, “Red Rain” (So)
  10. Archers of Loaf, “One Slight Wrong Move”

The Police, reuniting for a buck the Grammys

The Grammy awards folks announced yesterday that they convinced convinced the Police to play a song together to open the show on February 11. Yes, I’ll be watching (or Tivoing) it. No, I’m not thrilled and overjoyed. Too much time has passed, and I know how old Sting looks now; I don’t want to see an old Andy Summers and an old Stewart Copeland rehashing material that was current almost thirty years ago.

What I want is for them to get together—in the studio, not on TV—and pull a Mission of Burma by creating an album that’s just as amazing and vital as their early work. But I’m afraid the odds are against it.

Friday non-random listening: The Beatles, Love

Confession: I’ve been on a Beatles kick for a month or more now, as a quick glance at my Past Listening pages will show. Ironically, I think it started the last time I was in Las Vegas, with all the ads for the Cirque du Soleil show Love, based on the Beatles catalog. I also finally got a chance to listen to some of the Beatles discs I had ripped as part of The Project.

Now, coming back to the Beatles might not seem to be such a Big Thing, but consider: I basically gave away my Beatles collection, consisting of all the albums from Rubber Soul through Abbey Road, when I was in college. I had been nuts about the music when I was in high school, but by that point I had started to see it as juvenile, somehow. I had become aware of the roots of rock in American blues and folk music, and I had become captivated by the irony and anger of the better 90s alternative music. The Beatles seemed too pat, too earnest, too pop. So I gave the discs to my sister and forgot about them.

Except I had to go back and buy a new copy of The White Album, later.

And then in grad school, I sang lead on an a cappella arrangement of “Got to Get You Into My Life” … and fell in love with that song’s brassy soul. It had always seemed a throwaway track to me, tucked as it was right before “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the totally brilliant Revolver, but now as I studied it it was revealing hidden depths.

I was also becoming aware of how difficult it was to write the sort of melodies and nail the sorts of harmonies that the Beatles pulled off album after album. And I think my investigation of the roots of rock and roll was starting to make me curious… after listening to Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and others I wondered: what happened when this music hopped the pond to stir up four lads from Liverpool?

So in the last month I started picking up the early Beatles albums on the cheap. I had always dismissed the albums before Rubber Soul, preferring the clever songwriting to the albums that made teenage girls scream. I mean, come on… most of the early albums had cover songs on them. But after hearing a lot of 1950s Sun Records, I got curious. And I’m glad I did. Hearing the Beatles’ version of Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” is very very cool. Hearing some of the great originals on the earlier albums (“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl,” “Money”…

Fast forward to today. A coworker of mine lent me the George Martin mixtape Love, and I listened to a fair percentage of it today. And to my surprise it’s good. There are some really imaginative things in it: Ringo’s drum solo leading into “Get Back,” the merging of “Blackbird” and “Yesterday,” playing “Sun King” backward… It plays like a quiz recording, “spot the song.” It’s a lot of fun to listen to and very pleasant—not groundbreaking but fun.

Gettin’ nothing but static

Monday was a really crappy day: my Passat factory tape deck stopped auto-reversing and would only play side A. This was a Big Problem because I only listen to my iPod in the car and the tape adapter that I use only plays on side B. And of course the Passat factory radio doesn’t include an aux in.

Originally I had hoped to wire the iPod to the head unit directly, but I simply don’t have that kind of time right now. So, with some trepidation, I decided to see if I could find an FM transmitter that would work. I’ve had bad luck with these devices in the past. I bought one in 2001 for my first generation iPod, but after I almost ran off the road trying to tune the frequency to an unused station I stopped using it. The problem, too, was that the unit was underpowered—even when I found a relatively clear spot on the dial it would get swamped by static. I had the same trouble with a Griffin iTrip and my second iPod.

This time I bought a Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus. This thing has no problem punching through static on empty channels, though there is still intermittent bleed through of noise. It’s also easier to tune. I noticed that the sound isn’t as clean as what I used to get through the cassette adapter, but that’s my only complaint. Nice product.

Coming back to campus

I’ll be making an infrequent return to the MIT campus this afternoon on a career panel, talking about non-traditional recruiting paths. Sloan alums will remember my vocal skepticism of the value of traditional MBA recruiting, which at most schools seems designed to funnel MBAs into consulting or banking while giving other options short shrift. So I have a lot of things to say about the topic; hopefully I can say them in a constructive way this afternoon…

The old ways are sometimes best

The ever durable A List Apart had a great article on Paper Prototyping today. I have to second the recommendation. I had a tremendously productive prototyping discussion with one of our engineers recently using nothing but sticky notes on a whiteboard. Software is great but sometimes the physicality of being able to move stuff around makes a big difference to your creativity.

The practice reminds me of Voice of the Customer, the marketing practice by which customer utterances are written on Post Its and grouped to identify customer pain areas and requirements. Very low tech but very effective.

Props for Double Bag

Eric Asimov in the New York Times writes Quiet Cover for a Vital Brew, another in his series of beer tasting adventures. Reading these is almost as much fun as reading the great Michael Jackson’s beer writing; one gets the sense that if Asimov were not constrained for space by the newspaper, he would be fair competition for Jackson when writing about New World beers.

One of his Top 10 brown ales this week is the Double Bag Ale from Long Trail, a Vermont brewer whose stuff shows up in my local package store—interesting, since according to a 2001 interview with the president of the company they had pulled out of Massachusetts. Perhaps things turned around. I have enjoyed both the Double Bag (an appropriate name for a Vermont beer) and the Harvest Ale in the past; I think I’ll have to check out their other offerings…

Congrats…

…to my Sloan friend Charlie, who just ran the New York Road Runners Manhattan Half-Marathon on Sunday in a respectable 2:07:32. Considering that it was in 20° weather (14° with wind chill), that’s a pretty darned good start to life in the marathon lane. Onward!

Friday Random 10: Standing on the verge of getting it (the weekend) on edition

Lots of stuff happened this week, most of it between the hours of 10 pm and 3 am for various reasons. So today’s Random 10 will be brief. I will, though, point to one new site in my galaxy of affiliations: 43 People, which is now collecting my stories of meeting various famous and semi-famous people. Check out the leitmotif in the Willard Scott and Boyd Tinsley stories…

  1. Woody Allen, “Pets” (Standup Comic)
  2. Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Old Friends)
  3. Led Zeppelin, “The Rain Song” (Remasters)
  4. The Sundays, “Here’s Where the Story Ends” (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic)
  5. Joanna Newsom, “Swansea” (The Milk Eyed Mender)
  6. Charles Mingus, “Better Get Hit In Your Soul” (Three or Four Shades of Blue)
  7. Cat Power, “He War” (You Are Free)
  8. U2, “The Fly” (Achtung Baby)
  9. Ryan Adams, “I See Monsters” (Love Is Hell)
  10. Sting, “Little Wing” (…Nothing Like the Sun)

Hacking TiVo — not for the faint of heart

Every now and then I realize I’m at the far boundaries of my hacker cred. Such as when I read the directions for hacking a piece of popular hardware and turn pale. Today it looks like extending the TiVo with low level hack functionality like telnet, etc., requires rebuilding the kernel on the machine.

However, TiVo released an official SDK called the TiVo Home Media Engine (HME) last year, which allows developers to extend the platform with third party applications. I was pretty excited about this until I checked out the list of third party applications, which is pretty small even taking into account the additional list of downloadable apps. I’m frankly surprised that there aren’t more developers hopping onto the platform. What’s going on?

Might it be that the original hardware hackers who blazed the trails aren’t excited about playing with the official SDK precisely because it’s official?

Be careful what you wish for…

low of 7°

Why, it was just the other day that I was griping about the unnaturally warm weather we were experiencing this winter. “It’s a sign of the apocalypse,” I groaned. “Think of the poor ski resorts. Plus all the people getting colds.” That, of course, was before we woke up this morning to single-digit temperatures. And before I realized that the glass in my office is not well insulated—or insulated at all, apparently.

Ah well. If it weren’t cold, what would I have to complain about?

This is going to be a year without skiing for me, actually, for a number of reasons. So I guess the main reason I missed the cold was that I got acclimatized to it. Suddenly that’s not sounding like such a hot reason to want it to be cold.

Um. I can’t feel my fingers.

Anyway, now it’s cold and winter can officially roll on. Just a little late, but that’s ok. Geez, it’s hard to type when I’m shivering this hard. Maybe I ought just to lie down on the office floor for a minute. It looks warm and comfortable…

Brr. Ah, OK. The word is that there’s a damper stuck open in the heating system that is pulling cold air into the office. Perfect timing.

Overreaching at the Department of Symbols

You know, when Doonesbury had a character in the 70s become President Carter’s secretary of symbolism (cardigan, thermostat, etc.), I thought it was merely clever hyperbole. I see now I was wrong, though apparently the scope is only the USDA Forest Service’s symbols. Which include, heaven help us, the Junior Snow Rangers.

And Woodsy Owl. Who has been put on a shape-up or ship-out diet, apparently. I mean, seriously. Look at the owl on the left versus the owl on the right. Which one looks less threatening? Which one looks like a child predator? “Give a hoot,” indeed.

Alice Coltrane and Michael Brecker, RIP

I was surprised and saddened to learn of the death of two jazz luminaries this weekend. Michael Brecker was a pretty stellar saxophonist, Grammy winner and collaborator with pop luminaries ranging from Paul Simon (“Still Crazy After All These Years,” The Rhythm of the Saints) to Steely Dan (Gaucho, Gold) to Parliament (Trombipulation) to a host of jazz gigs under his own leadership, including multiple Grammys. I will always remember him for his superbly wry and understated guest spot on Dave Brubeck’s Young Lions and Old Tigers, the “Michael Brecker Waltz.” Leukemia took him too soon.

I was saddened about Alice Coltrane too, though reportedly she had been in poor health for a number of years. Fans of her husband John’s work generally are of two minds regarding Alice’s contributions to his later works, when she replaced McCoy Tyner on piano in his performing ensembles. Either they think of her as Yoko to his John (particularly those who don’t like the later, more experimental albums), or they recognize her work as a passionate collaborator and an important contribution to the sound and concept of such albums (Expressions, Stellar Regions). She was also an important contributor to the work of McCoy Tyner himself (Extensions). She will be missed.